Which team will Czech in?
By TERRY JONES -- Edmonton Sun
TORONTO -- So, which Czech team got off the plane?
The brutal band of fancy skaters which played so pathetically in European pool play? Or the brilliant bunch which played with such passion to stun the Swedes 6-1 in the quarter-final elimination game?
The golden greats of the 1998 Nagano Olympics? Or the ghastly group which slid to seventh in Salt Lake 2002?
The top-of-the-world team which won the 1999, 2000 and 2001 world championships? Or the toppled team which didn't manage to make the medal round as hosts of last year's world championships in Prague?
"Thinking about it is not going to do me any good. We'll find out when we step on the ice (tomorrow)," said Tomas Vokoun, the goaltender, of not knowing if he'll be required to play the game naked or not.
You figure this team out. The Czechs didn't score a goal in their first five periods in the tournament and have scored 16 since.
"I'm in Toronto. I'll go shopping. I'll look around. I'll enjoy it. I'm not going to play the game every day until we get to Saturday."
You never know what you're gonna get with these off-and-on, in-and-out Czechs who face Canada in Saturday's semifinal.
"On paper, you can look at it and say we know the Czechs are wonderful players. They won the Olympics in '98 with a lot of these same players," said Canadian coach Pat Quinn. "Yet in the round-robin, it looked like they weren't even interested."
Yesterday Vokoun's Czech mates took to the ice with a host of Sigmund Freuds sitting in the stands wearing media credentials around their necks. We did not get an answer to the burning question, although the fact that superstar Jaromir Jagr did not skate added another aspect to the study.
"I'll decide (today). If I'm OK, I'll tell the coach I'll play," said Jagr of a hip flexor.
Leaving that alone for a day, the Czech players allowed that it's a fair question to ask them which team might show up.
"It's not that we got beat, it's how we got beat," said Vokoun. "We didn't come to play. Everybody who watched us play could see it. It was embarrassing."
It was a carryover from the funk they ended up in when they lost to the U.S. in the quarter-final at the world championships last year at home in Prague, suggested Radek Dvorak. But while it took a couple of gutter games to get there, they turned a negative into a positive.
"We knew that bad feeling of being eliminated in the quarter-final," he said of transferring the feeling to the Swedes.
"We ended up 2-0 at the end of the first period and the Swedish fans started to turn on them. They were playing under more pressure than we were. Swedes love their hockey and the Swedish fans are tough."
Dvorak said he's not sure the same thing would happen here if the Czechs jumped up 2-0 on Team Canada.
"Canadian fans are different. They'll stay behind their team. But I wish we have a 2-0 lead to find out."
Head coach Vladimir Ruzicka, the former Edmonton Oiler, said the lay of the land going into this one is a lot like it was going into the semifinal of the Nagano Olympics against Canada.
"It's a similar situation," he said.
"It's why we have our hopes to repeat it. It won't be easy. Canada is a good team and the home team. But if we play like we did against Sweden, we can have success."
If that's the Czech team which stepped off the plane here, few would disagree.
"We have great forwards," said Vokoun. "We really can put the puck in the net. When we want to play, we really have amazing players."
He said a transition came over the team as they went further into the tournament.
"We knew we were way better than that. We decided if we've got to play, we might as well do it with passion. If we go out and play with that passion, there is no reason we can't play with Canada and beat them. We can beat anybody."
Vokoun said the bottom line is that the Czechs won the trip to North America to play Canada in the semifinal.
And what a trip it was.
"We're here for two games for sure," said Dvorak, one of the worst flyers to play for the Edmonton Oilers since Wayne Gretzky.
"You don't go through what we went through to come over here and lose and turn around and go right back home. That was a long flight for me. It took 15 hours. First we sat on the plane in Stockholm for a couple of hours waiting for a fuel truck to show up, then we landed in Greenland to refuel the plane. Never been to Greenland before."
No hurry to go back.
