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Coach Vejvoda about training in Sweden, Jágr, his famous feint and inspiration from Panenko

Is it a professional and life change for you after years in Sweden?

No, I don’t feel that way. I love the hall here, I know the cabin and I meet again the icemen I saw thirty years ago. Nostalgia may have set in when I came here after ten years and my legs weren’t working. It’s not now. But maybe it would be different if I didn’t train so many Czechs in Sweden.

It is true. The Lidingö Vikings junior team was one-third Czech. What is it?

When I started coaching the little guys there, the club was bouncing back from the bottom. In my year 1 there were five kids, now in year 7 some 550. But we had gaps in the years and I was in contact with Czech agents, which were guys I played with or against. Or fathers like in Peter Ton. We needed competition and the Czechs brought it. We were very happy with them because they wanted to train, they led by example and the cabin was perfect that the guys stay in touch. The official language was English. We didn’t want the Czechs to play Czech music and the Swedes Swedish, but when I was alone with a Czech or a Swede, I spoke to him in his native language.

We’re often compared to Sweden and it’s based on the fact that we beat them under the age of fifteen, but in the teenage years they step into training and run away from us. Why?

I asked Czech boys, talked to parents and agents and took a picture. The Swedes looked at us and the Russians twenty years ago when they had changes. They added their system, organization and pedagogy to it. They also did it centrally, but the union sends consultants to smaller clubs to improve their level and increase the number of small sections. They then deliver 14- and 15-year-old players to big clubs and gymnasiums. Few people start in Djurgarden and make it to the workshop. And also, for example, just in Stockholm there were at least eight elite teams in the last 18, and look how many there are in Prague. A larger tip will logically emerge from the wide base. And I have the feeling that there is even more playing there than in the Czech Republic. That’s how we learned to skate forty years ago, and then it was just a game, a game and a game.

Kladno will bet on experiencePhoto: Knights of Kladno

Is it related to the fact that they like to combine sports there? They play football in the summer, hockey in the winter.

They did a study in which Sundin, Forsberg, Lidström, Alfredsson figured, and they played four or five sports until they were fourteen. But that was twenty years ago. Now hockey has become a sport for twelve months of the year. It is specific because you spend thirty years of your career on two millimeters, which must be trained. However, it is good to supplement it with other sports – ball sports, gymnastics, changes in movement. But let it be a form of play. Let the children play fools, because they don’t even know how many times they turn left and right. If you told them to turn right 150 times in training, they wouldn’t enjoy it. But I maintain that there must still be competition. I’m a big fan of play, creativity and competition because I have to push you to be better and you push me to be better. Who saw the documentary Last Dance about the Chicago basketball players, where Michael Jordan wanted everyone to dance at practice. This is it. It’s one thing to do exercise, another to do it to the fullest, and another to do it properly.

How important is competition? David Pastrňák, whom Sweden prepared for adult hockey, said that when the coach leaves the gym, everyone continues to work there. In our country, a part of it is rejected.

I don’t want to speak badly about Czech boys and girls, but in Sweden they are taught to sit together at the table and solve a problem together from an early age. Everyone contributes, they are not ashamed. That society then has it rooted in itself and is homogeneous. Swedes don’t like conflict. A new player comes in, they shake hands with him. Yes, he is my competitor, but he will say: Welcome. Then, on the other hand, you have the Russians, who tend to be superstars but rarely make the team.

That requires education, right? Sweden has sports gymnasiums, here many teenagers and juniors miss school, while a sports career can easily disappear.

Intelligence is needed on the ice and it’s also about self-discipline. When a person manages both studies and training, he is responsible. Yes, there are plenty of cases when a player had a clear vision that he wanted to go to the NHL, he dedicated himself to it, he clearly followed his path and he got it. But 40 percent of players from universities also go to the NHL, which is also a great way. You play hockey at a high level, get three hours of ice a day and still get a degree from an American university.

I’ve been wanting to ask for years: Are you the first player to use the famous between-the-legs tackle. How did the idea come about?

I read Ivo Viktor’s book My jersey number 1 a hundred times. There were pictures of penalties from the 1976 European Championship and how he went to kick Tonda Panenko. I always wondered how to do something like that in hockey. Sometime around the age of thirteen, I started doing it in training for the mantinel, I would be embarrassed in a match. Then I tried it against Litvínov, but it was made to pull out at the right time. When the final in Vienna (1996) was going into extra time, I had it in my head to use it.

So Martin Procházka took away all the glory with his goal?

(laughter). No, Prochy did it very well. But I’m glad the trick has caught on and guys in different leagues are doing it. And it was funny that Robert Záruba later told me here in the winter that he knew that there was something of Tonda Panenka in me.

Coach Otakar Vejvoda on returning to KladnoVideo: Knights of Kladno

I’m thinking that your blue line could meet in one stadium again. Pavel Patera coaches Sparta, you Kladno, and Martin Procházka could co-comment your fight for television.

There were always great matches here with Sparta, and it’s special for me that my dad played for Sparta for five years and I went to watch him between the ages of nine and fourteen. However, neither I nor Patýz will solve it, we will talk after the season. We’re both going for three points and I’d be surprised if he said anything else.

You see, Pardubice and Sparta are ranked as favorites by the bookmakers, but they put you in last place. What do you think?

I don’t have social networks, I don’t watch TV, I don’t even read the news. I won’t read this interview either, so I don’t know what the experts are saying. But something came to me, so you need to take it as motivation. But I have a good impression of the team. The cabin works, which makes me happy.

What role does Jaromír Jágr play? A playing owner who, when not playing, participates in training.

He is a player who is second in NHL scoring, he is an owner, he understands hockey. He has fun with the boys, he is at all the exercises, he has his say on it. We talk about every training session. An absolute professional. I remember as a kid he trained a little extra, so did I. We talked about it. Our year was extremely good, we always wanted to do something extra. And you always see him on the ice trying new things. And that’s what he did, even when he was winning points in the NHL, he was still looking for new paths. Even Ovechkin has to shoot a little from other positions, because once there is stagnation, the end will come. Everyone will run you over. If he thought he was going to rely on what he was able to do at eighteen, at twenty, he wouldn’t have done what he was able to do there. He had to innovate.

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