The Finnish journalist admires the career of Petr Nedved and recalls comparisons to Gretzky.”
The entire column after the jump, and this and more as a paperback in the fall.
Homecoming
Petr Nedved is coming home. He’s only 35 years old, but he has already written a couple of chapters in the hockey history books, all the way from deflecting from Czechoslovakia in 1989 as a 17-year-old to being a first round pick (2nd overall in 1990) to representing Canada in the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, and winning silver.
I’ve only seen him play once. It was 17 years ago, and it wasn’t even a real game. I had spent the summer working at Tackla Canada in Ontario, and at the end of my stint I took a two-week vacation to stay with a friend of mine in Vancouver. I also had a special task to do: I was to find out if Petri Skriko had received his sticks that Tackla had promised him, and I was to deliver two golf shirts to the Canucks trainers.
The Canucks held their training camp in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, a beautiful ferry ride away from Vancouver. I had heard of Nedved, the defector, the prodigy, the gem, the next one. Yes, he was also one of many “next ones.” Unlike many other “next ones” who have tried to downplay any comparisons to The Great One, Nedved thrived on it, and encouraged it by mimicking many of the Gretzky gestures, looks and gimmicks.
Since I was one of the Gretzky followers, I took a special interest in Nedved. Who did he think he was, being a mirror image of Gretzky?
Gretzky had his sweater tucked in on the right side (originally to avoid his hand getting stuck in it when he was a five-year-old playing with nine-year-olds), Nedved makes sure his sweater is always tucked in on the left side.
He skated like Gretzky, his torso in a 90-degree angle to his legs. And he wore his hair long in the back but that, again, may be just a hockey thing. Or a Czech ‘80s thing. We all did that. Some of us never learn.
He even wore the same kind of old Jofa helmet that Gretzky wore. (Granted, that was always the cool choice anywhere in the world, and Jaromir Jagr even wore one a couple of seasons ago).
And there he was now, on the white team, all Gretzky-like, flying down the ice, making a sharp turn after the blue line, looking for a genius pass across the ice. But still not quite the same.
I found that Gretzky connection always irritating and irresistible at the same time. The arrogant imitation that I thought suggested that even Nedved himself saw himself as Gretzky, somewhere in his mind. On the other hand, with 145 points in 71 games with the Seattle Thunderbirds in the WHL, he sure had the numbers to back it up.
In the 1993 playoffs, Nedved’s Vancouver faced Gretzky’s Los Angeles Kings. After the Canucks were eliminated, Nedved asked Gretzky for his stick.
Embarrassing? Yeah. Lame? Maybe. But there’s something very charming about it as well.
Besides, we’re all Gretzkys in some part of our minds, in some part of our worlds. After all, this comes from a guy who wore 99 for a year even without any Gretzky numbers to back it up.
Turned out that Nedved wasn’t the Next One. It also turned out that only a year later he wouldn’t have had to defect from Czechoslovakia at all, thanks to the Velvet Revolution.
But he sure has done things his way, and for that, I now admire him. I may have to travel down to Prague, just to see him play again.
Maybe he’d give me a stick.