When a hockey player currently gets into problems with alcohol or perhaps drugs, he has one certainty. The NHL player program will help him, the hockey player goes to treatment and still has a salary. “I don’t know if there was any such program for us. The players association was not that strong. But back then, the paychecks weren’t like they are today. Just like prices, life was not so expensive,” reflects Kučera.
In his era, the club did not have organized dinners. The players were given diets and that was it. Five boys went there, another two went elsewhere. And in the evening we met at a bar where we drank beer from a bottle, but of course there was no match the next day,” recounts the Olympic champion from Nagano.
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It was mostly late at night after the game, when the team didn’t leave for another city until the next morning, so there wasn’t even a training session planned. “It happened that someone came to the hotel in the morning just to take a bag and get on the bus. When they played well, the coaches did not deal with it, even if they knew that the players were not at their “top”. These things should not have affected the results,” adds Kučera.
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He emphasizes that the players from the third or fourth line were well aware of how good a job they had. “They weren’t stupid, they valued what they were doing. The stars had a clear place in the team, but the guys from the third line had to fight for a place in the team,” states the fifty-five-year-old former defender of Sparta and Slavia.
You can see what else was heard in the Příklep show on Sport.cz in the video.