Jiří Holeček

"I came to Košice to the second league. At the end of the second league, the spectators knew there was hockey there and they started coming. For the first league we had a small stadium for about five thousand spectators. It was packed, hopelessly sold out, and once it happened that the spectators who wanted to get in next couldn't. So they dug a hole in the stadium wall with a pickaxe. About 100 more people crammed through that hole. They stood up above the curtain, because the snow from the roller skating rink was thrown behind the curtain, it was high, so they stood high. They were above the hockey rink watching the hockey and they could still kick the opponent. I experienced such beginnings in Košice. I like to remember it. It was something different, it was special, packed stadium, sold out season tickets."

"We were in Opava on August 21, 1968, in a dormitory at the winter camp, and I woke up at two o'clock in the morning. On my own, the radio started talking over the wire during the night, saying that Czechoslovakia was under occupation, that Russian tanks had come to us. I woke up the coaches, the leaders and all of us at five o'clock and we went to the locker room, packed our things and took the bus to Košice. We met motorcades, military vehicles and armored vehicles, jeeps, tanks not so much. We threatened them from the window of the bus, not even realizing that they could have shot us. We were angry, we were furious, what did they allow themselves to do, like the occupation. That was my bus ride to Košice, lined with Russian troops. You went to Košice to see your families? The camp was cancelled, we went east and the Russians went west, the camp was cancelled and we went to our families. I don't think there was any thought of hockey. Even Tonda Panenka said that the football league was postponed. But then the hockey league got going, didn't it? I still remember when we went to the square by the Košice dome, the square was packed with people. At the end of the square there are monuments to Soviet soldiers from World War II. From there a Russian tank came out, and it pointed at us, at the main street of Košice. We were all lying on the ground that morning and we didn't know what was going to happen. My wife was in a different state and I was lying on the ground with her. So these are my experiences and memories."

"I made the All Stars Team for the first time. The second part of the 1971 World Championship in Switzerland, when the whole team rose up, including me. I made some good saves, the crowd started cheering for us, they cheered for me. I could hear them, it helps, it cheers you up. The performance is better than when it's quiet and nobody is cheering. There were also people in the audience who left Czechoslovakia after 1968. There were a lot of emigrants there. I know some of them and I still visit with some of them. They come here to see me, I come there. Did they come to see you? You weren't forbidden to talk to them? Did the so-called private eyes visit you? There was always one, I don't think he even reported it to us. It wasn't his first time with us, and I think he overlooked it. He didn't want to aggravate us, he was a fan of us."

"I don't remember a bonus being written for the Russians. Before the game I didn't care if there was a bonus or not. I tried to prepare as well as I could for all the games, especially with the Russians. Mainly to get myself mentally well, to have a tight fighting morale, not to go there like a soaked chicken, that I'm going to win, that I'm going to crush them, destroy them, that they're not up to it today. The players kept me calm, they didn't address me at all before the game, they were talking amongst themselves. I was preparing the atmosphere myself in a corner, especially for Russia, to be in a fighting mood, and I went to destroy them."

"Michaljov was a sneaky sket who, when shots came at me from a distance, stood by the bar and scratched my legs from behind. Sometimes they missed me, too, and when a shot came I was lying on my back. The spectators were like, "Why don't you catch it, why are you lying there? When I saw Michaljov going for it again, I took him with our wider heavy stick over his ankles. He started yelling - Choleček, what are you doing? I told him - Shit, you idiot. So I had a nice chat with him. But he was already paying attention, he knew there was no impunity for what he was doing there."

"I think we played the Russians 1:1, there wasn't much left, two or three minutes. We had an agreement with the defensemen that if the Russians go two-on-one, I'll go up against one, push him a little bit and the defenseman will take the player without the puck. I think it was Olda Machač, I'm facing the player at an angle, he came to me. He saw he wasn't going to score, so he threw it to his teammate on the other side, Olda lifted his stick to the Russian who couldn't finish the puck behind me into the empty net. But his foot was free, so he kicked the puck with his skate on purpose and the puck flew into the net behind me. The referee Kompalla pointed to the goal, blew the whistle and went to the penalty box to report it as a goal. When I saw that he conceded a goal, not that it bounced off his foot by mistake, it was a deliberate kick. As soon as I saw Kompalla going to report it, I threw my gloves, mask, stick and sprinted to the penalty box. And as Kompalla was about to report it, I grabbed him by the neck, started choking him, his eyes were down, he was gasping for breath. Until my teammates arrived and pulled me away from Kompalla, because if I held him any longer, he would probably suffocate. And Kompalla, as he was absolutely sick of what he had done, and he knew he conceded a goal he shouldn't have, so he didn't give me any penalty. I should have been given the rest of the game and not played another game. I was trying for his life, if I hadn't been taken off I don't know how it would have turned out. But he didn't give me anything, no penalty, he didn't have a clear conscience."

"They wanted me in Chicago, Bobby Hull wanted me there. And that I would have a salary like him, they were much lower salaries, three or five million dollars a season. That´s what he has got, that he would give it to me, that he would make it happen, but I would have to leave my one-year-old son and four-year-old daughter here in Prague, which was unthinkable for me. I said I would like to, but I couldn't. He says, "For five million dollars, it's not possible, right? So I explained to him why it wasn't possible because of the little kids. He says, "In two months, through the Red Cross, they'll be here. I said, "Not in 20 years, not in two months, they won't be here. And I went back home."