Jakub Kindl

I know exactly what I did the day my mom died. I was training. I never missed a single session.

Aside from my passion for hockey and the opportunity it provided me for a future, it was also an escape from an unpleasant reality. Long before my mom died, she was sick and the sight of her pain tormented me. I lived only for my dream of the NHL. I didn't want to watch my mother slowly vanish before my eyes, so when I was traded from Šumperk to Pardubice in ninth grade, I wanted to stay there as much as possible and not travel home.

Training was my excuse. At the age of 14, I didn't have the balls to watch a person who loved me so much, suffer so much. My mother had been battling cancer for a long time, but a year after I left, her condition worsened terribly. After a month, I came home, and I hardly recognized her. She had already been hospitalized. I didn't understand the gravity of the situation at the time, but I would soon lose her forever.

As part of our summer training, we were jumping up the stairs, and before we went to change for hockey practice, I stopped at a vending machine behind the boards to buy a Mila bar. I still remember that exact moment. My father called and told me that he was in front of the stadium waiting for me. Everything was clear the moment I saw him and my 5-year-old brother Denis, who had tears pouring down his face. My father confirmed my fears and we sat on the sidewalk of the parking lot behind the stadium not really talking much. 

My father asked me if I was coming back home with them. “No,” I told him. “I'm not going.” I couldn't bear the idea of looking at the apartment where I grew up, without my mom there.

I gathered myself and returned to the locker room to join the boys. I didn't tell anyone what was happening. I didn't show any emotion. I was 15 and I was already training with the juniors. I thought that no one could see my eyes through the steel cage on my helmet. Sprint, pass, shot, turn with the puck. I managed everything just like everyone else. Except I was crying the whole time.

On the way to the dormitory in Rybitví, I confessed to my older teammate Martin Vágner. He understood why I didn't want to go home. To distract me a little bit, he invited me to Jaroměř, his hometown, for a weekend. I returned to Šumperk only for the funeral; the first funeral in my life.

It was weird. I sat next to my father and felt empty. The worst moment came when I stood up and a never-ending stream of people wished us sincere condolences. A lot of my friends from elementary school came. I wanted it to end as soon as possible. I wanted to go back to Pardubice, to my escape.

The first day of training after my mother died helped me. Hockey was everything to me. It fulfilled me, it amused me, and I was a decent player. I heard rumors that I could play in the NHL one day and my head was filled with that idea. 

It was not disrespect for my mother that led me to avoid confronting that tragedy. Her death was very hard for me emotionally, but I had something in my life that I could focus on; something that gave me a way of moving forward from her loss. At that time, I did not fully understand all of the consequences and I know if something similar happened now, I would handle it differently. As I get older, I realize how much I miss my mother, but who knows what would have happened if I hadn't been so focused on hockey. What would I have done? I had nothing else. We bet everything on a single card. There were a lot of guys who failed. Luckily, I didn’t.

There was a time when my career was in jeopardy, almost before it had started. I was 17, attending a national team meeting, when I suddenly began to pee blood.  I rested for a week, but it didn’t help; the issue kept coming back and certain numbers were always concerning in my blood tests. I had a biopsy, but my body eventually returned to normal and I haven't experienced the problem ever again.

I am fortunate because I didn't finish school. Even in elementary school, I had a poor grade-point average and I left high school at age 16 because I was already training with the Pardubice first team, which was very time consuming. I spent most of my time between trainings, sleeping in a dormitory. Martinec and Šejba, who oversaw us, always wondered why I was not at school, but I needed to rest. Moreover, I heard how talented I was, so who would want to go to school?

First, I started to skip math classes, which was a big problem in an economics school. I attended math class exactly four times in a year. Sometimes, I was at school, but when math was supposed to start, I disappeared. I was afraid, I didn’t like solving math problems. I preferred to go to the gym. 

My father and my agent were there with me, and I remember the headmaster saying to my father, "Mr. Kindl, we'll let him pass, but you must promise us that he will never return to this school."

So, I signed up somewhere else, but I literally just signed up because I never showed up. I completely skipped my education. I was raised by hockey and the following year, I was supposed to go to Canada.

I sat in the last row of the plane with tears in my eyes. My father and I had just said an emotional goodbye as he sent his first son into the world. I had never been alone this far from home, or for so long. I didn't know a word of English.

In anticipation of this new chapter in my life which was supposed to bring me closer to the NHL, it never occurred to me to bring a picture of my mother with me. As I unpacked my suitcase upon arrival, however, she was there in a frame. My father had packed a photo for me. 

From that point on, I always kept a picture of my mom on my bedside table. Whenever I look at her, even after all these years, I always hear her voice: “To a woman, you always have to deny. Deny, deny."

I don't know why, but this was her advice that stuck in my memory.