Zbyněk Michálek

When a puck hits you in an unpadded place, it hurts like hell. I know this because I feel like there is not a bone in my body that hasn’t been broken while blocking shots. My fingers and toes especially know what I’m talking about.

But what are the flying pucks of NHL players when compared to one accurately aimed potato?

Yep, a potato.

We used to throw them at each other when we were little. And trust me, they hurt a lot. For some reason, our parents didn’t enjoy our potato shootouts as much as we did. Maybe it was because we were supposed to be gathering them; our family was making its living off of them.

It was a tough job to walk behind the tractor that our dad drove and pick up the potatoes, but it was easy peasy compared to picking up stones. Once the harvest was done, our dad would till the soil and we would search the field with our bare hands to rid it of stones by putting them in a bucket. If you wanted to eat, you had to work.

At least we weren’t throwing stones at each other. We weren’t that stupid. 

We grew up in a village near Jindřichův Hradec and we had to work every day on our farm. We had a lot of cows, pigs, hens, rabbits and some land. My brother, Milan, and I had to cut grass, feed the animals, take care of them, and clean their barns. We hated it back then but now it’s a source of great memories for us. I remember selling fresh milk to our neighbors. And I’d love to know how many hockey players can say that they can drive a tractor.

The number one rule was: First you do the chores around the house, then you can go and play hockey. And when I say hockey, I don’t mean professional practice at a stadium. I mean just street hockey with other kids. We’d play like that all of the time. In wintertime, we would shovel snow to create barriers in the middle of our big yard, pour water on the ground and wait until the next day for it to freeze. If it was not enough for ice skates, we would at least slide in our shoes.

Many years later, thousands of people came to watch me battling against my brother, but back then, our only fans were cows and pigs.

My brother was a shooter even then, while I would always end up as the goalkeeper. While I wore simple gear, he loved taking penalty shots. When I was later asked in the States how I learned to block shots, I remembered these situations. I couldn’t let my brother win. Duh.

Things could get really heated between us, and we would fight hard. Milan is two years younger, but he was always big and strong. Even as a kid, I had to try my best to beat him. But we were also best friends.

My brother was always more talented. It was obvious that he was going to be really good. He would play with older boys — with us or another group — and he would stand out everywhere.

Everyone talked about him, they would ask about how he was doing and I admit, I was jealous. Of course, I wanted him to be successful but at the same time, I wanted to be in his position. It was not easy to be the other brother. The oh-you-play-as-well sibling.

It motivated me to work harder. I wanted to be like him, but he was pure talent, he was the best player of his year. Around the time he was 13, agents started to circle around him and to meet with our parents.

I always felt sad that none of them was interested in me. They viewed me like an iron ball stuck to my brother’s foot. That was because my father set a condition: if an agent wanted to sign Milan to a contract, he had to sign me to a contract as well. Why would they? I was a nobody. I didn’t play on the junior national team. I didn’t stand out. Many agents refused because of that single condition

Not Allan Walsh. He was the first one who agreed to the condition. He also left a great impression on my parents. He sent us to a camp in Montreal which he organizes annually for his clients. Were it not for Allan and my brother’s and father’s determination, I would have never made it there and I probably would not have played in the NHL. 

Milan was a star. Even at that camp, people knew him. He was the sixth overall pick in the 2003 NHL Draft by San Jose. We practiced with lots of boys who were drafted in the first or second rounds. Top picks. And between them was some guy named Zbyněk Michálek. The other Michálek.