Mikita, born in Czechoslovakia (now two separate nations—the Czech Republic and Slovakia), led the NHL in scoring four times during his 22-year career with the Chicago Blackhawks. He also twice won the NHL’s version of the Triple Crown, capturing MVP honors, the individual scoring championship and the Lady Byng Trophy for gentlemanly play.

But starting in the mid-to-late ‘70s, European-born players began trickling into the league. Swedes Borje Salm-ing, a defenseman for Toronto, and New York Ranger linemates Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson, became bona fide NHL stars. Then NHL fans, whose only exposure to hockey talent behind the Iron Curtain came via the Olympics or an occasional Canada Cup series, got a regular dose of this caliber of player when the Stastny brothers—Peter, Anton and Marian—defected from Czechoslovakia and played for the Quebec Nordiques.

However, the fall of communism in the late ‘80s and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 opened the doors for talented Eastern European players to make their way to the NHL without having to defect like the Stastnys. And they certainly took advantage of their window of opportunity.

Canadian and American-born players still make up a large percentage of NHL rosters today, but it’s not uncommon to see rosters carrying a handful of players from Russia, the Ukraine, Latvia, the Czech Republic or Slovakia, as well as from traditional European hockey hotbeds such as Sweden and Finland.

And they’re among the NHL’s most exciting and productive players. This season, Pittsburgh’s Jaromir Jagr (Czech Republic), Toronto’s Mats Sundin (Swe-den), Colorado’s Peter Forsberg (Swe-den), Anaheim’s Teemu Selanne (Fin-land) and Montreal’s Saku Koivu (Fin-land) are ranked in the top 10 in scoring, while goalie Dom-inik Hasek (Czech Republic), a one-time Vezina Trophy winner, sports a goals-against average of under 2.75.

And with NHL teams scouting and drafting European players in larger numbers, more and more could be making a living skating in North America in the future.

Adjustments in play

But oftentimes, there are plenty of adjustments that European’s finest must make before they reach the status of a Jagr, a Forsberg or a Hasek in the NHL. One of the biggest differences between NHL and European hockey is rink size. NHL rinks are smaller than European rinks.

“I was 19 when I came over to Quebec for the first time, just on the ice, (dealing with) the smaller ice surface,” says Sundin, a center for the Maple Leafs who broke in with the Nordiques in 1990/91 and tallied 23 goals and 36 assists in his first NHL campaign. Prior to that, he played for two teams in Sweden, Djurgarden and Nacka. “There were a lot of different changes.”

“You have to be much quicker, do everything much faster,” notes Tuomas Gronman, a native of Finland and a defenseman for the Chicago Blackhawks who’s in his first NHL season. “It makes it easier to hit people because there’s not much room to go. You have to get used to it a little bit at first.”

Oh yes, the hitting. European players are stereotyped as being reluctant to administer a check or take one, or go into the corners for a loose puck. Gronman admits the NHL’s physical style of play takes some getting used to—and, he notes, some European players never adjust to it—but the 22-year-old believes younger players like himself can make the switch easier.

“Many European players have gone back home (because of the physical play),” says Gronman, who in his first professional season with Tacoma of the WHL in 1991/92 racked up 102 penalty minutes in 61 games. “They might have skills for the league and everything, but that’s the toughest part to handle. There are lots of players who can handle it. That’s a big thing for Europeans, but that’s why it’s good to come as a young player and you have time to learn it.”

“NHL hockey... is a more physical, fast game,” adds Gronman’s teammate, right-winger Sergei Krivo-krasov, who’s been shuttling between the Hawks and their Indianapolis affiliate in the IHL each of the last four years, but has stuck with the parent club this season. “The European game, it’s like you get the puck, you get a little more time to cruise around, see everybody and make a play. Here, as soon as you cross the red line, you have to put the puck in and work the corners. The (Euro-pean) coaches don’t like that.”

Sundin, an NHL All-Star last year who led the Leafs in scoring with 83 points, also points out that Euro-pean players face a longer season in the NHL than they do in their native countries. “It’s a more intense schedule,” he says. “We play twice as many games here as we do in Europe.”

Culture and language

While making the transition from a shorter season and a more freewheeling style of play to a longer season and predominantly close-checking style presents the biggest challenge for European players over the long haul, adapting to the language and culture in the US and Canada can be an obstacle in and of itself.

Sundin and Gronman didn’t have much trouble speaking English in everyday situations when they arrived in North America, since both learned English as a second language in their respective countries. However, for someone like Krivokrasov, who is from Siberia and wasn’t taught a lick of English, picking up the language wasn’t easy.

Prior to signing with the Hawks in 1992 after playing for the CSKA Red Army team, Krivokrasov, who was 18 years old at the time, spent his first month-and-a-half in the US living in a dorm room at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

“It was tough,” he says. “I didn’t know any English. I just picked it up watching TV, listening. The director of the University of Minnesota-Duluth (Rich McCloud) used to take care of me all the time. He took me everywhere. I was always listening to what they (people around him) were saying, and I started to understand it more and more.

“By the time I came here (to Chicago) and signed a contract, I didn’t speak very good English, but I could understand what they asked me to do, little things.”

Sergei Zubov, a defenseman for the Dallas Stars, rates his ability to speak English “somewhere in the middle” since coming to the United States four-and-a-half years ago.

Originally drafted by the New York Rangers after playing for the Red Army team in the late 1980s that featured current NHL stars Sergei Fedorov, Pavel Bure and Igor Kravchuk, Zubov said English lessons and a three-month stint with the Rangers’ Binghamton AHL minor league team helped expose him to the language.

“I had to pick it up for living, for eating, sleeping, whatever,” says Zubov. “I’m trying to keep it up (English). I still have some lessons.”

No doubt, veteran Philadelphia Flyers’ defenseman Petr Svoboda would give the same reasons as Zubov for learning the language. But Svoboda had a more pressing reason to stay on the continent. Unlike Zubov, who could return to Russia freely today if things didn’t work out for him in the NHL, Svoboda couldn’t go back to then-communist Czechoslovakia in 1984 because he defected at the age of 17.

“I defected before I got drafted,” said Svoboda, who was drafted fifth overall by Montreal in the 1984 NHL Entry Draft. “It was tough. There were so many things going on in the Czech Republic that I didn’t agree with—the lifestyle, the differences. You were kind of locked in to a mold that you didn’t want to be in. There was only two ways to do it: you either stay there or go the way I did.”

Svoboda lived with Canadiens’ general manager Serge Savard’s family the first two months after he was drafted. Savard drove Svoboda to English classes every day.

“He was tremendous to me,” Svoboda says. “After that, it was lonely for a while, but it was a lot of fun. We had a great hockey team and a great bunch of guys in Montreal at the time, so it was easier.”

Nonetheless, life wasn’t entirely fun and games. Svoboda couldn’t return to see his family in Czechoslovakia for nearly four years.

“When I look back now, I’m over 30 and I’ve got kids of my own, so if you have a family and you have 17-year-old kids and they’re leaving the country and going to a totally different environment, it was really hard on them (his family),” says Svoboda. “It wasn’t easy at first, coming from a close family and you had to leave everybody behind.”

Fortunately, today’s players from eastern Europe don’t have to go through the hardships that Svoboda had to endure. And overall, once you learn the language, adjust to big-city life and remember to feed the parking meter, life is good.

“Everything is smaller back home,” says Gronman. “You know the town and the people. It’s big here—it’s different. Back home you just drive the car and leave it. But here you have to see where you park, pay every time you park.”

“I enjoy everything,” says Krivokrasov. “I spend time off the ice and enjoy all kinds of things, like fishing, tennis, golf, restaurants. I watch all kinds of shows. I watch talk shows, I like watching movies, sports, everything.”

Mike Sandrolini is a freelance writer based in the Chicago area.