Height: 5-10
Weight: 170
Shoot: L
Born: 15 Mar 1946, Brno Czechoslovakia
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Regular Season & Playoff Scoring Record (key)
| year | team | |||||||||||
| 1972-73 | Los Angeles | |||||||||||
| New York | ||||||||||||
| Totals (2 teams) | ||||||||||||
| Totals: |
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Czech Finds New Life With Sharks (excerpt) • by Jim Matheson • The Edmonton Journal • November 11, 1972
One day in February almost four years ago Jarda Krupicka grabbed his skates and made a rink-long dash, as it were, for freedom. He calmly walked out on his teammates on the Czechoslovakian national junior hockey team at a tournament in West Germany and hopped a train for Zurich, and a new life. Krupicka sat in a coffee shop of one of the hostelries in Edmonton Friday morning and commented, in two-month old English, yes, it's a long way from Brno to Los Angeles. But, it was worth it. The 26-year-old centre skates for tie Los Angeles Sharks in the World Hockey Association these days, and he's probably the only player in the league who can yell for a pass in four tongues — German, Russian, Czechoslovakian and now, a little English. ..."I do not speak English so good," says Krupicka. "I read a dictionary for two hours a day and am learning. It is very difficult. Words look one way in the dictionary but they are another way when you speak them." Hockey, as far as Krupicka is concerned, also looks one way in Brno, the second largest city in Czechoslovakia, and another in North America. "The game, it is maybe a little rougher over here," says Krupicka, again apologizing for his trouble in finding the right words. "I play 20 days in Greensboro in the Eastern League and there are some young fellows who are looking more for fighting. Here with Sharks everybody looks for position." Wednesday in Los Angeles, Krupicka was in the right position to score his first pro goal, the winner, against the New York Raiders. "I just skate into the place between the two defensemen and one of our players passes the puck to me," says Krupicka, "It is a very important goal with just three minutes to play. I keep the puck." Krupicka was sent to Greensboro, the Sharks' farm club after shining for Los Angeles during the rookie camp, but tailing off a little when the exhibition season began. "He's always skating like the Russians," says Coach Terry Slater. "He floats in the slot and is always in the right place. He doesn't really have to be taught very much." ...Krupicka fled to Zurich, where he knew friends of his father, because he could not live under the Russian strong-arm. "The politics in Czechoslovakia became a little stupid," says Krupicka, again searching for the right phrasing. "One day all is fine and then we see planes in the sky and tanks coming. The Russians move right in and it becomes very difficult to live there." So he gave up playing for the army team in Brno, 200 miles from Prague, and spent three years in Zurich playing first division hockey and working in a sports shop in the winter and teaching tennis in the summer. "I got a letter from Mr. Murphy (Dennis) and he ask me to come over to try and make team," said Krupicka, adding that a friend in Los Angeles had tipped the Sharks' general-manager. "So I come. My wife will be coming maybe in 14 days. She is in Austria now after leaving Czechoslovakia." |
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