Czeching In

Before the puck was dropped, the rookie right wing from Jihlava, Czechoslovakia , turned to the veteran defenseman from Minneapolis , Minnesota , and made a bold prediction. "You will not stop me," Bobby Holik told Mike Ramsey .

"I felt like Rocky before his fight with Ivan Drago," says Ramsey .

"I said that to make him, you know, mentally weak," says Holik.

Ramsey 's Buffalo Sabres won that Dec. 18 meeting with Holik's Hartford Whalers , but not before Holik had made good on his prediction. With the Sabres leading 3-2 in the third period, he took a pass on the off wing, brushed past a Sabre at center ice, crossed the Buffalo blue line and cut diagonally toward the net. Without slowing, he ripped a shot over goalie Daren Puppa's right shoulder to tie the score. "Nine times out of 10 a shooter hooks the puck wide when he shoots coming across like that," said Puppa afterward. "But he made it."

That morning in practice, Holik had taken 25 extra shots, most of them similar to the shot that he would use to beat Puppa. Holik's dedication to hard work is, like his sleek, hard, 6'3", 210-pound body, the product of a controlled experiment. For the first 18 years of Bobby's life, his father, Jaroslav, one of the best players Czechoslovakia has ever produced, dedicated himself to making Bobby good enough to play in the NHL . The result—an Ivan Draso on skates—has been unleashed on the league with the aid of another Ivan, a fellow Czechoslovakian named Lendl.

Shortly after the collapse of Communism in Czechoslovakia 15 months ago, Lendl, a resident of Greenwich, Conn. , who sits on the Whalers' advisory board thanks to his friendship with team owner and tennis buff Richard Gordon, helped Holik get an early release from his military commitment so that he could join Hartford in time for this season. The Dukla Jihlava club obviously was not happy to lose one of its stars, but it did get badly needed hard currency in return. Czechoslovakian club teams are no longer subsidized by the government, and to survive they are selling players at bargain-basement prices. No reasonable offer refused. For example, the Whalers paid $100,000 to Dukla Jihlava to get Holik.

Thus, nine rookies from Czechoslovakia are playing in the NHL . Four of them have immense potential: center Petr Nedved of the Vancouver Canucks , who was the second pick in the 1990 draft; right wing Jaromir Jagr of the Pittsburgh Penguins , the fifth player chosen in that draft; Holik, who was the 10th selection in the '89 draft; and Calgary Flame right wing Robert Reichel , who lasted until the fifth round in '89 because he's only 5'10" and 170 pounds. Holik, Jagr and Reichel used to make up one of the top lines for the Czechoslovakian national team. "Holik and those guys are so young and talented, they might develop into the finest players the country has ever developed," says New Jersey Devils center Peter Stastny , who has been an NHL star since defecting from Czechoslovakia in 1980.

For a nation of only 16 million people, Czechoslovakia has turned out a disproportionate share of the world's premier hockey players. "It's not that [Czechoslovakian youngsters] get more ice time," says Stastny . "It is the deep roots, the tradition." It is also the high level of instruction that is provided by the sporting clubs that sponsor teams at all age levels. And even before the mid-1970s, when the highly skilled, puck-possession style of play favored by the Soviets and Scandinavians began to take hold in the gritty, dump-and-chase NHL , the Czechoslovakians played a hybrid of those forms of hockey, which made their adjustment to the league a little easier.

Holik, who at 19 is one year older and more physically mature than Nedved and Jagr, has been making steady progress this season. A hard-driving forward, he had 16 goals and 16 assists through Sunday's games.

Jagr, a powerful skater with jaw-dropping one-on-one moves, has improved his play since the Penguins struck a deal with Calgary on Dec. 13 to acquire 33-year-old center Jiri Hrdina, a Czechoslovakian who has become Jagr's translator and counselor. "We were trying to explain to him the NHL regulation on stick curvature, and he thought we were yelling at him," says Pittsburgh general manager Craig Patrick . "Until we got Hrdina, Jaromir was slipping farther and farther away." Jagr scored his first NHL hat trick against Boston on Feb. 2 and now has 19 goals and 40 points.