First Czech Born NHL Player Passes Away

Regardless of what country you come from, the dream of most young kids is to play in the NHL. Such was the dream of Czech born player Jaroslav Jirki. He was the first Czech allowed to play in the NHL during the communist era in his country.

He died in a plane crash on July 11th and was a young 71 years of age and died in the city of Brno which is a short 125 miles from Prague.

It is reported that his ultra light one-seater crashed shortly after takeoff from the Brno Medlanky airport and caught fire, police said.

Jan Brskovsky, president of the Light Aircraft Association of the Czech Republic, said Jirik was an experienced pilot and the exact cause of the accident is not immediately known.

Jirik was cleared to play in the NHL by Czech authorities. He was a right wing who played only three games for the St. Louis Blues in the 1969-70 season.

He spent most of the season in the minors with the Kansas City Blues.

Jirik scored 83 goals in his 134 international games for Czechoslovakia, winning the silver medal at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble and bronze at the 1964 Innsbruck Olympics. In 450 games in the Czech league, he scored 300 goals.

He like many that followed lived his dream and he opened the door to many other players from Europe to play in the NHL, despite the fact we have some say “keep the NHL open to players from North America only”. How foolish are they??