In the 2013/2014 season, defender Jan Rutta, forwards David Kämpf and Ondřej Kaše played together for the Chomutov team in the hockey extra league. They gradually headed to the Canadian-American NHL, where they went through several clubs.
And after ten years, during which they played many matches in the best competition in the world and gathered a lot of experience, they meet on the ice surface and in the cabin again in the same jersey. And that in the national team of the Czech Republic at the world championship in a home environment. Jan Rutta (San Jose) and David Kämpf (Toronto) are still part of the NHL, Ondřej Kaše is active at the club level in Litvínov.
Along with the trio of Jan Rutta, David Kämpf, Ondřej Kaše, striker Vojtěch Kubinčák also started in the Chomutov team at that time.
“Ondr Kaše and David Kämpf were seventeen, barely eighteen years old, and they started with me in the same attacking formation. So it can be noted with a smile that I raised them hockey-wise. They came to the A’s as youngsters, they played the third and fourth lines,” Vojtěch Kubinčák exaggerated during our recent interview about the start of the career of the current representatives.
“I think the guys were taking me and were happy that I wasn’t yelling at them. I told them to be quiet. You could see that they already have the extra league at such a young age,” Kubinčák pointed out.
“At that time, Honza Rutta was also there with us, who was already experienced and in terms of hockey, everything for him was aimed at going to the NHL, which was soon confirmed. When I was in Chomutov, Jakub Lauko, who is now a Boston player in the NHL, used to go to the cabin there as a small club. His father made us the leader of the team,” added Kubinčák with other memories.
And so that the connections between Chomutov and the Czech national team were not enough, other facts are worth mentioning. In the 2015/2016 season, striker Roman Červenka, multiple World Cup participant, current captain and, from the national team’s point of view, the most experienced player on this year’s World Cup roster, played for Chomutov.
The head coach of the national team, Radim Rulík, also has a Chomutov footprint in his coaching career. In the 2009/2010 season, he led Chomutov’s team in the then first league, which was and is the second highest competition. The team still played at the old winter stadium and only a few years later moved to the new Chomutov arena.
