Jakub Petružálek – Player of the Month

How did he deserve a nomination?
In 12 KHL games during October he scored 9 goals and 7 assists. Currently, he is the leader in points of his team Khabarovsk and the whole KHL.

Who is Jakub Petružálek?

He is a 26-year old forward, who already could be dead at the moment. He is a hockey-player, whose name was unknown to all hockey fans over the World. Currently, he is one of the KHL's most observed players.
 
Petružálek was born in Most, Czechoslovakia and he entered the professional ice-hockey in Czech Extraliga in the jersey of Litvínov (2002-03). When he was drafted by New York Rangers he left the country to make his NHL dream come true.
 
Unfortunately, he wasn't successful. Jakub played just 2 games for the Carolina Hurricanes before he came back to Europe to play Finnish SM-liiga in the uniform of Lukko Rauma after the 2008-09 season.
 
But as was written earlier, at these times Petružálek could be dead already, as well as all the team of the former AHL club Albany River Rats. The club's coach skidded on an icy road and overturned during the River Rats way from an AHL game in Lowell. The accident was dramatic because the coach stayed partly lying on the highway and there was a hazard of a crash with any truck passing by. Instead of that, the coach got fired.
 
"I thought we had a tire-defect at first. But later the bus engine started to roar awful and we began to spin. The only thing what I remember was that everything was flying around. The stuff, the boys. No-one of us was strapped in. And suddenly a big bang occurred," Petružálek told Deník Sport.
 
He suffered no injury, fortunately no-one from the bus got life-threatening injuries, but for example Casey Borer suffered a vertebral fracture and the season ended for him.
 


Petružálek, the man who survived a big bus accident in USA, is currently playing in the World's second best league. And together with the rest of team Khabarovsk is flying to games in Yak-32, the same model of the airplane that crashed in September 2011 with the team of Yaroslavl.
 
Is he scared? "No way. Whatever should happen, will," Petružálek said in an online chat with fans on iDnes.cz, "I always wear the headphones and I don't think about it. We give our lives into the care of the pilots and we believe in their professionalism."
 
In every interview Jakub praises the life in Khabarovsk and his appearance in the KHL. Regarding to his words he is not planning any other come-back to NHL: "I lost all the illusions about NHL after I had the opportunity to play it; although I played only in two games there. After that experience, I am not interested in the come-back. My very first priority is KHL."
 
Last weekend, Petružálek was a part of the Czech national team in the 2011 Karjala Cup in Finland. In the first game against Sweden he scored two goals and helped to a 5-2 victory.

Past winners
October 2011 - Jakub Petruzalek
September 2011 - Tomas Zaborsky
April/May 2011- André Rankel
March 2011 - Martin Ruzicka
February 2011 - Petri Vehanen
January 2011 - Antti Pihlström
December 2010 - Jakub Stepanek

 

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