Libor Polášek
| Libor Polášek | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 22, 1974 Nový Jičín, Czechoslovakia |
| Height | 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) |
| Weight | 226 lb (103 kg; 16 st 2 lb) |
| Position | Centre |
| Shot | Left |
| Played for | Hamilton Canucks South Carolina Stingrays Syracuse Crunch HC Vítkovice HC Slavia Praha HC Opava HC Plzeň MsHK Žilina HKm Zvolen HC Košice Dubnica Spartak HC HC Vsetín |
| NHL Draft | 21st overall, 1992 Vancouver Canucks |
| Playing career | 1991–2007 |
Libor Polášek (born April 22, 1974) is a retired Czech professional ice hockey centre. He is regarded by most Vancouver Canucks fans, and hockey people in general, as one of the worst NHL first-round draft picks the team ever made.
Playing career
The Canucks hoped that the tall (6’4”) Czech center would develop into a Mark Messier-like player. Instead, Polasek had difficulty making an impact even at the minor-league level.
He scored a total of just 18 goals over two seasons (1992–1994) playing with the Hamilton Canucks farm team in the AHL. In the AHL playoffs in 1993–94, he scored no goals in three games during Hamilton’s four-games first-round loss to Cornwall.
After a goal-less seven-game stint in the ECHL in 1994–95, he returned to the AHL with the new Canuck affiliate Syracuse Crunch and scored just two goals in 45 games. In 1995–96, he played 19 games in the Czech league then returned to the Crunch for eight more goal-less games. He returned to Europe and in almost a decade of playing for Czech and Slovak teams he scored just 41 goals from 1996–97 to 2005–06.
Performance reception
According to CNNSI.com’s 2001 profile of Canuck draft busts (Say it ain’t so: Transactions that broke our hearts): “Polasek fared worse than the previous three (first-round busts Dan Woodley, Jason Herter and Alek Stojanov) combined -- he never played in an NHL game. In fact, one is hard-pressed to even find statistics on Polasek in many hockey annals.”
The Vancouver Sun’s Iain MacIntyre also wrote in 2001 that if “nuclear winter” set in due to the Canuck draft record in the 80s, then the team “detonated the H-bomb on themselves in 1992 in the form of Libor Polasek, who soon vanished. Not so the Canucks' reputation for picking more duds than CBS programmers.”
Career statistics
--- Regular Season --- ---- Playoffs ---- Season Team Lge GP G A Pts PIM GP G A Pts PIM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1992-93 Hamilton Canucks AHL 60 7 12 19 34 -- -- -- -- -- 1993-94 Hamilton Canucks AHL 76 11 12 23 40 3 0 0 0 0 1994-95 South Carolina Stingrays ECHL 7 0 0 0 6 -- -- -- -- -- 1994-95 Syracuse Crunch AHL 45 2 8 10 16 -- -- -- -- -- 1995-96 Syracuse Crunch AHL 8 0 2 2 6 -- -- -- -- -- 1995-96 Vitkovice HC Czech 19 4 5 9 26 3 0 0 0 2 1996-97 Vitkovice HC Czech 23 4 4 8 66 -- -- -- -- -- 1996-97 Slavia Praha HC Czech 12 3 1 4 55 -- -- -- -- -- 1997-98 Vitkovice HC Czech 48 10 9 19 56 -- -- -- -- -- 1998-99 Vitkovice HC Czech 8 2 1 3 39 -- -- -- -- -- 1998-99 Opava HC Czech 35 5 6 11 80 -- -- -- -- -- 1999-00 Vitkovice HC Czech 27 7 8 15 42 -- -- -- -- -- 2000-01 Vitkovice HC Czech 36 3 6 9 54 -- -- -- -- -- 2000-01 Plzen HC Czech 10 2 1 3 6 -- -- -- -- -- 2001-02 Zilina HK-SKP Slova 13 0 0 0 10 -- -- -- -- -- 2003-04 Zvolen HKm Slova 45 5 11 16 69 17 2 2 4 39 2004-05 Kosice HC Slova 15 0 0 0 22 -- -- -- -- -- 2004-05 Dubnica Spartak HC Slova 19 0 1 1 10 -- -- -- -- -- 2005-06 Vsetin HC Czech 2 0 0 0 0 -- -- -- -- -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
See also
External links
- Libor Polášek's career statistics at The Internet Hockey Database
- Libor Polášek – player profile and career stats at European Hockey.Net
| Preceded by Alek Stojanov |
Vancouver Canucks first round draft pick 1992 |
Succeeded by Mike Wilson |