Sturminator
Love is a duel
Well, Suchy outscored Vaclav Nedomansky in his best season, when he led the entire league (not just defensemen) in scoring. Should give some indication as to his offensive ability. He also outscored some prominent Russian forwards during his best tournaments, though I can't recall the exact details. I have a bit to add to the discussion on Suchy. It's quite interesting, I think, though may not really be useful to determining how great he was. I wrote David Luksu (the author of the Czech language biography on Suchy) and asked him some questions about the player. He graciously answered me. Here is the text:
Jan Suchy´s most famous international goal was the first one against USSR in WCH 1969 (CSSR vs. USSR 2:0 - the second one scored Josef Cerny and Suchy had an assist). Unfortunately the second game against Russia (4:3 fo Czechoslovakia) Suchy missed because of fracture of little finger (while blocking shot in the previous game vs. USA).
I read somewhere that Suchy was european Bobby Orr, and I think that it´s true in some aspects. At the first place he was very smart skater (better then most of the forwards that times), that´s why it wasn´t easy to go through him. He had good positional play in defence and also great stability on skates. He wasn´t tall (170 cm), so his kind of play had to be different from the physical force hockey practiced by giant russian backs like Ragulin. He played on the edge of sacrifice (blocking shots, fighting around goal...), when you look at these old games, you could not miss him: he was right at the center of action, one time in defence, and than in a few seconds on the other side of ring shooting on goal. He put everything in to the game: it´s clearly visible from the pictures shows "hardworking" Suchy with grimace of the warrior)) His speciality was sudden counter attack (I don´t know how to better say in English) - he was able to recognize when It´s the right time for offence and he could play like fourth forward (somebody called it false winger).
He had good technical skills with stick, but he prefered combination with his teammates (most of the time Holik brothers and Jan Klapac).
I think that Suchy wasn´t really the first one european defencemen who blocked shots (I heard that for example Frantisek Tikal did it occasionally), but he used this technique more often than anybody else before - it was a full-value part of his play. In communist Czechoslovakia there was no informations about NHL at all, so he couldn´t follow any oversea model. He is saying that he started to blocking shots by oneself.
Suchy was more passer than shooter. There wasn´t so much power in his shooting (rarely use slapshot), so he prefered wrist shot, which was fast enough and quite accurate.
Sorry for mistakes, my English isn´t so good. I will write you more later.... I´m sending you also English summary which was the part of our Jan Suchy´s biography Souska, hope you could use it.
So there you go...a bit of flavor on Suchy from his Czech biographer. Probably resolves nothing as to where he belongs on this list, but still interesting.
