Anyone who watched Buffalo hockey at the end of last season and during the summer break must have been excited about what Jiří Kulich will show in the new season. However, the young Czech striker has not yet been able to follow up on his charming rise. He even almost ended up on the stand among the substitutes.
At the last World Cup, Buffalo did not let him go, he had to fulfill his duties at the club farm in Rochester.
His first experience in the adult national team, after dominating the youth team, may be the Olympic tournament in Milan in less than four months.
Will national team coach Radim Rulík make him a winger of one of the first two formations? Or perhaps the leader of the third attack?
Not long ago, such questions were easy. Kulich finished the past NHL regular season – to the praise of coach Lindy Ruff – as Buffalo’s first center.
And for example, journalist Matthew Fairburn from the online newspaper The Athletic confirmed in September that the 21-year-old Czech has “the potential to be the first center” at the level of the best league in the world.
Kulich started the season as the number two center. But he was promoted immediately after the opening race, because number one Josh Norris was sidelined for a long time by an upper body injury.
The problem is that the pupil of Chomutov and Karlovy Vary did not stand up even as a second center, let alone a first.
After the third match, Ruff publicly criticized him and indicated by the composition of the formations in training that he would leave him in the stands as a healthy substitute in the next game.
In the end, he didn’t do that, but he “cleaned up” him for the fourth attack. Only during the duel did he give him room higher in the lineup.
The forceful response the coach was hoping for, however, did not come. Kulich did score, but only into an empty net, during the cannonade into the Ottawa net 8:4, Buffalo’s first win of the season. Otherwise he was struggling again.
Jiří Kulich’s goal during the opponent’s power play in the match with Ottawa | Video: NHL.com
“He’s got more,” Ruff pointed out. “I didn’t see that Jiří skate out of the zone with the puck. He had a few opportunities to do it. Normally he would, he just needs to gain a little confidence and add a little spice to his game. To tell himself that it’s his puck and he’s going to make it happen.”
The aforementioned hit into an empty net is Kulich’s only record of productivity after four games and with a decent ice time of 16:23.
Otherwise, he collected negative six points in the +/- rating, had only eight shots on goal and won only about 36 percent of the ball.
“Ruff is definitely not wrong about Kulich. Despite the large space in the first formation and on the power play, he is still invisible,” journalist Fairburn did not contradict the criticism of the Czech forward.
“Buffalo went into the season with the intention that Kulich could also help replace the offensive numbers that disappeared when JJ Peterka was traded. But in the first games, he did not stand up to this task,” he added.
Like a sudden drop in form. Preparation still offered reason for optimism – Kulich scored the same number of points (2+1) in three matches.
If the Czech talent, as the expected center, does not find his way into the first two formations, the Sabers will have a hard time breaking the long streak of not advancing to the playoffs. They are currently suffering from 14 bankruptcies in a row. No one in the league has been waiting this long to fight for the Stanley Cup.
