Less than 12 hours after he scored the winning goal for Sparta Prague in the CHL Quarter-Finals, forward Miroslav Forman got a suprise early-morning call to make his Czech national team debut.

by Derek O'Brien and Vaclav Jachim

PRAGUE – What a whirlwind 24 hours it was for Miroslav Forman. On Tuesday, his focus was on the return game of the CHL Quarter-Finals against SC Bern. In the game, Forman scored the game- and series-winning goal – with the puck in the corner, the threw it toward the net, and it hit goalie Leonardo Genoni and went in on the short side. 

After celebrating the victory with the rest of his Sparta Prague teammates he went to bed, thinking he'd get a chance to sleep in with an international break coming up. Then he got an early-morning phone call on Wednesday.

“I got a call from Mr. Kalous,” he said, referring to Sparta head coach Jiri Kalous, who also happens to be an assistant coach for the Czech national team. “It was a bit of a shock! At first I wondered if it was a dumb joke or something, but the coach spoke quite seriously, so I quickly figured out it was for real.” 

The late summoning of Forman came as the result of an injury to forward Jiri Sekac. He had no time to waste – the team practiced in Prague on Wednesday before flying to Helsinki in the late afternoon for a game against Finland on Thursday. Before he did anything else, though, some paperwork needed to be quickly taken care of so that Forman would be able to join the team for the flight to Moscow on Friday for the pair of games on the weekend.

“There was a lot, but thankfully everything worked. I have the Russian visa so I can go,” he happily reported. “If it hadn't worked out, it would have been too bad but I would have accepted it and looked forward to the next time.”

But in fact, this is the first time the 26-year-old will appear in Czech national team colours at any level, so he's obviously glad that it all worked out. 

“This is the national team, and I'm going for the first time. Obviously, the break would have been nice, but this is much nicer. I'm very happy to be on the team, and I'm really looking forward to it.” He added enthusiastically, “I wasn't even given any indication to be ready as an alternate or anything, so that makes this whole thing even better.” 

As excited as he is to make his national team debut, Forman claims not to be nervous looking ahead to Thursday night's game. “I've played in some big games before. It's true I've never represented my country before, and it will be an even higher level, but I'm not nervous. I'd say excited instead.”

Forman has been one of Sparta's clutch performers so far in the CHL with 4 goals and 3 assists in eight games. Two of those goals have been series winners where he benefited from some good bounces. In the Round of 32 he scored in overtime against Karpat Oulu when Petr Vrana's pass went in off his leg, and then in the Quarter-Finals against Bern, when his shot from deep in the corner somehow found space enough to squeak inside the post.

“It's a big deal,” Forman said about winning in the CHL. “It's very prestigious and the whole team is excited about being in the European Semi-Finals, but we want to go even further.”