KULICH TAKING NEXT STEP FORWARD IN SOPHOMORE SEASON
Nov 2, 2023
By Andrew Mossbrooks | @Mossbrooks48
The expectations have been set for Rochester Americans star forward Jiri Kulich.
“My job is to help them (Kulich and Isak Rosen) help the Buffalo Sabres contend for a Stanley Cup,” said Amerks head coach Seth Appert.
“It’s amazing to hear,” Kulich remarked. “He’s helped me so much.”
After leading Rochester in goals (24) his rookie season, the Kadan, Czech Republic, native is picking up where he left off. Kulich has successfully evaded the ‘sophomore slump’ to this point, as he leads Rochester with seven goals through the team’s first eight games. His seven goals are third-most across the AHL, and his 10 points (7+3) have Kulich tied with his linemate, Rosen, who has four goals and six assists to begin the season. Coincidentally, they’re best friends off the ice, too.
“‘Rosey’ (Rosen) helped me so much last year. He’s a European guy, too, so he understood my bad English and would talk to me pretty slow. When we’d go on long bus trips, we would sit next to each other and he would help me learn how to say and use some words.”
Kulich skated into the Flower City as a hopeful NHL player of the future. The Sabres selected the teenager in the first round of the 2022 NHL Draft and signed him to a three-year, entry-level contract just a few weeks later.
That’s pressure. The weight of that pressure wasn’t felt solely by the game he was trying to play, but also the language he was learning to speak. Kulich is learning English on the fly. He describes it as frustrating at times, noting how difficult his first couple of months were last season simply because he was on a bus with players speaking a language he couldn’t understand.
“It’s a lot,” said Appert. “Certainly nothing I’ve lived through. I think last year the first month or so for him was overwhelming. It was reaching a little bit of a breaking point. I could see it in his eyes. He was frustrated with hockey being so hard and the language and I was being hard on him as well.”
“I was a little mad at first last year because he was so hard on me,” said Kulich. “I didn’t understand last year for the first two months, but then I learned to understand what he meant by pushing me to be better and get the most out of myself. I know he can trust me, and that’s the best thing for me as a player.”
Appert took notice to that frustration early in the season and made it a point to bring a then 18-year-old Kulich into his office.
“I brought him in one day and had a message typed out to him through Google Translate in his native tongue because I thought he really needed to hear why I was being so demanding of him. It’s because we believed in him so much. You could see it was one of those moments that he was really at a tough point. I didn’t want anything getting lost in translation and I think he and I started getting on the same page. As his habits got better every day, his skill level started to take over.”
Shortly after that conversation, Kulich began to soar. From Jan. 25 onward, Kulich skated in 32 games with the Amerks, scoring 17 goals and 12 assists for a 29-point push to the playoffs. He became more comfortable adapting to life in North America and did what he’s done since he was a kid: shoot the puck.
Kulich grew up around his dad and brother. He used to play his brother in shooting games with a stick and puck outdoors and remembers always losing. Kulich, being the competitor that he is, took that personal. From the age of 12 up until the day he was drafted, Kulich would shoot roughly 1,000 pucks a day. His diet has steadied to “just a few hundred” each day of practice with the Amerks. The effort is part of the winning habits that coach Appert wants to see out of one of Buffalo’s brightest prospects.
“His growth has been massive,” said Appert. Last year he was a skilled player who could occasionally make a play and would struggle, other than when making occasional play. Now, there’s pressure on him to be there every night. It’s not about putting up points every night. They need to play the right way every night. The more he does that, the better success he’s going to have here, and that will bring him closer to his goal of the National Hockey League.”
Kulich’s goals have come in a variety of ways. He notched his first career hat trick during the opening weekend of the season in Toronto, with his third goal being the overtime winner. He scored another OT goal the following Wednesday in Laval. He’s registered a point in six of eight games so far.
The 19-year-old center found his stride last season. It took a conversation and a translator, but Kulich has settled in. The success from the regular season followed him into the playoffs, and now he hopes that the success from the first few weeks of this season will carry onward until it finds him at the pinnacle of the sport.
“My goal is to put a Buffalo jersey on me,” said Kulich. “But right now, I’m in Rochester, so I’m just trying to do my best to help this team win. We’ll see what happens down the road.”