OHL Alumni Central

Ontario Hockey League grad Petr Kanko has taken a demotion of sorts for the upcoming season. After two years with HC Ocelari Trinec of the Czech Republic’s Extraliga, he will start this season with HC Slovan Usti of the 1. Liga, the affiliate league to the Extraliga.

Petr Kanko played three seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 2001-02 to 2003-04, all with the Kitchener Rangers. Each season with the Rangers, his point production increased while his games played decreased. In his second season, he was part of a Ranger team that won the Robertson Cup as Ontario Hockey League playoff champion as well as the Memorial Cup as CHL champion. Petr played a huge part in the playoff success with 27 points in 20 games for the Rangers.

As a junior, Kanko represented his homeland, the Czech Republic, twice in international play. He was member of the 2001 under-18 team that was left out of the medal standings despite Petr scoring six goals in seven games. In 2004, he was part of the under-20 team that lost out in the bronze medal game.

Kanko was drafted in the third round of the 2002 NHL draft by the Los Angeles Kings. He played four seasons with the Kings’ American Hockey League affiliate, the Manchester Monarchs, from 2004-05 to 2007-08. He was called up to the Los Angeles Kings for a short stint during the 2005-06 season when he played ten games. He scored just one goal with the Kings and that was in his first ever NHL game.

As mentioned, Petr played two seasons with HC Ocelari Trinec of the Czech Republic Extraliga. Hopefully, with a good early performance for HC Slovan Usti, he’ll make his way back to the elite league before this upcoming season is over.

Check out Petr Kanko’s profile page on the HC Slovan Usti official website.

Petr is featured in two previous posts at OHL Alumni Central:

HC Ocelari Trinec of the Czech Republic

Kitchener Rangers 2002-03 Memorial Cup Champions

Jakub Koreis played just one season in the Ontario Hockey League, 2003-04. He played 48 regular season games with the Guelph Storm and 22 games in the playoffs as the Storm captured the Robertson Cup by upsetting Ontario Hockey League top seed, London Knights, in the Western Conference final and sweeping the Mississauga IceDogs in the final.

Koreis represented the Czech Republic three time during his junior career. In 2002, he was part of the bronze medal winning IIHF World Junior under-18 tournament team. He also appeared at the 2003 and 2004 under-20 World Juniors.

The Phoenix Coyotes had high hopes in Jakub as they drafted him in the first round of the 2002 NHL draft, 19th overall. After his season in the Ontario Hockey League, Koreis spent three seasons in the AHL, one with the Utah Grizzlies and two with the San Antonio Rampage.

In 2007-08, Koreis left North America and played in Finland’s SM-Liiga with Ilves. He returned home in 2008-09 and has been a member of HC Sparta Praha of the Czech Extraliga since. He is signed on with Prague for the 2010-11 season.

With HC Sparta Praha, he will join Ontario Hockey League alumnus Radek Smolenak, who was featured yesterday on OHL Alumni Central. Click here to check out the post. Former Barrie Colt, Lukas Bolf is also on the team.

Check out Jakub Koreis’ profile page on the HC Sparta Praha official website.

Radek Smolenak played two seasons in the Ontario Hockey League, 2004-05 and 2005-06. Smolenak played both seasons with the Kingston Frontenacs. From the start, Radek provided the Frontenacs with plenty of goal-scoring. In his first season, he put in 32 goals and in his second with Kingston, he increased the goal total by ten to 42.

Smolenak’s 42 goals in 2005-06 was best on the Frontenacs. His 84 total points placed him third on the team behind Cory Emmerton (90) and Chris Stewart (87). Kingston placed second in the Ontario Hockey League’s East Division that season and were the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference. Unfortunately, Kingston fell in the first round of the playoffs to the Sudbury Wolves in six games.

Radek was drafted by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the third round of the 2005 NHL draft, 73rd overall. In his four years of professional hockey since graduating from the Ontario Hockey League, Smolenak has appeared in seven NHL regular season games, six with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2008-09 and one with the Chicago Blackhawks this past season, 2009-10. The majority of the four seasons was spent with the Norfolk Admirals of the AHL.

The Prague, Czech Republic born winger has decided to return to his home country for 2010-11 and play for HC Sparta Praha (Prague) of the Czech Extraliga. Smolenak last represented his country at the 2004 IIHF World Junior Under-18 tournament and helped the Czech’s go home with a bronze medal. Last season, HC Sparta Praha finished fifth in the 14 team Extraliga with 87 points over the 52 game regular season schedule.

Radek joins two fellow Ontario Hockey League grads on HC Sparta Praha. Jakub Koreis played for the Guelph Storm and Lukas Bolf played for the Barrie Colts.

Check out Radek Smolenak’s profile page at the HC Sparta Praha official website.

Marek Kvapil played just one season in the Ontario Hockey League, 2004-05, with the Saginaw Spirit. Kvapil started that season with HC Slavia Praha in the Czech Republic under-20 league. After eight games, he made the move to the Ontario Hockey League and was an offensive powerhouse on a Spirit team that had the least goals for in the OHL. He added seven games for the Czech Republic at the 2005 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships where he produced two goals and three assists as the Czech’s lost out to Canada in the semi-finals but beat the USA for the bronze.

Kvapil finished up his season in Saginaw with 25 goals and 37 assists for 62 points in just 53 games. With the Spirit scoring just 150 goals on the season, Marek factored in on 43.4% of the team’s total goals, despite missing 15 games.

Kvapil found his way into the Ontario Hockey League record books during his short career. He is tied for the OHL record for the fastest goal to begin a period. He scored four seconds into the third period of a game against the Mississauga IceDogs.

The Tampa Bay Lightning drafted Marek in the sixth round of the 2005 NHL draft, 163rd overall. He spent three years following his one year stint in the Ontario Hockey League playing for teams in the AHL and ECHL (AHL – Springfield Falcons, Norfolk Admirals; ECHL – Johnstown Chiefs, Mississippi Sea Wolves).

Kvapil will start his third season in the Czech Republic’s Extraliga this upcoming season. His first two seasons were played with HC Vitkovice but he has made a change this year and signed on with HC Kometa Brno. Marek hopes to help lift Brno from 12th in the 14 team league in 2009-10 to at least a playoff berth this season. In the Extraliga, the top ten teams make the post season.

Marek had the fortune of representing the Czech Republic this past spring at the IIHF World Hockey Championships in Germany as the Czechs won the gold medal. He was mentioned in this previous post regarding OHL alumni on the Czech team for the tournament.

Check out Marek Kvapil’s profile page on the HC Kometa Brno official website.

Check out this great profile of Marek Kvapil in the alumni section of the Saginaw Spirit official website.

Branislav Mezei as a member of the Slovak national team.

Branislav Mezei has moved much closer to home. The native of Slovakia has signed on

HC Eaton Pardubice logo.

 with HC Eaton Bardubice in the O2 Extraliga of the Czech Republic. Mezei finished 2009-10 with the Espoo Blues in Finlands SM-Liiga.

Branislav played three seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 1997-98 to 1999-00, all with the Belleville Bulls. He played an important defensive role on the 1998-99 Bulls team that beat out the London Knights for the Robertson Cup and made an unsuccessful Memorial Cup appearance.

Mezei was originally drafted by the New York Islanders in the first round of the 1999 NHL draft, tenth overall. Branislav played parts of two seasons with the Islanders and was used sparingly by the Florida Panthers for five seasons. In all, he played in 240 NHL games between 2000-01 and 2007-08. He spent one season, 2008-09, in Russia’s KHL with Astana Barys.

HC Eaton Bardubice finished the O2 Extraliga regular season tied for second out of 14 teams over the 52 game season. The team was the league’s playoff champion this past season led in net by none other than Dominic Hasek.

Pardubice is a city of around 90,000 people in the north central of the Czech Republic, nearest to the Poland border. The team plays out of the CEZ Arena, which holds 10,300 for hockey and has twice been the host of the IIHF World Junior Hockey Tournament.

Check out Branislav Mezei’s profile page on the HC Eaton Pardubice official website. The site is in Czech. Try our Czech Hockey Language Guide for help navigating around the site.

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