Pivonka Learns American Game

Hockey had little to do with it. Most of what the Washington Capitals and New Jersey Devils were involved with on Wednesday night was a cross between a rugby scrum and a steel cage wrestling match.

Inevitably two men, crazed with passion and cut from the rest of the herd, pounded at each other’s skulls as teammates slowly circled round and round, dancing a wary tango, one eye on their partner, one eye on the combatants. Then, suddenly, as if they were overwhelmed by an unholy spirit, two others would commence fighting, and the cycle was renewed. By the end of the game, the accounting of the penalties was so voluminous, it was sent out to H&R; Block.

In the stands Michal Pivonka’s wife, Renata, and his mother, Magda, squirm anxiously, concerned for his safety.

“Be careful,” Renata thinks to herself as she peers down. “Michal doesn’t like fighting,” she says. Neither does she. In Czechoslovakia where they came from, hockey players didn’t fight. “It’s stupid. It’s not sport,” Renata says. But there is nothing they can do about this here, in the brave new world they’ve chosen. Renata shrugs her shoulders. “He doesn’t know how to fight, but he’s learning. He has to.”

Ask any of the Europeans why they covet playing in the NHL, and they’ll say it’s because that’s where the world’s best hockey players are. But the NHL--like all American pro leagues--is more than just pure sport, it’s entertainment. Fans have come to expect and cherish fights as integral to the package. And part of the price an innocent like Pivonka must pay to play here is to take his turn as a dancing bear when his calliope plays.

The Americanization of Michal Pivonka continues each time someone drops his gloves. “When the fight starts, you have to be there,” Pivonka says. “You don’t have time to think whether this is the kind of hockey you’re used to. You have to show up. . . . But you don’t have to fight. Just be there to hold your guy.” Told that Renata worries he’ll get hurt, Pivonka grins and arches an eyebrow. “She’s my wife,” he says fraternally. “I’m not a fighter, but I’m learning to play the hockey that’s here. You say it’s not my style? Why not? I’m here now. It should be my style. It’s the hockey you play here.”

He’s been here since July of 1986, and struggled on the ice. Ballyhooed as a scorer, Pivonka scored but five goals through the first 47 games this season; “a bad season, sure,” he admitted. Until he emerged as a playoff star against the Flyers, some questioned the Capitals’ judgment, going to extremes courting Pivonka. Capitals’ officials were there to meet Michal and Renata when they defected, mysteriously, through Italy, with one small suitcase each and the clothes they wore on their backs. Left behind were parents, siblings, home, hearth, everything they’d ever known; two kids, just 20, taking a chance of a lifetime.

Although she doesn’t speak English, Magda Pivonka can tell you how much she misses her son by opening her arms as wide as she can. Things are much better since she’s been able to visit twice a year for a month at a time. “She doesn’t cry much anymore,” Renata says, interpreting for her mother-in-law, a graying, maternal, open-faced woman, the kind of woman you’ve seen 1,000 times wheeling her shopping cart through the grocery store. “She did in the beginning,” Renata continues, “especially when we called the first time. They hadn’t known we’d left. . . . She thinks Michal looks good, a little more muscles than before he left. She is pleased. But she cannot be truly happy until he is allowed to go home.”

And when will that be?

“Who knows?” Renata says.

In the 21 months they’ve been here, Michal and Renata have mastered the look and the language remarkably well. You may have seen Michal’s clothing ad, “Hip Czech,” where he’s wearing Wayfarer sunglasses and a leather bombardier jacket and then, as the showstopper, he says in Czech, the equivalent of “Pretty cool, oh yeah.” A story is told of Michal, stopped at a red light, noticing the car in front of him with Tennessee plates and telling a companion, “Tennessee and Missouri, two states bordered by eight states.”

“Huh?” asked the stunned passenger.

“I learned it on ‘Jeopardy,’ ” Michal said with satisfaction.

For her part Renata, with her strawberry blond hair, her freckles, her acid washed jeans and her infectious perkiness, looks like she could be a tour guide at Disney World. “Me? Me?” she asks, incredulous. She blushes at the notion she is already as American as the “croissan’wich.” “When I came here I thought people in USA would be small and fat,” she says, giggling, “because they all use cars, and they don’t walk. . . . Now I see they look just like us.” But Renata still can’t get over the difference in life styles. America seems a horn of plenty. “Everyone has so much stuff, stereos and VCRs and two cars.” And so do the Pivonkas now, a VW and a Ford.