"The problem is that, today, almost any player from the Extraliga must be considered as a national team candidate," Hadamczik said.

"The rotation of players in the team's lineup is simply enormous."

Nearly every year, a dozen or more Czech players trickle away to North America to play in the National Hockey League.

"The pool of top-quality players has indeed been draining," Hadamczik said.

While the Czech team still brings home medals from the World Championships and Winter Olympics because elite players come back for those events, its results in other international games have tarnished the strong image of Czech hockey.

The national team has bounced from one loss to another on the international circuit. Most recently, it finished last in a Euro Hockey Tour event in Russia in December.

It currently sits in last place on the tour — a series of four tournaments in which the team competes against Sweden, Finland and Russia.

"We're paying the price for being unable to put together a team that can play together for more than just one tournament," Hadamczik said. "This would ruin any hockey nation."

Better than nothing

To make things worse, local hockey organizations have not been able to profit from players leaving for the NHL.

"We've been living under the NHL dictate," said national team General Manager Zbyněk Kusý, who also works as general manager for Extraliga club HC Moeller Pardubice. "It's been ripping us off for a while, and we cannot defend against that."

A concerted effort by European hockey associations in 2005 led to an agreement with the NHL through which the NHL pays European clubs $200,000 (4.3 million Kč) per player. The league doled out $9.7 million to European clubs last year alone.

According to the contract, no more than 45 Europeans can leave for the NHL per season. Also, the agreement stipulates that the NHL will need to pay a fine if a player taken from Europe plays fewer than 30 NHL games per season.

But the agreement will expire this summer, and the NHL is currently offering European associations a take-it-or-leave-it deal, Czech officials say.

On one hand, the NHL vows to pay $15 million to Europe in return for departed players. On the other hand, the NHL will kill the stipulation regarding playing time.

Czech Ice Hockey Association General Secretary Martin Urban admitted that the representatives of European federations are likely to ratify the draft this spring.

Kusý said that the new agreement creates even better grounds for mass exodus, and that the actual payments to clubs could be lower because of that. Still, Kusý insisted, there is no point in rejecting the NHL proposal.

"We have the option to take something or nothing," Kusý said.

On thin ice

Over the past six years, 369 players have left the Czech Republic — 58 more than in Russia and nearly as many as in Finland and Sweden combined. And local clubs are virtually powerless to keep young talent at home.

"The NHL is a big lure for young players," Kusý said. "While we can appeal to them that they stay here until they grow for international hockey, we cannot chain them down."

In order to convince European nationals to stay in Europe, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) released a study in late 2006 that indicated that the odds of players who leave their native lands in search of NHL glory actually achieving it are rather low.

"More than 90 percent of players who leave Europe at an early age later return home without a single NHL game under their belt," IIHF spokesman Szymon Szemberg said.

Szemberg said young Czechs serve as a warning.