RIP Roman Cechmanek
Well this has been a horrible Philly sports weekend. We’ve got Kelly Oubre getting hit by a car, and now this:
Sad news: memorable #NHL goaltender Roman Cechmanek dead at 52.
Drafted at age 29. Next season 2000-01: Vezina runner-up to Dominik Hasek, All-Star and 4th in Hart voting.
25 shutouts in 4 seasons! (Consider: Vasilevskiy has 32 in 9.)
And he loved to stop pucks with his head. https://t.co/qZoz76ZBa6
— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) November 12, 2023
The article Frank links is in Czech.
Here’s a rough translation from Google:
Tragic hockey news. Roman Čechmánek, a former excellent goalkeeper, died at the age of 52. Olympic champion from Nagano 1998 and three-time world champion. The circumstances of his sudden death are not yet known. It is known that the native of Zlín had serious financial problems in recent years, due to which he also appeared before the court. During this period he divorced his wife Dagmar. He is survived by three children, sons Jakub, Roman and daughter Kateřina. Son Roman is also involved in hockey, last season he played for first league Zlín. Dad was his mentor, his role model. He was the one to find his father without signs of life.
…
“What?!” Antonín Stavjaňa, Čechmánk’s former longtime teammate, could not believe the sad news. Information from iSport.cz was confused with him. Subsequently, it was also confirmed to him by his brother Miroslav, who heads the hockey club in Uherské Hradiště, where Čechmánek led the youth.
According to information from iSport.cz, the former goalkeeper fell ill on Saturday, did not come to the match in the morning and did not answer the phone. It shouldn’t be suicide. “It was confirmed to me by his son Roman, who found him. Yesterday he didn’t go to the match with the boys because he was sick, today he was supposed to go with the children too, but he didn’t even respond to the news,” Miroslav Stavjaňa told ČTK. He added that Čechmánek was not sick.
We’ll share more details when available.
Cechmanek played a few seasons in Philadelphia in the early 2000s. He was a sixth-round draft and really surprised right off the bat, winning the starting job and playing 59 games that first season. All Star Game, Vezina runner up, honestly he was awesome that rookie year. He played two more seasons in which the Flyers went out to the Senators in the playoffs both times, and then he was traded to the LA Kings. Kind of a strange tenure here, he really had some high highs and low lows, an unpredictable guy who was certainly never boring. He was really fun to watch. RIP.