Jiří Crha (born 13 April 1950) is a Czech former

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey in North America) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an Ice rink, ice skating rink with Ice hockey rink, lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. Tw ...

goaltender In ice hockey, the goaltender (commonly referred to as goalie or netminder) is the player responsible for preventing the hockey puck from entering their own team's net, thus preventing the opposing team from scoring. The goaltender mostly plays ...

. He played 69 games in the

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...

for the

Toronto Maple Leafs The Toronto Maple Leafs (officially the Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey Club and often referred to as the Leafs) are a professional ice hockey team based in Toronto. The Maple Leafs compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the A ...

between 1980 and 1981. The rest of his career, which lasted from 1969 to 1993, was spent first in the

Czechoslovak First Ice Hockey League The Czechoslovak First Ice Hockey League was the elite ice hockey league in Czechoslovakia from 1936 until 1993, when the country split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Slovak Extraliga and Czech Extraliga formed from the split. Histor ...

and then the German

Eishockey-Bundesliga The Eishockey-Bundesliga ("Federal Ice Hockey League") was formed in 1958 as the elite hockey competition in the Federal Republic of Germany, replacing the '' Oberliga'' in this position.Klein, p. 12 From the 1994–95 season, it was in turn re ...

. Internationally Crha played for the Czechoslovakian national team in several tournaments, including the

1976 Winter Olympics The 1976 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XII Olympic Winter Games (, ) and commonly known as Innsbruck 1976 (), were a winter multi-sport event celebrated in Innsbruck, Austria, from February 4 to 15, 1976. The games were awarded to Inn ...

, where he won a silver medal.

Playing career

Born in

Pardubice Pardubice (; ) is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 92,000 inhabitants. It is the capital city of the Pardubice Region and lies on the Elbe River. The historic centre is well preserved and is protected as an Cultural monument (Czech Repub ...

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

, now the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

, Crha played for nine seasons in the

and for his country at the international level, including the

. He was signed by the

as a free agent on 4 February 1980. He remained with the team until 1983 when he went to Germany, where he played until his retirement in 1991. He then served as a player agent to players in the

Career statistics

Regular season and playoffs

International

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Crha, Jiri 1950 births Living people Cincinnati Tigers players Czech expatriate ice hockey players in Germany Czech ice hockey goaltenders Czechoslovak expatriate ice hockey people Czechoslovak expatriate sportspeople in Canada Czechoslovak expatriate sportspeople in the United States Czechoslovak expatriate sportspeople in West Germany Czechoslovak ice hockey goaltenders Czechoslovakia (WHA) players EHC Bayreuth players EHC Freiburg players Expatriate ice hockey players in Canada Expatriate ice hockey players in the United States Expatriate ice hockey players in West Germany HC Dukla Jihlava players Ice hockey people from Pardubice Ice hockey players at the 1976 Winter Olympics Medalists at the 1976 Winter Olympics New Brunswick Hawks players Olympic ice hockey players for Czechoslovakia Olympic medalists in ice hockey Olympic silver medalists for Czechoslovakia St. Catharines Saints players Toronto Maple Leafs players Undrafted National Hockey League players