Jiri Bicek
Some people might remember the name Jiri Bicek, but he’s definitely not well known. He spent about four seasons toiling between the Devils NHL and AHL teams. Between 1997 and 2004, he was in the Devils organization, but outside of that, he was mainly a European player. He finally got an extended look in the 2002-03 season, playing 44 games for the eventual Stanley Cup Champs.
He scored five goals and six assists in the regular season. He then found himself in the lineup for five games in the 2003 playoffs. Four of those games came in the Stanley Cup Final. That’s wild that the Devils trusted Bicek to play that much when he hadn’t played much in the playoffs before that.
An interesting fact about Bicek, he’s the first player out of Slovakia to win the Stanley Cup. The entire country was backing the Devils during 2003 so that one of their countrymen could finally call themselves an NHL champion.
Another wild story, when Bicek was getting his day with the Cup, which he spent in Slovakia, the airlines lost it. That’s right, the keeper of the Cup made it to Slovakia, but Lord Stanley did not. The Cup finally made it the next day, but the tight celebration schedule forced Bicek and many of his fellow Slovakians to cancel or reschedule many of the celebrations. It was wild, but an unlikely member of the Stanley Cup Champions.