It can be easy to forget that Jakub Lauko is all of 19 years old.
After all, the Prague native already has a penchant for making opposing skaters 10 or more years his senior look rather pedestrian out on the ice, especially when he eclipses them in a foot race to a skittering puck.
For a winger that’s logged less than 70 full games over in North America, Lauko is already far past the usual development curve for players his age, especially when operating in the O-zone — where a nifty dangle, lethal snap shot or crafty self-pass stand as just a few of the many tricks he can deploy when skating with the puck on his stick.
On the ice, Lauko stands as one of Boston’s most promising prospects — a self-proclaimed “steal” in the 2018 Draft with both the talent and moxie to make some noise in the pro ranks sooner rather than later.
"The skillset? Top-end speed,” Bruce Cassidy said of Lauko’s profile. “We’ve seen it skating, already at the NHL level. I think the release, his shot, we’ve seen that as well."
Off the ice? Well, the discrepancy between age and talent becomes a bit more evident.
Whereas his interests on the sheet involve lighting the lamp or serving as a fly in the ointment of the opposition, Lauko is more than happy to chat about Game of Thrones in the Bruins' locker room — or just about any media involving the work of J.R.R. Tolkein.
His favorite Game of Thrones character? "Oberyn Martell. That was the best character on all the show. It was my favorite character. He didn’t end up too well. But I love him."
His go-to Lord of the Rings movie/novel? The Fellowship of the Ring.
Lauko even has a quote from the work etched into his left arm, delivered by Gandalf the Grey: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
https://twitter.com/jakub_lauko/status/1050503688698122240
That passage might have been jotted down close to seven decades ago, but it still rings true for Lauko — a driven, but candid, teenager looking to headline the next wave of Bruins talent breaking into the pro ranks.
"He reminds me a little bit of Marchy (Brad Marchand) when he was younger," Cassidy said. "Just on the puck all the time, second effort, irritating. Good speed, good shot. He’s just got to learn to harness all of that and stay in the moment."
Piráti Chomutov
“We had him on our list as a first-round pick,” Bruins senior advisor to the general manager Scott Bradley said in Dallas. “We’re ecstatic to get a player like this at that point in the draft. Fast energy. Plays with a lot of character, willing to sacrifice. ... He’s going to come in and hopefully turn some heads.”
“There’s a couple different things," Joakim Nordstrom said of adjusting to hockey in the U.S. and Canada. "Smaller sheet of ice, moving here. Moving away from home. Coaching is a little bit different with matchups and just the overall way you play. I know my first year here, it took a month or two or even three to try to get used to everything and kind of find your role and where you fit in and work from there."
"It was a little bit of a challenge early on," Bruins Player Development Coordinator Jamie Langenbrunner said. "Tough going into Northern Quebec learning English and French at the same time to a degree."
“Well, I hated it for the first month," he said.
Not always a positive meeting," per Lauko — and the road bumps along the way managed to mold Lauko into a player capable of both dominating a contest with his already sizable skill and retaining a hard-nosed, tenacious mentality for the nights in which the A-game was not there.
"By the end of the season, the guys in the locker room were telling me that I played like a Canadian," Lauko said. "It was nice to hear. Every meeting, you just see how everyone is challenging you and the other players, they’re doing everything at 100%.
"At the end of the season, you just look up and see that
you won two trophies," Lauko said. "It was the right choice after that. I think I changed a lot as a player. Improved my English, I think I'm a different player after this season, different person, just happy I made the choice.”
“I worked hard in the summer, upper-body stuff and everything," Lauko said. "Feel more ready than last year and feeling good in the corners and everything, some fights and everything."
"He’ll always be fast, he’ll always want to score, always be competitive, get under people’s skin," Cassidy said of Lauko. "But for him, it’s learning how to play every night. ... His board work is a work in progress. I think his details defensively — any time we’ve talked to him, he’s tried to go out and implement them. So for him, it’s just rounding out and probably breaking out of his own end, those little area plays you need to make under duress when you need to know where the pressure is."
"I think Marchy was a little bit, the details were secondary to — Let’s get on the puck, let’s attack the net. Let’s spear somebody. Can I say that?" Cassidy said with a smile. "And then you learn, Rob Murray was there and myself and there was some work to be done about what about away from the puck? Not guessing on where it’s going, defensively and then the penalty kill got worked in for him and that was his ticket from Providence to Boston.
"He came up as a fourth-liner because he could take care of those things and he would grow into a first (liner). I don’t know how it’s going to work out for Lauko, but I just see a little bit of Marchy at that age."
Urho Vaakanainen
David Pastrnak
"If you asked me, could he play in the American Hockey League — now I’m three years removed — but I would say he could," Cassidy said. "I think you’ve got to be careful with the kids that age. They have to have a certain mental toughness, but they’ve got to be strong enough. I think he skates well enough that he’ll get to avoid some of the physical play. He seems strong enough on the skates, where I think he’d be okay at that level. ... I think, from my experience, that he’d be a guy that can handle it."
"If I’m not going to make this team, I want to go to Providence … This year, for me, personally, the juniors is not an option," Lauko said. "I just see myself in pro.”
UPDATE:
