More than perhaps any other EdmontonOilers player of his era, Hemsky would have left a bigger impression had he been furnished with better teammates along the way. Now at age 36, his body simply cannot answer the bell anymore. (SportsnetSpec)
Today, he and wife Julie — an Edmonton girl — are raising Milo and Jimi in a suburb of Dallas, ironically the Oilers’ nemesis when Hemsky broke in back in 2002, a 19-year-old from Pardubice, Czech Republic by way of the Hull Olympiques of the QMJHL.
As a teenager he turned down a long-term contract in Pardubice — where his father was the coach — under threat that he would never play for the national team if he left. In the end, he played 845 NHL games, plus two Winter Olympics, three World Championships and a World Cup for his country. Of course the Czechs wanted him back, with his sublime, European skills.
“There wasn’t a more important player for me during my whole tenure as coach of the Oilers than Ales,” then-head coach Craig MacTavish recently said on 630 CHED. “He might not be alone at the top but I don’t see anyone above him.
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