Czech Point

Bobby Holik, the thinking man's hockey player, has checked out some of the great monuments in America: the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, the Capitol, Mario Lemieux. Most times Holik uses a guidebook. In the case of Lemieux he uses a Sher-Wood, poking and probing, not to turn the Pittsburgh Penguins icon into a brochette but to sap his strength and maybe his will. In the New Jersey Devils' 3-1 win over the Penguins in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals, Holik was matched against Lemieux in all 19 of Lemieux's even-strength shifts, which for Lemieux was like getting up from the dinner table 19 times to take a call from a telemarketer. Hounded by Holik as well as Holik's linemates John Madden and Randy McKay, Lemieux was held shotless last Saturday, only the third time in 57 games since his return from retirement on Dec. 27 that he'd been blanked.

Holik is the reason why New Jersey is different from other elite teams. A top-scoring line, a franchise defenseman and first-rate goaltending are pretty much standard issue for any Stanley Cup contender, but only the Devils have a 6'4", 230-pound irritant on their third line who combines the threat to score with a singular ability to unnerve. No forward is tougher on the NHL's top centers than the 30-year-old Holik. The tributes pour in, in the form of retaliatory slashes and punches and one crude but legendary message in the New York Rangers' dressing room three seasons ago. The names and numbers of the players on each of the Devils' lines and defensive pairs were written on a grease board—17 SYKORA, 25 ARNOTT, 26 ELIAS, for instance—but next to 16, Holik's number, was inscribed ASSHOLE.

"You can't hurt him," New Jersey goalie Martin Brodeur says. "Try to slash him, you're only wasting your time. He's so strong. It's so funny when you see guys like Mark Messier getting livid with Bobby. They get mad at him, and he's like, All right, hit me. He plays the game hard and takes a lot of abuse."

In a perfect world Bobby would have become the stylish forward his father, Jaroslav, a standout Czechoslovakian pro player in the 1970s, had envisioned, but the son wound up playing the same rough-edged game that the father had. Bobby learned early that there's no such thing as a perfect world. He grew up listening to Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, trying to make sense of the scratchy broadcasts that emanated from his radio. He played on a club team (Dukla Jihlava) and served about a year in the military. After being drafted in the first round by the Hartford Whalers in 1989, Holik came to the U.S. (the Whalers bought his rights from his team) and has been exploring his adopted country ever since.

The most difficult act in hockey isn't tying up Lemieux's stick in the slot but breaking the mind-numbing cycle of rink-hotel-airplane that rules the players' lives and ices their souls. Holik finds it all but impossible to recruit a teammate for, say, a quick tour of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. He visited the museum in the former Texas School Book Depository on the 30th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1993 and caught the Van Gogh exhibit in Washington a few years ago. On one road trip to the nation's capital, he sat on a bench and gazed across at the Capitol's dome and mused about how close he was to the epicenter of power in what he still calls "the free world."

Holik became a U.S. citizen in November 1996 and voted in his first presidential election last year, experiencing a chill when he drew the curtain in the booth. "Millions of people gave their lives to have that right," Holik says. "People say, 'Oh, I'm too busy to vote.' That's the reason I became a citizen, to have constitutional rights."

"People watch him play and get the impression he's a cruel person because of that nastiness on the ice, but there's a lot to Bobby," Devils center Scott Gomez says. "Bobby and I always sit together at the back of the plane, but I'm reading PEOPLE magazine and he's reading a book about history or something." The volumes Holik most recently read were Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation and Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like It in the World, about the men who built the transcontinental railroad.

Holik says the first and only time he tasted alcohol was when he took a sip from the Stanley Cup in 1995. A big night out for him is a movie. However, even in the monolith of the dressing room there's enough space for a contrarian such as Holik, especially one who whipped Lemieux on 15 of their 20 face-offs in Game 1 and whose five goals and 12 points through Sunday ranked him third to Petr Sykora and Patrik Elias in the Devils' playoff scoring this spring.

Holik, who is married and has a four-year-old daughter, says his most pressing concern for his adopted country is the decline in morality since the 1950s, a heartfelt expression from a rogue practitioner of hockey's dark arts. While doing whatever is necessary to win a game forms the ethical framework, there's still an amoral streak to Holik's play, one graced by the subtle crosscheck, the concealed face wash, the hidden punch in an after-the-whistle scrum. "One of his favorites is when he goes to the net and tries to knock you over into your goalie," Penguins defenseman Marc Bergevin says. "Then he skates away. Stuff will be happening, and he gets out just before they call a penalty."

Holik is profoundly stubborn, having stayed out of training camp before the 1996-97 season until he extracted a promise from management that he would no longer be paired with McKay and Mike Peluso on the one-dimensional Crash Line, a gambit that worked but still flew in the face of New Jersey's well-starched ways. "In 1996 I asked for the challenge of playing against top lines," Holik says. "I wanted to play against the best players. I look forward the whole season to this time of year."