Coach brings 35 years of playing experience and a gentle demeanor to the Carroll hockey team.

By Trae Thompson
Special to the Star-Telegram

SOUTHLAKE -- Laddy Tresl wants to share his gift.

He doesn't want to keep more than 35 years of hockey experience to himself. Or, as he puts it, he's not "going to take that into the graveyard."

So he coaches. The man who started playing hockey at age 3 in Czechoslovakia coaches the Carroll hockey team. He can't imagine doing anything else.

"Why not, you know?" he says with a slight European accent. "Somebody has to do it. I don't see any bad thing about this. You learn something, and you want to pass it on to somebody. I just want to give them whatever I had."

The generosity is paying off. This season, the Dragons have become one of the stronger teams in the Southwestern Bell Metroplex High School Hockey League. Carroll entered the week at 6-1-0 and 4-1 in Section 4.

Players attribute much of their success to Tresl, the quiet and humble teacher who was once blessed with an opportunity to play in the National Hockey League. The game he has known for so long, though, also granted him freedom.

Tresl grew up in Brno, Czech Republic, a city of 390,000 located about 2½ hours south of Prague and an hour from Vienna. At 26, the Quebec Nordiques drafted Tresl with the 183rd pick in the 1987 draft. It was a chance of a lifetime: A shot to play in the best hockey league in the world.

But it wasn't an easy decision. The communist Czechoslovakian government wanted Tresl to stay home and play. Tresl won't elaborate, saying he wants to keep much of the "long story" to himself. However, he revealed that he defected to Canada with his family and first wife, whom he later divorced. He left everything else behind.

Looking back, Tresl said he never imagined a day would come when he could return home to a free country.

"The time changed, the government changed," he said. "Everything changed for good, God bless for that. That's all what it is. Everything changed there. People were given a lot more freedom."

Tresl played for the Nordiques for three seasons, then went to the Los Angeles Kings from 1990-91. As a player, Tresl said he was a really good stick-handler and playmaker.

After his brief stint with the Kings, Tresl played minor league hockey in North America and ventured back home to the Czech Republic for the first time in 12 years to coach and play. He finished his pro playing career in Waco of the Western Professional Hockey League. Before taking the job as Carroll's coach, he went into private business in Waco.

Tresl's first encounter with the Dragons came in July when several players traveled to a hockey camp in Canada. Tresl helped with the camp, which was established by Jeff Beaudin, who was Carroll's coach at the time.

Tresl said he won't talk about how he got the Carroll coaching job because he doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

"Both coaches had their own strength, but Laddy is much more of a teacher," said Bill Cotton, vice president of the Southlake Carroll Hockey Association.

"If something's not going right, and he sees a kid make a mistake, he doesn't get on him. He goes up and says, `This is the way you should do it.' "

Tresl also takes a calm approach to his practices, stressing fundamentals, details and plenty of skating to increase endurance. He explains that teaching the game to his players isn't quick and easy. You can't make a Wayne Gretzky out of a player overnight, he jokes. It's a slow process, but he says his team is on the right track.

"He likes to repeat himself a lot, which is very good for us," Carroll defender C.J. Johnsen said. "Cause a lot of times we won't get it the first time. That's what makes him a good coach. If you barely mess something up, he'll blow the whistle, stop and have us do it again."

Tresl said his experience and methods come from former players and coaches he has been around through the years. You take a little from one guy, then from another guy, he explains, and patch everything together. The biggest thing to remember, he said, is that a former player has to see the game through a coach's eyes.

"During your time as a hockey player you don't think about it," he said. "But you grow up, get smarter and so you start kind of making little recalls and say, `I actually learned a lot from this guy.' "

Then there comes a time when that knowledge can be passed along, which is apparent to Dragons wing Geoff Eames.

"He makes it seem like it's important to him," Eames said. "I know it's important to him, no matter who he's coaching, that he wins and that he has a good team and that he does a good job."