I remember seeing an interview with Zdeno Chara and Marian Hossa (Slovak hockey stars) where they described growing up during the pre-post communist schism/independence. Basically during communism when they were children, despite the relative lack of wealth the government still subsidized sport for political reasons. So even though they grew up poor they (and their peers) always had access to ice time, gear paid for, coaching, you name it. Then in the mid-90s when Slovakia and Czech Republic split both countries were super poor for a while (like Poland at the time) so an entire generation of young players that came after them didn’t have shit or could afford it anymore.

In the late 1990s-mid 2000s Slovakia was a legitimate top 6 country in the world in hockey. Then they dipped to like, 10th where countries like Germany were starting to pass them. It’s now reversed a bit and Slovakia has a really good young generation, but the ~1985-2000 generation were basically the “lost” generation there.

So after babbling for a bit, I’m guessing Petr Cech may have went through something similar in the 1990s when he was growing up in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic.