The AIHL has now hit 15 years as a league and there has been plenty that has changed in that time. Starting with three clubs, only one team is still running with its original name, with the Canberra Knights becoming the CBR Brave during the off-season, the Adelaide Avalanche becoming the A’s and the Adrenaline in 2008-09. The Sydney Bears have continued uninterrupted through the highs-and-lows of the AIHL’s history.
While there are plenty of players who have been around for a long time, Adelaide’s Greg Oddy and the Bears’ Vlad Rubes have been around since the beginning. Rubes retired as a player recently during the last AIHL off-season due to a back injury, bringing to a close a successful career playing internationally in the Czech Republic and North America as well as representing Australia at eight world championships.
Czech-born Rubes said that some of his key career highlights came in the early years of his hockey development.
“When I played overseas, and the time I spent playing in the minor leagues in America was good fun,” Rubes said. “In juniors, I came close to making the junior national team. They invited me to a camp with the team in the Czech league, which was my highlight over there.”
After spending time in the minors with the Sunshine Hockey League and the Central Hockey League in North America, Rubes made the move to Australia and was around from the beginning of the AIHL.
As player-coach for the Bears from his second season, Rubes racked up 154 goals and 245 assists for 399 points in 239 regular season games to be the franchise-scoring leader, according to Elite Prospects although early AIHL statistics are notoriously incomplete. These stats make him the league’s third highest goal scorer, second highest in assists and second highest point scorer in AIHL history.
Rubes, an accomplished player before coming over, also took up the role of coach, a position he has held for the entire history of the AIHL. Always interested in coaching, Rubes said being a player coach had its own challenges.
“[When I started] I was in my younger years, so it was difficult to control both sides,” Rubes said. “I think we had a more experienced team then with a number of national team players so we played together for quite some time. We had a defencemen, looking after the defensive changes while I was responsible with the forwards and in between periods we just put it together. So from that, it was good as a player-coach.”
“But as I got older, there was a more of need to have someone on the bench. We have had a bench coach but then we ran into a situation where we had nobody. It was difficult, particularly when in the penalty box figuring out how to still coach.”
Quickly establishing himself as one of the better players in the league, Rubes went on eight World Championship campaigns for Australia, which remain among his best hockey memories, including winning the best forward of the tournament award at the 2004 Division 2 World Championships in Spain. However, it was as a coach that Rubes had his most satisfying successes.
“Winning the league a couple of times was really exciting, especially in 2007,” Rubes said. “We didn’t have enough players at the start of the season, we barely made it to the playoffs, and then we won. Winning the World Championships in Melbourne [as coach] was good fun three years ago. The years with the National youth team, when we went from Division 3 to Division 2 and then winning a bronze medal there [was another highlight].”
Not only retiring as one of the AIHL’s best players, Rubes had a successful international career for Australia that spanned eight years. He produced a total of 18 goals and 21 assists for 40 points in 34 games at 1.17 points per game.
This is the first of a three feature pieces on Vlad Rubes. theAIHL.com will look into Rubes' as a championship and World Championship winning coach; and how the AIHL has grown and evolved in its 15 year history.
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