Calendar slips away on Roman

Any number of potential potholes figured to confront the Spokane Chiefs this season as they mapped out another run to the Memorial Cup.

Dealing with a coaching change. Complacency. The needs and wants of the NHL. Replacing some treasured leaders. To say nothing of being the team every other team wants to beat.

What they didn’t expect was international intrigue.

And yet there are days when Chiefs general manager Tim Speltz feels like part cold warrior, part hostage negotiator – and other days when he just feels helpless.

With 10 percent of the Western Hockey League schedule behind them, the Chiefs are on familiar ground – tied atop the U.S. Division with their Tri-City pals. The early-season comings and goings are not yet behind them, however. Justin Falk last week went off to work for the NHL’s Minnesota Wild with the club’s thanks and blessing. Justin McCrae, another valued 20-year-old, remains sidelined with a knee injury. Leading scorer Mitch Wahl must miss the weekend, a victim of the WHL’s bizarro brand of justice.

And then there’s left winger Ondrej Roman, waiting to be ransomed from his home in the Czech Republic.

That could happen in a week or a month or not at all – the odds of that last bet getting shorter with each passing day, though Speltz himself remains “reasonably optimistic.

“Just because of the common sense factor,” he said. “If Romy wants to be an NHL player, and his NHL team wants to sign him and wants him to play in Spokane and there’s a limited opportunity for him (at home), what sense does it make to stay?”

And yet, it is obviously a problem, because Roman is suiting up these days for HC Vitkovice Steel in the Czech Extraliga.

The loss for the Chiefs is pronounced. Roman and Drayson Bowman were Spokane’s leading scorers in last year’s playoff run, and Roman is an important figure on the power play, which has not exactly been knocking them dead so far this season.

“From February on last year, he probably improved as much as any player on our team, including Bowman, Wahl or (Jared) Cowen,” Speltz said. “He took a great step.”

And then he went home to Ostrava, not to return.

At issue is the transfer of player rights and compensation. Roman is a 2007 draft pick of the NHL’s Dallas Stars, but as yet unsigned. The Czech Ice Hockey Federation wants the normal payout due when such a transaction occurs. But at the moment, there is no transfer agreement in place between the NHL and the International Ice Hockey Federation, and with no agreement the Stars are obviously not going to make that sort of investment.

Still, the Czechs do not want to let Roman go – feeling that if they do and he goes from Spokane to the Stars in a year, they will get no release fee.

“He is an asset to them,” Speltz said.

He is an asset to the Chiefs, too, but Speltz also believes it’s in Roman’s best interest to return here “unless he doesn’t want to be an NHL player and he’s said that’s what he wants – and what the Stars want.”

Here’s why: The Extraliga is a men’s league, and Roman’s ice time has been limited. He’s dressed for just nine of 12 games, and as the season goes on and the games get more important, there’s every chance that more experienced players will play more and, typically, a teenager will get less.

“He’s not going to develop being a 10-minute-a-night guy,” Speltz said.

Speltz’s frustration is that there’s little he can do. The players in this are Roman, his agent, the Stars and the federation. The agent, in all likelihood, counts on his relationship with federation officials to help him get clients. Roman – not a confrontational sort anyway – doesn’t need to make enemies there, either.

“If you’re here and fighting with USA Hockey or Hockey Canada, you can at least get on the phone and blast somebody and feel like you’re at the plate taking your swings,” Speltz said. “I feel like I’m pushing somebody up there to do it.”

News comes in dribs and drabs. Speltz has heard “overtones” that the Czechs might keep Roman through the World Junior Championships over New Year’s, which is what happened with Tri-City’s Radek Meidl last year. Some of the Chiefs called Roman from coach Hardy Sauter’s office Wednesday to tell him how much he was wanted back and were told more would be known in a week.

“But every week it’s kind of ‘next week,’ ” Speltz said.

And those will run out. If Roman isn’t released before Jan. 10, he can’t be added to the Chiefs’ roster, but to Speltz the point of no return may be closer to the end of this month – if the Chiefs are going to leave themselves time to search for veteran help.

“We’re not painting ourselves into a corner,” he said.

Or falling down a pothole.