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WHISTLER – The greatest player in the history of Croatian hockey was playing poker with his friends in Zagreb when he hit the jackpot and signed with the Vancouver Canucks.

All Borna Rendulic has to do now is actually make the National Hockey League team. The Canucks appear to be giving him a fair chance, playing the 24-year-old winger at training camp alongside Sven Baertschi and Bo Horvat.

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Granted, the Croat may only be keeping those core NHL players company until Canuck Jannik Hansen returns from the World Cup. But Rendulic has gone through a lot to have this chance and does not plan to go meekly to the Utica Comets, which is likely where he is headed.

Croatia has only 562 registered players among its population of nearly 4.5 million, so Rendulic left home at age 15 to play junior hockey in Finland.

“Hockey in Croatia is pretty bad,” he said before Sunday’s scrimmage here. “Two indoor rinks in the whole country. My age, when I was younger, there was only one team. So it was pretty tough to make it and I knew I wanted to do this, so I moved to Finland when I was 15 years old and spent seven years there. I did all junior, then signed as pro, then signed with Colorado.