Defenseman Radim Mrtka remembers looking across the rink two seasons ago and seeing "God on the bench" during one of his games in the top Czech league.

It was Jaromir Jagr, sitting out of Kladno's game after just getting back from a trip to Pittsburgh to "put his jersey up to the ceiling," as Mrtka described it with his limited English.

Mrtka, who just turned 18 on Monday, is too young to remember anything from Jagr's first stint in the NHL. But he grew up hearing stories about "the G.O.A.T.," and so he was still in awe seeing Jagr on the bench ... and perhaps liked that a little more than a later opportunity he had to play against him in a game.

"Even our coach told us that you can't really play against him physical, because he's that strong," Mrtka recalled. "And you don't really want to play physically against him, because if you would injure him, probably a whole nation would be kind of mad at you."

Mrtka is far and away the best Czech player available in this summer's draft, projected to be a mid-first round pick. And he might just follow in Jagr's footsteps and hear his name called by the Penguins on draft day.

Mrtka is a big, 6-foot-6, 218-pound right-handed shot who described himself as "a two-way player doing everything for a team to win the game" to me at the NHL's scouting combine in Buffalo last week. He added that he tries to model his game after the likes of Victor Hedman and Moritz Seider, who he thinks have two-way games among the best in the league.

Mrtka started last season in Czechia with his club HC Ocelan Třinec, where he had one assist in 10 games, then left midseason to move to the WHL and join the Seattle Thunderbirds for the remainder of the season.

"It's my dream to be in the NHL, so it was preparation for me to live here and stay here," Mrtka said of the move. "They gave me a lot of time and chances, and I think it went pretty good for both of the sides."

I asked Mrtka what some of the biggest adjustments were for him coming from Czechia to the North American game, and he said the biggest challenge wasn't on the ice at all, but off of it -- "the English was pretty hard for me," he said. He took some English in school back home, but he couldn't understand his teammates in the beginning, and they couldn't understand him when he tried to speak.

On the ice, the transition went a little more smoothly. He skated in 43 games with Seattle, recording three goals and 32 assists to finish fourth on the team in scoring and lead Seattle's defensemen despite arriving 20-something games into the season. He finished the year as a plus-10, leading his entire team.

One NHL team scout told the Elite Prospects Draft Guide in May that Mrtka has "so much upside. Big, right shot, skates well, flashes real puck skill and offensive potential. Can defend speed and size. On the right night, he looks like a top-pair NHL defenseman. But he’s soft at times, slow to read plays, and I question the offensive ceiling. He could go 8 to 15. I’ve never been blown away, but I get the appeal – if it all comes together, he could be special. How much are you willing to gamble on that?"

Mrtka knows that he needs to improve his skating and offense, as well as add more physicality to his game. He enjoys the physical aspect of the game, but admitted that he's still learning how to be more physical after not having much of it in his game growing up. He was just too big from a young age.

"It's getting better all the time," he said of his physicality. "Because when I was young, I was always big, so when I hit somebody, I'd make it to the penalty box. So I kind of played without the body to play on the ice. So right now, when everybody is getting bigger and stronger, I can play more physical. So it's getting better."

Mrtka met with 23 teams at the combine, but only one took the extra step and took him out for a dinner -- the Penguins. He remembers Kyle Dubas being a "great guy," but said the formal interview was "pretty hard."

"They showed me some bad clips of what I did in the season, and I had to talk about it," Mrtka recalled. "It was great."

As far as Mrtka's plans for next season, that'll likely be influenced on whichever team drafts him and what they think is best. He could go back to the WHL, or return to his Czech team. College hockey isn't an option -- he has two more years left of high school here.

The Penguins need high-end prospects at just about every skater position. They really only have two higher-end defense prospects in Owen Pickering and Harrison Brunicke, and Brunicke is the only right-handed shot of those two. Bolstering the pool with a big defenseman with pro experience and upside like Mrtka wouldn't be a bad move.