He played most of his career with HC Litvínov and spent two seasons in the National Hockey League with the Vancouver Canucks.

Internationally, Hlinka played for the Czechoslovakia men's national ice hockey team and was inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame in 2002.

After retiring as a player, he turned to coaching, leading the Czech national team to gold at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano and spending two seasons with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

[citation needed] In 1981, Hlinka and fellow Czech Jiří Bubla joined the NHL's Vancouver Canucks.

)[2] Playing in his first NHL season, Hlinka set a Canucks record for the most points by a rookie with 60 (later matched by Pavel Bure in 1991–92).

[citation needed] Hlinka returned to Europe to finish his playing career due to problems with his back in 1983.

Hlinka became a national hero when his team won the gold medal at the Nagano Olympics; the first time that the NHL agreed to release its players for the Games.

His first season also coincided with Mario Lemieux's return to the NHL, and together they made a surprising run to the Eastern Conference Finals, knocking off the higher-seeded Washington Capitals and Buffalo Sabres along the way before falling to the New Jersey Devils.

Hlinka himself was criticized by Lemieux for not taking classes in the summer to improve his English and that contributed to the frosty relationship between them.

[citation needed] Hlinka was supposed to be once again head coach of the Czech national team in the 2004–05 season.

However, he died on August 16, 2004, at age 54 when his car collided head-on with a Daewoo Avia truck driving the wrong way on the E48 highway 200 yards from the town of Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic.