23. The Russian hockey tsar, Alexander Ovechkin, is so many goals short of surpassing the legendary Wayne Gretzky’s goalscoring record and forever going down in NHL history as one of the best players of all time.
The season is barely over halfway and if the Russian attacker’s health does not fail, it is not a question of if, but when he will overtake Gretzky. “Ovi” currently has 872 professional league goals to his credit.
When the pursuit drive of Washington’s captain was covered in the Nova Sport TV studio a few days ago, the legendary Czech hockey player Václav Nedomanský also recognized Ovečkin’s qualities.
“The number he has now is huge, you have to admit that. It’s probably only a matter of time before he succeeds.
But I’ll be honest, I’d rather a Canadian hockey player overtake Gretzky than a Russian one,” he said about the most watched hockey player of the current season.
Nedomanský’s words will not surprise anyone who at least stumbled a little on the life story of the 80-year-old native of Hodonín. He does not hide his aversion to Russians.
“In my opinion, the Russians, with exceptions such as brilliant writers or composers, are a primitive nation. It has always been that way and it is especially true after 1918. The regime murdered its own people by the millions, no respect for human life is still a common reality there.
When I played against the Russians, few of them were mentally up to par. Some of our players were friends with them, they visited them, but I never wanted to have anything to do with them,” he told the Czech website bluntly idnes.cz.
Slovan star and Czechoslovak representative was the first hockey player to break through the Iron Curtain and make his mark in the NHL. When he emigrated in 1974, he had no intention of returning.
“I didn’t have feelings of regret, rather, I was disappointed with the behavior of some people. How they treated me and many of them even complained about me.
After all, in 1971, the State Security was watching my every move,” he recalled the conditions in the then Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
Nedomanský was brought up by his teammate from Slovan, Ján Starší. “When I transferred from Hodonín to Slovan, Starší took me in as an experienced teammate. He also invited me to his home.
He and his wife treated me well and I, as a young man, was grateful to them. Apparently then the system there crushed him and he cooperated with the secret service.”
The “Eštebáci” were supposed to track him, for example, using a device installed on the roof of the University of Economics in Bratislava, he also found a bug in his car.
From then on, he and his wife said important things to each other during a walk or while flushing the toilet, through which nothing could be understood.
Since 1963, he has been to North America several times with the Czechoslovak national team, and several local clubs were interested in his game, but at first the hockey player only wanted to “play and graduate from college”.
In 1965, a Canadian journalist told him that the New York Rangers were offering him a contract. “Who would I tell about this? After all, they made us look like idiots when we played somewhere in a match with the national team.
They organized some meetings so that no one could go away for a few hours and talk to someone. They were still guarding us,” continued Nedomanský.
He also added a story from 1972. “Two managers came to see me, one was from Atlanta, the other from Calgary.
I wanted to arrange a meeting in Prague with the then chairman of the Czechoslovak Physical Education Association at the hockey association. But the papal staff gave up on them, kept them waiting for a week and finally didn’t accept them at all.”
The escape from the Eastern Bloc took place in the summer of 1974, when the Nedomansky family went on vacation to Switzerland. “Me, my wife and my son each had only one small suitcase, we went there with only the things that one normally takes on vacation.
Everything else stayed at home, we couldn’t arouse suspicion at the border. When we passed through them, it was a huge relief, but even in Switzerland we preferred to hide with a friend.
We were afraid of Czechoslovak agents who could follow us there. We finally took a breather on the plane to Canada.”
The rest is history. Through the Toronto Toros club, he reached the NHL, where he gradually wore the jersey of the famous New York Rangers, St. Louis Blues and the Detroit Red Wings. Before the end of his career in 1983, he managed to play six seasons in the pro league and score 125 goals in 428 games.
Source: sportweb.pravda.sk
