THE RETURN OF A DAMNED GOAL SCORER

OVERVIEW

In the summer of 1974, the communist regime in Czechoslovakia dealt with a severe blow. One of the most famous hockey players in our history, Václav Nedomanský, fled Czechoslovakia with his family. At the age of 30, he joined the WHA and later the NHL as the first emigrant from Europe. His story changed the relationship with our hockey players on both sides of the Atlantic... At the same time, the paradoxical situation lasted for almost half a century, when the best scorer in the history of the national team did not have citizenship of the country whose records he set. In February 2024, just before his 80th birthday, he returned for the first time as a citizen of the Czech Republic to meet his former teammates and to tell his memories of the glorious and strange times of hockey's normalisation.