Only three members of Team Europe were even born when Peter and Anton Stastny arrived after their covert escape from Communist Czechoslovakia to play hockey in North America.
Two of those players are Slovakia-born Zdeno Chara and Marian Hossa, though they were still toddlers a year later when the third brother, Marian, tricked the authorities to escape with his wife and children, joining the Quebec Nordiques in 1981 to complete one of the great forward lines in NHL history.
They would score more than 2,000 National Hockey League points (playoffs included), while Anton would famously quip, “We were three, but we played like we were four.”
“I don’t remember them coming here, but I remember them playing here,” said the 1979-born Hossa, peeling off equipment after a morning skate at the Centre Videotron where Team Europe and Team North America open their pre-tournament schedule Thursday evening.
“Peter was the biggest of them, then Marian and Anton,” he said. “We didn’t have much coverage during the Communist days. I saw more Wayne Gretzky because he was on the highlights.
“Peter was one of the best players, and his brothers made big names in the National Hockey League. They were so big back in Slovakia.”
Ironically, it was the mystery of those times that led us to fall in love with International hockey. Players like the Stastnys, Petr Klima, Alexander Mogilny and Vaclav Nedomansky had to be smuggled out from their home countries, literally, in the trunks of cars in some cases.
As such, their names disappeared in the old country as political forces made sure not to celebrate the accomplishments of those who fled Communism. But the people — the hockey community — kept track the best they could. And in the case of the Stastnys, it was from here in Quebec City that news of their NHL dominance emanated.
“We had some news, and they were telling us how the Slovaks were doing in the National Hockey League. But that was it,” said Chara, who was born in Trencin, Slovakia in 1977, three years before Peter and Anton set foot on an NHL sheet of ice. “The footage of the NHL, we didn’t get until probably the early 90s. It was hard to really watch NHL games. I was knowing that they played here, but it was impossible to watch the games.”
Slovak Andrej Sekera still possesses a picture of he and his brother posing with the great Peter Stastny, taken when Sekera was “about six” years old. Like it or not, Slovakian hockey players followed in the Stastnys’ footsteps when they left home to join the NHL, even if the path had become so much easier than in the late 70’s.
“I have read a lot about [their escape]. It was a big thing back home, and here in Quebec City. They are legends in this city,” Sekera said, standing outside the locker room in Quebec. “They were the first guys who came over. They were very productive and became leaders here. Three brothers. It was cool.”
Just as us Canadians couldn’t believe there was a country out there who played the game of hockey as well — or sometimes better — than us when the Summit Series turned our heads back in 1972, so too was a hockey fan in Bratislava unsure that the best player on the local club teams could truly compete in the far away NHL.
“They were dominating the league back home, and then they were dominating the league over here,” Sekera described. “They could compare to the best players in the world, and I think that was a good thing for them. Especially in those times, when nobody believed in countries [like Slovakia]. I think it was a driving engine for the rest of the people there, that there was still something more to achieve. It meant a lot for the people back home.”
On Thursday, the three Slovaks and the rest of their teammates play the first NHL-level games ever in this brand new building, which rose out of the parking lot right beside the Stastnys’ old digs, Le Colisee.
Times have changed, even if the memories have not.
