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Vaclav Nedomansky
Position Centre
Shot Left
Nickname(s) Big Ned
Height
Weight
6 ft 1 in (1.85 m)
210 lb (95 kg)
Teams Toronto Toros
Birmingham Bulls
Detroit Red Wings
St. Louis Blues
New York Rangers
Nationality Flag of the Czech Republic Czech
Born (1944-03-14)March 14, 1944,
Hodonín, CZE
Pro Career 1974 – 1983

Václav Nedomanský (born March 14, 1944, in Hodonín, Czechoslovakia), is a former hockey forward. He is best known as the first hockey player to defect to North America to play.

Playing in Czechoslovakia[]

Olympic medal record
Men's ice hockey
Silver 1968 Grenoble Team
Bronze 1972 Sapporo Team

Nedomanský played for HC Bratislava of the Czechoslovak Extraliga for twelve seasons. In 1968 he was a member of the Czechoslovak national ice hockey team which won silver medals at the 1968 Olympics and bronze medals in 1972 at the 1972 Olympics. He also played for Czechoslovakia in nine IIHF World Championships, and was named top forward at the 1974 world championships.

Career after defection[]

Nedomanský defected in 1974 to Toronto via Switzerland. He was not able to return to his home country until after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

He played just over three seasons in the World Hockey Association with the Toronto Toros and the Birmingham Bulls, peaking with 56 goals and 98 points for Toronto in 1975–76. He also won the Paul Deneau Trophy for sportsmanship in 1975–76. He then signed as a free agent with the National Hockey League's Detroit Red Wings in 1977. Nedomanský played five seasons for Detroit, posting highs of 38 goals and 74 points. He retired after one final season with the St. Louis Blues and the New York Rangers in 1982–83.

Nedomanský coached in Germany during the 1987–88 season.

He was born in Hodonin, in eastern Moravia in the present-day Czech Republic, but very close to the Slovak border. Today, he claims to feel more Slovak than Czech, having played in Bratislava.

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Vaclav Nedomansky. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Ice Hockey Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 (Unported) (CC-BY-SA).



External links[]

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