Welcome to NHL99, The Athletic’s countdown of the best 100 players in modern NHL history. We’re ranking 100 players but calling it 99 because we all know who’s No. 1 — it’s the 99 spots behind No. 99 we have to figure out. Every Monday through Saturday until February we’ll unveil new members of the list.
Perhaps the simplest way to describe Peter Stastny’s NHL career is to put into context what transpired after he arrived on the scene in 1980.
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Only Wayne Gretzky had more points in the decade of the 1980s than the Quebec Nordiques superstar.
So, yeah.
“He was a great player and obviously a Hall of Famer,” Gretzky told The Athletic. “The impact that he had on the people in Quebec City was similar to the impact that Flower (Guy Lafleur) had on fans of the Montreal Canadiens.
“Fans truly loved watching Peter Stastny and his two brothers play. He embraced Quebec City, and the people loved him. He went on to have a stellar career. Just an elite player.”
But the hockey part of his life is just that — part of an incredible journey for Stastny, who defected from the former Czechoslovakia in 1980 to follow his NHL dream and, more importantly, secure freedom for his family.
And the sad thing is, all these years later, those same fears exist for so many after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It’s like the world has come full circle, and not in the way anyone would have wanted.
(Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
“Absolutely, very, very sad,” Stastny, 66, told The Athletic from his home in Bratislava, Slovakia.
He thinks back to 1956 and the Soviet crushing of a rebellion in Budapest, and of course, 1968 when Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia. But then he also recalls the hope of the wall coming down in 1989 and the eventual formation of the European Union. Stastny truly felt better times were here to stay.
“It just takes one crazy man,” he said. “Look what’s happening. It’s very, very, very painful and sad. Especially for the Ukrainian people.”
Stastny was a month away from turning 12 when the Soviets invaded his homeland in 1968. He remembers being at his grandparents’ place in the country, where they traveled every summer.
“I understood what was going on,” Stastny said. “I knew enough. Going through the emotions. I had a conflict with my dad because he was worried about my older brothers, who were back in Bratislava, and there were people getting killed in the main square in Bratislava by Soviet soldiers, tanks rolling everywhere. There were young students protesting and they were victims. My dad was worried about it. I told him, ‘Dad, if I was there, I would be there (protesting), too.’ He started screaming at me. Because he was worried about us.
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“I still have very strong memories.”
It was a terrifying experience and helped plant the seed for his defection in 1980. Stastny’s concern from the beginning was what his defection — if he even pulled it off — would mean for the rest of his family. He had four brothers and a sister.
“You know that when you leave, you will ruin their careers,” Stastny said. “You will ruin your parents’ career. So it was almost impossible.”
But it was his destiny. He had to evade the tyranny of the communist regime — and the pressure and coercion that came with playing hockey for the national team.
“They put a gun to my head. They said, ‘You better do what we tell you or you’ll never play for the national team,’” Stastny recalled. “At the time, the national team was like NHL level, Olympic level. It was a dream for all of us.”
When his wife, Darina, became pregnant, it made Stastny think even more.
“I realized, ‘My children will go into this system?’”
One of his fears was that when his playing career ended, he would no longer be of use to the regime. And what would happen then?
“Too many reasons, for me, but once they put a gun to my head. … I went to my brother Anton and said: ‘We’re leaving. First opportunity.’”
His older brother Marian, also a talented hockey player, was married with three kids, and at the time, it seemed too difficult to think about joining his brothers in defection. So it would be Peter and Anton going first. A European champion club tournament in August 1980 in Innsbruck, Austria, provided the opportunity.
To this day, Stastny remembers how terrified he was. It was paramount that his wife, eight months pregnant, be able to escape with him.
“She was tough. She wanted to go because it was so rare they allowed the wives to travel,” Stastny said.
So having his wife eventually join him in Innsbruck was a big part of it all. Of course, there’s also the moment: Stastny going to a pay phone and calling the Nordiques. Why the Nordiques? A number of reasons — one of them being that he remembered how much he enjoyed playing in Quebec City during the 1976 Canada Cup tournament.
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“We played Sweden there. I think Börje Salming scored two goals,” Stastny said. “It was just beautiful, beautiful end of summer there, mid-September. Just a gorgeous city. It reminded me of Bratislava or any European city. And Anton was drafted by (the Nordiques, in the fourth round of the 1979 NHL Draft). I wanted to play with my brother.”
And hockey-wise, Stastny factored in that it was a team that needed some help. He wanted to make sure he and Anton got a true opportunity. Obviously, he was ready to phone other NHL clubs had the Nordiques not shown interest.
“We had Philadelphia, we had Calgary, maybe the Rangers,” Stastny said. “We had other teams, too.”
He somehow had a directory with all the relevant NHL phone numbers. He managed to get Gilles Leger from the Nordiques front office on the phone.
“I will never forget the feeling because they almost dropped the phone,” Stastny said. “Their jaw dropped. I could feel it from Innsbruck.”
The Nordiques were all-in. They would help Peter and Anton defect. This was stuff from spy novels. Leger and Nordiques team president Marcel Aubut were on a flight to Austria the day after that phone call. When the club tournament wrapped up, the Stastny brothers were nowhere to be found in Innsbruck, already Vienna-bound in Aubut’s rental car. They were in Quebec City shortly thereafter.
As exhilarating as it was for Peter and Anton to get to Quebec City and begin their new lives, older brother Marian was still back home, and as retribution, he was not allowed to continue to play hockey. And their father lost his job.
“They took revenge,” Stastny said. “They were merciless. They would do anything. They isolated Marian. It was horrible, as the KGB can do.”
A year later, Marian also defected and came to Quebec City to join his younger brothers on the Nordiques.
“That was the biggest piano off my shoulders,” Stastny says. “Because I felt guilty. I felt responsible.”
Imagine living through that, first with their own defection, then waiting for brother Marian.
“He basically was running for his life to be able to go play hockey in North America,” Gretzky said of Peter Stastny. “Not only him, but his two brothers, too. From that point of view, what he did then was pretty remarkable and pretty special in its own right.”
Left to right, the Stastny brothers: Peter, Marian and Anton with the Nordiques. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
And so there they were, three Stastny brothers on one NHL team, taking the league by storm.
“The three brothers coming in, that kind of changed the dynamic,” Canadiens Hall of Famer Guy Carbonneau told The Athletic, recalling how it lifted the rival Nordiques. “I think Peter has always been elite and pretty much above everybody, but, like, the other two weren’t that bad, either.
“So it made that team a lot better instantly.”
Peter Stastny was the superstar, and he comes in at No. 56 on The Athletic’s list of the 100 greatest NHL players of the modern era. He won the Calder Trophy as NHL rookie of the year in 1980-81 and put up 100 or more points in seven of his first eight NHL seasons.
Again, only the Great One had more points in the 1980s.
“That’s my best claim to fame now,” chuckled Stastny. “Nobody likes to be second, but this is the exception. Being second behind the best ever.”
The Nordiques made the playoffs the first seven years after Stastny’s arrival, reaching the conference finals twice. And just as noteworthy, they were entertaining to watch.
“I would say one thing and you would probably concur: Us and the Oilers were probably the most fun to watch,” Stastny said. “There were goals almost guaranteed. And a lot of goals.”
Which Gretzky fully agreed with.
“I can remember playing there many nights and it was 9-8, 8-7,” he said. “People in Quebec City truly loved those games. Yeah, it was definitely run-and-gun when the Oilers and Nordiques played in the early ’80s.”
That decade, of course, featured one of the NHL’s most fearsome rivalries — the Battle of Quebec, with the upstart Nordiques coming over from the WHA and measuring up against the storied Canadiens. The emotion and intensity of those games were through the roof, especially in Adams Division playoff encounters.
“One of the biggest rivalries ever,” said Stastny.
In that rivalry, it was Carbonneau’s job to try to slow down No. 26.
“He was my shadow,” Stastny said of Carbonneau, one of the great shutdown centers in NHL history.
“I played against a bunch of guys, but I think the two toughest to play against as a center for me was (Mark) Messier and Peter,” Carbonneau said. “Just because they were so freakin’ good, but they could be physical. They were never backing down.”
That’s an element of Stastny’s game many might not remember. He was a bear of a man. So strong in the corners. So strong on the puck.
“On faceoffs, he was one of the toughest guys I had to go against,” said Carbonneau. “Because of his strength. And he was really smart.”
There was one rather memorable faceoff, in overtime of Game 7 between the Nordiques and Habs in 1985, that neither Stastny nor Carbonneau will ever forget. A clean win for Stastny from the dot against Carbonneau that led to a rebound goal by Stastny on Steve Penney and a series-clinching moment in the Battle of Quebec.
“That hurt me more than freakin’ … that was a tough day for me,” said Carbonneau, whose reaction on the ice after the goal said it all.
It was obviously one of Stastny’s favorite on-ice moments.
“Absolutely,” Stastny said. “Because by then I was there five years. I really understood the meaning of the rivalry. Two Quebec teams. It was like big brother against small brother. Every game was a battle.”
Never more so than in the Good Friday Massacre during Game 6 of the teams’ 1984 playoff matchup. It was the brawl to end all brawls.
“I remember the game report,” Stastny said. “It was normally one page. They added three more pages so they could add all the penalties and players. Unbelievable. That’s stuff for the museum.”
It was also in 1984 that Stastny made headlines by playing for a stacked Team Canada team in the Canada Cup, having become a Canadian citizen.
“It was very special,” Stastny said.
He scored against Czechoslovakia on a beauty.
To understand what that moment meant, consider that once Stastny defected in 1980, the communist regime eliminated his name from its internal media coverage. He no longer existed. Any record of his hockey exploits was expunged.
“We were persona non-grata,” Stastny said. “Journalists were not allowed to write our name. So when we beat them 5-1 or something, there were only four goals written. I was missing in the lineup that was reported. They weren’t allowed to mention my name on the broadcast.”
He was so fired up for that game.
“Very, very strong memories,” said Stastny, whose hockey-playing sons Yan and Paul have gone on to represent Team USA internationally.
A decade after the Canada Cup, another historical moment came for Stastny. Just over a year after the peaceful breakup of Czechoslovakia, he led Slovakia’s men’s hockey team into the 1994 Lillehammer Games.
“I was so proud,” Stastny said. “Because everything that I believed came true. I love history. Hockey history and Slovak history. We always dreamed about it. Finally we had our own team. It was fantastic. And we weren’t even supposed to be there.”
Stastny and the Slovaks had to lobby behind the scenes to get Slovakia special permission to get into the Olympic qualifying tournament. The Czechoslovakia breakup happened on Jan. 1, 1993, so there wasn’t much time ahead of the Games in February 1994.
“Somehow we got into the pre-Olympic tournament, won it, and qualified for the Olympics,” Stastny said. “It was a huge victory. We could finally come to the stage and present ourselves as a new country.”
The Olympics were capped with Stastny as his country’s flag-bearer.
“There wasn’t a prouder athlete out there than Peter Stastny walking into the Olympic stadium with the Slovak flag,” he said. “I got both, opening and closing ceremonies.”
Fast forward eight years to the 2002 IIHF men’s world hockey championships in Goteborg, Sweden. Having been inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1998, Stastny was the general manager of Slovakia’s entry in that world championships tournament, and one of the best moments of the tournament was witnessing the pure emotion that exploded out of him after Slovakia edged Russia 4-3 on Peter Bondra’s late goal.
That win came after upsets over Canada in the quarters and Sweden in the semis. Less than a decade after becoming its own country and having to build up the hockey federation, Slovakia was a world champion for the first time.
“There’s no greater feeling when you achieve something that’s a first,” Stastny said. “Being the first in the world for our country? It proved we could play with anybody.”
Proving that hockey was just a part of a life incredibly lived, Stastny then spent 10 years as a member of the European Parliament for Slovakia, from 2004 through 2014.
Is there nothing this guy can’t do?
“It was special,” Stastny said. “I didn’t want to do it. The (Slovak) prime minister gave me the offer. He’s a good friend of mine. I said, ‘No’ right away. But he kept pushing.”
Stastny took a few weeks to think about it, talked to his family about it and eventually decided he could make a difference in the role. It spoke to his soul about the importance of democracy.
“My dad always said the best decision he ever made was to defect from communism and give his family and future kids a life of freedom and opportunity,” the Hurricanes’ Paul Stastny told The Athletic. “His hockey achievements and political life speak for themselves. Although he is very private and keeps a small circle of trusted friends, he has always been the most selfless person I know that wants the best for his family and friends.
“He has always been driven by faith and family, and those are some of the biggest values he has instilled in all of us.”
When it comes to lives lived, there have been few more interesting than Peter the Great’s.
“I call myself the most blessed person and the happiest dude walking the Planet Earth,” Peter Stastny said. “My biggest win is my family. My beautiful wife, my beautiful children, my grandchildren …
“I keep pinching myself every day.”
(Top photo: Focus on Sport)