What did you think of as a fresh man in his sixties?
I thanked God for being born and being able to have such a great childhood. Without cell phones, the internet and all those things around.
Were you inspired by your three-year-old brother Dušan, who later played in the football league for Nitra and Dunajská Streda?
I enjoyed hockey more. In fact, it came from day to day.
From today’s point of view, it is strange that you lasted until you were 18 in your native Prešov. You must have had a bunch of transfer offers.
Back then, it was a good thing for talented players to stay in their clubs to play and help at the same time. I miss that these days. Now you see how parents see a fifth-grade boy in the NHL. Patience is missing. The greatest talents still grow in the smallest clubs. That’s where they play the most. But parents still want to change, that’s not good.
As a player of Prešov, you also competed in the World Twenties Championship.
It is true. The coaches then fought over me on the plane, I remember exactly that. Laco Horský attracted me to Slovan, Pavel Wohl to Sparta. But I said: Kosice!
Today’s juniors dream of the NHL, what motivated you? National team?
We had role models. When I played on the street, on Nedomanského, Golonka, someone on Ragulin and the then players. We didn’t think so much about the national team.
In the mid-1970s, the Šťastný brothers got into the joint national team from Slovakia to the maximum. How did you later feel in the team with the overwhelming predominance of Czechs?
To this day, I say that we had the perfect team. When there is an event once in a while, we have something to remember. Luděk Bukač and Stanislav Neveselý, they were the best coaching pair I have ever experienced. We never had any problems with each other, so we achieved success.
Did the war in Dukla in Jihlava help you?
She helped everyone. I didn’t care about anything for two years and I just played hockey.
You’ve been going to the World Cup since 1982, but if it weren’t for the fact that Peter Ihnačák emigrated to Helsinki at that time, your famous formation with Vincent Lukáč and Darius Rusnák might not have gotten together. On the ice, you acted like you had been playing together for five years a day.
That is a fact, Mr Bukač had a lucky hand at the time that he had put together such an attack. He was a prudent man who knew what he wanted.
Do you agree that the top of your line came at the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo? At that time, the coach of the choir Tichonov said that you are better than Makarov, Larionov and Krutov.
It was the best tournament for the three of us. In a difficult match in the group against the USA, we won 4: 1 and scored all the goals. Unfortunately, the Soviets won such an unfortunate goal in the final. Too bad they were so afraid of us then, they were completely done.
But the coaches built the team mainly towards the championship in Prague in 1985. Did you feel a lot of pressure on the result at the time?
I bought Mr. Bukač’s book and I really like it when he wrote that nowadays there is artificial pressure on the team and the players. Mr Bukac said that before the championship, everyone would give the players peace and all the accusations were directed at him. We only prepared for three years, we trained hard like the Russians, to be physically and mentally prepared and enough for them. It paid off.
When you had a fight with two Americans in Prague at the same time, I thought at that time that you would not get lost in the NHL.
I remember the situation as if it were today. I had no problems with hard play, I was used to such hockey. I was a patient player. But when someone pissed me off, it was different.
You were drafted into the NHL back in 1983, did you know that?
Since the 1980s, scouts have been circling around us at every tournament, offering me money to sign a contract. But I didn’t think about overseas at all. Someone left and left family at home, friends, but it depended on a specific person. It didn’t drag me into the NHL.
You also knew the strongest Canadian selections in two Canadian cups. Did you feel like you had such hockey?
In 1987, we led them in the semifinals in the middle of the match 2: 0. And how they ran after us! They weren’t eliminated at all, otherwise they probably wouldn’t have defeated us. It was a big school.
Three years earlier, emigrant Peter Šťastný also played for Canada.
But we had no problem talking to him. There was an ‘eye’ with us, but he was a harmless man who didn’t want to do us any harm.
The Happy Brothers were in the NHL, you preferred Košice. At that time, the Czech teams were quite afraid of matches with VSŽ.
It was said that they were already losing at Kysak (laughs). It is about 20 kilometers from Košice. They didn’t want to follow us. When the generation led by Vince Lukáč left, we stayed there with players like Vodila, Svitek. The team was then built by incorporating two young players during the year. At that time, it was known when and who to add there. Today, it’s chaos when you see them change half the team somewhere.
In 1986, you defeated Jihlava in the decisive final for the raids, and two years later you celebrated the title in Sparta.
Jihlava, then it was like a national team. And Sparta, like our Slavs, I called them government teams. But silencing a sold-out stadium and 15,000 fans in Prague with a winning goal was a great experience. People were in shock. Goalkeeper Sparta Šindel told me after the matches with us, when it was even 1: 1: Igor, you don’t have to go to Prague anymore. So I say: Don’t worry, we’ll go. The Spartans were sure. They hadn’t won the title for a long time before, most recently sometime in the 1950s (1954), so they did everything for him.
It is said that you received 5 thousand crowns gross per capita for the title.
That was a little over three thousand net. We drank it all in three days! (Laughs). But we didn’t think about money then, it didn’t matter if we got a million or 10.
After the season, you went to the NHL. But in Minnesota, where the architect of the 1980 American Olympic miracle Herb Brooks wanted you and Dušan Pašek, you experienced an unpleasant surprise.
(Brooks) wasn’t there anymore, he was fired. I was told to go to the farm, which I refused. After so many years and after all I’ve done, should I go to the farm? No way.
Have you boarded the return plane yet?
I remember it was nine in the evening and suddenly Phil Esposito calls to see me in the Rangers. I came to New York, but then I didn’t play ten matches again. At that time, no one determined the coach who to deploy. What the coach said was sacred.
Nevertheless, you played with real greats.
Sir, it was an experience! Marcel Dionne, Guy Lafleur and me. When we got somewhere, the whole stadium chanted: Guy! Guy! He skated there with long hair, without a helmet, enjoying it.
How were you doing with English? Did you talk?
My wife could, but I got into it in two months. In New York, I went to school, where I was sitting alone opposite the teacher, and he was tapping me.
But they soon sent you to Los Angeles.
I played, but my little finger broke. We went to a game and suddenly they came to me that I was playing for Los Angeles tomorrow and goodbye! Nobody talked to me. I packed my things and flew.
Behind the best player in history, Wayne Gretzky.
It just bothered me that he didn’t like beer. After the match, Gretzky went to peace and ended. But I’m a beer, I have to have a beer after the match. I have a memory of the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, where I was selected for a doping test. I had been sitting there for more than an hour and couldn’t pee. At the same time, I drank all the beer they had and still nothing. So they were just watching.
How many bottles were there?
They have thirds there. Well, I drank over thirty of them (laughs).
Decent work. Gretzky probably wouldn’t be enough for you.
I only saw him drink beer once. And maybe he didn’t even finish it. That’s when we went with the whole team to watch the Superbowl. Dionne and Lafleur were different, we always sat down with them, had a few beers, and defender Greschner sat down. But Gretzky couldn’t afford anything, someone had been watching him all day. It would be reported in the newspapers right away.
How did you feel as a defending left wing overseas?
I played the left wing in my own way, all over. I defended for everyone, I made my own system. Even Mr. Bukač did not interfere with me and left me. It took a lot of skating, but I didn’t have a problem with it in the NHL either.
You actually learned to skate as a child, didn’t you?
It is true. At that time, there was no condition that one coach was fit, another was mental, and another was different. Nobody teaches hockey just. We were self-taught. One coach took care of everything.
After returning from overseas, you played for the federal team at the Olympics in Albertville and at the 1992 World Cup in Prague. How do you explain that you scored only one start in the Slovak national team?
What can I tell you? This is a great mystery. Nobody explained it to me and will not explain it to me. But it happened and nothing can be done.
How do you look at the state of Slovak hockey now?
Last week I saw a long-announced hit of our league Slovan-Košice. That was misery! Something terrible. And then when I listen to those voices … We followed what the coach told us. We lost because we didn’t follow what he told us. We have to practice this, that. We were lucky to let us create from childhood, that was a good thing. And hockey was on a different level.
Martin Réway, who has had a great career, now also plays for Košice.
And if you saw him now … Normally I was crying. What a talent it was five years ago! But he is such a nature. He told Sparta that it didn’t suit him there and he wouldn’t play for them. Then he went around a lot of clubs. Unfortunately, for the most part, he is to blame.
When you opened your academy, was your goal to return something to Slovak hockey in this way?
Yes, you said that well. I was a generation raised under socialism. Sport didn’t cost us anything, so we return it this way. I’m just sorry I haven’t had any Igor here in eight years, really. Once an Igor comes, I’ll pay special attention to him (laughs).
Do you think that players returning to Slovakia from the NHL think in the same way as you?
So far, I see that they mainly want functions and no one wants to work with the little ones. Those who have not trained children do not know what it is. There are exceptions, but I think former NHL players should pay more attention to getting something back. And not just showing up on TV and doing shows. Rather go among the children and work with them. Daily work is about something else.
But you had to learn patience when training with children, didn’t you?
It was a difficult two years when Jaro Dragan and Slavo Ilavský and I climbed on our knees during training and did not know what to do. But for the last five or six years, we have had four figure skaters working with the youngest children and teaching them to skate. As soon as the kids learn, they go upstairs. This is our system.
So work enough, there is probably not much time to look back.
But a lot of people remind me of her. And I take it as an award. I receive requests for signatures from all over the world every week. I had cards made for my entire career and then I send them. For me, it’s the greatest honor when fans remember me.
IGOR LIBA
he was born on November 4, 1960 in Prešov
As the left wing, he played for 211 matches for the Czechoslovak national team, in which he scored 65 goals
He has played in the World Cup six times. He has gold from Prague in 1985, two silver pieces (1982, 1983) and two bronzes (1987, 1992)
He completed the Olympics in Sarajevo in 1984 (silver), in Calgary 1988 (6th place) and in Albertville 1992 (bronze). He competed twice in the Canadian Cup (1984, 1987)
In 1984 he won the Golden Hockey Stick for the best Czechoslovak player of the season
He also has four federal titles (1983 and 1984 with Jihlava, 1986 and 1988 with Košice) and one Slovak (1999 with Košice).
He played 37 games (7 + 18) in the NHL in the 1988-89 season for the New York Rangers and Los Angeles.
He has also worked in Switzerland, Italy, Finland and Austria.
He closed his career at the age of 42.
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