5. The Defections of the Ihnacak Brothers

As Peter Ihnacak stepped out of his taxi with his brother John, surveyed the docks below, and got in line to board the 16-hour ferry trip from Helsinki to Stockholm, he knew that the rest of his life sat in the balance of the next few minutes.

A quick glance over his papers and the punching of his ticket came with a chance—and only a chance—to apply for political asylum in Sweden and make his way to North America, where the Maple Leafs had promised they’d select him in the 1982 NHL Draft. But any thorough review of his documents would flag that he wasn’t permitted to travel without the Eastern Bloc’s approval—and he did not have approval.

As the line inched closer to the ramp between the dock and the boat, his heart raced. He tried to act normal, but he couldn’t help but peek his head out of the queue to carefully watch the officer in front of him check each passenger’s papers. Just before they arrived at the front of the line, John began to panic.

“You know what, we are fucked,” John said. “I think we should go back to the hotel.”

But before they could change their minds, it was their turn and the officer spoke.

“Tickets,” he said, extending his hand as John scrambled nervously to pull them out of his pocket.

* * *

Peter Ihnacak’s story before that moment, before John handed over their papers and waited for the officer to wave them through or pause, was a slow build to a life-changing endeavour.

Peter was born in Poprad, Czechoslovakia, as the third of four children along with his older brother, John; older sister, Magda; and younger brother, Miroslav. He didn’t start playing hockey until he was 13 years old but fell in love with the sport almost instantly, and his knack for it followed. Each day when school finished at 2 pm, he rushed home, gathered his equipment, and made his way to the rink, where he’d often practice for seven hours before returning home by midnight.

In those days, he never imagined that the better he got, the more trapped he would become. But that’s exactly what happened.

After starring for Czechoslovakia on home ice at the 1977 World Juniors, where he posted seven points in as many games en route to a bronze medal win over the Finns, Peter quickly became a star. The season after the world juniors, he made his professional debut with ASD Dukla Jihlava. A year after that he was recruited to play for TJ Sparta CKD Praha in Prague, where he immediately became the team’s leading scorer.

And when Czechoslovakia’s national team travelled east to play tournaments in the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, or Romania, he always played. But when it went west, it left him behind.

At first, officials came up with excuses for why he wasn’t allowed to participate. In 1980, just before his flight to Lake Placid to represent Czechoslovakia at the Winter Olympics, they used the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as their reason. (The Soviets had deployed their military across the border on December 24, 1979, a month and a half before the Games.)

“The situation is dangerous and we can’t let you go,” he was told.

Eventually, though, the excuses made way for the truth, which was that they felt he was a flight risk for the NHL, which had just begun to recruit and draft European players in larger numbers. After playing at the top of the Czechoslovakia lineup in a December 1980 tournament in Russia, they took him off the team in advance of an upcoming one in January. Before the 1981 Canada Cup, after he was told he’d made the national team in camp, a pair of KGB agents boarded the team’s flight and told him they were investigating him for defection, and he wouldn’t be allowed to leave the country.

In the 1981–82 season after the September Canada Cup, things eventually came to a head between Peter and communist authorities when he was planning a trip to Germany with a couple of teammates and he received a call from Sparta Praha’s secretary.

“After practice, come to the office. There are some guys that want to talk to you,” she told him.

Following his post-practice shower, he was greeted by five KGB agents in suits, his eyes widening.

“Yeah, what’s wrong?” he asked them.

“Mr. Ihnacak, you want to travel to Germany?” one of the men answered.

“Yeah.”

“Bad luck, give us your passport, you won’t be travelling anywhere.”

“OK,” he said, knowing he didn’t have a choice as they ushered him to their car and drove him back to his apartment in search of his papers.

When he couldn’t immediately find his passport in his apartment, Peter told the authorities that his girlfriend had it in an effort to buy himself some time.

“Tomorrow, bring the passport to the police station,” they told him.

That night, he stirred in his apartment, sleepless, debating whether or not he should try to hop on a bus or train to leave the country but fearful that if he did he’d be stopped at the border and put himself in even more trouble.

The following day, he caved, handing over his passport to authorities. A week later, he received a letter in the mail that stated he was an “enemy of the state” and could not be trusted to own travel documents. Outraged, he quit playing for Sparta Praha in protest, hopeful that he’d be given his paperwork back and allowed to travel with the club team—and his national team.

“Listen to me, if I’m a normal citizen then I would be able to travel, but because I play hockey and you are the ones that I travel with, you won’t let me,” he said on a joint call with authorities and team staff.

When another letter followed, this time telling him that he’d missed 10 consecutive days of work and he could be arrested, tried, and jailed for his refusal to play, Peter had no choice but to return to the team.

That spring, when the season was over, he again attended Czechoslovakia’s camp for the 1982 World Championships, which were set to be held in Helsinki, expecting he wouldn’t be allowed to participate.

Finally, though, a combination of things worked in his favour.

The first was that several of the national team’s staff for the 1982 World Championships also happened to work for the two clubs he’d played on in Prague and Jihlava, and they were willing to try to convince Soviet officials to let him participate. The second was his play itself. When they left him off the Canada Cup squad, the line he was supposed to play on performed poorly and by the time the world championships rolled around, he was a 24-year-old who’d already proven he was one of the country’s top players in four full seasons with Sparta Praha, so there were selfish reasons for them to let him help chase a gold medal.

The deciding factor, though, was Finland’s more restrictive immigration rules than the countries he had previously been prohibited from travelling to, which Soviet officials knew would prevent him from trying to both stay or leave.

“They took me to Finland because in Finland they didn’t accept immigrants. I knew that,” Peter said. “I didn’t have a passport, I didn’t have a visa, I didn’t have anything. And if I disappeared and showed up at a Finnish police station to say, ‘I want to stay here and apply for political asylum,’ they’d say, ‘No, we have to return you back to Prague.’”

In Helsinki, Peter quickly called John, who was living in New York after leaving Czechoslovakia in 1968, nearly a decade and a half earlier, with Magda.

“John, I’m in Finland and I don’t want to go back,” he told his brother.

“Be quiet, don’t tell anybody, and in a couple of days I will come to Finland and I will help you out,” John answered, promising to book a flight and pretend like he was travelling over as a fan to watch the tournament.

At the airport, John then recognized Leafs head coach Mike Nykoluk and general manager Gerry McNamara and approached them to chat. They told him that they were travelling over to Europe to scout someone to help Miroslav Frycer (who’d defected a year earlier from Czechoslovakia to the Nordiques before a trade deadline move to the Leafs) adjust. John trusted the two brasses with his brother’s story and told them to keep an eye on him. After watching Peter play early in the tournament, Nykoluk and McNamara then arranged a secret meeting with John, presenting him with a pre-emptive contract (which would today be considered tampering) and promising to draft Peter if he could successfully escape, with John serving as a translator for his brother, who spoke no English.

“He has to stay quiet so that nobody knows where he is because if others find out that he’s coming over then in the summer there’s the possibility that they’re going to pick him in the NHL draft,” McNamara told John.

John spent the day after their conversation with the Leafs looking into exit options while Peter practiced with the national team. Knowing that his brother would never get through pass control at the airport, he turned his attention to the nearby harbour and eventually the ferry (an overnight trip which was a favourite of partying locals and tourists) to Stockholm, where he knew the Swedes’ immigration rules were more amenable to those running from the Soviet regime.

That night, John rang Peter in his hotel room.

“Tomorrow, 5 pm, I’m waiting in the taxi behind the hotel. Come, don’t take anything, leave everything behind and just take the documents that you have and your toothbrush and toothpaste,” John said.

Peter told him he’d be there, and he was, defecting mid-tournament. The officer at the entrance waved them through and they spent the night on the boat before landing the next morning in Sweden. As they stepped off, local media were already there, having caught wind of his run for it overnight, snapping pictures and shouting at him.

Their first trip was a rushed cab ride to the Canadian embassy in Stockholm, where they were told that Peter could apply for immigration status but he would have to wait as many as seven months in Sweden for the paperwork to be completed. Knowing they couldn’t afford to wait and that they were likely being followed, John then made a second visit to the United States embassy.

“We are in danger here, we don’t know what can happen, and Canada says he has to apply from outside the country,” John pleaded.

The U.S. embassy told them they’d get in touch with the White House and see what they could do. After they had hidden out for one night in Stockholm, the American embassy managed to make arrangements for Peter, securing him a visa and helping him get a flight to New York with McNamara.

In New York, the first thing Peter did was track down a copy of The Hockey News at a stand outside Madison Square Garden.

“I was looking for a picture because I wanted to see guys naked to see how big they are and how they look because I had no idea,” Peter said, having never watched NHL hockey or been to North America.

He spent the summer in New York waiting for his immigration status to come through in Canada and laying low so that he didn’t lose out on the guarantees the Leafs had made to him.

“That contract was security to me,” Peter said. “I couldn’t do anything to screw it up.”

He turned 25 that May, a couple weeks after making the trip, and settled into a rigorous routine to pass the time. He’d wake up at 6 am to get a run in, come back to John’s apartment, eat breakfast, go to the gym until noon, return to the apartment for lunch, nap, and then go for a second run each evening. Back at home, the KGB moved swiftly to punish Miroslav for his big brother’s decision, preventing him from travelling outside the Soviet Union.

“My immigration destroyed my brother because he couldn’t travel anywhere. Like, he was done. I mean, they took all of his stuff,” Peter said.

The early days of the move crushed Peter, too. He constantly second-guessed his decision, he couldn’t communicate with anyone other than his brother because of the language barrier, and he worried about his family.

“It was a shock. I left everything behind. It wasn’t easy to digest. It was unbelievably hard,” Peter said.

The Leafs came through at the 1982 draft in Montreal, though. After taking Gary Nylund third overall and Gary Leeman 24th, the Leafs used the 25th pick of the draft to select Peter. They also took a chance on Miroslav, then 20 and five years younger than his brother, selecting him seven rounds later with the 171st pick even though they knew taking him would only make his own attempts to leave near impossible.

Peter was finally able to make his way to Toronto in September, just in time for Leafs training camp. Though he couldn’t communicate with anyone other than Frycer when he got there, he was surprised by how many people knew him (something he later realized was because the second-round pick that was used on him was part of the trade that sent captain Darryl Sittler to Philadelphia, which made fans particularly invested in his play).

“When I was at the airport, I went through customs and the guy says, ‘Hey Peter, good luck, everything’s going to be good,’ and everywhere I went it was unbelievable. When I was in Europe, I was good at hockey and nobody knew who I was. But there, it was big publicity,” Peter said.

In his first season in Toronto, in part because of his age, he stepped right into Nykoluk’s lineup and finished third on the team in scoring with 66 points in 80 games, a Leafs rookie scoring record that remained until Auston Matthews narrowly broke it in 2017.

In the decade that followed before the Velvet Revolution of 1989 restored democracy in Czechoslovkia and the 1993 dissolution and separation of the country into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, Peter never saw his family. In August 1983, between his rookie and sophomore seasons with the Leafs, his father, Stefan, passed of cancer and he wasn’t able to say goodbye.

“I just kind of talked to him on the phone and then the last few weeks, he couldn’t even talk. I heard his breathing on the phone on the other side, but he couldn’t speak anymore and I couldn’t go to the funeral,” Peter said. “It broke my heart.”

The only comfort he found was in his new home.

“I wanted to become as soon as possible Canadian. I love Canada. I love the people,” Peter said. “I wanted to adjust as much as possible to the Canadian way of living, to learn English as soon as possible. It’s the best country in the world.”

While his brother played for the Leafs, Miroslav became an even better player than Peter with HC Kosice, leading Czechoslovakia’s professional league in scoring with 35 goals and 66 points in 43 games in 1984–85.

For a couple of years, Miroslav tried to find legal ways to leave with the Leafs’ help.

“One way was that he would marry somebody from the West or from Yugoslavia and then they found a girl in Yugoslavia who would marry him but the communists said no. He was, like, locked,” Peter said of his brother’s efforts.

Eventually, just after Christmas and in the middle of the 1985–86 season, with Miroslav sitting atop the league’s scoring race for a second straight year with 32 points through the first 21 games, the Leafs paid a diplomat to invite him to Bratislava, at the country’s border with Austria, and smuggle him to Vienna.

Miroslav, then 23, showed up to his meeting with his girlfriend, Eva, not knowing anything about the arrangements that had been made. Together, the pair agreed to take sleeping pills and be loaded into the trunk of a car that had been outfitted with stronger shocks to help cushion the 70-kilometre ride between Bratislava and Vienna. They woke up on the other side, where McNamara had flown in to meet them by way of Linzer and a two-hour bus ride when his flight into Vienna was diverted due to gunfire at the airport.

In Vienna, the Canadian consulate told Miroslav, Eva, and McNamara that they would have to apply for asylum at an Austrian refugee camp before they could be granted immigration papers to Canada, a process which would reportedly take two months. All three, fearful that they were being shadowed and could be apprehended by Soviet officials, eventually got the help of two Canadian cabinet ministers when they leaked their cries for help to Canadian and American news media.

Together, the trio then caught the first flight they could out of the country, a roundabout route that took them the long way around the globe to Vancouver. Peter got a call from McNamara with the news when they landed.

“We’re getting a red eye plane to Toronto,” McNamara told him, to tears of joy.

On January 4, 1986, Miroslav was introduced in a press conference in Toronto alongside Peter, who served as his translator, McNamara, and owner Harold Ballard, who gloated, “Any communist that I could get out of there that wanted to be a Canadian, I’m very pleased,” and denied reports of the money he had spent to secure Miroslav’s escape (reports Peter confirmed for this book), crediting “intermediaries” for their help.

Though McNamara and Ballard raved about the impact Miroslav would have on their Leafs, who’d won just 10 of 35 games to that point in the season, Miroslav never had the NHL career his brother did. He and Eva moved in with Peter for the first couple of months, but he found the adjustment harsher than his brother had.

“He was in shock. I had this advantage because I came in April to the U.S. and I had five months to prepare like crazy. Miroslav, he didn’t practice or play, and he wasn’t ready. He just got off the plane and the next day he was playing with new equipment, new skates,” Peter said. “It’s too bad things went the way that they went because he was a good hockey player. He needed some help, adjustment time, but the big publicity and the expectations were humongous, and everyone was expecting a superstar. Not a player but a superstar.”

Peter went on to play eight seasons for the Leafs, amassing 267 points in 417 games. Miroslav bounced between the Leafs and their farm team in St. Catharines and then Newmarket, playing just 55 NHL games for the team across three seasons before finishing his short-lived career in North America with a one-game stint with the Red Wings and three more years in the AHL in Adirondack and Halifax.

When their NHL pursuits were over, both brothers spent the 1990s playing in Germany and Switzerland. Peter retired from the Krefeld Penguins in 1997 at age 40. Miroslav spent the early 2000s playing professionally in Slovakia, returning to Kosice HC for five seasons before retiring in 2006 at the age of 44. In retirement, Miroslav took up coaching and has led professional teams in Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Italy. Peter coached a trio of teams in the DEL, Germany’s top professional league, before the Leafs hired him as a European amateur scout in 2005. He was let go by the Leafs in 2015 when president Brendan Shanahan took over the club and cleaned house, but Peter remained active in alumni games. Today, he has finally moved back to Prague, where he scouts the Czech Republic and its neighbouring countries for the Washington Capitals, who hired him in 2016.

Toronto will always feel closer to home than home does.

“It was difficult, but I had an unbelievable time with the Maple Leafs,” Peter said. “I’m happy that it happened when it happened.”