Fifty years ago, Czech player Vaclav Nedomansky fired a puck at the Soviet Union bench during an Olympic hockey contest in Sapporo, Japan.

Four years before, Soviet tanks had rolled into Prague as Warsaw Pact countries banded together to invade the then-Czechoslovakia to put an end to the rise of liberal reforms for the country. The Czechs never forgave the Russians for that aggression.

At the 1972 Olympics, during heated hockey game between the two countries, famed Soviet coach Anatoly Tarasov was trash-talking Nedomansky, one of the most dominant players in the tournament. Nedomansky filed his protest against the coach and the Soviets by slapping a puck that just missed Tarasov.

Nedomansky eventually defected from the Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia to come to North America to play hockey.

It's now 2022 and another Czech, Dominik Hasek, is registering his own protest against Russian aggression.

After the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, Hasek criticized Washington Capitals Russian star Alex Ovechkin for not strongly denouncing the Russian aggression and the country's president Vladimir Putin.

The former NHL goaltending great also called for the league to suspend all Russian players and he called for Russian NHLers to donate their paychecks to relief organizations.

Hasek, considered one of the best goalies in NHL history, hasn't stopped campaigning for a stronger sports world stance against the Russians

Hasek asked the Czechia government to ban any Russians playing for the Nashville Predators (winger Yakov Trenin) and San Jose Sharks (wingers Alexander Barbanov, Evgeni Svechnikov and Nikolai Knyzhov.) from playing in Prague when the two teams kick off the NHL’s regular season there Oct. 7 and 8.

Hockeyfeed.com reported that the Czechia Foreign Minister has informed the NHL that his country will not welcome Russian players for those games because of alleged Russian war crimes against Ukrainians.

Whether that comes to pass or not, it's clear that the Czechs are not afraid to mix hockey with geopolitics. That was true in 1972 with Nedomansky and in 2022 with Dominik Hasek.

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