By George Gross
...I explained to him that one didn't have to be a genius to figure out that Vaclav Nedomansky, then the captain of the Czechoslovak national hockey team, was the best player in Europe and certainly worth going after. It was then that Cliff explained to me that he had just come back from Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia and that city's hockey team Nedomansky played for--- and that the player agreed to come to Atlanta.
Big Ned, as he later was nicknamed, was to go on holiday to Switzerland and Italy with his wife Vera and son Vasek and then change direction to the United States.
The Nedomansky family made it safely to Zurich and awaited Fletcher's arrival. Enter the late Buck Houle, then general manager of the Toronto Toros of the World Hockey Association.
Buck, being a smart operator, beat Fletcher to Nedomansky's Zurich address and advised him that it wouldn't be healthy for him and his family to go to Atlanta and that they would be far safer coming to Toronto and playing for the Toros.
