This is the Jeff Merrick Show on the Sports Net Radio Network.

All right, welcome back to the program.

Sandy White for Jim Lights, who's the Chairman of the Dallas Stars, now back in the summer of 1985 although I would

imagine the negotiations the conversations would have begun much earlier

perhaps when they drafted Peter Klima in 1983 for the Detroit

Red Wings. Jim Lights and Nick Polano were the two point people on helping Peter Klima defect from the

Czech team and brought him over to North America to play with the Detroit Red Wings. Now previous to that and I've talked plenty I know on this program about Vasslav Nettamanski who was the pioneer and was the first. Czechoslovakian player to defect along with Richard Farda to the Toronto Taurus of the then WHA.

Now there were other checkborn players who did defect, a couple of them, we think of like Yuri Bubla, for example,

who ended up with the Vancouver Canucks, but Peter Klima became the first Czechoslovakian player to defect and go directly to an American-based

NHL team and getting them out was anything but easy and one of the two-point people along

with Nick Polano who got him out and is here to tell

the story as the chairman of the Dallas Stars please welcome the program Jim

lights Jim it's Jeff Merrick here how are you you? Thanks so much for doing this. I'm doing

well. So sad news yesterday, the passing of Peter Klima, at the age of 58, I think everybody

was surprised and we certainly offer our condolences

to the friends and the family and certainly the the twins and his daughter as well

I mean and now the story started coming out about Peter Clemon our chance to reminis.

And you know, Ken Dryden would always talk about how hockey is the best and most vibrant when you're in your

teenage years and you know I can still recall the story of

you know the Detroit Red Wings and led by you and Nick Polano getting Peter Klima out you

know and away from the national team and and into the the Detroit Red Wings organization.

This is a pretty wide sweeping question to open up, but how did you do it?

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