Wall.”

Those who saw the defenceman play in his prime in the 1980s came away impressed. Jim Corsi, former NHL netminder and now goaltending coach of the St. Louis Blues, played against Frenzel numerous times in world hockey championships while with the Italian national team. His first encounter with the German was a memorable one.

“They were on a power play and he one-timed a slapshot off the crossbar from the top of the circle,” said Corsi, who played for the Oilers in 1979-80 season. “I had no idea where that puck was and when I found it, it was flying into the penalty box at the red line!”

Alan McDougall, an associate professor of history at the University of Guelph who has written extensively on East German sports, explains thatto understand why authorities rebuffed the offer for Frenzel one needs to remember the role athletes played in the Cold War conflict between East and West.

“For GDR officials, elite athletes were ‘diplomats in tracksuits.’ Their country did not have many successful exports, but international sport, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, was definitely one of them. Because of this, any move to the West would have been viewed as striking a blow to the prestige of socialism and the unloved East German state.”

Frenzel said hockey did indeed serve as a battleground in the Cold War, particularly games between GDR and West Germany.

“When the schedule came out for a world championship and we were scheduled to play (the West Germans), that’s when the quote-unquote ideological warfare started. The (Communist)