Slovak Hockey President Found Dead in His Office

Dusan Pasek, a former Minnesota North Star, was found dead in his office in Bratislava, Slovakia on Sunday from a gunshot wound to the head.

Suicide was suspected but the motive was unknown. Pasek, 37, was president of the Slovak Hockey Assn.

His colleagues rejected the suggestion that Slovakia’s poor showing at the Winter Olympics in Japan had anything to do with the death, Czech independent television Nova reported.

Pasek played in five world championships, two Olympics and three Canada Cups. He was a member of the Czechoslovak national team that won the world championship in 1985, and also was Czechoslovakia’s leading scorer in the 1988 Olympics.

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Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr and 16 other members of the Hockey Hall of Fame say they will leave the sport’s shrine if it allows former union head Alan Eagleson to remain, according to a published report Sunday.

A survey by the Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, Mass., of 44 of the Hall’s 76 living members showed 18 said they would leave if Eagleson stayed, another 20 also wanted him out, five were noncommittal and one--Bobby Clarke, the general manager of the Philadelphia Flyers--said he should stay, the newspaper said.

“They need a cranium operation to even think he belongs there,” said Howe, the NHL’s second-leading all-time scorer. “If they don’t understand the meaning of what the Hall of Fame should be, I don’t want anything to do with it.”

Eagleson, elected to the Hall in 1989 in the “builder’s” category, is serving an 18-month jail term in Ontario for defrauding Hockey Canada, the NHL, the NHL Players Assn. and Labatt Breweries of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Hall’s 18-member board of directors is expected to decide Eagleson’s future in Toronto on March 31. Howe stated his position in a letter March 5 to Scotty Morrison, the chairman of the Hall of Fame.

If Eagleson is not removed March 31, Orr said he will ask the next day that the Hall return any possessions of his and take his picture down from the wall.

“If the players don’t count, if the players don’t have a say, they can have a Hall of Fame without Bobby Orr and I’m sure a few others,” said Orr, in the Hall since 1979.

According to the newspaper, the 16 other players who have threatened to leave the Hall are Andy Bathgate, Mike Bossy, Johnny Bower, Johnny Bucyk, Bernie Geoffrion, Glenn Hall, Bobby Hull, Red Kelly, Ted Lindsay, Frank Mahovlich, Dickie Moore, Brad Park, Jean Ratelle, Henri Richard, Norm Ullman and Gump Worsley.

“Should he be removed? No, not at all,” Clarke said. “There’s nowhere that it says if you don’t live up to a certain standard, you come out of the Hall of Fame.”