A retired hockey star wants to put a couple of contractors in the penalty box for $1.5 million worth of allegedly shoddy renovations on his palatial New Jersey home.
Russian ice legend Viacheslav Fetisov, 54, the greatest defenseman in Soviet hockey history before a stellar career with the Detroit Red Wings and New Jersey Devils, said a pair of small-timers from the old country set up a home-improvement shop in Brooklyn and fleeced him and his wife, Ladlena, with substandard work on their Essex Fells home.
In a civil trial that began yesterday in Brooklyn federal court, the hulking former hockey star, who won back-to-back Stanley Cups with the Red Wings in 1997 and 1998, said he was returning to Moscow for a government position and wanted to renovate the house before he sold it.
Fetisov said he gave Oleg May and Yuri Roberman more than $1.5 million — including several signed blank checks — for the job, and then was forced to pay another contractor $120,000 to repair the repairs.
A lawyer for the contractors said their work was fine and that they stopped the renovation project when they stopped getting paid.