Team Penalties

No. 1 Pick Smith Has Starry Look

Being the first player selected in the amateur draft puts a lot of pressure on the shoulders of a young hockey player, but the Minnesota North Stars were confident that six-foot four, 210-pound Bob Smith of Ottawa would be able to accept the challenge. Smith, who set an Ontario Major Junior record with 192 points, including 69 goals last year, got off to a slow start with the North Stars this year with only 12 points in his first 23 games, but he may have gotten over the hump in his 24th game when he scored two power play goals and added an assist to spark a Minnesota Victory.…

HOCKEY WORLD

He’ll Always Be No. 1 “HE’S TOO GOOD to be true.” “If you had a son, you’d want him to be like him.” The object of all this affection is Bob Smith, who will forever be known as “a No. 1 NHL draft choice.” Whether he emerges as a hockey super star or turns toward a medical career or winds up back in Ottawa as a hardware-store clerk, people will point and say, “Ya know, he was the first player picked in the 1978 NHL amateur draft, I guess he was pretty good then.” Bob Smith is better than pretty good, er, well, although his early NHL scoring figures haven’t worried Guy Lafleur. Faster than you can say Bemidji, Minnesota, Smith will admit his point pace is below what he expected. “The puck hasn’t been…

HOCKEY TALK

Sleeping Giant Awakens LAST PLACE. That’s the place, of all places, that we picked the Atlanta Flames to finish. With advice like that, who needs bad advice? The theory was that the Flames, albeit talented and maturing, were a team without a killer instinct in a tough neighborhood—the Patrick Division, where the solid New York Islanders, revived New York Rangers and proud Philadelphia Flyers play. But the sleeping giant, and the Atlanta Flames are giant, has awoken. Not overnight, but over a long haul. “People forget,” general manager Cliff Fletcher was saying, “that we had a good streak at the end of the regular season last year. We had an unfortunate playoff—two straight losses in the first round to Detroit. That had happened before and there might have been the temptation to panic.” But Fletcher, a…