The Hockey News has been providing the most comprehensive coverage of the world of hockey since 1947. In each issue, you'll find news, features and opinions about the NHL and leagues across North America and the world.

November 16, 1979

The Hockey News November 16, 1979

<div class="byline">BY PAT THOMPSON</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0007-01968/4019076-1-eng-US/f0007-012.jpg" title="f0007-01" width="561" height="1443"><figcaption class="caption-body">Habitually a slow starter, Payne opened the season with a rush.</figcaption></div>BLOOMINGTON&mdash;The way Bobby Smith came on to win the Calder Trophy last season, not much attention was given the muscular left winger on his line.But there were few complaints heard from Steve Payne, who incidentally played on Smith&rsquo;s left side in their junior days with the Ottawa 67&rsquo;s.Payne finished his rookie year with 23 goals and 17 assists, and immediately set a challenge of 30 goals and 60 points for his sophomore season&mdash;a task that would seem a cinch if he continues at his early season pace of scoring five goals his first six games.&ldquo;I feel I can score more than I did last season,&rdquo; Payne said. &ldquo;I set a goal of 20 goals and 40 points and made it. This year I raised it to 30 goals and 60 points. I didn&rsquo;t want to Shoot too high. But the quicker I get there, I&rsquo;ll just want to get more and more. This is the best start I&rsquo;ve ever had.&rdquo;Payne, who had a brief trip to the minors last season, did not score his first goal until Minnesota&rsquo;s 25th game.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m a notoriously slow starter,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Most of my goals came in the last half of last season after our line (of Smith at center and Al MacAdam at right wing) jelled. My last year of junior I missed 18 games with a broken foot and ended up scoring 57 goals in 50 games&mdash;I had 42 goals my last 25 games.&rdquo;&ldquo;Steve is big and strong and talented. All he needed was experience,&rdquo; Sonmor said.Coach Glen Sonmor is not surprised by Payne&rsquo;s start. &ldquo;I said before the season that I looked for Payne to become a 30 to 40-goal scorer,&rdquo; Sonmor said. &ldquo;I see no reason to change that now, except maybe to revise the totals upward. Steve is big and strong and talented. All he needed was experience.The North Stars drafted the six-foot-two 205-pound Payne in the second round of the 1978 draft. He was the 19th player chosen, a personal disappointment that he was not a first-round selection.&ldquo;But things seem to work out for the best for me,&rdquo; Payne said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve played in every city in the league now and I feel there is no better place to play than Minnesota. I&rsquo;ve bought a home here, and this is where I want to play, and live year round. Everybody wants to go in the first round, and I thought I was going to be chosen then.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like to think I can&rsquo;t do it. I&rsquo;ve always been patient. Nothing comes easy for me, but the breaks seem to come my way in the long run.&rdquo;Payne, 21, interrupted the dialogue to say he didn&rsquo;t want people to think him conceited about his ability and responsibility to the team.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want it to sound as if I&rsquo;m saying I&rsquo;m great,&rdquo; Payne said. &ldquo;It does make me feel good that the team looks to our line to score, and I feel we come through. Hockey is a team game, but it&rsquo;s an individual game as well. You don&rsquo;t win if you don&rsquo;t score and I don&rsquo;t think that is a selfish feeling.Smith would support that. During a loss in mid-October, Payne fired in what appeared to be a goal. But the puck was shot with such velocity from a short distance that it went in and out of the net so that the referee started to overrule the goal judge. Smith put the puck in the net again, and get credit for the goal.&ldquo;It was a good thing Bobby was there or nobody would have scored,&rdquo; Payne said.On the team aspect, Payne feels the North Stars will be in the upper echelons of the National Hockey League, despite an early-season three-game winless streak which followed three straight victories opening the year. &ldquo;I hope nobody is pushing the panic button,&rdquo; Payne said. &ldquo;We won our first three games and &lsquo;we&rsquo;re still among the teams with the most points after two losses and a tie. We easily could be 51. We&rsquo;ve got about the best penalty killers in the league, one of the better power plays and more depth than ever. I think this team has the confidence and ability to go through two or three rounds of the playoffs, and we&rsquo;ve got a very young team.&rdquo;And. he might have added, a young left winger who is gaining notoriety around the NHL. &#9632;

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IN THIS ISSUE

Stars’ Payne Proves Fast Learner

<div class="byline">BY VARTAN KUPELIAN</div>DETROIT&mdash;Sooner or later, Rogie Vachon&rsquo;s run of bad luck had to end. You&rsquo;ve heard the line: &ldquo;If I didn&rsquo;t have bad luck, I wouldn&rsquo;t have any luck at all.&rdquo;For Vachon, that was the case.The National Hockey League season started with Vachon and Jimmy Rutherford sharing duties in goal for the Red Wings. Both played well.But Vachon injured his right shoulder in his first appearance, then his left shoulder in a morning warm-up on the day of his second game. It knocked him out of the Winnipeg game that night. Rutherford went in and came up with a big effort.Coach Bobby Kromm was expected to go with a rotation system, and when it was Vachon&rsquo;s turn once again, he couldn&rsquo;t play. Vachon was suffering from a severe sinus attack. He was told to stay home for a couple of days to recover.He finally got his third start of the season in Philadelphia and was outstanding. All he got for it was another disappointing defeat. The Flyers fired 48 shots at Vachon while the Wings returned a mere 20. The score: Philadelphia 5, Detroit 4.&ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t play very well but Rogie kept us in the game,&rdquo; Peter Mahovlich said.The Flyers agreed that except for Vachon, the score would have been lopsided.Rogie, still looking for his first victory, made his initial appearance of the season at Olympia against the Wings&rsquo; favorite cousins, the Chicago Black Hawks.The Wings, nursing a three-game losing streak, desperately needed a victory and they got it thanks largely to Vachon&rsquo;s efforts. Errol Thompson and Vaclav Nedomansky the Wings&rsquo; leading goal scorers, each scored his sixth of the season in the 2-0 victory.Vachon turned aside 25 shots for the shut out, his first in a Detroit uniform since coming from the Los Angeles Kings as a much-publicized $2 million free agent. Vachon had shown all the signs of rebounding from his off-season in 197879, and the shutout topped it off.&ldquo;I was not very nervous tonight,&rdquo; Vachon said. &ldquo;I felt really good to the warm-ups and I touched the puck a few times in the first minute or so, and that helps. So I felt really good after that.&ldquo;I was really proud of the defense. They took a lot of crap in the past few weeks, but they played a solid game.&ldquo;The forwards played well, too. They worked the puck in the corners, and that&rsquo;s what we need&hellip;that&rsquo;s what makes a big difference.&rdquo;Kromm juggled his lines again, returning to the units that began the season together. Nedomansky was back with Dale McCourt and Dan LaBraten. Thompson returned to left wing on Mahovlich&rsquo;s line with rookie Mike Foligno on the right wing. Paul Woods-Bill Hogaboam-Dan Bolduc made up the third line with Dennis Polonich and Dennis Sobchuk the spare forwards. &#9632;

Vachon’s Fortunes Change For Better

<h2>ECAC Conference</h2><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-03174/4020099-1-eng-US/f0025-032.jpg" title="f0025-03" width="531" height="456"></div><h3>DECEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-04129/4020092-1-eng-US/f0025-042.jpg" title="f0025-04" width="562" height="770"></div><h3>JANUARY</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-05110/4020085-1-eng-US/f0025-052.jpg" title="f0025-05" width="560" height="837"></div><h2>WCHA Conference</h2><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-0690/4020078-1-eng-US/f0025-062.jpg" title="f0025-06" width="569" height="171"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-0784/4020071-1-eng-US/f0025-072.jpg" title="f0025-07" width="585" height="963"></div><h3>DECEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-0875/4020064-1-eng-US/f0025-082.jpg" title="f0025-08" width="609" height="920"></div><h3>JANUARY</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-0967/4020057-1-eng-US/f0025-092.jpg" title="f0025-09" width="543" height="122"></div><h2>CCHA Conference</h2><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-1050/4020050-1-eng-US/f0025-102.jpg" title="f0025-10" width="551" height="397"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-1142/4020043-1-eng-US/f0025-112.jpg" title="f0025-11" width="553" height="289"></div><h2>Ontario Conference</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-1233/4020036-1-eng-US/f0025-122.jpg" title="f0025-12" width="535" height="817"></div><h2>California Colleges</h2><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-1328/4020029-1-eng-US/f0025-132.jpg" title="f0025-13" width="574" height="294"></div><h3>DECEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-1425/4020022-1-eng-US/f0025-142.jpg" title="f0025-14" width="573" height="33"></div><h3>JANUARY</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-1520/4020015-1-eng-US/f0025-152.jpg" title="f0025-15" width="506" height="218"></div><h3>FEBRUARY</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-1617/4020008-1-eng-US/f0025-162.jpg" title="f0025-16" width="575" height="339"></div><h3>MARCH</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-1713/4020001-1-eng-US/f0025-172.jpg" title="f0025-17" width="509" height="98"></div><h3>NOTE:</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-189/4019994-1-eng-US/f0025-182.jpg" title="f0025-18" width="566" height="101"></div> &#9632;

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VICTORIAVILLE College Scoreboard College Games To Come

<div class="byline">BY TOM MURRAY</div>NEW YORK&mdash;The Rangers&rsquo; seemingly endless quest for a hard-hitting, intimidating, &ldquo;crease-clearing&rdquo; defenseman is over.It ended in the middle of the Rangers&rsquo; recent dismal west coast trip, when they acquired Barry &ldquo;Bubba&rdquo; Beck, a six-foot-three, 217-pounder whom they had been coveting since 1977, when the 23-year-old Beck broke into the National Hockey League with the Colorado Rockies.In order to obtain Beck, who has compiled 36 goals and 66 assists in the past two-plus seasons, the Rangers traded away three regulars&mdash;left wing Pat Hickey, right wing Lucien DeBlois and defenseman Mike McEwen&mdash;and Dean Turner, a promising but unseasoned defenseman who had yet to appear in an NHL game this season. There was also a report that a large amount of cash and a player to be named later were included in the deal by the Rangers, but that was denied vociferously by assistant general manager Mickey Keating.Beck&rsquo;s arrival in New York ends a search that started last year, after the NHL All Stars played the Soviets in the Challenge Cup Series. Although the NHL was defeated in three games, Beck&rsquo;s play was magnificent enough to catch the untrained eye of Madison Square Garden president Sonny Warblin, who has been a moving force behind the effort to get Beck ever since.After that series ended, the rumors started almost immediately. Ironically enough, one had Beck coming to the Rangers for McEwen, Hickey, DeBlois and a truckload of cash. But they were all denied by both teams and Colorado general manager Ray Miron was so adamant in his denials that he threatened the Rangers with tampering charges. Those rumors ultimately died a natural death once the playoffs started and the Rangers surged to the final round without the benefit of a monsterman on the blue line.But several weeks ago, they started right up again when word got out that Beck was unhappy in Colorado because the Rockies refused to renegotiate his multi-year, $80,000-a-year contract, paltry by current NHL standards. (Presumably, this will not be a problem with the Rangers, who are expected to immediately boost Beck&rsquo;s salary into the $200,000-per-year range.)Fuel was added to the fire when the Rockies got off to such a lousy start: In their first 10 games, Colorado was 17-2&mdash;good for four points and a firm grip on last place in the mighty Smythe Division.&ldquo;We couldn&rsquo;t score goals,&rdquo; said Colorado coach Don Cherry. &ldquo;Something had to be done.&rdquo;&ldquo;We had to improve our hockey club,&rdquo; general manager Miron said. &ldquo;Our left side was brutal and we needed people who could score goals. We were close in some games, but close only counts in horseshoes.&rdquo;In Hickey and McEwen, the Rockies are definitely getting players who can score goals: Hickey, 26, was New York&rsquo;s third-leading scorer last season, with 34 goals and 41 assists. Two years ago he became the Rangers&rsquo; fifth 40-goal scorer in team history when he scored 40 goals and 33 assists. He had been hampered this year by an eye injury sustained in the pre-season.McEwen, 28, an offensive-minded defenseman with terrific stickhandling ability, scored 20 goals and 38 assists last year to become only the third defenseman in Ranger history to get 20 goals in a season.DeBlois, 22, who scored 11 goals in 62 games last season, and Turner, 21, are both players who possess that wonderful, nebulous catch-all quality called &ldquo;potential.&rdquo;Although none of the players were informed of the trade until the team arrived in Denver the day before a game with the Rockies, they must have known something was cooking when all were benched for the first game of the road trip, a 42 loss to the L.A. Kings.Then, when Hickey confronted coach Shero early the next morning and asked him if he was still a Ranger, the answer was obvious when Shero could only stare silently at the floor.The task of actually telling the three players (Turner was in New Haven with the Nighthawks) went to assistant coach Mike Nykoluk and public relations man John Halligan.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m shocked,&rdquo; McEwen said. It would have been nice to stay in New York, but I&rsquo;m just gonna have to make it work here. They want some goals, so I&rsquo;m gonna try and give &lsquo;em some.&rdquo;McEwen, who became the Rockies&rsquo; leading scorer as soon as he joined the team, and the other ex-Rangers didn&rsquo;t wait too long before they started scoring points for their new team: In his first game as a Rockie, just one day after the trade, McEwen scored two assists against his former teammates; Hickey added two goals and DeBlois and Turner one apiece as the Rockies routed the Rangers, 7-2. The game was the Rangers&rsquo; fifth straight without a victory (0-4-1), a span during which they scored only 10 goals.They redeemed themselves one night later against the Vancouver Canucks, 4-2, thanks largely to the superb goaltending of Doug Soetaert who, despite having to prove himself game after game, keeps coming up with the big saves. Beck earned his first point as a Ranger in that game and Anders Hedberg and Phil Esposito each scored his sixth goal of the season. The victory, the first one on the road for the Rangers this season since their opener on October 10 in Toronto, was a good effort, but not good enough to stop the rumor mill from churning: Right wing Don Murdoch is now being mentioned as the next player Shero is anxious to unload.&ldquo;Speculation,&rdquo; Keating says, &ldquo;nothing but speculation.&rdquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what he was saying when the Beck rumors started. &#9632;

Beck’s Acquisition Ends Long Ranger Quest

<div class="image-hero"><img title="Cover-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/cover-01664/4021373-1-eng-US/cover-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Photo by Bruce Bennett)</figcaption></div>&mdash;Page 13MARCEL DIONNE:The Spark That Lights The KingsMICHIGAN ONLYUNBEATEN TEAMREGGIE LEACH REVIVED FLYERLA. KINGSMARCEL DIONNE &#9632;

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BECK ENDS RANGER HUNT

<div class="byline">BY BOB VERDI</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0002-01995/4018790-1-eng-US/f0002-012.jpg" title="f0002-01" width="508" height="362"></div><h2>Bobby&rsquo;s Hullabaloo</h2>UNTIL GEORGE STEINBRENNER and Billy The Kid Martin finally parted last week for what surely will be the last time, they had to rank as the two leading men in sport&rsquo;s theater of the absurd.But a close second&mdash;and now first&mdash;were the participants in the tug-of-war surrounding Bobby Hull. When this long-running slop-opera wasn&rsquo;t inane, it was only because it was insane. And more often than not, it was both.This baby has deep seeds, of course. Way back in the winter of 1972, The Golden Jet told the Black Hawks approximately what it would cost them to get his name on a new contract. The Wirtz family which owns the Chicago juggernaut said thanks for all the memories, but if we sign you for what you want, it will throw our whole payroll out of whack.They didn&rsquo;t, Hull jumped to the World Hockey Association, the league breathed because of him and only him, and, lo and behold, every team&rsquo;s payroll got thrown out of whack. It is said that the money Hull asked for six months before he departed $1 million for five years&mdash;is exactly what the Hawks offered him at the last minute, when it was, of course, too late.That&rsquo;s also one million bucks less than Billy Reay, onetime Hawks&rsquo; coach, said Hull was worth. No wonder they didn&rsquo;t make him general manager.Bill Wirtz, Hawks&rsquo; president, says to this day that the Hawks could not compete with Hull&rsquo;s eventual windfall of $2.75 million from the Winnipeg Jets because the WHA pooled its money to give hockey&rsquo;s greatest goodwill ambassador an up front bonus.&ldquo;And that.&rdquo; huffed Wirtz, &ldquo;was illegal.&rdquo;<h2>Customers Left, Too</h2>LEGAL OR NOT, Hull left, and so did about 8,000 Chicago Stadium customers. The Black Hawks, which might have gone down the tubes with Hull, anyway, left no doubt what they would do without him. They went down the tubes, and still reside there.Seven years and several million dollars later, the WHA (When Hull Arrived) dropped dead as part of a merger (sorry, expansion) with the NHL. There was no question in anybody&rsquo;s minds where Hull was headed, especially when he announced where he was headed. Chicago, once more with feeling.Wirtz, who admitted that letting Hull go was an egregious error, thought it fitting and proper that the Jets, while genuflecting over their admittance to the big leagues, would challenge the Hawks not one iota over Hull.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll have a press conference for Bobby next week in Chicago,&rdquo; beamed Wirtz. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll open the Stadium up to the public because we&rsquo;ll fill the place. There&rsquo;s only one Bobby.&rdquo;That was in June. However, comma, while the Black Hawks were so busy extolling Hull&rsquo;s virtues and planning welcome home parades, the Jets were busy getting the protected list for the summer draft. They looked once, twice, thrice at Chicago&rsquo;s sheet. No Hull.&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; said Jets&rsquo; general manager John Ferguson, never fond of parades in the first place.<h2>Kept Daigle Instead</h2>SO IT GOES. The Hawks, who could have had Hull by leaving Alain Daigle off the protected list, lost Hull but kept Daigle instead. At last count, those 8,000 customers who vanished from Hull House still hadn&rsquo;t returned to see Daigle.Comically, the two general managers in this&mdash;Ferguson and Bob Pulford of the Hawks&mdash;each thinks he has the other one in a bind. Meanwhile, and because of this, all they did this summer was waste a lot of time and dimes exchanging non-solutions over the telephone.Ferguson, who really didn&rsquo;t want Hull, now has him back to help at least the Jets&rsquo; mordant powerplay. Pulford, who didn&rsquo;t really want Hull either, got his wish, sort of. A 40-year-old left wing didn&rsquo;t louse up Pulford&rsquo;s grand rebuilding plan. But the manner in which Hull didn&rsquo;t show up has convinced Chicago fans to do what they&rsquo;ve been doing all along. Not show up either.&ldquo;If you gave this all to a script writer,&rdquo; said Hull&rsquo;s sagacious Chicago advisor, Harvey Wineberg, &ldquo;they&rsquo;d return it on the grounds of it sounding too fictitious. It&rsquo;s amazing what has gone on here.&rdquo;Amen. If Hull hadn&rsquo;t lost his hair already, he&rsquo;d have lost it this summer. Wisely, he elected to take care of his cattle before he laced up a skate for either teamThe most amazing part of all this, Harvey, is that, of course, it&rsquo;s not over. April 23&mdash;one day too late to honor this maze as it should be honored&mdash;the Winnipeg Jets visit the Black Hawks in Chicago Stadium.One is afraid to venture a guess for which team Hull will be playing that evening. &#9632;

f0002-01

HOCKEY TALK

<div class="byline">BY BILL LIBBY</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0003-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-011002/4018821-1-eng-US/f0003-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">He used to get down when the team was down but now Dionne is giving one great game after another for the Kings. (Photo by Robert Shaver)</figcaption></div>Marcel Dionne is dynamite. He touches off the explosions that have made the first line of the Los Angeles Kings the hottest in the league. Through the first three weeks of the season the three players on this line were the first three in scoring in the league.Center Dionne had 25 points, left-wing Charlie Simmer 20 points, and right-wing Dave Taylor 20 points. Simmer had 11 goals and Dionne and Taylor nine each. Dionne had 16 assists and Simmer and Taylor nine each. As a line they had 29 goals in the first nine games.The Kings&rsquo; trio has been truly amazing and two vital statistics on their scoring prowess points out that they are meant for one another. In the last 38 games of the 1978-79 season and the first 11 games this year, the line has at least one point in all 49 games and has scored an unbelievable 47 goals in 49 of those games. In addition, if the NHL continues streaks from season to season, then Simmer broke the existing record of scoring goals in 10 straight games. The Kings&rsquo; star counted goals in his last five games last season and six in his first six games this season.Dionne may well be the best player in the league. He is at least one of the top three.It will take a lot to surpass the New York Islanders&rsquo; line of Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy, and Clark Gillies as the best in the league, but the Los Angeles line has this sort of potential.Dionne may well be the best player in the league. He is at the least one of the top three with Guy Lafleur of the Canadiens and Trottier of the Islanders, and he has less support than the others.In only his third season, Taylor is one of the two or three finest right wings in the circuit, ranking right behind Lafleur. This gives the line a lot of strength. It is virtually an All Star line.Yet the line came into its own when Simmer was summoned from Springfield at mid-season last season and took over for several left-wingers who had been tried with Dionne and Taylor and could not keep up.Dionne may be the quickest player in the league. He also may be the smartest. He sees openings others do not see. And he has the quickness in his legs and hands to take advantage of these.Dionne darts through defenses and lays perfect passes on linemates&rsquo; sticks or shoots fast and hard with awesome accuracy. At 5&rsquo;8 in height, he looks small, but at 185 pounds he is sturdy and cannot be knocked off stride.Taylor, a six-foot, 190-pounder came out of Clarkson College in upstate New York unheralded, the 210th pick in the summer of &lsquo;75 draft by superscout George Maguire, and made it with Marcel immediately.He has long strides, deceptive speed, and burning desire. He plays with an awesome intensity and has made Dionne a more intense and consistent player. Rugged Dave drives into the corners, roughs it up with the roughest players, and is a superb playmaker and shotmaker.Simmer, a 6&rsquo;3&rdquo;, 200-pounder, is a big guy who plays a power forward effectively and has deceptive puck-handling ability. A fourth-round draft pick by California&rsquo;s Seals in 1973, he looked so awkward he divided his first four seasons as a pro between the majors and minors, but he is a bigleaguer to stay now.After being signed as a free agent by the Kings in 1977, he had good pre-season camps but was. surprisingly, sent down two straight seasons. Teams make mistakes. The Kings admit making a mistake on him.He scored 42 goals at Springfield season-before-last and scored 21 goals and assisted on 27 in 38 games in LA after being recalled last season. Taylor had 20 goals and Dionne 22 in that span, giving the line 63 in those 38 games.Dionne led the league in scoring the second half of last season.Dionne wound up with 59 goals and 71 assists for 130 points last season. He was second in the league in total points for the second time in three seasons and second in assists. He was second All Star center behind Trottier and third in the Most Valuable Player balloting. Two seasons earlier he was a first All Star right wing.Taylor wound up with 43 goals and 48 assists for 91 points, sixth in the league in goals, ninth in points. But he also was second in the league and first among forwards in the plus-minus ratings. He is the best combination offensive-defensive forward in the league.The line has taken up where it left off last season and was so spectacular in the early going a contest was started to give it a glamorous nickname. My suggestion, simply, &ldquo;The Goal Line.&rdquo;The Kings were a .500 team last season and may be a bit better this season with the addition of some strong young players, but they are not sound defensively and have to outscore opponents. In the early going, they lost games by 8-6 and 5-4 scores, but won some by 7-5, 7-4, and 5-4. The first line carried a heavy load as others were slow-starting.&ldquo;They&rsquo;re starting to defense us, putting their best checkers on against us, and concentrating on us,&rdquo; admits Dionne, &ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t think they can stop us because we skate too well. They may rough us up, but we can take it.&rdquo;Dionne is a little bull, while his wingmates are big guys, unafraid and aggressive. Taylor, out of Levack, Ontario, is 23, while Simmer, out of Terrace Bay, Ontario, is 25. Both give credit to Dionne for the line&rsquo;s success.Taylor, who is so intense he hyperventilates after games and stammers in interviews, says, &ldquo;It is easy to play with Marcel because he makes such great plays for you, but it is hard because if you don&rsquo;t do something good with the puck when he gets it to you, or don&rsquo;t get it to him when he wants it, he can be tough on you.&rdquo;Simmer, who hustles with similar desire, says, &ldquo;Dionne makes a better player of everyone he plays with, but you have to play well with him or he&rsquo;ll let you know about it. He brings out the best in me because he is a perfectionist and I know I have to go all-out and be alert all the time.&rdquo;&ldquo;&hellip;I don&rsquo;t think they can stop us because we skate too well.&rdquo;Dionne is a moody fellow out of Drummondville, Quebec. The second choice of the 1971 draft, behind Lafleur, he earned a bad reputation in Detroit because of outspoken criticism of some of his teammates and some of the press.In Los Angeles, his frank comments are regarded as refreshing, his outspoken ways praised as candor. After eight seasons in the league he has seniority that permits him to speak his piece.He has proven himself. He scored 40 and 47 goals in two of his four seasons in Detroit and 40, 53, and 59 in three of his four seasons in L.A. He slipped to 36 one season when he played half the season with a sore shoulder that hampered his shooting.His 327 goals, 464 assists, and 791 points make him one of the highest-scoring players ever for the first eight seasons of an NHL career and he is off to the fastest start of any scorer in history this season, including the second four-goal game of his career.His last two seasons as an amateur, Marcel scored 117 goals and 275 points for St. Catharines to surpass all Ontario Junior League records and he has continued this spectacular pace as a professional in the National League.When he was signed away from the Red Wings as a free agent by Jack Kent Cooke in 1975, there was some grumbling because the Kings gave up key defenders Dan Maloney and Terry Harper from Bob Pulford&rsquo;s defensively-oriented and highly-successful Kings&rsquo; team.However, by now, no one can complain. Maloney has slipped, while Harper has slipped right out of hockey, and Dionne at 28 is just approaching his peak, the centerpiece of Bob Berry&rsquo;s free skating system.His only problems in the past were that he sometimes got down when his team was down and had dull games, but now he is giving one great game after another and is playing like one of the great players ever to play the game.Far from the heart of hockey in the far west, he does not attract the attention of a Lafleur in Montreal or a Trottier in New York, but Dionne is a dynamic performer who may be the most exciting to watch in the game today.One or two may skate faster, but because he has more shifts of speed than others and can change direction without reducing speed as others cannot, no one skates better. And no one handles the stick better. He controls the puck incredibly well. He is a dancer on ice who can make the puck dance.Down on the ice where he is screened by bigger players he somehow sees plays I cannot see from my superior vantage point high above the ice. &ldquo;I cannot explain it. It is an instinct,&rdquo; he says. Seeing an opening, he is through it or puts a puck through it in the blink of an eye.He controls the puck incredibly well&hellip;a dancer on ice who can make the puck dance.He gets roughed up, but presses on. Twice winner of the Lady Byng Award he has four times had only 10 to 14 minutes a season in penalties, but gets 30 to 40 minutes these seasons as he battles back.He and his wife Carol have a daughter, Lisa Lee, and a handsome home by the ocean. He walks the beach before games to get in the mood. He says, &ldquo;I am bothered by wanting to win too much, but I have a gift for this game and I want to honor it.&rdquo; &#9632;

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Dionne Spark For Hockey’s Hottest Combo

<div class="byline">KEN McKENZIE&#x2019;S</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-011053/4018880-1-eng-US/f0004-012.jpg" title="f0004-01" width="422" height="337"></div>&bull; IT WILL BE interesting to see if the block-buster trade which saw the New York Rangers obtain defenseman Barry Beck from the Colorado Rockies in exchange for Pat Hickey, Mike McEwen, Lucien DeBlois and Dean (The Hulk) Turner will set off a swapping binge among any of the other teams who might be dissatisfied by their play over the first eighth of the schedule&hellip;There have been persistent rumblings out of Toronto that Leafs&rsquo; general manager Punch Imlach is itching to make a deal to bolster the Maple Leafs&rsquo; offense. The name of Ian Turnbull is the one most often mentioned as the lure Leafs are offering to procure the services of a sharpshooter&hellip;Hard-Luck Gary Doak of the Bruins, who seemed to have finally shaken free of the injury bug during most of the last two seasons, is just getting back into the Boston lineup. Doak fractured a knuckle on his left hand during the pre-season&hellip;The International Hockey League will have a new wrinkle for its play-offs this year. Instead of holding eliminations within its two divisions and then having the division titlists meet in the final, the league will arrange playoff pairings mainly on a points basis with the top three teams of each division qualifying, plus two wild-card teams from among the fourth and fifth place finishers for a total of eight&hellip;A pair of Lethbridge Bronco centers, Doug Morrison and Gordie Williams were burning up the Western League scoring race in the early going. Morrison, who passed Williams for the lead, led the circuit with 12 assists, while Williams was the runaway goal-scoring leader with 15.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-021008/4018873-1-eng-US/f0004-022.jpg" title="f0004-02" width="282" height="431"><figcaption class="caption-body">Mike McEwen</figcaption></div>&bull; THE UNTIMELY death of Toronto Maple Leafs&rsquo; assistant general manager Johnny McLellan was certainly a great loss for the world of hockey. McLellan, who was chosen as THE HOCKEY NEWS&rsquo; Coach of the Year in 1971, had friends throughout all levels of the games and will be greatly missed&hellip;The start of the National Hockey League season brought a couple of firsts for the league. When noth Minnesota and Montreal were defeated in their fourth games of the season they were the final teams to taste defeat in the 21-team alignment. The last time that no teams were unbeaten after less than four games was the 1963-64 season when the league comprised only six teams&hellip;On the other hand, this week&rsquo;s page three featured performer, Marcel Dionne of the Kings, has gotten off to the fastest start ever by an NHL Player with 25 points in his first nine games&hellip;Guy Lafleur had the fastest previous start, 24 points in the first nine games of the 1975-76 campaign&hellip;Freshman center Bruno Baseotto of Michigan certainly started his season with a bang collecting three goals and three assists in his debut against Bowling Green and then one goal and two assists the following night&hellip;Another former college hot-shot Mark Johnson of the University of Wisconsin, last year&rsquo;s College Player of the Year, has been the leading scorer with the fine U.S. Olympic hockey team&hellip;Top goaltender for the squad is Jim Craig, the All-American from Boston University who fashioned an impressive 1.26 goals against average and a perfect 6-0 record in his first half dozen outings for the squad.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-03903/4018866-1-eng-US/f0004-032.jpg" title="f0004-03" width="284" height="402"><figcaption class="caption-body">Mark Johnson</figcaption></div>&bull; NEVER HAVE the Washington Capitals come as close to defeating the Montreal Canadiens as on their first meeting on this year when they led 2-0 with two minutes to play&mdash;then settled for a 2-2 sawoff. The Capitals extended their streak to 33 games, 30 of them losses, without ever attaining a victory over the Canadiens. All three of the ties, by the way, have been in Landover, Maryland&hellip;To top off a rough ending for the month of October, the Caps also learned that Denis Maruk, who last year set a club record for points, will probably be out of the lineup for two months, due to Knee surgery&hellip;With the balanced schedule employed by the NHL this season, fans around the league will have only two opportunities to see legendary Gordie Howe in his last tour of the loop&hellip;When Howe arrived in Toronto he gladly stepped aside to let Hartford teammate Dave Keon have the spotlight. Keon, the former captain of the Leafs, played 15 seasons in Toronto and was a part of four Stanley Cup champion clubs&hellip;Polar Ice Paint, manufactured by Bondex International is still the first choice of numerous arenas throughout Canada and the United States&hellip;Bernie Wolfe is now into the business world in Maryland and will aid the Washington Capitals, for whom he toiled in the National Hockey League, with some public relations work&hellip;Somewhat overlooked in the homecoming circles was the work of Blaine Stoughton, another former Leaf, who played a large role in Hartford&rsquo;s upset victory over Toronto. He scored the winning goal and also assisted on one by Keon<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-04801/4018859-1-eng-US/f0004-042.jpg" title="f0004-04" width="278" height="406"><figcaption class="caption-body">Dave Keon</figcaption></div>&bull; HOW&rsquo;S THIS for irony? When the Buffalo Sabres and the Chicago Black Hawks recently played to a scoreless tie, it was the first time in nearly 10 years that a 0-0 game had been played in Chicago Stadium. Tony Esposito had the shutout for the Hawks (Bob Sauve had Buffalo&rsquo;s) while it was also Esposito who was in goal for Chicago on March 10, 1970 when Chicago and Boston played a goalless game. The ironic part was that the Boston goaltender was Eddie Johnston, who is now the Chicago coach&hellip;When Philadelphia Flyers upended the St. Louis Blues in their first meeting of this season in Philadelphia&rsquo;s Spectrum, it was the 21st consecutive time the team clubs have met in Philadelphia without a St. Louis win. The Blues have managed just one tie during that period which stretches back to early 1972&hellip;Many people are not surprised by the fast start enjoyed by the Minnesota North Stars because of the abundance of young talent on the club. They&rsquo;ve been especially proficient in both power play and penalty-killing departments, areas where most good clubs excel&hellip;Rick Ley, captain of Hartford, and an original Whaler, played in his 500th contest with the club on Nov. 6. He also played four years for Toronto&hellip;The Buffalo Sabres have appointed defenseman Jim Schoenfeld and left winger Craig Ramsay as designated captains for the 1979-80 season. Danny Gare will continue to wear the &ldquo;C&rdquo; for the Sabres, his third year at that honor.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-05662/4018852-1-eng-US/f0004-052.jpg" title="f0004-05" width="256" height="439"><figcaption class="caption-body">Tony Esposito</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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PASSING THE PUCK

OFFICIAL NATIONAL HOCKEY WEEKLY FOUNDED 1947VOLUME 33, NUMBER 7 NOVEMBER 16, 1979Editorial and Advertising Offices:214 King Street WestSuite 314Toronto, Ontario. M5H 1K4Charlie Halpin Editorial DirectorTom Murray Assistant PublisherMike Dennis Assistant EditorCathy Munro Copy EditorBob Hanley Editorial ConsultantStan Fischler, Frank Orr Bob Verdi Contributing EditorsBusiness StaffPeter Emerson Executive Vice President and General ManagerJoanne Hatch Sales Service ManagerKenneth W. McKenzie President and PublisherW. C. C. Publishing Ltd.,Suite 217,1434 St. Catherine St W.,Montreal, Canada. H3G 1R7Donald R. Wall ChairmanTom Murray Assistant Publisher850 Third Avenue,New York, N.Y. 10022Advertising Representatives:New York:Tom Murray850 Third Ave,.New York, N.Y. 10022 &bull; (212) 593-2100Chicago:Hooper, Jones & Associates3322 W. Peterson AvenueChicago, III. 60659# (312) 478-5544Boston:Steve GanakSteve Ganak Ad ReosStatler Office BuldingBoston, Mass. 02116 &bull; (617) 542-6913THE HOCKEY NEWS, (ISSN 0018-3016), is published weekly except monthly June through September by W.C.C. Publishing Ltd., 214 Kino St. W., Suite 314, Toronto, Ont. M5H 1K4. Phone: (416) 598-1753. In U.S. c/o W.C.C. Publishing Corp., 850 Third Ave., New York, N.Y. 10022. Phone (212) 593-2100.YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $14.95 in the U.S.A., 13.95 in Canada, $19.25 in Foreign Countries. Send all subscription requests to The Hockey news, 850 Third Ave., New York, N.Y. 10022.Please allow 4-6 weeks for processing. SEND ADDRESS CHANGES (AND 3579 FORMS) to: The Hockey News, Martinsville Center, Martinsville, New Jersey 08836. Second class postage paid at New York, N.Y. 10001 and additional mailing offices. Second Class ZMall (Registration No. 1327). &#9632;

The Hockey News

<div class="byline">BY TOM HENSHAW</div>The Rev. George Abbott and Claude Pronovost are answers to hockey trivia questions around Boston.Abbott was the Toronto practice goalie who replaced the ailing Bert Gardiner in the Bruins&rsquo; goal in 1943. He lost 74. Pronovost was the junior goalie who was called on to fill in for Boston&rsquo;s Terry Sawchuk in Montreal in 1956. He won 20. Neither ever played another NHL game.That was back in the days when teams carried only one goaltender on the roster and the home team supplied the emergency replacement.On the first long road trip of the current season, however, it looked for a while like the Bruins were going to be asked another trivia question. Fortunately for them, no one was called on to provide an answer.It started at 13:15 of the first period in Los Angeles Oct. 30, when Gillies Gilbert came out of his net to challenge the Kings&rsquo; Marcel Dionne. Dionne&rsquo;s shot caught him on the right elbow.&ldquo;It hit a nerve and I lost all feeling,&rdquo; said Gilbert.The X-rays were negative but Gilbert was left with his right arm in a sling and the Bruins, who had sent Gerry Cheevers home to rest his ailing knee, were left with only Yves Belanger to play in goal.Down in the minors, Boston has only Marco Baron, the fifth round draft choice out of Montreal in the QMJHL, and Jim Stewart, who was playing in net for Holy Cross College last year. Neither is ready for heavy lifting.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to take turns watching Belanger,&rdquo; said Coach Fred Creighton as the Bruins&rsquo; road show moved on to Vancouver. &ldquo;You take the 12 to 3 shift and you take&hellip;&rdquo;In Vancouver, they were using the 16-year-old son of their western scout, Barton Bradley, in one of the nets so they could scrimmage in practice. Gilbert dressed for the game but it was doubtful if he could have played.If anything happened to Belanger, Creighton told his men, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll draw lots and the loser gets to play goal.&rdquo; Some of the Bruins were all for it.&ldquo;Fred Creighton didn&rsquo;t beat around the bush. He told me what the situation was in Boston&hellip;&rdquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;d love it,&rdquo; said defenseman Dick Redmond. &ldquo;Then I would have played every position on a hockey team.&rdquo;&ldquo;It would be great fun,&rdquo; said winger Stan Jonathan, and he recalled one time in the minors when his coach put a defenseman in goal for a penalty shot and the makeshift goalie skated out and took the puck away from the startled shooter.&ldquo;I dressed as a spare once and I loved it,&rdquo; said center Bobby Miller. &ldquo;I quit when a team had two shots at me one day and both of them hit me on the same foot.&rdquo;Meanwhile, Belanger, who was cut loose by Atlanta after last season, was getting an unexpected workout. He signed with the Bruins in training camp as an insurance goalie after spending the summer as a free agent.&ldquo;I had an offer to play for Quebec,&rdquo; he revealed, &ldquo;but I decided against it because I didn&rsquo;t know anything about their organization. I didn&rsquo;t want to get there and find out that they weren&rsquo;t going to keep their promises. I&rsquo;m 27 and that&rsquo;s too old to be worrying about things like that.&ldquo;Fred didn&rsquo;t beat around the bush. He told me what the situation was in Boston, that I&rsquo;d start at Binghamton and be insurance for the Bruins. I knew that Cheevers has been hurt and Gilbert has had injuries before.&rdquo;Belanger was unconcerned about his poor (4.33) goals against average for his first three games with Boston. He_ blamed it on lack of work.&ldquo;At the end of training camp and the first week in Binghamton, I only played one game,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t get any action for two weeks. That&rsquo;s when it gets tough to play.&ldquo;Practices don&rsquo;t help because the guys have more time to shoot and you start seeing everything going past you and that doesn&rsquo;t help your confidence.&ldquo;But if you play three nights in a row, the second night you&rsquo;re better than the first and the third you&rsquo;re even better. Then you start stopping everything and you reach the point where it&rsquo;s easy. The puck just seems to hit you.&rdquo; &#9632;

Bruin Belanger’s Backup Role No Triviality

<div class="byline">BY WAYNE WARRINER</div>HARTFORD&mdash;After their first eight games in the National Hockey League, the Hartford Whalers were right where most &ldquo;experts&rdquo; had predicted they would finish&mdash;at the bottom of the heap. One win and three ties for five points was all the Hartford team could muster out of the 16 points available.What was most heartening, however, was the fact that with the exception of just two periods of hockey, the Whalers&rsquo; felt they were right in the thick of each game they had played. Despite having been blown out of Nassau Coliseum by the Islanders in a 6-1 affair, the Whalers still had a fairly respectable 3.25 goals against average.In their first NHL game the jitters had taken hold and the Whalers were down by three goals after the opening period. Then, a week later, it was a fast avalanche on Long Island that buried them. But aside from those two engagements, the Whalers had held their opposition to three or fewer goals per game. The difficulty in getting into the win column was attributed largely to their own inability to put the puck in the net.Whaler brass couldn&rsquo;t be happier with the play of goalie John Garrett in the early stages. When Garrett was signed by the Whalers in September of 1978, director of hockey operations Jack Kelley hailed him as &ldquo;the kind of goaltender who can play in the other league.&rdquo;Last season with the Whalers, John split the netminding chores with veteran Al Smith. As a matter of fact, they split the games right down the middle. This year, there was some question whether the same setup would prevail as the Hartford team launched its inaugural season in the NHL.Garrett&rsquo;s experience was all in the World Hockey Association (six years). Smith had had four or five years of NHL experience in addition to being an original Whaler with the WHA. It was logical to expect the two to work as a tandem once more.But early in training camp, Smith was felled by an errant shot off his mask. Then, almost as soon as he climbed into his gear once again, Smitty was hobbled with a muscle pull in the back of the knee. There were strong indications that he might need surgery.Thus Garrett got most of the assignments during the exhibition games with rookie Terry Richardson getting only an occasional turn and when the season opened Garrett had the number one spot.Coach Blackburn apparently felt that rookie Richardson needed more seasoning and Kelley was beating the bushes for an experienced backup.Smitty&rsquo;s knee responded to treatment without the need for surgery but by the time he returned to the backup spot, John &ldquo;Cheech&rdquo; Garrett was well-entrenched. He was earning star-status practically every outing. But the little netminder was quick to spread the credit around, saying&mdash;&ldquo;I think we&rsquo;re well-coached defensively.&rdquo;The five-foot-eight netminder has been concentrating on the stand up style a lot this year. Veteran Dave Keon &ldquo;keeps reminding me to stand up. Heck, I&rsquo;m so short that if I don&rsquo;t stand up I&rsquo;m going to get hit in the head,&rdquo; quipped Garrett.The way the 28-year-old Garrett is playing it looks like he will be the main man in the nets this year. That&rsquo;d suit him fine. His six-year WHA record shows that he performs well when he&rsquo;s called upon to work 55-60 games a year.Says coach Blackburn: &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t fault Garrett. He&rsquo;s given us a chance to pick up points just about every night we&rsquo;ve played but we&rsquo;ve got to start scoring some goals for him. We&rsquo;re putting a lot of pressure on him when he&rsquo;s sitting on a one-goal lead all the way along.&rdquo;So goaltending seems set&mdash;and the defense seems more than adequate. Forwards are backchecking and forechecking. The only thing that the team was having real difficulty with was scoring. Eighteen goals in eight games tells the story. And when you stop to consider that six of the 18 goals came in the big home opener lambasting of Los Angeles Kings, you know that management has to be concerned&mdash;to say the least.Although concerned about the lack of scoring potential (even before the season began), management has not pushed the panic button. To his credit, Kelley has said he doesn&rsquo;t want &ldquo;to rush the kids in Springfield&rdquo;. He&rsquo;s just hoping that some of the young guys with the parent club don&rsquo;t begin to press. Several have been getting good shots but without any luck.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-01912/4018959-1-eng-US/f0005-012.jpg" title="f0005-01" width="572" height="1000"><figcaption class="caption-body">John Garrett has shouldered all of the netminding duties thus far.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Garrett Going Great For Whalers

<div class="byline">BY CHARLIE HALPIN</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-011084/4019014-1-eng-US/f0006-012.jpg" title="f0006-01" width="314" height="299"></div><h2>Haunted The Leafs</h2>HOCKEY NOSTALGIA has been increasingly disappearing from the game in recent years. Unlike baseball, which thrives on bringing back the old faces to rekindle fans&rsquo; enthusiasm, hockey seems to be content to forget its great name players once they hang up their skates.On Hallowe&rsquo;en night in Toronto it remained for a pair of old hockey skeletons to come out of the closet and haunt the Toronto Maple Leafs while rolling back the clock. Gordie Howe at the remarkable age of 51 and little Dave Keon, who is 39, brought hockey nostalgia back to Maple Leaf Gardens this memorable night.By today&rsquo;s NHL standards, neither should be still playing the game but Oct. 31, 1979, was indeed a night to remember for both men.It was the night Keon, who vowed never to set foot in Maple Leaf Gardens again after being rebuffed by Toronto owner Harold Ballard, stirred the hearts of more than 16,000 fans by leading Hartford Whalers to a 4-2 upset of the Leafs. For his magnificent performance, Keon was accorded not one, but three standing ovations, an occurrence unheard of in the hallowed halls of the Gardens.Keon, who skated out on Toronto ice for the first time in five years after starring at center for the Leafs for nearly 15 seasons, tingled with the cheers of Toronto fans ringing in his ears. He confided after the game that all he wanted to do in his Toronto return was to play well and not to disappoint his old Leaf followers. With a goal and an assist, he was named the game&rsquo;s first star in an ironic twist of hockey fate.<h2>Howe Name Magic</h2>THE ENIGMATIC Howe wasn&rsquo;t quite up to the pace of Keon but when the Great One wrist shot the puck past Mike Palmateer in the third period, He brought the Gardens&rsquo; fans to their feet once more. Hockey oldtimers described the goal as a typical Howe shot&mdash;the kind he used to snap past NHL netminders when he was the terror of Detroit.Howe&rsquo;s appearance in Toronto for the first time in several years was truly dramatic. He competed with the likes of King Tut, Elton John, Sophia Loren and the filming of the movie, &lsquo;The Assassination Of The President&rsquo;, in downtown Toronto. Yet he overcame such opposition for newspaper space and TV interviews with his usual media adulation. He was the focus of a front-page photo in color along with Keon, appeared in endless TV interviews and occupied more than the daily newspaper space for two days leading up to the game.Conn Smythe, 86-year-old major domo of the Leafs now retired, the man who built the Gardens, came out to see the indestructible Howe perform, one of the few occasions he has shown around the College Street ice emporium. There was also Jim Pappin, the former NHLer, ex-Leaf and ex-Hawk, who flew from Sudbury just to get a look at Howe in the flesh. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe what I&rsquo;m seeing. He&rsquo;s incredible,&rdquo; said Pappin, who retired in his late 30s while Howe was still pumping in goals.Howe was back for the first time since 1970 when he was still the scoring hero of the Detroit Red Wings at age 42. He had lost a few steps over the years but he still displayed the smooth skating strokes that made him such a magnificent hockey player for more than 29 pro hockey seasons. He also hadn&rsquo;t lost his diplomatic touch, either.Moved by the standing ovation accorded him by Toronto fans, he acknowledged that &ldquo;Toronto fans have always been my favorites. They&rsquo;re the most knowledgeable.&rdquo; He added, &ldquo;it was great to see them receive Davey (Keon).&rdquo;<h2>He Can Still Do It</h2>WHILE SOME observers were of the opinion that the elder Howe was a drag on the team and not pulling his weight since last season and the early part of this year, the veteran right wing certainly dispelled any feelings that he didn&rsquo;t belong in the Hartford lineup. After his third-period goal in the Toronto game, he finished the contest stronger than when he stepped out for the start of the evening. He admitted there were nights when he felt 51 and there were other nights when he still played with the zest of a 40-year-old.Howe, who has already declared that he will definitely retire at the close of the 1979-80 season, is still magic in the eyes of hockey fans everywhere. He is great box office and still the game&rsquo;s best ambassador.To prove his point two nights later that he still had it, he scored twice to turn the Leafs back again in Hartford. With five goals in the Whalers&rsquo; first 11 games, it would appear that the incomparable Gordie Howe is still the electrifying figure of the past. Hockey fans still want to see him touch the puck and above all, they want a chance to jump to their feet in exhilaration whenever he scores a goal.To them, he&rsquo;s still the Great One. &#9632;

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INSIDE HOCKEY

<div class="byline">BY BILL FLEISCHMAN</div>PHILADELPHIA&mdash;A longtime Flyers&rsquo; observer sitting in the Spectrum press box shook his head and said, &ldquo;I never thought I&rsquo;d live to see this.&rdquo;There before the gentleman&rsquo;s very eyes was Reggie Leach, killing a penalty for the Flyers. Next thing we know, Wayne Cashman will shave his head and sell flowers in airports.Killing penalties is part of Reggie the Revived&rsquo;s new image. Meet Reggie Leach, complete hockey player. Leach still won&rsquo;t challenge Bob Gainey for the Selke Trophy as the NHL&rsquo;s best defensive forward, but the Flyers&rsquo; veteran has been skating, scoring, and checking as well as ever.Much of the early-season excitement in Philadelphia over the Flyers revolves around Brian Propp, who has been the league&rsquo;s leading rookie scorer. Propp has been more than the Flyers expected, but another major reason for the Flyers&rsquo; fast start has been Leach. Leach&rsquo;s name is right there below Propp&rsquo;s among the league&rsquo;s leading scorers.The 29-year-old right winger already has three two-goal games. Among Leach&rsquo;s goals are two game-winners.What, you may rightfully ask, has happened to the player who was considered abandoned by the Flyers early last season?According to Leach and Coach Pat Quinn, the key was a brief conversation the two had shortly after Quinn was named Philadelphia&rsquo;s coach last January.&lsquo;&lsquo;He (Quinn) told me that my job is just to go out and score goals,&rdquo; said Leach. &ldquo;It seems when you concentrate on one thing, the defensive part seems to come along by itself.&rdquo;The key was a brief conversation the two had shortly after Quinn was named coach&hellip;Scoring goals, of course, is what Reggie Leach does best. Julius Erving shoots a basketball, Earl Campbell runs with a football, Barbra Streisand sings, Reggie Leach scores goals.In the 1976 Stanley Cup playoffs, Leach scored more goals than anyone ever had (19). That season he also set an NHL regular-season mark for right wingers, pumping 61 goals past opposing goaltenders.The sight that season was familiar; Bobby Clarke would send Leach away flying with a perfect pass. Over the red line Leach would skate at full speed. By the blue line he&rsquo;d be winding up to unleash one of hockey&rsquo;s hardest shots. At the Spectrum, people would be halfway out of their seats in anticipation. Then&mdash;whoosh!&mdash;the goalie would wave at a blur and the puck would be in the net.It looked so easy that season. Too easy. No one, not even a Guy Lafleur, can maintain such a goal-scoring pace. The next season, Leach&rsquo;s total dipped to 32. The following seson it was a mediocre 24, prompting GM Keith Allen to frequently call his counterparts around the league. Alien&rsquo;s pitch went something like, &ldquo;Uh, Ray, how about Leach? I&rsquo;m sure he could score goals for your club. Hello, Baz, about Leach&hellip;&rdquo;When last season began Leach was still very much available. Finally, Clarke and Bill Barber, Leach&rsquo;s colleagues when the three set an NHL record of 141 goals by a line in 1975-76, appealed to Coach Bob McCammon, asking that he play Leach regularly. McCammon agreed, handing Leach an envelope with just one piece of advice: shoot the puck.&ldquo;I knew I was up against it last year,&rdquo; Leach now says. &ldquo;If I didn&rsquo;t produce, I&rsquo;d be gone.&rdquo;Leach produced, tying Barber for the club goal lead at 34. He probably won&rsquo;t approach 61 ever again, but the 40&rsquo;s is a reasonable level again.Looking back, Fred Shero emerges as the culprit in Leach&rsquo;s decline.&ldquo;Reggie scored a lot of goals, but Freddie wanted him to check more,&rdquo; said Clarke.&ldquo;Reggie always cared&mdash;he just got lost. Early last year, he wasn&rsquo;t the only one. A lot of us were lost. One of the biggest things Pat has done is to get everybody involved.&rdquo; &#9632;

Revived Leach Now Flyers’ Complete Player

<div class="byline">BY GLENN COLE</div>MONTREAL&mdash;When Ken Dryden retired from the Canadiens during the summer, it was generally conceded that Michel Larocque would finally get his chance to be a No. 1 goaltender with the Canadiens.Even when Denis Herron-was acquired from the Pittsburgh Penguins, Larocque was still being touted as the guy who would play in the majority of the Canadiens&rsquo; games this season.But when the season got under way, coach Bernard Geoffrion decided to alternate Herron and Larocque. The results were simple&mdash;Herron was more consistent than Larocque and established himself as the No. 1 goaltender. Herron was undefeated in six decisions and allowed 13 goals in six games.Meanwhile Larocque was having all kinds of difficulty. He won opening night against Atlanta 3-1, lost to Chicago 3-2, was in nets for a 6-6 draw at Philadelphia, beat Pittsburgh 8-5, lost to Quebec 5-4 and was the losing goaltender when the Flyers beat the Canadiens 5-3 for their first victory at the Forum in five years.&ldquo;I lost the game again,&rdquo; Larocque said after letting in four goals in the third period against the Flyers, two of them coming off generous rebounds provided by Larocque.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what is going on. I don&rsquo;t know what to think.&rdquo;Larocque came into the game against Philadelphia in relief of Herron who was struck on the collarbone by a Bill Barber shot in the second period.Herron had made his third consecutive start in the game and overcoming some early-season jitters to become a favorite with the Montreal fans.&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t make a mistake here. They expect you to be perfect.&rdquo;Herron said he did not really mind playing several games in a row.&ldquo;I always work hard in practice to be ready,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I doesn&rsquo;t really matter to me. I will just go out there and do the best I can.&rdquo;Larocque says there is no animosity between the two resident puck stoppers, but the man who was Ken Dryden&rsquo;s backup for seven years figures the Canadiens really didn&rsquo;t give him an opportunity.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-02831/4019045-1-eng-US/f0006-022.jpg" title="f0006-02" width="558" height="865"><figcaption class="caption-body">Michel Larocque played his way into the number two spot in the rotation.</figcaption></div>What he wanted to do was play several games in succession to prove what he could do. Unfortunately for him, his performances did not justify that type of move by coach Geoffrion and therefore, Larocque was relegated to the No. 2 job again until the injury, which drove Herron from the game against the Flyers, put him back in goal.The Herron injury was one of several to hit Canadiens lineup in late October and early November.Feisty centre Doug Risebrough was sidelined for three weeks with strained knee ligaments picked up when he and Barry Legge collided in Montreal&rsquo;s embarrassing 5-4 loss to the Nordiques at Quebec.Pierre Larouche was sidelined with a bruised right foot and Bob Gainey had a broken bone in his left foot. &#9632;

f0006-02

Habs’ Larocque Struggling Early

The International Hockey Weekly Founded in 1947Published by the W.C.C. Publishing Co.214 King St. West, Suite 314, Toronto, Ont. M5H 1K4<h2>Exciting Newcomers</h2>YOU WOULDN&rsquo;T EXPECT a National Hockey League expansion franchise to win the Stanley Cup, this year, any more than you would expect Blue Jays to win the World Series in the first decade of their existence. In the economics of pro sport, the expansion brother can hardly expect super-star bench depth for a modest lodge admission of six million dollars.But even though the established league didn&rsquo;t rain talent on its four new hockey brethren, this year, the four survivors of the defunct World Hockey Association&mdash;orphans of the era of Gary Davidson&mdash;are doing considerably better than expected after a dozen games, and can knock off some of the big guys on a given night.They are playing to packed stands in their local rinks, they are introducing exciting new personalities, and before the season is out some of them may be an embarrassment to established clubs which have been allowed to deteriorate.As they say in that car rental commercial&mdash;when you&rsquo;re No. 2 you try harder.And even if the new teams aren&rsquo;t deep in talent, they have special performers sparkling at the top. Sometimes you wonder whether it was wise on the Bart of the NHL to show us again the special skills of Howe, Hull, Keon, which stand as an indictment of what kids are learning today.Those who viewed the NHL exclusively knew from other years what Nedomansky, Ley, Tardif and Napier could do. But a whole new crowd of headliners will be entertaining around the circuit in the current season&mdash;Linseman, Gretzky, Cloutier, Lacroix, Blair MacDonald, Mark Howe, Ftorek, Lukowich, Bernier, Rogers.Old NHL fans who had a casual regard for expansion clubs at the beginning of the season have had their heads turned. The new clubs play bright hockey and they are capable of some shockers&mdash;Whalers&rsquo; back-to-back wins over Leafs, and Nordiques&rsquo; victory over Canadiens.The new clubs may entertain better than a few of the older clubs and before the year is out they will play the role of spoilers.<h2>That Olympic Dream</h2>The idea, on the part of Hockey Canada, to organize a Canada-wide university hockey league as a talent base for future Olympic teams, may be a commendable project. All that&rsquo;s missing is the money and it isn&rsquo;t going to be raised easily from government, private and university sources.Estimates of the cost of such league operations range up to $2 million and it isn&rsquo;t going to be a simple task to pry money loose from a government which has already expressed the philosophy of retraction and cost cutting.Another factor is that most young men who plan or hope for adult hockey careers, direct their aspirations through the junior leagues which send on their partly-finished products to the NHL.As for Canadian universities, they&rsquo;re in tough competition with their American counterparts. Scholarships of $2,000 have been suggested for Canadian colleges but the rewards don&rsquo;t stack very well against the $7,000 scholarships at some U.S. schools.Finally, you have to wonder whether young men who are engrossed in academics, can ever contend with the single-minded hockey players from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.The European player is a pro, he&rsquo;s older, spends more time in training, and has a single purpose at this point in his life.The academic Olympian from North America is a magnificent dream but the harvest may not contend well with Central Red Army or the Soviet Nationals. &#9632;

<div class="byline">BY TOM MURRAY</div>Starting on January 25, 1980, and continuing on practically every Friday evening&mdash;plus two Thursdays&mdash;through early April, fans throughout North America will have an opportunity to watch various National Hockey League games on television. This would be terrific if the majority of the 11 games were really worth watching, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that they really aren&rsquo;t. Games between teams like Winnipeg and Hartford (February 15), St. Louis and Hartford (February 29) and Chicago and Colorado (March 7) simply aren&rsquo;t going to attract significant audiences outside of the cities where the teams are based. And those &ldquo;quality&rdquo; games that will draw&mdash;like the Islanders and Montreal on March 28&mdash;are way too few and far between. In fact, they&rsquo;re almost non-existent in a schedule littered with teams like Vancouver and Hartford and totally missing the Rangers and Bruins.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0008-011075/4019155-1-eng-US/f0008-012.jpg" title="f0008-01" width="248" height="467"></div>For a league that is trying desperately to land a national contract with a major network, the schedule is puzzling. And the explanations of NHL spokesmen when they are queried about the schedule are even more puzzling. To wit:&bull; &ldquo;We&rsquo;re changing our philosophy by building up the local packages and making them as professional as possible. Then we&rsquo;ll try to sell our major events to major networks.&rdquo;&bull; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s extremely difficult to move things around to accommodate TV.&rdquo;&bull; &ldquo;The only way you can get the games on TV is by seeking out compromises in scheduling and traveling.&rdquo;&bull; &ldquo;The quality of the games is an important factor, but it&rsquo;s not the only factor that has to go into the setting of the schedule.&rdquo;Baloney! The quality of the games means everything! How else can the league expect to impress that borderline fan who&rsquo;s wavering between watching &ldquo;Laverne And Shirley&rdquo; and the NHL Game of the Week? If a contest between Montreal and Boston or the Rangers and the Islanders is available, chances are excellent he&rsquo;ll tune in. But Hartford and Winnipeg or Chicago and Colorado? No way!And as for &ldquo;seeking out compromises&rdquo; and &ldquo;moving things around to accommodate television&rdquo;&hellip;the league is obviously not doing enough of it. More compromises have to be sought, more &ldquo;things&rdquo; have to be moved around, and a bigger effort must be made to present North America as a whole with as many attractive games as possible. This cannot be achieved with the present&mdash;and ridiculous&mdash;balanced schedule or with local packages&mdash;no matter how strong.But the schedule for this season is history, and nothing can be done about it until next year. Hopefully, by the time the 1980-81 campaign rolls around, the situation will be radically different.In the meantime, rest assured: That ding-donger between Winnipeg and Hartford is just about three months away. Can you wait? Unfortunately, I suspect you can.&bull; Tom Murray is assistant publisher of THE HOCKEY NEWS and editor of HOCKEY PICTORIAL magazine. &#9632;

f0008-01

NHL Television A Travesty

<div class="byline">BY DON GRAHAM</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0008-02966/4019186-1-eng-US/f0008-022.jpg" title="f0008-02" width="244" height="480"></div>The National Hockey League entry draft this past August was obviously conducted with the future in mind, as evidenced by the large number of under-age players, 53, among the total of 126 selected.It was no surprise that the first five or six underage players taken&mdash;and these were all players going in the first round&mdash;were guys who had a pretty good chance of stepping into the NHL and playing right away.Players like Paul Reinhart (Atlanta), Ray Bourque (Boston), Laurie Boschman (Toronto), Keith Brown (Chicago) and Tom McCarthy (Minnesota) are all good prospsects with lots of ability. Then there were other players who were selected with the feeling that after another year of junior they&rsquo;d be ready to step into a top minor pro club or perhaps make the big team at next year&rsquo;s training camp. Examples are Roland Melanson of Windsor and Lee Norwood and Steve Peters of Oshawa, just to site the Ontario Major League.It used to be that as a scout you would go into a rink looking at three or four players from each team. Now with 18 and 19-year-olds eligible for next year&rsquo;s draft nearly every player is eligible.With a draft of six rounds (it will be eight next year), you&rsquo;re trying to find the best future prospects. Scouts are looking down the road and they figure that now is the time to take these guys and what&rsquo;s happening is that an under-age player is taken in the fourth or fifth round and the 20-year-old is not being drafted.I&rsquo;d have to say that this year is going to be one of the toughest years for a scout. They&rsquo;ll be drafting players born in 1960, &lsquo;61, and those born before Sept, of 1962&mdash;that&rsquo;s almost three years&rsquo; worth of players.You&rsquo;re looking at players who may have just come out of Midget hockey and they&rsquo;re going to be smaller and not as physically strong as the older ones. But who&rsquo;s to say that a player isn&rsquo;t going to grow two and a half inches and put on another 20 pounds. Most players don&rsquo;t develop until they&rsquo;re around 20.I&rsquo;d say it&rsquo;s a situation very much like when sponsorship of junior clubs by NHL teams was in. We were scouting midgets for the junior teams, looking for potential, doing exactly the same thing as we are now.I would add, though, that every club has to be pleased with their under-age players. Most of them are playing regularly and very well. And you know, quite a few of them are defensemen and it&rsquo;s tougher to break in playing on defense, where you are the last line before the goaltender and have so much to learn.You&rsquo;d have to say that there&rsquo;s a lot of talent assembled in those under-age kids.&bull; Don Graham is the chief scout for the Atlanta Flames. &#9632;

f0008-02

Tough Year For NHL Scouts

<div class="byline">BY PAT CALABRIA</div>LONG ISLAND&mdash;He is big and strong and powerful. He is energetic and enthusiastic. Now the only thing the Islanders hope is that he is a David who can make the team a Goliath.Dave Langevin is six-foot-two and 200 pounds when he is flat on his feet and wearing only a bath towel. Strap on him a pair of skates and pads and he can grow into an intimidating checker&mdash;just the kind of player the Islanders think they need.&ldquo;He plays with fire,&rdquo; coach Al Arbour said, &ldquo;and we need someone who plays with fire.&rdquo;The Islanders desperately hope that the fire spreads to the rest of the locker room and that Langevin is everything he seems to be. A groin injury in training camp slowed him down, but Langevin still is one of the team&rsquo;s new faces who Arbour believes can change the team&rsquo;s old face&mdash;that of folding in the Stanley Cup playoffs.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll help in any way I can,&rdquo; said the 25-year-old defenseman. &ldquo;What I think they&rsquo;re looking for is for me to take the body. That&rsquo;s the way I play. I get the puck up to the forwards, I&rsquo;ll clear guys out from the front of the net. I think that&rsquo;s what they&rsquo;re looking for from me and I&rsquo;m going to do the best I can.&rdquo;Still, coming to a new team has not been easy for Langevin. There are adjustments to be made, friends to be made and a new system to learn. It didn&rsquo;t help that Langevin was forced out of action with his injury and did not begin to round into shape until just before the season opened.&ldquo;It was all so new to me and I didn&rsquo;t know what to expect,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know what the guys were like or anything like that. It wasn&rsquo;t a big adjustment, but it does take a little time. But pretty soon, the guys get to know you and you get to know them. It works out.&rdquo;Bill Torrey likes (his) size and what he can do with it when he plays wellNone of the other Islanders had ever seen Langevin play because he spent three seasons with the Edmonton Oilers in the WHA. Although he was a seventh-round draft choice by the Islanders in 1974, Langevin decided to remain at the University of Minnesota-Duluth for two more years to obtain his teaching degree and when he graduated he found that the Oilers were willing to better the Islanders&rsquo; offer.Although not a big goalscorer, Langevin earned a reputation in the WHA as a hard-nosed, stubborn defenseman, the kind that Islanders lost when they surrendered Gerry Hart to the Quebec Nordiques in the expansion draft. Langevin has been counted upon to help rejuvenate the lagging checking game from the first day he arrived.Throughout the draft, Langevin heard Edmonton might leave him unprotected and the Islanders would then claim him. Once his fate was certain, he was delighted to be coming to a team that was good enough to lead the NHL with 116 points last season. Besides, there was the experience of playing in front of goalie Glenn Resch&mdash;who preceded Langevin at Minnesota-Duluth.&ldquo;I was happy about coming here,&rdquo; said Langevin, who was born in St. Paul, Minn. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t have anything at all against Edmonton. I liked playing there. Both places are good to play in. And I wanted to play good for the Oilers last year because I knew that if the NHL took in the WHA there would be fewer jobs, so I wanted to do the best I could. Now that I&rsquo;m here, I&rsquo;m excited.&rdquo;The Islanders are excited, too. They see Langevin as part of their six-man defense, although Langevin said he realizes excelling in the NHL will take work and time. &ldquo;Most of the guys in this league are very quick,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s one adjustment. And not only are they quick, but they think quick.&rdquo;The Islanders thought quickly in procuring Langevin. He was scouted by Arbour during the WHA playoffs last season and the coach came away impressed. General manager Bill Torrey likes Langevin&rsquo;s size and what he can do with it when he plays well.Although the Islanders allowed only 214 goals last season, the dfense may be tender because of the absence of forceful checking that surfaced while the team was on the way to scoring a league-leading 358 goals. But tough old-fashioned defense still is the cornerstone of the team&rsquo;s success and the Islanders believe Langevin can help.&ldquo;I hope so,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;People told me the team needed some help in the defense. I just hope I can help.&rdquo; And while the Islanders have their impression of Langevin, he has his impressions of them. After a few weeks of observing Bryan Trottier, Langevin said:&ldquo;Boy, that guy is something else.&rdquo;Denis Potvin and Bob Bourne have returned to the lineup. Potvin had been out with a shoulder bruise and Bourne was sidelined with a separated shoulder. They returned in the club&rsquo;s 2-2 tie at Vancouver which delighted coach Al Arbour because of the swarming offense. It was the team&rsquo;s sixth straight unbeaten game after a two-week slump. &#9632;

Isles Look To Langevin For Physical Role

<div class="byline">BY ARNOLD IRISH</div>ST. LOUIS&mdash;When it became known that Ed Kea had been designated as part of the Blues&rsquo; compensation for relinquishing &ldquo;Iron Man&rdquo; Garry Unger to Atlanta, there were some National Hockey League observers who wondered how a defenseman on the wrong side of the generation gap could figure into the present, much less the future, of a team committed to a youth movement.As a stabilizing factor, that&rsquo;s how. Kea, the oldest player on the Blues&rsquo; roster (he&rsquo;ll turn 32 next January), has five-plus seasons of NHL experience, and already the six-foot-three, 200-pounder&rsquo;s savvy has stood his new employers in good stead.St. Louis has some promising young defensemen, and the team&rsquo;s progress might well hinge on how quickly they mature. &ldquo;Hopefully, I can help to stabilize the defense,&rdquo; Kea said. &ldquo;I like to relate to younger players. I know some tend to get over-anxious, and at times I can spot instances where a word or two can help a young guy improve his game. Here, the young guys listen. And Barc (head coach Barclay Plager), an ex-defenseman himself, likes feedback from his players.&ldquo;I know when I broke in, I got help from more experienced players like Noel Price, Randy Manery and Pat Quinn, to name a few, and of course from the ctoaches. Boom Boom Geoffrion and Fred Creighton.&rdquo;That the big, good-natured native of Weesp, Holland, should be an NHL veteran is itself ironic because &ldquo;I never came up the same way as the other players in the league,&rdquo; said Kea. &ldquo;When everybody else was going somewhere playing Junior A hockey, I was my dad&rsquo;s righthand man on his dairy farm near Collingwood, Ont., about 90 miles north of Toronto.&ldquo;There weren&rsquo;t any major junior clubs in that area, and when I had any spare time at all, I played soccer (he was a fullback), but my dad didn&rsquo;t like sports because it kept us away from our work on the farm.&rdquo; Ed is the second youngest of 14 children.&ldquo;Our family came over from the Netherlands in 1952, and I can remember getting sick as we crossed the English Channel on a small boat,&rdquo; Kea said. &ldquo;I can also remember the boat&rsquo;s big horn going off so loud, and scaring me so much, that I almost went overboard.&rdquo;&ldquo;I was on skates at eight, but never played organized hockey until I was 17 or 18, and then it was Junior C. I was 20 before I ever dreamt I&rsquo;d play hockey for a living someday. I figured if I didn&rsquo;t farm, I&rsquo;d either be a policeman (he&rsquo;s played that role at times in the NHL) or an electrician.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m a defensive defenseman,&rdquo; Kea said (he missed 27 games last season with a fractured ankle suffered blocking a Jacques Lemaire shot). &ldquo;I play best when I&rsquo;m aggressive&mdash;I get more involved in that way&mdash;but as the years go by, I&rsquo;m less of a policeman. You realize you can last only so long that way.&rdquo; &#9632;

Kea Fits Blues’ Plans As Stabilizing Factor

<div class="byline">Fan Forum Compiled By CATHY MUNRO</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-011062/4019265-1-eng-US/f0010-012.jpg" title="f0010-01" width="549" height="324"></div><h2>Fischler&rsquo;s Vision Thought Cloudy</h2>I was shocked and angered by Stan Fischler&rsquo;s attack on Ken Dryden&rsquo;s article that appeared in a recent issue of Sports Illustrated. For too long the ailing hockey world has relied on myopic naive writers who have continuously spooned out the same old pablum season after boring season. Dryden&rsquo;s article not only revealed the ills of the beleagured sport in a concise articulate manner, but it revealed a Ken Dryden who possesses a calculating perceptive mind and a talent for communicating in a profound thought-provoking style.If Mr. Fischler ever wants to elevate some of his prolific prose beyond the elementary level, he should call upon Mr. Dryden to ghostwrite for him. Hockey can do without its own version of Rona Barrett; but it can certainly use a few more Ken Drydens.Wally Powers&nbsp; Ithaca, NY<h2>No One Hurt, This Time</h2>My wife and I attended the Blackhawks-Nordiques&rsquo; game at Chicago Stadium on October 21. We&rsquo;ve now attended three of the first four home games for the Hawks, and I&rsquo;d like to make the rest of the hockey fans aware of the situation that exists in Chicago.We&rsquo;ve gone to quite a few Hawks&rsquo; games over the past five or six years, but this year is starting out on a sour note: the fan control is almost nonexistent, obscene chants and yells are commonplace, and a barrage of garbage is assured after nearly every penalty (bad call or not).The Oct. 21 game was the worst we&rsquo;ve seen. There were fist fights in the crowd between ushers and patrons, obscenity was at its worst, and the thrown objects were numerous. An older lady seated near us was hit and injured by thrown garbage and her husband made the target of curses. A lot of garbage made it to the ice, but thankfully no players were injured&mdash;this time.I don&rsquo;t pretend to know what the answer is, but increased security, removing people for throwing objects (instead of only threatening to do so), and in extreme instances (such as the Oct. 21 game) removing the teams from the ice, and forfeiting the game if need be, would be a start to making hockey enjoyable in Chicago&mdash;again. If something isn&rsquo;t done, don&rsquo;t look for families or even couples to be repeat visitors to Blackhawks&rsquo; games, and that will leave only the cause of most of the problems&mdash;foul-mouthed, mostly drunk, bores!Dave and Jan Steinquist&nbsp; Woodridge, IL<h2>Rash Problems Linked to Mercury</h2>While reading Passing the Puck, I came across an article on a skin rash that has forced players to retire due to its severity. Another article which I read in a local newspape described an entire high school basketball team who came down with a severe skin rash which caused considerable concern by local health officials. It was later discovered that the cause of the rash was a damaged mercury vapor bulb in the gymnasium.After reading this I called the Checkerdome maintenance department and asked what source of light they used. Mercury vapor! If one bulb caused a rash in a group of people, just imagine what a dozen could do?If this hasn&rsquo;t yet been considered as a possible cause for the skin rash, it might well be worth an investigation.Rick Rajnoha&nbsp; St. Louts, MO<h2>West Coast Awaits a Winner</h2>The Vancouver Canucks with their star-studded young lineup (one of the youngest in the league) may finally have the team everyone was expecting them to have after nine complete seasons in the NHL.Led by netminder Glenn Hanlon (&ldquo;The Franchise&rdquo;), the Canucks have a fresh array of young talent on the ice in front of him too. Among those are defensemen Kevin McCarthy, Lars Lindgren, and John Hughes, and an abundance of high scoring forwards like Bill Derlago, Jere Gillis, Ricky Vaive, captain Don Lever, and underage Brent Ashton, who at just 19 seems like he&rsquo;s been in the NHL a number of years!With this array of talent, it is hoped that coach Harry Neale can put together a winner for the deserved fans out on the west coast, something they have yet to really see!Don Fennell&nbsp; Richmond, B.C.<h2>Showdowns Would End Tie Games</h2>Most hockey fans do not like tie hockey games. To relieve this problem and to bring a bit of excitement into the game the NHL should install a showdown segment into tie hockey games. One player from each team starts at centre ice challenging the goaltender. If the challenging team&rsquo;s player scores then the home team&rsquo;s player must score or a winner of the game is determined right away. And so on until a winner is determined.A fair way to do the selecting of the player chosen for each team might be a system whereby each player gets six points for a goal and three points for an assist. The player with the most points at the end of regulation time is selected for showdown. In the cases of 0-0 ties and two players from the same team tied in points the coach can select his man for the showdown.Jeff Emack&nbsp; Thunder Bay, Ont.<h2>Border War Looming on Horizon?</h2>I realize and understand why THE HOCKEY NEWS has become directed more and more toward American audiences, but this business on the part of Stan Fischler has to stop. I refer specifically to his column on the Mike Milbury&mdash;Alan Eagleson squabble. It is fine by me that Fischler is an American, but where does he get off by implying that Eagleson has done Milbury or anyone else an injustice simply by insisting that the next president of the NHL&rsquo;s Players&rsquo; Association should be a Canadian?I realize that Fischler and Milbury would dearly love an American being named president, yet in the NHL and most minor leagues the general managers and coaches are Canadian. Alan Eagleson is simply doing the right thing by having a Canadian represent their interests as well as the interests of the American and Swedish players.Lastly, Craig Ramsey is criticized for backing Eagleson, but in truth 16 other representatives backed him also. Do you suppose all 16 are wrong and Milbury is right, or is it possible that Eagleson is doing a much better job than he is being given credit for?Gary James&nbsp; Burlington, Ont.<h2>Discrepancies In Majors, Minors</h2>I have been a minor league hockey fan for the past 20 years and find the following to be beyond comprehension. How can minor league hockey continue when a major league parent club operates with ticket prices ranging from $4.50 to, $9.00 and the minor league affiliate operates with ticket prices ranging from $3.75 to $8.50? These prices are charged for whatever talent is available.Major league affiliates continue to sell the minor league fan short by carrying three goaltenders or eight defensemen on the NHL team and placing unqualified players on the minor league club. How can a fan associate with a team with an ever changing roster?D. D. Wolfe&nbsp; Pottsville, PA &#9632;

f0010-01

FAN FORUM

<div class="byline">BY BUDDY O&#x2019;CONNOR</div>QUEBEC CITY&mdash;Emotion crackled like electricity in a hot summer storm as an historic rivalry became red hot with the appearance of Montreal Canadiens against the new National Hockey League club, the Quebec Nordiques, at the old Coliseum.The last time Quebec fans were spectators to a Montreal-Quebec confrontation in the NHL had been the 1919-20 season with the Quebec Bulldogs as local representatives.Ever since that time some 60 years ago, Quebec has been clamoring for the NHL: they got the World Hockey Association and seven long years later, the dream became a reality&mdash;the NHL was in Quebec City.And before 11,908 roaring, frenzied fans in the ovenlike atmosphere of the Coliseum, an incredible ending that could only come out of a movie script: the upstart Nordiques had done the impossible, they had taken &ldquo;Les Glorieux&rdquo;, the Stanley Cup champs, 5-4 in a fast and furious tilt. The rest was pure bedlam.To many, it was just another hockey game in the long 840 games of the 1979-80 NHL season.But, not in Quebec. The drama had begun many years before its culmination in June of this year.Montreal-Quebec City rivalry can easily be compared to that of the old New York yankees&mdash;Brooklyn Dodgers&rsquo; feuds.Quebec saw the man that was responsible for the building of the Coliseum in 1949, Jean Beliveau, go off to the Canadiens and then had to suffer once again when their adored Guy Lafleur went to the Habs, with the Nordiques losing No. 10 in an eleventh hour deal that saw Lafleur sign with Montreal. &ldquo;If only&rdquo;&hellip;was the weary comment heard all over.Beliveau and Lafleur were back in Quebec for the game, big Jean in his capacity as a vice president of the Habs, Lafleur in his quality of a masterful superstar. But Lafleur did not score on this eventful night.And the player that made the Nordiques&rsquo; credible, former Hab defenseman Jean-Claude Tremblay who came to the Nordiques in the very first WHA season, 1972-73, and retired last season, was present for a ceremony that saw his No. 3 sweater placed in retirement. He drew a standing ovation.Comments after the game, when fans stated coming back to earth, included one from 19-year-old business administration student Roberto Puchol, celebrating his birthday that very day, &ldquo;I have never, ever received such a wonderful gift as to see the Nordiques beat the Canadiens. Our guys are going to win between 35 to 40 games this season.&rdquo;But the comment that summed up the overall feeling of Quebec fans everywhere came from Quebec resident Claude Giroux: &ldquo;I have been paying season tickets for my wife and I ever since the Nordiques started in 1972 and this for just one reason: to see just one game, Canadiens against Nordiques. And all my expenses paid off tonight. This was it!&rdquo;SKATE MARKS: Because of CBC TV, painters were busy before the Canadiens-Nordiques&rsquo; game here, erasing all evidence of O&rsquo;Keefe and Coca Cola ads along the boards&hellip;Business is business. &#9632;

Quebec-Montreal Rivalry Begins New Chapter

<div class="byline">BY STAN FISCHLER</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0011-011016/4019320-1-eng-US/f0011-012.jpg" title="f0011-01" width="455" height="341"></div><h2>Using Sam&rsquo;s Philosophy</h2>Al Eagleson gives me a royal pain in the esophagus when he chirps that his successor must be a Canadian &ldquo;because hockey is Canada&rsquo;s sport.&rdquo;The hell it is! Hockey is Europe&rsquo;s sport and America&rsquo;s sport as well as Canada&rsquo;s. In fact it will do Eagleson well to consider how rapidly the number of American-born players have grown in the NHL since he became Lord High Executioner of the players&rsquo; union in 1967.At that time you could count the American-born players in the NHL on your thumb. Right now, conservatively, there are more than 35 sons of Uncle Sam in the bigs. And if you consider those who might make the jump sometime later this year&mdash;such as Hartford&rsquo;s Marty Howe&mdash;the figure climbs over 40. These include the following:BRUINS: Mike Milbury, Walpole, Mass.; Bob Miller, Billerica, Mass.; SABRES: Richie Dunn, Boston, Mass.; CHICAGO: Mike O&rsquo;Connell, Chicago, Ill.; ROCKIES: Mike Christie, Big Springs, Texas; DETROIT: Reed Larson, Minneapolis, Minn.; Dan Bolduc, Waterville, Maine; Jim Korn, Hopkins, Minn.; EDMONTON: Pete LoPresti, Virginia, Minn.; Lee Fogolin, Chicago, Ill.; HARTFORD: Nick Fotiu, Staten Island, New York; Jim Warner, St. Paul, Minn.; Alan Hangslaben, Warroad, Minn.; Mark Howe, Detroit, Mich.; Gordie Roberts, Detroit, Mich.; Mike Antonovich, Calumet, Minn.; Bill Bennett, Warwick, R. L; LOS ANGELES: Steve Jensen. Minneapolis, Minn.; Tom Younghans, St. Paul, Minn.; Mike Polich, Hibbing, Minn.; Jack Carlson, Virginia, Minn.; Gary Sargent, Red Lake, Minn.; NEW YORK ISLANDERS: Dave Langevin, St. Paul, Minn.; NEW YORK RANGERS: Warren Miller, South St. Paul, Minn.; Dean Talafous, Duluth, Minn.; Ed Hospodar, Bowling Green, Ohio; PHILADELPHIA: Paul Holmgren, St. Paul, Minn.; Tom Gorence, St. Paul, Minn.; PITTSBURGH: Russ Anderson, Minneapolis, Minn.; QUEBEC: Robbie Ftorek, Needham, Mass.; Paul Stewart, Boston, Mass,; Kevin Zappia, Messina, New York.ST. LOUIS: Jack Brownschilde, Buffalo, New York; Joe Micheletti, International Falls, Minn.; VANCOUVER: Curt Fraser, Cincinnati, Ohio; Jere Gillis, Bend, Oregon; WASHINGTON: Tom Rowe, Lynn, Mass.; Peter Scamurra, Buffalo, New York; WINNIPEG: Craig Norwich, Edina, Minn.<h2>Gordie&rsquo;s Fame Fleeting</h2>NOTES: Are they trying to tell Gordie Howe something? When Mister Hockey was a Red Wing and a cop pulled him over it was to get Gordie&rsquo;s autograph. Now that he&rsquo;s 51, life just isn&rsquo;t the same. He was sirened down on a highway near Hartford by a cop&hellip;&ldquo;You&rsquo;re Gordie Howe?&rdquo; the gendarme inquired&hellip;&ldquo;Yup,&rdquo; Gordie replied&hellip;&ldquo;You&rsquo;re still goin&rsquo; 65,&rdquo; the cop concluded and presented Howe with a speeding ticket&hellip;After a game trying to nail super kid Wayne Gretzky, Islanders defenseman Bob Lorimer said; &ldquo;He skates like he&rsquo;s been in the NHL for 10 years! &ldquo;&hellip;There&rsquo;s been lots of speculation, mostly wrong, about which Ranger ex-Blueshirt Nick Fotiu likes least. My bet is captain Dave Maloney&hellip;Apparently Dave Scnultz has worn out his welcome in Buffalo, if scuttlebutt is to be believed&hellip;Fact is The Hammer lost his clout the minute he left Philadelphia. His least touted attribute is teamsmanship which the Sabres apparently can do without&hellip;The most totally unheralded hustler in the NHL is Chicago&rsquo;s Reg Kerr&hellip;You wanna get Oilers&rsquo; Slats Sather mad? Call Edmonton an &ldquo;expansion team.&rdquo;&hellip;Bobby Clarke and Fred Shero haven&rsquo;t talked since Shero promised never to leave Philly&mdash;and then left. &ldquo;I feel he may have conned us a little,&rdquo; writes Clarke in his newspaper column. &ldquo;Certainly like anybody else, I don&rsquo;t like to be conned.&rdquo;&hellip;Join the club, Bobby&hellip;Then, there&rsquo;s Fotiu on Shero: &ldquo;Everything is going right for Shero now. But you never know. You don&rsquo;t step on too many people, or it backfires.&rdquo;&hellip;A year ago Scotty Bowman told me that Toronto wouldn&rsquo;t amount to a contender until Maple Leaf Gardens&rsquo; fans stop getting on Dan Maloney&rsquo;s back. Scotty&rsquo;s still right&hellip;Black Hawks privately admit they were too up-tight under Bob Pulford&rsquo;s stewardship as coach but now are enjoying life under the more relaxed Ed Johnston&hellip;Tix for Habs-at-Nordiques matches are being scalped at $400 for a good pair. That&rsquo;s as good a case as any for divisional rivalries. Nice-guy ref Bryan Lewis says toughest part of officiating isn&rsquo;t fans or players. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s sayin&rsquo; good-bye to the wife and kids,&rdquo; says Lewis, &ldquo;and bein&rsquo; on the road three weeks.&rdquo;MORE NOTES: Word up and down the NHL grapevine has it that American-born Robbie Ftorek of the Nordiques emerged champion of the Canadian-produced &ldquo;Showdown&rdquo; TV series in which superstars and not-so superstars match skills&hellip;Jets&rsquo; GM John Ferguson tells me that he employed the Sammy Pollock &ldquo;stand fast&rdquo; philosophy in his dealings with the Black Hawks over the disposition of Bobby Hull&hellip;It&rsquo;s great for the NHL to hire Bobby Orr to promote kids&rsquo; hockey but how come John Ziegler doesn&rsquo;t hire someone to market the NHL? Like in the November issue of SPORT Magazine there are stories on football, basketball, baseball, marathon and even the sport of ballooning but not a feature on your favorite sport and mine&hellip;Flames&rsquo; coach Al MacNeil and Vancouver&rsquo;s Harry Neale were teammates on the 1956 Toronto Marlboros Memorial Cup (Junior Championship) winners.HARD TO BELIEVE DEP&rsquo;T: A prominent Canadian hockey writer reportedly is moonlighting as an agent for an NHL defenseman. More on that in a week or two&hellip;NHL boss John Ziegler ought to check with some media witnesses who watched Phil Esposito try to get into a &ldquo;No Admittance&rdquo; minor officials room after Rangers had whipped Edmonton, 102. Whaddya think? Crybaby Phil was miffed because he didn&rsquo;t get an assist. Ziegler ought to pin a medal on the NHL official who turned Espo away. More on that next week.POSTSCRIPT: Colleague Bob Verdi, my third-favorite writer (after Rex MacLeod and Milt Dunnell) went off half-cocked in his &ldquo;No Place For Fighting&rdquo; (HOCKEY NEWS, Oct. 26) column; no doubt a product of his youth. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a good, clean one-on-one fight among equals. From 1919 to the present (60 years) there is virtually no evidence of damage accruing from a legitimate bit of fisticuffs; mostly because hockey players are lousy fighters. The problem, Robert, is not with the fists but with the stick which, when left uncontrolled, leads to fist work There was fighting in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s&mdash;the golden ages of hockey&mdash;and nobody complained. It&rsquo;s the bludgeoning, the goonism, and the gang warfare that hurt the game. Point your finger, as Ken Dryden does, at Fred Shero and his Philly Flyers of 1973-1975. &ldquo;The 1970s,&rdquo; wrote Dryden in Sports Illustrated, &ldquo;have seep fighting elevated from a supposedly inherent and spontaneous act to the level of a conscious and contrived tactic; and its most successful proponent, The Philadelphia Flyers, won two consecutive Stanley Cups.&rdquo; I contrived fighting, as once encouraged by Shero, is deplorable. But is it necessary to erase a spontaneous bout among equals that lasts 30 seconds, from the game?MEDIA: Jacques Beauchamp, managing director of The Philly Journal as well as a daily sports columnist, once was practice goalie for Les Canadiens in the Rocket Richard-Toe Blake heyday&hellip;Speaking of Richard, I finally discovered who nicknamed him The Rocket. None other than Montreal&rsquo;s veteran jounalist Harold Atkins. 1 was covering the hockey beat in &lsquo;42 when Maurice started flying in on the net, Atkins told The Gazette&rsquo;s Tim Burke. &ldquo;It was at the time that the Germans were talking about launching their V-1 rocket bombs on London. I tied the two together and came up with the nickname of &lsquo;The Rocket.&rsquo;&rdquo; &#9632;

f0011-01

ON THE CONTRARY

<div class="byline">BY NEIL MILBERT</div>CHICAGO&mdash;The names dwindle down to a precious few.With defenseman Keith Magnuson&rsquo;s retirement, only three Black Hawks remain from the team that battled Montreal for seven games before falling in the 1971 Stanley Cup final.Stan Mikita, Tony Esposito and Cliff Koroll are the last of the Mohicans.&ldquo;My right knee (thrice operated on) wouldn&rsquo;t let me do what I wanted to do on the ice,&rdquo; said Magnuson, whose new role with the Black Hawks working as an assistant to Coach Eddie Johnston.For Koroll, Magnuson&rsquo;s decision to discontinue the battle of wounded knee &ldquo;rang a few bells in my head.&rdquo;&ldquo;Keith and I go back to when we were 12-year-old kids in Saskatoon,&rdquo; reminisced the soft-spoken, hard-working right wing who turned 33 on Oct. 1. &ldquo;We played against each other in elementary school and high school&mdash;not only in hockey but in all sports.&ldquo;In football, Keith was a quarterback. He threw the javelin and ran the mile in track, and he was a catcher with a lousy arm in baseball.&ldquo;No matter what sport it was, he had that same enthusiasm. When I was about 15-16, I was pretty close to the size I am now (6-1 and 195 pounds). And here was this little redheaded shrimp of about 5-2 and 130 pounds who kept taking runs at me when I&rsquo;d get the puck in the corner.&rdquo;The boyhood adversaries became allies when they went to college in Denver.&ldquo;My senior year we won the NCAA Tournament and I was the captain,&rdquo; recalled Koroll &ldquo;The next year, when I was playing minor league hockey in Dallas, Denver won the NCAA Tournament again and Keith was the captain. In college, Keith was a little more offensive-minded. He scored more goals in four years in Denver than he did in 10 in the NHL.&rdquo;(In his 589 games with Chicago, including three this year, Magnuson scored 14 goals and contributed 125 assists and spent 1,438 minutes in the penalty box. His 292 minutes in 1970-71 is a club record.)As rookies in 1969, Koroll&mdash;up from Dallas&mdash;and Magnuson&mdash;off the college campus&mdash;were reunited on the Black Hawks. In those days, they were bachelors and the teammates became roommates.&ldquo;In disposition, we were very compatible,&rdquo; continued Koroll. &ldquo;If we lost a game, both of us wanted to come home and brood instead of hitting Rush Street.&rdquo;However, as hockey players, they were a study in contrast. Magnuson piled up mountains of penalty minutes and, after his fourth season, became prone to an assortment of serious injuries. Koroll, meanwhile, has been a model of decorum on the ice and is almost impervious to injury. During one span, he played 404 straight games.&ldquo;One of the few times I&rsquo;ve been knocked cold was when Maggie hammered me in an intra-squad game in Denver,&rdquo; reminisced Koroll. &ldquo;And leave it to Keith to give me a going-away present.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got four new teeth courtesy of a shot from his hockey stick this fall when we were playing the Canadiens in an exhibition in Halifax. He was trying to hit Guy Lafleur and he missed and hit me.&rdquo; &#9632;

Koroll Loses Old Adversary, Teammate

<div class="byline">BILL LIBBY&#x2019;S</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-011036/4019382-1-eng-US/f0012-012.jpg" title="f0012-01" width="333" height="352"></div><h2>Worth Hanging Onto</h2>THE DETROIT RED WINGS came close to losing their outstanding young players Dale McCourt and Reed Larson, but through the smart, tough tactics of Ted Lindsay managed to hold on to both. McCourt was awarded to the Kings as compensation for the Wings&rsquo; signing of free agent Rogie Vachon last season, but carried his case on in the courts until the Kings caved in and settled for another player and draft choices.Larson was a free agent this summer and wanted to sign with the Kings, but the manager refused to discuss compensation. For fear of losing a Dave Taylor, the Kings withdrew their offer to Reed and the Wings signed Larson to new contract. As long as it isn&rsquo;t clear what a club might lose, it won&rsquo;t sign a free agent and the freedom supposedly granted players is worthless.&ldquo;The Kings and Rangers made me attractive offers,&rdquo; the 23-year-old defenseman says. &ldquo;I was ready to make the move to Los Angeles. Looking forward to it, in fact. But when the Wings wouldn&rsquo;t deal, the Kings wouldn&rsquo;t take me. Can&rsquo;t blame &lsquo;em, either of &lsquo;em,&rdquo; he smiles. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s business.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-02876/4019375-1-eng-US/f0012-022.jpg" title="f0012-02" width="378" height="510"><figcaption class="caption-body">Reed Larson</figcaption></div>The Kings&rsquo; offer was better than the Wings&rsquo;, but the Wings&rsquo; offer was good enough. I&rsquo;m not unhappy to be back in Detroit. I&rsquo;m happy to have it settled.&rdquo;<h2>Blistering Shot</h2>THE WINGS ARE HAPPY to have him. The six-foot, 195-pounder is one of the better offensive defensemen in the league and has one of the most blistering blueline slap shots in hockey. He scored 19 goals and assisted on 41 as a rookie and scored 18 and assisted on 49 last season. Reed&rsquo;s 60 points tied Barry Beck&rsquo;s for the most ever by a rookie defenseman in the NHL and his 67 last season was third among NHL defensemen and for the second straight season set a new team-mark for Detroit defensemen.The big, aggressive youngster actually led all Detroit players in shots on goal with 271 last season and led the power play with his booming blasts. Dennis Hextall says, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know anyone who shoots harder.&rdquo; Once a blast by Larson caroomed off Hextall&rsquo;s ankle into the net and hurt so much Dennis didn&rsquo;t demand credit for the goal. Another time a blast by Larson ripped a new, &ldquo;impact-resistant&rdquo; plastic-covered blade right off Heztall&rsquo;s boot. Still another time, Reed&rsquo;s shot shattered a foe&rsquo;s shinguard.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always worked on my shot and I&rsquo;ve always had a hard shot. Bobby Hull was my hero when I was a boy,&rdquo; Reed says. &ldquo;I break a lot of sticks because I like my sticks light, but stiff and hard, and the whippy ones snap when I powder the puck. It&rsquo;s my defense I have to work on, but Terry Harper helped me a lot, teaching me how to use my stick and body on defense. I&rsquo;m not afraid of hard work. I&rsquo;ve found that if you work in practice it pays off in games. I&rsquo;ve noticed that everyone who gets to the NHL has talent, but the ones who work the hardest get the most out of it.&rdquo;<h2>Hard To Hold Back</h2>HE IS A HARD-WORKING kid who is caught out of position at times, but isn&rsquo;t afraid to use his great skating and stickhandling ability and isn&rsquo;t afraid to use his strength and hitting ability. &ldquo;Rushing is my game and if I hold back I&rsquo;m not playing my game, but I&rsquo;ve got to pick the right spots so I don&rsquo;t get burned,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind the rough stuff and I&rsquo;ve fought fellows like Dave Hutchison and Dave Schultz, but I got a cracked cheekbone out of one fight and a broken thumb out of another so I don&rsquo;t want to overdo that sort of thing.&rdquo;Reed, who had 169 minutes in penalties last season, tied retired Tommy Williams for the most points in an NHL season by an American-born with his 67 last season. He was born in Minneapolis and had a checkered career as a young athlete. His father, Wes, a truck driver, put Reed and brothers Jay and Ross on the ice early. Mom Ruth and sister Faith cheer. Older brother Ross has been an excellent all-around athlete and younger brother Jay is on his way.Reed starred in football as well as hockey at Roosevelt High. He passed up football in favor of hockey at the University of Minnesota, but has signed with an agent and had to go to court to be eligible for college athletics. His college career ended in a game against Michigan Tech when he was a junior. Slashed by a foe, Larson slashed back. When the ref called a penalty on Reed, not his foe, Reed shoved the ref. When he was suspended, he turned pro.He was disappointed the North Stars didn&rsquo;t take him, but the Red Wings had made him the 22nd choice in the summer, 1976 draft and he finished out the season with them, playing 14 games, before he emerged as a brilliant rookie in his first full season, season before last.Reed is married and he and his high school sweetheart, the former Katherine Johnson, have a home in Detroit and an offseason lake cabin in Brainerd, northern Minnesota, where he and Kathy swim, waterski, fish, play tennis, racquetball and golf. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not into night life. We&rsquo;re into sports. I&rsquo;m just an outdoors, bare-foot type of guy,&rdquo; this agreeable good-looking lad with the flaming mop of hair grins.He slaloms bare-foot over the lake water at times and carries a captivating amount of energy and enthusiasm with him wherever he is. &#9632;

f0012-01

HOCKEY AD LIB

<div class="byline">BY CHUCK MOODY</div>PITTSBURGH&mdash;When the Pittsburgh Penguins traded No. 1 goaltender Denis Herron and a second round draft choice in 1982 to the Montreal Canadiens for right wing Pat Hughes and goaltender Rob Holland in late August, many of their fans thought the club had given up too much and gotten to little.After one month of the season, the jury appears still to be out.Through his first eight games in a Penguin uniform, Hughes had scored only one goal. Meanwhile, Holland, pressed into heavy duty service because of a hamstring injury to regular netminder Greg Millen, had played well despite giving up 27 goals in his first six games&mdash;including 21 in three consecutive road losses.&ldquo;I feel sorry for Rob Holland,&rdquo; Penguin captain Orest Kindrachuk said after the unproductive three-game road trip. &ldquo;People will see that he gave up 21 goals and figure he must not be doing a very good job.&ldquo;But the fact is that he has. We just haven&rsquo;t given him any help. Most of the goals he&rsquo;s given up have been the result of somebody rebounding a shot or coming in uncontested and driving at him point blank.&rdquo;Holland came off the bench to relieve the injured Millen early in the second period in Boston and shutout the Bruins for the rest of the game. Quite a National Hockey League debut for the 22-year-old Montreal native.Kindrachuk equates the Penguins&rsquo; bad road games&mdash;against the New York Rangers, Buffalo Sabres and Montreal&mdash;to &ldquo;a form of cancer&rdquo;.&ldquo;Bad performances are like cancer,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;When it sets in it&rsquo;s tough to get rid of it.&rdquo;The Penguins, who had their best road record ever last season when they picked up 34 points, were outscored in the three-game road swing 21-11.&ldquo;I think we&rsquo;re doing the job offensively,&rdquo; said Kindrachuk. &ldquo;The problem is with our defense. We&rsquo;ve played it to loose. We&rsquo;ve got to tighten up. We have to start clearing bodies out of the way and doing a more through job on defense.&rdquo;Kindrachuk was off to one of the best starts of his NHL career. Through his first eight games he scored six goals and picked up five assists.Penguin coach Johnny Wilson agreed with his team captain as to the cure for the &ldquo;cancer&rdquo;.&ldquo;We have to tighten up the defense and quit letting the opposition get two and three shots on goal at a time,&rdquo; Wilson said. &#9632;

Stats Misleading For Pens’ Holland

WASHINGTON&mdash;For the Washington Capitals, one of the big highlights of the past summer has turned out to be the play of a youngster from Brantford, Ontario who scored exactly&rsquo; one goal in his final year of juniors and then didn&rsquo;t play at all for Washington his rookie year.That man is defenseman Paul MacKinnon, whose quiet and efficient means of operation on the Capitals&rsquo; blueline is making it increasingly obvious that a first rate NHL&rsquo;er is about to emerge.The attention was focused on the stocky (six-foot, 190 pound) MacKinnon after a stellar effort in one of the most exciting&mdash;and heartstopping&mdash;games ever played at Capital Centre. The opposition was provided by the mighty Montreal Canadiens, but in 58 minutes it was all the Washington Capitals as they pieced together a 2-0 lead on goals by Antero Lehtonen and Errol Rausse.Montreal, held to a single shot on goal in the first 17 minutes of play and continually baffled by the goaltending of Gary Inness, finally got on the board at 18:10 with a goal by Bob Gainey, and then, incredibly, knocked in another by Rejean Houle just 70 seconds later to deadlock the game at 2-2.Still, the crowd of 10,774 leaving the arena knew they had seen a classic hockey game. What they likely missed, however, was the work of Paul MacKinnon.Goalie Gary Inness, who couldn&rsquo;t be faulted for either goal, made sure MacKinnon didn&rsquo;t go unrecognized.&ldquo;He knows exactly what he can and cannot do,&rdquo; said the exhausted netminder afterwards. &ldquo;And he has played his position almost perfectly. I was caught away from the net tonight and he knew just how to jump in there and make a save.&rdquo;General manager Max McNab recalled a key play.&ldquo;Lafleur was coming down the ice with a full head of steam and some company besides. Paul showed great anticipation, making just the right move to cut him off when he got the puck.&rdquo;On another instance, the Canadiens broke into the Capitals&rsquo; zone 3-1. The crossing pass was heading for a waiting stick when a well-timed dive by MacKinnon enabled him to just get his glove on the puck and deflect it away. No goal, Montreal.&ldquo;He has good sense of basic intuition,&rdquo; noted McNab, who made MacKinnon one of his two picks in the second round of the 1978 draft. &ldquo;He plays by the book and reads defenses well. You&rsquo;ll never notice him until you turn around and see that it&rsquo;s Christmas and know he still hasn&rsquo;t made any mistakes.&ldquo;Gary Green (the Capitals&rsquo; coach in Hershey) had Paul as a junior in Peterborough and we knew based on his performance there and in Winnipeg last year that he could do the job in the NHL.&rdquo;The Capitals missed MacKinnon during the 1978-79 season. Instead of signing with Washington, he opted to go with the WHA&rsquo;s Winnipeg Jets. Even as a rookie, he showed great poise, and by the time the rejuvenated Jets were making the late season stride that carried them to Acvo Cup Championship, MacKinnon had earned a berth as one of the four defensemen in the team&rsquo;s regular rotation.&ldquo;I wish I could hide him somewhere,&rdquo; said coach Tommy McVie after his exuberant Jets had carried off the title. But the Capitals made MacKinnon and Swedish forward Bengt Gustafsson priority items in the re-entry draft and both now wear Washington&rsquo;s red, white and blue. &#9632;

Unsung Mackinnon Valuable Capital

<div class="byline">FRANK ORR&#x2019;S</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-011017/4019509-1-eng-US/f0014-012.jpg" title="f0014-01" width="431" height="329"></div><h2>Hockey Loses A Dandy</h2>THE PUT-ON WAS a beauty, an elaborately woven tale concocted in conjunction with a hockey writer, but it was typical of Johnny McLellan, clever but gentle.McLellan and the writer told a couple of hockey guys how they used their swimming pools in the winter as fish ponds. McLellan made the yarn convincing because no loose ends dangled from it. He told how he drained his pool, had the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests fill it with special pond water, stocked it with trout, fed them all autumn and then, when the pool froze over, he was able to use it for ice-fishing.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you something: There just isn&rsquo;t anything quite as good as getting up on a winter morning, going out in the back yard, pulling out a couple of good-sized trout from the pool and having them for breakfast,&rdquo; McLellan dead-panned and, around him, mouths watered.Johnny Mac kept the story going, too, and more than a few guys in hockey fell for it. The fish story finally exploded but no one was sore that he&rsquo;d fallen for it. There were plenty of laughs about it because Johnny McLellan loved to laugh, especially at himself.McLellan died recently at 51. He was raking leaves at his suburban Toronto home when his heart gave out and it&rsquo;s impossible to remember a death in hockey that touched as many people as deeply.Johnny Mac was a warm, wonderful man, a master of the gentle needle and put-on, a fine coach until his ulcers forced him out of the job and a good executive, assistant general manager of Toronto Maple Leafs.&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t like Johnny McLellan,&rdquo; said one hockey man, &ldquo;there just isn&rsquo;t much hope for you.&rdquo;&ldquo;I consider myself a very fortunate man to have had Johnny for a friend,&rdquo; said Jack Davison, assistant GM of Chicago Black Hawks who worked with McLellan in the operation of New Brunswick Hawks, the American League farm team of which the Leafs and Black Hawks shared sponsorship.&ldquo;He had a wonderful family (wife Sheila, three sons and a daughter) and more friends than anyone I know,&rdquo; Davison added. &ldquo;Johnny was a man of such warmth, kindness and humor that he just brightened everyone&rsquo;s life.&rdquo;<h2>He Was A Winner</h2>JOHN McLELLAN came out of the hockey hotbed of the 1940s and &lsquo;50s&mdash;northern Ontario. He was born in the gold mining town of Timmins and, like many lads from that area, was scouted and moved south by the Maple Leafs.He played on a Canadian junior championship team at St. Michael&rsquo;s College in Toronto, then moved up to Marlboro seniors at a time when senior amateur hockey was big stuff and played on another Canadian champion.McLellan had a distinguished career in the American League with the old Pittsburgh Hornets and Cleveland Barons.In the 1958-59 season, McLellan was reinstated as an amateur and was a key member of Belleville MacFarlands when they won the world amateur championship in Prague, Czechoslovakia.McLellan then returned to his hometown of Timmins, worked in the gold mine and played and coached senior clubs.&ldquo;Yeah, I had the light on my hat and went down in the hole in the ground,&rdquo; McLellan said. &ldquo;I was earning a living for my family and playing a little hockey for fun.&rdquo;Later, when he was coaching the Maple Leafs in a bad season, someone asked McLellan if it wasn&rsquo;t a tough way to earn a buck.&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t easy but going down into that mine every day wasn&rsquo;t any picnic either.&rdquo;<h2>Brklacich Was Boss</h2>McLELLAN ALWAYS credited Steve (Broken Stick) Brklacich for rescuing him from the mine. Brklacich, now a scout for St. Louis Blues, was general manager of the Nashville team in the old Eastern League and he talked McLellan into taking the light off his hat and heading south.&ldquo;I was making less than $5,000 a year to coach the team in Nashville,&rdquo; McLellan said. &ldquo;Eastern League clubs in those days had only 13 players so it was a helluva big challenge to a coach. But we won the championship twice in a row.&rdquo;Ray Miron, now GM of Colorado Rockies, was operating the Leafs&rsquo; Central League farm team at Tulsa in the mid-60s and he hired McLellan to coach the team. McLellan took the club to a CHL title.&ldquo;Johnny had that special touch with young players,&rdquo; Miron said. &ldquo;The kids would run through a wall for him. He took the same approach to coaching as he did to life&mdash;total honesty.&rdquo;When the Leafs sacked Punch Imlach as GM-coach in &lsquo;69, Jim Gregory was hired as GM and McLellan became the Leaf coach.The Leafs were up and down, as they were through the 1970s, in McLellan&rsquo;s four seasons behind the bench. In the &lsquo;70-71 season, The Hockey News named him the NHL&rsquo;s coach-of-the-year.Then in the &lsquo;72-73 season, the club was stripped of much talent by the World Hockey Association and won only 27 games. McLellan was forced to give up the coaching post because of ulcers. Since then, he was assistant general manager to Gregory and, this season, to Punch Imlach.McLellan was one of the scouts dispatched to the Soviet Union in 1972 prior to the first &ldquo;Summit Series&rdquo; against Team Canada. When he returned, he said that the Soviets appeared to be weak in goal. Vladislav Tretiak turned out to be a remarkable goalie.Many jokes were made about McLellan&rsquo;s scouting expertise, most of them by Johnny McLellan.&ldquo;What I didn&rsquo;t know when I saw Tretiak play was that he&rsquo;d been married the night before&rdquo; McLellan laughed. &ldquo;If I had known that, my report might have been different. I&rsquo;ve never met a goalie yet who was much good in the nets on his honeymoon.&rdquo;On a sunny autumn morning, a warm, gentle man was buried in Toronto. More than 700 people, most of them from the hockey world, attended the service. Every one of them felt a huge sense of loss. &#9632;

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HOCKEY VIEWPOINT

<div class="byline">BY JIM MATHESON</div>EDMONTON&mdash;It&rsquo;s easy to overlook Risto Siltanen.He&rsquo;s only 68 inches high, which makes him one of the shortest defenders in the National Hockey League. On top of that, he also has one of the smallest English vocabularies. When he arrived from his native Finland last spring he knew exactly two words: thank and you. He used them a lot even when people were giving him hell. It&rsquo;s better now with some tutoring on planes by part-time teacher Dave Dryden, but Siltanen still is no Howard Cosell.If he doesn&rsquo;t have the gift of height or gab, the former Finnish national teamer does have a bountiful supply of talent. Only a few days into his 21st year, Siltanen looks like he could be a mainstay of Edmonton Oilers blueline for years to come.Risto reminds me a lot of Pat Stapleton,&rdquo; said Bruce MacGregor, Oilers&rsquo; director of player personnel and a former teammate of Whitey&rsquo;s with the WHA&rsquo;s Team Canada &lsquo;74.&ldquo;But I think he&rsquo;s even stronger than Pat was.&ldquo;In some ways, it&rsquo;s harder to move a small man because he can get low and spread his legs for balance and it&rsquo;s almost impossible to shift him out of the way.&rdquo; At 185 pounds, the young Finn is so sturdy, his teammates have taken to calling him the Littlest Hulk.L. H. Siltanen is a master at passing the puck, threading the needle through a maze of players. They say New York Islanders&rsquo; blueliner Stefan Persson of Sweden is tops, but Siltanen is only 21 while the Swede is 27. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s the best I&rsquo;ve seen at moving it forward,&rdquo; said Oiler coach Glen Sather. &ldquo;He has a knack for hitting the open man in flight.If he has a problem, it&rsquo;s that he sometimes moves it too fast&hellip;his teammates aren&rsquo;t anticipating the pass.&rdquo;&ldquo;Really, Risto is just like a first-round junior draft pick,&rdquo; said Sather. &ldquo;People think he&rsquo;s older than he is, maybe because he was on the Finnish national team. But he&rsquo;s Only 21 with a lot of good years ahead of him.&rdquo;As such, Oilers are being very patient. His defense still needs work, he tends to stickcheck a little too much when he could easily rub the opposing player along the boards But that&rsquo;s a minor thing. He also gets a little flustered in his own end when pressured extensively by forechecking but again he&rsquo;ll get better. He&rsquo;s too good a stick-handler to have problems for any length of time.His skating is effortless, in fact he might be able to skate faster backwards than some players forwards. And he can turn on a dime a la Toller Cranston.&ldquo;He has a wealth of potential,&rdquo; said chief scout Barry Fraser, who watched the youngster dazzle in the world junior in Montreal a few years back.Some day he may even be ready for an interview. &#9632;

Oilers Plan Patience For Siltanen’s Talent

<div class="byline">BY BILL LIBBY</div>LOS ANGELES&mdash;Following two seasons as the best all-around defenseman on the Kings, Randy Manery suffered through a listless pre-season and was not dressed through the first three weeks of the season.When he told coach Bob Berry, assistant Frank St. Marseille, and manager George Maguire he didn&rsquo;t know what was wrong, but he had no strength or energy, they acted as though he must have other problems.&ldquo;You know how it is in sports,&rdquo; Randy sighs. &ldquo;If they can&rsquo;t see it, they can&rsquo;t believe it. They&rsquo;d have bought a broken leg, but they couldn&rsquo;t buy my explanation. They thought I didn&rsquo;t want to play.&ldquo;It turns out I have a severe iron deficiency&hellip;it will take a year to get back to normal&hellip;&rdquo;&ldquo;The fact is, I couldn&rsquo;t play. I&rsquo;m not so big and strong and skilled I can get by when I&rsquo;m out of condition,&rdquo; the six-foot, 180-pounder points out. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not the greatest player in the world and I have to work hard to make it in the majors.&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know what was wrong and when I went to the doctors they didn&rsquo;t know what was wrong. They found out both my red cell and white cell blood count was way down, which was bad. They didn&rsquo;t tell me, but I knew they were testing me for all kinds of cancers and things and it was scary.&ldquo;It turns out I have a severe iron deficiency. I&rsquo;m taking a thousand units of iron in three pills a day now and they tell me it will take a year for me to get back to normal, but I&rsquo;ll be built up enough to start playing again by the end of October.&rdquo;The 30-year-old veteran of 10 seasons as a pro and seven seasons in the National Hockey League with Detroit, Atlanta, and L.A. says, &ldquo;The last complete of seasons I&rsquo;d get tired the last part of the season, but I figured I was just used up, and I&rsquo;d get through the last month or so somehow.&ldquo;Instead of resting this summer, I ran almost every day with John Wolf (the King publicist) in an effort to build myself up. He lost weight and I lost blood. I didn&rsquo;t realize I was tearing myself down so instead of being stronger going into the season I was already weakened.&ldquo;If I&rsquo;d stayed with a normal person&rsquo;s nine-to-five routine during the off-season I&rsquo;d have been better off,&rdquo; he admits. He almost decided on a full-time nine-to-five life for himself, for the Kings went into the season with nine defensemen, were having trouble deciding and could have cut him.Now, Berry says, &ldquo;There really was something wrong with him,&rdquo; as though surprised. Berry is sensitive, but coaches are under pressure and there often is not the communication between coaches and players the public assumes there is.Manery and his wife Linda had their first child, daughter Lindsey Anne, in July. Randy holds a degree in English and geography from McMaster University and has a partnership in an Atlanta travel agency. Linda is a realtor. But hockey comes first at this time and the agile Leamington, Ont. native admits, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m relieved to know what my physical problem is and to be doing something about it.&rdquo;KINGS THINGS: Manery has been under the care of Dr. Toby Freedman, who turned him over to a specialist. Drs. Robert Kerlan, Vince Carter and Stephen Lombardo again head up the Laker-King medical staff&hellip;New owner Jerry Buss gifted Laker-King trainers Jack Curran, Peter Demers, and John Holmes with a workout room full of nine elaborate pieces of the most modern body-building weight equipment available at a cost of $35,000.Doug Halward had scored or assisted in seven straight games and led NHL defensemen with 16 points&hellip;Butch Goring had at least a point in eight straight games&hellip;Minor officials are John Johnston, Bill Meuris, Ken Watson, Dutch Hiller, Ernie Rucks, Ron Van Gompel, Dennis Roy, Bill Wright, Lou McClary, John Bealey, Fred Hilderand, and Ed Lee&hellip;Press aides are Bob Borgen, Jim Pells, Steve Sharon, Dave Israeli, Bill Gurney and Robin Mahkom. &#9632;

Mysterious Illness Slows Kings’ Manery

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0016-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-01823/4019578-1-eng-US/f0016-012.jpg"></div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-01714/4019571-1-eng-US/f0017-012.jpg" title="f0017-01" width="564" height="749"></div>LEADING SCORERS<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-02608/4019564-1-eng-US/f0017-022.jpg" title="f0017-02" width="505" height="552"></div> &#9632;

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NHL SCORING STATISTICS

<div class="byline">BY DICK JOHNSTON</div>BUFFALO&mdash;Things finally are breaking right for Bob Sauve. And that certainly helps the Buffalo Sabres.Don Edwards is doing his usual steady job in the Buffalo goal and Sauve, dividing the netminding duties with him, has been evern better.After the Sabres&rsquo; first dozen games, Edwards and Sauve had a combined goals-against average of 2.42 and if that wasn&rsquo;t the best in the National Hockey League, it certainly was close to the best.Sauve, the hard-luck guy from Ste. Genevieve, Que., had a gaudy 1.84 average and had gone 129 minutes 27 seconds without allowing a goal. He had successive shutouts against Quebec and Chicago.In the Chicago game, both Sauve and Tony Esposito had shutouts as the contest ended in a scoreless tie. The shutout was Esposito&rsquo;s 70th in NHL play but was only the second for Sauve, who is in his first full season in the league.Sauve was the first choice of the Sabres in the 1975 amateur draft when Edwards was the sixth pick of the club.Sauve signed a contract that year that stated he must stay with the Sabres for the first few months of the season.Edwards went to training camp with no contract and wasn&rsquo;t tendered one until after he had been sent to Hershey of the American League and had played several games.Sauve, meanwhile, was Buffalo&rsquo;s third netminder, watching from the stands while Gerry Desjardins and Roger Crozier did the goaltending.When Sauve finally asked to be sent to the minors, to get in some playing time, he played a total of 31 games for Providence of the American League and Charlotte of the Southern League.The following season Sauve was with Rhode Island of the AHL and Edwards was with Hershey, Buffalo&rsquo;s affiliate in the same league, when Desjardins was hurt. Edwards was called up and filled in so admirably that he became a permanent fixture between the Buffalo pipes.In 1977-78, Edwards played more minutes than any other goaltender in the NHL and won more games. He was voted the league&rsquo;s second team all-star.Sauve divided his time between Buffalo and Hershey. He played in eight games for Buffalo and 16 for Hershey.Bob went to the 1978-79 training camp determined to do a good job and earn a chance to divide time with Edwards. That came about, but not the way anyone expected.Sauve suffered a broken finger in camp before he could play in even one exhibition game. Randy Ireland and Paul Weaver served as Edwards&rsquo; backups in preseason.At the start of the 1978-79 campaign, when his finger was healed, Sauve was sent to Hershey to play himself into shape.It wasn&rsquo;t long, however, before Buffalo needed him. Edwards suffered a sprained ankle in a game in Boston in November. Sauve was called up and did a fine job until Edwards was back in shape.Edwards played more the rest of the season but Sauve saw action and when the playoffs came up, Sauve got the call for the first game.The Sabres lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the opener of the preliminary round but it was no fault of Sauve&rsquo;s. The next game, however, Edwards was scheduled to start. In the midday skate, Don hurt a hand when two players shot pucks at him at the same time.Sauve went into the nets and did a brilliant job as Buffalo won. He played the third game and was beaten in overtime on a brakeaway goal.This year Sauve and Edwards, Edwards and Sauve, are a tandem and, so far, as good as the league has.Ice Chips&mdash;After a lackluster 4-0 loss in Detroit, the Sabres went four games without losing, three wins and a tie, giving them only one loss in a four-road-games-in-five-starts stint.The Sabres signed Sauve&rsquo;s brother, Jean Francois, a high-scoring forward in the Quebec Major Junior A League, to a contract for next season. &#9632;

Sauve Giving Sabres Solid Goaling

<div class="byline">BY MIKE DENNIS</div>TORONTO&mdash;Call it a team slump and mark down the Leafs as being in up to their necks. It began on a western swing when the Torontonians, who used to be looked upon so favorably out there, couldn&rsquo;t buy a goal.The drought continued back home when the Leafs were doubled up on by the fledgling Hartford Whalers to sink below the .500 level for the second time in the first month of the campaign (third counting opening night) and obviously coach Floyd Smith was in no mood to be tossing bouquets around the dressing room.&ldquo;Displeased?&rdquo; Smith answered increduously an inquiry from a daily newspaper reporter. &ldquo;You guys saw the game&hellip;write it as you saw it. I&rsquo;ll just say that we have to improve in every area. Just keep plugging away.&rdquo;While the 4-2 loss to the Whalers may have been the apex of the Leafs&rsquo; frustrations, the fact that they could only manage one point from four less than powerful adversaries had to be troublesome.The puck just wasn&rsquo;t bouncing for the Leafs. They dropped a 5-1 decision to a fired-up Vancouver team which they had shutout only four nights previously. They had to receive two goals from Borje Salming who was moved up to left wing to get a 2-2 tie out of the Colorado Rockies. They fell on the short end of a 7-5 shootout in the L.A. Forum.Then the Whalers, led by old folks Dave Keon and Gordie Howe, stuck it to them at the Gardens.About the only time that the puck bounced right for the Leafs all night occurred when Walt McKechnie batted in a knee-high pass from Salming near the end of a Toronto power play to give them a 1-0 lead less than four minutes into the Whalers&rsquo; game.After that the Leafs spent the evening unable to beat Hartford goaler John Garrett except once on a Paul Gardner goal (which followed four consecutive Whaler scores) among a total of 39 drives directed Garrett&rsquo;s way.What&rsquo;s going on anyway, Walt?&ldquo;If you could find the answer (to scoring slumps),&rdquo; the six-foot-two, 195-pound centerman offered, &ldquo;you wouldn&rsquo;t be writing for HOCKEY NEWS. You&rsquo;d be in good shape.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had the chances, but it&rsquo;s just the way the game goes,&rdquo; McKechnie continued. &ldquo;You have to keep working at it and sooner or later they go in.&rdquo;To Smith&rsquo;s credit, he hasn&rsquo;t been standing around waiting for the Leafs to suddenly start wearing out National Hockey League goaltenders. He&rsquo;s had defenseman like Salming and Ian Turnbull up front, trying to get some more scoring and he&rsquo;s moved the forwards around nearly every game.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve been changing lines pretty regularly, &ldquo;McKechnie assessed, &ldquo;but it shouldn&rsquo;t really bother us. Sometimes it works when you make a couple of changes&mdash;a change of scenery helps a lot of guys.If anybody should be accustomed to changes in scenery it should be McKechnie who was originally drafted by the Leafs in 1963 and then proceeded to play in the NHL with Minnesota, California, Boston and Detroit before winding up with the Leafs at the start of last season.To say he was a pleasant surprise is understating the case because the Rangy pivot knocked in 25 goals and 61 points in the regular season plus four goals, assisted three stats in the playoffs to lend the Leafs the kind of scoring support they have needed behind Darryl Sittler center.LOOSE LEAFS: The Leafs wore black arm bands at the Whaler contest in memory of assistant general manager Johnny McLellan who died Oct. 27.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-01731/4019657-1-eng-US/f0018-012.jpg" title="f0018-01" width="570" height="577"><figcaption class="caption-body">Center Walt McKechnie feels line changes can be helpful.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Maple Leafs Find Scoring Well Dry

MARCEL DIONNE&hellip;L. A. KingsFor the second week in succession little Marcel Dionne has been the dominant scoring force in the National Hockey League.The dynamic center of the Los Angeles Kings enjoyed another productive week scoring five times including a hattrick in the Kings&rsquo; 5-3 victory over Chicago Black Hawks.Dionne, who scored seven goals last week, popped in another five to raise his season output to 14. With 19 assists, he still leads the NHL with 33 points.He and his two linemates, Charlie Simmer and Dave Taylor, make up three of the top four scorers. Simmer has 25 points and Taylor 22 giving the line 80 scoring points in 13 games. &#9632;

Player Of The Week

<div class="byline">BY FRED PIETILA</div>LOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSLOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSDENVER&mdash;It was somewhat of a shock. A rude awakening. But 26-year-old Nelson Pyatt, long on speed and short on the ability to finish off a beautiful play, finally discovered that playing in the National Hockey League beats working in a grain elevator.Pyatt, an extremely swift center-left winger, has been somewhat enigmatic in his four seasons with the Colorado Rockies. Great breakaway speed, the ability to score 20 goals, but suddenly problems on the ice and the inability to communicate with his coaches.Pyatt, midway through his sixth pro season, simply called it quits last year when the Rockies dispatched him to the Philadelphia Firebirds of the American Hockey League for the second time. He didn&rsquo;t bother reporting and returned to his Thunder Bay, Ontario, home where he was employed in a grain elevator.But a new season and lots of time to think about his life has produced a new man, at least at the start of the 1979-80 NHL campaign.Pyatt simply started the current season the way many in the Rockies&rsquo; organization felt he should have been playing all along&mdash;scoring goals. He had four in his first eight games, compared to two in 28 games with the Rockies last season.What happened? Well, let the soft-spoken Pyatt explain.&ldquo;I just got bloody frustrated. It was a lot of promises. They just kept promising things,&rdquo; Pyatt recalled of a year he&rsquo;d rather forget.He definitely had no second thoughts about his decision when it was made just into the new year. &ldquo;No, I was thinking about the whole thing for a couple of months. It was so bloody disheartening. They never said anything to me,&rdquo; Pyatt explained.&ldquo;Well, they sent me down and about three weeks before Christmas and the night before Christmas, Favey (goalie Doug Favell) and I spent the night in an airport talking. I got called up a little later and played two games, sparingly, and then I was sent back down again. No, I didn&rsquo;t go down. I stayed in Denver for awhile. My wife and I discussed it,&rdquo; Pyatt said.So he was pretty much convinced he&rsquo;d remain out of hockey until he received a phone call from Art Berglund, a college scout for the St.Louis Blues who lives in Colorado Springs. Berglund also has international connections, notably in Austria. &ldquo;He was trying to get me to play for a team in Austria and that sort of got my old adrenalin flowing to play hockey again.&ldquo;My wife, and I got to thinking about it. She&rsquo;d never been to Europe before. And I had played for the London Lions (a Detroit Red Wing affiliate in the 1973-74 season). I guess Berglund thought I played well on the larger ice surface because my biggest asset is skating. We started thinking about it.&ldquo;Then &lsquo;Grapes&rsquo; (new Colorado Rockies coach Don Cherry) gave me a call about two weeks later and told me to come back and give it another shot. He didn&rsquo;t promise anything. He said to come back and he&rsquo;d give me another shot. He was fair,&rdquo; Pyatt continued.So Pyatt, once forgotten as a member of the Rockies, showed up for training camp and survived to start the season as one of several prime breakaway threats. &#9632;

Pyatt Putting Speed To Work For Rockies

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0019-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-01700/4019719-1-eng-US/f0019-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">The Montreal Canadians have been hit with a series of player injuries and the club is keeping its fingers crossed that netminder Denis Herron won&rsquo;t miss any NHL action. Herron was knocked out of the Philadelphia game when he took a hard shot in the chest. The Habs are waiting for a report on him from the doctors. (Photo by Ian MacAlpine)</figcaption></div><h2>Magnuson Retires</h2>CHICAGO&mdash;Keith Magnuson, 32, a fixture on defense for the Chicago Black Hawks since the 1969-70 season, has retired from active play and will remain with the club in an assistant coaching role.Magnuson, who came out of Denver University and landed a job with the Black Hawks without a day in the minors, appeared in just 26 games last season because of a knee injury. He said that because his knee wouldn&rsquo;t let him do what he wanted to do on the ice, that he was retiring.However, he will remain as team captain throughout the current season and could be available to play if the situation arises.<h2>Soviet Vets Return</h2>MONTREAL&mdash;The return of the conquerors might be the theme when two Soviet Union teams tangle with eight National Hockey League clubs at the end of December and early January.No less than 17 of the 23 Soviet players, plus coach Viktor Gikhonov, who led the national squad to a two out of three victory win of last February&rsquo;s NHL Challenge Cup series, will be present with the two touring teams&mdash;Central Red Army and Moscow Dynamo.Two of the more familiar Soviet stars with the Army team are 35-year-old center and Captain Boris Mikhailov, who was chosen as the top Soviet player in the Challenge Cup and outstanding goaltender Vladislav Tretyak.<h2>Underagers Signed</h2>TORONTO&mdash;Five NHL teams beat the rush to sign drafted underage junior stars before the Nov. 1 deadline.Philadelphia Flyers signed Bill Barber&rsquo;s brother, Danny, a 19-year-old with Toronto Marlboros. Young Barber will finish out his junior year with the Ontario Major Hockey League team and report to the Flyers next season. Under NHL rules governing signed underagers, Barber is not eligible for the summer draft in 1980.In other signings, Dave Fenyves of Peterborough was inked by Buffalo Sabres. Hartford Whalers signed Stuart Smith, also of the Petes, and the Sabres inked 19-year-old right winger Mark Wickrowski of Kingston. All three will remain in junior hockey.<h2>Arena Strike Ends</h2>PITTSBURGH&mdash;A tentative contract settlement was reached between striking Pittsburgh Civic Arena workers and the Auditorium just hours after a report that the Penguins&rsquo; management was going to relocate the team.The Oct. 27 game between the Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers was postponed because of the strike while Penguins&rsquo; staff stepped in to replace ushers, ticket salesmen and ticket collectors so that the Oct. 31 game between Pittsburgh and Colorado could be played.A proposed three-year contract was presented to the 300 members of the Public Service Employees Union.<h2>Stanfield Winner</h2>NIAGARA FALLS&mdash;Fred Stanfield, a 14-year veteran of the NHL with Boston, Buffalo, Chicago and Minnesota, received his long awaited hockey dream&mdash;to coach and came off a winner in his first try.Stanfield, who retired from active playing his season, took over the Niagara Falls Flyers in the Ontario Major Hockey League and guided them to a 5-1 over Kingston in his coaching debut. Stanfield succeeded Barry Boughner, who was fired after failing to get the team moving in seven games.<h2>Leafs Have Problems</h2>TORONTO&mdash;The Toronto Maple Leafs, who started out the year with a bright outlook and a new management, have run into a series of unexpected problems that have plunged them to the very depths of the Adams Division behind the Quebec Nordiques.The Leafs, who have lost five straight games on the ice, appear to be brewing for trouble off of it as well. First GM Punch Imlach is faced with two serious contract settlements and there are recurring rumors that Punch is about to unload some of his unproductive Leafs in a big player trade.Imlach must settle with defenseman Borje Salming and goaler Mike Palmateer. The Toronto goaler is seeking $200,000 or more annually but that would put him above Salming, Darryl Sittler and Lanny McDonald, three of the team&rsquo;s untouchables. Salming&rsquo;s asking price could go above $300,000 if he achieves his aim to become the highest paid European player in the NHL. The Rangers are paying their Swedish aces, Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson, that amount now.<h2>Appeal Rejected</h2>NEW YORK&mdash;An appeal by rookie John Paul Kelly to have a suspension lifted to enable him to play in the NHL with the Los Angeles Kings, was dismissed in county court in New Westminster, B.C.Kelly and six other members of the junior New Westminster Bruins were found guilty on common assault charges arising out of a hockey brawl in the Canadan city last March 22. The suspension was imposed oh the group to keep them from actively playing any league hockey until Dec. 1, 1979.Kelly, who was drafted by the NHL Kings, has been sitting around waiting for his suspension to expire to get into his first league action.<h2>Hockeybriefs</h2>WASHINGTON&mdash;Injuries have hit hard at NHL teams in the past two weeks and the Washington Caps were no exception. They lost top scoring Dennis Maruk for two months after he underwent knee surgery&hellip;The Montreal Canadiens were jolted this past week by the injury bug as well. Doug Risebrough was forced to undergo exploratory surgery for torn knee ligaments and will be out three weeks. Bob Gainey cracked a bone in his ankle and will be sidelined for a few weeks. And goaler Dennis Herron was knocked out of the game against Philadelphia when he stopped a hard shot with his chest and had to be replaced in the game&hellip;The Philadelphia Flyers are off to their best start in the team&rsquo;s 13-year-history. The two-time Stanley Cup champs have the best record in the NHL with 9-1-1 for 19 points&hellip;And how about goaler Bernie Wolfe, the former Canadian college goaling whiz who couldn&rsquo;t hang on with the Washington caps. Wolfe packed it up at the unbelievable young age of 27 to work with a financial consulting firm in Silver Spring, Md. He will do some scouting work with the Capitals as well.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-02568/4019712-1-eng-US/f0019-022.jpg" title="f0019-02" width="1775" height="1451"><figcaption class="caption-body">After a somewhat slow start, super Oiler Wayne Gretzky is beginning to make his presence felt in the NHL. The Edmonton winger scored twice this past week and managed to climb into the top 25 NHL scorers with 14 points.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0019-01

SLAPSHOTS

<div class="byline">BY PAT DOYLE</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-01542/4019750-1-eng-US/f0020-012.jpg" title="f0020-01" width="569" height="905"><figcaption class="caption-body">Bobby Hull said his desire to play in the U.S. was based solely on personal matters.</figcaption></div>WINNIPEG&mdash;It was on the night of Oct. 4 when John Ferguson made his decision.&ldquo;After we&rsquo;d lost to Minnesota 6-0 in Thunder Bay in a preseason game,&rdquo; says Ferguson, &ldquo;we knew then that we wanted Bobby Hull.&rdquo;And, so it came to pass, on Oct. 26, that Hull agreed to end a one-year hiatus from professional hockey and come out of retirement with general manager Ferguson&rsquo;s Winnipeg Jets.It ended months of speculation about Hull&rsquo;s career, speculation which took on all the atmosphere of a real life soap opera. First, they said he was going to join Hartford Whalers; somebody suggested the Washington Capitals would land the former National Hockey League All Star left winger; and from the moment the June expansion draft ended the Chicago Black Hawks were always in the running to regain Hull&rsquo;s services.An exhibition loss proved to Ferguson he had only one alternative&hellip;convince Hull to play.But, that 6-0 exhibition loss to Minnesota North Stars convinced Ferguson he only had one alternative in respect to Hull, and that was to convince him to play for the Jets.&ldquo;We would have traded Bobby for Bobby&rsquo;s sake,&rdquo; said Ferguson, &ldquo;to comply with his wishes. For selfish reasons, I didn&rsquo;t want to trade Bobby. Yes, I did try and trade him. But, I haven&rsquo;t talked to (Bob) Pulford for a month and a half.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve already made Chicago a better team by the addition of (Terry) Ruskowski and (Rich) Preston. They&rsquo;d be better with the addition of Hull. Winnipeg was always coming out second best in any dealings that Chicago wanted to make and I didn&rsquo;t want that.&rdquo;Hull had established a posture that he wanted to relocate in the United States once he had cleared up some cattle business. However, the night before he and Ferguson sat side by side at a press conference to announce his return, Hull met with the Winnipeg GM to iron out some personal matters.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s been a long, drawn out affair,&rdquo; said Hull, &ldquo;although I wasn&rsquo;t too involved with it. We got together to hash things out. Had we both done this sooner maybe things would have been resolved sooner.&rdquo;Hull said his desire to play in the U.S. was based solely on personal matters, and it had nothing to do with a feud between himself and Ferguson.&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to clear up one thing,&rdquo; offered Ferguson in that respect, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s no animosity between us. There was as players, but not as management.&rdquo;Hull played 15 seasons with the Black Hawks before bolting to the Jets and the World Hockey Association in 1972. During his years in the toddlin&rsquo; town, the Golden Jet scored 604 goals and was selected to either the first or second All Star teams on 11 occasions. With the Jets, Hull added another 303 goals in only 411 games.Hull couldn&rsquo;t foresee any major obstacles in making his comeback to the NHL, although he was careful not to rush right into the battle.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to rush it,&rdquo; he said on the afternoon of his press conference. &ldquo;When you&rsquo;re 40 years old your body doesn&rsquo;t snap back the same as it does for a 30-year-old, or 25-year-old.&rdquo;The Jets didn&rsquo;t need Hull on Oct. 26, the night they defeated Boston Bruins, 3-2, for their biggest victory as an NHL franchise.This truly was one of the finest games in Winnipeg&rsquo;s eight-year history, and the only sad part about the whole thing was that there weren&rsquo;t more seats available to the Winnipeg public. A crowd of 13,699 witnessed Jets&rsquo; major upset, but neither of the two new tiers in the Arena was in use that night. &#9632;

f0020-01

Hull Exudes Caution In Comeback

Following are the latest player movements in hockey:<h2>NATIONAL LEAGUE</h2>ATLANTA&mdash;Dave Hanson, LW, sent to Birmingham of CHL.BUFFALO&mdash;John Gould, LW, secured from Edmonton for future considerations. Dave Fenyves, D, signed as 19-year-old draft. Mark Wichrowski, RW. signed as 19-year-old draft. Both players will remain with their junior teams. Fenyves with Peterborough of OMJHL and Winrowski with Kingston of OMJHL.COLORADO&mdash;Barry Beck, D, traded to Rangers in exchange for Mike McEwen, D, Dean Turner, D, Pat Hickey, LW, Lucien DeBlois, RW, and a minor league player to be named later. Bob Atwell, RW. recalled from Fort Worth of CHL. Merlin Malinowski, C, sent to Fort Worth as replacement. Peter Sturgeon, LW, also sent to Fort Worth.CHICAGO&mdash;Keith Magnuson, D, announced retirement to become an assistant coach.DETROIT&mdash;Jim Korn, D, and Kevin Schamehorn, RW, assigned to Adirondack of AHL.EDMONTON&mdash;Jim Harrison, C, released and returned to Chicago. Kari Makkonen, LW, assigned to Houston of CHL. Ron Areshenkoff, C, and Dan Newman, LW, recalled from Houston.HARTFORD&mdash;Al Smith, G, returned to roster from injury list. Terry Richardson, G, sent to Springfield of AHL. Ron Plumb, D, recalled from Springfield. Chuck Luksa, D, and M. F. Schurman, LW, assigned to Springfield. Gregg Carroll, C, signed as free agent. Stuart Smith, D, signed as 19-year-old draft. Smith will remain with Peterborough in OMJHL.LOS ANGELES&mdash;Rick Hampton, D, Don Howse, C, and Mike Marson, LW, assigned to Binghamton of AHL.MONTREAL&mdash;Gaston Gingras, D, sent to Nova Scotia of AHL. Doug Risebrough, C, placed on disabled list for three weeks while undergoing exploratory surgery for strained knee ligaments. Bob Gainey LW, placed on disabled list for two weeks with cracked bone in his foot. Guy Lapointe, D, returned to lineup from injury list.ISLANDERS&mdash;Denis Potvin, D, returned to lineup for first time this season from injury list.PHILADELPHIA&mdash;Dan Barber, RW. signed as 19-year-old draft. Barber will remain with Toronto of OMJHL.QUEBEC&mdash;Francois Lacombe, D, sent to Syracuse of AHL.ST. LOUIS&mdash;Rick Bowness, RW, recalled from Salt Lake of CHL.VANCOUVER&mdash;Ian Tennant, D, signed as 19-year-old draft. Tennant will remain with Saskatoon of WHL.WASHINGTON&mdash;Dennis Maruk, C, placed on disabled list for two months after undergoing knee surgery. Jack Lynch, D, recalled from Hershey of AHL. Bernie Wolfe, G, announced retirement to become team scout.WINNIPEG&mdash;Bobby Hull, LW, rejoined Jets for first time this season.<h2>RETIREMENTS</h2>EDMONTON&mdash;Pete LoPresti, G, retired from hockey. Brent Hughes, D, and Glen Irwin, D, retired.VANCOUVER&mdash;Michel Belhumeur, G, retired from hockey.<h2>AMERICAN LEAGUE</h2>BINGHAMTON&mdash;Jim Marsh, D, signed as free agent. Jim Stewart, G, returned to Dusters from Grand Rapids of IHL by Boston. Doug Keans, G, returned to Dusters from Saginaw of IHL by Los Angeles.<h2>CENTRAL LEAGUE</h2>BIRMINGHAM&mdash;Mike Penasse, RW, reassigned by Atlanta to Muskegon of IHL.CINCINNATI&mdash;Jim Cunningham, D, reassigned by Winnipeg to Maine of AHL. Jim Roberts, LW, reassigned by Winnipeg from Tulsa of CHL.DALLAS&mdash;Bill Himmel-right, D, returned to Montreal. Mark Murphy, LW, recalled by Los Angeles.FORT WORTH&mdash;Willie Trognitz, LW, sent by Colorado on amateur tryout. Stan Gulutzan, LW, reassigned by Colorado to Muskegon of IHL.INDIANAPOLIS&mdash;Dave Cameron, C, assigned by Islanders on amateur tryout. Bert Marshall, D, reactivated as player by Islanders. &#9632;

Player Movements

National Hockey League officials are getting a new look this season. No, they&rsquo;re not making a change in the uniforms, it&rsquo;s just that 16 new men have been added to the NHL&rsquo;s officiating crew, swelling the ranks to 49 full-time officials under contract to the league for this season.Scotty Morrison, the NHL&rsquo;s Referee-in-Chief, is pleased with the men he has to choose from when putting together his assignment schedule. &ldquo;I think we have a fine combination of good, young officials and many seasoned veterans,&rdquo; said Scotty. &ldquo;It provides us with a well-trained and quite competent staff of game officials.&rdquo;The addition of four new teams to the league and the retirement of Matt Pavelich to become one of the three supervisors of officials, led to the additions to the staff.&ldquo;We gained men from the Western Canada League, the Ontario Major Junior Hockey Association, the Amateur Hockey Association of the United States as well as men who worked in the International Hockey Association last season,&rdquo; said Morrison.Morrison also added six officials from the World Hockey Association&mdash;Ron Harris, who will be refereeing NHL as well as American and Central League games this season, Ron Fournier, Ron Asselstine, Ron Foyt, Wayne Bonney and Joe Dame. &#9632;

New Faces Highlight NHL Officiating Crews

<div class="byline">BY TONY GALLAGHER</div>VANCOUVER&mdash;Consistency at a high level of performance is the most difficult plateau for a professional athlete to attain. At least that&rsquo;s what all the coaches lead people to believe.For the Vancouver Canucks, one player who has managed that creatively is Stan Smyl, a name not really familiar around the National League but one that, none the less, will be around a few years.Smyl is anything but flashy. He is probably the antithesis of Mike Bossy or Guy Lafleur. He survives by takeouts, digging and outstanding fundamental play in his own end. Essentially, he is the best fundamental player on the Canucks. He does most everything right except score goals in numbers, and Harry Neale, the Canucks&rsquo; coach, even had a chuckle at that.&ldquo;At the pace Stan is going now, he&rsquo;d end up with 35 goals on the season, and let&rsquo;s face it, he may not stop the way he&rsquo;s going.&rdquo;Neale is the one to heap the praise on the little winger from St. Paul, Alberta. He goes out every time Vancouver plays and leads the team in takeouts, and he is always in the right position when it comes time for the Canucks to get the puck out of their own zone.Scouts and even some professional observers were not always convinced that Smyl would make it in the NHL.Detroit Red Wings coach Bobby Kromm called him a &lsquo;minor leaguer&rsquo; when he first saw him play. The scouts obviously didn&rsquo;t expect him to do as well as he has because they left him all the way to the third round despite the fact he had captained the Memorial Cup champion New Westminster Bruins and had a fantastic final in the process. They all figured he was too short (five-eight) and not a good enough skater with his 197-pound frame.He stuck last year with his tenacity and ability to stir things up, and with rookies Curt Fraser and Thomas Gradin formed the team&rsquo;s most effective line over the year, even though they were all first-year players.This off-season, he went out and lowered his weight by about seven pounds which allows him to get to his striking zone earlier. And he has become a little more relaxed with the puck. As a result his shot appears to be better, and he&rsquo;s beginning to score some goals while playing with Gradin and a new left winger, Jere Gillis.&ldquo;I guess it&rsquo;s just my turn to score,&rdquo; Smyl says befitting the modesty of a small town boy. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve just gone out and worked hard as a unit and worked hard as a team and it&rsquo;s starting to pay off a little for us.&rdquo;Neale says he would like to buy a beer for the person who decided Smyl should be drafted by the Canucks.&ldquo;He (Smyl) reminds me of the best player ever to play in terms of consistency, and that is Dave Keon. He plays great and good, never bad.&rdquo;Smyl has the tendency to make things happen offensively by his ability to liberate the puck from defensemen in the offensive zone and defensively he is as good a checker as Canucks have. And as well, he has that little additive called consistency working for him. It has made him the Canucks most popular player among the fans and likely with the coach as well. &#9632;

Vancouver’s Steady Smyl Strong On Fundamentals

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0022-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-01421/4019853-1-eng-US/f0022-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Photo by Robert Shaver)</figcaption></div><h2>LAURIE BOSCHMAN&hellip;Toronto Maple Leafs</h2>Leafs &lsquo;rookie center is quickly proving why he was the first pivot chosen in the entry draft with his stickhandling prowess and ability to withstand the pounding a physical player must withstand. Boschman beat out a couple of experienced pros to make the Leafs as an under-age player and appears to have the talent to rapidly become a top-flight performer in the NHL. &#9632;

f0022-01

Meet The Rookies

<div class="byline">By AL SMITH</div>ATLANTA&mdash;When the Atlanta Flames started training camp, there was no reason to believe their No. 1 line of Guy Chouinard, Bob MacMillan and Eric Vail, better known as the Gems, wouldn&rsquo;t pick up where they left off in the 1978-79 season.The trio finished as the second-leading scoring line in the National Hockey League last season and again they would be counted on to produce much of the Flames&rsquo; offense.But five days into training, MacMillan suffered an attack of appendicitis and didn&rsquo;t get into action until the Flames&rsquo; fourth regular-season game. Coach Al MacNeil used numerous players on the right side, to take MacMillan&rsquo;s place, but things just weren&rsquo;t the same.Chouinard, a 50-goal scorer in &lsquo;78-79, wasn&rsquo;t scoring anywhere near his pace of last year, but he was picking up assists.And the reason was, over on the left side, the &ldquo;E&rdquo; of the GEMs, Eric Vail, was putting the puck in the net with regularity.After nine games, &ldquo;The Big Train&rdquo;, had seven goals and was off to his best start since turning pro. His play in the early stages of the &lsquo;79-80 season even overshadowed his rookie year when he scored 39 goals and won rookie of the year honors.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m excited,&rdquo; Vail said.&ldquo;Not that I wasn&rsquo;t before, but I feel better than I ever have. And maybe I just want to show people I can get off to a good start.&rdquo;Vail&rsquo;s best game in the opening nine, came in the Flames&rsquo; 7-3 victory over the Edmonton Oilers. A game for which only 8,420 fans showed up at The Omni, one of the Flames&rsquo; smallest Friday night crowds ever.&ldquo;I want to put people back in this building,&rdquo; Vail said. &ldquo;And the only way we&rsquo;re going to do that is to win. I want to stay in Atlanta and so does everyone on this team. I&rsquo;ve spent my whole career here and I like it.&rdquo;Vail scored his sixth and seventh goals of the season against the Oilers, but that wasn&rsquo;t the only thing that had people talking about the six-foot-two, 209-pounder from Schumacher, Ont.He was working harder than ever in the corners and throwing his weight around along the boards. And three of his goals came from standing his ground and taking a beating in the slot.Vail came to the Flames in the 1973 amateur draft when he was picked in the second round. He spent most of the season in the Central Hockey League at Omaha, but played 23 games in Atlanta and scored his first two NHL goals. The following year, he rewarded the Flames by scoring 39 goals, which still stands as a Flames&rsquo; rookie record.Now, still only 26, he is destined to become the Flames&rsquo; all-time leading goal scorer and point leader. He went into the season only nine goals and 101 points behind Tom Lysiak, who now plays for the Chicago Black Hawks.But while team records were within his reach, Vail&rsquo;s thoughts were on the Flames&rsquo; faltering attendance.They were also on the mind of Flames&rsquo; general manager Cliff Fletcher.&ldquo;This is what expansion is going to cost us,&rdquo; Fletcher said of the small crowd to watch the Oilers.&ldquo;This would generally be the Islanders, Flyers or Rangers in here on a Friday night and we&rsquo;d have 11-12-13,000. The balanced schedule is going to cost us $30,000 a game when we play expansion teams.&rdquo;And taking into consideration the Flames lose 12 games against their Patrick Division rivals this season, they&rsquo;ll lose in the vicinity of $320,000. And hopes to get the schedule changed for next season are poor, because it takes a unanimous vote by the NHL Board of Governors to get it changed.&ldquo;We got $750,000 from expansion,&rdquo; Fletcher said. &ldquo;But by the time it&rsquo;s over, we&rsquo;re going to lose money because of it.&rdquo;In their first five home games, the Flames drew 51,285, an average of 10,257 per game. Their biggest crowd of the season was their opening game when they had 13,358 to watch the Flyers on a Saturday night.The smallest crowd came against the Rookies 7,135, on a Tuesday night. And, the most disappointing turnout of the season came on a Tuesday night when the Flames played the Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens and drew only 9,438. &#9632;

Atlanta Fans Missing ‘Big Train’

<div class="byline">BY VIRG FOSS</div>ANN ARBOR&mdash;You&rsquo;ve heard of &ldquo;Leave it to Beaver&rdquo;, a long-running popular television program?Well, the University of Michigan has a show of its own&mdash;it&rsquo;s called &ldquo;Leave it to Bruno&rdquo;.In this case, it&rsquo;s freshman center Bruno Baseotto, the talk of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. The 5-10, l70-pound rookie from Calgary is a major reason why the Wolverines are undefeated and lead the WCHA after two weeks of play.Baseotto popped in four more goals Nov. 2-3 as Michigan, last in the 10-team WCHA a year ago with a 6-25-1 record, bumped off defending national champion Minnesota twice to become the only undefeated team in the league.Baseotto&rsquo;s two second period goals pushed Michigan into a 3-1 lead the first night that Minnesota couldn&rsquo;t overhaul. Then, he rallied the Wolverines the second night after Minnesota had taken a 2-0 lead in the first period on goals by Mike Reilly and Kevin Hartzell.Baseotto got his first with 36 seconds left in the first period, then tied the game just 48 seconds into the second period. Dan Lerg got the game-winner for Michigan with 15 seconds left in the second period. Neither team scored in the last period.Baseotto isn&rsquo;t the fastest skater in the WCHA. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not a good skater, but he has a keen sense of anticipation. He gets to the right place at the right time, and the puck seems to come to him,&rdquo; Michigan hockey coach Dan Farrell told Minneapolis Tribune sportswriter John Gilbert.Baseotto has had the hot hand ever since the season opened. He has 12 goals in six games overall, including hat tricks against Bowling Green and Minnesota-Duluth.Another reason for Michigan&rsquo;s improvement has been the goaltending of freshman Paul Fricker, who had 36 stops in each game against Minnesota.There were some other interesting developments around the WCHA, too. Let&rsquo;s take a look:MICHIGAN TECH AT NORTH DAKOTA: This was a key series for both teams. Michigan Tech, with nine freshmen in the lineup, still figures to be a power in the league. And North Dakota is the defending champion.The Sioux of North Dakota got in the opening shot with a 4-3 victory. Two goals by sophomore defenseman Howard Walker were the difference. Walker&rsquo;s game-winner came early in the third period and spoiled an outstanding goaltending demonstration by Tech rookie Rod PolmanTuin, who had 39 stops to 25 for North Dakota All-America goalie Bob Iwabuchi.The next night, Tech rebounded for a 5-3 win with Gord Salt, a senior wing, and Mike Lauen, a freshman wing, scoring two goals apiece.WISCONSIN AT MICHIGAN STATE: Leo Lynett, a senior center and the league&rsquo;s leading scorer with eight points on the opening weekend, was held to one goal by Wisconsin, which won 6-4 the opening night before falling 5-4 the second night.With Lynett checked by the Badgers, senior wing Russ Welch came to the rescue.Welch had the hat trick the second night as the Spartans broke into the win column for the first time under new coach Ron Mason.Michigan State rallied from a 2-0 deficit on two goals by Welch and one by Mark Hamway in the second period. Welch and Ted Huesing made it 5-2 before Theran Welsh brought Wisconsin close with two late goals.NOTRE DAME AT DULUTH: Notre Dame rebounded from dropping two games at home on the opening weekend by thumping Duluth twice on the road.Notre Dame won 8-4 in the opener as Kevin Humphreys and Bill Rothstein had two goals apiece. Notre Dame led 6-1 in the third period before two goals by Gregg More helped the Bulldogs pull within 6-4.The second night, two goals each by Dave Poulin and Ted Weltzin offset the sniping of Duluth&rsquo;s Scott Carlston, who had two goals, too.John Schmidt&rsquo;s goal with 3:21 left in the game wrapped it up after Carlston had pulled Duluth within a goal two minutes earlier.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-01395/4019908-1-eng-US/f0023-012.jpg" title="f0023-01" width="561" height="557"><figcaption class="caption-body">Bruno Baseotto has been a one-man wrecking crew for Michigan.</figcaption></div>COLORADO COLLEGE VS. DENVER: As always, expect the unexpected when these two western teams meet.The unexpected happened again. Colorado College swept Denver 7-5 and 5-4, the first night in Denver and the second night in Colorado Springs.Greg Whyte&rsquo;s hat trick paced Colorado College in the opener as the Tigers scored six goals in the second period to stun Denver. Ed Beers scored twice for Denver. It was a tough night for Denver goalie Scott Robinson, who had just 24 saves for 42 for CC&rsquo;s Tom Frame.Colorado College delighted the home fans the second night by rallying from a 4-4 deficit to win 5-4 in overtime on Dave Feamster&rsquo;s goal with 2:51 gone in the 10-minute session.Darrell Morrow, Ken Merritt, Ed Beers and Andy Hill had given Denver a 4-1 lead. &#9632;

f0023-01

Unbeaten Wolverines ‘Leaving It To Bruno’

<div class="byline">BY JIM SCHNEIDER</div>SAULT STE. MARIE&mdash;Freshman Steve Mulholland earned player-of-the-week honors in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association for his nine-point weekend as he led Lake Superior to an 11-3 and 15-2 sweep of St. Scholastica.In other CCHA action Western Michigan had the offense in gear in sweeping Chicago-Circle 6-2 and 11-1; Ferris State topped Wilfrid Laurier 51 and 6-2; Ohio State took a single game from Western Ontario 9-2; Northern Michigan swept Miami 8-1 and 4-3 and Bowling Green tied U.S. International 3-3 in the first game and won the second game 6-3.Lake Superior decided both games early, outscoring St. Scholastica 7-1 in the first period in the opener and 8-0 in the first period on Saturday.Mulholland, Myles Forget, Frances Veneruz and. Don Delabbio all had two goals for the Soo Lakers in the opener while Mulholland had four goals in the second game with Steve Farrell, Bob Ciotti and brother Chris Delabbio each scoring two.Sophomore Terry Olson paced the Western Michigan Broncos in their second game as he scored four goals and added three assists for a seven-point game.Kelly Mitchell sparked WMU in the opened with a pair of goals and freshman Steve Abbott made 21 saves.The Broncos set or tied 10 records in the 11-1 win including most assists in a period (13), most power play goals in a game (6), most goals in a period, T. Olson (3) and in a game (4) and Olson also had five points in a period.Newcomer Brian Walters scored twice to pace the Ferris State opening win against Chicago-Circle.Doug Nowels played goal in both games for the Bulldogs and made just 32 saves in the sweep.Rocki Smith had two goals and Paul Bates had a goal and two assists in the second game.FSC veteran Perry Zoldak collected his 100th career point on the first Ferris State goal of the season.Northern Michigan used a six-goal second period to stun the Miami Redskins in the first game of the series, but Steve Cady&rsquo;s Skins came back the next night to hold NMU to a 43 win.Steve Bozek scored three straight goals, including two in 20 seconds in the opener, during the second period.Steve Weeks, who made no saves at all in the second period, lost his shutout bid when St. Louis transfer Mike Norten scored at 19:57 of the third period. Weeks finished the game with nine saves.The next night was different as NMU took a 1-0 lead on Tom Laidlaw&rsquo;s goal at 2:16 of the first period, but Miami scored the next three goals for a 3-1 lead heading into the final period.Bill Joyce scored at 1:53 of the third period and Dave Ikkala tied the game at 6:36 on the power play for Joyce and Don Waddell.Terry Houck scored the winner at 13:48, while Weeks made 17 saves in the second game.In Columbus the Buckeyes found themselves down to Western Ontario 1-0 after just 2:11, but OSU bounced back with four goals in the period and never looked back.On the West Coast Bowling Green became the first team to win at U.S. International in San Diego, CA. In the opener BG grabbed a 2-1 lead in the first period when freshman Brian Hills scored twice in six seconds at 12:03 and 12:09 assisted on both goals by George McPhee and Brian MacLellan.Senior leading scorer Yves Pelland pushed BG&rsquo;s lead to 3-1, but the Gulls bounced back to tie on a pair of Dale Ingram goals. There was no overtime played. &#9632;

Laker Frosh Mulholland Sparkles

<div class="byline">BY TOM BURKE</div>HYANNIS&mdash;For three years, Brian Petrovek excelled at kicking, stabbing, scrambling, swinging, and doing almost anything else to keep hockey pucks out of the Harvard University goal. Harvard won many more games than it lost in those years, but Brian was a busy man because the team&rsquo;s approach was &ldquo;offense, offense, offense, and defense if we&rsquo;ve gotta&rdquo;.His career behind the pads, which ended in 1977, was good preparation for Petrovek&rsquo;s current job. Brian went to work for the ECAC last summer as assistant commissioner (read &ldquo;hockey czar&rdquo;), succeeding Steve Hardy. Steve had won much respect with his approach to administering ECAC hockey, the big conference&rsquo;s problem child ever since Signor Zamboni invented his ice machine. The job leaves one open to more brickbats and vitriol than the presidency of Exxon, and Brian knows that he has a tough act to follow, particularly this year. He may yet find himself yearning for the goal crease and the relative tranquillity of a Boston University power play.As you probably know, ECAC Division One has a new look for this year, with its 17 teams subdividing into three groups. More importantly, however, is that all players in the East will be required to wear facial protection, even though the NCAA does not yet mandate it.Why all the concern? Well, for one thing, the East will be under everyone&rsquo;s microscope. Will the increased protection simply cause more violent, devil-may-care tactics, as the hard plastic football helmets apparently have done? Will some coaches use the above possibility as an excuse to plan a bigger role for goons at the expense of the smaller and skillful players? What will the referees be expected to do?&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you, I was at a meeting of the coaches in Providence recently,&rdquo; said Petrovek. &ldquo;And the questions were flying hot and heavy.&rdquo;In one sense, we can only wait for the one year trial of the mask to run its course. Coincidentally, the NCAA is due to publish a study of the mask around the end of the season. So, for Petrovek, the toughest job, or the one which is open to the most second guessing, will again be the selection and assignment of referees for Eastern games.Some background here is necessary. For years, critics claimed it was easier to become director of the CIA than to get onto the job list for ECAC Hockey. No one knew how or why Joe Slobotnick got 20 assignments a year at the same arena in games involving the same team. Quite probably, the innuendo hinted, it was because Joe and the team&rsquo;s coach were golfing buddies or something.Under Steve Hardy, the firm list of referees for Division One games was drawn up and maintained, using among other criteria increased dependence on the rating cards submitted by the individual coaches. That pleased the latter group, none of whom could ever claim strict impartiality in matters pertaining to his team.Hardy&rsquo;s efforts also resulted in a rotation of officials&rsquo; assignments throughout the East. The move increased travel expenses but spread the talent around so that no home crowds got to establish a love or hate relationship with any one official.This part of the system should be easy for Petro to maintain and build upon. In fact, Hardy had completed about half the year&rsquo;s game assignments before departing for the University of Washington. All Brian really needs to do is stay informed and visible, be business like, and learn to sort out the bluster, the valid criticism, and all the colors of the intervening spectrum.&ldquo;The mask rule will put a lot of pressure on me, I think,&rdquo; said Petro. &ldquo;I have to consider what kind of interpretation problems the referees will be faced with. Some of the coaches at the Providence meeting are concerned even that the rule will force them to change their recruiting practices. They figure that the small, clever center whose great asset is peripheral vision will not be a prime target any more.&rdquo;He might have added that those coaches most against the mask are those who think it is the fault of the referees that masks were ever considered necessary in the first place. Had they been enforcing the rules properly, high sticking and other dangerous violations would not be a factor, goes the argument which also has its merit. This group of coaches will probably approve of the Eastern approach this year which is designed to put more direct authority over game conditions in the hands of the referees.&ldquo;We are intending to make some changes which will point to more control of games by the officials,&rdquo; related Brian. &ldquo;They may seem minor, and fans won&rsquo;t even notice some of them, but they&rsquo;re designed to make officials more responsible for themselves and less dependent on the coaches.&rdquo;Among the new wrinkles is the provision for a faculty representative from the home school at all games. Said representative will make himself known to both coaches and referees before the game begins. Should drastic actions such as the ejection of unruly spectators become necessary, the ref can go directly to the faculty man for action. Undoubtedly, the crowd control problems at last year&rsquo;s suspended North eastern-Colgate game in Hamilton prompted this move.Referees will also have to be present for pre-game warmups, albeit off the ice surface, to reduce the possibility of fights. Each team will be confined to its own end of the rink during this time. Nor will referees have to wait for a challenge by an opponent to an alleged illegal piece of equipment such as a mouthpiece or stick. He may take the initiative to check them himself and assess penalties.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been out West to their referee clinics,&rdquo; said Petrovek. &ldquo;It was quite an eye opening experience. They&rsquo;ve eliminated the automatic icing and put in the red line for icing purposes. There&rsquo;s obviously a lot of professional influence, which is disturbing, but it will be interesting to watch.&ldquo;I also want to study their three man officials&rsquo; system more. Our athletic directors have been against taking on another man. but I think it&rsquo;s been more a question of money and mileage costs in their minds.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0024-01409/4019963-1-eng-US/f0024-012.jpg" title="f0024-01" width="576" height="732"><figcaption class="caption-body">Former Harvard netminder Brian Petrovek may find dealing with ECAC decisions as asst commissioner a lot more difficult than stopping pucks.</figcaption></div>All these new developments squarely involve Petrovek, the old goalie. He&rsquo;ll do fine, as long as he realizes that you can&rsquo;t please&mdash;let alone fool&mdash;all the people all of the time. &#9632;

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Ex-Harvard Goaler On Executive Hot Seat

<h2>WCHA CONFERENCE</h2>(Standings on Mon. Nov. 5)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-01347/4020137-1-eng-US/f0025-012.jpg" title="f0025-01" width="509" height="260"></div><h2>GAMES COMPLETED</h2>Colorado College 3, North Dakota 1North Dakota 9, Colorado College 4Denver 6, Notre Dame 4Denver 5, Notre Dame 3Michigan 11, Minn-Duluth 6Michigan 6, Minn-Duluth 4Minnesota 9, Michigan State 8Minnesota IL Michigan State 5Wisconsin 6, Michigan Tech 5Michigan Tech 6, Wisconsin 4Colorado College 1, Denver 5Colorado College 5, Denver 4Michigan 5. Minnesota 2Michigan 3, Minnesota 2Wisconsin 6, Michigan State 4Michigan State 5, Wisconsin 5North Dakota 4, Michigan Tech 3Michigan Tech 5, North Dakota 3Notre Dame 8, Minn-Duluth 5Notre Dame 6, Minn-Duluth 4<h2>LEADING SCORERS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-02252/4020130-1-eng-US/f0025-022.jpg" title="f0025-02" width="508" height="286"></div><h2>CANADIAN COLLEGES</h2>Guelph 8, York 2Ryerson 12, Brock 5Western 7, Laurier 5Concordia 13, Laval 2Laurentian 5, Queen&rsquo;s 4McMaster 2, Laurier 1Guelph 9, Western 4Laval 7, McGill 0UBC 4, Alberta 3Ottawa 7, Quebec 5<h2>EXHIBITIONS</h2>Plattsburgh State 5, Bishop&rsquo;s 4Lake Superior 4, Lakelwad 3Regina 3, Toronto 2<h2>CCHA CONFERENCE</h2>Lake Superior 11, St. Scholastica 3Lake Superior 15, St. Scholastica 2Western Michigan 6, Chiago-Circle 2Western Michigan 11, Chicago-Circle 1Ferris State 5, Wilfrid Laurier 1Ferris State 6, Wilfrid Laurier 2Ohio State 9, Western Ontario 2Northern Michigan 8, Miami (0) 1Northern Michigan 4, Miami (0) 3Bowling Green 3, U.S. Inti. 3Bowling Green 6, I U.S. Inti. 3 &#9632;

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League Games

<div class="byline">BY MIKE MURRAY</div>This is the third of a three part series evaluating the five CIAU conferences.TORONTO&mdash;This year&rsquo;s Ontario University Athletic Association has disbanded the three conference concept and gone to one. Instead of having their historic sudden death playoffs, it will now be a best two-of-three in the semi-finals and finals. Look for Guelph to capture the Ontario championship once again this year.The Gryphons appear to be in the driver&rsquo;s seat to repeat as OUAA champs, as they have three complete forward lines-back. Leading this group are centers Mike McParland, Mike Pidgeon and Scott McKenzie. Veteran defensemen Paul Goldup and Ross Bowden will anchor the Guelph blueline while in the nets, both of last year&rsquo;s goaltenders have returned. Coach Bud Folusewych feels he has recruited two possible All-Canadians in Les Campbell and Ray Irwin. The Gryphons are eagerly awaiting their European tour. They will be pitted against the German Olympic team as well as other division I clubs.LAURENTIAN: Former Leaf Billy Harris readily admits that the fate of his team rests squarely on the shoulders of his five returning defensemen. &ldquo;We lost seven players and I feel that they were all key offensive players,&rdquo; said Harris. Expected to hold the team together defensively are Will Crothers, Bob Dudis and Norm McCauley. The leading candidate to start the season as No. 1 goalie is back-up Rick Brown. Harris feels that if the Vees hope to finish near the top of the pack, Tim Heel and Lou Clements will have to pick up the slack offensively. Or else it could be a long hard winter in Sudbury.McMASTER: If you saw the Marlins walking to an arena, you might think that they were a basketball team. &ldquo;Yes, we have good size.&rdquo; admits coach Bill Mahoney. &ldquo;We are going to play a robust style, noping to wear the other team down.&rdquo; Back on defense the Marlins have Norm Col at 6&rsquo;3&rdquo; and Rae Hanske at 6&rsquo;4&rdquo;, while up front the little mite Dave Wilson will be one of the main scoring forces. Mahoney is looking to finish near the top.QUEEN&rsquo;S: This year&rsquo;s hew system of one division certainly pleases coach Fred O&rsquo;Donnell. &ldquo;We were lucky to take one point from Toronto in years past,&rdquo; admits O&rsquo;Donnell. &ldquo;But now we&rsquo;ll know where we really stand in relation to the other schools in Ontario.&rdquo; The Gaels defense has to be a question mark as only one veteran is back in Joe South. Hopefully two rookies, Tom Powers and Gord Smeaton, will pick up the slack. Returning up front are John McIntyre and Paul Stoffard, who along with Ronnie Folk should provide the bulk of the scoring punch.LAURIER: The Golden Hawks will be once again be led by their high scoring line of Darley Benjamin, Dan McCaffety and Greg Ahbe. Between them they had 55 points in league play. With the addition of the four returning defensemen, led by Brian Crombeen, coach Wayne Gowing hopes to improve on last year&rsquo;s 9-5-2 record. Two new rookies who have earned starting spots are goaler Terry Thompson from the Kingston Canadians and center Glen McCelland. All in all Gowing expects to finish in the top six and get a crack at knocking someone off at playoff time.TORONTO: The question circulating around the OUAA concerning the Blues is how well will they get along without Tom Watt? interim coach Gord Davies who replaced Watt while he takes a one year sabbatical to help coach Canada&rsquo;s Olympic team, feels that he has nothing to prove and that there&rsquo;s little pressure on him. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m here to do the best I can and hope that the guys enjoy playing hockey.&rdquo; The Blues have lost 11 players and have little proven talent after Caines, Shaw, Snetsinger and Tamblyn. Davies reflected on his camp saying, &ldquo;This is the first year since Tom has been here that not one of our rookies had major junior experience, said Davies. The Blues will have a tough time capturing the championship.WESTERN: A total of 14 players have returned for the Mustangs this year, so coach Ron Watson has an excellent base to start the year. Back are center Bill Smith, an OUAA All Star last year and Derek Schmuck, the 1978-79 leading scorer. Ron Graham and Dave Hillborn are third year veterans who will stabilize the blueline. Two rookies who have been impressive in pre-season play are Brian Schnurr from the Kitchener Rangers and Mark Tessier from Royal York of the Ontario Junior League.WINDSOR: The Lancers are in a rebuilding year as only nine players have returned leaving some large holes to be filled. Back for coach Eaves are both of his goalers, Don Johmpson and Dave Caron. Hopefully Garry Rosaffen and Pat Byrne, both whom are rookies, will help fill the void left by graduation on the defense. Len Chittle, an OUAA All Star last year is being counted on heavily to provide a lot of leadership for the crop of young rookies.YORK: Bruce Reier has taken over the reins of the hockey program at York this year, he hopes to bring his Yeomen to the top with sound defensive play. From all early indications rookie Steve Ross will handle the goaltending chores while the blueline will be headed by Blair Lewis and John Lovall. Back are two dynamic centers, Al Sinclair and Tim Haun. Having knocked off Varsity in their own tournament, the Yeomen have to be considered in early contention for league honors. &#9632;

Guelph Power Old Stuff In New Ontario Look

<div class="byline">BY MORRIS DALLA COSTA</div>LOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSLOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSSUDBURY&mdash;Wolves&rsquo; hardhitting defensive brigade has been hard hit with injuries, and it&rsquo;s starting to take its toll.Wolves, who last season were among the top scoring clubs in the Ontario Major Junior Hockey League, lost four sharpshooters in Mike Foligno, who was the first OMJHL player picked, Scott Gruhl, Bob Lekun and Dave McQueen.This year they were to rely on a tough defensive approach to the game. That has been thrown out of whack with injuries to Shane Swan, who has been out the full season and Randy Mercier who is fighting a recurring tendinitis problem. Both are expected back in the line-up shortly but their injuries have caused some adjustments to be made.Add to those problems a groin injury to perhaps the league&rsquo;s top netminder Don Beaupre, which has kept him out of action for five games and it spells trouble for Wolves.Wolves have given up 76 goals in 17 games, while scoring 71. They managed a comeback win over Kitchener Rangers 8-7 after trailing 6-2 at one point, but they were blown out by Oshawa Generals 8-2.Despite some of the problems the hockey club has developed, coach Andy Laing sees progress made from early in the season.&ldquo;We are slowly starting to settle down. We have two solid lines now and when we get Swan and Mercier back we&rsquo;ll be tough. We&rsquo;ve been getting some good scoring chances but the puck hasn&rsquo;t been going in for us,&rdquo; says Laing.A big addition to the hockey club has been the acquisition of Wayne Groleau from Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. The aggressive winger came up with a goal and three assists in his first game.Sudbury&rsquo;s northern neighbour, Sault Ste Marie continues to struggle in last place in the Leyden division.While the rest of the league roars on, Oshawa Generals have snuck up on the Leyden division and have put together an eight game home winning streak. Led by a streak himself, Bob Crawford and his centerman, draft pick (fourth round) Mitch Lamoureux, Generals are proving inhospitable on their home ice.They&rsquo;ve hammered Greyhounds 9-2, Wolves 8-2 and Brantford 5-2 firing over 50 shots at the Brantford net.Niagara Falls Flyers have finally named a replacement for fired coach Barry Boughner.Owner Reg Quinn, who has handled the club himself for the past three weeks, has named 14-year National Hockey League veteran Fred Stanfield as the new coach.In Brantford coach and general manager Dave Draper announced he&rsquo;ll step down as coach as soon as he finds a suitable replacement. &#9632;

Injuries Won’t Stay Away From Wolves’ Door

<div class="byline">BY BOB McKENZIE</div>SAULT STE. MARIE&mdash;Terry Crisp guessed that life as a junior hockey coach would provide its share of pitfalls.Now he has no doubts.That hasn&rsquo;t stopped the retired national Hockey League center from carrying out his daily duties as coach and assistant general manager of the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds in the Ontario Major Junior Hockey League.Crisp, the plucky little former Philadelphia Flyer who played 10 NHL seasons, never once missing the playoffs, signed a two-year contract with the Greyhounds early this past summer.And although the junior season is still in the early stages, his initiation has come swiftly. After 13 games, Crisp&rsquo;s Greyhounds possessed a paltry 3-10 record.Not exactly an impressive start.So every time he feels a bout of the blues coming on, he harks to advice given him by a couple of old mentors.&ldquo;Patience and repetition,&rdquo; Crisp says thoughtfully. &ldquo;Patience and repetition is the advice given to me by Freddie Shero and Scotty Bowman. In the coaching game it&rsquo;s damn good advice.&ldquo;I feel fortunate that both men coached me during my career,&rdquo; he added, referring to two of professional hockey&rsquo;s most successful coaches. &ldquo;It helped me to learn both their styles, habits and beliefs concerning this game.&rdquo;After retiring from Philadelphia in 1976 with two Stanley Cup rings in tow, Crisp landed a job as an assistant coach in Philly. When the Flyers cleaned house last year, Crisp, along with coach Bob McCammon, were cut loose.Shero, who foresook Broad Street for life in the Big Apple, suggested Crisp seek a coaching job in the junior ranks.So what better place to look than at the junior grand finale&mdash;the Memorial Cup. Crisp ventured to Montreal in May, where he met Greyhound president Jim McAuley.A little longer, more than a month later, the coaching job was his.&ldquo;I went into coaching because I enjoy that aspect of the game,&rdquo; Crisp said. &ldquo;I feel it&rsquo;s a natural progression for me.&ldquo;I played junior hockey, then professional. I was an assistant coach and did some radio-television work in Philadelphia. Coaching was the only avenue I hadn&rsquo;t explored.&rdquo;There have been days when Crisp didn&rsquo;t appear to enjoy his new vocation. That, however, has only served to intensify his efforts to gain pleasure from coaching.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re off to a rocky start,&rdquo; he admitted. &ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t get out of the blocks quickly but we are in a rebuilding process here. This team has never finished better than fifth place.&rdquo;Sault hockey fans, though, aren&rsquo;t in the mood to wait. In eight years of major junior competition, the Greyhounds have never recorded a .500 season. Last year, they were the doormats of the Leyden Division.They boast a lineup with several junior stars. Up the middle they have flashy Arthur Rutland, an underager who returned from Vancouver Canucks&rsquo; training camp, and last year&rsquo;s OMJHL rookie-of-the-year, John Goodwin. On the blueline, 18-year-old Paul Coffey is among the top junior prospects in the nation.However, the Greyhounds continue to blow apparently insurmountable leads. It&rsquo;s impossible to predict how they&rsquo;ll play on any given night.That&rsquo;s what bothers their rookie coach.&ldquo;The frustrating thing about coaching juniors is on one night&rdquo; a team will play like they&rsquo;re world champions. The next night they might get bombed 12-0. There&rsquo;s no figuring them out,&rdquo; he said.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-01341/4020216-1-eng-US/f0027-012.jpg" title="f0027-01" width="560" height="1233"><figcaption class="caption-body">It&rsquo;s a long way from Philly to Sault Ste. Marie but ex-Flyer Terry Crisp is adjusting slowly to his new hockey role.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Crisp Discovers Coaching Not Easy

<div class="byline">BY DAVE SENICK</div>LOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSLOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSREGINA&mdash;Bob Strumm&rsquo;s perspective on the Western Hockey League has undergone some alterations during the past few years.Strumm is a former writer and columnist for the Saskatoon Star Phoenix but now, instead of writing about what is transpiring in the league, he&rsquo;s part of it. Specifically, he&rsquo;s associated with the Regina Pats with whom he is general manager, governor and part owner.It&rsquo;s Strumm&rsquo;s third year in the WHL as a general manager. He spent his first two in Billings. While Strumm was there the team advanced, in 1977-78, to the league final, then, last season, finished first in the Central Division.Strumm moved to a team that placed last in the East Division and compiled the league&rsquo;s poorest record with just 18 wins and seven ties in 72 outings during the 1978-79 schedule.But that doesn&rsquo;t phase Strumm.&ldquo;It may sound corny, but being in Regina is one of the biggest thrills of my life. I remember growing up and watching the Pats, but I never dreamed I would be their general manager,&rdquo; says Strumm.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a lot of work to be done here. A negative atmosphere has prevailed but, thanks mainly to our coach Bryan Murray, we&rsquo;ve gotten the players on the right track. They&rsquo;re starting to understand what it means to be a winner.&rdquo;Pats have, in the past, established a winning tradition and it&rsquo;s obviously a trait Strumm would like to restore. &ldquo;I consider this the junior hockey capital of western Canada because of the tradition behind the Pats. That puts more pressure on a person, because whatever you do is in the spotlight.&ldquo;In Billings, people were new to junior hockey and their enthusiasm carried over in almost every situation.&ldquo;I was treated well there. I&rsquo;ll never forget the opportunities I received to break into the league. I developed a great deal of respect for people like the team&rsquo;s owner Joe Sample.&rdquo;Strumm also worked as an assistant to former WHL president Ed Chynoweth before accepting the Billings job. He became part of the Bighorns organization in its first year of existence when the franchise was shifted from Calgary to Billings.The move to Regina came during this past summer when Pats underwent wholesale changes. The Pinder family of Saskatoon became the club&rsquo;s principal owners and, in turn, hired Strumm to replace general manager-coach Gregg Pilling.Strumm then appointed Murray as coach. The two have assembled and motivated a team that is well ahead of the pace set by last year&rsquo;s club. Regina was winless in its first eight games last season but this year has compiled a 44 record.That slate includes a 6-3 win over Saskatoon Blades during the past week. In that game, the Pats scored five power play goals. Doug Wickenheiser and Ron Flockhart both scored twice for the winners.Regina also lost 6-3 to Medicine Hat with Flockhart and Wickenheiser again scoring, this time a goal each.<h2>EAST DIVISION</h2>BILLINGS: The Bighorns bounced back from 7-4 losses to Brandon and Calgary to beat Great Falls 8-3. Billings scored five goals in the third period to defeat Great Falls. Gord Stafford and Jeff Zilkie both finished with two goals. Stafford&rsquo;s performance gave him 11 goals and 13 assists in 10 games which ranked him third in the league.BRANDON: The Wheat Kings dropped two consecutive games after winning two. They beat Billings 7-4 and Medicine Hat 5-1 before losing 9-1 to Calgary and 6-5 to Seattle.CALGARY: Wranglers suffered their first loss of the season but countered with two consecutive wins. Saskatoon edged Calgary 5-3 after the Wranglers had won their first four games.GREAT FALLS: The Americans remained the only team in the East Division without a win, losing 8-3 to Billings. That left the team with a 0-8 record.LETHBRIDGE: Doug Morrison and Gord Williams continue to accumulate points. Morrison leads the league in scoring with 15 goals and 12 assists while Williams is next in line at 16-6, both in 11 games.MEDICINE HAT: Tigers downed Regina 6-3 but then dropped a 5-1 decision to Brandon and lost 6-5 to Saskatoon.SASKATOON: Blades ended a road trip by downing the previously unbeaten Calgary Wranglers 5-3. Dan Bent scored twice to pace Saskatoon to the win.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-01325/4020247-1-eng-US/f0028-012.jpg" title="f0028-01" width="560" height="742"><figcaption class="caption-body">Sharpshooter Doug Wickenheiser is a central figure in rebuilding the Pats.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Strumm Returns Home In New Role Trying To Revive Pats’ Tradition

NEW WESTMINSTER: The Bruins continued their losing ways, dropping a 7-4 decision to Lethbridge and 6-3 game to Portland. The results left the team with a 0-10 record. The Winter hawks scored three goals in the final period to down the Bruins. Randy Wickware had a goal in each of the games.In an attempt to help stop the losing streak. Bruins acquired 19-year-old center Marc Chartier from Saskatoon for future considerations. He had 16 goals and 35 assists in 66 games with Saskatoon last season.PORTLAND: Winter Hawks went through the week undefeated, edging Portland 3-2 and downing New Westminster 6-3. Pat Dobson scored the only two goals of the third period to lift Portland to the win over Seattle. Against New Westminster, left winger Florent Robidoux scored three unanswered goals in the third period to give his team the win. He was playing on a line that included rookie center Robert Geale who replaced Tim Too-key, absent because of a bad cold. Geale finished with a goal and two assists.SEATTLE: Breakers suffered two setbacks before beating Brandon 6-5. Joe Ward tallied twice in the victory which followed a 3-2 loss to Portland and 3-1 defeat against Victoria. Seattle was outshot 45-20 against Portland but goalie Ken Hodge helped keep the team in the game.VICTORIA: The Cougars remained the only unbeaten team in the WHL, increasing their record to 9-0 with a 5-4 win over Lethbridge and 3-1 triumph against Seattle. Tom Adams and Bob Jansch both scored their second goals of the game against Lethbridge in the third period. It was the only two goals of the period and lifted Cougars into the win. Jansch and Brad Yachimec scored 26 seconds apart to help Victoria to the defeat of Seattle. &#9632;

Bruins Slide Reaches 10

<div class="byline">BY DANNY YOUNG</div>LOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSLOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSQUEBEC CITY&mdash;After a horrendous 0-4 start, the Quebec Remparts have settled down to win five of their last eight games. But there&rsquo;s a problem here. Why does a team with one of the potentially best defenses in the Quebec Major Hockey League have a goals against average over six?Finding a solution to that problem is up to the new coach of the Remparts, Gaston Drapeau, who was hired by general manager Martin Madden to bring badly needed discipline and organization to the club.&ldquo;He (Drapeau) has control of his teams,&rdquo; says Madden.&ldquo;They have to play his way. He likes discipline on and off the ice.&rdquo;The Remparts showed an instant improvement under Drapeau&rsquo;s order, but once again, the pucks are flying into the Remparts&rsquo; net. The situation is disturbing for general manager Madden.&ldquo;We have enough good players on defense to be on par defensively with any other team,&rdquo; says Madden.A big part of the problem has been goaltending. Though he&rsquo;s attempted to both trade and draft for a goalie, Madden has not been able to find someone right for the job. The result has been a lot of easy goals for Quebec opposition.But all the fault cannot be placed on the young goalies. Defensemen Gaston Therrien and Dave Pichette, both with All Star potential, are not making the plays they are capable of.&ldquo;We need more aggressiveness and better defense,&rdquo; says Pichette who missed the first few Rempart games. Talking like a coach, Pichette adds, &ldquo;If the other team doesn&rsquo;t score, you have at least a point out of the game.&rdquo;SHERBROOKE: The Bea vers are invincible! They&rsquo;ve won 10 in a row which has given them a seven point lead over second place Verdun in the overall standings. The Beavers hammered Laval 6-1 with Andre Cote scoring twice. Then they defeated Verdun 6-4 as Louis Begin picked up a pair of goals. Against Quebec, Serge Boisvert scored four consecutive goals and Begin added two more for a 7-4 win.TROIS-RIVIERES: The Draveurs were hit by a couple of injuries. Jean Francois Brisson will be out for three months with tom ligaments, and defenseman Claude Gagnon was hospitalized after falling head first on the ramp leading up to the ice.In their three games, the Draveurs put one notch in each result column. They beat Montreal 8-5 on four Jean Francois Sauve goals. Then, in two games with Hull, they lost the first 6-3 and tied the second 66.MONTREAL: The Juniors only took one of four games, but that was a decisive 10-4 win over Cornwall. Denis Savard and Denis Cyr each had four points while Denis Tremblay picked up the hat trick. In action against Trois-Rivieres, Constant Priondolo scored twice in an 8-5 loss. The Juniors also dropped games to Quebec 6-5, and Chicoutimi 101.VERDUN: The spectacular Hawk line of Normand Aubin, Alain Bouchard, and Chris Valentine put on another great show for the fans at the Verdun Auditorium. Bouchard scored three goals and two assists, Valentine had two goals and three assists, and Aubin had a goal and three assists in a 9-5 win over Quebec.LAVAL: The sinking Voisins have gone six games without a point, and are in last place with a 2-10 record. They lost to Sherbrooke 6-1 as overage goalie Yves Deschenes was faced with 41 shots. At home against Cornwall, Danny Girard and Alain Grenier each scored a pair but the Voisins lost 7-5. In that game they were outshot 55-23.CORNWALL: Mark Craw ford scored twice but the royals were hammered by Montreal 10-4. In Laval, Bobby Hull, Dave Ezard, and Dan Daoust each scored twice as the Royals notched their fourth win of the year with a 7-5 decision over Laval.CHICOUTIMI: Bravo, Sagueneens!!! In the first game following their bus accident, the Sags provided an inspiring 10-1 victory over Montreal. Robert Millette scored four goals and defenseman Gilbert Delorme had five assists. The Sags are now one point out of second place in the overall standings with a 7-3 record.HULL: The Olympics are in fifth place overall, but just two points out of second. Not bad for a team that didn&rsquo;t make the playoffs last season. In two games with Trois-Rivieres, the Olympics won the first 6-3 and tied the second 6-6. In the first game, Mike Brisebois had a hat trick and Jean Poulin added two. In the second game, rookie Jean Chabot scored twice.SHAWINIGAN: The Cats came as close as anybody has to Sherbrooke in the last couple of weeks, but they still lost 5-3. Guy Fournier had two goals in the losing cause. Offense has been a problem for the Cats. They&rsquo;re ninth best in the goal scoring department.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-01283/4020302-1-eng-US/f0029-012.jpg" title="f0029-01" width="565" height="851"><figcaption class="caption-body">Serge Boisvert knocked in four consecutive goals for Sherbrooke.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0029-01

Remparts Ink Coach To Cure Defense Woes

<div class="byline">BY JIM LEAHY</div>LOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSLOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSADIRONDACK&mdash;The Red Wings acquired two new players recently from Detroit and both of them paid immediate dividends for their new club.Greg Joly, a defenseman, and Brent Peterson, a center, arrived in time to help the American Hockey League Wings skate to a 4-3 win over Springfield. Peterson had two assists and Joly one as the duo saw their first ice time of the season. To make room for Joly and Peterson, winger Tom Ross was sent to Kalamazoo of the IHL and Ray McKay, veteran defenseman, was dropped from the club&rsquo;s roster.Peterson was drafted in 1978 as Detroit&rsquo;s second round draft choice, but was out last year after only playing in five games as a result of a broken leg. The native of Calgary played his junior hockey with the WHL Portland Winter Hawks, where he scored 83 points during the 1977-78 campaign. Joly was the NHL&rsquo;s number one draft pick in 1974, but has been a major disappointment in the past. He has been with Detroit for the last three years and is coming off a shoulder injury that limited him to see action in only 20 games last year. His experience and head&rsquo;s up defensive style of play will be a big boost to the Adirondack defense.Following their win in Springfield, the Red Wings returned home and blasted Syracuse 8-4. Five Adirondack players scored with Mal Davis, Rick Vasko and Sylvain Locas getting two each. Captain J. P. LeBlanc celebrated his 33rd birthday with a four-assist night and was voted the star of the game by the local media. The Wings relinquished their temporary lock on first place in the Northern Division when Rochester skated to a 5-2 win at the Civic Center.NEW BRUNSWICK: The AHL&rsquo;s only undefeated team in the early going finally lost a game. After winning their first six contests, the Hawks were blanked 2-0 in Nova Scotia. Prior to that loss, the Hawks had skated to a 3-1 win at Springfield, blanked Rochester 2-0 and edged Nova Scotia 7-6. In addition, a trio of New Brunswick Hawks were leading the AHL scoring derby in the early going. Tim Trimper, Reg Thomas and Bruce Boudreau were pacing AHL scorers during the team&rsquo;s unbeaten skein.Goaltender Murray Bannerman started all five of the Hawks&rsquo; early contests, posting an outstanding 1.60 goals-against-average. He was in the nets for the 2-0 win at Rochester. Bannerman could be a big factor in New Brunswick&rsquo;s drive to the AHL title. Last year he posted a less than spectacular 3.54 GAA in 47 games to go with his 22-14-5 record. Bannerman is obviously off to a great start this year, however, he will have to compete in the league&rsquo;s toughest division and improve on last year&rsquo;s record in order to lift the Hawks higher than their second place finish last season.SYRACUSE: The Firebirds got off to a terrible start, losing their first five games. Even though four of the contests were on the road, the &lsquo;Birds were blasted each time they took to the ice. The record speaks for itself, through five AHL encounters, Syracuse was outscored 33-13.After their gruelling and difficult road trip which opened the AHL season, the Firebirds played their first game on home ice but lost 6-3 to the previously-winless Springfield Indians. The &lsquo;Birds had dropped games in New Brunswick and Halifax in their swing through the Maritimes, and another in Adirondack by an 8-4 margin. They were only in one game, a close 3-2 loss to Nova Scotia.Three new players came to the Firebirds during the week and two left. Left wingers Gilles Bilodeau and Blair Stewart and goaler Ron Low came down from the NHL Quebec Nordiques. The Pittsburgh Penguins recalled goaltender Gordon Laxton, who was sporting a 9.56 GAA in two games with Syracuse. Tough left winger Nelson Burton was sent up to Quebec.MAINE: Will the real Maine Mariners please stand up? In the early going, Maine is finding out that winning three straight Calder Cup titles will be very difficult this season, with four strong teams in their division to eliminate before they can think of another AHL record for this amazing franchise. The Mariners have been struggling. To make matters worse, the parent Philadelphia Flyers called up top-notch Mariner defenseman Mike Busniuk.After losing Busniuk, who was leading the club in scoring at the time, the Mariners were listless in skating to a 1-1 overtime time at home against the weak Binghamton Dusters. Three nights later, it was another low-scoring contest, this time a 2-1 win over Hershey, also at the Civic Center.SPRINGFIELD: The In dians finally got on the winning side of the ledger with a 6-3 victory up in Syracuse. As a matter of fact, things could start to look up for the Tribe now that Hartford is starting to send some quality players to Springfield. Goaltender Terry Richardson is back after a brief stint with the Whalers. He was the best goaltender in the Central Hockey League last year, posting a 2.53 GAA in 40 games with the Salt Lake City Golden Eagles.NOVA SCOTIA: The Voya, geurs are a vastly improved club over last year and will be right in the thick of the Northern Division race. They are a much more aggressive team this season as evidenced by the fact that Chris Nilan was leading the AHL in penalty minutes and Nova Scotia was leading the entire league in penalties, an unusual place for a Montreal-owned team to be.A few player chainges were made during the week. Cente Dave Stewart came to the Vees on loan from Springfield and the Canadiens sent center Rick Meagher back to Halifax. Meagher led the Voyageurs in scoring last season, picking up 81 points on 35 goals and 46 assists. To make room for Stewart and Meagher, defenseman Dave Saatzer was sent to Flint of the IHL. Left winger Dave Norris has been placed on the injured list. &#9632;

New Wing’s Lift Adirondack; Hawks Grounded

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-01320/4020357-1-eng-US/f0030-012.jpg" title="f0030-01" width="563" height="787"><figcaption class="caption-body">Mike Marson is back in the AHL with Binghamton after being cut by L.A.</figcaption></div>BINGHAMTON&mdash;The Binghamton Dusters received some welcome help from their National Hockey League affiliate&mdash;the Los Angeles Kings.The NHL club dropped defenseman Rick Hampton and center Don Howse and left winger Mike Marson down to the Dusters to strengthen their cause in the South Division race.The Dusters hope all three players will help stimulate the club&rsquo;s offense, which ranks only fifth in the AHL. Hampton is an offensive defenseman and both Howse and Marson can score.The Dusters also added free agent defenseman Jim Marsh and received both goalers Doug Keans and Jim Stewart back on the club. The Kings brought Keans back from Saginaw of the IHL and Boston Bruins returned Stewart, who was a walk-on at the Boston training camp this season, from Grand Rapids of the IHL.Stewart is a replacement for Yves Belanger, who has been recalled by Boston.Meanwhile, rookie Craig MacTavish scored a third period goal to give the Dusters a come-from-behind 6-5 win over New Haven, and the club its first victory of the season. Even though Binghamton trailed 4-1 after the first period, they kept pecking away at New Haven&rsquo;s lead before MacTavish scored his gamewinner.ROCHESTER: The Amerks, who are expected to be a top contender for the Southern Division crown this season, came up with a big win on the road when they skated past Adirondack 5-2 in Glens Falls. A few nights earlier, powerful New Brunswick hung a 2-0 whitewash on the Amerks in front of the home crowd. Defense and goaltending has been a strong point for Rochester in early games, they had the best defensive record in the Southern Division at this writing.NEW HAVEN: The Nighthawks split their first six games, but were still favored to run away with the Southern Division race when they get into high gear. In a home-and-home series with the Dusters, New Haven bombed their Southern Division rivals 6-1 at the Coliseum, but blew a 5-2 lead and dropped a 6-5 contest in Binghamton.HERSHEY: After beating the Voyageurs twice in Novd Scotia Hershey continued their long road trip in Maine against the defending AHL champions. The Bears ended up on the short end of a 2-1 Mariner victory. &#9632;

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Dusters Get Help From Kings

LOUISVILL HOCKEY STICKSLOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSFT. WORTH&mdash;There is an old expression that goes something like &ldquo;the slightest change can make a big difference.&rdquo; Two Central Hockey League coaches found out the unrelenting truth of this adage in the past week. Coaches Ron Ullyot of the Ft. Worth Texans and Ted Hampson of the Oklahoma City Stars found out very quickly what a difference one player can make in the entire performance of a team.In Ft. Worth the Texans failed to win in their first four games but not without plenty of scoring chances hindered by continuous frustration. Then came the arrival of one Peter Sturgeon from the Colorado Rockies and suddenly the Texans emerged with two wins in three starts against the Eastern Division leaders, the Birmingham Bulls. The 25-year-old Sturgeon could rank is the least likely of heroes but his presence in Ft. Worth has added greatly to the play of the young Texans.OKLAHOMA CITY: Two new faces appeared in the Oklahoma City lineup and the Stars continue to impress as one of the early season contenders in the West Division. Returning to Oklahoma City was the former Ken McKenzie Trophy winner (Rookie-of-the-Year) in the CHL last year, center Mike Eaves. After setting a new CHL mark for most assists by a rookie in a single season (61) last year, this former University of Wisconsin All-American cracked his ankle in the Minnesota North Stars training camp, but judging his performance last week, The native of Denver, Colorado has everyone convinced that his skating is back at top condition. With two goals and three assists Eaves helped the Stars win two of three starts last week.The other new face in the Oklahoma City lineup belongs to big, tough defenseman Curt Gilles who has been assigned to Oklahoma City by Minnesota. In three games, Gilles collected one goal and three assists but continuously made his 200-pound-plus frame very noticeable on the ice.SALT LAKE CITY: It was difficult to determine who was happier to be at home&mdash;the fans or the players&mdash;but in both cases the parties responde in class fashion. After playing six of their first seven regular season games on the road, the Golden Eagles returned to the friendly confines of the Salt Palace and were welcomed by a near sellout crowd of 9,498 on Friday, Oct. 26. The Eagles treated the largest crowd of the CHL season to an exciting 5-2 victory over the Houston Apollos. The CHL&rsquo;s leading goal-scorer, Richie Hansen, registered a second-period goal to provide the margin of victory before defenseman Bob Hess sealed the win with a pair of final period tallies. Veterans Tom Williams and Chris Bordeleau had scored earlier for the Eagles to offset a pair of goals by Apollo rookies Mike Toal and Max Kostovich.HOUSTON: Even though it is still early in the season, coach Al Rollins will be looking for a formula to enable his Apollos to play as well on the road as they have in their two starts in Houston. Winless in four games on the road, the Apollos have been struck by some early season recalls that have taken the likes of high-scoring forwards Ron Areshen-koff and Wayne Bianchin; but Rollins is confident he&rsquo;ll get some new faces in the lineup as the Apollos begin to play a tougher portion of their schedule.The latest home ice conquest for the Apollos was a 7-4 victory over the Tulsa Oilers on Oct. 24.BIRMINGHAM: There will be a new face in the city of Birmingham as the Bulls have secured the services of the 15year veteran National Hockey League performer Ken Hodge. Nine of those years were spent in Boston where on two different occasions the 35-year-old right-winger tallied over 100 points and during the 1973-74 season reached the coveted 50-goal plateau, scoring these goals for the Bruins while earning a first-team All Star berth that season. Thus, Ken Hodge brings plenty of experience to his new position with the Birmingham Bulls.The Bulls continue to be the early season surprise in the CHL, winning five of their first seven starts. The team truly reflects the calculating manner of their successful veteran coach John Brophy. There seems to be little wasted motion in the Bulls&rsquo; performance. Despite their winning performance the Bulls have been averaging only 22 shots on goal per game which is by far the lowest total in the CHL. However, the Bulls have been compensating for this low quality production with excellent quality, hitting on 24 of 157 shots for the best scoring percentage of 15.3. As long as the Bulls continue their accuracy on the goal and continue to receive some outstanding goaltending from the duo of Rejean Lemelin and Tim Bernhardt, the Bulls will provide some interesting moments during the course of their initial season in the league.DALLAS: Following a stick swinging battle and an ensuing bench-emptying eruption and seven game misconduct penalties, the Dallas Black Hawks emerged from their home debut with a 6-4 victory over the Cincinnati Stingers. Almost 5,000 fans delighted to the performance of the defending Adams Cup champions who tied a CHL record for most consecutive home ice victories&mdash;15&mdash;with this decision. Six different Hawks scored in the contest with rookie forward Gary Lupul the most impressive, accumulating one goal and three assists in his debut in front of the hometown fans.The big fracas in the game occurred with only 23 seconds left in the second period and the Hawks leading 6-3. For the Black Hawks it was Ernie Hicke while for the Stingers it was Paul Stewart who engaged in the stick-swinging episode before the Stingers&rsquo; Dale Ya-kiwchuk led the charge off the benches. Referee Bob Henry banished six of the combatants from the contest before sending everyone to the dressing room so that some semblance of order could be restored, With all the players missing on both sides the final 20 minutes of play was finished in a relatively quiet manner.INDIANAPOLIS: Faced with a possible player shortage, coach Bert Marshall needed to look no further than through his own mirror to find a more than adequate replacement for his injury-stricken Checkers. Following injuries to Billy Carroll and Neil Hawryliw and the callups of Anders Kallur and Yvon Vautour, the rookie coach Marshall found himself with only 12 healthy bodies so the 36-year-old veteran of 16 NHL seasons with Detroit, California and the New York Islanders returned to the active roster for the Oct. 28 game against Oklahoma City. However, the coach dressed but did not appear in this contest as the Checkers avenged the previous evening&rsquo;s defeat at the hands of the Stars with a 5-2 victory. Another of the new Checkers&rsquo; Dave Cameron, who joined the team earlier in the day from Ft. Wayne (International Hockey League) scored the game-winning goal midway in the second period. Hector Marini scored twice while Kelly Davis added a power play goal and veteran Alex McKendry continued his early season torrid scoring pace with his fifth goal of the young season in only seven games.TULSA: As the season progresses rookie coach Mike Smith is beginning to make believers out of the rest of the CHL as the Oilers continue to rank as the most impressive early season performers. One of the major reasons for the quick start by the Oilers has been the presence of Markus Mattssonm goal. The former Finnish National Star now in his third professional season presently leads all CHL goaltenders with a 1.75 goals against average, allowing only seven goals in four starts.CINCINNATI: To say that the debut of the Cincinnati Stingers has been anything less than spectacular could be the understatement of the decade. The Stingers have been struggling, both on the ice and at the gate at home. In four home ice appearances Cincinnati has been averaging slightly less than 2,000 fans per game which is certainly well below early-season expectations. Perhaps their early season inability to put the puck in the net has been one of the major difficulties for Al Karlander&rsquo;s crew.However, one of the bright spots for the Stingers has been rookie Bernie Saunders. The former Western Michigan star has tallied six goals in eight games, including his first professional hat trick in the Stingers&rsquo; lone home ice win, a 5-4 triumph over the Dallas Black Hawks on Oct.25. &#9632;

Newcomers Buoy Fortunes Of Texans, Stars

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Central Hockey League Rosters

<div class="byline">BY BUD GALLMEIER</div>LOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSLOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSMILWAUKEE&mdash;The Milwaukee Admirals haven&rsquo;t been around long enough to establish tradition. This is their second voyage in the International Hockey League. But Milwaukee isn&rsquo;t an unfamiliar name to veteran IHL followers. The Admirals hope to put those memories to rest for good.The Milwaukee Chiefs skated for two seasons in the IHL (1952-53 and 1953-54). They finished dead last both times, once in a six-team league and the second time around in a nine-club circuit.Milwaukee tried it again during the 1960-61 season. That was the year&mdash;or partial year&mdash;of the Falcons. The team folded after 17 games with a 115-1 record.The Admirals haven&rsquo;t lost the loser stigma which labeled their predecessors&mdash;yet. But in two full seasons the Admirals have almost doubled the victory total of the Chiefs and Falcons.Last season Milwaukee posted a 21-48-11 record. The first time out it was 27-38-15. The two-year win column totals 48, one less than the combined Chief-Falcon log. And last season the Admirals carried the Grand Rapids Owls to eight games (that&rsquo;s right, eight) before bowing out of the playoffs. The &ldquo;extra&rdquo; game resulted from league action involving an ineligible Grand Rapids&rsquo; player. The game was ordered replayed.Enough of last season. In fact, new Milwaukee coach Richard Jamieson looks at the current season as the &ldquo;first&rdquo;. &ldquo;This is a new beginning for all of us,&rdquo; was his message as he greeted his players.And it looks that way, too. The roster features a lot of new faces. The uniforms are brand new, decorated with fleur des lys to represent the team&rsquo;s new affiliation with the Quebec Nordiques.But Jamieson isn&rsquo;t making any rash predictions. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not a dreamer. I like to have my two feet on the floor. I can&rsquo;t start saying that we&rsquo;re going to win the cup. I might think it inside but we can&rsquo;t go around saying that. If you only have $100, you can only spend $100. If you&rsquo;ve got $1,000, you can probably spend $1,000.&rdquo;Jamieson has instilled a new style of play for the Admirals. It&rsquo;s a more wide open game. Under Jamieson, the Admirals will use the entire ice surface. He stresses speed and aggressive play. And muscle.&ldquo;Not violence,&rdquo; Jamieson will point out, &ldquo;but last year everybody thought it was fun to play in Milwaukee. They didn&rsquo;t hit at all. There was a party on the ice and then a party afterwards. This year it&rsquo;s going to be a different story.&rdquo;Three games into the current season, the Admirals were still losers. But the 1-2 record is misleading. Both losses came to defending Turner Cup champion Kalamazoo, one on the road. The encouraging statistic is the one victory. It came on the road&mdash;and in the toughest rink for visiting teams&mdash;Grand Rapids.PORT HURON: New coach Doug Hinton got off to a good start with a pair of victories. The Flags opened at Muskegon with a 3-1 triumph, breaking loose in the third period after neither team could score in the first 40 minutes.A 4-3 thriller over Flint marked the home opener with veteran Brian Kinsella getting the winning goal on a power play. Kinsella teamed with two other veterans, Larry Gould and Gary Murphy, to provide most of the fire power. The trio had three goals and six assists in the win over Flint.The Generals got even the next time out at home, 4-2.FLINT: Marc Boileau, who has turned a lot of hunches into victories during his coaching career, struck it rich again as Flint snapped a two-game losing streak for their first victory of the season over Port Huron at home, 4-3.Boileau put together a line comprised of Gerry Leroux, Mark Wells and Paul Clarke.Boileau hadn&rsquo;t seen Wells until shortly before the game. But he had heard he was a good skater. &ldquo;I wanted a line with speed. I knew Leroux and Clarke could skate but 1 never saw Wells. I talked to Herb Brooks (Olympic coach) and he told me about Wells.&rdquo;Leroux got the winning goal, on a rebound of Clarke&rsquo;s shot. Wells set the play in motion.MUSKEGON: The Mohawks had their home opener spoiled, 3-1, by the Port Huron Flags but are still skating .500 following a pair of games. And the Mohawks never could say that last season.Following the heart-breaking loss to the Flags, the Mohawks bounced back to outscore Toledo, 9-5. Bill Hamilton led the attack with a three-goal hat trick.Coach Gerry Moore was happy with the win&mdash;but not the style of play. &ldquo;The game was a shambles,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The opener with Port Huron was a helluva good hockey game and we lost it. Then we play like this and win. It was like a silver dollar rolling down a sidewalk and someone yelling, &lsquo;Here, you take it.&rsquo; &ldquo;FORT WAYNE: The Komets, who started with an eight-game winning streak last season, managed only one this time out.The Komets blanked Grand Rapids, 4-0, behind veteran goalie Robbie Irons in their opener but then dropped a pair to the new Dayton Gems in a home-and-home series. The Gems won with comebacks, nipping the Komets in the road game, 6-5, and coming from a 3-0 deficit for a 6-3 win at home.DAYTON: If the old hockey axiom about strength at center being the key to success, then the new Dayton Gems could be the surprise of the season. In posting a 2-1 record, the Gems have gotten excellent play from their three centers.Jim Snodgrass has four goals and two assists already&mdash;Mike Hartman two and two and Glen Tomalty also two and two.The opening night crowd was disappointing (2,652) to general manager Keith Sprunk. But not discouraging. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll have to work harder,&rdquo; he said. The first-nighters agree on one thing, however. The new Gems will be an exciting team&mdash;if not a championship one.TOLEDO: New coach Greg Pilling had a successful home debut as coach of the Goaldiggers if not an artisitc one Toledo stumbled along but finally put the young Dayton Gems away, 8-4.&ldquo;We had the jitters at the start. There&rsquo;s no question about that,&rdquo; said Pilling, who led Fort Wayne to the league championship in 1977-78. &ldquo;The players wanted to succeed instantly in front of the home crowd and it created breaks for Dayton.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-01298/4020443-1-eng-US/f0032-012.jpg" title="f0032-01" width="569" height="724"><figcaption class="caption-body">Veteran Larry Gould and linemates totalled three goals and six assists against Flint.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Milwaukee Hoping To Sink Former Image

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0032-02" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-02228/4020474-1-eng-US/f0032-022.jpg"></div> &#9632;

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INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE ROSTERS

<div class="byline">BY PATRICK LYON</div>LOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSLOUISVILLE HOCKEY STICKSRICHMOND&mdash;At press time a decision was expected on the possibility of National Hockey League winger Ken Hodge playing with the Rifles.A mainstay in the NHL for many seasons, Hodge was assigned to Richmond by the New York Rangers, but his playing status remained uncertain while he requested an arbitration ruling from NHL president John Ziegler on the legalities of the Rangers sending him to an Eastern Hockey League team.According to a spokesman in the Rifles&rsquo; front office, Hodge believes he has a clause in his contract which will nullify the Rangers&rsquo; move. When this issue went to press, Hodge was working out with Richmond and awaited a decision by Zeigler.The 12 year veteran has been with Chicago, Boston and New York, but hasn&rsquo;t competed since his elbow surgery a year ago. Hodge once starred on a line that featured current New York center Phil Esposito and Boston Bruin winger Wayne Cashman when all three were teammates with the Bruins.The 35-year-old Hodge last played hockey in the American Hockey League during the 7778 campaign when he participated in 52 games with the New Haven Nighthawks. In his last season with the Rangers, 1976-77, Hodge had 21 goals and 41 assists for 62 points and has accumulated 326 goals and 468 assists for 794 points in his NHL career.The Rifles began the regular season with a 3-3 tie against Hampton. Lawrie Nisker, a strong goal scorer in the preseason, kept up his pace with two goals, Mike Gibbons getting the other. Gibbons&rsquo; lamplighter came at 18:20 of the first period and was the first goal ever for the new Richmond franchise.When the smoke finally cleared, Cap Raeder and Tom Semanchyk had won the two goalie positions with the Rifles. Michel Belhumeur, one of four netminders on hand during the exhibition season, announced his retirement from hockey and joined the front office staff as a member of the public relations department.ERIE: Blades&rsquo; goaltender Carey Walker picked up where he left off a year ago with a glittering opening night performance as the Blades began the regular season with a 4-1 triumph.Walker, who was instrumental in helping the Blades to the EHL championship last season, kicked out 36 shots, including 18 in the first period. After playing scoreless hockey for more than two periods, the Blades broke the tight contest open with three goals in a span of one minute and 32 seconds. Dave Dornseif, Val James and Kevin Zappia got the first three goals, Paul Devlin scoring the final tally.Coach Nick Polano had his defense bolstered by the return of Daniel Poulin, a first team All Star with the Blades and Mike Sanford, acquired by the Blades after being cut by the Mohawks.UTICA: The Mohawks&rsquo; opening night win, a 7-5 decision over Johnstown, was the first home opening victory for a Utica based club in six years.A crowd of 2,026 saw Brian Drumm contribute two goals and an assist with Gordie St. Clair notching a pair of assists to spark the club. Tom O&rsquo;Toole and Doug Melvin won out in the goalies&rsquo; competition with O&rsquo;Toole doing the majority of the first game&rsquo;s work before he was shaken up and replaced by Melvin.Coach Larry Mickey was pleased with the good team effort displayed as the Mohawks used three goals by Lee Keller, Bob Ferguson and Ray Kurpis to overtake the Wings, who had built up a 5-4 advantage.JOHNSTOWN: Coach Marty Read saw his young team lose the game in Utica after holding the lead on three different occasions, but he feels it&rsquo;s just a matter of time before his kids start to mature and really start showing their talent.The Red Wings were without any veteran players on the squad and Read corrected the situation when he signed veterans Harry Shaw and Ed Starkey. Defenseman Shaw, a mainstay on last year&rsquo;s team, will give Johnstown some valued leadership with Starkey providing assistance on the wings. Winger Wes George is another newcomer to the Johnstown lineup.Randy Wilson had a goal and assist in the opener. Johnstown split a pair of exhibitions, beating Hampton 7-5 and dropping an 8-5 game to Baltimore.BALTIMORE: The Clippers were making preparations in anticipation of a big crowd for their November home opener at the Baltimore Civic Center which will hold 7,593 fans for hockey.Coach Gene Ubriaco&rsquo;s Clippers lost their road opener in Erie 4-1 after winning two straight road games in exhibition play. Duke Johnson could muster the only goal against the Blades as Baltimore held the edge in shots, 37-21, but not the final score.HAMPTON: A crowd of 2,800 was present for the Aces&rsquo; home opener, Hampton rallying for a 3-3 overtime tie with the new Richmond club.Newcomer Terry Ballingall, Lome Rombough and Bo Schryer each chipped in a goal and picked up one assist apiece to account for the Hampton scoring. Free agent Ballingall is expected to help coach Muzz MacPherson with his defensive alignment.Hampton lost exhibitions to Johnstown 7-5, Richmond 6-2 and Baltimore 4-3.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-01267/4020505-1-eng-US/f0033-012.jpg" title="f0033-01" width="574" height="806"><figcaption class="caption-body">Ken Hodge, the former NHLer, has been assigned to Richmond by the Rangers but he is contesting the move.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Hodge Tests Rangers’ Option; Hot Goaling Makes Erie Winner

ATLANTA&mdash;Nilsson 7, t, 9, MacMillan 1, Russell 1, Houston 2, Chouinard 3, Pronovost 3, Clement 1, Vall 8.BOSTON&mdash;Schmautz 7, Smith 1, Middleton 3, Marcotte 1, Ratelie 4, Miller 2, 3. McNab 5, McCrimmon 1.BUFFALO&mdash;Dudley 1, Perreault 8, Mongrain 1, McKegney 2 Gare 7.CHICAGO&mdash;Mulvey 2, Daigle 1, Kerr 4.COLORADO&mdash;Berry 2, Ramage 1, Z Robert 3, 4, Hickey 3, 4, Saleski 3, Delorme 1, Turner 1.DETROIT&mdash;Foligno 3, Sobchuk 1, Mahovllch 2, Thompson 6, Nedomansky 4, McCourt 5.EDMONTON&mdash;Chipperfield 1, 2, Gretzky 3, 4. Newman 1, Callighen 3, Weir 4, MacDonald 9,10.HARTFORD&mdash;Allison 3, Keon 1, Stoughton 4, G. Howe 3,4,5, M. Howe 3, Rogers 2, Hangsleben 1.LOS ANGELES&mdash;Dionne 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Hopkins 1, Goldup 1, Jensen 3, 4, Simmer 12,13,14, Goring 4, Halward 5.MINNESOTA&mdash;Shmyr 1, MacAdam 2, 3, 4, Hartsburg 3, 4, McCarthy 3, 4, Zanussl 4, Sharpley 4, Andersson 3, Sargent 3, Smith S.MONTREAL&mdash;Gainey 3, Houle 3, Lapointe 1, Lambert 2, Larouche 7, Shutt 8, Latleur 11, 12, Mondou 3, Napier 2.ISLANDERS&mdash;Howatt 1, Tambelllnl 3, Persson 1, Trottier 4, 7, Bossy 7, 8, 9, Gillies 4, Vautour 2, 3.RANGERS&mdash;Nilsson 7, Johnstone 2, Hedberg 5, 4, Murdoch 5, Marois 2, Esposito 4, Don Maloney 2.PHILADELPHIA&mdash;Bridgman 1, 2, MacLeish 5, Leach 10, 11, Barnes 2, Hill 2 Barber 4, 5, Linseman 2, Holmgren 7.PITTSBURGH&mdash;Kehoe 4, Malone 2, 3, 4, Sheppard 3, McAdam 4, Llbett 4.QUEBEC&mdash;Cloutier 8, 9, Fltchner 2, Ftorek 4, Bernier 3, 4, Hislop 1, Smrke 1, Hoganson 2, Weir 1, Leduc 4.ST. LOUIS&mdash;Babych 4, Laurence 1, Klassen 2, 3, Federko 4, 5, LaPointe 2.TORONTO&mdash;McKechnie 1, Gardner 2, Slttier 4, 7, Maloney 4, Williams 5, 4, Butler 1.VANCOUVER&mdash;Gillis 3, Smyl 4, Valve 5, Blight 2, 3, Gradin 3, Lever 8.WASHINGTON&mdash;Lehtonen 2, Rausse 3, Bouchard 1, Edberg 4.WINNIPEG&mdash;Sullivan 5, 4, 7, Wilson 3, 4, 5, Lindstrom 2, Melrose 1, Douin 2 Norwich 3. &#9632;

NHL’S SCORERS THIS WEEK

(Standings on Mon. Nov. 5)<h2>NORRIS DIVISION</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-254/4020864-1-eng-US/f0034-252.jpg" title="f0034-25" width="531" height="144"></div><h2>ADAMS DIVISION</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-264/4020857-1-eng-US/f0034-262.jpg" title="f0034-26" width="531" height="122"></div><h2>PATRICK DIVISION</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-273/4020850-1-eng-US/f0034-272.jpg" title="f0034-27" width="531" height="121"></div><h2>SMYTHE DIVISION</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-282/4020843-1-eng-US/f0034-282.jpg" title="f0034-28" width="533" height="146"></div><h2>GAMES COMPLETED</h2><h3>Tue. Oct. 30</h3>Colorado 1 at Atlanta 3Montreal 2 at Washington 2Boston 4 at Los Angeles 4Edmonton 1 at St. Louis 2<h3>Wed. Oct. 31</h3>Islanders 2 at Vancouver 2Hartford 4 at Toronto 2Colorado 2 at Pittsburgh 4Minnesota 5 at Detroit 3Buffalo 0 at Chicago 0Winnipeg 5 at Quebec 2<h3>Thu. Nov. 1</h3>Rangers 2 at Los Angeles 4St. Louis 1 at Philadelphia 3Minnesota 1 at Montreal 5<h3>Fri. Nov. 2</h3>Islanders 5 at Edmonton 7Quebec 4 at Atlanta 4Washington 1 at Winnipeg 1Toronto 3 at Hartford 5Boston 3 at Vancouver 3<h3>Sat. Nov. 3</h3>Rangers 2 at Colorado 7Philadelphia 5 at Montreal 3Atlanta 3 at Pittsburgh 3Washington 1 at Minnesota 7Chicago 0 at Detroit 2Los Angeles 1 at St. Louis 4Buffalo 4 at Toronto 3<h3>Sun. Nov. 4</h3>Rangers 4 at Vancouver 2Islanders 4 at Winnipeg 4Buffalo 1 at Philadelphia 3Detroit 1 at Quebec 5Los Angeles 5 at Chicago 3Boston 2 at Edmonton 1 &#9632;

f0034-25

NHL SCORE BOARD

<h2>NOVEMBER</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-235/4020902-1-eng-US/f0034-232.jpg" title="f0034-23" width="550" height="985"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-246/4020895-1-eng-US/f0034-242.jpg" title="f0034-24" width="546" height="1022"></div> &#9632;

f0034-23

WHERE NHL TEAMS PLAY

<h2>Tue.oct.30 COLORADO 1, ATLANTA 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-01293/4020788-1-eng-US/f0034-012.jpg" title="f0034-01" width="532" height="458"></div><h2>MONTREAL 2, WASHINGTON 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-02234/4020781-1-eng-US/f0034-022.jpg" title="f0034-02" width="535" height="482"></div><h2>BOSTON 4, LOS ANGELES 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-03175/4020774-1-eng-US/f0034-032.jpg" title="f0034-03" width="528" height="410"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-04112/4020767-1-eng-US/f0034-042.jpg" title="f0034-04" width="532" height="219"></div><h2>EDMONTON 1, ST. LOUIS 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-0574/4020760-1-eng-US/f0034-052.jpg" title="f0034-05" width="535" height="430"></div><h2>ISLANDERS 2, VANCOUVER 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-0651/4020753-1-eng-US/f0034-062.jpg" title="f0034-06" width="535" height="478"></div><h2>HARTFORD 4, TORONTO 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-0745/4020746-1-eng-US/f0034-072.jpg" title="f0034-07" width="535" height="503"></div><h2>COLORADO 2, PITTSBURGH 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-0840/4020739-1-eng-US/f0034-082.jpg" title="f0034-08" width="538" height="503"></div><h2>MINNESOTA 5, DETROIT 3.</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-0930/4020732-1-eng-US/f0034-092.jpg" title="f0034-09" width="536" height="599"></div><h2>BUFFALO 0, CHICAGO 0</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-1028/4020725-1-eng-US/f0034-102.jpg" title="f0034-10" width="529" height="408"></div><h2>WINNIPEG 5, QUEBEC 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-1124/4020718-1-eng-US/f0034-112.jpg" title="f0034-11" width="540" height="649"></div><h2>RANGERS 2, LOS ANGELES 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-1222/4020711-1-eng-US/f0034-122.jpg" title="f0034-12" width="536" height="504"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-1317/4020704-1-eng-US/f0034-132.jpg" title="f0034-13" width="536" height="123"></div><h2>ST. LOUIS 1, PHILADELPHIA 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-1414/4020697-1-eng-US/f0034-142.jpg" title="f0034-14" width="536" height="458"></div><h2>MINNESOTA 1, MONTREAL 5</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-1513/4020690-1-eng-US/f0034-152.jpg" title="f0034-15" width="538" height="530"></div><h2>ISLANDERS 5, EDMONTON 7</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-1613/4020683-1-eng-US/f0034-162.jpg" title="f0034-16" width="541" height="696"></div><h2>QUEBEC 4, ATLANTA 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-1710/4020676-1-eng-US/f0034-172.jpg" title="f0034-17" width="533" height="604"></div><h2>WASHINGTON 1. WINNIPEG 1</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-189/4020669-1-eng-US/f0034-182.jpg" title="f0034-18" width="532" height="457"></div><h2>TORONTO 3, HARTFORD 5</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-198/4020662-1-eng-US/f0034-192.jpg" title="f0034-19" width="532" height="365"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-207/4020655-1-eng-US/f0034-202.jpg" title="f0034-20" width="532" height="362"></div><h2>BOSTON 3, VANCOUVER 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-216/4020648-1-eng-US/f0034-212.jpg" title="f0034-21" width="535" height="601"></div><h2>Sat, Nov, 3 RANGERS 2, COLORADO 7</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-226/4020641-1-eng-US/f0034-222.jpg" title="f0034-22" width="532" height="600"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-02232/4020634-1-eng-US/f0035-022.jpg" title="f0035-02" width="527" height="79"></div><h2>PHILADELPHIA S, MONTREAL 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-03170/4020627-1-eng-US/f0035-032.jpg" title="f0035-03" width="536" height="600"></div><h2>WASHINGTON 1, MINNESOTA 7</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-04138/4020620-1-eng-US/f0035-042.jpg" title="f0035-04" width="534" height="698"></div><h2>CHICAGO 0, DETROIT 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-05106/4020613-1-eng-US/f0035-052.jpg" title="f0035-05" width="527" height="292"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-0687/4020606-1-eng-US/f0035-062.jpg" title="f0035-06" width="532" height="175"></div><h2>LOS ANGELES 1, ST. LOUIS 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-0778/4020599-1-eng-US/f0035-072.jpg" title="f0035-07" width="534" height="505"></div><h2>BUFFALO 4, TORONTO 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-0860/4020592-1-eng-US/f0035-082.jpg" title="f0035-08" width="533" height="505"></div><h2>ATLANTA 3, PITTSBURGH 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-0957/4020585-1-eng-US/f0035-092.jpg" title="f0035-09" width="529" height="550"></div><h2>RANGERS 4. VANCOUVER 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1049/4020578-1-eng-US/f0035-102.jpg" title="f0035-10" width="531" height="570"></div><h2>ISLANDERS 4, WINNIPEG 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1144/4020571-1-eng-US/f0035-112.jpg" title="f0035-11" width="531" height="650"></div><h2>BUFFALO 1, PHILADELPHIA 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1235/4020564-1-eng-US/f0035-122.jpg" title="f0035-12" width="530" height="527"></div><h2>DETROIT 1, QUEBEC 5</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1330/4020557-1-eng-US/f0035-132.jpg" title="f0035-13" width="532" height="528"></div><h2>LOS ANGELES S, CHICAGO 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1427/4020550-1-eng-US/f0035-142.jpg" title="f0035-14" width="530" height="266"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1523/4020543-1-eng-US/f0035-152.jpg" title="f0035-15" width="535" height="396"></div><h2>BOSTON 2, EDMONTON 1</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1621/4020536-1-eng-US/f0035-162.jpg" title="f0035-16" width="536" height="434"></div> &#9632;

f0034-01

NATIONAL LEAGUE SUMMARIES

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0035-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-01283/4020933-1-eng-US/f0035-012.jpg"></div> &#9632;

f0035-01

NHL TEAM ROSTERS

<h2>AMERICAN LEAGUE</h2>(Standings On Wed. Nov. 7)<h3>NORTHERN DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-01258/4021041-1-eng-US/f0036-012.jpg" title="f0036-01" width="507" height="144"></div><h3>SOUTHERN DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-02196/4021034-1-eng-US/f0036-022.jpg" title="f0036-02" width="507" height="126"></div><h2>GAMES COMPLETED</h2>Tue. Nov. 30Springfield 3 at Adirondack 4Maine 3 at New Brumwick 5Wed. Oct. 31Adirondack 4 at Hershey 4Nova Scotia 3 at Syracuse 5Fri. Nov. 2few BrunswickS at Adirondack 2Springfield 5 at New Haven 4Maine 2 at Nova Scotia 1Rochester 1 at Syracuse 4Sat. Nov. 3New Haven 3 at Binghamton 2Syracuse 1 at Hershey 4Adirondack 1 at Maine 3New Brumwick 5 at Springfield 3Sun. Nov. 4Rochester 3 at New Brumwick 3Syracuse 3 at New Haven 3<h2>LEADING SCORERS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-03146/4021027-1-eng-US/f0036-032.jpg" title="f0036-03" width="534" height="365"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-0492/4021020-1-eng-US/f0036-042.jpg" title="f0036-04" width="528" height="102"></div><h2>CENTRAL LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Tue. Nov. 6)<h3>EAST DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-0560/4021013-1-eng-US/f0036-052.jpg" title="f0036-05" width="511" height="121"></div><h3>WEST DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-0643/4021006-1-eng-US/f0036-062.jpg" title="f0036-06" width="513" height="123"></div><h2>GAMES COMPLETED</h2>Tue. Oct. 30Birmingham 5 at Oklahoma City 3Cincinnati 6 at Tulsa 6Wed. Oct. 31Birmingham 2 at Houston 2Thu. Nov. 1Fort Worth 6 at Houston 2Dallas 4 at Oklahoma City 2Fri. Nov. 2Cincinnati 2 at Birmingham 4Tulsa 4 at Dallas 3Fort Worth 0 at Indianapolis 1Oklahoma City 3 at Salt Lake 4Sat. Nov. 3Cincinatti 5 at Birmingham 4Indianapolis 3 at Houston 1Oklahoma City 4 at Salt Lake 3Dallas 3 at Tulsa 0Sun. Nov. 4Birmingham 2 at U.S. Olympic 5Fort Worth 2 at Cincinnati 7<h2>LEADING SCORERS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-0739/4020999-1-eng-US/f0036-072.jpg" title="f0036-07" width="512" height="297"></div><h2>INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Fri. Nov. 9)<h3>NORTH DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-0834/4020992-1-eng-US/f0036-082.jpg" title="f0036-08" width="528" height="147"></div><h3>SOUTH DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-0928/4020985-1-eng-US/f0036-092.jpg" title="f0036-09" width="532" height="149"></div><h2>GAMES COMPLETED</h2>Tue. Oct. 30Port Huron 4 at Milwaukee 3Wed. Oct. 31Saginaw 5 at Fort Wayne 7Kalamazoo 3 at Grand Rapids 0Fri. Nov. 2Fort Wayne 4 at Muskegon 3Grand Rapids 1 at Port Huron 7Toledo 3 at Flint 5Kalamazoo 3 at Saginaw 4Dayton 2 at Milwaukee 7Sat. Nov. 3Toledo 2 at Fort WayneFlint 3 at Muskegon 3Saginaw 4 at Port Huron 5Milwaukee 3 at Dayton 3Grand Rapids 4 at Kalamazoo 4Sun. Nov. 4Muskegon 5 at Dayton 3Kalamazoo 4 at Flint 4Port Huron 2 at Saginaw 6Fort Wayne 4 at Grand Rapids 3<h2>LEADING SCORERS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-1025/4020978-1-eng-US/f0036-102.jpg" title="f0036-10" width="529" height="310"></div><h2>EASTERN LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Tue. Nov. 6)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-1122/4020971-1-eng-US/f0036-112.jpg" title="f0036-11" width="507" height="169"></div><h2>GAMES COMPLETED</h2>Wed. Oct. 31Baltimore 2 at Richmond 5Erie 5 at Utica 1Fri. Nov. 2Hampton 5 at Utica 7Richmond 1 at Johnstown 4Sat. Nov. 3Richmond 1 at Utica 1Hampton 2 at Johnstown 11Sun. Nov. 4Hampton 1 at Erie 5<h2>LEADING SCORERS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-1220/4020964-1-eng-US/f0036-122.jpg" title="f0036-12" width="510" height="360"></div> &#9632;

f0036-01

MINOR SCOREBOARD

<h2>ONTARIO MAJOR LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Tues. Nov. 6)<h3>EMMS DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-1317/4021121-1-eng-US/f0036-132.jpg" title="f0036-13" width="503" height="168"></div><h3>LEYDEN DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-1414/4021114-1-eng-US/f0036-142.jpg" title="f0036-14" width="506" height="146"></div><h2>GAMES COMPLETED</h2>Tue. Oct. 30Kingston 1 at Niagara Falls 5Thu. Nov. 1Niagara Falls 3 at Windsor 4Toronto 3 at Peterborough 4London 5 at Oshawa 7Fri. Nov. 2Niagara Falls 5 at Sault Ste.Marie 4 Peterborough 8 at Sudbury 2Brantford 4 at Kitchener 9Oshawa 4 at Ottawa 2Kingston 9 at London 7Sat. Nov. 3Brantford 4 at Toronto 3Sun. Nov. 4Peterborough 4 at Sault Ste.Marie 4 Niagara Falls 5 at Sudbury 4Ottawa 4 at Oshawa 4Kingston 8 at Kitchener 5Toronto 4 at London 3<h2>QUEBEC MAJOR LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Mon. Nov. 5)<h3>LeBEL DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-1514/4021107-1-eng-US/f0036-152.jpg" title="f0036-15" width="527" height="144"></div><h3>DILIO DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-1613/4021100-1-eng-US/f0036-162.jpg" title="f0036-16" width="531" height="123"></div><h2>GAMES COMPLETED</h2>Mon. Oct. 22Cornwall 8 at Laval 4Tue. Oct. 23Sherbrooke 5 at Quebec 5Shawinigan 1 at Trois-Rivieres 4Wed. Oct. 24Chicoutimi 3 at Hull 5Trois-Rivieres 4 at Laval 4Thu. Oct. 25Chicoutimi 3 at Cornwall 7Fri. Oct. 24Cornwall 5 at Shawinigan 10Laval 5 at Sherbrooke 11 Hull 5 at Verdun 5Sat. Oct. 27Montreal 8 at Quebec 4Sun. Oct. 28Laval 5 at Chicoutimi 8Trois-Rivieres 5 at Cornwall 4Quebec 3 at Hull 4Verdun 2 at Montreal 4Sherbrooke 3 at Shawinigan 3mon. Oct 29Hull 4 at Laval 5 Tue. Oct. 30Verdun 9 at Quebec 4Sherbrooke 10 at Trois-Rivieres 3Wed. Oct. 31Shawinigan 2 at Cornwall 5Trois-Rivieres 4 at Chicoutimi 10Thu. Nov. 1Montreal 4 at Verdun 3Laval 1 at Montreal 7Trois-Rivieres 5 at Quebec 4Verdun 3 at Shawinigan 5Chicoutimi 7 at Sherbrooke 11Sun. Nov. 4Sherbrooke 3 at Chicoutimi 7Montreal 5 at Cornwall 1Shawinigan 5 at Hull 3Quebec 3 al Trois-Rivieres 10Laval 2 at Verdun 9<h2>LEADING SCORERS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-1710/4021093-1-eng-US/f0036-172.jpg" title="f0036-17" width="527" height="268"></div><h2>WESTERN LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Tue. Nov. 6)<h3>WESTERN DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-1810/4021086-1-eng-US/f0036-182.jpg" title="f0036-18" width="509" height="123"></div><h3>EASTERN DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-199/4021079-1-eng-US/f0036-192.jpg" title="f0036-19" width="512" height="194"></div><h2>GAMES COMPLETED</h2>Tue. Oct. 30New Westminster 3 at Billings 4Brandon 0 at Victoria 9Wed. Oct. 31Lethbridge 2 at Regina 7New Westminster 5 at Great Falls 5Thu. Nov. 1Seattle 4 at Portland 10Great Falls 2 at Billings 10Fri. Nov. 2Brandon 3 at Lethbridge 4New Westminster 3 at Billings 5Calgary 4 at Saskatoon 7Sat. Nov. 3Brandon 3 at Medicine Hat 4New Westminster 5 at Great Falls 4Victoria 4 at Portland 2Sun. Nov. 4New Westminster 4 at Lethbridge 2Calgary 5 at Regina 7Portland 5 at Seattle 4Medicine Hat 4 at Saskatoon 3<h2>LEADING SCORERS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-208/4021072-1-eng-US/f0036-202.jpg" title="f0036-20" width="580" height="690"></div> &#9632;

f0036-13

AMATEUR SCOREBOARD

1&mdash;Montreal2&mdash;Chicago3&mdash;Boston4&mdash;Rangers5&mdash;Detroit6&mdash;Toronto7&mdash;Philadelphia8&mdash;Los Angeles9&mdash;St. Louis10&mdash;Minnesota11&mdash;Pittsburgh12&mdash;Islanders13&mdash;Vancouver14&mdash;Buffalo15&mdash;Atlanta16&mdash;Washington17&mdash;Colorado18&mdash;Edmonton19&mdash;Hartford20&mdash;Quebec21&mdash;Winnipeg<h2>OTHER AFFILIATIONS</h2>22&mdash;Chicago&mdash;Toronto23&mdash;Boston&mdash;Los Angeles24&mdash;Quebec&mdash;Pittsburgh25&mdash;Edmonton&mdash;Winnipeg26&mdash;Montreal&mdash;Chicago27&mdash;Vancouver&mdash;Islanders28&mdash;Boston&mdash;Pittsburgh29&mdash;Atlanta&mdash;Colorado30&mdash;Washington&mdash;St. Louis31&mdash;Los Angeles&mdash;Hartford32&mdash;Que.&mdash;Islanders&mdash;Buff.33&mdash;St. Louis&mdash;Philadelphia34&mdash;Boston&mdash;Hartford &#9632;

Who They’re Affiliated With…

<h2>AMERICAN LEAGUE</h2><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-217/4021197-1-eng-US/f0036-212.jpg" title="f0036-21" width="565" height="1092"></div><h2>CENTRAL LEAGUE</h2><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-226/4021190-1-eng-US/f0036-222.jpg" title="f0036-22" width="520" height="612"></div><h2>INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE</h2><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-235/4021183-1-eng-US/f0036-232.jpg" title="f0036-23" width="541" height="702"></div><h2>EASTERN LEAGUE</h2><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-245/4021176-1-eng-US/f0036-242.jpg" title="f0036-24" width="507" height="513"></div> &#9632;

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PRO GAMES TO COME…

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0037-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-01226/4021228-1-eng-US/f0037-012.jpg"></div>&ldquo;Where readers get together to do businessPLAYER EQUIPMENTRINK EQUIPMENTPERSONALSFAN CLUBSOPPORTUNITIES OFFERED, WANTEDDo you have something to sell&mdash;or tell&mdash;to your fellow readers of The Hockey News?Here&rsquo;s the place to do it, in this brand new Classified section that&rsquo;s being read right now by thousands of hockey fans and players, many of them &ldquo;in the market&rdquo; for used hockey equipment and rink equipment&hellip;many others seeking playing opportunities and job opportunities&hellip;still others eager to buy, swap, or sell hockey items, services, and ideas on a personal, one-to-one basis. Tell them what you have to offer and get action! It&rsquo;s easy to do&hellip;just use the handy coupon (lower left-hand corner), enclose your cheque, and prepare to do business. (Please note schedule of deadlines&mdash;your copy is due 3 weeks before issue date.)<h2>PLAYER EQUIPMENT</h2>SKATES, BAUER SUPREME II, 3 pr., 8,8,9. Used one season, excellent condition. Best offer over $100/pr. Write: Bill Hitzig, 169 West 21st St., New York, N.Y. 10011.SKATES, CCM PROGOAL, 2 pr., 7,8. Used two seasons, good condition, best offer over $80/pr. Write: John Monahan, 4 Baldwin St., Newton, Mass.HELMETS, 4 JOFA, 4 WIN- NWELL 2000. Like new, $100 takes all. Write: Kevin Burke, 56 East 87th St., New York, N.Y. 10028.STICKS, KOHO, 3 doz., lie 5, left. Never used, team disbanded. Price negotiable. Write: Gordon McMahon, 432 East 85th St., New York, N.Y. 10028.WANTED: USED UNIFORMS, GLOVES for teenage pickup team. Different colors, sizes OK. Need 12-15 sets. Send description, asking price to: Mark Riley, St. Sebastians School, Newton, Mass.FULL SET OF GOALIE EQUIPMENT: Pads, chest protector, arm pads, stick glove and catching glove, plus assorted odds and ends. Will negotiate. Write: Tom Murray, 55 East 73rd St., New York, N.Y. 10021.<h2>RINK EQUIPMENT</h2>ZAMBONI 500, 1974, excellent mechanical condition, brand new water applier, used only during hockey season on 4-days-a-week cycle. Price negotiable. For full specifications and photo, write: M. Unger, 2071 East 26th St., Brooklyn, N.Y. 11229.SKATE SHARPENER, BLADEMASTER, 5 years old, excellently maintained, operates like new. Must sacrifice due to rink shut-down. Direct all inquiries to Gordon Duncan, 15 Pine Rd., Syosset, N.Y. 11791.<h2>PERSONALS</h2>WANTED: AUTOGRAPHED PICS of players on 1952 Detroit Stanley Cuppers, individual or team, esp. Sawchuck. Original autographs only, no copies. Send description and asking price to: Hockey News, 214 King St. West, Toronto, M5H 1K4.WILL PAY TOP PRICES FOR AUTHENTIC EDDIE SHORE MEMORABILIA, signed photos, pucks, sticks, original newspaper clippings covering pre-NHL Play and first NHL season. Description and asking price to: Joe Curnane, 67 Windsor St., Everett, Mass.<h2>OPPORTUNITIES OFFERED, WANTED</h2>JR. PLAYERS WANTED, B &bull; caliber or better for team in Peace-Cariboo Junior League, producer of B.C. champions last 3 years and winner of Western Canada title 2 years ago. Employment, secondary educational opportunities available. Send resume of hockey and educational experience, plus references to: Terry Moore, coach, 100 Mile House Blazers Hockey Club, P.O. Box 986, 100 Mile House, B.C. V0K 2E0. Tel. 604-395-3641.SR. A. PLAYERS WANTED to play in the B.C. senior hockey league. Contact Cliff Smith, Hurry Kings Hockey Club, 3110 East 54th Ave., Vancouver, B.C. V5S 1Z1. Tel. 604-438-3483 or 604-5917631.PLAYERS WANTED for good semi-pro continental hockey league team. Write immediately to: General Manager, Peoria Blades, Box 3581, Peoria, III. 61614.WANTED: GAMES WITH NEW YORK AND PENNSYLVANIA TEAMS. Gananoque Senior Hockey Team. Ontario OHA B Champions past 2 years, will travel for expenses. Contact: Terry Haird, 375 Brock Street, Gananoque, Ontario, K7G 1K6. Tel. 613382-7175.HOCKEY SCOUT AVAILABLE in Edmonton and Northwest Canada areas. Familiar with M.J.H.L. and College personnel and player development. Excellent liaison with minor hockey associations and schools. Contact: Gary Pruden, 9303-128th Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta. T5E 0H3. Tel. 403-478-7316. &#9632;

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CLASSIFIED

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0038-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-01266/4021287-1-eng-US/f0038-012.jpg"></div><h2>Fan appreciation night</h2>Bob Kelly, second left, star left winger of the Philadelphia Flyers was the proud owner of a new hunting rifle courtesy of three Flyer fans. Shown with Kelly from the left are Elvin Minnich, Sylvan Hemingway and Joe Murray. Hemingway built the 257 Roberts rifle from scratch for Kelly with help from his two friends.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-02209/4021280-1-eng-US/f0038-022.jpg" title="f0038-02" width="1182" height="1642"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Photo by Ian MacAlpine)</figcaption></div><h2>In the family</h2>It seemed only natural that Susan Gallivan should turn up as an usherette at the Montreal Forum this season. Her father is the veteran TV hockey sportscaster Danny Gallivan, who has been airing Canadiens&rsquo; home games at the Forum for 28 years.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-03156/4021273-1-eng-US/f0038-032.jpg" title="f0038-03" width="565" height="1465"></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-04107/4021266-1-eng-US/f0038-042.jpg" title="f0038-04" width="1146" height="1478"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-0579/4021259-1-eng-US/f0038-052.jpg" title="f0038-05" width="1149" height="1487"></div><h2>Former NHL Ice Greats Do It One More Time</h2>The Minnesota North Stars and St. Louis Blues staged one of those nostalgic Oldtimer hockey games at the Checkerdome for the benefit of the St. Louis Children&rsquo;s Hospital and while the kids were the lucky winners, the oldtimers had a good time, too. Here are four of the ex-NHL stars who turned out for the game, won by St. Louis 4-3 before 15,000 fans. From the left, Murray Oliver of Minnesota, Dickie Moore of St. Louis and at right, goaler Glenn Hall and current Blues&rsquo; coach Barclay Plager. &#9632;

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HOCKEY PEOPLE

<div class="byline">BY BILL HILTS</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-01249/4021318-1-eng-US/f0039-012.jpg" title="f0039-01" width="355" height="345"></div><h2>We Need You</h2>IT&rsquo;S ONLY FITTING that this writing takes on a new look this season, to compliment the image being presented by the &ldquo;new&rdquo; Hockey News. Instead of staying exclusively to junior team coverage, we have expanded to all amateur hockey and will again be appearing weekly. When enough quality copy is generated, Canadian and U.S. news will appear on alternate weeks.That&rsquo;s where you come in! We want to hear about the budding young stars in your leagues&hellip;the coaches and league officials. Let&rsquo;s hear all about amateur hockey! Here&rsquo;s a chance to let the hockey world know all about your players, teams and leagues. We aren&rsquo;t too concerned about statistics&hellip;we want to write about kids&hellip;people&hellip;and exciting happenings. Put us on your mailing lists, or give us a call.Please address all correspondence to Bill Hilts, Pen Rod Acres, 5115 Bear Rd., Sanborn, NY 14132, USA, or call 716731-9984.&#9733;&#9733;&#9733;The new hockey campaign is beginning to shape up for the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League with defending league and national champion Prince Albert Raiders, North Battleford and Swift Current in a dogfight for the north title, while Moose Jaw, Weyburn and the Regina Blues look strong in the south.The Moose Jaw Canucks got a bit of revenge against the Raiders, the team that knocked them out in six games in the finals last year, when defenseman George Patterson&rsquo;s hat trick sparked a 7-3 victory for the home crowd to open the season. It was sweet music for Moose Jaw fans.New coaching faces around the loop are Larry Billows in Moose Jaw replacing Mike Sauter who headed off to Lethbridge, Greg Quisle taking over in Swift Current, and Stan Dunn moving from Swift Current to the North Battleford Barons.Teams are still allowed to carry as many 20-year-olds as they want, but due to a recent rule change, those players must have performed with the club, or an affiliate somewhere down the line.<h2>St. Louis Opener Set</h2>ST. LOUIS METRO Junior Hockey League public relations director Bill Demzik sends word that the schedule for the 1979-80 will face-off in classic form when the new St. Louis Knights clash with the St. Louis Junior Blues in a charity exhibition game at the Castle Oak Country Club. The game will benefit the Shriner&rsquo;s hospital for crippled children.The exhibition contest will be named the Robert A. Pauli memorial charity game in memory of the late amateur hockey supporter and Junior &ldquo;B&rdquo; owner.&#9733;&#9733;&#9733;The 1979-80 campaign marks the seventh season of Junior A competition in the Midwest for the United States Hockey League. The seven-team loop, divided into two divisions, will undergo a 50-game schedule which will be followed by playoffs and participation in the National Junior Tournament.Jack Barzee will return as coach for the 1978-79 champions, Waterloo Blackhawks. Other returning coaches include: Tom O&rsquo;Brien, Green Bay; Mark Lambert, St. Paul, and Dan Austin, Hennepin, New coaches taking hold of the reins are: Rob Harris replacing Tim McDonald in Bloomington, Lyle Bradley taking over for Andre Beaulieu at Sioux City and Bill Greer succeeding Jim Garvey in Austin.<h2>Fitchburg Gets Jump</h2>THE FITCHBERG WALLOPERS have jumped off to a fast start as they currently lead the New England Hockey League with a 4-0 record and tied with defending Wallace Cup champs, South Shore Braves (4-1). The Wallopers handed the Braves their only loss when a change of goalies resulted in three rapid-fire-goals by Fitchburg veterans Paul Dickie, Fran Boucher and J. P. Robinson. Fitchburg&rsquo;s defending league scoring champion Mark Lavasseur is back into mid-season form as his hat trick sparked an 11-4 win ruining the inaugural tilt in Suffolk by downing the Royals.Regular season play started in the &ldquo;A&rdquo; Division with the National Champion Paddock Pool Saints establishing themselves once again as the team to beat. The Saints however, needed a power play goal with just 1:46 left to nudge the Detroit Junior Wings, 5-4. Paddocks Jim Crandall recorded two of the Saints&rsquo; five tallies while Detroit&rsquo;s Brett Perry did likewise for the Wings&hellip;In the Wayne Chiefs and Redford Royals first matchup, Mark Devitt of Wayne converted a Jeff White pass into the tieing goal for the 4-4 deadlock. Two of the Royals&rsquo; tallies came on power plays&hellip;Paddock Pools fans got a thrill as the Saints pumped in 12 goals to bury Fraser Highlanders. Tracy Washell recorded the season&rsquo;s first hat trick while Jeff Grade, Kevin Collar and Colin Cin each added two. Frasers&rsquo; Dave McDonald had opened the scoring on a power play at 3:54 of period number one. Final score was a whopping 12-5 for Paddock. &#9632;

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THE AMATEUR SCENE

NEW YORK&mdash;Philadelphia Flyers are off to the most successful start in their 13year National Hockey League history. By sweeping last weekend&rsquo;s games against Montreal and Buffalo, Flyers have nine wins and a tie after 11 games.Flyers&rsquo; best previous start was in 1975-76 when they accumulated eight wins and two ties in their first 11 games.Flyers, along with Minnesota North Stars and Los Angeles Kings, are the only NHL clubs with no losses at home this season. Flyers kept their home record intact with a 3-1 victory over the Sabres.Flyers handed Montreal Canadiens their first home defeat of the season and in the process won their first game at the Forum since Nov. 2, 1974. Since their last victory at the Forum, Flyers had played nine regular season games in Montreal, losing six and tying three.It was also Flyers&rsquo; first win overall against Canadiens in 19 games, including four 1976 Stanley Cup Final games. &#9632;

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November 16, 1979

Stars’ Payne Proves Fast Learner

Vachon’s Fortunes Change For Better

VICTORIAVILLE College Scoreboard College Games To Come

Beck’s Acquisition Ends Long Ranger Quest