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.

July 1, 1983

The Hockey News July, 1983

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0029-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-01434/4799241-1-eng-US/f0029-012.jpg"></div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-02305/4799234-1-eng-US/f0029-022.jpg" title="f0029-02" width="476" height="1497"></div> &#9632;

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IN THIS ISSUE

OHL Midget Draft

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0015-02" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0015-02852/4798417-1-eng-US/f0015-022.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Corydon Cycle Rangers from Winnipeg skated off with the 23 + &ldquo;B&rdquo; gold.</figcaption></div><h2>LAKE PLACID TOURNAMENT II MEDAL WINNERS</h2>23 + &ldquo;A&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Old Sod Aces, Brampton, Ont.Silver &mdash; Jacket Man, Oshawa, Ont.Bronze &mdash; Team North Country, Lake Placid, NY23 + &ldquo;B&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Corydon Cycle Rangers, Winnipeg, Man.Silver &mdash; United Woodworking, Toronto, Ont.Bronze &mdash; Comer Bears, West Hill, Ont.23 + &ldquo;C&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Howick Golden Hawks, Gowanston, Ont.Silver &mdash; Irish House Saints, Kingston. Ont.Bronze &mdash; Listowel Fifth Wheels, Listowel, Ont.23 + &ldquo;D&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Ottawa Jesters, Ottawa, Ont.Silver &mdash; Wounded Moose, Toronto, Ont.Bronze &mdash; Stash O&rsquo;Neills, Scarborough, Ont.23 + &ldquo;E&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Hamilton Woodpeckers, Hamilton, Ont.Silver &mdash; Wednesday Knights, Scarborough, Ont.Bronze &mdash; Factory Muffler, St. Thomas, Ont.30 + &ldquo;A&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Potsdam Hockey Club, Potsdam, NYSilver &mdash; Basement Boys, Toronto, Ont.Bronze &mdash; Pickering Power Plant, Pickering, Ont.30 + &ldquo;B&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Bowmanville Cleaners, Bowmanville, Ont.Silver &mdash; Ultra Mar Golden Eagles, Toronto, Ont.Bronze &mdash; Owen Sound Harbour Inn, Owen Sound, Ont.30 + &ldquo;C&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Preston Gamblers Oldtimers, Preston, Ont.Silver &mdash; Little Britain Oldtimers, Sunderland, Ont.Bronze &mdash; Midas Top Guns, Toronto, Ont.30 + &ldquo;D&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Orleans Old Pumpers, Orleans, Ont.Silver &mdash; Mt. Brydges Old Tymers, Strathroy, Ont.Bronze &mdash; Nepean Collection, Ottawa, Ont.CAN/AM and THE HOCKEY NEWS wish to take this opportunity to thank Anheuser-Busch Inc. (Budweiser) for their participation in the Lake Placid Tournaments. (&ldquo;This Bud&rsquo;s For You!&rdquo;)<h2>LAKE PLACID TOURNAMENT II REPS</h2><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0015-07263/4798410-1-eng-US/f0015-072.jpg" title="f0015-07" width="1375" height="686"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0015-05364/4798403-1-eng-US/f0015-052.jpg" title="f0015-05" width="1456" height="830"><figcaption class="caption-body">Bowmanville, Ont., cleaned up on the competition in the 30 + &ldquo;B&rdquo; category.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0015-011154/4798396-1-eng-US/f0015-012.jpg" title="f0015-01" width="1461" height="830"><figcaption class="caption-body">The Brampton, Ont., Old Sod Aces won it all in the 23 + &ldquo;A&rdquo; division.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0015-03652/4798389-1-eng-US/f0015-032.jpg" title="f0015-03" width="1462" height="828"><figcaption class="caption-body">The Howick Golden Hawks from Gowanstown, Ont., took the 23 + &ldquo;C&rdquo; title.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0015-04488/4798382-1-eng-US/f0015-042.jpg" title="f0015-04" width="1457" height="833"><figcaption class="caption-body">Potsdam, NY Hockey Club captured the gold medal in the 30 + &ldquo;A&rdquo; division.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0015-06303/4798375-1-eng-US/f0015-062.jpg" title="f0015-06" width="1462" height="831"><figcaption class="caption-body">The elders of the tournament, the Orleans, Ont., Pumpers, won in the 30 + &ldquo;D&rdquo; event.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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CAN/AM-HOCKEY NEWS ADULT TOURNAMENTS

<div class="byline">BY BUD GALLMEIER</div>MONTREAL&mdash;The International Hockey League lost its commissioner but may have picked up another franchise&mdash;at least potentially&mdash;during its two-day meeting here in June.Jack Riley, who has served as the league&rsquo;s commissioner for four years, announced at the start of the meeting he would be resigning his position. Riley agreed to stay on until his replacement could be found. The league said it had several people in mind for the position and that a committee would screen the candidates.One of Riley&rsquo;s final tasks as commissioner will be to investigate the application for membership of Erie, PA. Erie made a formal application and has posted a $10,000 performance bond. Riley planned an early trip to Erie to talk to the people involved.Erie was a member of the Atlantic Coast Hockey League last season and is a former member of the Eastern League.While Erie is a good possibility to join the ranks of the IHL, which operated as an eight-team circuit last year, Saginaw could be among the missing next season. Saginaw is on shaky ground and the key to its survival, apparently, rests on whether the franchise can sell beer next season at its facility. The income, or expected income, from beer sales is a must for survival according to the Saginaw owners.The other franchises appear set for another year. Muskegon, which also appeared on thin ice following the completion of the 1982-83 season, apparently is confident it can survive. Season ticket sales are underway. Other cities in the league are Flint and Kalamazoo, MI; Milwaukee, Wl; Peoria, IL; Fort Wayne, IN and Toledo, OH.Colin Lister, who put up about $150,000 to keep the Fort Wayne franchise afloat last season, was named winner of the league&rsquo;s Andy Mulligan Trophy, awarded each year to the IHL executive whose knowledge of hockey and dedication to the sport provided a great measure of success to his club and the entire league. The Komets, who sank $150,000 into debt during the 1981-82 season, bounced back the past year and had a &ldquo;good year,&rdquo; according to Lister. Attendance was up about 20 per cent. Lister said the club reduced its debt but is still in the red, although optimism is running high for the immediate future.Jerry Clark, who took over as the Komets&rsquo; director of public relations, had a lot to do with the Komets&rsquo; success, according to Lister.&ldquo;Jerry did an excellent job with promotions,&rdquo; said Lister. &ldquo;We had three sell-outs with the San Diego Chicken and Jerry was resonsible for that promotion.&rdquo;Lister also said that general manager-coach Ron Ullyot was a key factor, too.&ldquo;Ron controlled our operating expenses well and, of course, he had a highly competitive team on the ice,&rdquo; Lister said. &ldquo;It was a combination of things that made our year successful. It was a team effort.&rdquo;In other league matters, John Snider of Muskegon was named chairman of the board of directors, replacing Ted Parfet of Kalamazoo, who stepped down. Joe Tierney of Milwaukee was named vice-chairman.The league voted for an 82-game schedule again in 1983-84 with each team playing 41 games on the road and 41 at home. The season will open on Oct. 14 and end on April 8.The committee that will screen candidates for a new commissioner is comprised of Ken Ullyot of Fort Wayne, Tierney and Snider. The league will meet again on July 6-7 in Detroit. &#9632;

Riley Gives Up Position ‘As League Commissioner

<div class="byline">BY CHUCK MOODY</div>PITTSBURGH&mdash;Even though the Penguins traded away their opportunity to select first overall in last month&rsquo;s NHL entry draft, general manager-coach Eddie Johnston is very happy with his club&rsquo;s selections&ldquo;We&rsquo;re extremely happy because we were able to take the two players that we&rsquo;ve been talking about for the last two or three weeks,&rdquo; said Johnston after supervising his first draft since being named GM.Those two players are left winger Bob Errey, who was selected 15th overall from Peterborough Petes of the Ontario Hockey League, and Oshawa defenseman Todd Charlesworth, who was the first pick in the second round and the 22nd player chosen overall.Pittsburgh would have had the first pick in the draft by virtue of its 21 st-place finish in the overall NHL standings last season. However, former GM Baz Bastien, who died in a car accident March 15, flip-flopped selections in a November trade with Minnesota that brought rookie defenseman Ron Meighan and forward Anders Hakansson to the Penguins for forward George Ferguson.&ldquo;We were hoping they might be there,&rdquo; Johnston said of Errey and Chariesworth. &ldquo;If we were able to get one, we&rsquo;d have been very happy. The last few years we&rsquo;ve been trying to fill two sports&mdash;left defense and left wing.&rdquo;The 5-foot-10, 183-pound Errey was the first left winger taken in the draft. The 18-year-old Montreal native scored 53 goals and 47 assists for the Petes last season, playing on a line with center Steve Yzerman, who was the fourth player chosen in the draft.&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t bother me at all that the team was last in the league,&rdquo; Errey said after being picked by the Penguins. &ldquo;It just gives you a little something to work harder for.&rdquo;&ldquo;But Errey&rsquo;s a kid with exceptionally good speed,&rdquo; said Johnston. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very, very good at finishing off plays. This is something that takes years to do as a kid.&ldquo;We think right now that he can do that for us on the left side. We&rsquo;re very optimistic that he can make our club next season. Everybody projects that it will be awfully tough to keep him off there.&rdquo;On the other hand, Johnston believes Charlesworth would benefit from another season in junior. The 18-year-old Charlesworth scored six goals and 23 assists for the Generals last season.&ldquo;The last month-and-a-half of the season he played so well&mdash;and in the Memorial Cup&mdash;that everybody had him listed in the middle to late in the first round,&rdquo; said Johnston of the 6-foot-1, 186-pounder. &ldquo;I was able to watch him play 10 or 12 games and I was extremely impressed with the kid. He moves the puck exceptionally well and his anticipation and knowledge of the game are just fantastic.&ldquo;I believe a fellow like him needs at least another year to build himself up and play one more full year in junior&mdash;he has a couple of more years left in junior. And if he can do that, we definitely feel we have an NHL prospect for a long time.&rdquo;Charlesworth agrees with Johnston about needing another season in junior.&ldquo;I know I&rsquo;m not ready yet,&rdquo; said the Calgary native. &ldquo;I want to stay in junior. I can use another year to mature and work on my offensive skills. I just love playing defense.&rdquo;Johnston was asked to pick a &ldquo;darkhouse&rdquo; candidate from among his club&rsquo;s other draft selections.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re talking about Patrick Emond, who centered for Sylvain Turgeon, who was picked second overall,&rdquo; said Johnston of Pittsburgh&rsquo;s sixth-round choice from Hull of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. &ldquo;Turgeon ended up with 54 goals and 109 assists and our fellow ended up with 44 goals and 69 assists. We have to feel that he was primarily responsible for Turgeon being drafted second overall.&rdquo;Pittsburgh&rsquo;s new GM summed up his feelings about his first draft in a dual capacity.&ldquo;We made up our minds a long time ago,&rdquo; Johnston said. &ldquo;In the last three or four weeks we did a lot of work and we keyed on two players. We said if these two players are there, we&rsquo;d be more than happy to come out of here with one. We got both! It&rsquo;s just terrific and we&rsquo;re tickled pink.&rdquo;PENGUIN TRACKS&mdash;Johnston said he&rsquo;s about to make a decision on his coach for the coming season. If Johnston decides to concentrate on his GM&rsquo;s job, Lou Angotti is his likely successor. Angotti, who previously coached in the NHL with St. Louis, guided Pittsburgh&rsquo;s Baltimore farm team last season. &#9632;

Penguins Get The Men They Want

<div class="image-hero"><img title="Cover-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/cover-01786/4799444-1-eng-US/cover-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Photo by Bruce Bennett</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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The Hockey News $1.50 64522 THE INTERNATIONAL HOCKEY WEEKLY JULY 1, 1983 VOL. 36 NO. 34

Our next issue, which will be a special statistics edition, will be on the newsstand and in the mail in two weeks. This new feature of THE HOCKEY NEWS will carry statistics for all professional hockey players in North America as well as complete major junior scoring results from last season.On top of all the statistics, we&rsquo;ll have a variety of other interesting features including THE HOCKEY NEWS 1983 Newsmakers&rsquo; Roundtable, where experts from various fields of hockey comment on the important issues.It&rsquo;s certain to be one of the most informative issues of the year and one you will want to hold on to for months to come. Don&rsquo;t miss all that plus much, much more. &#9632;

Next Issue

<div class="byline">by BOB MCKENZIE</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0003-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-011199/4797628-1-eng-US/f0003-012.jpg"></div>Call them The New Breed and color them red, white and blue. They are the new chapter in a long line of American Dreams and more are on the way. Their patron saint is Bobby Carpenter of the Washington Capitals and if they can emulate his achievements, then the National Hockey League is on the verge of becoming a truly three-dimensional league.The 1983 NHL entry draft has come and gone, forever to be remembered as The Year of the Yankee, the year that not one, not two, not even three or four, but five American-born players were selected in the first round. An unofficial tally indicates 63 of the 242 players taken in the draft are Americans. That compares with 35 Europeans and 144 Canadians.But those numbers don&rsquo;t tell the real story. The real story was on the floor of the Montreal Forum, where Brian Lawton, the 18-year-old pride and joy of Cumberland, R.L, and the star of Mount St. Charles High School in nearby Woonsocket, pulled a Minnesota North Star jersey over his head and posed for pictures, the first American ever to be chosen No. 1 overall in the entry draft.It didn&rsquo;t stop there. Moments later, Lawton was joined by Pat LaFontaine, a good-looking kid from suburban Detroit who went third overall to the Stanley Cup champion New York Islanders. Next, it was Tom Barrasso, a netminder from Acton-Boxboro High School near Boston who went fifth overall to the Buffalo Sabres. Twelve picks later, the Montreal Canadiens took Alfie Turcotte, a native of Gary, IN, and the Hartford Whalers, picking 20th overall, selected David Jensen from Lawrence Academy.The Year of the Yankee? You bet.And who better to put it all into perspective than Lawton, a well-spoken young man who will either play for the U.S. Olympic team this season or turn pro with the North Stars.&ldquo;I guess we all owe something to Bobby Carpenter and Phil Housley,&rdquo; Lawton says. &ldquo;They were both drafted high in the first round and both of them proved that a U. S. high school player could not only jump directly to the NHL, but star in the league.&ldquo;Hopefully, if we (the American-born first rounders) can do the same, we might be able to give the game of hockey a little more of an identity in the United States. I think the American people need to see more hometown boys playing in the NHL. Maybe we can help to promote the game, maybe even boost attendance in some areas. Hockey will never be as big in the U.S. as it is in Canada, but we can try.&rdquo;It would be unwise to underestimate the influential powers of the Americans drafted on June 8 in Montreal. Many of them have already overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to arrive where they are.Each has exhibited a total commitment to the game of hockey. They have cast aside traditional American pastimes&mdash;baseball, football and basketball&mdash;to concentrate on what was once a sport totally dominated by Canadians. Canadians no longer rule it so thoroughly, their power base eroded first by the European invasion and now by the young Americans.There is some consolation in the fact that players such as LaFontaine and Turcotte had to move away from home and play Canadian major junior hockey if they wanted to advance their skills, but Carpenter, the Caps&rsquo; talented center-left winger, Housley, the Buffalo Sabres&rsquo; flashy defenseman, and now Lawton, Barrasso and Jensen are proof that high schools in New England and Minnesota are fertile breeding grounds for professional hockey. They need not go anywhere because the game comes to them.Still, the bond that unites the American draftees would appear to be sacrifice&mdash;above and beyond the sacrifices that an athlete must make to play at the professional level.&ldquo;In Detroit,&rdquo; says LaFontaine, a diminutive center who rewrote the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League record book last season with the Verdun Juniors, &ldquo;hockey isn&rsquo;t very big at the high school level.&ldquo;Every Friday or Saturday, there would be a football, baseball or basketball game at school and then a party. I missed out on a lot of that because I was playing hockey. When Alfie (Turcotte) and I played for (Detroit) Compuware (midgets), it was then that we set our minds on playing professionally. Sure, we had to give up some things, but we feel it&rsquo;s worth it.&rdquo;&ldquo;I used to play a lot of other sports,&rdquo; says Barras-so, a rangy goaltender who looks as though he stepped off the cover of GQ instead of THE HOCKEY NEWS. &ldquo;But when I realized I had a shot at a career in hockey, I quit them all. At first, I was primarily an outcast. All my friends were quitting hockey. Everyone would say to me, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s such a longshot (playing pro hockey) unless you go to Canada and play junior hockey.&ldquo;But Bobby Carpenter opened a lot of doors. Before him, there were no scouts at high school games. Now, at every game I played this year, there were at least six or seven NHL scouts.&rdquo;Of all the draft-day stories, Barrasso may well be the most incredible. He is the first American high school goalie to be accorded first-round status. In fact, when the Sabres made him the No. 5 pick, he joined John Davidson and Ray Martinuik as the highest-drafted goalies ever. He may also be the biggest gamble, since the development of goalies is the most risky in this inexact science.NHL scouts rave about his potential and say he can handle the puck as well or better than any NHL goalie right now, which prompted one cynic to chirp, &ldquo;Now all we have to see is if he can stop it.&rdquo; Another scout said he attended a game to see Barrasso play and the netminder faced only one shot, to which Vancouver Canucks&rsquo; ebullient general manager Harry Neale responded, &ldquo;Yeah, but how did he handle it?&rdquo;Barrasso, who exudes confidence, is the first to admit that high school competition is inferior by most standards. &ldquo;But my goal is to play in the NHL and I think I can do it. And if I don&rsquo;t decide to play in the Olympics, I think I can play in Buffalo this season.&rdquo;Lawton, meanwhile, may be in the most unique situation. At his school, he says, hockey is without question the No. 1 sport.&ldquo;I guess my biggest choice was between hockey and tennis,&rdquo; Lawton says. &ldquo;I probably had more naturaly ability in tennis but I don&rsquo;t like individual sports as much as team sports. Still, being in the United States and making hockey your No. 1 sport, it involves sacrifice. But we all enjoy hockey. If we didn&rsquo;t enjoy it, then we probably wouldn&rsquo;t make the sacrifices.&rdquo;Perhaps it was only coincidence, but the fact remains: The top two defensemen in the NHL last season were Americans. The U.S. could not lose when it came time for the Norris Trophy presentation. Either Rod Langway, a New Englander who was born in Taiwan and played his college hockey at the University of New Hampshire, or Mark Howe, the Detroit-born son of a living hockey legend&mdash;Gordie Howe&mdash;would walk awake with the honor.At the Academy Awards-style presentation at. Places Des Arts, Langway edged Howe (who edged Langway in first-team all-star balloting). The big winner, though, was the U.S. pro hockey cause.In the Calder Cup race, Housley was runner-up to Chicago Black Hawk winger Steve Larmer. That, too, helped the U.S. to carve its niche at the NHL&rsquo;s 1983 meetings.Langway, the kingpin of the revitalized Washington Capitals, admitted that he was happy to see Americans do so well in the awards and at the draft, but that the U.S. success should not be interpreted as a new phenomenom.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not as if it&rsquo;s all some kind of overnight success,&rdquo; Langway says. &ldquo;I have a theory that, for a lot of years, the United States has had some unbelievably great hockey talent.&ldquo;But, for one reason or another, that talent was never unearthed. NHL scouts never used to pay any, attention at all to the high school program in the States.&ldquo;What I wonder is how many really good U.S. players, maybe as good or better than Bobby Carpenter or Phil Housley, never made it to pro hockey because they just finished playing high, school or in some local league and were never really given any recognition or reason to continue at higher level?&ldquo;I honestly believe some excellent talent probably just dropped by the wayside because they didn&rsquo;t have anywhere else to go. But with the success the, American kids have had in the past couple of years, that&rsquo;s not going to happen anymore, is it?&rdquo;If anything, the Americanization of the NHL will increase in the next few years. The 1983 draft was no fluke. There are already some, outstanding U.S. prospects being sized up for the 1984 entry draft, players that will again go in the first round.The proof can be found in the Ontario Hockey League, the Canadian junior loop that had 57 players&mdash;the highest single figure&mdash;drafted last month., A week before the NHL draft, the OHL held their midget priority selections, a first-rate albeit scaled-down version of the big-league affair.OHL teams scour the province of Ontario, the Maritime provinces and the United States for prospects that can play in what is probably the most, competitive, NHL-like competition outside of the NHL.This year, the consensus was that the two best players available were Americans. Al Iafrete, a towering 17-year-old defenseman who played for the Detroit Compuware midgets for the past two seasons, was rated No. 1 by the OHL Central Scouting Bureau.He was drafted sixth overall by the Belleville Bulls, who a year ago drafted LaFontaine only to have him choose to play in Verdun. The only reason Iafrete went so late was because he announced that, he would play only for the Bulls and other teams feared getting burned as Belleville did with LaFontaine.The other top prospect was Ed Olczyk, a 16-year-old Chicago native who plays center and is 6-foot-1 and 195 pounds. He played last season with Strata ford of the Midwestern Ontario Junior B league and the reason he didn&rsquo;t go until midway through the first round&mdash;Toronto Marlboros drafted him ninth overall&mdash;was because he announced his intention to play for the U.S. Olympic team, if he makes it.Both Iafrete and Olczyk are being projected as first-rounders in next year&rsquo;s NHL draft, guaranteeing that the American tradition will be carried on.&ldquo;From my point of view,&rdquo; says Olczyk, as mature a 16-year-old as you will find, &ldquo;the Amateur Hockey Association of the United States deserves some of the credit for Americans doing so well.&ldquo;In the last few years, AHAUS has started this elite program with a variety of different summer leadership camps. These elite camps are good because they take the best players from various regions and put them against each other. That way, you know how you stack up against the best.&rdquo;Another boost to the American hockey program comes each summer when the National Sports Festival is held&rsquo;. This year, it&rsquo;s in Colorado Springs and began on June 22nd. Every sport is played at it and this year&rsquo;s Festival is being used to select participants for the Olympics. Lawton, LaFontaine, Barrasso and Olczyk were all expected to attend it. In the past, the Festival was used to select U.S. world junior hockey teams.Once Olczyk realized he did stack up with the best, he made the decision to leave suburban Chicago and play in Stratford. It&rsquo;s a decision that he doesn&rsquo;t regret.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen some really good hockey players at home just fade away and quit because the competition wasn&rsquo;t there for them,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I vowed that would never happen to me. It was tough to leave home, but to me, it&rsquo;s worth it. I want to play in the NHL and that takes determination and courage. That&rsquo;s what Pat LaFontaine and Alfie Turcotte showed when they left home.&ldquo;When I see guys like Pat and Alfie and the other guys from high school&mdash;Lawton, Barrasso and Jensen&mdash;do so well, it kind of spurs me on. I&rsquo;ve competed against them (Olczyk&rsquo;s midget team in Chicago beat the vaunted Compuware team for the 198182 national championship) and held my own against them.&ldquo;My dream is to play in the Olympics and then the NHL. When I see those other guys so close to that, it makes my dream seem so much more like a reality or at least a possibility.&rdquo;Olczyk, perhaps more than other NHL-bound Americans, went through the period where he was &ldquo;an oddball&rdquo; because of his obsession with hockey as opposed to football, baseball or basketball.&ldquo;I can honestly say I&rsquo;ve never had any steady best friends to bum around with,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always put hockey above my social life. I don&rsquo;t regret it. It&rsquo;s something I&rsquo;m willing to sacrifice.&rdquo;And as for those hockey observers who question whether U.S. high school hockey is a worthy breeding ground of pro talent, Olczyk says it&rsquo;s a pointless argument.&ldquo;I see those film clips of Lawton and Barrasso, too,&rdquo; Olczyk says, &ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t think the caliber of play is as good as the Junior B league or team I played for. But the thing is this: Lawton skates circles around all those high school kids and then when he comes to the summer camps with the best players in the country, he does it there, too, so you know he&rsquo;s one helluva hockey player.&ldquo;But you want to know my honest opinion about this whole American hockey thing? It&rsquo;s all because Bobby Carpenter hasn&rsquo;t let anyone down. If he would have fell flat on his face, you think Phil Housley would have gone so high last year? Do you think Brian Lawton would go No. 1 this year? No way, not a chance.&rdquo; Meanwhile, the building goes on. In Detroit, where youth hockey is modelled after the Canadian club system&mdash;as opposed to the New England and Minnesota high school structure&mdash;-Pete Karmanos is creating what seems to be a hockey factory.Karmanos is the man behind Compuware, a nine-team triple A organization in Detroit that is responsible for turning out LaFontaine, Turcotte and more than a half-dozen other talented players who are currently competing in major junior hockey in Canada, not to mention those who have gone to U.S. colleges.Of course, it&rsquo;s still far too early to tell&mdash;and what the hockey world doesn&rsquo;t need now are more stories of child phenoms&mdash;but Jim Carson, a 14-year-old who just finished a bantam season with Compuware, scored 200 points and is, naturally, being compared favorably to LaFontaine.Karmanos says his organization is founded on three components&mdash;dedication, commitment and practice.&ldquo;When all these things go together,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;you get an explosion of talent. It&rsquo;s like a catalyst that encourages the kids to make it.&rdquo;In this, The Year of the Yankee, the ones who are least tempted to wave the flag and get swallowed up by the nationalistic fervor are the central figures. Lawton, LaFontaine and Barrasso, while admitting they are pleased to see their homeland being recognized by the hockey world, are aware that a sound attitude, good work habits and their on-ice production are more important than where they were born.&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s face it,&rdquo; says LaFontaine matter of factly, &ldquo;we still have to prove ourselves. Getting drafted in the first round is one thing&hellip;we&rsquo;ve still got a way to go.&rdquo;&ldquo;We&rsquo;re all proud to be Americans,&rdquo; adds Barrasso, &ldquo;but what we&rsquo;re really proud of is that, as hockey players, we were selected in the first round of the NHL draft. We have pride in being good hockey players and you have that no matter where you&rsquo;re from, whether it&rsquo;s Canada, the United States or Europe.&rdquo;&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see myself as any different than any other player drafted,&rdquo; Lawton says. &ldquo;If you can play the game, well, that&rsquo;s all there really is to it.&rdquo;Bob McKenzie is the Editor in Chief of THE HOCKEY NEWS. &#9632;

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Bobby Carpenter Opened The Door For A Generation Of Dedicated, Young Americans

Just to give you an indication as to how strong the United States&rsquo; entry in the 1984 Canada Cup will be, Washington Capital captain and Norris Trophy winner Rod Langway wonders if he&rsquo;ll make the grade.Well, that&rsquo;s an exaggeration, of course. The Team USA lineup promises to be competitive in the tournament&mdash;which for all intents and purposes in the true world championship&mdash;but there isn&rsquo;t a squad in the world that wouldn&rsquo;t benefit from Langway&rsquo;s prowess on the blueline.Still, Team USA boasts some top talent, especially on defense. Consider the following defense corps: Langway and Norris runner-up Mark Howe; Buffalo Sabres&rsquo; Mike Ramsey and Phil Housley; Boston Bruin Mike O&rsquo;Connell; New York Islanders&rsquo; Ken Morrow and Dave Langevin and Detroit Red Wing Reed Larson. That doesn&rsquo;t even include some other solid players such as Minnesota&rsquo;s Gordie Roberts, Montreal&rsquo;s Craig Ludwig and Boston&rsquo;s Mike Milbury, to name just three.&ldquo;I never realized we had such an imposing defensive unit,&rdquo; Langway said. &ldquo;Maybe I would have a tough time making that team.&ldquo;But I said in the last Canada Cup that we were seven or eight players away from a truly competitive squad that could, on any given night, beat anyone. With all these top youngsters coming up, I think that void has been filled and by the next Canada Cup, we&rsquo;ll be a definite threat. I&rsquo;m not kidding.&rdquo;Indeed. Team USA goaltenders Tony Esposito and Chico Resch are getting a little long in the tooth but NHL scouts are predicting a great future for New England schoolboy Tom Barrasso.Up front, some of the eligible U.S. talent includes Neal Broten. Dave Christian, Bobby Carpenter, Brian and Joey Mullen. Paul Holmgren, Mark Pavelich. Rob McClanahan, Mark Johnson, Steve Christoff, Chris Nilan, Aaron Broten, not to mention the bright, young American stars of the 1983 entry draft.Brian Lawton, Pat LaFontaine, Alfie Turcotte and David Jensen may or may not be ready to assume a role on Team USA.One thing is clear: The next Canada Cup will be more than a three-way race between the Soviets. Czechs and Canadians.The Eagle has landed. &#9632;

Team USA Will Be A Threat

<div class="byline">BY DICK JOHNSTON</div>BUFFALO&mdash;Scotty Bowman did it again. He and his Buffalo Sabres had everyone at the 1983 National Hockey League entry draft buzzing, just as they did at the &rsquo;82 draft.Most observers agreed that Bowman&rsquo;s manipulations make the Sabres look beter than ever for the 1983-84 season.Bowman maneuvered a last-minute trade, just as he did last year (this one was completed at 4 a.m. the day of the draft) and again the Sabres ended up with three picks in the first round.Last year, Bowman acquired Phil Housley, Paul Cyr and Dave Andreychuk in the first round. All three played for the Sabres. Housley made the Professional Hockey Writers&rsquo; Association all-rookie team and was runner-up for the Calder Memorial Trophy as the league&rsquo;s top rookie.This year, the Sabres got Tom Barrassos, the highly-touted high school goaltender from Acton-Boxboro in Massachusetts; Normand Lacombe, a muscular, 190-pound right winger from the University of New Hampshire, and Adam Creighton, a 6-foot-6 center from the Ottawa 67&rsquo;s whose father once played for the Buffalo Bisons in the American Hockey League, as well as several NHL clubs.In the second round, the Sabres picked up two more players, John Tucker from the Kitchener Rangers and Richard Hajdu from the Kamloops Oilers.Tucker was rated as a first-rounder before the draft. Thus, Buffalo ended up with four of the top 16 in the NHL Central Scouting Bureau&rsquo;s ratings and five of the top 34.&ldquo;A great draft,&rdquo; according to associate coach Jim Roberts. &ldquo;We got the guy we really wanted in Tom Barrassos. We think he will be a super goalie in the Ken Dryden mold.&ldquo;In Norm Lacombe we think we have a right winger who can play next season. Creighton is good now, potentially great.&ldquo;And John Tucker, we couldn&rsquo;t believe he was still available. We rated him 10th in this draft. He&rsquo;s a Mike Bossy-type scorer.&rdquo;Bowman went into the draft with two first-round picks in the first 10, acquired in trades with Los Angeles and Calgary.He got the 11th selection by trading to Quebec a package of Tony McKegney, his second highest scorer in 1982-83, Andre Savard, a veteran center and a good defensive player, and J.F. Sauve, one of the stars of Buffalo&rsquo;s Calder Cup-winning Rochester farm team in the AHL.Sauve had been up and down between Buffalo and Rochester during his first three pro years.Buffalo also turned over its third-round draft pick this year. In return, the Sabres acquired Real Cloutier and Quebec&rsquo;s first-round pick&mdash;11th overall&mdash;with which they took Creighton.&ldquo;We wanted something for the present, as well as the future,&rdquo; Bowman said. &ldquo;Cloutier is a pure goal-scorer, up near the top when it comes to scoring. We have had a need for that kind of player.&ldquo;He has been sort of overshadowed by the Stastny brothers the last couple of years with Quebec. There are guys who can put the puck into the net and there are guys who can&rsquo;t. Cloutier is one who can.&rdquo;Cloutier and Michel Bergeron, the Nordiques&rsquo; coach, apparently were feuding all of last season, resulting in Cloutier playing only 68 games.Bergeron said Cloutier&rsquo;s beef was that he wasn&rsquo;t getting enough ice time and that he wasn&rsquo;t being utilized fully on the power play.The Sabres, who had trouble with their power play last season, can use Cloutier&rsquo;s scoring ability when they have a man advantage and if Cloutier has Gil Perreault as his center&mdash;which seems likely&mdash;he will get plenty of ice time. It also should be good for Perreault, who is at his best with a big scorer on his wing.McKegney led Buffalo in goals last season with 36, not an impressive total for the team leader.The big left winger-center was a popular player in Buffalo but not, apparently, with Bowman. For the last two years, trade rumors involving McKegney circulated around the league.The same with Savard, who was a solid performer for the Sabres the last seven years. Savard, going back to his native Quebec, said he was happy about the trade. If he couldn&rsquo;t continue to play in Buffalo, he said, Quebec is where he would want to be.Sauve, who was bypassed in favor of other centers in the organization because of his 5-foot-6 stature, figured he has a much better chance to play in the NHL with the Nordiques. Bergeron was his coach in junior hockey.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-011242/4797683-1-eng-US/f0004-012.jpg" title="f0004-01" width="561" height="865"><figcaption class="caption-body">The addition of Real Cloutier gives the Sabres a much-needed goal-scorer.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Good Things Come In Threes For Bowman

PUBLISHERDean HeineCONTROLLERTony DobranowskiEDITOR IN CHIEFBob McKenzieEDITORIAL DIRECTORCharlie HalpinCONTRIBUTING EDITORSStan Fischler, Frank OrrADVERTISING SALES MANAGERRandy GreenADVERTISING SERVICES MANAGEREsther SumkaADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES New York:Bob Bassinette, The Bassinette Co., 27 Audrey Ave., Oyster Bay, NY 11771 (516) 922-6842Canadian Consumer Product Sales: CCMC, Kim Locke, 43 Madison Ave., Toronto, Ontario M5R 2S2 (416) 961-5141SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES MANAGERPaula HeardNEWSSTAND SERVICES MANAGEREsther SumkaSPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGERElaine WatkinsonADVERTISING AND EDITORIAL OFFICES85 Scarsdale Rd., Suite 100 Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3B 2R2 (416) 445-5702EXECUTIVE OFFICE850 Third Avenue New York, New York 10022DISTRIBUTORDistributed nationally by Disticor101 Duncan Mill Rd., Suite L4 Don Mills, Ont., M3B 1Z3 (416) 449-6430THE HOCKEY NEWS, (ISSN 0018-3016) is published weekly except monthly June through September by W.C.C. Publishing Ltd., 85 Scarsdale Road, # 100, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3B 2R2 (416) 445-5702. In U.S. c/o W.C.C. Publishing Corp., 850 Third Ave., New York, N.Y. 10022.YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $19.95 in the U.S.A. $19.95 in Canada, $34.95 in Foreign Countries. Send all Canadian and Foreign subscription orders to THE HOCKEY NEWS, P.O. Box 13035, Postal Station &lsquo;A&rsquo;, Toronto, Ont. M5W 1V7. U.S. subscription requests should be mailed to Box 904, Buffalo, N.Y. 14240. Please allow 4-6 weeks for processing.SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO THE HOCKEY NEWS, 85 Scarsdale Road #100, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3B 2R2. Second Class mail Registration No. 1327. All inquiries pertaining to subscriptions should be addressed to Subscription Dept., The Hockey News, 85 Scarsdale Road, #100, toronto, Ontario, Canada M3B 2R2.IN THE UNITED STATES: Second class postage paid at New York, N.Y. and at additional mailing offices, U.S. POSTMASTER send address change to: The Hockey News, P.O. Box 904, Buffalo, N.Y. 14240.<div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-031010/4797714-1-eng-US/f0004-032.jpg" title="f0004-03" width="61" height="53"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div>Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations &#9632;

The Hockey News THE INTERNATIONAL HOCKEY WEEKLY Founded in 1947 by Kenneth W. McKenzie

<div class="byline">BY GARY MUELLER</div>ST. LOUIS&mdash;As fellow Missourian Mark Twain said some 86 years ago, &ldquo;The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.&rdquo;The reports of the death of the St. Louis Blues were greatly exaggerated, too.Presumed dead when Ralston Purina Co. pulled the plug one month earlier, the Blues miraculously clung to life with the June 13 decision by the National Hockey League&rsquo;s board of governors that the NHL would assume control of the St. Louis franchise.But even this decision did not necessarily bring a smooth conclusion to the soap-opera saga of the Blues.Although the league assumed control of the franchise, NHL President John Ziegler made it clear that the NHL was not interested in operating the team during the 1983-84 season. Instead, the league assumed control to head off Ralston&rsquo;s threatened liquidation of the team, with the NHL then hoping to find a local buyer for the team.The frontrunner among candidates to buy the team appeared to be Harry Ornest of Beverly Hills, CA. Ornest said he was prepared to offer $3 million in cash and $5 million in notes for the team, subject to being able to negotiate a five-year lease for the use of the Checkerdome in St. Louis.Because Ralston Purina owns the Checkerdome, there was some thought that Ornest&rsquo;s chances of obtaining an acceptable lease package were remote. Ralston, in a prepared statement, said &ldquo;We will co-operate in an orderly transition of the team.&rdquo;Such a transition will have to be not only orderly but also speedy. With the scheduled opening of the 1983-84 season less than four months away, the league must find and approve a suitable buyer; the buyer then will have to find and hire a suitable general manager and coach and front-office employees.Ralston Purina left the Blues looking like a skeleton, with all but a handful of front-office employees having been released on May 13. Team president and GM Emile Francis was released from his contract in May so he could sign with the Hartford Whalers.Barclay Plager, who finished last season as the Blues&rsquo; coach, had indicated late last season that he was not interested in remaining as the team&rsquo;s coach.Ironically, it was Francis, a long-time friend of Ornest, who first put Ornest in touch with a group of St. Louis investors who were attempting to keep the Blues in St. Louis. But with Francis signed to a five-year contract in Hartford, Ornest would not be able to call on his old friend to run his hockey team, if and when Ornest actually becomes the new owner of the Blues.Although they still might be alive, it would be inaccurate to say that the Blues are alive and well. The start of the 198384 season can hardly be expected to be anything but chaotic for the Blues.Even if Ornest&rsquo;s purchase of the team is accomplished quickly and smoothly and even if Ornest is successful in landing a qualified GM and coach, the Blues&rsquo; training camp should be interesting to watch.The Blues already have signed contracts to hold their training camp in Regina, Sask.,&mdash;in the rink that was to be the backup in case the new rink in Saskatoon was not completed in time, under the arrangements of the previous deal between Ralston Purina and Coliseum Holdings of Saskatoon.It was the NHL&rsquo;s rejection of the sale and transfer of the Blues to Saskatoon that triggered the bizarre series of events that almost led to the liquidation of the team.How do you think the hockey fans of Regina are going to like having the team that was almost theirs training right under their noses before returning for St. Louis for the regular season?Meanwhile, the $6O-million lawsuit filed by Ralston Purina against the NHL for blocking the sale to Saskatoon still stands, as does the NHL&rsquo;s $78 million contersuit for abondoning the franchise.Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau has also entered into the picture by sending a letter to Ziegler. The letter says the House of Commons is concerned about NHL moves that are making it difficult to establish an NHL team in Saskatoon. Trudeau said he would see if there were &ldquo;some way in which I can use my good offices to influence the president of the NHL.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-021172/4797745-1-eng-US/f0004-022.jpg" title="f0004-02" width="553" height="663"><figcaption class="caption-body">League president John Ziegler has stated the NHL doesn&rsquo;t want to operate the Blues.</figcaption></div>And, of course, the Blues&rsquo; new owner, whoever that might be, will have no new young players to help strengthen the organization because Ralston Purina refused to participate in the entry draft June 8.The day before the draft, Ralston Purina announced it was &ldquo;tendering&rdquo; the team to the league, to do with it as it saw fit. But part of that offer included a provision that any money derived from the sale of the team would go to Ralston, with that amount subtracted from the damages Ralston sought in its suit against the NHL.In its June 13 meeting, the NHL rejected that &ldquo;tender&rdquo; offer, but then stripped Ralston of the franchise after hearing charges, brought by the Chicago Black Hawks, that Ralston had violated the NHL constitution in its attempts to transfer the Blues to Saskatoon. Ralston Purina did not send anyone to represent the Blues at the meeting.BLUENOTES: Another potential buyer for the Blues has been Ottawa businessmen Howard Darwin and Earl Montagano, owners of the Junior A Ottawa 67s and London Knights. Darwin and Montagano reportedly had discussed the viability of owning the St. Louis franchise with Buffalo Sabres GM-coach Scotty Bowman. There&rsquo;s also a group in Indianapolis who&rsquo;ve shown some interest in buying the club, although Indy is presently the home of the Checkers, the Islanders&rsquo; minor league farm team who won the Central Hockey League crown for the second season in a row&hellip;Left winger Perry Turnbull was married June 10 at St. Louis&rsquo; famous outdoor Missouri Bontanical Gardens, in a dazzling ceremony that included nearly 500 guests&hellip; A dispersal draft of the Blues&rsquo; players probably would have happened if the team was not saved by the league. Had the draft occurred, the speculation was that Pittsburgh would have made Brian Sutter the No. 1 pick and Hartford would then opt for Rob Ramage, whom Francis had paid such a dear price for when he was GM of the Blues. &#9632;

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League Possesses Blues; Trudeau Writes Ziegler

<div class="byline">FRANK ORR&#x2019;S</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-011101/4797776-1-eng-US/f0005-012.jpg" title="f0005-01" width="292" height="345"></div><h2>The True Blues</h2>A BATCH OF OBSERVATIONS, quotes and viewpoints on the St. Louis Blues&rsquo; situation, a rather sad demise for a National Hockey League franchise that has produced many splendid moments since entering the league in the 1967 expansion.Few NHL governors have had much to say publicly about the Blues&rsquo; situation, the bid by the Saskatoon group to take over the franchise and the league&rsquo;s eventual seizing of the team&rsquo;s assets.&bull; In their 16 seasons in St. Louis, the Blues have had an average attendance of 13,878 spectators. In that time, NHL franchises have operated in 18 other U.S. cities. Only four&mdash;New York Rangers, Buffalo Sabres, Philadelphia Flyers and Chicago Black Hawks&mdash;have greater average attendance than the Blues.&bull; Some NHL governors are sore at Harold Ballard, the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who simply couldn&rsquo;t keep his mouth shut when Saskatoon popped up as a candidate for the Blues. Other owners were careful not to say anything derogatory about Saskatoon but Ballard, of course, had to throw some insults at the Saskatchewan city.&ldquo;If Ballard had kept his trap closed about it, then it would have been a simple business decision when the Saskatoon people applied to buy the Blues and have the NHL approve their ownership and transfer,&rdquo; said one NHL governor.&ldquo;But when Ballard sounded off, the Saskatoon people&mdash;give &rsquo;em credit for pouncing on it quickly&mdash;turned what he said into a big deal. They made it appear that it was the U.S.-dominated NHL against little Saskatoon.&rdquo;&bull; The big problem with the Saskatoon offer?&ldquo;There was no equity financing in the whole thing, no up-front cash,&rdquo; said an NHL owner. &ldquo;They would have needed some season ticket money to hold training camp. It was pie-in-the-sky stuff.&rdquo;<h2>Work It Out</h2>&bull; THE QUICKNESS WITH which the Ralston Purina Company, operators of the Blues for the last five years, went to the mat with the NHL surprised a few governors, who felt the company had been admirable partners.&ldquo;If Ralston Purina had said to us that the company had had enough of operating the team and could the league help them find a buyer for the franchise, I think we could have avoided all the trouble and bitterness,&rdquo; said NHL president John Ziegler.&bull; The Saskatoon proposal to the NHL contained a book listing the applicants for 18,000 season tickets but the NHL board wasn&rsquo;t overly impressed. They had heard that song before.When it was announced that the Capitals were set in Washington, D.C., there was a huge mail response of ticket inquiries. A follow-up phone campaign indicated that the team would be sold out. When the invoices went out to the prospects, it was a different story. The team was hard-pressed to sell 6,500 season tickets.When it was announced that the Colorado Rockies were moving to the Meadowlands as the New Jersey Devils, more than 30,000 season ticket requests were received. When invoices were sent out, 2,500 tickets were purchased.&bull; The NHL&rsquo;s Central Registry, which keeps all player contracts on file, estimated that the payroll for St. Louis Blues during the 1983-84 season, including major and minor league salaries and bonuses, will be approximately $4.5 million in U.S. funds. If the team had moved to Saskatoon&mdash;the players had to be paid in U.S. loot&mdash;it would mean a total of $5.4 million in Canadian money.<h2>A Political Football</h2>&bull; ONLY A CYNIC would suggest the Canadian government&rsquo;s involvement in the Saskatoon turn-down was politically motivated. However, the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau doesn&rsquo;t have an elected member in the west.&ldquo;My estimation of politicians would rise considerably if the Canadian government looked at the Saskatoon situation and congratulated the NHL board on its good business sense,&rdquo; said an owner.But it doesn&rsquo;t work that way and the NHL governors must parade to Ottawa in July to be questioned by the anti-combines people investigating the Saskatoon matter.&bull; The NHL&rsquo;s strong stand against Ralston Purina is motivated by an effort to show that the league&rsquo;s constitution has some strength.The NHL board&rsquo;s view is this: Our constitution is the same as a written contract and when Ralston Purina entered the NHL as owners of the Blues, they signed that contract. It stated that if an owner wants to withdraw a team from the league, then he must give two year&rsquo;s notice.&ldquo;We have to show that the constitution is solid or who knows what some team might try next?&rdquo; an owner said.The NHL took control of the Blues&rsquo; assets, namely the player contracts, when R-P threatened to have a dispersal sale. Of course, the league wanted to keep the Blues in one piece in an effort to sell the team but it also made the move to prevent some teams from buying players.Ziegler admitted that he couldn&rsquo;t prevent clubs from buying players if the Blues placed them on the market.A team owner was more definite when he said: &ldquo;Anyone who knows how our league works realizes all too well that some of our clubs would have been there with the cheque books if the players went on the market.&rdquo; &#9632;

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HOCKEY VIEWPOINT

<div class="byline">BY GLENN COLE</div>MONTREAL&mdash;It was late in the first round of the entry draft. The Canadiens had failed to better their position in the opening round, although they had tried to deal with both the Winnipeg Jets and the Washington Capitals.But to the delight of Claude Ruel, the director of player personnel, Alfie Turcotte was still around, ready to be picked.&ldquo;We saw him play in the Memorial Cup,&rdquo; said coach Bob Berry. &ldquo;We were impressed with him there and thought he played quite well. It was a surprise that he was still there when our turn came around.&rdquo;The Canadiens drafted 17th in the proceedings and had just seen another possibility&mdash;defenseman Bobby Dollas of the Laval Voisins&mdash;snatched away by the Winnipeg Jets.&ldquo;Had he been available when our turn came around, we would have had to take a time out and discuss our No. 1 choice,&rdquo; said general manager Serge Savard. &ldquo;We were happy Turcotte was available. He has as much talent as Pat LaFontaine.&rdquo;There was great speculation that the Canadiens would make deals with either Minnesota or Hartford to get a higher choice in the draft. But Savard couldn&rsquo;t swing a suitable deal and had to settle for what he had.Turcotte, whose father, Real, was once a teammate of the Canadiens&rsquo; assistant coach Jacques Laperriere, was the outstanding player for Portland in its Memorial Cup championship in May. He was the player who was the object of some controversy when Real, who coached him at Nanaimo last season, traded him to Portland midway through the schedule.&ldquo;It was felt that I&rsquo;d be better off in Portland,&rdquo; the young Turcotte said.A native of Gary, IN, Turcotte was a teammate and a good friend of LaFontaine&mdash;selected third overall by the Islanders from the Verdun Juniors&mdash;when the two played midget hockey with Detroit Compuware. Turcotte&rsquo;s personality is akin to LaFontaine, which should make him popular with both the Montreal media and fans.In 75 Western Hockey League games last season, Turcotte scored 49 goals and added 78 assists for 127 points and picked up 48 minutes in penalties. He is listed at 5-foot-9,170 pounds by the NHL Central Scouting Bureau, although he looked bigger than that when he donned a Canadiens&rsquo; sweater for the first time.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s very smart with the puck,&rdquo; said Berry, who refused to speculate on Turcotte&rsquo;s chances of making the Canadiens this fall, granting that the youngster will be given a good shot at training camp.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to try my best,&rdquo; said Turcotte, who feels his strength is puckhandling. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think my age will be a handicap.&rdquo;Playing in the WHL, Turcotte often found himself facing the other team&rsquo;s top pivots, such as Rich Sutter of divisionrival Lethbridge.&rdquo;&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t say I&rsquo;m a defensive center,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Our line just happened to be out against the other team&rsquo;s top line. If they got three goals and we got four, we&rsquo;d be doing our job.&rdquo;If Turcotte doesn&rsquo;t make it this fall, he will have three options. He could go back to Portland for another year or find himself playing for the Canadian or United States Olympic teams in the 1984 Games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. Turcotte has dual citizenship.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always been a Canadiens&rsquo; fan, too,&rdquo; says Turcotte. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if it was because of my father (who played with Laperriere with the Junior Canadiens and Hull-Ottawa). I hope they didn&rsquo;t draft me because of my father.&rdquo;Quite unlikely. The Canadiens don&rsquo;t operate that way and from Claude Ruel to Bob Berry and various scouts in between, the feeling was the Canadiens plucked a gem.Montreal also drafted Vladislav Tretiak, the all-star goal tender from the Soviet Union. He was taken 143rd overall and the Canadiens hope there is a chance that the Soviet Ice Hockey Federation will let Tretiak try to prove his mettle in the NHL.While the Soviet national team was on a tour last winter, Tretiak said that if he were to play in the NHL, he would want to be a Canadien.Montreal Gazette columnist Tim Burke quoted a source from the Soviet consulate saying Tretiak could sign a contract with the Canadiens by late July.It would by dynamite.IN PASSING&mdash;The Canadiens were almost totally ignored in the post-season award voting. Mats Naslund&rsquo;s selection to the rookie all-star team was about the only thing the Canadiens could brag about. &#9632;

Young Turcotte Like LaFontaine, Say Habs’ Brass

<div class="byline">BY STAN FISCHLER</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-011280/4797831-1-eng-US/f0006-012.jpg" title="f0006-01" width="292" height="344"></div><h2>Likes, Dislikes Of &rsquo;82-83</h2>SO, HOW DID you like the 1982-83 hockey season?I loved parts of it and hated others.For starters, I loved the way Wayne Gretzky demonstrated that the only one who can follow The Great One&rsquo;s act is Gretzky, himself. He has become so good that he has made Dave Semenko virtually irrelevant.More than anything else, I hated hearing players who are earning more than $100,000-, $200,000- or $300,000-a-year say that the regular season was meaningless.I loved the feud between Herb Brooks and Bob McCammon. Hockey can always use a good, clean feud and this one was superb. McCammon deserves an Oscar for coming up with the Smurf label. Brooks rates an Emmy for keeping a straight face when he knew that his Rangers had an un-Smurf-like average height of 6-foot, 188 pounds.I hated what happened to Paul Baxter in Penguinville this year. Never mind that he cut his penalty minutes by about a million; I expected Baxter to really come into his own offensively and defensively. For one season, at least, he seemed lost. Pathetic.To an American, the rise of another U.S.born coach such as Badger Bob Johnson in the NHL was, for me, a neat happening. Better yet, Badger Bob is a lovely man&mdash;similar to Herb Brooks. It&rsquo;s too bad they hate each other.I hate Dick Beddoes because (a) he outdresses me 365-0; (b) he outtalks me 200-165 and (c) he out-Gretzkys me 6-1.I love Dick Beddoes because he is Dick Beddoes&mdash;our Frank Sinatra.In case you haven&rsquo;t heard, I&rsquo;m not crazy about Borje Salming.Since I have unlimited respect for teams which honor the 80-game schedule, I love Gerry Cheevers, Orval Tessier, Bob McCammon and Glen Sather for what they and their Bruins, Black Hawks, Flyers and Oilers, respectively, did from the beginning of October to the start of April.I loathe those Toronto writers who didn&rsquo;t support their colleague, Bill Houston of the Globe and Mail, when Houston was banned by management from the Maple Leaf dressing room. The Globe&rsquo;s Allen Abel told me &ldquo;it&rsquo;s no major problem.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s a major problem, alright, if you&rsquo;re stranded outside when your livelihood depends on your being in. Abel and the other sheep copped out.Geez, I can&rsquo;t tell you how much I hate watching a talent wasted; especially a smart talent such as Behn Wilson. This is a jewel covered with gunk. I&rsquo;ll never forget that stick-swipe he took at Eddie Mio in the playoffs. If you&rsquo;re committed to playing dirty hockey, Behn, at least play it smart. That was among the dumb moves of the decade. Maybe playing for the Black Hawks will help.I love when Gordie Howe talks about his father, who is alive and well in Saskatoon. For me, Ab&rsquo;s (via Gordie) best line of the year was him saying that he still thinks that his other son, Vic, (Gordie&rsquo;s kid brother) was a better hockey player than Gordie. That is the riot of all riots because I saw Vic play, firstly for the Rovers and then the Rangers in the &rsquo;50s. In pre-game practice, Vic was the spitting image of Gordie. But when the game started, Vic never got out of first gear. (But I know what you mean, Ab.)If there&rsquo;s a more lovable and listenable and lilting goalkeeper in captivity than Glenn Resch then he must be hiding in Outer Mongolia. What I love most of all about Chico is that when you string all his adverbs and adjectives together they make more sense than anybody I&rsquo;ve ever heard in hockey since Frank Boucher.I&rsquo;ll never forget&mdash;and will forever hate&mdash;that flu bug that bit me last February, two hours before Lou Nanne phoned to give me 20 minutes of grief. Do you know what it&rsquo;s like to verbally fence with Sweet Lou From The Soo when you&rsquo;d rather be sleeping? Hateful, that&rsquo;s what.When he&rsquo;s hot, I love watching goalie Michel Dion play. He&rsquo;s better than any other netminder in the league. From a purely stylistic standpoint, Dion seems capable of doing more things right than anyone since Ken Dryden.I hate putting the rap on old pals such as John Ferguson, but if Fergie is going to knock Irv Grundman over the Rod Langway deal, he&rsquo;s got to take an uppercut for dealing Rick Middleton for Ken Hodge.Nothing does more for my taste buds than sinking my teeth into a delicious hockey column. This year, I loved Al Morganti in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Doug Grow of the Minneapolis Tribune, Tim Burke of the Montreal Gazette (much better than Dread Fisher on the best day Dread ever had), Jerry Trecker of the Hartford Courant, Steve Simmons&rsquo; Calgary Heraldstuff, Joe Fitzgerald in the Boston Herald-American, Trent Frayne, who left the Toronto Sun to replace Abel at the Globe and Mail, John Robertson of the Toronto Sun, Jim Proudfoot of the Toronto Star, Houston of the Globe and Mail&mdash;whether they let him in the dressing room or not&mdash;Bill McGraw of the Detroit Free Press and, for sheer perversity, the man who once dubbed the Oilers &ldquo;weak-kneed wimps,&rdquo; Terry Jones of the Edmonton Sun.Even though I took three years of French at Brooklyn College, I hate the fact that I can&rsquo;t speak it as well as Serge Savard. But I can read the language and my favorites of the French press in 1983 are Claude Larochelle of the Quebec Soleil, Rejean Tremblay of the Montreal La Presse, Jacques Beauchamp of the Sunday Express and Yvon Pedneault of the Journal de Montreal.There are 50 dozen things I love about Don Cherry but nothing more than his irreverence. One of my favorite Cherry yams is about the time he was in Europe a few years ago with Team Canada. At a diplomatic banquet, someone introduced Cherry to a Swedish functionary and Grapes looked him up and down and asked a question many of us have wondered for 40 years: &ldquo;How come you guys never entered World War II?&rdquo;I hate helmets; always did, always will.I love Lanny McDonald&rsquo;s moustache, personality and shot.I hate what has happend to Guy Lafleur. To me, he has done nothing right in three years except not wear a helmet.When Mike Milbury isn&rsquo;t my defensive hero, Rod Langway is. What I like best about Langway is the way he inflates himself to three times his normal size when an enemy skates over the Caps&rsquo; blueline.When teams such as the Maple Leafs insist upon hiring dinosaurs such as Paul Higgins, my blood turns to molten lava. I hate the fact that those sheepy Toronto writers&mdash;those prepubescent ewes who like to blame Americans for encouraging hockey bloodshed&mdash;did virtually nothing but joke about Higgins&rsquo; presence.While I&rsquo;m not crazy about seeing an NHL team in Saskatoon, I find myself loving all the good people I&rsquo;ve talked to from that city during the past season. The only people who could dislike a man such as Wild Bill Hunter are NHL governors.One of those governors happens to be Harold Ballard, who is so much like Bill Hunter I have to love Pal Hal.It is against the law for a hockey writer to love John Ziegler but I do cartwheels every time I&rsquo;m reminded that JZ once was a professional tap dancer. Besides, it&rsquo;s impossible to dislike a prez who always answers phone calls.Much as I find NHL referees as scintillating and intelligent and likeable as any group of people I&rsquo;ve met anywhere, anytime, I hate those zebras once the game begins.I hate sportscasters such as New York&rsquo;s Warner Wolf, who put down hockey fights and then show them over and over and over again on videotape instead of displaying the classy plays.I love clean players such as Denis Savard, Mike Bossy, Mark Pavelich, Bobby Smith, Marcel Dionne, Gil Perreault and Rick Middleton.The St. Louis hockey situation has driven me bananas, since I&rsquo;ve been close to the Blues for 15 years. I hate Ralston Purina for the ham-handed manner in which the corporation has manhandled the hockey team.Since I love their names, I wish Steve Gatzos, Louis Sleigher, Walt Poddubny, Ted Bulley, Dave Fenyves, Kari Eloranta and Corrado Micalef were better players than they are.<h2>Fischler, You Jerk</h2>NO YEAR-END SEGMENT would be complete without a selection of irate letters which prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that your&rsquo;s truly does, in fact, have a few thousand imperfections. Some mail; some replies:CHARLES H. W. TALBOT, SEATTLE, WA: &ldquo;You are an idiot. There is no such thing as the &lsquo;new Seattle-Tacoma arena.&rsquo; I guess you are talking about the new domed stadium in Tacoma.&rdquo;REPLY: Too true, H.W. They just opened the Tacoma Dome and they want NHL hockey in the U.S. Northwest. I figure that having a team in Tacoma is like having the Seals in Oakland. They should have been in San Francisco and a State of Washington team should be in Seattle. But Bart Wright, hockey writer for the Tacoma News-Tribune, says otherwise. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s only a 40minute drive from the center of Seattle to the Dome,&rdquo; says Wright. &ldquo;Besides, Seattle and Tacoma right now are like one unified big city.&rdquo; For the sake of Mr. Talbot and all my relatives in the Northwest I would like nothing more than an NHL team in Seattle-Tacoma. So would the Vancouver Canucks. So would the NHL. The problem is simoleans, dollar bills. Produce enough, Tacoma-Seattle (with one of the best cable-TV systems in the country) and the Sea-Tac Ironmen will rise again.JOHN B. HALL, PHILADELPHIA, PA: &ldquo;Your put-down of Pat Quinn was grossly unfair. Behn Wilson and Ken Linseman cost Pat his job.&rdquo;REPLY: Bob McCammon proved himself a better coach than Quinn in spite of Behn Wilson, Brad McCrimmon and Glen Cochrane on defense. Perhaps Pat Quinn can be an effective NHL coach. What he needs is an NHL job to prove that point. He didn&rsquo;t prove it by me on what he showed in Philly the first time around.ANTOINETTE MARTINO, TORONTO, ONT: &ldquo;Stan, you&rsquo;re a jerk. Anyone who knows anything about hockey could tell you that Borje Salming is one of the most valuable players on the Maple Leafs.&rdquo;REPLY: That&rsquo;s not what Dick Beddoes told me. I live by Beddoes&rsquo; word, not Borje&rsquo;s bank book.PAUL DIZADJI, CHICAGO, IL: &ldquo;I disagree with your crying over the fact that two writers picked Denis Savard over Wayne Gretzky for center on the all-star team.&rdquo;REPLY: Denis, marvelous as he is, came out second-best all season and in the playoff confrontation with Wayne. He should, therefore, come out second-best in the voting. &#9632;

f0006-01

ON THE CONTRARY

<div class="byline">BY BOB FACHET</div>LANDOVER&mdash;The Washington Capitals, once committed to a policy of building through the draft, abandoned that tenet when the Winnipeg Jets offered their versatile captain, Dave Christian, in exchange for a first-round pick.&ldquo;I did not want to trade our first-round pick and I realize this is a contradiction to what we had expressed before,&rdquo; said Caps&rsquo; general manager David Poile after the deal was made during a Washington draft timeout. &ldquo;But there is nothing wrong with giving it up for a 24-year-oId Dave Christian, who is a top player with leadership qualities.&rdquo;The Capitals were scheduled to pick 14th, a result of the first successful season in the club&rsquo;s history. In the past, Washington had obtained players such as Ryan Walter, Mike Gartner, Bob Carpenter and Scott Stevens because their sorry status gave them priority in selections.&ldquo;We were looking for another forward who could play and where we were picking, it was difficult to come up with one,&rdquo; said coach Bryan Murray. &ldquo;Dave is a young player and he will fit in comfortably with the players like Mike Gartner and Rod Lang way.&rdquo;Since Poile had previously indicated the need for a winger with the club overstocked at center, the first question about the deal concerned Christian&rsquo;s status. He has played his best hockey as a center.&ldquo;Getting a little crowded, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; Poile quipped. &ldquo;One of the reasons obviously is versatility. Dave has played every position except goal, which makes his value very high. He&rsquo;s primarily a centerman, but he can play elsewhere and he can kill penalties and play the point on the power play. That&rsquo;s an area where we must improve.&rdquo;Christian expressed pleasure at the move and indicated that anywhere Murray decided to put him was just fine.&ldquo;I played everywhere in Winnipeg and even though I played center most, I feel I can play anywhere with an adjustment period,&rdquo; said Christian, a standout on defense for the 1980 U.S. Olympic champions. &ldquo;I just like to play. I don&rsquo;t care where.&rdquo;Christian missed 25 games last season because of shoulder problems, which were corrected by surgery on May 5.As a U.S. citizen, Christian said he was glad he would be playing for an American team and he said the Canadian dollar differential had been important factor in his failure to negotiate a new contract with the Jets. He had been scheduled to become a free agent on July 1.Three Capitals were dropped when their contracts expired on June 1, including one of the club&rsquo;s surplus centers, Milan Novy. Also released were winger Ted Bulley and defenseman Randy Holt, the NHL penalty king.&ldquo;Randy played a (policeman) role for us,&rdquo; Murray said, &ldquo;but now we have Scott (Stevens), Rod (Langway) and a couple of others, maybe Torrie Robertson, that we didn&rsquo;t have when we got Randy. We have a number of people who can fill that role, but I&rsquo;m not sure it&rsquo;s that necessary any more, anyway.&rdquo;The Capitals also agreed to jointly operate Hershey Bears of the American Hockey League with Boston. Washington had tried to stock the Bears itself for several years. &#9632;

Christian’s Versatility Keys Trade To Caps

<div class="byline">BY RICH FRIEDMAN</div>NEW YORK&mdash;The Rangers have been de-Smurfed!The Rangers, dubbed Smurfs because of their diminutive size, have shot up following a six-player trade with the Detroit Red Wings.The newest Rangers are 6-foot-5 defenseman Willie Huber and wingers Mark Osborne, who&rsquo;s 6-foot-2, and 6-foot-1 Mike Blaisdell. All three players weigh at least 200 pounds. In return, the Red Wings get free-agent goalie Ed Mio, center-winger Ron Duguay and winger Eddie Johnstone.It is the Rangers&rsquo; biggest deal since the acquisition of Barry Beck in 1979, perhaps since the Phil Esposito-Carol Vadnais-Joe Zanussi deal of 1975, in which Brad Park and Jean Ratelle were shipped to Boston.The Rangers gained youth in exchange for experience, although many observers are giving the Rangers the upper hand in this deal.No sooner had the trade been made than both Mio and Duguay expressed their displeasure. Duguay, the toast of the New York gossip pages and the whipping boy of the Ranger fans, felt he had too many business commitments in New York to play out of the area. Mio, a free agent seeking an increase in salary, was upset because he says Ranger general manager Craig Patrick told him he wouldn&rsquo;t be traded.But enough about the banished Rangers; the new ones seem to be quite content coming to New York.&ldquo;The only thing we&rsquo;re worried about,&rdquo; said Huber, &ldquo;was that the guys were so popular here. We have to wonder if the New York fans will accept us. But all we can do is play our best and hope that they will.&rdquo;For Huber, 25, Osborne, 21, and Blaisdell, 22, it is a chance to play in the playoffs for the first time in their careers, on a team for which the Stanley Cup is a possibility instead of an impossible far-off dream.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re very pleased and excited,&rdquo; Patrick said of the trade. &ldquo;Huber&rsquo;s got size and the ability to move the puck with accuracy, Osborne is a complete allround left wing and Blaisdell has speed, a great shot and size.&rdquo;Huber, the biggest player in the NHL, made no secret of his desire to get out of Detroit, following the pressure he endured in his five years with one of the NHL&rsquo;s worst teams. As Osborne pointed out, Huber frequently had no one to pass the puck to. The Ranger forwards and coach Herb Brooks&rsquo; motion system will work to his advantage.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s easier to hit someone with a pass who&rsquo;s moving,&rdquo; added Osborne, who said that he was &ldquo;really excited&rdquo; about the trade. &ldquo;This will bring out the best in Willie.&rdquo;When it was pointed out that Huber does not use his size to his advantage, Patrick said &ldquo;his presence and the amount he does use his body will suffice for our needs.&rdquo;Huber&rsquo;s arrival will certainly take some of the pressure off Beck on the Rangers&rsquo; backline and gives the Rangers a defensive corps of imposing dimensions. Beck, Huber, Tom Laidlaw, Scot Kleinendorst, Rick Chartraw and Dave Maloney are all 6-foot-plus. The addition of Huber could move Ron Greschner up to forward&mdash;if his ailing back allows him to return. Reijo Ruotsalainen, the small Finn who played up front for several games late last season, could also be moved to forward.Osborne has been compared to Don Maloney, who incidentally was his counsellor at the Bobby Orr hockey camp when Maloney was 17 and Osborne 14. Don&rsquo;s head counselor there was Joe Bucchino, who now is the Rangers&rsquo; director of team operations.Blaisdell found out about the trade&mdash;and was ecstatic&mdash;when his mother called him from Saskatchewan as he was preparing to move out of his apartment in the suburbs of Detroit. The Red Wings, not knowing he was still in town, had called home to break the news.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad she caught me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Otherwise, I would have been three days on the highway to Regina and I wouldn&rsquo;t have known unless I&rsquo;d picked up a newspaper.&rdquo;Blaisdell played for a year at the University of Wisconsin under Bob Johnston, now the Calgary Hames&rsquo; coach. Blaisdell was a first-round draft pick, 11th overall, in 1980.In the trade, the Red Wings acquired three experienced players who, for various reasons, had outlasted their welcomes here. The Rangers had gotten as much as they ever would out of Johnstone, 29, who is hard-nosed and a digger but who never could adapt to Brooks&rsquo; motion system. Mio played heroically under pressure, particularly in the playoffs, but the Rangers have a flock of younger goalies: Glen Hanlon, for whom they gave up a lot (defenseman Andre Dore) in last January&rsquo;s trade with St. Louis; Steve Weeks, who has been bounced around enough in their crowded netminder rotation&mdash;he was sent down to Tulsa on the day Hanlon arrived&mdash;and who deserves the chance to prove he&rsquo;s NHL caliber; Michigan State star Ron Scott and John Vanbiesbrouck, who has shown promise with Sault Ste. Marie of the Ontario Hockey League.Both Vaclav Nedomansky, the veteran forwards who arrived with Hanlon, and goalie Steve Baker have been told by the Rangers to seek employment elsewhere. Each would have become a free agent on July 1&mdash;the same day as Mio.None of the Rangers who were traded to Detroit was a surprise, least of all Duguay, whose goal production slipped to 19 from 40 and the season before and who, for his sake and that of the Red Wings, must come to look on the trade as a new lease on his hockey life&mdash;and perhaps the last. He came to camp last September out-of-shape and never got along with coach Brooks who prefers, among other things, that his players show up on time for practice.If ever playing in the Big Apple can steal a young man&rsquo;s perspective, it has done that to Duguay. If he finds peace with his move to Detroit&mdash;providing, of course, he eventually agrees to play for the teams&mdash;the Red Wings have themselves an even deal; if not, the Red Wings are in for some tough times.Patrick said that the trade had been in the works for weeks and that three factors catalyzed its completion: The Wings desperately wanted Mio, the Rangers wanted to get the players here as soon as possible, particularly for the team&rsquo;s summer conditioning program, and &ldquo;season ticket packets just went out and we want our subscribers to know what they&rsquo;re buying,&rdquo; Patrick said.NOTES&mdash;As expected, Anders Hedberg signed a new contract. The 32-year-old right winger had 25 goals and 34 assists in 78 games last season after sitting out the entire 1981-82 season following knee surgery&hellip;The Rangers are extremely pleased with their first-round selection, Dave Gagner of the Brantford Alexanders. Gagner, a center, scored 55 goals and 121 points, was the Ontario Hockey League&rsquo;s Scholastic Player of the Year and the most valuable player in the OHL all-star game.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0007-011145/4797886-1-eng-US/f0007-012.jpg" title="f0007-01" width="555" height="728"><figcaption class="caption-body">Willie Huber, the league&rsquo;s tallest player, adds height to the Ranger lineup.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0007-01

Ranger Attack Increases By Inches

IF YOU TAKE the time to peruse the other stories in this issue, you will find a common thread running through all of them. Now that the National Hockey League 1983 entry draft is history, the 21 clubs, the various media and hockey fans everywhere are intent on making some sort of instant evaluation.Examples:In Vancouver, the Canucks are being second-guessed by the media and fans for taking David Bruce of the Kitchener Rangers in the second round instead of Portland Winter Hawk winger Randy Heath.In Toronto, the same thing is happening as the Maple Leafs opted for Victoria Cougar center Russ Courtnall instead of North Bay Centennial winger Andrew McBain in the first round.In Winnipeg, the Jets are proclaiming the 1983 draft a success&mdash;because they got McBain&mdash;and the media says it may be John Ferguson&rsquo;s finest moment at the drafting table.The Hartford Whalers, who took Hull&rsquo;s Sylvain Turgeon No. 2 overall instead of Verdun scoring ace Pat LaFontaine (who went No. 3 to the New York Islanders), are defending their position amid second guessing from a variety of sources.Those are just a few examples. Elsewhere, you will find scouts and general managers crowing the same well-worn draft-day cliches. &ldquo;We got exactly who we wanted.&rdquo; &ldquo;We had a hell of a draft.&rdquo; &ldquo;We never expected him to be there when our turn came.&rdquo;Well, we understand the urge to pass judgment and try to come up with something tangible in the wake of the draft, but when it comes right down to it, everyone is blowing a lot of smoke. Quite simply, no one knows how they fared in the 1983 draft, nor will they know for a couple of years, at least.Six or seven years ago, when the NHL was drafting players who were 20 and 21, it was a little more realistic to make the snap judgments. Of course, the margin of error was still there, but many of the drafted players had developed to the point that you could get a better reading on how good or bad they may be.Compare that situation with the one that went down on June 8 at the Montreal Forum and the similarities are few and far between. The players being drafted now are 18-years-old. Some of them are one year out of midget hockey. Even the shrewdest of the NHL GMs and scouts know that their selections&mdash;even the first-rounders&mdash;may not ever play regularly in the league, let alone star.It&rsquo;s just one of the many hazards in drafting adolescents. Some have called the Entry Draft one big &ldquo;crap shoot.&rdquo; Well, with some exceptions, that&rsquo;s exactly what it is. And that explains why it&rsquo;s become so popular to draft American high school players and Europeans.It used to be that scouts scoured the Canadian junior leagues looking for players who could play in the NHL. Now, they look for players who cannot play in the NHL. Confused? You&rsquo;re not alone.The modern-day scouting philosophy is as follows: Because the scouts see so many junior games, they feel confident in assessing a player&rsquo;s ability. More often than not, the scouts decide who cannot play. Therefore, a junior player who scores 50 goals and gets 100 points, but who is small or slow or has some other undesirable quality, puts himself in the spotlight 70 or 80 times in a season. His flaws are exposed and magnified.On the other hand, a high school player, say from Cloquet or Hibbing, MN, plays no more than 20 to 30 games in a season. The competition isn&rsquo;t as good. They are more heavily scouted now than ever before, but it&rsquo;s still less than the exposure in Canadian junior hockey. A scout may see a player in six or seven games and based on his play, draft him. What it boils down to is that the high school player has yet to prove he can&rsquo;t play in the NHL. Too few games and lack of stiff competition mask the high school player&rsquo;s flaws.On top of all that, NHL rules encourage drafting unknown longshots from American high schools. If a team drafts an American high schooler, they do not have to sign him or protect him and he remains its property. If they draft a major junior player, they must do one of three things in a one-year span&mdash;sign him, make an arbitrated contract offer or put him back into the talent pool 48 hours before the following year&rsquo;s draft.This, naturally, is a source of concern for junior hockey operators in Canada. And well it should. The NHL rules regarding signing and protecting draft picks should be uniform.As it stands right now, it&rsquo;s just not fair. But then neither is passing judgment on a team&rsquo;s draft performance, but that doesn&rsquo;t stop anybody from doing it. &#9632;

The Delayed Reaction

<div class="byline">BY REX MacLEOD</div>It&rsquo;s hard to get used to even though it goes on all the time.Newspapermen pretend they are indifferent to or unaware of the intoxicating allure of gaping at live celebrities, so called. What the hell&mdash;everyone knows newsmen don&rsquo;t go ga ga over Zsa Zsa or others of her ilk.That cow-eyed slobbering, even over ersatz luminaries, may be okay for fan clubs, souvenir hunters or the great unwashed but sophisticated, steely-eyed newsmen are immune to that jazz. They rub shoulders with celbs every day and, like the eunuchs in a harem, they don&rsquo;t feel anything from the experience. Some newspersons might resent that comparison. Anyway, that&rsquo;s the way the fiction goes. Just the facts ma&rsquo;am&mdash;or sir.Actually, and it grieves one to say so, the biggest fall-guys (persons?) when it comes to mooning over celebrities are the newspeople even though they try to summon a fake yawn whenever one happens to be in the vicinity.You can see it in the Toronto Star newsroom all the time. Some well-known individual comes in for an interview or heads for the photo studio to be mugged and finger-printed for Starweek magazine and you wouldn&rsquo;t believe the gawks.Professional newsperson, of course, are as capable of disguising their gawks as Dave Stieb is his change-of-pace, but this feigned nonchalance doesn&rsquo;t fool anyone. A furtive peek (sometimes while coughing gently into a fist) or a sudden hike to the washroom, so as to cross paths with the high-profile type, usually betrays the sly Stargazer even though he thinks no one has noticed.It is sad to relate but there is an occupational ailment among those who report, a compulsion to grovel and it seems to be progressive. Everyone wants to be a nice guy. The cynics and the heretics have been weeded out or converted. No one carries grudges anymore, nor is anyone consumed by a passion to get even for alleged slights, snubs or the old standby&mdash;quoted out of context. It&rsquo;s demoralizing.Even a hack politician, batting 1,000&mdash;his figure&mdash;for being misquoted can come into a newsroom and instantly be surrounded by back-slappers. It is not de rigueur to mention that he was &ldquo;unavailable&rdquo; every time he was needed for an original comment about one of his campaign calumnies.Rick Vaive&mdash;you might have heard the name&mdash;dropped in at the Star the other day, promoting something called Slo-Pitch. He looked fetching in Maple Leaf-blue shorts. He had his gang with him. Security has interrogated less suspicious-looking types, figuring they might be delivering a letter to the editor with fuse attached, but Vaive and his henchmen were waved through, directly to the desk of sports editor Paul Warnick where they received a cordial welcome. Just like that&mdash;all protocol forgotten.Sure, this is hospitable but reporters, whose spleens have become flaccid through lack of exercise, even reacted with a mild pout. They can tell you of the frustrations involved in trying to reach Vaive, or his buddies, at THEIR office in Maple Leaf Gardens. If you phone, you leave a number and if you work for a weekly you might hear back before deadline. If you drop in you will be treated with the all the warmth you might expect if you made a similar visit to Millhaven penitentiary.Vaive is a personable enough guy&mdash;if you can get to him. Unlike some of the Leafs he is a magnificent thespian&mdash;he can actually give the impression he is glad to see you&mdash;after you have managed to trap him in the dressing room by stepping on his foot or some other artful manoevre.There are times, though, with deadlines thundering in, when he lurks in the training room or the showers, in the Darryl Sittier memorial chapel or other out-of-bounds areas.After one game last season&mdash;a game in which he had distinguished himself so there was no need to be aloof&mdash;he seemed to have three showers and then he took another 10 minutes blow-drying his hair while the creme de la creme of sports journalism waited by his locker to hear him deliver something like, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll get &rsquo;em next time,&rdquo; or &ldquo;this team is starting to jell.&rdquo; No hockey writer worth his salt regrets a stomach-churning wait so long as his patience is rewarded with homespun gems like that. He can picture his editor jumping in glee even if he did blow an edition.As stated above, Vaive is a personable guy, chatty and informative&mdash;when you get him cornered. That isn&rsquo;t the point. Newsmen have to unite, show their mettle, their steel (metal?). Enough of this subservience. Next time Vaive or any other prominent wheel shows up unannounced, show them what we&rsquo;re made of.Don&rsquo;t be easy. Make them wait a minute or so. Then ask for their autograph.This article first appeared in the Toronto Star. &#9632;

Your Autograph Will Be Along Shortly

<div class="byline">BY TRENT FRAYNE</div>Wayne, um, geez, the name was right here; ah yes, Gretzky&mdash;comes home to Brantford, Ont., each summer for a tennis tournament that bears his name and helps blind people read.This is a young man of a mere 22 summers who has done next to everything on the ice and now is heavily involved in something highly worthwhile off it. Three years ago, he sat at a head table at one of those ubiquitous sports banquets where the cliches are ground and recycled like newsprint. Next to him was an athlete named Craig McFarlane, a mighty remarkable guest at a sports banquet: he was enthusiastic.Usually at these things, the big celebrities are bored or go nodding off between double negatives, but here was Craig McFarlane smiling and excited. In addition, as Wayne Gretzky was to discover, he was blind.Craig is a wrestler from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. This night, he made a lasting imprint upon Wayne Gretzky. Such courage in spite of the darkness. Wayne went home thinking about blind people. Within five weeks, tennis balls were flying into the net&mdash;and occasionally over it&mdash;in the first annual Wayne Gretzky Celebrity Tennis Classic in the arena at the Brantford Civic Centre and the proceeds went to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.There are two things about Wayne&rsquo;s tennis tournament; practically all of the people who play in it are famous and practically none of &rsquo;em can play tennis for squat. Here is a guy such as Gordie Howe who can do anything, right? He used to work out with Detroit Tigers. He used to soar a golf ball out of sight. Jim Norris, who owned the Red Wings and ran the fight game in the United States, took one look at Howe&rsquo;s slope shoulders one time and said this guy could hit with Joe Louis.All right. Old Elbows partnered with the host, The Kid, and they were tied playing Stan Jonathan and Mike Bullard going to match point. Stan lifted a weak little lob toward Gordie at the net&mdash;duck soup for the win. But, overeager, the greatest right-winger since Charlie Conacher swung too soon, hit the ball with the rim of his Wilson 2000 racquet and blew the match.Next, Cheryl Tiegs. Cheryl Tiegs may be the bestlooking tennis player who ever lit up a magazine cover, but for the skinny though curvaceous Cheryl, the rudiments of the backhand stroke are one of life&rsquo;s little mysteries. Off the court, Anne Murray sings of love and, on it, she has perfected it&mdash;she and partner Rick Vaive were blanked in three matches. The Chicago combination of Denis Savard and Steve Larmer terrorized NHL goaltenders through 80 games last winter. Swinging at flying tennis balls, they were Laurel and Hardy.&ldquo;This game must be harder than it looks,&rdquo; the old Davis Cupper Don Fontana said as Gretzky popped a ball against the time clock 20 feet above the court. &ldquo;Everybody&rsquo;s problem is that, sooner or later, they take their eyes off the ball&mdash;and I mean everybody. I&rsquo;ve been playing most of my life and I&rsquo;m convinced, if I could watch the ball all the time, I&rsquo;d be 25 percent better.&rdquo;Of course, the object of the Wayne Gretzky Celebrity Classic is not to present the classic strokes, classically performed; no, the object is to enable the blind to read and the $45,000 raised in this year&rsquo;s tourney (the figure has leaped from the first year&rsquo;s $5,000 and last year&rsquo;s $30,000) will be used to buy talking-book machines, playback devices used for books and magazines produced on cassettes at the CNIB&rsquo;s in-house studios.A note in the tournament program advises that most blind people don&rsquo;t read braille and that it takes two years to learn to read with ease. So the demand for access to talking books has escalated in four years from 172,000 to 545,000. For this, yet another accolade must be heaped on Wayne, er, Gretzky.This article first appeared in the Toronto Globe And Mail. &#9632;

Take A Bow, Wayne, But Watch The Ball

<div class="byline">BY BOB DONNELLY</div>QUEBEC&mdash;While the Buffalo Sabres grabbed most of the publicity at the entry draft in Montreal, the Nordiques also got into the headlines with a last-minute trade, the only major deal at the annual event.The Nordiques traded disgruntled forward Real Cloutier and their first-round draft pick, 11th overall, to Buffalo for three players and a third-round draft pick. The deal was consummated only hours before the start of the draft and fulfilled general manager Maurice Filion&rsquo;s two-month-old promise to make changes before the start of the new season.Coming to Quebec are left winger Tony McKegney and centers Andre Savard and Jean-Francois Sauve. McKegney was the second-highest scorer with the Sabres last year with 36 goals and 37 assists. The knock against him in some circles is that he is not aggressive enough on the road&mdash;precisely the rap Cloutier endured in Quebec. Filion advises critics to give McKegney an opportunity to show himself before passing any judgments.The other two players in the deal give Quebec some much-needed help at center, where Bergeron could only really count on Peter Stastny and Dale Hunter last year. Savard, who is 30 and has a lot of experience, will help defensively and kill penalties. At 5-foot-6 and 170 pounds, Sauve is considered too petite to play in the NHL&mdash;at least that&rsquo;s what Bowman thinks. Buffalo played Sauve in only nine games last year, but the swift skater was a big hit in the minors with Rochester. Bergeron coached Sauve as a junior in Trois-Rivieres and Denis Savard has proved that speed can make up for lack of size in the league.&ldquo;Everyone knew that Cloutier had to leave Quebec and that his departure would be the best for everyone involved, including him,&rdquo; commented Filion. &ldquo;He had announced it himself in the papers that he wanted to be traded and the deal with Buffalo was the best we could do.&ldquo;The new players will help us at center, where we needed help, and will allow us to develop our prospects like Paul Gillis and Mike Eagles. Michel Bergeron will be able to count on some help right away and we know what Tony McKegney can do for us. I wish Real all the best with Buffalo; he remains a great scorer.&rdquo;There is a great deal of difference between a great scorer and a complete player and this was noted by the Quebec press in the days building up to the trade. The Quebec management kept saying that Cloutier could score a lot, but had nothing else to say about him. Bergeron has always insisted on players who will give their all every game. He hopes the new players, along with the changes made last year, will help establish that atmosphere on his team.&ldquo;I was very surprised when the deal was finally announced,&rdquo; said Savard. &ldquo;On the other hand, if there is one place to go in a trade, I&rsquo;m glad it&rsquo;s Quebec.&ldquo;I was very surprised when the deal was finally announced,&rdquo; said Savard. &ldquo;On the other hand, if there is one place I had to go in a trade, I sure am glad it is to Quebec and the Nordiques. I felt I can play solid defense and at the same time contribute on offense.&rdquo;Savard played his junior hockey in Quebec with the Remparts. &ldquo;I know I still have a few good years left and that I can help the Nordiques,&rdquo; he added.McKegney expressed initial surprise at the trade, particularly with the heavy income tax burden he&rsquo;ll incur in Quebec. Before long, however, he was anxious to show Bergeron that the Nordiques were right about him and that Bowman had made a mistake.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t really think I had all the ice time that I deserved in Buffalo,&rdquo; said McKegney. &ldquo;I still have some things to show people and I just hope I will get the chance to do that in Quebec.&rdquo;Cloutier also complained about lack of ice time and McKegney will have to show Bergeron that he deserves lots of ice through his efforts game in and game out.By trading away their first pick, the Nords didn&rsquo;t select until 32nd overall, when they opted for Yves Heroux from Chicoutimi. Heroux is 6-foot, 190 pounds and plays right wing. He is only 18 and despite his desire to play for the Nords right away, he will most certainly play another year, if not two, of junior hockey. The Nordiques are especially happy with Heroux because the NHL rating system had him listed as 21st overall, the equivalant of a first-round pick.&ldquo;I would really like to stay with the Nordiques next year and I will give it my all,&rdquo; said Heroux. &ldquo;My chances are even better now because of the departure of Cloutier.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0009-011216/4797989-1-eng-US/f0009-012.jpg" title="f0009-01" width="554" height="786"><figcaption class="caption-body">Tony McKegney felt slighted in Buffalo because he wasn&rsquo;t getting sufficient ice time.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0009-01

Trading Cloutier Fulfills Filion’s Promise

<div class="byline">BY JOE FALLS</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-011259/4798044-1-eng-US/f0010-012.jpg" title="f0010-01" width="286" height="334"></div><h2>Dressing Room Character</h2>MY STANLEY CUP memories are probably a little different than most of the writers covering the series between the Oilers and Islanders.That&rsquo;s because I haven&rsquo;t seen many Stanley Cups lately. The last one was in 1972.So, everything impressed me this time&hellip;especially the dressing room of the Islanders in Nassau Coliseum. It was little more than Early Stone Age. A place to sit down, a place to hang your clothes, a place to take a shower. Not much more.It told me much about the character of this team. The Islanders didn&rsquo;t need any frills in there. They get it done where it counts the most&mdash;out on the ice.If there ever was a meat-and-potatoes team in hockey, it&rsquo;s these guys in the blue and orange uniforms.When you walk into the Islanders&rsquo; dressing room, the first thing you notice is silence.Nothing is going on.The players are scattered around the room but nobody is saying much or doing very much. It&rsquo;s like a church in there. Everything is so still. Everything is so quiet.You hear no rock music blaring from amplifiers, no TVs carrying the soaps, no radios turned up to shatter the eardrums.<h2>No Bare Necessities</h2>YOU SEE NO magazines anywhere, girlie or otherwise.This is a place of business&mdash;the office of the Islanders&mdash;and they conduct business in a very serious manner.You don&rsquo;t see so much as a fragment of food around the room.Just a few Cokes and a couple of kegs of Gatorade.No horseplay is going on.The walls are made of concrete block and they&rsquo;re painted white. The lockers are made of wood.This is the sophisticated sum of the best hockey team in the Western Hemisphere.Somebody has hung up a picture of Toe Blake, the old Montreal coach, with some scribbling on it. It is something to the effect that if Blake could win four straight Cups, so could the New York Islanders.Not one slogan is written on the walls. No signs or slogans anywhere&mdash;not even a chalkboard to tell which players to cover which wings. They probably know that already.They&rsquo;ve got a rack of sticks nailed to one wall and three garbage cans in the middle of the room. That&rsquo;s so the players can toss their adhesive tape in there.Goalie Billy Smith has a small sign pasted in the back of his locker. It reads: &ldquo;God Bless America&mdash;1976.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s as glamorous as it gets with these guys.This is a no-fluff team that has no need or desire to show off. It is a team of honest workers&mdash;men who put in a day&rsquo;s work for a day&rsquo;s wages.The truth is that their dressing room looks like a basement sale after the sale is over. The shelves are bare.<h2>Where&rsquo;s Al&rsquo;s Office?</h2>THE LOCKERS CONTAIN nothing but skates, socks, pants, suspenders and jerseys.No funny dolls. No pictures. No bubble gum cards. No bubble gum.No sofas or chairs anywhere. You sit on the hard wood and like it.Not even Al Arbour has an office and he&rsquo;s the head coach. He gets dressed out of a locker, right along with the players, and if you want to interview him, you interview him out in the open in front of the players. It is an austere setting, to say the least, and for me, it only added to the growing legend of this great hockey team.Even the sportswriters seemed comfortable in this room. They know they are welcome and so they come in and sit around on the floor and pass the time with the players. Not everything is interview. Sometimes it&rsquo;s just talk&mdash;man to man. That impressed me very much.Women reporters are allowed in the dressing room&mdash;even encouraged to come in. The players simply do not take their clothes off in front of them. The players do that in the back, where they shower. Why didn&rsquo;t somebody think of that before.The players sit there quietly as they talk to the writers and broadcasters. They treat them with respect&mdash;another thing that caught my eye. They answer all of the questions and answer them quietly and patiently. Those who cover the team on a full-time basis say it is this way all the time.All of this is a credit to Arbour and it goes back to a very simple axiom in sports: A man who can&rsquo;t control his dressing room can&rsquo;t control his team.Quite clearly, this man in in complete control of both. &#9632;

f0010-01

HOCKEY CORNER

<div class="byline">BY DICK CHUBEY</div>EDMONTON&mdash;Mutt and Jeff!Put concisely, this is where the longterm future of the Edmonton Oilers sits following a childish production June 8 which the National Hockey League terms its entry draft.&ldquo;Yeah, we got the long and the short of it, all right,&rdquo; mused assistant coach Ted Green of the Oilers&rsquo; first- and seventh-round draft choices. &ldquo;One guy&rsquo;s 6-foot-4 and another 5-foot-5.&rdquo;&ldquo;Mutt and Jeff,&rdquo; piped straight-man John Muckier, general manager-coach Glen Sather&rsquo;s other coaching lieutenant.The Oilers also established a draft record in choosing 6-foot-4, 212-pound Jeff Beukeboom of Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds in the opening round&mdash;the fourth time in five years (Kevin Lowe, 1979; Paul Coffey, 1980; and Jim Playfair, 1982) they&rsquo;ve opted for a defenseman in the first round. Beukeboom, a native of Lindsay, Ont., shares something in common with 1981 first-rounder Grant Fuhr. The netminder from Victoria Cougars, similar to Beukeboom, failed to score a goal in his draft year.&ldquo;I did get one in the playoffs, though, but I&rsquo;m certainly not a goal-scorer,&rdquo; said Beukeboom, who had 25 assists and 193 minutes in penalties. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a stay-at-home defenseman and I just try to do my job.&rdquo;Scoring goals may not be Beukeboom&rsquo;s strength, but pint-sized (5-foot-5, 150 pounds) Dale Derkatch certainly accounted for a sufficient number to accommodate both of them. The 18-year-old Regina Pats&rsquo; center led Western League scorers with 84 goals and 179 points in 1982-83.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s got so much ability, how can you not take him in the seventh round?&rdquo; said Sather, discounting the rap against the smallest player ever drafted. &ldquo;What if he turns out? Wouldn&rsquo;t it be fun?&ldquo;Plus, think of the money you could save on shin pads.&rdquo;Regina GM Bob Strumm, admittedly biased, certainly is in Derkatch&rsquo;s comer.&ldquo;Five years from now when he&rsquo;s on the cover of Sports Illustrated, 20 other teams will be making excuses why they didn&rsquo;t take him,&rdquo; boldy predicted Strumm. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s so small, his size is an advantage, not a disadvantage. Guys try to run at him but he just sticks it up their backsides. He&rsquo;s never missed a game through injury.&ldquo;When he goes back to Regina next year, he&rsquo;ll break records in (western) major junior. He&rsquo;ll be the first guy in our league to score 100 goals. He&rsquo;ll have that out of the way by Valentine&rsquo;s Day.&rdquo;The immediate future of Beukeboom, who turned 18 on March 28, also lies in junior.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m very pleased and surprised. I didn&rsquo;t expect to be drafted until early in the second round,&rdquo; said Beukeboom, who was rated 14th overall by the Oilers&rsquo; chief scout Barry Fraser, though only the Calgary Flames expressed an interest&mdash;via the telephone&mdash;in Beukeboom prior to the draft.&ldquo;I know I&rsquo;m going to a good organization. Steve Graves (a teammate with the Greyhounds who was chosen in the second round by the Oilers in 1982) has told me a lot about the Oilers.&ldquo;I know I need to develop and will be back in junior this year for sure.&rdquo;Beukeboom&rsquo;s bloodlines also indicate a hockey background. His uncle, Ed Kea, is a long-time NHL veteran who suffered a serious head injury while playing in the minor leagues last season. Beukeboom&rsquo;s older brother, John, 22, played in the American League with Adirondack in 1982-83.Oilers&rsquo; second- and third-round choices&mdash;center Mike Golden and defenseman Mike Flanagan, both 18&mdash;were a couple of college-bound high schoolers from the Boston area. Golden will attend University of New Hampshire which produced Oiler winger Dave Lumley, while Flanagan is enrolled at Providence College.&ldquo;It may take a couple of years, but those kids will play in the NHL,&rdquo; said Oilers&rsquo; scout Ace Bailey, who works the Boston area.IN THE CREASE&mdash;Oiler owner Peter Pocklington has quashed rumors he&rsquo;ll sell Wayne Gretzky to the New York Rangers for $16 million. Pocklington&rsquo;s company, Fidelity Trust, has been frozen until he agrees to sell it or inject about $20 million of new capital. The rumors began to circulate several weeks ago when Pocklington, who was handily defeated in his bid to become head of the federal Progressive Conservative party, began selling his interests to concentrate on his political ambitions&hellip;Sather has announced he&rsquo;ll maintain his triple portfolio (president, GM, coach) with the Oilers next season, ending the annual mild speculation he&rsquo;ll relinquish his coaching duties&hellip;Former Hartford head coach Larry Kish will be joining the Oilers in a scouting capacity. &#9632;

Oilers’ Drafting Goes In All Sizes

<div class="byline">BY ERIC DUHATSCHEK</div>CALGARY&mdash;&ldquo;Mike Eaves,&rdquo; begins Bob Johnson, sounding as if the prodigal son had just returned to the fold, &ldquo;is the kind of player you win with. You build teams around guys like that. He&rsquo;s from the same mold as Doug Risebrough. We need those kind of players on our team.&rdquo;The Flames acquired Eaves and minor-league defenseman Keith Hanson from Minnesota during the June entry draft. In return, the Flames dealt Steve Christoff, who had been traded from the Stars the previous season, and a second-round draft pick in next June&rsquo;s entry draft.The acquisition of Eaves climaxed almost a year of negotiations between the Flames and North Stars. When Johnson joined the Flames as coach and surveyed the available talent at center, he put out the word: get Mike Eaves.&ldquo;That made it harder,&rdquo; conceded general manager Cliff Fletcher. &ldquo;They knew we wanted him. They also realized, however, we would only go so far for him.&rdquo;In Eaves, the Flames give themselves another center with NHL experience. Since Kent Nilsson&rsquo;s shift to the right side is now permanent, the club did not want to go to camp with only Doug Risebrough, Jim Peplinski, Mel Bridgman and Guy Chouinard at the center spot.In fact, the names of Bridgman and Chouinard were the most frequently mentioned in the intensive trade talks the Flames had with a number of teams at the NHL congress. All the others fell through.Eaves said the trade did not come as much of a surprise.&ldquo;I had a gut feeling all summer something would happen,&rdquo; Eaves said. &ldquo;I thought that with changes the North Stars would be making, I&rsquo;d get swept away.&rdquo;&ldquo;I had a gut feeling all summer that something would happen,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I thought that with the changes the North Stars would be making, I&rsquo;d get swept away somehow.&rdquo;Eaves played for Johnson at the University of Wisconsin, leading the 1977 team which he captained to the national championship. Additionally, Eaves, a two-time all-American, played for Johnson in the 1981 Canada Cup.Eaves is primarily known for his penalty-killing (he scored five of his 16 goals last season shorthanded), but Johnson said he would allow Eaves to become a two-way player again.&ldquo;They made him a defensive specialist in Minnesota,&rdquo; said Johnson, &ldquo;but he can score. Believe me, he can score.&rdquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m looking forward to getting to Calgary and playing for Bob again,&rdquo; said Eaves.Christoff, the man the Flames gave up for Eaves said: &ldquo;They&rsquo;re getting a helluva player. I played with him in Minnesota. He moves the puck well. He goes into the comers. He can give it to his wingers good. Besides, Calgary needs a center more than a right wing.&rdquo;The trade put an end to Christoff&rsquo;s unhappy sabbatical in Calgary. He was returned to the North Stars exactly one year after the Flames acquired him for Willi Plett.Christoff had a difficult time in Calgary, reporting to training camp with his shoulder still ailing from off-season surgery. Once he was ready to play, Johnson could not&mdash;or would not&mdash;find a place for him in the lineup.&ldquo;I have to thank Calgary for rebuilding my shoulder,&rdquo; said the amiable Christoff, a popular player with his teammates. &ldquo;I saw the doctor who did the operation a little while ago and he said, in a year&rsquo;s time, he&rsquo;d never seen anyone get his shoulder strength back as quickly. I didn&rsquo;t play much, but I sure did rehabilitate my shoulder by the time I got back down here.&rdquo;Hanson, the other player the Flames picked up, is given a good chance of cracking the team&rsquo;s blueline corps.If enough of the team&rsquo;s defensive prospects turn out, Johnson is toying with the idea of using Paul Reinhart at forward again next year.Pierre Page, coach of Calgary&rsquo;s minor-league affiliate in Colorado, called Hanson &ldquo;the most improved player in the Central League.&rdquo;Hanson spent last season with Minnesota&rsquo;s farm club in Birmingham.&ldquo;He was always their leader there, in the drills and on the ice,&rdquo; said Page. &ldquo;Above all, he&rsquo;s a guy that can really improve. He just needs a chance to get his feet wet.&rdquo;&ldquo;All winter long, I kept hearing reports about this late-bloomer in Birmingham,&rdquo; said Fletcher. &ldquo;If Hanson can step in and play, this is a good deal for us.&rdquo;While Eaves fills an immediate need, acquisition by choosing centers with their first two picks in the draft.Their first choice, Dan Quinn of Belleville Bulls, came as something of a surprise because the Flames wanted Adam Creighton, the 6-foot-6 center from Ottawa 67s. Choosing 13th overall, the Flames were thwarted by Buffalo Sabres, who chose Creighton 11th overall with a pick they received from Quebec in the trade for Real Cloutier.Fletcher said he saw Gretzky-like qualities in Quinn.&ldquo;He sees the ice very well. He has great anticipation. I just think he has the potential to be a star in the NHL.&rdquo;Fletcher acknowledged that Quinn was his pick, not his scouts&rsquo;.&ldquo;I think I liked him more than anybody,&rdquo; said Fletcher.Calgary&rsquo;s second choice, Brian Bradley of the London Knights, came in the third round, 52nd overall. The fact that Bradley, the 28th-rated player in the draft was available so late, surprised the Flames&mdash;pleasantly, of course.&ldquo;He was considered at length for our first pick overall,&rdquo; said Fletcher. &ldquo;Why he slipped through, I don&rsquo;t know, but I&rsquo;m glad he did.&rdquo; &#9632;

Eaves Gets Reunited With College Coach

The Flyer front-office shake-up is just the tip of a melting organizational iceberg at the Spectrum, according to a source close to the organization. One informant reports that the ultimate goal is for boss Ed Snider to sell the team and the PRISM TV operation. To do so, he must present a tight economic ship to prospective buyers and this might account for the payroll trimming. One report has it that ex-GM Keith Allen&rsquo;s private line was cut and that a new Philly employee was brought in who will, among other functions, approve payments. When it was pointed out to one of the biggies in the Flyer high command that some of the veteran employees might resent the new practices, the reply was said to have been: &ldquo;If they don&rsquo;t like it, they can quit!&rdquo;&hellip;Although veteran broadcaster Dan Kelly would be hurt by the loss of the St. Louis Blues, with whom he&rsquo;s been affiliated, Dan has told friends he&rsquo;s got enough hockey work with the USA Network to keep him busy. Gary Green also is sitting pretty at USA but is disuccing the Hartford Whaler coaching position with Emile Francis&hellip;It&rsquo;s whispered that political infighting between the rival breweries that own the Montreal Canadiens (Molson) and Quebec Nordiques (Carling-O&rsquo;Keefe) is the reason why the Boston Bruins have been stymied in their attempts to play a Normand Leveille benefit game in the province of Quebec. Last fall, the Bruins met the Nords in Chicoutimi as part of a Canada Winter Games promotion&hellip;The Eames&rsquo; marketing brigade hopes to have all 16,667 seats in Calgary&rsquo;s new Saddle-dome sold on a seasonal basis when the campaign begins. GM Cliff Fletcher is on the lookout for a publicist now that Al Coates has been I promoted&hellip; UPI sports editor Milt Richman stands by his story that Herb Brooks was planning to jump the Rangers this summer. The inside report is that Madison Square Garden boss Sonny Werblin made it clear that Brooks would be sued up, down and sideways if he broke his Ranger I contract. &ldquo;Herb,&rdquo; the tipster tells BLUELINES, &ldquo;was intimidated by I Sonny.&rdquo; Another monkey wrench in any proposed Brooks-to-Minnesota shift was that, had it ever happened, Herbie would have been making more than the highest-priced North Star, Bobby Smith&mdash;which is plenty. Those I who heard Brooks tell New York scribes that he was anxious to return I home to Minnesota for the summer were surprised to learn that Herb embarked on a 10-city tour for Levis that will keep him on the road through I mid-August.Phyllis Gretzky, Wayne&rsquo;s mother, tells BLUELINES she has had no I problems adjusting to the fishbowl existence since Wayne hit the heights. I &ldquo;And we&rsquo;ve had no problems with our younger children either,&rdquo; she adds, I &ldquo;except for the day after the Islanders beat the Oilers for the Stanley Cup. I The kids were a little hesitant about going to school to face the needling.&rdquo; Phyllis, along with Wayne&rsquo;s strikingly-beautiful companion, singer Vicki Moss, were in New York with Gretzky when he received the Seagram&rsquo;s Seven Crown of Sports award for the second year in a row. Meanwhile, Gretzky&rsquo;s summer itinerary includes four weeks in Los Angeles. He&rsquo;ll play in a benefit softball game at Dodger Stadium and have a taste of his favorite hobby, watching soap operas&mdash;only this time he&rsquo;ll be performing in them with brief spots. A spot on The Tonight Show is also on the agenda. While in California, Gretzky is likely to check out possibilities of himself as lead character in an animated cartoon series&hellip;Although goalie John Davidson is being wooed by several TV organizations, the Rangers say that they wouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if he showed up at camp for just one more try. If so, it would kill his chance to sign on with the Devils&rsquo; video crew since the New Jerseyites don&rsquo;t plan on waiting until September before naming their 1983-84 TV team&hellip;With the signing on the dotted line imminent, the New York-based Pro Sports will start publishing GOAL magazine for the NHL next season. Ed Healy left GOAL as editor for a TV job&hellip;Ken McKenzie, founder and ex-publisher of THE HOCKEY NEWS, has moved to Toronto, where he has taken over as chairman and chief executive officer of Special Event Television, which produces a number of shows including Don Cherry&rsquo;s Grapevine and The Original Six&hellip;North Star-watchers whisper that the key to the club&rsquo;s behind-the-scenes success in 1983-84 will be the manner in which new coach Bill Mahoney meshes gears with his assistants, J.P. Parise and Murray I Oliver, both stalwart cronies of GM Lou Nanne&hellip;Carol Vadnais&rsquo; salary drop, from player to assistant coach, is said to be from $195,000 to $50,000.NHL veep Steve Ryan is winning kudos for his positive efforts in the marketing arena&hellip;When Cat Francis signed up with the Whalers, he left his wife, Em, in St. Louis to put their house on the block. &ldquo;I told her,&rdquo; Emilesays, &ldquo;sell that house or I&rsquo;ll put you on waivers!&rdquo;&hellip;Bobby Orr has become marketing veep for the Boston office of Pandick Press, the financial printers. Trim and relaxed, Orr made a brief appearance at the Canadian Society of New York&rsquo;s annual hockey bash. When a guest mentioned to Orr that Wayne Gretzky seemed invisible to her when he was on the ice, Bobby shot back: &ldquo;I wish Wayne would tell me what he does when he&rsquo;s out there.&rdquo; The implication is that Gretzky is doing things that Orr figures he could never do&hellip;Bruin captain Wayne Cashman is about to retire&mdash;bitterly&mdash;from the club. Beantown word is that he quarreled at the end of the season with GM Harry Sinden and coach Gerry Cheevers, with the latter narrowly averting a nasty showdown between the pair. Obstacles halting benefits for injured Normand Leveille may be cast aside within weeks. Considering that the youngster was almost given up for dead early in the season, he has made considerable progress although he is still unable to talk&hellip;Nick Fotiu, who is tight with Ranger proxy Jack Krumpe, apparently has been assured that he won&rsquo;t be traded, despite rumors to the contrary. &#9632;

BLUELINES

<div class="byline">BY TIM MORIARTY</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0011-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0011-011168/4798123-1-eng-US/f0011-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Isles&rsquo; general manager Bill Torrey (left) is willing to let his No. 1 pick Pat LaFontaine (right) play in the Olympics.</figcaption></div>UNIONDALE&mdash;The rich get richer.That was the consensus of most observers after the Islanders made Pat LaFontaine their No. 1 pick in the National Hockey League amateur draft.&ldquo;That kid was the best player in the draft,&rdquo; said general manager John Ferguson of the Winnipeg Jets.Then how did the Islanders, picking third, wind up with LaFontaine? An interesting story.Lou Nanne of the Minnesota North Stars owned the first pick and drafted Brian Lawton, a 17-year-old center from Mount St. Charles High School in Providence, R.I. That was hardly a surprise.What followed was a large surprise. Hartford Whalers, picking second, were expected to draft LaFontaine. But Emile Francis, the team&rsquo;s new president and GM, ignored LaFontaine and chose another center, Sylvain Turgeon, who totalled 54 goals and 163 points with the Hull Olympics last season. That left LaFontaine available to the Islanders and GM Bill Torrey grabbed the 18-year-old Detroit native.Asked later if he was aware that Francis would pass up a chance to draft LaFontaine, Torrey said: &ldquo;I had an inkling.&rdquo; He based that &ldquo;inkling&rdquo; on a meeting he held with Francis on the eve of the draft. Torrey was cautious about discussing the meeting, though he did admit &ldquo;we discussed acquiring the second pick.&rdquo;Here is what transpired according to sources: Francis told Torrey he would pass up LaFontaine if Torrey would surrender a front-line player in return. Torrey declined to make a deal, gambling instead that Francis had already decided to draft Turgeon instead of LaFontaine.The gamble paid off the following morning. Torrey, as slick as a riverboat poker player, would up with an ace. LaFontaine is not too big (5-foot-9 and 170 pounds), but he posted large numbers for the Verdun Juniors last season&mdash;103 goals and 235 points.&ldquo;Pat is our most publicized pick since Denis Potvin in 1973,&rdquo; Torrey said. &ldquo;Pat seems to thrive on it, too. He has great maturity for his age.&rdquo;And how did LaFontaine feel about winding up with the four-time Stanley Cup champions?&ldquo;It&rsquo;s unbelievable,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I never expected this to happen.&rdquo;LaFontaine insisted that his lack of bulk would not work against him in the NHL.&ldquo;A lot of other players without size have made it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You just have to skate faster when you&rsquo;re small.&rdquo;The biggest decision facing LaFontaine now is whether or not to play for the U.S. Olympic team, thereby delaying his signing with the Islanders.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a big decision,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Maybe I might need more development. But the Islanders will have a say in that, too.&rdquo;Torrey indicated he would not object if LaFontaine joined the U.S. team for the 1984 Winter Olympics.&ldquo;The Olympics are a great experience,&rdquo; Torrey said. &ldquo;Pat could play against some good competition and then come back by March when the Olympics are over and maybe help us in the playoffs.&rdquo;But could LaFontaine make that jump from junior hockey to the Stanley Cup champions?&ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; Torrey said. &ldquo;Pat is an exciting player, the type you&rsquo;re automatically attracted to. He can blow people right out of their seats.&rdquo;The Islanders&rsquo; second pick&mdash;16th overall&mdash;was a defenseman, Gerald Diduck of the Lethbridge Broncos.&ldquo;He has good size (6-foot-2, 195 pounds) and good potential,&rdquo; Torrey said.Torrey also is high on his third round pick, defenseman Mike Neill of the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds.&ldquo;Mike is strong and aggressive and tough around the net,&rdquo; Torrey said.ON THE ISLE&mdash;The Islanders turned a profit for the fourth straight season and are &ldquo;very close&rdquo; to wiping out the team debt that once was estimated at more than $20 million, according to owner John O. Pickett. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re an extremely healthy franchise,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And we believe we&rsquo;ll only get better. From a business standpoint, we&rsquo;ve very comfortable&rdquo;&hellip; A thief entered the room of Les Wagner, the Isles&rsquo; p.r. man, while he was attending the meetings in Montreal and made off with one of Ken Morrow&rsquo;s game sweaters. Wagner had promised the defenseman&rsquo;s sweater to Lefty Reid, curator of the Hall of Fame in Toronto, for a special exhibit. &#9632;

f0011-01

Torrey’s Gamble Pays Off As Isles Draft LaFontaine

<div class="byline">BY REYN DAVIS</div>WINNIPEG Unquestionably, it was the finest piece of drafting ever done by John Ferguson and his eight sleuths.According to their own ratings, the Jets were able to draft four of the top 22 players available.Central scouting differed, naturally, in its estimation of certain players but, by and large, Ferguson had his best day ever around the draft table.The pearl of the bunch should be Andrew McBain, a tall right winger from the North Bay Centennials.The Jets, drafting eighth in the first round, pounced on him.&ldquo;Stunned is the right word,&rdquo; said Barry Fraser, the super scout of the Edmonton Oilers. &ldquo;We had McBain rated No. 2, right behind (Brian) Lawton. I&rsquo;d say he was the steal of the draft.&rdquo;New York Islanders, considered to be fair judges of talent themselves, rated McBain the third best player available.The Islanders were braced to take him. But when the Hartford Whalers opted for Sylvain Turgeon, rather than Pat LaFontaine, the Isles could not resist taking the player Ferguson has described as &ldquo;a franchise.&rdquo;The day after the draft, Islander GM Bill Torrey called McBain&rsquo;s agent. Bill Watters, to apologize for ignoring his client.But Watters understood. The Islanders had only one choice, the third, and no inkling that LaFontaine would be available.&ldquo;He would have suited the Islanders perfectly,&rdquo; said Watters of McBain. &ldquo;He can be rugged and he can be cute. He&rsquo;s a complete player, the kind they like so much.&rdquo;Ferguson was excited. Weeks ago, he said McBain would be the best of all the players who could be available when the Jets picked. But, as the draft drew near, it became more apparent McBain would be gone. They began to concentrate on another right winger, John MacLcan, of the Oshawa Generals.The Jets believe McBain is only one of five or six players who could play immediately in the NHL.They had a sweater waiting for him&mdash;No. 20, the number worn by another right winger, Willy Lindstrom, who graced the lineup for seven seasons.&ldquo;I suppose No. 9 is gone,&rdquo; said McBain. When informed the number belonged to a left winger, Doug Smail, he said, &ldquo;this&rsquo;ll be just fine.&rdquo;After posing for photographers with his top choice, Ferguson rushed back to his draft table to complete yet another coup. As the first round continued, an announcement was made. Washington Capitals had dealt their first-round choice&mdash;-14th overall&mdash;to Winnipeg for the Jets&rsquo; captain, Dave Christian.Invited to pick again, Ferguson opted for a broad-shouldered defenseman, Bobby Dollas, of the Laval Voisins.&ldquo;We have just got the best defenseman in the draft,&rdquo; said Mike Doran, the assistant GM of the Jets. &ldquo;He may be a year away but he is going to be a good one.While the Jets rated McBain and Dollas fourth and eighth, respectively, Central Scouting had them sixth and 13th.Both players hovered over Ferguson, himself a six-footer. Still growing, McBain and Dollas are both 6-foot-3. McBain weighs 190 pounds, while Dollas is 215.Dollas doesn&rsquo;t plan to spend another year in junior hockey.&ldquo;People say I could step in and play right away in Winnipeg,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They tell me the only really good defenseman there is Dave Babych.&rdquo;Tim Watters, Don Spring, Moe Mantha or Bryan Maxwell may take exception to his analysis. But his cockiness is welcome.Meanwhile, coach Tom Watt hated to see Christian go.&ldquo;I often said he was one of the most unappreciated players in the league,&rdquo; said Watt. &ldquo;He did everything I could ask. But we have to look ahead. I remember in college, asking myself how would we ever survive the loss of a certain player through graduation. But we always seemed to find another.&rdquo;The Jets were equally excited about their second-round choice, a defenseman, Brad Barry, of St. Albert Saints.&ldquo;We regarded him as the top Tier Two prospect in Canada,&rdquo; said Doran. &ldquo;As defensemen go, we ranked him right behind Dollas as the second best here.&rdquo;Barry, 6-foot-2, 190 pounds, is bound for the University of North Dakota, not far from Winnipeg.Their fourth pick, leading off the third round, is expected to play for the U.S. Olympic team.Peter Taglianetti, a defenseman from Providence College, is a native of Framingham, MA.&ldquo;The U.S. Olympic coach (Lou Vairo) says he&rsquo;ll make the team,&rdquo; said Doran. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s good enough for us.&rdquo;Taglianetti is 6-foot-2, 200 pounds.&ldquo;In one morning, we went from one of the smallest teams in the league to one of the biggest,&rdquo; said Ferguson.All told, the Jets drafted eight Canadians and five Americans.BENCH BITS&mdash;Dave Poile, GM for the Washington Capitals, said he was seizing upon a situation not unlike Rod Langway&rsquo;s when he acquired Dave Christian. &ldquo;It was another case of an American being unhappy playing in Canada,&rdquo; said Poile. &ldquo;I definitely paid a price. But I&rsquo;m getting a proven player&rdquo;&hellip; If the league decides to disperse the St. Louis Blues among teams willing to pay an ante adding up to $8.5 million, the Jets would be anxious to take part, according to Ferguson&hellip;The Jets will open their training camp in Sherbrooke, Que., on Sept. 10. Five days later, the team will wing west&hellip;Dale Hawerchuk, upon returning to his home in Winnipeg for the balance of the summer, was surprised to find someone had painted a Jets&rsquo; logo on the wall of his swimming pool. The &ldquo;someone&rdquo; turned out to be teammate Craig Levie. &#9632;

GM Ferguson Enjoys His Finest Moment

<div class="byline">BY STEVE SIMMONS</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-011232/4798178-1-eng-US/f0012-012.jpg" title="f0012-01" width="286" height="336"></div><h2>Post-Season Observations</h2>JUST THREE MONTHS away from another National Hockey League season, it occurred to me:&bull; That Scotty Bowman is closing in on Bill Torrey as the top general manager in the game and that Bowman and Torrey are miles ahead of the rest. The trade Bowman made with the Quebec Nordiques during the annual meetings in Montreal was nothing short of a steal. In essence, the Sabres got Real Cloutier for Tony McKegney and the Nordiques&rsquo; first draft choice for J. F. Sauve, a center who couldn&rsquo;t play for Bowman, and Andre Savard, an ordinary center nearing the end. For the good of the game, teams should stop trading with Bowman. He has not made anything resembling a bad trade since he took over in Buffalo, which makes no one wonder why Irving Grundman was hired over him in Montreal.&bull; That year after year, some of the voting members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association make that fine association look ridiculous. A case in point is this year&rsquo;s all-star voting. Somehow, two writers&mdash;we want names, please-&mdash;decided they would not vote for Wayne Gretzky as the first team center, which is their perogative. But two writers&mdash;two people who MUST be identified by the league&mdash;voted Gretzky third on their ballots. That is not a subjective vote; it is a ridiculous one. If Gretzky had not scored a goal this season, he still would have won the scoring title on the strength of his assists alone. The fact that two unqualified voters named him third on their ballot is reason enough to no longer allow these writers to vote.<h2>Plus-Minus Is Meaningless</h2>&bull; THAT CHARLIE HUDDY&rsquo;S play during the Stanley Cup playoffs adds further credence to those who don&rsquo;t put much stock in plus-minus ratings. Huddy won the Emery Edge award as the league&rsquo;s top plus-minus player and the league&rsquo;s most meaningless award. Calgary defenseman Paul Reinhart, a standout during the playoffs. was minus-16 for the Flames. Reinhart was mostly a victim of the collapse of a team. Because he is the Flames&rsquo; best player, he was on the ice more than anyone else, leading to the misleading statistic. One final shot at all-star voters (which I am one of): How is it that all three Calgary writers voted for Reinhart on the all-star team and only six of 60 other league writers mentioned him on their ballots? If Paul Coffey is a second-team all-star and Reinhart finishes ninth in the voting, something is definitely wrong.&bull; That the future of the New York Islanders looks so bright, as to be scary. Forget the team that just won its fourth consecutive Stanley Cup. Waiting in the wings are some of the best young players anywhere in tender in North America not playing in the NHL. Paul Boutilier looks like he&rsquo;ll be an excellent NHL defenseman. The Isles also have the last two Canadian junior players of the year in Dave Simpson and Pat LaFontaine. While Barry Fraser gets so much credit for what he&rsquo;s done with the Edmonton Oilers, few credit Gerry (Tex) Ehman with the superb work he&rsquo;s done with the Isles. Ehman, the first to draft a Sutter, has been one of the driving forces behind the Islanders. He&rsquo;s just not as well publicized as Fraser.&bull; That on the floor of the Montreal Forum, David Poile returned to earth. The trade Poile made with the Winnipeg Jets&mdash;acquiring Dave Christian for the Capitals&rsquo; No. 1 draft choice&mdash;will not be mentioned with THE TRADE. Trading a first-round pick for Christian just doesn&rsquo;t seem to make sense. The price is too high. Christian is a better-than-average major league center, but that&rsquo;s all. He&rsquo;s better than average. Not great. Washington did need help up front, but it probably could have found that help at a lesser price.<h2>Chynoweth Is Shrewd</h2>&bull; THAT BY THE time this issue comes out, Ed Chynoweth will likely be employed by Philadelphia Flyers. Chynoweth, for those of you who don&rsquo;t know, has run junior hockey in Canada for several years. He is considered one of the shrewdest hockey men in the business and it makes one wonder what has taken NHL teams so long to catch on. While front-office jobs have gone to those less qualified over the years, Chynoweth has largely been disregarded by the closed-shop that is the NHL.&bull; That two of junior hockey&rsquo;s most prominent individuals have searched for NHL jobs without much luck. Bob Strumm. the general manager of the Regina Pats, has been unable to lock on with an NHL club. Strumm has consistently put together competitive junior clubs and at one time while running the Billings franchise, he had a list that included Gord Kluzak, Randy Moller, Mike Moller and two-time WHL MVP Mike Vernon. Another looking for work somewhere in pro hockey is Doug Sauter, who for the past five seasons coached the Calgary Wranglers. Year in, year out, Sauter&rsquo;s team has had remarkable results. Without teams of great talent. Sauter has taken the Wranglers into the league finals once and division finals twice His teams have been a rarity in junior hockey: low scoring, tight checking and extremely disciplined. He would make an excellent minor-league coach. &#9632;

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THE WESTERN WORD

<div class="byline">BY TOM HENSHAW</div>BOSTON&mdash;More American high school hockey players went higher in the NHL draft than ever before, but that does not necessarily mean that the edge in talent has shifted south of the border. There are economic considerations, too.&ldquo;Most of the American kids who were drafted are going on to college and that&rsquo;s important,&rdquo; said Harry Sinden, the general manager of the Boston Bruins.&ldquo;You&rsquo;re required to offer players who don&rsquo;t go to college a contract within the first year. He has to either take it or turn it down or go to arbitration. After that, all you have left is exclusive negotiation rights in his last year of junior. If you don&rsquo;t sign him, he goes back into the draft.&ldquo;The college player, or the high school player who&rsquo;s going on to college, you&rsquo;ve got four years to watch his development. So it&rsquo;s attractive. It&rsquo;s probable that, other than Brian Lawton, Pat LaFontaine and perhaps Tom Barrasso, the goalie, all the other Americans were drafted with the idea that they&rsquo;re going to college.&rdquo;In Sinden&rsquo;s view, the annual NHL entry draft, in which players as young as 17 years of age are eligible for the taking, is getting to be more of a lottery&mdash;a guessing game&mdash;than it was when youngsters had to be 19- or 20-years-old.&ldquo;Anybody who tells you different is kidding himself,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got to be lucky.&ldquo;Take this year&rsquo;s draft: No one can forecast that Brian Lawton, the No. 1 pick, will be a star player, which is what No. 1 is supposed to be in the future. He looks like he&rsquo;s got everything, but that to me emphasizes the fact that it&rsquo;s a lottery.&ldquo;When you pick a kid out of a Rhode Island high school it&rsquo;s a gamble. Washington did the same with Bob Carpenter and won. They drew the winning ticket. Minnesota might do it here because I really like Lawton. But if he doesn&rsquo;t come through you really can&rsquo;t criticize Minnesota for that.&ldquo;You just cannot tell at 17 years of age what you&rsquo;re going to end up with, espcially when they&rsquo;ve been playing against high school kids. What happens to Lawton when somebody runs him in the National Hockey League? Minnesota feels nothing will happen. I do, too, as a matter of fact. But he could very well fold. I shouldn&rsquo;t be using his name because this applies to everyone of them.&rdquo;Back in the days of the 20-year-old draft when the Bruins rarely drafted higher than 15th, their drafting record was not spectacular. Since then it&rsquo;s been sensational. Four of last year&rsquo;s regular players came in the 1980 draft alone. To Sinden, a lot of it is simply good fortune.&ldquo;To be a genius at the draft today doesn&rsquo;t apply,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You have a good chance now. One of the reasons we&rsquo;ve done so well is that you have a good chance of drafting late and still getting a good player. You never had that before.&ldquo;In the old days, by the time a kid was 20, a lot of the gamble had been taken out. You could project their future pretty accurately. You watched them play for a longer period of time against all the top juniors who remained there until they were 20. Now all the top juniors, the Brian Bellows&rsquo;, the Gord Kluzaks, they leave early so the kids who played junior last year didn&rsquo;t play against them.&rdquo;The Bruins, with the best record in the NHL last season, drafted last (21 st) in the first round but Sinden figures the Boston entry had a shot at two pretty good players even then&mdash;Nevin Markwart, the left winger from Regina, and John Tucker, a 50-goal center from Kitchener. They debated it, finally took Markwart, the &ldquo;Kamikaze Kid.&rdquo;&ldquo;We needed the fearless type of player Markwart is,&rdquo; said the Bruins&rsquo; GM. &ldquo;We just couldn&rsquo;t bring ourselves to take a player who only finesses around. Maybe it&rsquo;s a mistake to feel that way but we like to maintain that tradition to a degree. We knew Tucker could score goals but he wasn&rsquo;t as good a two-way player as Mark wart.&rdquo;Sinden projects him as a possible Bruin next season, although he stopped short of recommending that he go out and buy a house in suburban Lynnfield.&ldquo;The way he plays and his attitude are such that he could very well make it and he&rsquo;s a left winger, too, which could help him. If he can show us he can score a little bit, he could make the team,&rdquo; said Sinden. &#9632;

Sinden Stresses Draft Economics

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-011173/4798247-1-eng-US/f0013-012.jpg" title="f0013-01" width="319" height="319"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-02878/4798240-1-eng-US/f0013-022.jpg" title="f0013-02" width="319" height="319"></div>It&rsquo;s something I think people will never forget. Those four days in Banff or Lake Placid are something they&rsquo;ll remember for the rest of their lives.&mdash;John Wallin, U.S. director for the CAN/AM GROUP, discussing the CAN/AM HOCKEY GROUP-THE HOCKEY NEWS International Adult Tournaments.Most people will agree that some of the more interesting team names in recent hockey years have been the Golden Seals, Screaming Eagles and Toros. But these are the ones people are familiar with; there are many more wild and crazy sobriquets, which have managed to escape the probing eyes and ears of hockey&rsquo;s know-it-alls.Ever heard of the Laurentian Old Puckers? Ottawa Jesters? Windsor Moosehead Exports? Peterborough Quacks? Hamilton Woodpeckers? Saddle Lake Bearcats? Saskatoon Outlaws?Don&rsquo;t laugh, these teams really do exist, although don&rsquo;t expect the National Hockey League board of governors to consider them for expansion. These are teams which competed in the 1983 CAN/AM HOCKEY GROUP-THE HOCKEY NEWS International Adult Tournaments.A total of 98 teams competed in the tournaments, two of which were in Lake Placid, NY (March 31-April 3, April 7-10) and another one in Banff, Alta., (April 10-15).The tournaments have grown in popularity, marked by a 100 percent increase in teams from the first year of competition in 1980.Not only did this year&rsquo;s competitions feature a lot of teams, there was a variety of U.S. and Canadian cities. Many of the players probably gained a lessen in geography, with the U.S. tourneys featuring teams from Potsdam, NY, Coroapolus, PA and Ontario squads from Capreol, Listowel Gowanston and Orleans, to name a few. In the the Banff tournament, the host province was represented by Crows Nest Pass, Ft. McMurray and Canmore.The success of the tournament is a barometer of the growth of adult hockey. John Wallin, the U.S. director for CAN/AM, says adult hockey is &ldquo;emerging from the shadows.&rdquo;In essense, the tournaments are fulfilling the economic formula of supply and demand.&ldquo;If it&rsquo;s a good product, people will buy into it,&rdquo; Wallin says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a tough economy, but obviously people think they&rsquo;re getting more than there money&rsquo;s worth for their dollar.&rdquo;There is a catch. Wallin says the tournaments would not sell strictly on the merits of the hockey. That is the catalyst, but the competitors, who will often bring their families along and make it a mini-vacation, are looking for a &ldquo;total environment.&rdquo;Within Lake Placid and Banff they are able to discover it.Wallin calls these places &ldquo;magic,&rdquo; based on their ability to draw tourists. Lake Placid, of course, is famous in hockey circles for the stunning gold-medal victory by the Americans in the 1980 Olympic Games. Banff, highlighted by the Canadian Rockies, has always been considered one of Canada&rsquo;s premier tourist attractions.Some of the off-ice activities included in the tournament are tours, skiing, biking, and aerobic dancing for the women.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a total package,&rdquo; Wallin says.The competition has been broken down in terms of age and skill level. Teams submit information cards stating the aforementioned details and Wallin says it&rsquo;s an important facet of the tournament&rsquo;s setup.&ldquo;If we make the decision of putting a team in the wrong division, it can put a damper on things,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want one team in a division getting blown out.&rdquo;There is a spirit in these tournaments illustrated by Paradise Manufacturing&rsquo;s victory over reigning champion Crows Nest Pass in the 23 and over &ldquo;C&rdquo; Division of the Banff competition.&ldquo;We had dinner the night they won,&rdquo; Wallin says. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re in downtown Calgary and they&rsquo;ve all got gold medals around their necks. The goalie said, &lsquo;This is the first medal we&rsquo;ve ever won.&rsquo;&ldquo;These are the type of guys who come to the tournaments. They&rsquo;re all fired up. And the staff gets just as much energy and excitement as the guys winning it.&rdquo;Ft. McMurray Hawks were aided in the Banff tourney by 12 fans&mdash;mostly wives of the players&mdash;who brought along noise makers and banners. Danny Armstrong, who&rsquo;s wife, Carole, was the team&rsquo;s No. 1 rooter, said the support played a part in the team winning the gold medal in the 30 and over &ldquo;D&rdquo; division.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-03724/4798233-1-eng-US/f0013-032.jpg" title="f0013-03" width="1917" height="1714"><figcaption class="caption-body">Enthusiasm among competing members of the Adult Hockey Tournament teams runs high at all times.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;They made enough noise for 100 people, it was almost embarrassing at times,&rdquo; Armstrong says.The Hawks were one of the better teams in the competition, both in terms of their undefeated record and their players. The most noteworthy player on the team was former NHLer Barry Gibbs.&ldquo;He was really good; he didn&rsquo;t hotdog,&rdquo; Armstrong says of Gibbs. &ldquo;It was quite nice playing alongside an NHLer.&rdquo;When the final buzzer sounded, the Hawks started celebrating as if they&rsquo;d won an Olympic medal. After walking around with their medals for a short while, the team took a chartered bus to Edmonton, where they witnessed a playoff game between the Oilers and the Calgary Flames. Between periods, the Hawks engaged the touring Japanese National team, who were &ldquo;very inquisitive&rdquo; about the medals.Graham McDonald, whose team, Banff Oldtimers, earned a bronze in the Hawks&rsquo; division, recommends the competition to any teams thinking of competing. Part of the reason is the tournaments impressive public relations.&ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s a real professional job,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;They&rsquo; re making people feel at home, making them feel comfortable.&rdquo;McDonald is impressed with the organization and the concept of the tournament, saying the organizers have &ldquo;hit on a good thing.&rdquo;Rules such as the elimination of the center line were initiated by the players. In next year&rsquo;s tourney, there&rsquo;s going to be a novice competition for players with two years or less skating and hockey experience.&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s get guys out of the bleachers and into the games,&rdquo; Wallin explains for the inception of the novice division. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a need out there. They want to get into the tournament, but they don&rsquo;t want to play against guys who&rsquo;ve been playing eight to 12 years.&rdquo;There is also plans to add Reno, Nevada to the list of &ldquo;magic&rdquo; cities.&ldquo;If you see the faces and emotion and feeling and things that are said by people&hellip;that&rsquo;s a commitment on our people to make it better every year,&rdquo; Wallin says. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s pressure, but pressure I like. It&rsquo;s exciting and competitive.When an organizer has that kind of emotion, you can easily understand why these tournaments are growing in popularity. &#9632;

f0013-01

Discovering ‘Magic’ In Lake Placid, Banff

<h2>LAKE PLACID TOURNAMENT I</h2>Lake Placid Roamers, Lake Placid, NYBelleville Kinsmen, Belleville, Ont.Hagen Hackers, Lucan, Ont.Forest Legion, Forest, Ont.Ignace Northern Lights, Ignace, Ont.Gander Oldtimers, Gander, Nfld.LHD Montreal, Montreal, Que.Cornwall Hubs Oldtimers, Cornwall, Ont.<h2>LAKE PLACID TOURNAMENT II</h2>Old Sod Aces, Brampton, Ont.Corydon Cycle Rangers, Winnipeg, Man.Howick Golden Hawks, Gowanstown, Ont.Ottawa Jesters, Ottawa, Ont.Hamilton Woodpeckers, Hamilton, Ont.Potsdam Hockey Club, Potsdam, NYBowmanville Cleaners, Bowmanville, Ont.Preston Gamblers Oldtimers, Preston, Ont.Orleans Old Pumpers, Orleans, Ont.<h2>BANFF TOURNAMENT</h2>Elliott Chevrolet, Ottawa, Ont.Paradise Manufacturing, Saskatoon, Sask.Ft. McMurray Hawks, Ft. McMurray, Alta. &#9632;

Gold Medal Winners

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0014-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-011214/4798344-1-eng-US/f0014-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Cornwall Hubs were the class of the 35+ &ldquo;C&rdquo; event, reserved for the elders.</figcaption></div><h2>LAKE PLACID TOURNAMENT I MEDAL WINNERS</h2>23 +&ldquo;A&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Lake Placid Roamers, Lake Placid, NYSilver &mdash; Austin Airways, Timmins, Ont.Bronze &mdash; Team Capreol, Capreol, Ont.23 + &ldquo;B&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Belleville Kinsmen, Belleville, Ont.Silver &mdash; Tobey&rsquo;s Restaurant, Bradford, Ont.Bronze &mdash; McIntyre Auto Wreckers, Peterborough, Ont.23 + &ldquo;C&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Hagen Hackers, Lucan, Ont.Silver &mdash; Brampton Barons, Scarborough, Ont.Bronze &mdash; Pop Shoppe, Kingston, Ont.23 + &ldquo;D&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Forest Legion, Forest, Ont.Silver &mdash; Canadian Tire, Toronto, Ont.Bronze &mdash; Aero Electric, Woodbridge, Ont. 23 + &ldquo;E&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Ignace Northern Knights, Ignace, Ont.Silver &mdash; Great Neck Bruins, New York, NYBronze &mdash; Beaver Country, Coroapolus, PA30 +&ldquo;A&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Gander Oldtimers, Gander, Nfld.Silver &mdash; Lake Placid, Lake Placid, NYBronze &mdash; Koho Hockey Club, Newmarket, Ont.35 + &ldquo;B&rdquo;Gold &mdash; LHD Montreal, Montreal, Que.Silver &mdash; LHD Doubles, Montreal, Que.Bronze &mdash; London Oldtimers, London, Ont.35+&ldquo;C&rdquo;Gold &mdash; Cornwall Hubs, Cornwall, Ont.Silver &mdash; Scarborough Sudzers, Scarborough, Ont.Bronze &mdash; Flamborough Sabres, Hamilton, Ont.<h2>LAKE PLACID TOURNAMENT I REPS</h2><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-07223/4798337-1-eng-US/f0014-072.jpg" title="f0014-07" width="1364" height="469"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-02978/4798330-1-eng-US/f0014-022.jpg" title="f0014-02" width="1457" height="833"><figcaption class="caption-body">Hagen Hackers from Lucan, Ont., won the gold in the 23 + &ldquo;C&rdquo; division.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-03692/4798323-1-eng-US/f0014-032.jpg" title="f0014-03" width="1458" height="829"><figcaption class="caption-body">The LHD team from Montreal took the gold in the 35 + &ldquo;B&rdquo; competition.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-04491/4798316-1-eng-US/f0014-042.jpg" title="f0014-04" width="1461" height="826"><figcaption class="caption-body">Forest Legion from Forest, Ont, took the gold in the 23 + &ldquo;D&rdquo; division.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-05346/4798309-1-eng-US/f0014-052.jpg" title="f0014-05" width="1449" height="826"><figcaption class="caption-body">The Ignace Northern Knights from Ignace, Ont., went home with the 23 + &ldquo;E&rdquo; gold.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-06278/4798302-1-eng-US/f0014-062.jpg" title="f0014-06" width="1463" height="831"><figcaption class="caption-body">The Lake Placid Roamers from Messena, NY topped the 23 + &ldquo;A&rdquo; competition.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0016-05" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-05404/4798448-1-eng-US/f0016-052.jpg"></div>The CAN/AM HOCKEY GROUP and THE HOCKEY NEWS&rsquo; tournament committee paid special tribute to those players voted as most valuable to their team.What made their selection so important was that only two players per tournament were selected as overall tournament MVP&rsquo;s. Each most valuable player received a pair of the world famous Cooperall hockey pants for their superb on-ice achievements combined with their ability to lead their teammates.Congratulations to these most valuable players, truly special people! &#9632;

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TOURNAMENT MVP AWARDS

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0016-06" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-06340/4798507-1-eng-US/f0016-062.jpg"></div>Shooter against the goalie, the best against the best&hellip;every shot counts&hellip;the pressure&hellip;the fun&hellip;a goalie was born for this moment&hellip;a shooter dreams of the big goal&hellip;What has become a focal point and a great tradition at the tournaments is the shootout contest, pitting goalie against skater.The arenas were packed with teammates and fans of the participants cheering, yelling and screaming for their favorites to come up with one more save or put one more into the net.At the end of the competition the first place shooter received the top-line Bauer skates. The first place goalie received the famous Bauer Custom Goal Skate. Second place shooters and goalies each received a beautiful Bauer travel bag.Congratulations to the following winners.CAN/AM and THE HOCKEY NEWS wish to take this opportunity to thank the Bauer Company for their participation in the Lake Placid and Banff Tournaments. (&ldquo;Nobody Knows Fit Like Bauer.&rdquo;)<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-011017/4798500-1-eng-US/f0016-012.jpg" title="f0016-01" width="1757" height="710"><figcaption class="caption-body">In the 30-plus age group, Andre Chaput of Montreal, second right top row, won the shootout in the Lake Placid I Tournament. Dave Alguire of Cornwall, second right, bottom, was the best goalie Others top left to right, Chris Fitzpatrick, Don Aubin, Chaput and Frank Schissler. Front, John Rocco, Roger Laverdure, Alguire and Mark Gilligan.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-02822/4798493-1-eng-US/f0016-022.jpg" title="f0016-02" width="1757" height="707"><figcaption class="caption-body">Tom Anderson of Capreol, Ont., back row, second right, and goalie Kevin Lightfoot of Lucan, Ont., bottom, second right, led the 23 event at Lake Placid Tournament I. Anderson was top shooter and Lightfoot best goaitender. Others, left to right, back, Paul Picard, Harold Higgs, Anderson and Frank Schissler. Front, Chris Fitzpatrick, Chuck Turner, Lightfoot and Mark Gilligan.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-03652/4798486-1-eng-US/f0016-032.jpg" title="f0016-03" width="1761" height="704"><figcaption class="caption-body">In the 30-plus shootout in the Lake Placid II Tournament, Ronald Martin of Orleans, Ont., second left back, and goalie Rick Quance of Toronto, second right back, were the winners. Martin was top shooter and Quance best of the netminders. Others shown in back, left to right, Ray Luxton, Martin, Quance and Frank Schissler. Front, John Rocco, Bob Bauer, Jack Allen and Kirk Bowman.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-04513/4798479-1-eng-US/f0016-042.jpg" title="f0016-04" width="1753" height="705"><figcaption class="caption-body">Bob Bassett of Scarborough, Ont., second left back, and Jim Robinson, of Mississauga, Ont., second left front, were the pick of the 23 competitors in the Lake Placid II Tournament shootout. Bassett led the shooters and Robinson was best goalie. Others from left to right, back, Ray Luxon, Bassett, Herb Cowen and Frank Schissler. Front, John Rocco, Robinson, Claudio Peca and Kirk Bowman.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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The Shootout…

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0017-05" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-05340/4798538-1-eng-US/f0017-052.jpg"></div><h2>DIVISION &ldquo;B&rdquo;</h2>Gold&mdash;Elliott Chevrolet, Ottawa, Ont.Silver&mdash;Saskatoon Outlaws, Saskatoon, Sask.Bronze&mdash;Kingsway Inn, Edmonton, Alta.<h2>DIVISION &ldquo;C&rdquo;</h2>Gold&mdash;Paradise Manufacturing, Saskatoon. Sask.Silver&mdash;Crows Nest Pass Chiefs, Crows Nest Pass, Alta.Bronze&mdash;Casino Royals, Calgary, Alta.<h2>DIVISION &ldquo;D&rdquo;</h2>Gold&mdash;Ft. McMurray Hawks, Ft. McMurray, Alta.Silver&mdash;Canmore Centennials, Canmore, Alta.Bronze&mdash;Banff Oldtimers, Banff, Alta. &#9632;

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Medal Winners

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0017-04" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-04440/4798590-1-eng-US/f0017-042.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">John Egars, of Regina, Sask., shown third from left top row, emerged as the shootout winner in the Banff Tournament, while Jim Fleischacker, of Ft. McMurray, bottom right, was the best goalie. Others left to right, top, Tom Buckley, Ron Brand, Egars, Moe Sorken and Paul Pickard. Front, Rick Pisula, left, and Fleischacker.</figcaption></div>Players and tans were treated to an unbelievable week of super hockey, camaraderie, partying and ideal weather at the second annual CAN/AM-HOCKEY NEWS Banff Tournament.The talk of the tournament was the on and off-ice activities of Elliott Chevrolet team from Ottawa. Without question, they excelled on the ice, winning the gold medal, led by Bill Kilrea, and a host of excellent hockey players. Off the ice they were a fantastic bunch of guys who revelled in their hockey success.In the &ldquo;C&rdquo; Division, the big showdown between Crows Nest Pass Chiefs (&rsquo;82 gold medal winners) and Paradise Manufacturing of Saskatoon, (made up of the &rsquo;82 Mizfits and &rsquo;82 Paradise Manufacturing) held everyone in their seats with a great exhibition of hockey.Ft. McMurray Hawks had to have some of the greatest fans that ever supported a team. Led by Carol Armstrong and a group of rabble rousers, they spirited the Hawks to an undefeated (3-0) first place finish. Then they had to sit back and await the outcome of the Banff Old Timers and Canmore Centennials semi-final game.Canmore edged Banff in a close game with goaltending being the difference to advance against the Hawks for all the marbles.Ft. McMurray had a delicate balance of old-timers and young (old) rookies. They combined quick passing and strong backchecking to keep Canmore from utilizing their speed. And when the Centennials broke through, the Hawks&rsquo; excellent goalie, Jim Fleischacker, stopped them with acrobatic saves. Ft. McMurray won the gold medal and was wisked away to Edmonton to see the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames NHL playoff game, courtesy of Barry Gibbs, former Minnesota and Boston Bruins defenseman, who was a great guy to all.Teams took advantage of the great ski packages made available to our teams, aerobic dancing for the girls, hiking, sight-seeing, horseback riding, fishing, biking and the luxurious accommodations of the Banff Springs and Park Lodge to make this tournament the event of the year.CAN/AM and THE HOCKEY NEWS wish to take this opportunity to thank the Molson-Alberta Brewing Company for their participation in the Banff Tournament.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-01900/4798583-1-eng-US/f0017-012.jpg" title="f0017-01" width="1756" height="1074"><figcaption class="caption-body">The Elliott Chevrolet team from Ottawa came away from the Banff Tournament with the gold medal in the &ldquo;B&rdquo; Division event for 23 + players as they beat out Saskatoon and Edmonton for the title.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-02737/4798576-1-eng-US/f0017-022.jpg" title="f0017-02" width="1739" height="1068"><figcaption class="caption-body">Paradise Manufacturing from Saskatoon kept the Division &ldquo;C&rdquo; 23 and over gold medal in the West by defeating two western rivals, Crows Nest Pass and Calgary.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-03574/4798569-1-eng-US/f0017-032.jpg" title="f0017-03" width="1740" height="1062"><figcaption class="caption-body">There was no stopping the Ft. Murray Hawks in the &ldquo;D&rdquo; Division section of the Banff Tournament. They not only went undefeated but won the title as well in a playoff with Canmore, Alta.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Banff Tournament An Unbelievable Hockey Experience

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0018-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-01918/4798642-1-eng-US/f0018-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Leo Bourgault of Montreal, shown with his son, Bobby, is one of adult hockey&rsquo;s biggest supporters. He directs a 125-team double rink program each year.</figcaption></div>Leo Bourgault, the young president of the Patinoires Doubles Twin Rinks in Montreal, is certainly a man of vision and a supporter of adult hockey.Leo played on the LHD Montreal team which won the gold medal in the 35 and over &ldquo;B&rdquo; division at Lake Placid in Tournament 1.His rinks cater mostly to adult hockey, giving his 125 teams throughout the year prime ice time, and pampers them with top facilities. He plans to double the size of his complex to four rinks due to the popularity of adult hockey.CAN/AM and THE HOCKEY NEWS wish to take this opportunity to thank the Cooper Company for their participation in the Lake Placid and Banff Tournaments. (&ldquo;The World Plays Hockey With Cooper.&rdquo;)<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-03510/4798635-1-eng-US/f0018-032.jpg" title="f0018-03" width="1726" height="1347"><figcaption class="caption-body">Linda Braund, tournament co-director, checks the official scoresheets at tournament.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-02704/4798628-1-eng-US/f0018-022.jpg" title="f0018-02" width="1135" height="1230"><figcaption class="caption-body">Happy youngster poses with medal-winning dad after tournament win at Lake Placid.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-04346/4798621-1-eng-US/f0018-042.jpg" title="f0018-04" width="1131" height="1404"><figcaption class="caption-body">Everything goes from bull horns to cowbells among the fans.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Montrealer Promoting Adult Hockey Program

As adult hockey increases in its popularity throughout North America, the CAN/AM HOCKEY GROUP and THE HOCKEY NEWS recognize the need for a Novice Division for 1984.Novice hockey is popular from California to New York. This beginner&rsquo;s program allows the participants to get out of the bleachers and into the game.It is devoted to players with two years or less of skating and hockey experience.CAN/AM believes that there is a place for Novice Hockey. We&rsquo;ll see you in &rsquo;84. Look for further information in THE HOCKEY NEWS. &#9632;

Novice Division Action For 1984 Tournaments

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0019-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-01867/4798704-1-eng-US/f0019-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">The ladies, as well as the men, enjoyed the 1983 Adult Hockey tournaments at Lake Placid, NY.</figcaption></div>The MGM Grand Hotel in Reno, Nevada, will provide the focal point for this exciting new tournament site. From the moment you arrive, you will be treated to entertainment on a scale only MGM could create.You will thrill to the special excitement of gaming in the world&rsquo;s largest casino. Delight in the unequalled spectacle of Donn Arden&rsquo;s &ldquo;Hello Hollywood, Hello!&rdquo; Enjoy lively entertainment in the Lion&rsquo;s Den, Leo&rsquo;s Lair and the Cub Lounge. Nearby you will marvel at the splendors of the High Sierra and majestic Lake Tahoe&mdash;an unmatched background for water sports, fishing, golfing, skiing and sight-seeing.Reno will be the site of a 23 and over division and a novice division during the 1984 schedule of tournaments.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-02660/4798697-1-eng-US/f0019-022.jpg" title="f0019-02" width="1121" height="1022"><figcaption class="caption-body">Once the games were over, it was time for celebrating and rejoicing as the players toasted their victory.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Reno, Nevada New Site For 1984

<h2>MORE THAN JUST HOCKEY</h2>Players, family and fans were treated to a multitude of off-ice activities at Lake Placid, NY and Banff, Alta., during the 1983 tournaments.Tournament parties featuring entertainment, dancing, singing, contests and a great way to unwind &hellip; skiing down the slopes of White Face or Lake Louise &hellip; hot pools &hellip; aerobics &hellip; pool parties for the kids &hellip; hiking &hellip; sight-seeing &hellip; the Olympic Tour &hellip; shopping for souvenirs &hellip; airplane and helicopter rides &hellip; tennis &hellip; and making new friends.These activities, and more, await you in 1984. See you there!<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-01710/4798756-1-eng-US/f0020-012.jpg" title="f0020-01" width="955" height="2503"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-02484/4798749-1-eng-US/f0020-022.jpg" title="f0020-02" width="953" height="1085"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-03346/4798742-1-eng-US/f0020-032.jpg" title="f0020-03" width="957" height="2507"></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-04232/4798735-1-eng-US/f0020-042.jpg" title="f0020-04" width="2925" height="982"></div> &#9632;

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TOURNAMENT ACTIVITIES

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0021-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0021-01532/4798787-1-eng-US/f0021-012.jpg"></div> &#9632;

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YOUR SUMMER SPORTS READING SELECTION…

<div class="byline">BY JOHN GILBERT</div>H&B Louisville&HockeyH&B Louisville&HockeyBLOOMINGTON&mdash;Everything fell into place for the Minnesota North Stars, just in time to send them into a nice quiet summer.There was a new coach, Bill Mahoney, one small trade and a crop of 13 draftees, led by the expected No. 1 choice overall of Brian Lawton.But there are a lot of intriguing sidelights to the recent flurry of news out of the Met Center.First of all, Mahoney surfaced as a late-rising darkhorse candidate. Speculation around the league was that general manager Lou Nanne made a late, strong bid for Pat Quinn, currently in law school and still receiving his paycheck from the Philadelphia Flyers. Rumors are that Quinn turned it down, while other reports are that there was no such offer made.Mahoney used to be Gary Green&rsquo;s assistant with the Washington Capitals. He coached for 16 years before that at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. After being fired by the Caps in their front-office purge, Mahoney became coach of Detroit&rsquo;s Adirondack farm club at Glens Falls, NY.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m extremely pleased to join forces with Lou Nanne and (president) John Karr,&rdquo; Mahoney said. &ldquo;I know I&rsquo;m taking the reins of one of the premier rosters in the NHL.&rdquo;Mahoney considers his strength to be motivation and he intends to insert and enforce proper discipline, both in a style of play and for the individual players.But the North Stars have been better with words than with action for two seasons now and the cynics are lining up to wait and see. Some suggested that Mahoney&rsquo;s biggest test will be to avoid being a puppet for the ubiquitous Nanne. Others figure that Nanne had an eye on the bottom line when he signed Mahoney for a comparatively cheap estimated $75,000-a-year for two years. One report said that bonus and incentive clauses could push the salary up to &ldquo;almost&rdquo; $100,000 if Mahoney leads the Stars to the Stanley Cup.Whatever, the anticipation for someone as little known as Mahoney climbing onto such a hot-seat, should stir considerable interest.Then there was the trade. Steve Christ-off, who was sent with Bill Nyrop to Calgary for Willi Plett a year ago, was brought back to Minnesota by Nanne in exchange for Mike Eaves.On the surface, it may not seem like any big deal. Christoff is a hometown Richfield product, who starred at the University of Minnesota and for the U.S. Olympic team in 1982 before hitting the North Stars with a splash of goals late in the 1980 spring. He fell victim to shoulder problems during the 1981-82 season and was traded after surgery to Calgary. He is a winger with strength and speed and a very quick shot who, at his best, scores in streaks.But he never got on a streak with the Flames and Nanne obtained him for Eaves. While he has never had the big statistical numbers in the NHL, Eaves had been one of the most positive influences on the team every game. Always in exceptional physical condition, Eaves suffered from a string of concussions that threatened to end his playing career. But last season he was free of any such problems. In the North Stars&rsquo; pecking order, the lines of Bobby Smith and Neal Broten were counted on for offense, while the lines centered by Eaves and Tim Young were sort of the &ldquo;other&rdquo; lines.Eaves, noted for his smart, alert play at both ends of the rink, drew constant praise from Minnesota defenseman who said Eaves always came back and yelled tips to aid in defensive zone play and breakouts. On a team with some players who have been accused of individualism, Eaves was the consummate team player.In college, Eaves directed the Wisconsin power play, was captain for three years and won Western Collegiate Hockey Association scoring titles, all-WCHA, All-America and league most valuable player honors. His coach, of course, was Bob Johnson, now the Calgary coach. Look for Eaves to get hs chance offensively at Calgary and to make the Flames&rsquo; power play a slick, precise factor.On top of that, Eaves and Christoff are close friends and had gotten together just before the trade was made.There was conjecture that Nanne tried to trade Young, who has steadfastly maintained a desire to be traded rather than be slotted in a less-pronounced offensive role. In either case, Nanne clearly wanted to move a center, perhaps to make room for Lawton, the 17-year-old whiz from Mount St. Charles High School.The National Hockey League is a tough step from Rhode Island preps, of course, but the next item of interest is whether Nanne will sign Lawton or allow him to play for the U.S. Olympic team, which Nanne has had a big influence on.If he signs Lawton, it will let down the Olympic team; if he doesn&rsquo;t, it will aid the Olympians next winter, but it will make North Star fans wonder just what has been done to improve their team, which faltered so clearly in the playoffs two springs in a row.Nanne entertained a dozen different trade possibilities for that No. 1 overall pick in the draft, but asked for too high a ransom and made none of the deals. &#9632;

Intriguing Sidelights Shine On North Stars

<div class="byline">BY MIKE DENNIS</div>TORONTO&mdash;As they say in Montreal, &ldquo;Quel difference!&rdquo;Yes, what a difference a year can make in regard to the National Hockey League&rsquo;s annual exercise of prognostication, the entry draft.The scenario from a Maple Leaf standpoint was remarkably changed from the previous year. At that time, the Leafs were still smarting from a l9th-place finish and the pangs of not competing in the playoffs. With the third pick in the draft, the Leafs desperately needed a player who could step directly into their lineup from the junior ranks and they found one in 6-foot-4 defenseman Gary Nylund.Nylund was injured much of last season but should return as strong as ever, along with Czech center Peter Ihnacak, who was drafted third by the Leafs last year and who had a decent rookie season, though he missed the playoffs with a leg injury. The third choice of the Leafs last year, Gary Leeman, excelled on defense for Regina Pats and should make the jump to the NHL this time around.When you consider Walt Poddubny and Dan Daoust were also rookies and size up the Leafs&rsquo; depth, it becomes apparent that while the lineup can be improved, it doesn&rsquo;t have the glaring holes it had just 12 months before. A third-place Norris Division finish and good playoff showing boosted confidence.The Leafs aren&rsquo;t claiming to challenge the Islanders and the Oilers in terms of roster strength just yet, but they have a pretty strong base to build on with 11 major-league forwards and, counting Leeman, at least seven defenseman heading into the 1983-84 campaign.Considering their position as the seventh team to draft and the lack of depth in this year&rsquo;s crop of juniors, the Leafs weren&rsquo;t expecting to come away with a player who can play right away.They were quite happy, though, to choose Russ Courtnall, a 5-foot-9, 170-pound center from Victoria Cougars, as their first pick. Courtnall, who has good speed and is rated as a fine playmaker turned in 36-61-97 stats for the Cougars in his first year in major junior action. According to Leaf general manager Gerry McNamara, the Leafs had Courtnall rated well ahead of any other player when it came time for Toronto to pick. The Leafs continued their policy of drafting the best player available regardless of position by taking Courtnall when the club already has Daoust, Ihnacak, Bill Derlago and Greg Terrion at center.There was some surprise that the Leafs didn&rsquo;t opt for right winger Andrew McBain, a 6-foot-2, 190-pounder who is also a center. McBain had 119 points for the North Bay Centennials and was taken immediately after the Leafs&rsquo; pick by the Winnipeg Jets. Some scouts insist that McBain could jump directly into the NHL. Courtnall, unless injuries dictate otherwise, is slated to return to the Western League for another year of seasoning.&ldquo;All I can do is to go to training camp and work as hard as I can,&rdquo; Courtnall said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad it was the Maple Leafs that claimed me because they seem to be a team that is giving young players a good chance.&rdquo;The Leafs&rsquo; next two picks came from the Brantford Alexanders of the Ontario Hockey League. Jeff Jackson is a defenseman and goalie Alan Bester, a Mike Palmateer-sized backstop who was rated as the best goalie in the OHL.The Leafs traded away their fourth- and sixth-round picks in previous deals but in between selected Dan Hodgson, a center with Prince Albert Raiders and last year&rsquo;s R8kie of the Year in the WHL.The Leafs feel they acquired a sleeper in l2th-round selection Ron Choules, a left winger with Trois Rivieres Draveurs of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. Choules posted 53 goals and 113 points in 68 games and had 289 penalty minutes. It is his infraction figures, which may gain him a spot on the roster as an enforcer. Last year the Leafs employed Paul Higgins in that role&mdash;which begetted criticism from fans, press and opposing teams&mdash;but he failed to net any points in 22 games.LOOSE LEAFS&mdash;The Leafs and John Anderson, the club&rsquo;s leading scorer, are said to be far apart in contract talks. Anderson averaged a point a game last season as he reached the 30-goal plateau for the second year in succession&hellip;The Leafs announced another price hike for season ticket holders which now lifts the top seat at Maple Leaf Gardens to $20.00, an increase of $1.50. At the opposite end of the scale, the least expensive seats are $6.50, an increase of 50 cents.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-01601/4798842-1-eng-US/f0022-012.jpg" title="f0022-01" width="529" height="943"><figcaption class="caption-body">Russ Courtnall was the Leafs&rsquo; first choice but he&rsquo;ll probably play another year of junior.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Leaf Draft Pick A Bit Surprising

<div class="byline">BY NEIL MILBERT</div>CHICAGO&mdash;Not-so-gentle Behn Wilson is starting over with a smile on his face rather than a chip on his shoulder.The more the strong defenseman thinks about the draft day trade that sent him from Philadelphia to Chicago, the more he likes the idea.&ldquo;Everyone thinks it&rsquo;s unsettling, but I&rsquo;m extremely happy to say the least,&rdquo; said Wilson.&ldquo;Take a look at what happened to Pete Peeters when he went from Philadelphia to Boston last year. Look at what happened to Ken Linseman when he went to Edmonton. They had tremendous years.&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t a question of those two not being great athletes or great competitors. It was just a case of them being in the wrong place at the wrong time.I think you&rsquo;ll see it will be the same with me. I&rsquo;m going to Chicago with a positive outlook. It&rsquo;s a good team and they want me. Not only that, I wanted to come to Chicago. I thought I was going to be traded this summer and I spoke to my wife about it. I made a list of five cities in order of priority and Chicago was No. 1.&rdquo;A defenseman endowed with the power-hitting prowess and all-around attributes of Wilson has been near the top of general manager Bob Pulford&rsquo;s shopping list ever since he came to the Black Hawks in the summer of 1977.To get Wilson, the Hawks had to give up defenseman Doug Crossman and a second-round selection in the 1984 draft. Crossman, who will begin his third year in the National Hockey League in October, plays a finesse game that&rsquo;s in stark contrast to Wilson&rsquo;s physically-punishing style.&ldquo;We hated to give up Crossman,&rdquo; admitted Pulford. &ldquo;But to get something, you have to be willing to give and we just felt that Wilson fit a definite need.&ldquo;We&rsquo;d been after him for two years. Then, bang! In 30 seconds, we made the trade.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s tough and that&rsquo;s something I felt we&rsquo;ve needed on defense. I also think he has the ability to be an all-star and I believe Orval Tessier has the coaching ability to make him one. Talent-wise, he was the best by a country mile of the (physical) kind of defenseman we had a chance of getting.&rdquo;No relation to the Hawks&rsquo; best defenseman, Doug Wilson, 24-year-old Behn, is a 6-foot-3, 210-pound veteran of five seasons in the City of Brotherly Love. He was the Flyers&rsquo; first-round choice in the 1978 draft.Stastically, his best season was 198081, when he had 16 goals and 47 assists despite spending 237 minutes in the penalty box.The Flyers&rsquo; GM-coach, Bob McCammon, moved Wilson to wing and used him only sparingly last year. He wound up with eight goals, 24 assists and 92 penalty minutes.Although this is the first trade Pulford has made with Philadelphia, Wilson is a former teammate of two Hawks, Doug Wilson and right winger Tim Higgins. He began his junior career with them as a member of the Ottawa 67s.&ldquo;I have a very vivid memory of playing on that team,&rdquo; he reminisced. &ldquo;I especially remember the times I worked the power play with Doug. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d fake a shot, get the puck to him and watch him blast.&ldquo;I got a lot of assists that way.&rdquo;HAWK TALK&mdash;Making the 18th selection in the first round of the draft, the Hawks picked Ottawa&rsquo;s Bruce Cassidy, the Ontario League&rsquo;s highest-scoring defenseman. Pulford said Cassidy&rsquo;s offensive skills are similar to those of Doug Wilson and Crossman, who also played junior hockey in Ottawa. But Cassidy, who turned 18 on May 20, was drafted as a long-range investment rather as a replacement for Crossman this coming season&hellip;Right winger Steve Larmer, who was awarded the Calder Trophy as the league&rsquo;s top rookie the night before the draft, is the sixth Hawk to win it. The last was goalie Tony Esposito in 1970. In addition to Larmer&rsquo;s award, two Hawk greats of yesteryear, Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita, were voted into the Hockey Hall of Fame on the eve of the draft. &ldquo;What a way to go!&rdquo; exclaimed Mikita. &ldquo;Bobby Hull and I go back 28 years to when we were both kids in St. Catharines. Now, we&rsquo;re going into the Hall of Fame together.&rdquo; &#9632;

Behn Wilson Sees Trade As A New Start

<div class="byline">BY VARTAN KUPELIAN</div>Detroit&mdash;Blessed be Jimmy Devellano.Jimmy D really does want to build the Wings into a contender&mdash;and he&rsquo;s got some definite ideas on how to do it.Devellano believes the only way to build is via the draft; he won&rsquo;t make a trade simply for panic&rsquo;s sake.Unfortunately for the sophomore Red Wing general manager, he&rsquo;s apt to develop a pain in his gut if things keep going the way they are.At the National Hockey League&rsquo;s entry draft in June, Devellano would have loved to nab Pat LaFontaine, the Detroit-born player who ripped the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League apart with 103 goals and 235 points. Devellano never expected to nail LaFontaine&mdash;he was touted as the No. 1 player in everybody&rsquo;s books&mdash;but when Minnesota and Hartford bypassed on LaFontaine, it was getting pretty close. One pick before Detroit, New York Islander general manager Bill Torrey grabbed the microphone and announced to all that LaFontaine was now the property of the four-time Stanley Cup champions.It was a cruel blow for Devellano, the former Islander assistant GM who&rsquo;s been telling everyone that it&rsquo;s been him, more than Torrey, who&rsquo;s been responsible for building the Islanders.Devellano then took his turn and drafted Peterborough Petes&rsquo; Steve Yzerman. Not a bad player, but not LaFontaine, either.No sooner had the hockey establishment settled back in their seats following the big party in Montreal when Devellano grabbed the front pages of sports pages with a blockbuster trade. The Wings shipped big Willie Huber and forwards Mike Blaisdell and Mark Osborne to New York Rangers for goalie Ed Mio and forwards Ron Duguay and Eddie Johnstone.&ldquo;We plugged two holes,&rdquo; Devellano said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve helped our right side with Duguay and Johnstone joining Danny Gare there and in Eddie Mio, we have acquired a dependable goaltender. He certainly has played very well the past two seasons.&rdquo;So the pieces appeared to be falling into place for Devellano when the latest members of the red and white brigade. expressed a reluctancy to leave the Big Apple.&ldquo;Every morning I feel worse about the trade,&rdquo; said Duguay. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m really starting to think about the whole thing. I have so many things going for me in New York.&rdquo;Mio, a free agent who was asking the Rangers for an increase in salary, though not as astronomical as someone were lead to believe, he says&mdash;felt New York GM Craig Patrick let him down.&ldquo;Craig told me he didn&rsquo;t intend for me to leave New York and I told him I didn&rsquo;t want to go,&rdquo; Mio said.Poor Eddie. Poor Ronnie. Poor Jimmy.Devellano, however, seemed understanding about Duguay&rsquo;s predicament.&ldquo;He was a little bit stunned,&rdquo; Devellano said of Duguay. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s understandable. He played for the Rangers for six years. He has a restaurant in New York City. He just needs a little time to get over this. Anytime you&rsquo;re traded, it&rsquo;s a boot in the rear.&rdquo;Then there&rsquo;s Mio. The 29-year-old native of Windsor who still makes his home there might just decide to test his free agency. Devellano doesn&rsquo;t expect any problems signing Mio.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re very fair,&rdquo; Devellano said. &ldquo;We know the value of the players we&rsquo;ve acquired.&rdquo;The fact that Duguay can play both center and right wing had a lot do with Devellano going after him.&ldquo;Duguay&rsquo;s ability to play both positions gives us flexiblity and that was another of the reasons we made the trade,&rdquo; Devellano said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a good skater and an exciting player.&rdquo;The Red Wing GM is ecstatic about the players he&rsquo;s acquired in the draft. Aside from Yzerman. rated as the best prospect in the Ontario Hockey League, the Wings drafted Lane Lambert in the second round, which was somewhat surprising to the Wings considering they had him projected as a sure first-rounder.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a nice start for us,&rdquo; Devellano said of Yzerman. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll be a cornerstone of the franchise. He will be able to play in Detroit right away.&rdquo; &#9632;

Duguay Balks At Move From The Big Apple

<div class="byline">BY TONY GALLAGHER</div>VANCOUVER&mdash;When it comes to drafting, the Vancouver Canucks have a history of failing to do two things&mdash;keeping first-round picks and ignoring local talent.Allow for a little history lesson. Since their inception in 1970, the Canucks&rsquo; first-rounders have been Jocelyn Guevremont, Don Lever, Dennis Ververgaert, Ron Sedlbauer, Rick Blight, Bob Manno, Jere Gillis, Bill Derlago, Rick Vaive, Rick Lanz, Garth Butcher and Michel Petit.Only Lanz and Butcher are with the club, while Petit, who&rsquo;s with the St. Jean Beavers of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, is almost sure to make the jump to the Canucks this year. Whether they stay with the club&mdash;more importantly, how long they will stay&mdash;will be told in time.As for native sons, the most obvious is Barry Beck, though most forget the Canucks didn&rsquo;t have a shot at him in the &rsquo;77 draft because the Colorado Rockies had an earlier shot at him. Excluding Beck, another local talent whom the Canucks bypassed is Glenn Anderson. Not only did he star for the Canadian Olympic team in 1980, he has blossomed into one of the finest right wingers in the game.This year the Canucks had the ninth pick overall and chose Cam Neely, an 18-year-old right winger who starred for the Memorial Cup-winning Portland Winter Hawks.In Neely, who lives in Maple Ridge, about 20 miles outside Vancouver, the Canucks have accomplished two things. They&rsquo;ve got a first-rounder who has the scoring ability to play right away&mdash;and hopefully for many more years than some of his first-round predecessors&mdash;and they&rsquo;ve plucked a native son.The second choice, however, was David Bruce of Kitchener Rangers. In getting Bruce, the Canucks let go Randy Heath of the Winter Hawks, a little speedster who scored 82 goals and was arguably the best player in the Memorial Cup final. Heath had just about everything going for him except his size, 5-foot-9, 165 pounds.He can fly, score&mdash;something the Canucks have been in need of since the franchise began operating&mdash;and has a ton of character. By just about every account he is a sure NHL player.&ldquo;It was a tough choice for us,&rdquo; said general manager Harry Neale in explanation of what everybody locally feels is another classic drafting blunder. &ldquo;We said before the draft we couldn&rsquo;t get any smaller and we think Bruce is going to be a little bigger.&ldquo;We had Bruce rated a little ahead of Heath and we didn&rsquo;t want to go away from all the work we&rsquo;d done all year.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0024-01582/4798945-1-eng-US/f0024-012.jpg" title="f0024-01" width="552" height="945"><figcaption class="caption-body">When Vancouver drafted Cam Neely, it chose a player who grew up in nearby Maple Ridge.</figcaption></div>The choice around the Canucks&rsquo; table was hardly unanimous, as western scout George Wood apparently lobbied for Heath.&ldquo;I was disappointed we didn&rsquo;t take him,&rdquo; said Wood. &ldquo;But you can&rsquo;t ignore your ratings, I guess.&rdquo;Heath, of course, went to the New York Rangers and it looks as though they&rsquo;ve got themselves a pretty good hockey player. The Rangers had him rated late in the first round, while pegging Bruce somewhere in the third.What really made the decision hard to take was the fact Heath and Neely were linemates and given those circumstances all that was left was prying loose Ken Yaremchuk from Chicago and they&rsquo;d have one of the best lines ever assembled in junior hockey.Some observers felt Vancouver took Bruce because of the large, influential contingent of Eastern scouts combined with the fact they had already drafted a Westerner.It is sometimes forgotten that the team actually plays on the west coast.Considering Vancouver hasn&rsquo;t even signed last year&rsquo;s second rounder, Yves Lapointe, it&rsquo;s small wonder there have been a few heads shaking around town.Oh, well, so much for history. &#9632;

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Canucks Make History By Drafting Neely

<div class="byline">BY RICK SADOWSKI</div>LOS ANGELES&mdash;The Kings, who promised to make some moves following a dismal last-place finish in the Smythe Division, made a couple of interesting ones within a span of 12 days.First, on May 27, the Kings signed goaltending coach Rogie Vachon to a multi-year contract as Don Perry&rsquo;s top assistant, then they announced that the services of assistant Brad Selwood were no longer necessary; in essence, he was fired.Then, on June 8 in Montreal, they made 17-year-old Bruce Shoebottom, a defenseman with Peterborough who had fractured his left leg in two places back in December, their first pick (third round, 47th overall) in the draft.The official reason for dismissing the 35-year-old Selwood was a numbers game. The Kings said they felt Perry required only one assistant and that the 37-year-old Vachon, hired to coach the goaltenders last February, was the best man for the job.&ldquo;We want only one coach on the bench and the other upstairs and we feel Rogie is the premier person to take on these responsibilities,&rdquo; general manager George Maguire said. &ldquo;Really, it&rsquo;s not that big a deal.&rdquo;The unofficial reason is that several players had a field day criticizing Perry and Selwood during closed-door sessions with Maguire after the season ended and the Kings felt they had to do something to &ldquo;bolster team morale.&rdquo;Selwood, who had an option year left on his contract, found it difficult to believe the official version.&ldquo;First of all, they can call it anything they want, but I was fired,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;ve never heard of anyone being fired because of numbers. I don&rsquo;t understand that at all.&ldquo;I asked George why he was doing this, to be up-front about it. Had I been doing something wrong? Was I not working hard enough? He told me there were no problems in those areas.&ldquo;Then he said something about too many opinions clouding the issues, whatever that means.&rdquo;Maguire told Selwood that three players had questioned coaching ability, strategy and philosophy during the postseason meetings, but that it had nothing to do with letting him go. Maguire refused to identify the players.&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather believe what George told me, but maybe that did have something to do with it&hellip;it must have,&rdquo; Selwood said. &ldquo;I know some players feel we were too hard on them, that we intimidated them, but if you haven&rsquo;t got the guts to say it to our faces, you don&rsquo;t go and stab somebody in the back.&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t name names because I&rsquo;m not positive who they were, but I do know there are a couple of spoiled brats there. Why bother hiring a coach if they&rsquo;re running the show?&rdquo;Selwood and Perry joined the Kings on Jan. 11, 1982 after Parker MacDonald was fired as head coach. The club&rsquo;s failure to make the playoffs for the first fime in 10 years, he said, was due to lack of character, not talent.&ldquo;On a scale of 1 to 10, I&rsquo;d give them maybe a 2 or a 3,&rdquo; Selwood said. &ldquo;Except for guys like Marcel Dionne and Mike Murphy, there are too many followers and not enough leaders. They&rsquo;re not going to go very far with all those limp wrists.&ldquo;If they have visions of Stanley Cups in their heads, they&rsquo;d best take a trip to the Hall of Fame to see it. It&rsquo;s right there in the display case.&rdquo;Selwood has been in contact with several clubs in hopes of landing another position, including Detroit, Vancouver, Chicago, New Jersey and Hartford. &#9632;

Selwood Canned By Kings Amid ‘Morale’ Problems

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0025-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-01507/4799000-1-eng-US/f0025-012.jpg"></div> &#9632;

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Make The SAVE This Summer 2 Ways

<div class="byline">BY MIKE KANE</div>H&B Louisville HockeyH&B Louisville HockeySPRINGFIELD&mdash;For the first time in a decade, the American Hockey League will maintain the status quo from one season to the next.Barring an 11th-hour turnaround&mdash;and league officials maintain they are not receptive to a late-summer revision of the schedule&mdash;the AHL will open its 198384 with the same 13 teams that competed in 1982-83. Of course, there will be some minor changes, such as affiliation and partnership switches, but for the first time since 1973-74 when the AHL returned the same 12 teams that played the season before, the league&rsquo;s governors will not have to consider proposals to shrink or expand the circuit.At the National Hockey League&rsquo;s congressional meetings in Montreal, AHL officials agreed to keep the same divisional alignments, but approved a further refinement of the three-year-old sector scheduling format.The concept, which is merely an unbalanced schedule, divides the league into even more defined geographical sections. Last season, league president Jack Butterfield used a three-sector system to build his schedule. This summer, he will be concerned with four sectors while wearing his schedule-making cap.Under the new breakdown. Sector A is comprised of Nova Scotia, Moncton and Fredericton, the three teams in the Maritime Provinces. Sector B has the remaining three teams in the Northern Division&mdash;Adirondack, Maine and Sherbrooke. Sector C is the smallest, with just Springfield and New Haven, while Sector D is made up of the remainder of the Southern Division&mdash;Baltimore, Hershey, Binghamton, St. Catharines and Rochester.&ldquo;It was a compromise of all the suggestions made at the meeting,&rdquo; league vice-president Gordie Anziano said. &ldquo;The sector scheduling does two things for us. One, it cuts down on travel and two, it helps to create rivalries. We feel that those are major factors in our success.&rdquo;Anziano said that the schedule had not been completed, but explained the breakdown for teams in Sector A. Each team will play the other two in its sector 12 times (six home, six away) and will face Sector B teams a total of eight times. Sector A teams will play the pair from C six times each and the five clubs in the final group four times each.The length of the schedule was also discussed and approved at the congressional meetings, with the season running from Oct. 5 to April 1. The playoff format is indentical to the past seasons, with the top four teams in each division qualifying. Also, the league will remain with a best-of-seven format for each round of the playoffs.The question of altering the scheduling format for the playoffs is tabled for discussion at the league&rsquo;s annual meetings in Lake Tahoe. Prior to this past season, the setup was for the team with the better record playing the first two games at home, the opposing team getting the next two games and then alternating the next three, if necessary. A change to a 2-3-2 system saved money, but generated some criticism during the playoffs, especially from the coaches of the higher-standing teams who felt their home-ice advantage was diluted by the new schedule.Anziano also expects the league&rsquo;s governors to adopt a definite policy concerning when playoff series must begin. There were some problems prior to the start of the 1983 playoffs when some teams requested that the start of their series be delayed because of particularly gruelling schedules in the final two weeks of the season.AROUND THE LEAGUE&mdash;Adirondack, Rochester and Springfield lost their coaches for different reasons. Bill Mahoney was hired by the Minnesota North Stars to be their head coach after just one season with Adirondack. Detroit GM Jimmy Devellano said he would name Mahoney&rsquo;s successor in August. Mike Keenan left Rochester after leading the Amerks to the Calder Cup title for the head coaching job at the University of Toronto. Keenan spent three seasons with Rochester but, despite his success, apparently didn&rsquo;t fit into the future plans of the parent Buffalo Sabres. Veteran goaltender Phil Myre, who spent most of the season as Keenan&rsquo;s assistant, is considered the leading candidate for the job. The Chicago Black Hawks have announced that Orland Kurtenbach will not return as the Indians&rsquo; coach in Springfield. Kurtenbach is likely to be replaced by former Black Hawk Jim Pappin, who has been serving as a part-time scout. Coaching positions are still very much up in the air at Binghamton and Baltimore. Hartford&rsquo;s new GM Emile Francis has not announced whether Rick Ley will be retained at Binghamton and Baltimore Skipjacks&rsquo; coach Lou Angooti is expected to be promoted to the parent Pittsburgh Penguins, which will create an opening in Maryland.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0026-01532/4799031-1-eng-US/f0026-012.jpg" title="f0026-01" width="542" height="910"><figcaption class="caption-body">Wayne Schaab, Maine&rsquo;s all-time scoring leader, has retired to join an investment firm.</figcaption></div>Coaches expected to return for another season include Gary Inness (Hershey), Doug Carpenter (St. Catharines), Nick Beverly (New Haven), Tom McVie (Maine), Jacques Demers (Fredericton), John Brophy (Nova Scotia), Doug Messier (Moncton). Ron Racette, who was forced out by medical problems last summer, is scheduled to coach at Sherbrooke, replacing interim coach Rick Bowness.The AHL governors will consider a couple of rule changes at their Lake Tahoe meeting. Most notable are proposals to modify rules 54(e) and 54(f), both of which pertain to conduct of nonfighting players during an altercation. The present rule 54(e) dictates that nonfighting players must leave the scene of a fight and go to a specific area&mdash;the team bench area. The proposal would allow players to retreat to other areas away from the fight without being penalized. The proposed change in 54(f) would give referees the descretion of handing out game misconducts to players who become involved in fights after the original altercation. The rule now says that any player who becomes involved must be given a game misconduct. The change proposed is intended to prevent a player from one team deliberately trying to get a player from another team expelled by attacking him and provoking a fight.The Boston Bruins will place their farmhands in Hershey for the coming season. The Bruins, who were affiliated with Baltimore last season, Erie the season before that and Springfield in 1980-81, will join the Washington Capitals as the Bears&rsquo; NHL affiliate. The move leaves Pittsburgh without a partner at Baltimore.Center Wayne Schaab, an original member of the Maine Mariners, has retired from the game and accepted a position with a Portland area investment firm. Schaab, the team&rsquo;s career leader in goals, assists and points, will be honored at a ceremony prior to Maine&rsquo;s first home game, Oct. 8, and his uniform (No. 7) will be retired. In 480 games with the Mariners, Schaab scored 178 goals and totalled 508 points. &#9632;

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American League Set With Same Teams

<div class="byline">BY TOM LOBAUGH</div>H&B Louisville HockeyH&B Louisville HockeyTULSA&mdash;Although still uncertain who will provide players for the coming season, the Oilers have moved their operations to Expo Square (formerly known as the Fairgrounds), about six miles (10 kilometres) southeast of the Assembly Center, where the team has played for 19 seasons since joining the Central Hockey League in 1964.Plans are going ahead for August installation of ice-making machinery at the 5,3OO-seat Expo Square Pavilion in Tulsa. Season-ticket holders have been invited to compare their seating assignments with those at the Assembly Center and to make any adjustments necessary.The New York Rangers, whose one-year working agreement with the Oilers expired April 2, have not renewed the contract, although discussions have taken place.Jeff Wix, general manager of the Oilers, assured fans &ldquo;we will have a hockey team next season.&rdquo;&ldquo;We have four options open to us,&rdquo; Wix explained. &ldquo;We could work with the Rangers again. That would be my preference. But, if the Rangers don&rsquo;t want to come back, we could try to get a working agreement with another National Hockey League club which has been in the Central League previously. We could operate independantly or there is a possibility the Central League could operate the franchise.&rdquo;The Oilers were hoping to solve some of their financial problems by a public sale of stock. That sale still had not been approved by the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission.Tulsa is the CHL&rsquo;s oldest franchise. For their first nine seasons in the league, the Oilers were backed by the Toronto Maple Leafs. They were independant in 1973-74, although getting half of their players from the Leafs.In 1974-75, Tulsa was sponsored by the Phoenix Roadrunners and Vancouver Blazers of the World Hockey Association. For three seasons (1975-78) the Oilers were a joint effort of the NHL Atlanta Flames and Vancouver Canucks. Atlanta was the lone parent club for one season and the Winnipeg Jets backed Tulsa for three years until the agreement with the Rangers was signed last summer.Elsewhere, the CHL apparently had three franchises set and two others up in the air.The champion Indianapolis Checkers (backed by the New York Islanders), the Colorado Flames (backed by the Calgary Flames) and the Salt Lake City Golden Eagles (backed by the St. Louis Blues) appeared set for the 1983-84 season. While the NHL had vetoed the sale of the Blues to a Saskatoon group and St. Louis&rsquo; future in the league was still being pondered, Salt Lake owner Art Teece still had two years remaining on a three-year working agreement with St. Louis or its successor.The parent New Jersey Devils appeared to be close to an agreement with a group in Billings, MO, which would replace Wichita in the league. Wichita owner Larry Gordon has said he will not operate a team this season.Rumors had the Minnesota North Stars looking for another location to replace Birmingham as a farm site.League president Bud Poile attended the NHL meetings in Montreal but little was done to clarify the league&rsquo;s future. It appears for the moment the CHL will operate as a five&mdash;team circuit with the door still open for a more-workable sixth franchise. The league has already completed plans for its teams to engage both the U.S. and Canadian Olympic teams next season in a partial schedule of games with points attained in the series credited to the respective CHL teams in the standings. The league hasn&rsquo;t given up hope the North Stars will come through and operate a farm team in some other city to restore the CHL to a six-team operation. &#9632;

Parent-Less Oilers Move To New Building

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-01504/4799124-1-eng-US/f0028-012.jpg" title="f0028-01" width="736" height="2712"></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-02350/4799117-1-eng-US/f0028-022.jpg" title="f0028-02" width="1485" height="1880"></div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-03259/4799110-1-eng-US/f0028-032.jpg" title="f0028-03" width="753" height="2729"></div> &#9632;

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How NHL Teams Drafted The Amateurs

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0028-04" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-04189/4799155-1-eng-US/f0028-042.jpg"></div> &#9632;

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Top 21 First-Round Picks

MONTREAL&mdash;Wayne Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers continues to astound the hockey world with his accomplishments.The 22-year-old scoring sensation walked away from Montreal&rsquo;s gala summer awards show at the Place des Arts with his fourth consecutive Hart Trophy under one arm and the Art Ross Trophy under the other.Gretzky shared the podium at the glittering NHL silver presentation with veteran goalie Ken Dryden, one of three new members of Hockey&rsquo;s Hall of Fame, Boston goaltender Pete Peeters, Philadelphia&rsquo;s battle-scarred Bobby Clarke, sharpshooting Mike Bossy of the Islanders, rookie of the year Steve Larmer of Chicago, netminder Roland Melanson, also of the Islanders, and top defenseman Rod Langway of Washington.The Edmonton superstar captured the Hart as league MVP for the fourth successive season, making him the first player in the 66-year history of the NHL to win the award that many times in a row. Gretzky received 215 of a possible 315 points from the 63 voting members of the Professional Hockey Writers&rsquo; Association while winning 43 first-place votes. Peeters was second and Denis Savard of Chicago was a distant third.Balloting for most of the awards was considerably close but only a fine line separated Bossy and Rick Middleton of the Bruins in the selection for the Lady Byng Trophy winner. Middleton won the trophy last season and almost snatched it away from Bossy this time. The Islanders&rsquo; ace scorer polled 191 points to 181 for Middleton while winning the NHL&rsquo;s most gentlemanly player award.Another trophy voting dogfight developed for the Norris Trophy as the NHL&rsquo;s best defenseman with Langway and Mark Howe of Philadelphia the main combatants. Langway received 180 points in the final tabulation to edge Howe, who finished with 150.The remainder of the individual NHL awards were more conclusive with all the respective winners showing a wide margin in the voting. Larmer finished with 227 votes for the Calder Trophy as best rookie to beat out young Phil Housley of Buffalo, who received 115. Larmer had 36 first-place selections, topped only by Gretzky in the voting for the Hart Trophy. In other balloting, Peeters polled 105 points to easily outdistance Melanson for the Vezina Trophy as No. 1 netminder of the year. Melanson received but 34 points. Clarke was the undisputed winner of the Selke Trophy as top defensive forward. The effervescent captain of the Flyers, who hadn&rsquo;t won an NHL award since 1975, picked up 125 points to outdistance Jari Kurri of Edmonton, who had 63.Melanson was on hand to accept the William Jennings Trophy for the Stanley-Cup winning Islanders as the best goaltending team of the past season.The NHL selected three new player members for the Hall of Fame. Dryden, Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull are the newest inductees who will be honored in September at the league luncheon in Toronto along with Harry Sinden of Boston. The Bruins&rsquo; executive was named to the builder section earlier this year.The NHL named its All-Star team with Peeters in goal, Howe and Langway on defense, Gretzky at center. Bossy on right wing and Mark Messier of Edmonton at left wing on the first team.Picked on the second team were Melanson in goal, Ray Bourque of Boston and Paul Coffey of Edmonton on defense, Savard at center between McDonald on right wing and Quebec&rsquo;s Michel Goulet at left wing. &#9632;

Gretzky Shows He’s Got Plenty Of Hart

<div class="byline">BY MIKE BROPHY</div>H&B Louisville HockeyH&B Louisville HockeyTORONTO&mdash;It was, some say, one of the strangest midget drafts in Ontario I Hockey League history.For starters, the top-rated player, according to Central Scouting, wasn&rsquo;t chosen until sixth overall, the second-rated player went ninth and the third-rated player was selected first. Also, a couple of players who carry famous hockey names were rated as second rounders but went third and fourth overall.Yes. it was a crazy draft.Causing much of the confusion was the fact that the top two-rated players for the 1983 draft were Americans. Despite the fact they were both drafted by OHL teams, they are eligible to join any of the three junior leagues in Canada, try out for the U.S. Olympic team or attend U.S. colleges.Al Iafrate, the No. 1 rated player, made it very clear before the draft that he would only play in the OHL if selected by the Belleville Bulls, where his pal and fellow American Jim Andanoff plays.Not wanting to make the mistake the Bulls did last year when they drafted Pat LaFontaine first overall, only to have him sign and play in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, the five teams that drafted before Belleville passed on Iafrete, a 6-foot-2, 195-pound defenseman who played with Detroit Compuware midgets last season.The case of second-rated Ed Olczyk is even more absurd. A Chicago native who scored 50 goals and 92 assists in 42 games for Stratford Cullitons (junior B), the 6-foot-1, 190-pound center has already made it very clear his objective next season is to make the U.S. Olympic hockey team. Failing that, he would entertain offers from all three junior leagues or play U.S. college hockey.Toronto Marlboros took a giant risk when they took him in the first round, ninth overall.Trevor Stienburg, who scored 39 goals and 30 assists for 69 points and 182 penalty minutes for Brockville Tier Two last season, was the No. 1 pick overall, going to the Guelph Platers. A right winger-center, he should take some of the pressure off Plater star Kirk Muller.Sudbury Wolves, picking second overall, took a local boy, Craig Duncanson, in an obvious attempt to help bolster sagging attendance. Duncanson, who played for St. Michael&rsquo;s Jr. B team last season, wasn&rsquo;t rated among the top 10, but is tabbed as an excellent prospect.The big surprises came with the third and fourth overall picks. Kingston Canadians selected Ted Linseman, another in the long line of hockey-playing Linsemans, and a local boy at that. The Windsor Spitfires followed by taking Keith Gretzky.London Knights, with Don Boyd installed as coach and general manager, took the first goalie in the draft, selecting Jeff Reese from the Hamilton Mountain A&rsquo;s. Then, Belleville took Iafrete.The seventh pick belonged to Brantford and the A&rsquo;s took Shayne Corson of Barrie, a 6-foot-1, 170-pound defenseman who missed part of last season with a broken ankle. Jeff Rohlicek of the Chicago Jets was taken by the Cornwall Royals, eighth overall.Olczyk went ninth overall and then the North Bay Centennials took 6-foot-3, 180-pound defenseman Kevin Hatcher from Detroit Compuware, the brother of 6-foot-7, 235-pound Mark Hatcher, who already plays for the Centennials.Kitchener Rangers, who had such a successful draft a year ago, picked 11th and took David Latta, the brother of Ken Latta, who earned the reputation as one of the OHL&rsquo;s best fighters during the past four seasons with London and the Soo Greyhounds. The younger Latta, a native of Thunder Bay, Ont., played tier two with Orillia last sason, scoring 43 points in 42 games. The OHL champions and Memorial Cup finalists, the Oshawa Generals, took 6-foot, 170-pound defenseman John Stevens. 12th overall. Stevens will be a welcome addition to the Generals, who lost defensemen Joe Cirella, Norm Schmidt and Dale DeGray to graduation.Peterborough Petes bolstered their already strong defense by taking 16-year-old Larry Shaw, who played a full season in the OHL with Guelph last year.Keeping with the trend of drafting defensmen, the Ottawa 67s selected homewbrew Todd Clarke 14th and the Soo Greyhounds, led by mastermind general manager Sam McMaster, took John English, a defenseman from St. Mike&rsquo;s Jr. B. &#9632;

U.S. Influence Contributes To Crazy Draft

<div class="byline">BY BEN KUZMA</div>H&B Louisville HockeyH&B Louisville HockeyREGINA&mdash;The final numbers tell one story, but the Regina Pats tell you another.It was a lean year for Western Hockey League hopefuls at the recent National Hockey League entry draft in Montreal. Only nine WHL players managed to go in the first three rounds and only 40 of 240 total selections&mdash;less than 16 per cent.While Memorial Cup champion Portland Winter Hawks had six players selected in the first four rounds, Regina had eight players picked to lead the league.Left winger Nevin Markwart went to Boston in the first round, while center John Bekkers was taken by Calgary in the fourth. Defenseman Jayson Meyer went to Buffalo in the fifth round and center Dale Derkatch, the league&rsquo;s leading scorer, didn&rsquo;t go until the seventh round to Edmonton. Defenseman Stu Grimson and right winger Jeff Frank were Detroit selections in the 10th and 11th rounds, respectively. Defenseman John Miner also went in the 11th round to Edmonton and Pittsburgh selected rearguard David Goertz in the 12th.&ldquo;Last year the WHL had 57 players taken and these things seem to go in cycles,&rdquo; said Regina general manager Bob Strumm. &ldquo;This year was the down side of the cycle and there just weren&rsquo;t the numbers available from our league.&ldquo;In the last four years we&rsquo;ve had 22 players taken and we&rsquo;re proud of that. In some cases this year we were surprised by the round in which they went. But if you count the total numbers taken, our players would have gone in the first six rounds. They (NHL clubs) are taking a lot of American high school kids and Europeans because of the rules. They don&rsquo;t have to pay any development money.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-01489/4799272-1-eng-US/f0030-012.jpg" title="f0030-01" width="554" height="726"><figcaption class="caption-body">Regina&rsquo;s Dale Derkatch was selected in the seventh round by Stanley Cup finalist Edmonton.</figcaption></div>What surprised Strumm most was the lateness at which Derkatch was drafted. Derkatch led the league in scoring with 84 goals and 95 assists for 179 points, but at 5-foot-5, 150 pounds, the Winnipeg native was considered too small for professional hockey by most NHL general managers. But in the same year in which 5-foot-9 Quebec Major Junior Hockey League standout Pat LaFontaine was considered big enough to go third overall to New York Islanders, Edmonton general manager Glen Sather decided to get Derkatch before somebody else did.&ldquo;Twenty-one general managers obviously know what they&rsquo;re doing,&rdquo; said a sarcastic Strumm. &ldquo;In five years, he (Derkatch) will be on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Sather will be a hero. Dale will make Edmonton look good and then 20 of 21 general managers are going to be explaining why they didn&rsquo;t pick him.&rdquo;PORTLAND&mdash;The Winter Hawks had two players taken in the opening round of the draft to steal some thunder. Right winger Cam Neely, drafted by Vancouver, was the ninth player taken overall, while center Alfie Turcotte went to Montreal as the draft&rsquo;s 17th selection overall.New York Rangers selected left winger Randy Heath in the second round and left winger Gord Walker in the third. Left winger Tim Lorenz went to Vancouver in the fourth round and Montreal selected rearguard John Kordic in the same round. Defenseman Ryan Walker went to the Rangers in the 11th round.VICTORIA&mdash;Center Russ Courtnall had the distinction of being the first WHL player drafted when Toronto chose him seventh overall. Defenseman Ron Viglasi was taken by New York Islanders in the fifth round and Calgary made rearguard Rob Kivell its ninth-round pick.KAMLOOPS&mdash;Left winger Richard Hajdu proved popular at the draft, going in the second round to Buffalo. New Jersey selected defenseman Gord Mark in the sixth round and right winger Greg Evtushevski in the seventh. Defenseman Mark Ferner went to Buffalo in the 10th round.Bill LaForge has signed a one-year contract to return as the Oilers&rsquo; GM-coach. Assistant coach and therapist Ron Coleman also agreed to contract terms.NANAIMO&mdash;While the Islanders were pleased when defenseman Doug Quinn went to Vancouver in the fifth round of the draft, the future of the financially-troubled franchise is in doubt.The team is expected move to the Vancouver area for the 1983-84 season, but final announcement wasn&rsquo;t expected to be made until the league meetings.KELOWNA&mdash;The Wings had two players taken in the draft. Center Dwaine Hutton went to Washington in the seventh round and Detroit took defenseman Craig Butz in the eighth.SEATTLE&mdash;The future of the Breakers is also in doubt. The club, which failed to have any of its eligible players taken in the draft, will report on its troubled financial picture at the league meetings.SASKATOON&mdash;The Blades made their presence felt at the draft with five players being selected.Right winger Lane Lambert went to Detroit in the second round and goaltender Alan Larochelle was taken by Boston in the fourth. Detroit selected right winger Joey Kocur in the fifth round and the Islanders took left winger Dale Henry in the eighth. Hartford made left winger Allan Acton its llth-round selection.CALGARY&mdash;The Wranglers had three players drafted. Defenseman Allan Measures went to Vancouver in the ninth round and Edmonton took Warren Yadlowski in the 10th. Left winger Garth Hildebrand was Pittsburgh&rsquo;s llth-round pick.LETHBRIDGE&mdash;Defenseman Gerald Diduck highlighted the Broncos&rsquo; draft day, going in the first round to the Islanders. Defenseman Darcy Kaminski went to Hartford in the 12th round.MEDICINE HAT&mdash;The Tigers&rsquo; rearguard Kevan Guy was drafted in the fourth round by Calgary and Boston made defenseman Allan Pederson its fifth-round selection.PRINCE ALBERT&mdash;Rookie of the Year Dan Hodgson, a promising center, was taken by Toronto in fifth round and New Jersey made left winger Allan Stewart its 11th-round pick.WINNIPEG&mdash;The Warriors&rsquo; defenseman David Korol was selected in fourth round by Detroit.BRANDON&mdash;Big news for the Wheat Kings wasn&rsquo;t who got drafted, it was who didn&rsquo;t. Once again, standout center Kelly Glowa was overlooked by NHL clubs in his second shot at the draft. Glowa was third in league scoring last season with 163 points, but at 5-foot-9 is considered too small to play in the NHL. The Wheat Kings were shut out in the draft.NOTES&mdash;The big concern from the head office is the future of league president Ed Chynoweth. Chynoweth has been approached by Philadelphia to serve in an administrative role. His plans will be known at the league meetings. &#9632;

f0030-01

Regina Leads League In Plauers Selected

<div class="byline">BY HERB ZURKOWSKY</div>LONGUEUIL&mdash;There has been a drastic shakeup&mdash;totally expected&mdash;of the Longueuil Chevaliers&rsquo; front office.Jacques Lemaire and Andre Mangifesto are out as coach and general manager, respectively, having been replaced by Mario Bazinet and Fred Macarone.Lemaire recently signed on as assistant coach with Montreal Canadiens, while Mangifesto resigned following Longueuil&rsquo;s five-game final series loss to the Verdun Juniors. Mangifesto is expected to replace Roger Roy, the league&rsquo;s chief scout. Roy has accepted a scouting position with the Canadiens.Bazinet comes to the Chevaliers&mdash;he signed a one-year contract&mdash;after a topsy-turvy, three-year reign at TroisRivieres. While Bazinet departed with a successful .580 winning percentage, he spent the majority of last season on the sidelines with suspensions.Following numerous warnings and minor suspensions from the late president Jean Rougeau, Bazinet was handed a 25-game suspension last year&mdash;the stiffest reprimand in league history&mdash;after a particularly rough game in which Bazinet failed to control his players.&ldquo;The owners in Trois-Rivieres wanted a change in style,&rdquo; said Bazinet. &ldquo;I was under contract for another year and there was nothing I could do to get out of it. What happened, happened and I paid the bill.&ldquo;But the style we had my first two years in Trois-Rivieres and a similar style the Chevaliers had last year will be continued. It will be a good skating team, disciplined both on and off the ice.&rdquo;While the sophomore Chevaliers are not expected to enjoy the same success this season, they nonetheless have a good nucleus of players returning, including reserve goaltender Daniel Savoie, sensational defenseman Jean-Jacques Daigneault&mdash;the best blueliner in the league&mdash;and centers Joe Mercuri, Franco lammattoo, Santino Pellegrino and Guy Rouleau.But what remains to be seen is how well Bazinet and Macarone work with Fred Ware, who owns the team along with Georges Touten and Vic Bergeron.Ware can best be described as an active owner who intently oversees the operation of his team. He also has a son, center Patrick, who played little last season.&ldquo;Ware is like a dictator,&rdquo; accused Mangifesto. &ldquo;He must have absolute power. He told me he would next year and would hire a coach who would play whome he was told to.&rdquo;Ware could not be reached for comment. Bazinet, meanwhile, said he is aware of the alleged stories, but isn&rsquo;t anticipating any conflicts.&ldquo;Most (WMJHL) owners get involved with their teams because of the high budgets,&rdquo; said Bazinet. &ldquo;They did in Trois-Rivieres, Drummondville and we all know about (Claude) Fournel in Laval.&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m on the same wave-length (as Ware). I don&rsquo;t see any problems. I have accepted the conditons and I won&rsquo;t change my mind during the season. I&rsquo;ll have control over the team. If you&rsquo;re going to hire a coach and tell him who to play, you might as well go behind the bench yourself. No coach would accept a contract under those conditions. I&rsquo;ll do what I have to do. If they don&rsquo;t like that, well, a coach is hired to be fired.&ldquo;When the players come to camp I won&rsquo;t care what their names are. Give them a sweater and a number. The best 21 will make the team. If Patrick Ware makes it, good. If not, too bad.&rdquo; &#9632;

Bazinet Won’t Be-Ware

<div class="byline">BY WALT MacPEEK</div>EAST RUTHERFORD&mdash;Who is Mikko Makela?New Jersey general manager Billy MacMillan believes Makela will be the answer to a Devils&rsquo; trivia question for a long, long time.The question is: Who was the last draft choice lost by the New Jersey Devils (through a trade?At long last, the New Jersey Devils no longer have to operate with the mistakes of the past hanging ominously over the future.For the first time since June of 1981, no other team has a claim to any of the Devils&rsquo; future first-round choices&hellip;or any draft choices, for that matter.The historic moment when the Devils&rsquo; draft debts disappeared occured at 10:19 on the morning of June 8. when the New York Islanders, using a fourth-round choice obtained from Colorado, selected Makela. an 18-year-old center from Finland.To many, that moment marked the actual start of Devils&rsquo; rebuilding progress. What took place in this year&rsquo;s entry draft was as much of an exercise in survival as in rebuilding.Basically, the Devils&rsquo; staff has been trying to make the best of a bad situation for the past two drafts. Even though they preferred to think of themselves as a &ldquo;new&rdquo; team last summer, they were operating under handicaps left over from Peter Gilbert&rsquo;s under-financed, panic-inspiring management in Colorado.&ldquo;Now we&rsquo;re ready to go forward, to make some progress.&rdquo; MacMillan declared at the conclusion of the draft in Montreal. &ldquo;The upset is over. We&rsquo;ve bottomed out and there are some teams which can&rsquo;t say that.&rdquo;At Colorado, an inexperienced MacMillan was forced to operate in a win-today-or-we-go broke-tomorrow climate and he is the first to admit that he allowed those pressures to hurry him into mistakes.MacMillan has obviously learned from those errors, however, and made a very important trade on the morning before the 1982 draft. Since he was so familiar with what financial woes could do to a GM&rsquo;s judgement, he chose a team in a similarly desperate position as his &ldquo;victim.&rdquo;MacMillan sent defenseman Rob Ramage to St. Louis for two first-round draft choices, which turned out to be Rocky Trottier (eighth choice in the first round in &rsquo;82) and John MacLean (sixth choice in the first round in &rsquo;83).The damage caused by the trading of draft choices, which allowed Boston to draft Gord Kluzak last June and the Islanders to pick LaFontaine this year, will be greatly reduced if Trottier and John MacLean develop into good NHL players.&ldquo;The deal Mac made with St. Louis saved our last two drafts, kept them from being disasters,&rdquo; the Devils&rsquo; director of player personnel Bert Marshall noted after the 12th and final round.&ldquo;Only time will tell but we believe we did well last year when we drafted Trottier (8th), Ken Daneyko (18th) and Pat Verbeek. And we&rsquo;re extremely pleased to add MacLean (6th) and Shawn Evans (24) this year.&rdquo;To MacMillan and Marshall, MacLean is a key player.The 18-year-old right winger played last season for the Oshawa Generals, champions of the Ontario Hockey League and was chosen to the Memorial Cup first all-star team.&ldquo;Our scouts had MacLean rated behind Brian Lawton (the first overall choice by Minnesota) and LaFontaine among all the forwards and defensemen,&rdquo; MacMillan revealed. &ldquo;When Buffalo took Tom Barrassos (the top-rated goalie) fifth, the decision we would have had to make was made for us.&rdquo;Evans, 18, compiled seven goals and 48 points in 58 games with Peterborough Petes. The6-foot-2, 193-pounder is considered a complete player, according to Marshall.&ldquo;We had him rated as the 12th best prospect overall and were surprised to see his there in second round,&rdquo; Marshall said. &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t expect him to be a superstar but we think he will be a solid guy who can contribute on a winning team in the NHL.&rdquo;In the fifth round, the Devils drafted Chris Terrari, a 19-year-old goalie with Providence College. Their sixth- and seventh-round choices, respectively, were Mark Gordon and Greg Evtushevski, both of the Kamloops Oilers.One round after the Montreal Canadiens drew some murmers when they chose goalie Vladislav Tretiak of the Soviet Union&mdash;who is considered to be the premier player in the world in his position&mdash;the Devils drafted Viacselev Fetisov, Said Marshall: &ldquo;Most people think he&rsquo;s the best defenseman in the world. If he ever becomes available for play in the NHL, we want to make sure it is for the Devils.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0031-01451/4799327-1-eng-US/f0031-012.jpg" title="f0031-01" width="543" height="706"><figcaption class="caption-body">The Devils&rsquo; scouts had Oshawa Generals&rsquo; John MacLean rated third overall in the draft.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0031-01

‘Devils’ Drafting Void Finally Over

<div class="byline">BY RANDY SMITH</div>HARTFORD&mdash;The irony of the Hartford Whalers&rsquo; draft, the club&rsquo;s first under Emile Francis, was overwhelming because in the end, all that Francis did was lend support.&ldquo;You have to give Emile a tremendous amount of credit,&rdquo; said Larry Pleau, who has been reduced to assistant GM under Francis in the Whalers&rsquo; new scheme of things. &ldquo;He could have taken the easy way out, but he put his faith in our reports.&rdquo;The &ldquo;easy way out&rdquo; would have been to select Pat LaFontaine, an American center who became almost as popular as Guy Lafleur while scoring 103 goals and 235 points for the Verdun Juniors of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.The Whalers, however, especially Pleau and head scout Bill Dineen, the two men who carry the most weight behind closed doors, were convinced that Sylvain Turgeon, a center-left winger with Hull Olympics of the QMJHL, was a better player.So, after Minnesota made Brian Lawton the first American to be selected No. 1 overall in NHL history, the Whalers raised more than a few eyebrows by bypassing LaFontaine in favor of Turgeon.The New York Islanders, picking third, wasted little time before selecting LaFontaine.&ldquo;LaFontaine is going to be a tremendous hockey player, but so is Turgeon,&rdquo; Francis said. &ldquo;We had Turgeon rated one or two all year long. We always had him rated ahead of LaFontaine.&rdquo;Turgeon, a native of Noranda, Que., the hometown of former Whaler Dave Keon, is 6-foot, 190 pounds and more than likely will play left wing in the pros.&ldquo;I think that I can help Hartford,&rdquo; said Turgeon, who collected 54 goals and 109 assists for Hull. &ldquo;I met with people from Hartford before the draft and they seemed very nice. I like Mr. Pleau. I scored more goals as a left winger, but I got more assists as a centerman. I think I can play both places, but I don&rsquo;t have a preference.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m looking forward to trying the NHL. I was bored in Hull.&rdquo;Turgeon was flown into Hartford and underwent an all-around fitness test. He scored third on the current roster, behind Ronnie Francis and Michel Galameau. Turgeon took similar tests in Detroit and on Long Island.&ldquo;I&rsquo;d bet my job that Turgeon&rsquo;s the right one for us,&rdquo; Pleau said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s got great, great character. He did everything right. He came to Hartford to be tested, he went to Detroit and to the Islanders. He didn&rsquo;t try to hide anything.&rdquo;Francis, with 36 years of experience, simply allowed the Whalers&rsquo; staff to do what it had planned.&ldquo;I see no reason why Turgeon can&rsquo;t play with the Whalers next season,&rdquo; Francis said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s big and he&rsquo;s mature. He&rsquo;s got a great shot and he won&rsquo;t shy away in the comers. We&rsquo;re looking to build a nucleus of young players in Hartford and Turgeon&rsquo;s going to be one of them.&rdquo;Pleau spent time with Turgeon&rsquo;s family. For the past 20 years, Turgeon&rsquo;s father has left home on Monday, travelled 100 or so miles to work as a machinist and does not return home until Friday night. Sylvain&rsquo;s brother, 13-year-old Pierre, who already is more than six-feet tall, pitched for the Canadian Little League champions in the World Series in Williamsport, PA last summer.&ldquo;The family is very close,&rdquo; Pleau said, &ldquo;you know, real people. Sylvain has had to handle a lot of the responsibilities. To be honest, I love the kid.&rdquo;John Cunniff, who ended last season as coach of the Whalers, but isn&rsquo;t sure what his role will be in September, agreed with the selection of Turgeon.&ldquo;Emile came up big,&rdquo; Cunniff said. &ldquo;He showed me something. He could have gone with the popular choice, but he trusted our scouts.&rdquo;Dineen, in particular.&ldquo;I may be history, but at least we got Turgeon,&rdquo; said Dineen, who publicly criticized Francis before his arrival in Hartford. &ldquo;Believe me, the kid&rsquo;s going to be a beauty. You&rsquo;re gonna love him.&rdquo;Dineen said the team&rsquo;s No. 2 pick, David Jensen, the 20th overall choice, has &ldquo;a great shot&rdquo; at making the 1984 U.S. Olympic Team and that No. 3 pick, Finland&rsquo;s Ville Siren, the 23rd overall pick, was &ldquo;the best player I saw in Europe.&rdquo; Jensen is a center, while Siren plays defense.Hartford fans will see neither for at least two years..&ldquo;We got what we wanted,&rdquo; Dineen said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d say that we had a hell of a draft.&rdquo; &#9632;

The Cat Bypasses Pat For Svlvain

BUFFALO&mdash;Tony McKegney, C, J.F. Sauve, C, and Andre Savard, C, all traded to Quebec in return for Real Cloutier, RW, and Nordiques&rsquo; first-round draft pick in 1983.CALGARY&mdash;Steve Christoff, RW, traded to Minnesota in exchange for Mike Eaves, C, and Keith Hanson, D. Flames also gave Minnesota a second-round draft pick.DETROIT&mdash;Willie Huber, D, Mark Osborne, LW, and Mike Blaisdell, RW, all traded to New York Rangers in return for Ron Duguay, RW, Eddie Johnstone, RW, and Eddie Mio,, G. Gilles Gilbert, G, Jim Schoenfeld, D, Reg Leach, RW, and Tom Rowe, RW, all released outright as free agents.NEW JERSEY&mdash;Carol Vadnais, D, retired as player to become an assistant coach with the Rangers.PHILADELPHIA&mdash;Behn Wilson, D, traded to Chicago in exchange for Doug Crossman, D, and Hawks&rsquo; second-round draft pick in 1984. Wayne Schaab, C, announced retirement from hockey.TORONTO&mdash;Bill McCreary, LW, Reg Thomas, LW, Dave Snopek, C, Benoit Laporte, RW, and John Gibson, D, all released as free agents.WASHINGTON&mdash;Milan Novy, C, Randy Holt, D, and Ted Bulley, LW, all released as free agents.WINNIPEG&mdash;Dave Christian, C, traded to Washington for Caps&rsquo; first-round draft pick in 1983.COACHING CHANGESLOS ANGELES&mdash;Rogie Vachon signed as assistant coach, replacing Brad Selwood, who was not rehired.MINNESOTA&mdash;Bill Mahoney of Adirondack of the AHL named new head coach of the North Stars.MONTREAL&mdash;Bob Berry rehired as head coach after being dropped. Jacques Lemaire named assistant coach.PHILADELPHIA&mdash;Ted Sator named assistant coach. &#9632;

PLAYER TRANSACTIONS

<div class="byline">BY JAY GREENBERG</div>PHILADELPHIA&mdash;Whether Behn Wilson mishandled his promise or the Flyers couldn&rsquo;t extract it from him, maybe the Chicago Black Hawks have a better idea.On the final day of Wilson&rsquo;s five tortured years in Philadelphia, the number of potential deals involving him might even have equalled Wilson&rsquo;s NHL record for being the subject of rumors. Finally, the Flyers pushed through the last of the possibilities, insisting Chicago give them defenseman Doug Crossman and their No. 2 pick in next year&rsquo;s draft.A lesser price would have attracted no anger from the Spectrum faithful who, frankly, didn&rsquo;t like Wilson almost from the first minute they saw him. But considering the way the Flyers devalued Wilson by using him as a spare defenseman and fourth-line left winger last season, they recouped nicely.Crossman, 23, is as mild as Wilson was occassionally angry, but he moves the puck beautifully and adds one more place of mobility to the Flyer defense. The Black Hawks, with Doug Wilson, Keith Brown, Dave Feamster and Bob Murray, felt they had enough of those types and badly wanted a mean streak on their defense.General manager Bob Pulford wanted an even-up swap but the Flyers insisted on a draft choice, too. Originally demanding a No. 1, they settled for the second-rounder in what is projected to be twice the quality of the recent entry draft.Pulford is a cautious man and he and recently-appointed vice-president Keith Allen considered various Wilson packages for almost a year. As the years have passed, fewer and fewer NHL teams have been willing to make a satisfactory offer to the Flyers for Wilson. And the Hawks also fished elsewhere.They made a good offer to Buffalo for Larry Playfair during the past season, but couldn&rsquo;t finish the deal. When two other Flyer proposals, which would have sent Wilson away for No. 1 picks in this year&rsquo;s draft fell through, new GM Bob McCammon turned back to Chicago.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll say the same thing I said when we traded Ken Linseman,&rdquo; said Keith Allen. &ldquo;There was a lot more potential than we were able to realize from Wilson. Kenny started to live up to it this year. Maybe Wilson will too.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re worried about giving up his toughness, sure,&rdquo; said McCammon after striking his first Flyer trade. &ldquo;But I think with Glen Cochrane and Paul Holmgren we still have enough.&ldquo;I think we got a guy who is potentially an all-star. He&rsquo;s a very skilled player. He had 53 points last year. That really isn&rsquo;t many fewer than Mark Howe had.&rdquo;Crossman will scare no one the way Wilson did. But the Flyers, after being pummelled to death by pillows in two straight first-round losses to the Rangers, had to wonder what fear was worth.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/c4-01225/4799413-1-eng-US/c4-012.jpg" title="C4-01" width="550" height="783"><figcaption class="caption-body">The Flyers&rsquo; defense should be even quicker next year with the addition of Doug Crossman.</figcaption></div>Wilson&rsquo;s Flyer stay was checked by too many appearances before league disciplinarian Brian O&rsquo;Neill, but that had little to do with the decision to move him. He had no problems with his teammates and was humbled by the way McCammon used him last year. But the problem remained Wilson too often played at 45 revolutions per minute when the game sometimes required 78.There were times he would snap out of it and be most of what the Flyers expected when they made him the sixth player taken in the 1978&rsquo;draft. Wilson wasn&rsquo;t the quickest guy but he skated well and when his brain was on, he could move the puck very well.But the Flyers grew tired of waiting out his suspensions and groin pulls and often lackadaisical approach. Last summer&rsquo;s acquisitions of Mark Howe, Miro Dvorak and Brad McCrimmon made Wilson an extra. And the final writing on the wall came when a series of injuries struck the Flyer defense last winter.The Flyers recalled Bob Hoffmeyer from Maine and continued using Wilson mostly as a fourth-line left winger.&ldquo;I thought I would get my chance,&rdquo; said Wilson, &ldquo;so I kept working hard in practice. It didn&rsquo;t work out, but I&rsquo;m kind of relieved now that it&rsquo;s done.&ldquo;All the rumors the last couple days that people were reading to me. I didn&rsquo;t know whether to buy snowshoes for Minnesota or a swimming suit for L.A. Chicago is a break, it&rsquo;s a good team.&ldquo;I think the booing (in Philly) wouldn&rsquo;t help anybody&rsquo;s confidence. You think about Pete Peeters, who we all knew was a great goalie and athlete and it just built up on him from the fans, team and management. I&rsquo;m not trying to draw a comparison between Pete and me, but we all know how well things are going for him in Boston.&rdquo;The Flyers, who traded this year&rsquo;s No. 1 pick to Hartford in last summer&rsquo;s Mark Howe deal, dangled Wilson before several clubs in an effort to get one back. Their first hope was to acquire Quebec&rsquo;s (11th overall). But the Nordiques decided against the straight Wilson for draft choice offer the Flyers tendered and took the three-player package from Buffalo instead.The night before the draft McCammon was also optimistic about Hartford&rsquo;s interest in Wilson. But new GM Emile Francis decided to draft instead.&ldquo;I know he has a bad reputation,&rdquo; said Pulford, &ldquo;but so did (Al) Secord when we got him from Boston. We want what Wilson can give us.&rdquo;Which may be what Wilson was best cast to give all along.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s funny, I was just thinking about that today,&rdquo; said Wilson. &ldquo;Probably the best part of my game, which never gets talked about, is my work in the comers. I feel like I go in there and never get knocked off my feet or the puck.&ldquo;It was a funny feeling being 20-years-old and in your second season and being expected to play like a veteran. I&rsquo;m not really blaming anybody for that. I guess it&rsquo;s part of the business.&rdquo;ICEBERGS&mdash;The front-office shakeup, which began with the ascension of McCammon to the general managership, continued with the resignation of Marcel Pelletier and firing of Ontario scout Eric Colville. &ldquo;We have three different front-office structures in mind, depending upon whether we get the people we want,&rdquo; said McCammon. Ed Chynoweth, the president of the Westen Hockey League has been offered a high-level position and western scout Jerry 4 Melnyk is in line for a promotion either into Pelletier&rsquo;s position or to head scout<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/c4-02188/4799406-1-eng-US/c4-022.jpg" title="C4-02" width="2330" height="2515"></div> &#9632;

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