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.

August 31, 1984

The Hockey News August 31, 1984

<div class="byline">BY TOM HENSHAW</div>BOSTON&mdash;Page 63 of the 1980 class yearbook at Thayer Academy in suburban Braintree says it all.&ldquo;Cleon Daskalakis&hellip;Future prediction: Goalie for Bruins.&rdquo;During the off-season, the Bruins took a long step toward making that prediction come true when they signed Daskalakis to a free-agent contract, thus shoring up what was becoming a dangerous lack of depth in the goalkeeping department.The 22-year-old Daskalakis, who was passed over in all the years that he was eligible in the National Hockey League entry draft, may be the goaltending sleeper of the year.He capped a four-year career at Boston University by being named ECAC player of the year, winning the Walter Brown Award as the top American-born college player in New England, and finishing second in the balloting for the Hobey Baker Trophy as the top college player in the United States.He led the Terriers to the NCAA quarter-finals with a goals-against average of 2.92, third best in the nation.&ldquo;Playing for the Bruins is something I&rsquo;ve always wanted to do,&rdquo; said Daskalakis. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s funny, I started out dreaming of playing for BU and I did. Then I dreamed about playing for the Bruins and now I&rsquo;m going to do that, too.&ldquo;Atone time, I didn&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;d end up in Boston. I was leaning elsewhere. But the Bruins really came on strong and I&rsquo;m glad they did. They are the team I&rsquo;d always hoped to play for. They worked hard to sign me so they must have plans for me.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m confident I can make the move to the NHL. I know there&rsquo;s two guys ahead of me who have already proven them-selves and I&rsquo;m willing to take my time and learn from them.&rdquo;Daskalakis is projected as the No. 3 goalie on the Bruins&rsquo; roster, behind Pete Peeters and Doug Keans and ahead of, or possibly even with, Mike Moffat.&ldquo;Pete Peeters, in our estimation, along with Billy Smith and maybe one other, is the best goalie in hockey,&rdquo; said Bruin general manager Hany Sinden in a post-season analysis of the Boston goaltending situation.&ldquo;Two years ago he had one of the outstanding goaltending seasons in the league recently. For him to follow that up, particularly when he had the injuries he had last season, was a little too much to expect. I don&rsquo;t have any reservations about Pete Peeters and his future here.&ldquo;To me, Doug Keans was our biggest surprise of the season, a guy who really gave us the goaltending tandem that was as good as anybody&rsquo;s.&ldquo;Mike Moffat&rsquo;s progress has been disappointing. He has had difficulty in the American League. He had an average of 4.50 goals against or something. What the reason is I don&rsquo;t know. But we haven&rsquo;t given up on him. Gerry Cheevers thinks he&rsquo;s a major goalie.&rdquo;The Bruins will have two other newly-turned pro goalies in their training camp next month.Alain Larochelle was their fourthround draft choice out of Saskatoon in 1983 and Don Sylvestri was their ninthround pick from Clarkson University in 1981.WHAT&rsquo;S BRUIN&mdash;The second annual Normand Leveille golf tournament was held at the South Shore Country Club in Hingham and his fans had a chance to see how Leveille has progressed since his near fatal cerebral hemorrhage Oct. 23, 1982.The 21-year-old left winger, who rode around the course in a golf cart signingautographs, walks with a cane, speaks haltingly, drives his own car and has an apartment of his own in Montreal.&ldquo;A year and a half ago,&rdquo; said Bob Perno, his friend and agent, &ldquo;he was never expected to walk or talk, much less live on his own or drive.&ldquo;The next big step is to do away with the cane, hopefully by Christmas. Then it&rsquo;s being able to talk. He knows that&rsquo;s going to take an awful long time. The doctors say it will be physically impossible for him to talk normally, but I know Normand. He&rsquo;s done things they said he couldn&rsquo;t do.&rdquo;Leveille&rsquo;s brother, Daniel, disclosed that Normand even tried skating last January.&ldquo;He did it to feel the sensation of skating, to show he could skate again,&rdquo; Daniel said. &#9632;

IN THIS ISSUE

Bruins Add Another Goalie To The Stable

<div class="byline">BY RICK MAYOH</div>VERDUN&mdash;Verdun Junior Canadiens are going all out to win the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League championship this season, according to general manager Eric Taylor.Leading the charge will be former Montreal Canadien left winger Yvon Lambert, who was selected to coach the club recently by general manager Serge Savard of the parent Montreal Canadiens.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m always happy if I can give a job to a former teammate, especially if he played for the Canadiens,&rdquo; said Savard, a close friend of Lambert. &ldquo;But the main thing for me was to get the quality man for the job. He understands the game very well and he&rsquo;ll be a good discipline man.&rdquo;Phil Myre, a 15-year pro goaltender, Hartford Whaler scout Flo Potvin and Leo Bedard, coach of the triple A midget powerhouse Lac St. Louis Lions also were among the candidates to replace Pierre Creamer.Creamer directed the team to the league title two years ago with Pat LaFontaine, now with the New York Islanders, providing much of the production. Creamer stepped up to become coach and general manager of the Canadiens&rsquo; American Hockey League team in Sherbrooke.Lambert, 34, piled up 101 points in 51 games in his last junior season playing for hometown Drummondville Rangers. Detroit Red Wings drafted him third in 1970 and the Habs claimed him in 1971 after a year with Port Hurori in the International League. In his second season with Nova Scotia Voyageurs, the 6-foot-2, 195-pounder made the Canadiens take notice by setting club records with 52 goals and 104 points.He played eight full seasons with the Canadiens before Buffalo claimed him in the 1981 waiver draft and he spent one season with the Sabres before finishing his career with the Rochester Americans.The Amerks won the AHL&rsquo;s Calder Cup his first year there and lost to Maine Mariners in last year&rsquo;s final. Lambert scored 70 points in 79 games last season and added 19 more in 18 playoff games.Lambert, known for his strong play in front of the net and his communication skills as a coach, will be aided in Verdun by Andre St. Jacques, Creamer&rsquo;s assistant for the past seven years.Among the newcomers this year will be top draft pick and high-scoring center Jim Carson from Detroit Compuware midgets and No. 2 choice Everett Sanipass, a 6-foot-2, 195-pound centre and winger from the Big Cove Indian Reserve near Moncton.&ldquo;Carson was the leading scorer in the U.S. junior elite camp in Colorado with five goals and seven assists after four games,&rdquo; Taylor said. &ldquo;He and Sanipass have another year of midget left and they are two of the top prospects in the country.&rdquo;Carson, a 6-foot, 170-pounder, scored 85 goals and 74 assists for 159 points in 65 games to lead Compuware to the U.S. midget final last season.&ldquo;I know Pat LaFontaine and Jim Nescich pretty well, we play a lot of summer hockey together and I definitely wanted to come to Verdun,&rdquo; Carson said. &ldquo;My idol is Guy Lafleur.&rdquo;Added size on the blueline will come from 6-foot-3, 205-pound Scott Mac-Tavish from Fredericton high school and 6-foot-2, 205-pound Ron Annear of Charlottetown from San Diego International University. MacTavish chose Verdun over Western Michigan University.Rookie defenseman Serge Savard Jr., 17, a 6-foot-2, 180-pounder, has been on the Verdun ice every day with Czechoslovakia defector Petr Svoboda, helping the Habs&rsquo; surprise first-rounder learn English as well.Returnees include former Compuware midget right winger Nescich, left winger Jeff Smith and defenseman Bill McKitrick. Peter Karmanos Jr., whose father bought controlling shares in the Windsor team in the Ontario League, has decided to leave the club and play at the University of Michigan.The club also will lose defensemen Billy Campbell, Alain Bedard and Alain Paquette and forwards Jean-Maurice Cool, Jeff Hamilton, Randy Muttart and Martin Thibeault.Returning veterans include Jerome Carrier, Franco De Santis, Shane MacEachem, and 6-foot-6, 220-pound defenseman Gerry Fleming, nephew of NHLer Reggie Fleming. &#9632;

Lambert Inherits Creamer’s Job

<div class="byline">BY DICK CHUBEY</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0014-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-011287/5130162-1-eng-US/f0014-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Team Canada has plenty of offensive power, but it remains to be seen how they perform behind the blueline, especially since Denis Potvin, team captain in 1981, is absent because of hypertension.</figcaption></div>It&rsquo;s taken 12 years, but the message has finally gotten across. At least the plan is at long last taking shape.So says Wayne Gretzky, the National Hockey League&rsquo;s center of attention who was all of 11 years old when the initial summit confrontation between Canada and the Soviet Union took place over a never-to-be-forgotten eight-game debate in 1972.Team Canada prevailed in the inaugural clash of the shinny giants, but hardly with the ease freely forecasted before the September series. And because eyes were opened, changes were prompted. Albeit long term.The results, according to the NHL&rsquo;s premier performer, will begin to unfold during the next item on the international calendar&mdash;the 1984 Canada Cup tournament, which will wind up at the Northlands Coliseum either Sept. 18 or 20.&ldquo;Since 1972 we&rsquo;ve been told we have to put together a program that matches the Soviet and European style of hockey,&rdquo; Gretzky said. &ldquo;From 1972 to 1984 through minor hockey and professional and junior programs we&rsquo;ve put together a system where the NHL has more skating and more puckhandling That&rsquo;s a style similar to the Europeans and Russians.&ldquo;I think since &rsquo;72 this is really what we, what Canada has built and trained for. On this team we have guys like (Glenn) Anderson, (Ray) Bourque, (Paul) Coffey, (Mark) Messier&hellip;Those kind of players are an example of what we&rsquo;ve been taught from &rsquo;72 to &rsquo;84&mdash;the closest thing to a European style. And that&rsquo;s what I think will make this team different. It&rsquo;ll be more of a Soviet-European style hockey team.&rdquo;If you can&rsquo;t beat &lsquo;em. join &lsquo;em. Or, at the very least, learn from them.And with the exception of the 1976 Canada Cup, to which the Soviets sent a young, inexperienced team, victory has hardly been a common occurrence for the NHL since that narrow triumph a dozen years back.The most recent crack was in 1981 when the Canadians breezed through the tournament&rsquo;s round-robin segment undefeated, trumping the Soviets, 7-3, in the process. But when the suddendeath final rolled around, the Russian Bear turned on the NHL side for a resounding 8-1 conquest.Some say the 1981 Team Canada was its best-ever version, although the &rsquo;76ers could undoubtedly supply a stern argument. How does the current edition compare on paper?&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you can compare the teams,&rdquo; said Gretzky, the NHL&rsquo;s five-time Hart Trophy winner. &ldquo;This is a completely different team than the team in &rsquo;81. Although any time you have a Team Canada you&rsquo;re going to have a lot of individuals, because it&rsquo;s picked basically on stats and valuable players.&ldquo;Guys like (Edmonton Oilers&rsquo; teammate) Dave Hunter don&rsquo;t get selected to something like this, but those players are very important on each team. So you&rsquo;re going to have some individualism on a national team. What is important is to combine the individualism with a team concept. If that can be put together, then this team has the potential to be the best Canada has assembled.&ldquo;Basically the difference is that the &rsquo;81 team was still a version of the NHL&rsquo;s old style of hockey. It was more of a grinding team, guys like (Montreal Canadiens&rsquo;) Bob Gainey. This team will rely more on speed.&rdquo;Speed indeed.If the NHL ever presented an outfit designed around skating and finesse, this is it. Heck, the forwards chosen averaged 1 (X) points last season, while defensemen&mdash;the likes of Oiler Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque of the Boston Bruins and Chicago Black Hawks&rsquo; Doug Wilson have been known to shoot first and ask questions later.&ldquo;Skating will be the strength of this team,&rdquo; said Gretzky, who accounted for 87 goals and 205 points in 1983-84. &ldquo;We had a tremendous skating team in 1981. We had a great skating team. But nothing compared to this. The speed on this team should be something else.&rdquo;Up front those speedsters include: the Oilers&rsquo; Gretzky, Messier and Anderson; Chicago&rsquo;s Denis Savard; Quebec&rsquo;s Peter Stastny and Michel Goulet; Washington&rsquo;s Mike Gartner; Islander Bob Bourne and Hartford&rsquo;s Sylvain Turgeon. In addition to speed, Team Canada&rsquo;s forward unit has a great mix of scorers and grinders, all of whom possess outstanding skills in all areas of the game. That collection includes the Islanders&rsquo; Brent Sutter (replacing injured Bruin Barry Pederson), John Tonelli and Mike Bossy; Detroit&rsquo;s Steve Yzerman (replacing Bryan Trottier); Minnesota&rsquo;s Brian Bellows; Boston&rsquo;s Rick Middleton; Toronto&rsquo;s Rick Vaive; Chicago&rsquo;s Al Secord and St. Louis&rsquo; Brian Sutter.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no question the Oilers are going to be a big influence on Team Canada.&rdquo; said Gretzky, who went on to predict that the majority of the players chosen to Team Canada will have little difficulty adapting to the Sather coaching style. &ldquo;Most of the guys selected play a similar style of how we play anyway. Look at Middleton, Yzerman, Stastny. It goes on and on. Those guys play a similar style anyway. It won&rsquo;t be a big change for them.&ldquo;I also believe those guys are going to learn some things that our hockey team uses and does that&rsquo;s going to benefit their game. Glen lets you play an offensive game. He reminds you of defense, but he doesn&rsquo;t tamper with or take anything away from people&rsquo;s offense. I think you&rsquo;ll see that guys like (Michel) Goulet will perform very well in this tournament, because they&rsquo;ll enjoy playing for Glen and (assistant coach John) Muckier.&rdquo;To which Conn Smythe Trophy winner Mark Messier succinctly added: &ldquo;The team&rsquo;s definitely got an Oiler influence. Obviously our coaching staff feels it&rsquo;s a good way to play. They&rsquo;ve had good success with this style, but I guess we&rsquo;ll soon find out how it works out in the Canada Cup.&rdquo;Ah, the proverbial element of doubt. And, if skating and offense are to be Team Canada&rsquo;s long suit, then, pray tell, what are its weaknesses?&ldquo;You put this team on paper and it shouldn&rsquo;t have a flaw in it,&rdquo; said Messier, the NHL&rsquo;s second all-star team left-winger who was converted to center in mid-February last season. &ldquo;All the guys picked have played well, but the biggest thing is to mold it into a team&mdash;not just have the 20 best players.&rdquo;And, building a team takes time&hellip;&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the weakness,&rdquo; interjected Gretzky, &ldquo;that we haven&rsquo;t been together long and we don&rsquo;t get enough time to train. There&rsquo;s no question we&rsquo;re behind the eight-ball right off the bat. What has to happen is those guys who get selected have to sacrifice their whole summer&hellip;and not just decide a week before they go to camp that they&rsquo;ve got to start getting in shape. You had to basically say, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s the middle of June, I&rsquo;ve got to star doing something to be ready.&rdquo;Gretzky, however, discounts the fact that a lack of international experience by goaltenders Grant Fuhr (Edmonton), Pete Peters (Boston) and Reggie Lemelin (Calgary Flames) will hinder Team Canada. &ldquo;Maybe that&rsquo;ll help, everybody talks about you&rsquo;ve got to do this against the Europeans, you&rsquo;ve got to do that against the Soviets. But, as I said, now the NHL&rsquo;s getting so much closer to the Europeans that I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s a big difference, not when you&rsquo;re playing on our ice surfaces. Maybe it would be disadvantage for a goalie if he plays the first time over there (on bigger ice surfaces), but I think our goalies will find it to be very similar to the way we play here.&rdquo;On defense, the accent is again on youth. The core of the blueline corps will be manned by offensive speedsters Bourque (Boston), Coffey (Edmonton), Wilson (Chicago) and James Patrick (New York Rangers). Kevin Lowe (Edmonton) and Larry Robinson (Montreal), the only holdover from the 1976 Canada Cup team, will be there to provide some steady defensive play. Mario Marois (Quebec), Randy Gregg and Charlie Huddy (Edmonton), Scott Stevens (Washington) are others who will be battling for a spot on the squad, which has to be pared to 20 skaters and two goalies by Sept. 1, the day the tournament opens.Familiar faces such as Barry Beck, Craig Hartsburg, Paul Reinhart and Denis Potvin are absent this time around because of injuries. In Potvin&rsquo;s case, he had to bow out at the last minute because of hypertension (high blood pressure), a hereditary condition that hindered him in last spring&rsquo;s Stanley Cup playoffs. But Team Canada is counting on the new wave of young stars to fill any voids.Gretzky also figures the loss of Islander center Bryan Trottier, perhaps the league&rsquo;s finest two-way performer, will be eased by the presence of Messier.&ldquo;Before Mark came on and did what he did (in the Stanley Cup playoffs) we would have missed Trottier a lot more,&rdquo; Gretzky said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no question you&rsquo;re going to miss a player of Bryan Trottier&rsquo;s ability and talent, and his leadership off the ice cannot be compared. But Mark has the ability now to step in and do that job, and if he fills that role Team Canada will be better because of it.&rdquo; &#9632;

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Canucks Sport Distinct European Flavor

<div class="byline">BY BOB DUFF</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0005-05" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-05261/5129770-1-eng-US/f0005-052.jpg"></div>that the all-time leading scorers in Canada Cup competition are: &#9632;

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Did You Know…

<div class="image-hero"><img title="Cover-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/cover-01806/5131846-1-eng-US/cover-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Illustration by Jim Glen, Photo by Bruce Bennett)</figcaption></div>Special 16-Page Pull-Out SectionBryan Trottier Boosts Team USA Hopes &#9632;

Cover-01

CANADA CUP ’84

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0002-011237/5129505-1-eng-US/f0002-012.jpg" title="f0002-01" width="283" height="343"></div><h2>A Fine Three Weeks</h2>MANY NATIONAL HOCKEY League people get their underwear in a bunch when they hear anyone extol the virtues of international hockey, claiming that the domestic variety is superior on all counts.Well, no one can deny that the NHL produced some exceptional hockey last season. The large group of young players rushed into big-league uniforms over the past few years because of the underage draft have matured and the league owns some exceptional talent now.The Stanley Cup playoffs were splendid, almost justifying the length of hockey&rsquo;s spring and the participation by 16 teams. If that many clubs were not admitted, we would have missed the New York Islander vs. Ranger series, a great piece of theatre.How about the Montreal Canadiens and Quebec Nordiques, the Canadiens and Islanders, the seven-gamer between Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames for the championship of Alberta and the good one to the limit between Minnesota North Stars and St. Louis Blues. All of it was capped by the Oilers&rsquo; excellence and exciting play in the final against the Isles.While the upsurge in the North American variety is splendid, the arrival of another Canada Cup international tournament is just dandy, too. For 21 days in early September, the best players from six countries will compete&mdash;Canada, the U.S., Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Sweden and West Germany&mdash;in an event of high interest to anyone who enjoys the game.This is the third such tournament and all indications are that it will be the most competitive. There&rsquo;s a good chance of a five-team scramble&mdash;only West Germany appears to be weak&mdash;and a big assortment of factors for which puck afficionados can watch.An assortment of interest points exist in the Canada Cup and one of the best involves a player who won&rsquo;t participate. Vladislav Tretiak, the great Soviet goalie, has retired and no good replacement seems to be available. How much will Tretiak&rsquo;s absence change the Soviet approach?<h2>Big Center Switch</h2>HOW ABOUT THE big center switch that saw Bryan Trottier, the great Islander pivot, acquire U.S. citizenship to join Team USA, which won&rsquo;t do much for his popularity in Canada, and Peter Stastny land Canadian citizenship&mdash;he defected from Czechoslovakia in 1981&mdash;and become eligible for Team Canada?Trottier provides a big lift to a U.S. team that was good, anyway, because he supplied the high-calibre attacker the squad lacked. The U.S. defense is very strong and the goaltending the same with Chico Resch and Tom Barrasso. Now, with Trottier, Neal Broten, Mark Johnson and Pat LaFontaine, the U.S. is strong up the middle.Stastny, the great Quebec Nordique, will be an asset for Canada because he has vast experience in both international and NHL play. Team Canada boss Glen Sather wants his team to play a wide-open puck-control game and who is better at that approach than Stastny?The Canadian lineup is an interesting one with eight Oilers and a large number of those good young players. Sather wants his team to skate and move the puck, figuring that&rsquo;s the easiest system to perfect in the short time available.Wayne Gretzky was good in the &rsquo;81 Canada Cup but he&rsquo;s older, strong and wiser this time. Knowing Gretzky&rsquo;s great pride, he&rsquo;ll try to seize this chance to show he&rsquo;s the best on the globe.<h2>Jiri Is Back</h2>BACK IN 1981, the NHL&rsquo;s scouting bureau rated Czech winger Jiri Dudacek as the best prospect for the draft. Buffalo Sabres claimed him on the first round, although they had no idea if he would ever join them.Dudacek. at 19, was the Czechs&rsquo; leading scorer in the &rsquo;81 Canada Cup, then seemed to disappear from the scene. Rumbles claimed a serious illness or fear of a defection but Dudacek is back with the national team for this year&rsquo;s tournament.Two of the best young players to enter the NHL in years are the Sundstrom twins&mdash;Peter of the Rangers, Patrik of Vancouver Canucks&mdash;and they&rsquo;ll have the chance to play together for Sweden. The Swedes are the tournament&rsquo;s big question mark, a contender for the crown in &rsquo;76, winner of one game in &rsquo;81.West Germany replaces Finland as the sixth team and it owns an unusual player, forward Erich Kuhnhackl, the No. 1 shooter in German hockey. He fills the role in hockey that the striker does in soccer, the guy who arrives late to pop in the goals but does little else.Then, too, there&rsquo;s a chance to verify the suspicion that Viacheslav Fetisov, the fine defenseman of the USSR, can skate backwards as fast as anyone else can frontwards?Hey, drop that international puck! &#9632;

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FRANK ORR’S HOCKEY VIEWPOINT

<div class="byline">BY RICK SADOWSKI</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0003-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-011277/5129536-1-eng-US/f0003-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Los Angeles King winger Charlie Simmer, right, and his wife, Terri Welles-Simmer, left, have sold their California home and appear quite intent on moving to another National Hockey League city.</figcaption></div>LOS ANGELES&mdash;All-Star left winger Charlie Simmer, embroiled in a contract dispute with the Kings, has asked general manager Rogie Vachon to trade him.Simmer, who led all King goal-scorers with 44 last season following his remarkable two-year recovery from leg surgery, already has sold his suburban home and said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m just very depressed about the way the whole thing has been handled.&rdquo;The problem dates back to 1980-81, when Simmer put together his second straight 56-goal season before fracturing his right leg&mdash;after which he was signed to a contract extension through the 1986-87 season.The Kings announced on May 7, 1981 that Simmer signed the contract&mdash;adding three years to his old one&mdash;but it apparently, according to sources, included a clause which the National Hockey League ruled to be unacceptable.The NHL did not certify the contract and returned it to the Kings to rework the clause. Apparently that was done, but Simmer never signed the new contract and, the sources said, Simmer claimed free agency under the old contract, which expired at the end of last season.The Kings contend Simmer has been paid under terms of the new contract&mdash;in excess of $200,000 per&mdash;for the last three years, more than double his salary under terms of his old contract. Also, his name was not included on the free-agent list released by the league.Bob Steiner, a spokesman for owner Jerry Buss, said NHL president John Ziegler was to act as arbitrator, but no decision had been made as of press time.Vachon, describing the matter as &ldquo;a big mess,&rdquo; said he&rsquo;s &ldquo;stuck in the middle,&rdquo; that &ldquo;when I took over this job (from George Maguire in January) the situation was already in the lawyers&rsquo; hands.&ldquo;Obviously there&rsquo;s been a lack of communication, but he&rsquo;s our property, no question.&rdquo;In the meantime, Simmer says he wants out regardless of Ziegler&rsquo;s decision.&ldquo;I talked it over with my family and we&rsquo;ve decided that we no longer want to play in Los Angeles anymore.&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Right at the end of the year, we (he and agent Jack Childers) sent registered letters to Dr. Buss. We called him weekly and left messages, but there was never any response from him.&ldquo;I talked with Rogie, but he said the matter was out of his hands. It (the contract problem) has been going on for three years now. There were some problems with the wording. Basically, it centers on proposals for deferred money, but now those clauses have been taken away. But that contract still has not been signed.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m just very depressed with the way the whole situation has been handled. No one has talked with me since April. I don&rsquo;t feel wanted here anymore. It&rsquo;s kind of depressing. I&rsquo;ve always given them my best.&rdquo;As far as a trade goes, however, Vachon says he can&rsquo;t do anything until the contract situation is settled. But he didn&rsquo;t sound like a fellow who wants to part with Simmer.&ldquo;I really like Charlie and he&rsquo;s certainly been a big guy for us,&rdquo; Vachon said. &ldquo;But I think it&rsquo;s pretty obvious, when a guy sells his house, he usually doesn&rsquo;t want to stick around.&ldquo;To keep a guy who doesn&rsquo;t want to play or not&hellip;I&rsquo;ll have to make that decision after we find out about the contract. I hope Mr. Ziegler makes that decision soon because we&rsquo;ll be going to training camp pretty soon.&rdquo;Simmer, always a class act on and off the ice since being signed by the Kings as a free agent on Aug. 8, 1977, has collected 232 goals and 258 assists in 459 career games.He was voted a Masterton Trophy candidate by the L.A. chapter of the Professional Hockey Writers Association the last two years. Last year, when he finished with 92 points, the writers voted him team MVP.KING NOTEBOOK&mdash;Training camp check-in time for players at Victoria, B.C., is Sept. 17. New coach Pat Quinn will hold his first workouts the next day, and the Kings will play their first game on Sept. 22 against Vancouver at Victoria. Rogie Vachon said negotiations with Alan Eagleson, who represents first-round draft pick Craig Redmond, are going well. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re getting close and I don&rsquo;t think there will be any problem,&rdquo; he said&hellip;Right winger Jim Fox, about to enter his option season, signed a two-year (plus an option) contract. He had 30 goals and 42 assists last year&hellip;The Kings are in the process of buying out the contracts belonging to wingers Steve Christoff and Kevin Lavallee and goaltender Gary Laskoski. &#9632;

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Simmer Asks The Kings To Trade Him

<div class="byline">BY BOB MCKENZIE</div>If the 1984 Canada Cup tournament wasn&rsquo;t gamering all the hockey attention in these dog days of August, then fans across the continent would have something far more serious to worry about than what color sweater Bryan Trottier will be wearing.While the excitement builds toward the Sept. 1 opening of the six-nation tournament, there is no such joy within the confines of the National Hockey League, where a cold war has rapidly heated up to the point that it could soon be an out-and-out civil war.Six Canadian NHL teams&mdash;Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Winnipeg Jets, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers and Vancouver Canucks&mdash;in conjunction with Intermart Inc. have filed a $25-million lawsuit which names the Quebec Nordiques, the 14 U.S.-based NHL clubs, Carling O&rsquo;Keefe Breweries of Canada Ltd. and NHL president John Ziegler, Jr., NHL Vice-President/General Counsel Gilbert Stein and NHL VicePresident, Broadcasting Joel Nixon as defendants.The writ, which was issued in the Supreme Court of Ontario on June 25, 1984, has virtually split the NHL into two warring factions. The rift between the six Canadian teams and the 15 other NHL members is so deep that there have been rumbles that it could result in the end of the league as we know it today.The war is centered on television rights in Canada. The six Canadian teams and Intermart Inc., which carries on business as Canadian Sports Network, which in turn produces Hockey Night in Canada, charge that the NHL&rsquo;s Trans-Border Agreement guarantees them a monopoly on all broadcasts of games shown in Canada.The 14 U.S.-based teams and the Nordiques. which are owned by Carling O&rsquo;Keefe, claim that the TransBorder Agreement that guaranteed an Intermart monopoly in Canada has expired. It was under that premise that Nordique president Marcel Aubut orchestrated a deal between the other 15 NHL teams and the brewery.The initial plans called for 25 Game-of-the-Week presentations to be shown nationally across Canada on the CTV network, most likely on Friday nights.But the legal action has halted production work and industry insiders says that the CTV network has told its affiliate stations not to expect the hockey package and to have alternate programming ready.The U.S. teams and the Nordiques were excited about the prospect of getting national exposure in Canada. For starters, Carling O&rsquo;Keefe was reportedly paying the U.S. teams much, much more than the payment from Canadian Sports Network. In the past, with the exception of playoff hockey, CSN has had very little desire to broadcast games originating in the U.S.Now, no one&mdash;not on either side or those caught in the middle&mdash;will comment on the current status of the legal wrangle. But unattributed comments indicate that the differences are so pronounced that the breaking up of the league into a Canadian and American divisions isn&rsquo;t out of the question.In the wake of those devastating comments, NHL president Ziegler said the idea of the league splitting in two was exaggerated and that steps were being taken to solve the controversey.However, both sides appeared adamant, which seemed to indicate that the matter will be settled by the courts.The argument&mdash;a complex and intricate controversey that&rsquo;s awfully difficult for a layman to understand&mdash;is basically this:&bull; The six Canadian teams and Intermart say they have always been granted exclusivity and a monopoly in Canada by the TBA.&bull; The six Canadian teams and Intermart say they had until April 1, 1984 to make an offer of renewal to the NHL and, in fact, made such an offer (verbally) on Dec. 16, by telex on Dec. 19 and followed those up with letters dated March 14th and 20th.&bull; The writ also charges that, providing the offer was made before April 1, the NHL could not enter into an agreement with a third party without first giving Canadian Sports Network first right of refusal to match the offer.&bull;The writ also charges that in September of 1983, Carling O&rsquo;Keefe entered into agreement with the Hartford Whalers, Los Angeles Kings, Philadelphia Flyers, Minnesota North Stars, New York Islander and Quebec Nordiques to broadcast 1984-85 home games of those teams nationally in Canada and that in January, 1984, a committee representing the NHL&rsquo;s U.S.-member teams granted Carling O&rsquo;Keefe the right to broadcast any home games in the U.S. on national television in Canada for the next five years.Thus, the writ alleges that the U.S. clubs and the Nordiques, &ldquo;through their agent, the NHL, have refused to negotiate diligently and in good faith and hence are in breach of the provisions of the TBA&hellip;Commencing in or before 1960, and as reaffirmed from time to time thereafter, all NHL member clubs have orally agreed as between themselves that no game between two U.S. member clubs would be broadcast in Canada without the consent of the Canadian member clubs&hellip;&rdquo;The six Canadian teams and Inter-mart claim that allowing Carling O&rsquo;Keefe to broadcast games in Canada would infringe on their territorial broadcast rights and would result in a drop of gate receipts.Therefore, the writ requests damages totalling $25 million ($1 million for each breach of the TBA) or to have the Carling O&rsquo;Keefe deal with the U.S. clubs and Nordiques be declared null and void.Now, it looks as though Round Two will be in court.Stay tuned. &#9632;

Bitter TV Battle Threatens NHL’s Foundation

<div class="byline">BY ERIC DUHATSCHEK</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0004-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-011306/5129591-1-eng-US/f0004-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Paul Reinhart, the ace of the Flames&rsquo; backline, had to give up playing golf this summer because of the hazards to his back.</figcaption></div>CALGARY&mdash;It is always on his mind and always on other people&rsquo;s minds, and now that the hockey season is nearing, all Paul Reinhart wants is an end to his summer of discontent.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting anxious,&rdquo; Reinhart admitted, &ldquo;but I&rsquo;m also a little apprehensive. I went through a year last year where a lot of things went wrong for me. I don&rsquo;t want to go through it all again.&rdquo;Reinhart, the Calgary Flames&rsquo; emerging star, has a back problem. Like others that suffer from that mysterious ailment, he sometimes doesn&rsquo;t quite know what to do about it. He has been probed and plied with advice. He feels better, then he feels worse, then he doesn&rsquo;t know, then he doesn&rsquo;t know what to think, then he doesn&rsquo;t know what to do, then he doesn&rsquo;t know what to say.All of which has one implication for the layman, quite another for the professional athlete.Reinhart&rsquo;s injury, officially suffered in a Nov. 19 game against Winnipeg Jets, was originally diagnosed as spasms. The spasms didn&rsquo;t go away, and finally the diagnosis was changed. It became a disc problem, one that eventually required surgery and a four-month layoff. Reinhart returned for the last three weeks of the season and had an extraordinary playoff as the Flames took the Edmonton Oilers to the limit before falling in seven games.In the seventh game, Reinhart lett in the third period with a new injury&mdash;a charleyhorse&mdash;and one old injury&mdash;his back. The charleyhorse is better. The back? Its status cannot be know until training camp.Hence, Reinhart&rsquo;s dilemma. On the one hand, he needed the off-season to recover. On the other hand, the suspense is killing him. Can he play? Or will 1984-85 be another in-again, out-again year, a carbon copy of the frustrations he suffered last season?The last inquiry, however, found Reinhart in his most optimistic mood in months.&ldquo;It has improved as much in the last two-and-a-half weeks as it did in the first seven months,&rdquo; said Reinhart. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s partly the exercise program, I think. It&rsquo;s starting to kick in well.&rdquo;Reinhart&rsquo;s exercise program, prescribed by his specialist, centers on two things: one physical, the other mental.&ldquo;Most of it concentrates on stomach and abdomen work,&rdquo; said Reinhart. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m also becoming more conscious of what bothers me and what doesn&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;m learning how to sit again. I&rsquo;m learning how to walk again. Generally, people don&rsquo;t sit or walk the right way. Most of the things we do, the way we do them isn&rsquo;t good for your back.&rdquo;One of the things Reinhart&rsquo;s given up is every player&rsquo;s second vocation, golf. It&rsquo;s strictly verboten, now and maybe forever. Reinhart says he&rsquo;s playing a little tennis, but &ldquo;I&rsquo;m being careful about that. I&rsquo;ve learned what I can and can&rsquo;t do. Golf, I can&rsquo;t play this year and if I can&rsquo;t play next year, well, if that&rsquo;s the way it is, then that&rsquo;s the way it is.&rdquo;Among the people carefully monitoring Reinhart&rsquo;s progress is Flame coach Bob Johnson.The Flames, a team which made strides last season, will be looking to take another step forward in the upcoming year.With Reinhart, Jamie Macoun, Steve Konroyd and Al MacInnis, they have a nucleus of good, young defensemen, perhaps one of the two or three best groups of young defenders in the league.Without Reinhart, there&rsquo;s a gap there, the same gap that almost every other fair-to-middling team possesses.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not as strong as before,&rdquo; said Reinhart, &ldquo;but there&rsquo;s no reason why it can&rsquo;t be strong enough.&rdquo;IN BRIEF&mdash;Paul Reinhart received a call to play for Team Canada in the Canada Cup, but had to decline the invitation. &ldquo;I have second thoughts every day because I wanted to play,&rdquo; said Reinhart, &ldquo;but I have no second thoughts at all about whether I could play. I can&rsquo;t. I just wasn&rsquo;t physically ready.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0004-01

Reinhart Wants To End Summer Discontent

THE INTERNATIONAL HOCKEY WEEKLYFounded in 1947 by Kenneth W. McKenziePUBLISHERDean HeineCONTROLLERTony DobranowskiEDITOR IN CHIEFBob McKenzieEDITORIAL DIRECTORCharlie HalpinASSISTANT EDITORPerry LefkoCONTROL TING EDITORSStan Fischler. Frank OrrDIRECTOR ADVERTISING SALESDanny LewickiADVERTISING SALES MANAGERRandy GreenADVERTISING SERVICES MANAGEREsther SumkaADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVESCanadian Consumer Product Sales:CCMC, Cliff Ki veil, 287 MacPherson Ave.Toronto, Ontario M4V 1A4(416) 928-2909SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES MANAGERPatricia BackNEWSSTAND SERVICES MANAGEREsther SumkaCIRCULATION DEPARTMENTJudy Hartman Rosanne TaninoACCOUNTING DEPARTMENTTom Moffat Mary CarubiaSPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGERHughes MarketingHockey News Bookshelf(416) 499-8227ADVERTISING AND EDITORIAL OFFICES85 Scarsdale Rd.. Suite 100Toronto. Ontario, Canada M3B 2R2(416) 445-5702EXECUTIVE OFFICE850 Third AvenueNew York. New York 10022NEWSSTAND DISTRIBUTORDistributed nationally by Disticor101 Duncan Mill Rd.. Suite L4Don Mills. Ont., M3B 1Z3(416) 449-6430THE HOCKEY NEWS, (ISSN 0018-3016) is published weekly except monthly June and bimonthly July and August 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. 10022.40 ISSUE SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $22.95 in the U.S.A. $22.95 in Canada. $49.95 in Foreign Countries. Send all Canadian and Foreign subscription orders to THE HOCKEY NEWS. P.O. Box 13055, Postal Station &lsquo;A&rsquo;. Toronto. Ont. M5W IV7. 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 HOCK EY 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 post age paid al 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.Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations &#9632;

The Hockey News

<h2>Sept. 14</h2>Believe it or not, this issue, which will be in the mail and on the newsstands in the first week of September, marks a return to our weekly publication schedule.We&rsquo;ll have two special sections to kick off our unofficial beginning of the busy season. First, we&rsquo;ll have a Canada Cup update, giving you the latest news and views on the exciting six-nation tournament. And second, we&rsquo;ll present the first of three Hockey Equipment Buyers&rsquo; Guide.In past years, our annual equipment supplement has been published in one issue. This year, we&rsquo;ll break it down into three categories&mdash;skates, equipment and sticks.On top of all that, we&rsquo;ll update you on what&rsquo;s happening in the NHL, the minors and junior hockey. Don&rsquo;t miss it.<h2>Sept. 21</h2>Three good reasons why you won&rsquo;t want to miss this issue:1. Canada Cup Update: A complete statistical and written summary of the tournament games plus exciting feature stories.2. NHL Training Camp Preview: This includes complete training camp rosters for all 21 NHL teams.3. Equipment Buyers&rsquo; Guide: Product charts and descriptions for all the latest hockey equipment.Don&rsquo;t miss it. &#9632;

COMING SOON IN THN

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-011179/5129677-1-eng-US/f0005-012.jpg" title="f0005-01" width="535" height="753"><figcaption class="caption-body">Dave Williams</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-02868/5129670-1-eng-US/f0005-022.jpg" title="f0005-02" width="535" height="753"><figcaption class="caption-body">Rob McClanahan</figcaption></div><h2>TIGER TRADED TO DETROIT</h2>DETROIT&mdash;Dave (Tiger) Williams, the combative left winger who began his career with the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1974 and was traded to Vancouver in 1980, is moving eastward again, after the Canucks traded him to the Detroit Red Wings in a one-for-one deal for winger Rob McClanahan on Aug. 8.When contacted by Toronto Globe and Mail hockey writer Neil Camp-bell, Williams, 30, said that he was traded because of Arthur Griffiths, the son and assistant to Canuck owner Frank Griffiths.&ldquo;The reason I&rsquo;m going is because of Mr. Griffiths,&rdquo; Williams said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think Arthur wanted me around any more and I think that was the bottom line. Arthur and I didn&rsquo;t see eye to eye on the business parts of hockey.&rdquo;Arthur Griffiths, however, was &ldquo;flabbergasted&rdquo; by Williams&rsquo; charge.Williams, whose book, Tiger. A Hockey Story, will soon hit the shelves, has had an up-and-down four-and-a-half years with the Canucks, after coming to Vancouver along with Jerry Butler for Rick Vaive and Bill Derlago. That trade came as part of the Punch Imlach purge, in which the Maple Leaf general manager cleaned house. Williams, as he indicates in his book, knew he was going to be traded, despite the fact he was one of the favorite players of Leaf owner Harold Ballard, and had named his girl, Clancy, after Leaf vice-president King Clancy.Williams, who&rsquo;d never been traded before, says he was not too well-received by his new teammates in Vancouver. Conversely, he says he wasn&rsquo;t very impressed with them either, saying they didn&rsquo;t have a willig-ness to win. But his aggressiveness, along with Roger Neilson&rsquo;s coaching, played major roles in the Canucks&rsquo; making it to the Stanley Cup finals in 1982.Williams, who has played in 719 National Hockey League games and holds the league record for penalty minutes with 2,994, was sought by the Wings for his toughness.&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you he&rsquo;s right in his prime, but he does bring an ingredient that this team needs,&rdquo; Detroit general manager Jimmy Develiano told the Detroit ews. &ldquo;We felt our team could be a little more aggressive, a little tougher. We don&rsquo;t want to be pushed around. We want to be strong and stand up to any team out there, and I&rsquo;m not satisfied that we have done that in the two years I&rsquo;ve been here.&rdquo;Williams is the third member of the Canucks&rsquo; &rsquo;82 team to come to Detroit. The others are defenseman Colin Campbell, who signed with the Wings in the summer of &rsquo;82, and center Ivan Boldirev, who was acquired in a mid-season trade in 1982-83 and had his best season as a pro last year.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m excited about coming to Detroit,&rdquo; Williams said. &ldquo;When I left Toronto, I wanted to live and die in Toronto. When I went to Vancouver, I felt I had a job to do there to help make the team into a contender. I have exactly the same feeling coming to Detroit.&rdquo;Williams was entering his option year, earning an annual salary of $150,000. Canuck general manager Harry Neale felt a change had to be made.&ldquo;In my opinion his competitive spirit is unsurpassed in the NHL,&rdquo; Neale said. &ldquo;But as we look ahead over the next two years, we feel that Tiger would become a utility or spot player on our roster. We don&rsquo;t think he would like that, nor would it fit in with his style.&rdquo;Earlier this summer, the Canucks traded veteran defenseman Harold Snepsts to Minnesota for veteran winger Al MacAdam. That deal was not well-received by Canuck fans (see page 34), who felt Neale was trading away a long-time Vancouver player and receiving little in return.McClanahan, 26, played with the U.S. team that won the gold medal in the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid. He&rsquo;s been a journeyman since though, and has made stops in Buffalo, Hartford and New York with the Rangers. His best campaign was two years ago when he had 22 goals and 48 assists with the Rangers. The Wings acquired him for future considerations in May after he spent most of last season in the minors. &#9632;

f0005-01

SLAPSHOTS

<div class="byline">BY RANDY SCHULTZ</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0005-03" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-03607/5129715-1-eng-US/f0005-032.jpg"></div>When the Edmonton Oilers defeated the New York Islanders for the Stanley Cup this past spring, preventing the Islanders from winning a fifth consecutive Cup, players from the Montreal Canadiens teams of 1955-60 couldn&rsquo;t have been happier.One player in particular from that Canadien era of five consecutive Stanley Cups championships could have had reason for rooting for the Islanders to tie the record.But for Phil Goyette, the first coach in the history of the Islanders, his loyalties were still to Les Habitants.&ldquo;I was very happy that the Islanders had won four straight Stanley Cups,&rdquo; said Goyette, whose National Hockey League career stretched from 1956-72 with the Canadiens, New York Rangers, St. Louis Blues and Buffalo Sabres. &ldquo;But I was also very happy that they didn&rsquo;t win the fifth in a row.&ldquo;I was a part of that Montreal team that won five straight. I was on four of them. And I&rsquo;m very proud of that fact.&ldquo;I know that records are made to be broken. But that is one I would like to see stand for another few years. It is a record that I, along with the rest of the players from that era, are proud of. It is a great team record.&rdquo;Which is the complete opposite of what&rsquo;s been said about the first-year Islander club which Goyette coached in 1972-73. He lasted 60 games before being fired and replaced by Earl Ingarfield. Goyette&rsquo;s record: six wins, four ties, 40 losses.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-04403/5129708-1-eng-US/f0005-042.jpg" title="f0005-04" width="559" height="755"><figcaption class="caption-body">Phil Goyette jumped at the chance to coach the expansion New York Islanders.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;I got into coaching at a bad time, almost half of the players the Islanders had chosen in the expansion draft had jumped to the new World Hockey Association,&rdquo; Goyette recalled. &ldquo;By the time the WHA had finished raiding us, there was nothing left, as far as players go, for me to coach.&ldquo;Plus, coaching was a whole new experience for me. I had just retired as a player. Instead of hooking on with a winning team and working my way up through the minors as a coach, I jumped at an NHL job when it was offered to me.&ldquo;I figured I could gain experience by time and learning by my mistakes. But the time they gave me was impossible.&ldquo;They wanted respectability as soon as possible. They were asking to put too much together in too little of time.&rdquo;For Goyette, the Islanders spelled the end of his coaching career and his association with professional hockey.After he was released from his duties as coach of the Islanders, Goyette went to work for a brokerage firm in Montreal. Today, he&rsquo;s the director of sales for the company.&ldquo;I could have stayed on with the Islanders in some other capacity at the time,&rdquo; said the 50-year-old Goyette, a native of Lachine, Que., who today resides with his family in Montreal. &ldquo;But I didn&rsquo;t want to start living out of a suitcase again as a scout of something.&ldquo;And I didn&rsquo;t want to start hopping from one team or city to another always looking for a job.&ldquo;I decided to go back to the business I knew as a broker. I had already been doing it on a part-time basis when I was playing.&ldquo;Plus, I had a lot of great memories as a player. I had played on several Stanley Cup teams in Montreal. And I had won the Lady Byng Trophy with St. Louis in 1970.&ldquo;That is why I rooted so hard for the Oilers this spring. That record of five straight Cups for the Canadiens means a lot to me and the other guys.&ldquo;Maybe in another four years the Oilers may try and break the record. I don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;ll do then.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0005-03

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

1. What was the score of the first-ever Canada Cup game?2. Who scored a hat trick in that game?3. Name two current NHL GMs who played for Team USA in the 1976 Canada Cup?4. Who is the only player to lead his country in scoring in both Canada Cup tournaments?5. Name the brother combination that played on Sweden&rsquo;s defense in the 1976 tourney?6. Only one goaltender who played in the original Canada Cup was active in the NHL in 1983-84. Who was he?7. What two Edmonton Oiler defensemen played for Team USA in 1976?8. What goalie played every minute of the &rsquo;76 tourney for Canada?9. What player played for Sweden in 1976, despite the fact that he was born in Finland?10. Team USA&rsquo;s leading scorer in 1976 played last season with the CHL-champion Tulsa Oilers. Who was he?<h2>Trivia Answers</h2>1. Canada 11, Finland 2.2. Rick Martin.3. Craig Patrick (NY Rangers) and Lou Nanne (Minnesota North Stars).4. Matti Hagman (Finland).5. Boije and Stig Salming.6. Markus Mattson.7. Lee Fogolin and Rick Chartraw.8. Rogie Vachon.9. Juha Widing.10. Robbie Ftorek. &#9632;

TRIVIA

<div class="byline">BY STAN FISCHLER</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-011361/5129801-1-eng-US/f0006-012.jpg" title="f0006-01" width="285" height="340"></div><h2>Chico&rsquo;s Cherished Collection</h2>IF YOU&rsquo;RE A nut like me and swoon over old bubble-gum picture cards of Chuck Rayner and Rocket Richard, circa 1950, then you&rsquo;re a nut like Chico Resch.The New Jersey Devils&rsquo; goaltender is a walking Hockey Hall of Fame and if you don&rsquo;t believe it, check out his recreation room. You&rsquo;re apt to find a 1935 Boston Bruin program on one shelf and a pair of hockey gloves, vintage 1930, on another, not to mention photos of everyone from the 1930 Toronto Maple Leafs (in training) to the Northern Marvels, a women&rsquo;s team from yesteryear.Like an archaeologist who has just completed a major dig, Resch is bubbling these days about a recent find&mdash;a one-piece hockey stick given away as a promotion for the Victoria team in 1914. The stick is autographed by Hall of Famer Lester (The Old Silver Fox) Patrick.&ldquo;It was a Spalding stick,&rdquo; says Resch. &ldquo;They glued paper all the way around up on the handle with an advertisement. Three teams endorsed it; Patrick&rsquo;s Victoria team, the Flying Frenchmen from Montreal, and a Quebec team. They all signed it in 1914.&rdquo;Resch is so bananas about collectibles that he has assigned agents throughout the NHL to be on the lookout for good items. That&rsquo;s how he came upon the 1914 Patrick prize.&ldquo;I have a couple of guys looking out for me in Toronto and they told me about this store and that&rsquo;s how I got it,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Old sticks are okay, but I&rsquo;m mostly interested in old jerseys, especially the eight NHL teams from the 1930s.&rdquo;Resch searched from here to Portage La Prairie and finally located a venerable New York Americans&rsquo; sweater, but that has not slaked his thirst for more.&ldquo;The one I&rsquo;d really like to get is an old New York Rangers&rsquo; sweater&mdash;not like the newer ones, you can get those&mdash;the old ones with the old collars,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Another one I&rsquo;m after is the Chicago Black Hawks&rsquo; barber-pole jerseys; they go back to the early forties. They&rsquo;re hard to find.&rdquo;Ancient equipment is another of Resch&rsquo;s passions and I speak first-hand. I was about to toss my 1946 Brooklyn roller hockey shin pads in the garbage. (They were so beat up even my kids wouldn&rsquo;t wear them.) When I mentioned it to Resch he sounded as if I planned to throw the crown jewels to the wolves. He was tickled when I gave them to him.&ldquo;Now I&rsquo;ve got just about every piece of old equipment,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;with one exception, real old elbow pads; the kind that had just ribs. I just can&rsquo;t find them.&rdquo;Chico&rsquo;s prehistoric passion dates back to his youth in Saskatchewan, where his grandfather would regale him with stories of the pioneer days in western Canada.&ldquo;Gramps would tell me stories, like how he&rsquo;d walk 40 miles from Moose Jaw to the farm and stuff like that,&rdquo; Chico recalls. &ldquo;I always liked when people related stuff&mdash;the oral history&mdash;and when I got to college I minored in history.&ldquo;About that time I got into antiques. But I really got into the hockey stuff seriously when I got to the NHL. I had so much time to kill on the road I started to look around, especially in the old six-team cities. I began collecting and realized that a lot of old stuff was being thrown away or lost and it was getting hard to find.&rdquo;Chico confesses that his passion soon became an addiction. If he found a pair of old hockey gloves, he&rsquo;d buy &lsquo;em.&ldquo;I went through a stage where I had to have everything I saw. Now, I&rsquo;m more selective. I&rsquo;m after pre-1950 stuff. That presents a challenge, although it gets to be expensive. But I&rsquo;m serious about it. In fact, I even bought some store mannequins so I can mount the sweaters and set up a mini-museum.&rdquo;It will have a comer set aside for baseball memorabilia, including Babe Ruth&rsquo;s autograph on the back of a business card and Lou Gehrig&rsquo;s signature on a baseball.&ldquo;Ruth&rsquo;s autograph cost me a hundred bucks,&rdquo; Resch says. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s an uncomplicated deal. Sometimes it gets involved when collectors get together.&rdquo;Resch once learned of a Toronto historian who owned some old, wool NHL jerseys but wanted Wayne Gretzky material. As it happened a third party in Detroit owned a pile of Gretzky collectibles, but cherished Chico&rsquo;s goalie mask.&ldquo;We made a big swap,&rdquo; Chico says. &ldquo;I gave the mask to the guy in Toronto. He gave my mask to the guy in Detroit who gave him the Gretzky stuff. The guy in Toronto then gave me the old wool sweaters. Complicated? Sure, but you&rsquo;ve got to do that in collecting. That&rsquo;s why it&rsquo;s a whole society unto itself.&rdquo;Curiously, Chico&rsquo;s biggest investment was for a New York Golden Blades (World Hockey Association) jersey. It became an instant antique because the Golden Blades lasted only half a season (1973-74) and then took their business to Cherry Hill, NJ, where they became the Jersey Knights. The Golden Blades sweater cost Resch $350.By far Chico&rsquo;s best investment was a 1920 team picture of the Cleveland Indians. He paid $32 for it at an auction in Minnesota, then travelled to another collectors&rsquo; convention 300 miles away.&ldquo;They had an old baseball jersey there, also old programs and some boxes with all kinds of stuff in them. So, I bought this bunch of stuff cheap and&mdash;if you could believe this&mdash;in that box was a tom stub also from the 1920 World Series, which matched the picture I had bought. I couldn&rsquo;t believe the chances of that happening. Anyhow, it turns out that I wound up with a $400 item.&rdquo;Once, Resch discovered that even his autograph had a price on it. He was attending a collectors&rsquo; show at a New York hotel along with Mickey Mantle, the baseball Hall of Famer.&ldquo;Mickey&rsquo;s autograph was worth ten dollars and mine was a buck,&rdquo; Chico recalls, &ldquo;which showed where I was at. Multiply that by the thousands and you&rsquo;ll see that I&rsquo;m still way down the list.&rdquo;Chico sometimes gets the notion that his hobby is way down on his wife&rsquo;s list of desirable-things-for-a-grown-man-to-do.&ldquo;She likes to kid me,&rdquo; he allows. &ldquo;She says, &lsquo;One of these days I&rsquo;m gonna get somebody to tie you up. Then, I&rsquo;m going to take all your stuff and bum it in front of you.&rsquo;&ldquo;My daughter isn&rsquo;t too crazy about it either. Whenever she hears me say the word &lsquo;antiques&rsquo; she says, &lsquo;Oh, no, Daddy, please!&rdquo;&lsquo;IN DISCUSSING THE passing of Bill Libby, who wrote so wonderfully for THE HOCKEY NEWS over a span of two decades, the word that immediately comes to mind is class. But, on second thought, I like the word grace even better.Bill and I had some disputes about the manner in which hockey should be covered&mdash;he favored a more gentle approach&mdash;but I came away from the conversations with the feeling that he was a lot like Red Smith, a splendid journalist and a very, very nice guy.I felt a special kinship with Lib, although we were worlds apart philosophically. He was New York-bred and spent his early hockey-loving years in the Madison Square Garden balcony and then the Ranger clubhouse.It&rsquo;s one thing to cover a sport and it&rsquo;s another to love it; and Bill did them both. He always would show up in the Garden lobby (there was no press room in the 1950s) and join the Who&rsquo;s-Better-Rocket-or-Gordie-Howe-Gab-Society at a hot dog stand just off the ice. Lib and Paul Gardella and a bunch of the other fanatics regarded pre-game talk as important as the match itself.Bill made a gutsy move when he went to Los Angeles with no job and just the tools of a freelancer. But with his love of hockey he emerged as the premier western writer on the sport, especially when the Kings brightened his life by joining the NHL.His cool touch came through his prose. When you read a Libby column you could see him sitting in the dressing room enjoying a chat with Harry Howell or John Ferguson or Marcel Dionne. Nancy Reagan must have enjoyed chatting with Bill as well, since she had him co-author her book.Libby&rsquo;s world transcended hockey. He ghosted books for James Roosevelt, Monty Hall, Helen Forrest and Gale Storm, among other celebrities, always getting to the heart of his subject.&ldquo;The thing I really liked about the guy,&rdquo; says Associated Press&rsquo; Ben Olan, who knew Lib well, &ldquo;is that he had tremendous compassion and it came through when he talked to people. And anytime anyone needed a favor, Bill came through.&rdquo;Always with the utmost grace.BRIAN MULLEN OF the Winnipeg Jets, will you please take the stand.Q. What are your fondest memories of learning to be an NHLer while growing up on the streets of Manhattan?MULLEN: Our roller hockey team was the best in the city for ten years. I lived right across the street from the New York School of Printing, where there was a roller hockey rink. At one time I was playing in three leagues at once.Q. When did you switch from roller to ice hockey?MULLEN: My brothers were already playing ice hockey so they let me come up and practice with them when I was 11, but I couldn&rsquo;t stop on ice skates the way I did on rollers. My brothers, Joey and Tom, worked on me and made me stop all the time. I was slow at first and I fell every time I shot. My balance was off from being used to the wheels. I took some time but then ice skating just came to me.Q. What was the biggest disadvantage for a city kid trying to make it as a professional hockey player?MULLEN: Ice time. Finding a place to play and finding someone to help you. Lou Vairo helped me out and Tom Horvath did, too. They gave me the little push I needed to make it into college (Wisconsin), and then Bob Johnson took over and helped immensely with my skating and other skills.Q. The story goes that your dad, who&rsquo;s worked at Madison Square Garden for years and years, is the Zamboni driver at the Ranger games.MULLEN: My dad doesn&rsquo;t even have a license. &#9632;

f0006-01

ON THE CONTRARY

<div class="byline">BY JAY GREENBERG</div>PHILADELPHIA&mdash;With two of their spare parts&mdash;Randy Holt and Frank Bathe&mdash;having slipped unannounced into retirement this summer, the Philadelphia Flyers have bought themselves a little depth.Ostensibly, Ed Hospodar, 25, picked up as a free agent without compensation, replaces Holt as a jack-of-all-trades, injury insurance and glowering bench presence. But Clarke says he expects Hospodar, nicknamed The Boxcar, will see more ice time than Holt.&ldquo;We think he can play regularly for us,&rdquo; Clarke said. &ldquo;(Glen) Cochrane (who underwent major knee surgery in March) may not be ready until November and with Randy not going to play, we could use another defenseman.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a physical type, which you can always use. Cochrane might end up being a left winger anyway when he comes back, and this also might give us the flexibility to move Mark Howe up to left wing if we decide to try that again.&rdquo;Holt, 31, whose knee all but collapsed at the end of last season, will stay with the organization in a scouting capacity, working out of his home in Calgary.Bathe, 29, who underwent disc surgery in December, was given a negative report by doctors and has taken their advice to retire. He has returned to his home in Portland, ME, and is looking into buying into a business.&ldquo;(Bathe) was a gutsy bugger,&rdquo; Clarke said. &ldquo;He tried like hell to come back, but the doctor said he wasn&rsquo;t doing himself any favors to try to keep going.&rdquo;Bathe, despite a multitude of physical problems and a self-confessed shortage of talent, lasted six years with the Flyers. With the retirement of Clarke, The Bather, believe it or not, was second to Bill Barber among current Flyers in length of service to the team.His career had been pronounced dead almost upon his arrival from Maine in 1978, and it became a yearly ritual to write him off. But someone always got hurt and someone else always screwed up. And the Flyers would then realize that they could do a lot worse than have Frank Bathe taking a regular shift or filling in as a seventh man. He didn&rsquo;t win any games, but then again, his smart play within a rare knowledge of his limitations never gave any away.He is a good guy, whose selfdeprecating humor kept a locker room loose. The Flyers&rsquo; training room just won&rsquo;t be the same without him hanging around healing.There wasn&rsquo;t an interminable line of suitors for Hospodar, but Clarke said there was interest from other NHL clubs.&ldquo;I think we had an edge in that his mom and dad live in Moorestown (NJ) and this is where he really wanted to play,&rdquo; Clarke said.A second-round pick by the Rangers in 1979, Hospodar was traded to the Hartford Whalers in October, 1982 for winger Kent-Erik Andersson.ICEBERGS&mdash;General manager Bobby Clarke says negotiations involving Tim Kerr&rsquo;s contract are progressing &ldquo;amicably.&rdquo; The Flyers&rsquo; GM says he has come up and Frank Milne, Kerr&rsquo;s agent, has come down, and that he has hopes of signing the 54-goal right winger before the Aug. 10 deadline that marks the beginning of the option year of Kerr&rsquo;s contract. &ldquo;If not, we&rsquo;ll offer him the option contract and keep talking,&rdquo; Clarke said&hellip;Clarke said it is unlikely the Flyers will be able to make a deal for a left winger before training camp. &ldquo;We know what&rsquo;s out there and we know what people want,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think we&rsquo;ll be able to do anything. If either Todd Bergen or Peter Zezel make the club, Darryl Sittler can play left wing. Or we could think again of playing Mark Howe there.&rdquo; It wasn&rsquo;t the first time the GM had mentioned Howe playing left wing but, of course, the problem is replacing him on defense. Howe, by the way, is on a rehabilitation program for the shoulder problems that caused him to beg off playing in the Canada Cup. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re going to try this first,&rdquo; Clarke said. &ldquo;If it does need surgery, they said it would only take about two weeks until he could play again.&rdquo;&hellip;Goalie Bob Froese and left winger Lindsay Carson have signed new contracts. &#9632;

Flyers Fill Gap On Defense With Hospodar

The International Hockey WeeklyFounded in 1947Published by W.C.C. Publishing Ltd.85 Scarsdale Road, #100, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3B 2R2.<h2>The Uncivil War</h2>THE 1980s HAVE, for the most part, been years of prosperity for the National Hockey League. True, only about one-third of the 21 NHL teams make a significant profit each year. And another third hover just barely above or below the break-even point. And the final third lose money on a consistent basis.So perhaps prosperity isn&rsquo;t the right word to describe the NHL. Maybe stability or serenity fit a little better. The NHL seems relatively stable insofar as franchises are concerned. Despite the presence of some continuous money-losers, there haven&rsquo;t been the same number of relocations and club deaths as there were in the 1970s.After years of runaway inflation, players&rsquo; salaries have returned to a modest level, which allows our sport to function well within its financial means.On the ice, most observers would readily agree that the overall product we are viewing today is better than it was eight or nine years ago, although that is always something which is wide open to debate.If you&rsquo;re searching for one root of all this apparent happiness and contentment, look no further than 1979, the year that the NHL absorbed the four survivors&mdash;Edmonton, Winnipeg, Quebec City and Hartford&mdash;from the World Hockey Association.Just as the arrival of the WHA did more to turn the hockey world upside down, the death of it helped to put things back in their proper place.It was tough at first. Some of the owners of the original six clubs&mdash;Toronto Maple Leaf boss Harold Ballard, for example&mdash;who had been hit hardest by the renegades of the WHA said they&rsquo;d never work in concert with the new boys on the block.But slowly, they started to come along. You&rsquo;d go to a Board of Governors meeting and Ballard would be walking down the hall with Quebec Nordiques president Marcel Aubut, muttering something to the effect, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry, Marcel. We&rsquo;ll fix those bleepin bleeps.&rdquo;It was an encouraging sign for all of hockey when the established governors were allowing themselves to deal with the new governors freely and openly.Of course, there are always rivalries and feuds between them all&mdash;it&rsquo;s the nature of the game&mdash;but all things considered, the governors have done some pretty good work of late to administer the game we love. Marcel Aubut&rsquo;s lobby to get overtime is a perfect example.Now, though, the question is whether we&rsquo;ll ever see those days again and the implication is serious: Is this the beginning of another war?We refer, of course, to the current TV feud between the six Canadian clubs, excluding the Nordiques, and the 15 other NHL clubs. The details of it all are documented on Page 3 of this issue and we&rsquo;d be lying if we didn&rsquo;t say it&rsquo;s a conflict that is of grave concern.At this point, we&rsquo;re not about to take one side or the other in the debate of TV broadcast rights in Canada. We need more time to study the situation and the bottom line is that the courts will likely have the final word on the whole thing anyway.No, all we can do at this point is express deep, deep concern that if the two factions continue to war, they&rsquo;re only going to be hurting themselves and the game of hockey.When the NHL and WHA were at war, the everyday attention that the game required fell by the wayside. It was a perfect case of crisis management. It&rsquo;s tough to worry about details when it seems that the walls are crumbling down around you.The same thing could happen again this time and because the war is civil&mdash;the threats coming from within&mdash;it could do far more damage than the NHL-WHA scraps of years gone by. In a perverse way, hatred of the WHA provided the NHL with a common bond.This time around, there is no common bond. And if one side sees itself as a loser in the battle, it&rsquo;s bound to have long-term ramifications on how everyday NHL business is conducted once peace is arrived at.So governors, take heed. This war you&rsquo;re embarking upon could tear apart the foundation of the National Hockey League. And really, can we all afford to fight a fight with the stakes so high? &#9632;

<div class="byline">BY PERRY LEFKO</div><h2>A History Lesson Someplace, Somewhere In Time</h2>Sometime, perhaps in the next century, in a classroom somewhere in Canada, a teacher will tell his students to turn on their computers and call up the history lesson of the day. The time period will be September, 1984.As the students scroll through the pages of time they will discover that this was a most important time in Canadian history. In one month, Canadians would have elected a new prime minister, welcomed the Pope for his first-ever visit in Canada, and watched the third edition of the Canada Cup. And all would have happened around the same time, making it a busy month for Canadians.And some student in that class will be so fascinated by what he&rsquo;s reading, he&rsquo;ll want to learn more. So, he&rsquo;ll ask his teacher which, of these three events, was the most important.The teacher, after taking a few minutes to censure one of the other students for inserting a disc into his computer and playing war games, will tell the interested student that all three were important.The election, the teacher said, was critical because the country had lapsed into such an ecomonical chaos that Canadians were looking for a prime minister who would somehow find the magical formula for curing unemployment and inflation, both of which had risen to disastrous levels.The Papal visit, the teacher continued, was critical because he had condemmed abortion and homosexuality, two issues that were very much part of the times.The Canada Cup, the teacher concluded, was critical because Canadians were tired of losing to the Soviet Union in hockey, and were looking for some way to dismantle the Soviet supremacy.When class was over and the other students raced out to whiz around in their high-powered speed demons, the student stayed behind and pumped the teacher for more information. And then he discovered the most important thing of all: all three events were uniquely connected.The Pope, he was told, delivered his grand mass before a crowd of about one million in Toronto, on a site which had been very much a matter of importance in the political and sporting spectrum. This place, known as the Downsview Air Force Base, was being proposed as a possible site for a domed stadium. The issue has risen to unfathomable heights because aside from the numerous proposals in consideration for dome sites, there was the ever-popular question whether it was even necessary.The student was further told that it was a politician who had been instrumental in helping Toronto acquire a baseball team before he became the publisher of a local newspaper which featured a girl in a bikini on page three.The student&rsquo;s interest was piqued by this time. He could not believe what he was hearing. But the best was yet to come.&ldquo;You really want to know what is interesting?&rdquo; the teacher said. &ldquo;While Toronto would play an important part in the outcome in the election and the Papal visit, it would have no bearing on the Canada Cup.&rdquo;The student, who just happened to have some knowledge on hockey, was aghast by this thought and asked, &ldquo;But didn&rsquo;t Toronto have Maple Leaf Gardens, the most famous hockey building in the world?&rdquo;&ldquo;Yes, but is was also owned by a man named, Harold Ballard, who insisted he would allow no activity involving the Soviets in his building, because of their heinous participation in world events.&rdquo;&ldquo;Was that the only reason?&rdquo; the student asked.&ldquo;Well, there were many people who believed that Ballard didn&rsquo;t dislike the Soviets half as much as the Alan Eagleson, the man who organized the Canada Cup, and that in no possible way would Ballard sanction any Eagleson event in his building.&rdquo;&ldquo;But,&rdquo; the student asked, &ldquo;what did Eagleson do that was so wrong?&rdquo;&ldquo;That can be answered many ways,&rdquo; the teacher answered as he shook his head. &ldquo;Some think he was still seething because Eagleson, who also happened to be head of the Players&rsquo; Association, told the players on Ballard&rsquo;s hockey team not to play in a fund-raising exhibition game against Canada&rsquo;s Olympic Team in 1980 unless they were given something in return, such as a game against the Soviets. Others suggest that Ballard was particularly upset with Eagleson because he had been the agent for several of the top players on the Leafs, including Darryl Sittler before he was traded away to Philadelphia.&rdquo;&ldquo;So you mean hockey fans in Toronto weren&rsquo;t allowed to watch any games in their city? They must have been really upset?&rdquo;&ldquo;Not necessarily,&rdquo; the teacher replied. &ldquo;They had a chance to see the Pope, and they knew that their votes would dictate the outcome of the election.&rdquo;&ldquo;Yeah,&rdquo; said the student, &ldquo;but it seems like such a shame that they couldn&rsquo;t see any games.&rdquo;&ldquo;Well, they weren&rsquo;t totally deprived. There was a new pay-TV channel starting in Toronto at that time, which allowed fans to see some of the games in the tournament which the other channel was not showing.&rdquo;&ldquo;You know something, sir, that was really an interesting lesson, and it surely must have been an interesting month for Canadians, and particularly those people who lived in Toronto. But that man, Ballard, is an interesting fellow. Can you tell me a little more about him some time?&rdquo;&ldquo;Well, you can read about him in this book. It was written by a journalist who was banned at one time from the Gardens because he wrote something which Ballard didn&rsquo;t like. He was even threatening to sue the journalist if he wrote the book.&rdquo;&ldquo;But didn&rsquo;t they have free speech then, sir?&rdquo;&ldquo;Well the politicians and the Pope could say what they wanted, but they never bad-mouthed Ballard&rsquo;s hockey team.&rdquo;Perry Lefko is THN&rsquo;s Assistant Editor. &#9632;

SOME OTHER VIEWS

<h2>IN APPRECIATION OF HOOD</h2>As an avid hockey fan for about the past 10 years or so, I have come to appreciate the people who have contributed to the game. I am not solely referring to just the Trophy winners or the men in the front offices, but the men who have worked so hard with so little recognition. One such man is Bruce Hood.Hood&rsquo;s standard of officiating in Chicago will be missed in other cities as well. He was a man to be respected and who took pride in his job. From the moment he skated onto the ice, you could feel that he was in complete control of the game. He will be missed by many hockey fans and players as well.What more could be said about a man who has survived officiating in the NHL as many years as Bruce Hood has? Here is wishing him a great future. Hopefully it will still be with the NHL in some capacity.Martin Johnson Chicago, IL<h2>TROTTIER AND SATHER</h2>Bryan Trottier has quite happily played for Canada before. Why this sudden insistence on Team USA or nothing?All the factors that Trottier cites are quite valid (I&rsquo;ll give him that), but they have also, for the most part, been true for some time.I won&rsquo;t go so far as to call Trottier a traitor, as some have done, but I do wonder whether he&rsquo;s telling the whole truth. Could Alan Eagleson&rsquo;s selection of a certain coach&mdash;intials G.S.&mdash;have triggered Trottier&rsquo;s rejection of Team Canada? Since the last Canada Cup, all that&rsquo;s changed is the Islanders have lost the Stanley Cup and the architect of the Oilers&rsquo; rapid rise to the top is to direct our Canada Cup fortunes.Liz Craig Red Deer, Alta.<h2>DOYLE SOILED STASTNY</h2>Let&rsquo;s put aside for a minute that I&rsquo;m only 15 years old and my favorite team is the Quebec Nordiques. With all that aside I still can&rsquo;t believe the absurd statements made by Calgary Sun sports editor Pat Doyle, who recently wrote that he doesn&rsquo;t feel Peter Stastny should have the right to represent Canada in the Canada Cup.Even though Stastny has his Canadian citizenship papers, Mr. Doyle feels that only Canadian-born players should be allowed to represent Canada in an international tournament such as this.Maybe it hasn&rsquo;t occurred to Mr. Doyle that once you get your citizenship papers you arc Canadian, or whatever country you wish to be a citizen of.1 also still can&rsquo;t believe these incredible statements have been made by a sports editor of a major newspaper. I hope that nobody else feels this way, and are so selfish to deny a Canadian his newly acquired right!Heath Brown Calgary, Alta. &#9632;

FAN FORUM

<div class="byline">BY BOB DONNELLY</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0010-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-011337/5129952-1-eng-US/f0010-012.jpg"></div>QUEBEC&mdash;The participation of three Quebec players for Team Canada in the Canada Cup provides more evidence that the Nordiques are now among the top teams in the National Hockey League.Michel Goulet and Peter Stastny were original choices by Team Canada coach Glen Sather, and defenseman and team captain Mario Marois was added as a replacement for New York Islander ace Denis Potvin, sidelined because of hypertension.Stastny, more than anyone, is anxious to represent his new country in the tournament. One week before reporting to Team Canada, Stastny was bursting with confidence. He even did a radio interview live and in French.&ldquo;I think we have the best team in the world,&rdquo; Stastny said of Team Canada. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m anxious to play and I&rsquo;m convinced we can win. I am in better shape now than I was last summer at the same time.&rdquo;Stastny was joined in workouts throughout July by his two brothers, Anton and Marian, as well as Miroslav Frycer of the Toronto Maple Leafs. He is naturally looking forward to playing his former team from Czechoslovakia in the tournament.&ldquo;We are the best team, and to win we must beat all the opposition, including Russia and Czechoslovakia,&rdquo; Stastny said. &ldquo;All I know is that I have been invited to be part of the Canadian team and that&rsquo;s all that matters as far as I am concerned.&rdquo;Stastny and left winger Goulet finished the 1983-84 season with 119 and 121 points, respectively, the third and fourth scorers overall. Goulet had 56 goals, compared with 46 for Stastny. Sather has already said that he plans to use the two players on the same line. Brian Bellows of Minnesota appeared to be the frontrunning candidate for the right side.Goulet, who holds the National Hockey League record for most points in a single season by a left winger, has registered two consecutive seasons of over 50 goals. He scored 56 last year despite missing five games. He will be trying in the Canada Cup tournament to make up for a sub-par performance in the 1984 Stanley Cup playoffs.The late addition of Marois to the Team Canada roster may have been a surprise to some observers, but not to those who followed the Nordiques last season. Marois played an outstanding role in helping Quebec move from 19th to fifth place defensively in the NHL last year.&ldquo;I thought I might have been a choice when they originally announced the team,&rdquo; Marois said, &ldquo;because I had just finished a good season. I had actually resigned myself to not going when I suddenly got the call from Alan Eagleson. It is still a great honor to be asked and it shows once again how much we have improved in Quebec.&rdquo;Marois is at his best playing aggressively, carrying the puck and clearing the front of the net. Last season he played with with great confidence and, even more importantly for him, with selfcontrol. Playing in all 80 games for Quebec, Marois totalled 49 points, including 13 goals. He ranked third in the NHL among defensemen in plus-minus stats.&ldquo;Whether you are asked to replace someone, or for whatever reason, it doesn&rsquo;t matter,&rdquo; Marois said, &ldquo;because it&rsquo;s just great to be asked and it shows the confidence they have in me.&rdquo;The Nordiques are sending three players to Team Canada, each with a special mission of sorts. Peter Stastny will be playing for his new country. Goulet will be trying to show that he does not choke under pressure. Marois will want to play regularly, and will not be satisfied with being a leader only in the dressing room.This also shows the Nords that have a depth that just wasn&rsquo;t there two years ago. Having four NHL-calibre goaltenders&mdash;Dan Bouchard, Clint Malarchuk, Richard Sevigny and Mario Gosselin&mdash;on the roster when most teams have problems keeping two is more evidence. The five-year plan announced by team president Marcel Aubut to win the Stanley Cup is well underway.NORDIC NOTES&mdash;Goalie Richard Sevigny, signed as a free agent from Montreal, is convinced he will stay with the Nordiques for the start of the regular season, and his chief competition will come from Clint Malarchuk&hellip;Nordique president Marcel Aubut has made absolutely no comment on the problems his new television deal has caused the NHL, although he has said rumors that the league will split up into separate Canadian and American divisions are greatly exaggerated. &#9632;

f0010-01

Quebec Players Have Personal Cup Stake

<div class="byline">BY TIM MORIARTY</div>LOND ISLAND&mdash;Denis Potvin has high blood pressure. It&rsquo;s a condition that affects millions, and most live normal lives, provided they receive proper medication.Potvin, though, is concerned about the case of hypertension he first suffered in last spring&rsquo;s Stanley Cup playoffs and caused him to turn down an invitation to represent Team Canada in the Canada Cup tournament.&ldquo;After checking me closely this summer, the doctors feel I&rsquo;m susceptible to hypertension,&rdquo; the Islander captain said. &ldquo;So I don&rsquo;t want to risk playing now. I feel I have major responsibilities to myself. to my family and to the Islanders, in that order.&ldquo;The doctors have made me aware of the risks involved (in playing) so I&rsquo;d rather wait and have them check me thor-oughly before the start of the (NHL) season&hellip;I don&rsquo;t want to wind up flat on my back.&rdquo;Said Dr. George Gilbert Jr., the team internist: &ldquo;Denis has been on medication&hellip;for a physical problem, basically hypertension. He was tested recently, and while he has shown progress, the tests were inconclusive. I readjusted the medication and he will be retested in about two weeks.&rdquo;Potvin&rsquo;s problem surfaced in the final playoffs between the Islanders and the Oilers last May. He was forced to leave Game No. 4 with leg cramps, which later were attributed to a violent reaction to medication he had been receiving for hypertension.Potvin grimaced when asked if his medical problem might force him to retire as a player.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a question that everybody (with hypertension) has to ask himself,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The problem is such that it&rsquo;s difficult to find medication that (produces no side effects). You saw what happened to me in last season&rsquo;s playoffs. That&rsquo;s why I can&rsquo;t risk playing in the Canada Cup.&ldquo;Right now I feel fine. I&rsquo;m not weak. I&rsquo;m not sick. But it&rsquo;s a definite problem that has to be taken care of. The danger is if you let it go untreated it will resurface and do great damage.&ldquo;Proper medication should keep it under control. But the problem for people involved in violent activity like hockey is the side effects the medication might produce. We are concerned about that, so we&rsquo;ll just have to continue the tests and see what happens.&rdquo;The 30-year-old defenseman suffered through several traumatic experiences in the past year&mdash;the death of his father, a divorce case, and the loss of the Stanley Cup to the Oilers.&ldquo;I suppose they did compound it, though I&rsquo;ve been told that the condition is hereditary,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My dad had high blood pressure. However, there&rsquo;s no question that the emotional strain I went through last season didn&rsquo;t help.&rdquo;Meanwhile, five other Islanders began practising for the Canada Cup tournament&mdash;Bryan Trottier and Pat LaFontaine with Team USA, and Bob Bourne, Mike Bossy and John Tonelli with Team Canada.The way was cleared for Trottier to join Team USA when he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He said &ldquo;I do&rdquo; when administered the oath of citizenship in a federal courtroom in Brooklyn, where many fans gathered upon learning that the Islander center was in the building.&ldquo;I hope not to embarrass this country at any time,&rdquo; said the 28-year-old native of Val Marie. Sask.Trottier reiterated that he bore no ill feelings toward Canada.&ldquo;But the U.S. has been good to me and my family, and now I want to do something for this country,&rdquo; he said.At first. Trottier felt that the North American Indian card he holds would have enabled him to play for Team USA, but he was later told he would need an American passport. That&rsquo;s when he began the process of becoming a U.S. citizen.ON THE ISLE&mdash;General manager Bill Torrey still wants to trade one of his three goalies. Chico Resch, the former Islander now with the New Jersey Devils, offered a prediction on the subject: Bill Smith&rsquo;s job is safe. &ldquo;If the Islanders had hired a new coach, they probably would trade Smitty,&rdquo; Resch said. &ldquo;But he and Al (Arbour) work well together. And now that Al will be around next season, I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;ll want to keep Smitty.&rdquo; &#9632;

Potvin Doesn’t Want To Take Any Chances

<div class="byline">BILL FLEISCHMAN&#x2019;S</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0009-011274/5130007-1-eng-US/f0009-012.jpg" title="f0009-01" width="282" height="333"></div><h2>Trottier&rsquo;s No Traitor</h2>CANADA CUP &rsquo;84 is here and Bryan Trottier has not only switched teams, he has switched countries. Let&rsquo;s hope Canadians aren&rsquo;t sticking pins in Trottier&rsquo;s bubblegum card and calling him a traitor.That Canadians could be upset by Trottier&rsquo;s decision to join Team USA on and off the ice is understandable. But they should also realize that this isn&rsquo;t something Trottier decided one afternoon while he was mowing the lawn. First, Trottier&rsquo;s wife, Nickie, is an American. And second, after all these years with the Islanders, Trottier concluded that he should be a citizen of the country where he makes his living.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not slapping Canada in the face or turning my back on it,&rdquo; Trottier said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m proud of my Canadian background. I&rsquo;ve given everything I possibly could to Canada, but I&rsquo;m making my living in the States.&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to give back to the country where I make my living. And I think what I&rsquo;m doing will create a little attention in the U.S. market.&rdquo;While Trottier insists he doesn&rsquo;t expect any rowdy welcomes when he plays in Canadian cities, his wife suspects he&rsquo;ll be booed from Quebec to Vancouver.&ldquo;I just hope the Canadian fans understand.&rdquo; said Mrs. T. &ldquo;This is something Bryan wanted to do a little later down the road. But he decided to do it now.&rdquo;<h2>Warm American Reaction</h2>MRS. T. SAID the American reaction has been heartwarming. &ldquo;The house is full of American flags that people have sent. And people have sent tons of cards congratulating him.&rdquo;In case you&rsquo;re just recovering from watching the Olympics day and night and missed it, Trottier obtained his American citizenship in time to play for Team USA in the Canada Cup. As a North American Indian, Trottier was free to travel between Canada and the U.S., but he didn&rsquo;t spend enough time in Canada each year to vote and without his citizenship, he couldn&rsquo;t vote in the U.S. either.During the annual NHL meetings in Montreal. Lou Nanne. Team USA&rsquo;s general manager, dropped the word that Trottier was trying to become a U.S. citizen. Skeptics smiled and suggested Nanne was just up to his old mis-chievious tricks.A few beers later, these skeptics decided that Nanne was serious. After all, if you had a chance to add a Bryan Trottier, who many consider the most talented two-way player in the NHL, to your team, wouldn&rsquo;t you run the idea up the flag pole and hope the immigration and naturalization people saluted? That Trottier is now wearing the stars and stripes proves it&rsquo;s wise to listen to Sweet Lou. He&rsquo;s not always right, but he&rsquo;s never dull.Team USA won&rsquo;t be dull either. With young Tom Barrasso and Glenn Resch, the U.S. will be solid in goal. Two-time Norris Trophy winner Rod Langway leads a defense that includes Phil Housley and Mike Ramsey. Joining Trottier at center are Neal Broten, Dave Christian. Pat LaFontaine and Brian Lawton. Wingers include Bobby Carpenter, Mark Johnson and such emerging stars as Joey Mullen and David A. Jensen.<h2>Missing Key Players</h2>BUT DESPITE THE addition of Trottier, Nanne has reason to lament the losses of some players who definitely could have helped the Americans&rsquo; cause.&ldquo;We lost four key guys, three on defense,&rdquo; said Nanne. &ldquo;Mark Howe and Kenny Morrow are hurt, Mike O&rsquo;Connell has a hockey school and Mark Pavelich wants to fish. That really hurts us.&rdquo;Nanne likes Team USA&rsquo;s talent in goal. on defense and at center. But not even Nanne. who has sold a tamale or two to Texans in his time, will try to tell you the U.S. is loaded with goal scorers on the wings. Nanne will tell you that Canada and the Soviet Union are favored in the Canada Cup, with the United States and Czechoslovakia mucking it up for third place.Trottier, who was tied for runner-up in scoring in the 1981 Canada Cup. also touts Canada and the Soviets as the tournament favorites. But he thinks Team USA &ldquo;will be very competitive. I hope we&rsquo;ll be in the finals. That&rsquo;s the way I approach it and I hope the rest of the guys feel the same way.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll definitely be defensive-oriented. We don&rsquo;t have 60- or 70-goalscorers, but we have guys who are capable of scoring goals. And we have guys who have been in international competition. I think we&rsquo;ll be ready.&rdquo;Trottier is ready. Before reporting to camp, he obliged a photographer&rsquo;s request by tracking down a Team USA jersey in a Long Island sporting goods store.As he departed for camp, he knew his family and friends were supporting his decision about changing citizenship. &ldquo;My parents, brothers and sisters are Canadians and none of them feel any animosity over what I&rsquo;ve done. There arc a few Irishmen on my mother&rsquo;s side and I&rsquo;m sure they&rsquo;re behind me.&rdquo;That&rsquo;s a good place to start. &#9632;

f0009-01

HOCKEY WORLD

<div class="byline">BY RICH FRIEDMAN</div>NEW YORK&mdash;As the Kris Kristoffer-son lyrics go, &ldquo;Feeling good is good enough for me,&rdquo; and that could easily be Ron Greschner&rsquo;s theme song for the summer of &ldquo;84. There was a time not long ago when he wondered if he&rsquo;d ever feel good again.It will be three years this October since the Ranger backiiner crashed into the Maple Leaf Gardens boards while attempting to hip-check Wilf Paiement. He played just 29 games in the 1981-82 season, coming back too soon and assuming that he just had a sore back instead of the severe spinal problem that would ultimately sideline him for all but 10 games of the 1982-83 season.&ldquo;There was a time, even a year and a half ago, when I never thought I&rsquo;d be playing,&rdquo; said a relaxed Greschner early this month. He and his wife, Carol Alt, who is one of New York&rsquo;s top fashion models, were taking a break at their East Side Manhattan apartment from their summer-long project of renovating the 250-year-old farmhouse they bought in rural, upstate New York.&ldquo;We tore up the floors, put in new cupboards, everything,&rdquo; Greschner said.And yet, the 34-year-old Goodsoil, Sask., native, who possesses one of the great senses of humor on the Rangers, did not chuckle when he was asked if he and his wife were building his retirement villa.Retirement is not a joking matter with Ron Greschner. not when you take into account all that he has gone through since that fateful night in Toronto. There was traction, acupuncture, visits to chiropractors, and finally, in the summer of 1982, the papaya extract injection into his lower back.Seven weeks later, as his spinal column settled and the papaya extract dissolved the herniated disk in his lower back&mdash;the novel technique thus allows patients like Greschner to avoid surgery&mdash;there was the pain he had been warned about.&ldquo;It paralyzes you,&rdquo; he recalled. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t cough, you can&rsquo;t sneeze.&rdquo;There were times then when it took half an hour to get into an automobile. He knows he is lucky to be playing.And he was also lucky that he didn&rsquo;t have to face the ordeal alone. There was Carol, whom he referred to shortly after those horrid days as &ldquo;the best nurse I could have found,&rdquo; who gave him the moral support that enabled him to fight back instead of giving up, and to resume making his living as he has done since Nov. 3, 1974, as a New York Ranger. He has worn that uniform longer than any other member at the team.&ldquo;Before, when you&rsquo;re a kid and you have youth and you never get tired, you never appreciate it,&rdquo; he told the Daily News&rsquo; Frank Brown last December, a month after he married Carol and just three months into a comeback 1983-84 season in which his 44 assists would be tops among all Ranger backliners.&ldquo;But if you had something and you lost it, you have to appreciate it when you get it back.&rdquo;And appreciate it, Greschner does.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m looking forward to camp,&rdquo; he said. Last year at this time, he was thinking about coming back; now, he is thinking about playing.He hadn&rsquo;t been on ice all summer, working out instead on a stationary bike and roller skates, and the only teammates he had seen were fellow defensemen Tom Laidlaw and team captain Barry Beck. He and Alt are very much stay-at-homes when they&rsquo;re both in town at the same time, which is rare enough considering that her hours as a model are often as long and bizarre as the hours a professional athlete keeps.Like his teammates, Greschner had gone through a mental recovery following the Rangers&rsquo; opening-round loss to the crosstown Islanders.&ldquo;I thought we had a good shot at beating them,&rdquo; said Greschner, recalling the seventh game, overtime goal by Ken Morrow which sank the Rangers&rsquo; season. &ldquo;We played a lot better than they did.&rdquo;The fact that Greschner will be there for another try at the Cup, after overcoming obstacles that few professional athletes have had to face, is a tribute to his determination, the support of the woman in his life and that of his friends. And good fortune.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m very lucky,&rdquo; Greschner said as he went back to mulling over plans for that farmhouse. There&rsquo;d be plenty of hockey to think about in just a few more weeks. &#9632;

Greschner Looking To Return To Rangers

<div class="byline">BY STAN FISCHLER</div>The civil war which has erupted within the National Hockey League confederation between the American and Canadian teams over Canadian television rights threatens long-range uncivil ramifications. The battle centers on a $22-million lawsuit filed in Ontario by all Canadian teams, except the Nordiques, against all 14 American clubs and the Nordiques. According to some insiders, it could lead to a permanent rupture with the American teams seceding, as it were, and operating independently of their Canadian cousins. So concerned are league officials over the rift that the entire governors meeting in Chicago was devoted to attempts at settling the battle, although there was other business on the agenda. A more likely scenario, rather than the complete secession, would be a more amicable split as proposed by Devil owner John McMullen. According to the McMullen plan, the league would be divided into two conferences&mdash;American and Canadian&mdash;both under the NHL banner. NHL prexy John Ziegler tells BLUELINES there&rsquo;s no way such a split-by-nation would be tolerated. &ldquo;This (the tv battle) has not been a pleasant situation for anyone,&rdquo; says Ziegler. &ldquo;And there have been some emotional statements made (about splitting the league), but it would have no practical reality. Besides, there&rsquo;s no consensus to change the format we now have.&rdquo;&hellip;Although Nordique president Marcel Aubut has suggested extending overtime from five to 10 minutes in the regular season, the five-minute style will remain. An obstacle to a 10-minute overtime is the need for guarantees from local television stations that they can sell the extra time. &ldquo;We need to improve revenues on the local tv packages before we can go to 10-minute overtime,&rdquo; Ziegler explains. &ldquo;On the positive side is the fact we&rsquo;ve had no complaints from anyone about the five-minute overtime.&rdquo;Sports Illustrated&rsquo;s long-awaited expose about power broker Alan Eag-leson has not yet produced any legal reaction from The Eagle. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not doing anything immediately,&rdquo; Eagleson tells BLUELINES. &ldquo;The article was not quite what we expected. For a year it was like I had a bazooka pointed at my head and finally out came a cap.&rdquo; Eagleson charges that the article had errors &ldquo;which we&rsquo;ll bring to their attention.&rdquo; He is angry at reports from the SI clique that the article could have been tougher. &ldquo;Here, the (censored) article is out and they&rsquo;re still talking about what might have been in it. I pointed out correct answers to some of their questions but they didn&rsquo;t want to find out what they were.&rdquo; The SI piece has not diminished The Eagle&rsquo;s standing in any of his ventures, from the stewardship of the Canada Cup to the head of the NHL players&rsquo; union. &ldquo;I must be doing something right,&rdquo; he concludes,&rdquo; &ldquo;or so wrong that nobody can figure it out!&rdquo;&hellip;Eagleson projects that some of the 1988 Canada Cup games could be held at Madison Square Garden, likely Russia vs. USA and Czech vs. USA. Hartford and Detroit had applied for Canada Cup contests this year but only Buffalo (Sept. 6, USA vs. Czech) will have a stateside match.Summerhill Books has finally titled its hot property, Ballard&mdash;A Portrait of Canada&rsquo;s Most Controversial Sports Figure.&nbsp;Bill Houston of the Toronto Globe and Mail, who completed the manuscript at the end of July, has included a riotous anecdote about Pal Hal&rsquo;s pet piranah, Fang. According to Houston, Ballard and sidekick King Clancy got their jollies feeding live goldfish to Fang. On one occasion Ballard&rsquo;s secretary allegedly was dispatched to a pet shop to obtain more goldfish for Fang&rsquo;s lunch. The shop owner apologized that the fish she had were rather gaunt but the secretary said not to worry, they&rsquo;d be dead in an hour and explained they were headed for Fang. The enraged pet shop owner threatened to phone the humane society&hellip;Other hockey books due out this fall include one by Walter Gretzky, as told to Vancouver writer Jim Taylor and another by Dave (Tiger) Williams, as told to another Vancouver journalist, James Lawton.The NHL inner circle is split over the manner in which the New Jersey Devil researchers used supposedly confidential material from the NHL&rsquo;s Central Scouting Bureau for use in their draft media guide. Brian O&rsquo;Neill, the league veep in Montreal, and Jim Gregory, of Central Scouting in Toronto, are furious with the Devils. But on the U.S. side there&rsquo;s more admiration than anger. &ldquo;The Devils did a great job,&rdquo; one NHL official tells BLUELINES. &ldquo;Gregory and O&rsquo;Neill overreacted. Their (the Devils&rsquo;) draft book was a tremendous service to the media and they ought to be congratulated for a painstaking job.&rdquo;&hellip;Wayne Gretzky won&rsquo;t earn a penny more than any other NHLer for participating in the Canada Cup tourney. All players will receive $4,000 and another grand if they win&hellip;Scotty Bowman and Lou Nanne are quoted in the Penguin promotional brochure which revolves around Mario (The Magnificent) Lemieux. The Lemieux signing set an unofficial record for hockey coverage in Pittsburgh during the summer&hellip;Fred Shero tells BLUELINES he&rsquo;s undecided about returning to the Devils&rsquo; broadcast booth next fall. He&rsquo;s holding some coaching options, including a European possibility&hellip;Although the NHL&rsquo;s deal with one of the American cable networks&mdash;USA or ESPN&mdash;should have been resolved earlier, league sources say USA still has the edge, albeit slim, in keeping the package&hellip;A few weeks before he was hired by Jerry Buss to be the Kings&rsquo; new p.r. man, Larry Rosoff was sitting in Buss&rsquo; Forum rooting for the Celtics to whip Buss&rsquo; Lakers. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m originally from Boston,&rdquo; chuckles Rosoff. &#9632;

BLUELINES

<div class="byline">BY DICK CHUBEY</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0012-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-011310/5130086-1-eng-US/f0012-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Edmonton Oiler free agent Glenn Anderson has no qualms about money, but is worried that inflation will affect a long-term contract.</figcaption></div>EDMONTON&mdash;Glenn Anderson, his amateur status temporarily restored, is once again prepared for another crack at the Russians.Again for no money.After that? Who knows?But wherever Anderson will wind up in 1984-85, you can bet there&rsquo;ll be money involved. Plenty of it.The Edmonton Oilers&rsquo; winger, whose Vancouver-based agent. Ron Perrick, is involved in a contract dispute with general manager and coach Glen Sather, will not allow his unsigned status to affect his participation in the Canada Cup tournament. Even if it means he must peform for renumeration amounting to the hole in the donut.The 23-year-old free-agent&rsquo;s entire Canada Cup stipend of $4,000 has been channeled to Lloyds of London for dis-ability insurance as a guard against injury. Anderson dealt through special risk underwriter William Sutton, a Lloyds of London correspondent out of Toronto.&ldquo;What I make from the tournament will cost me for insurance,&rdquo; shrugged Anderson, who only stands to emerge from the event with $1,000 should Team Canada capture the best-of-three final.The Burnaby, B.C.-native hardly minds. He was a member of the 1980 Canadian Olympic team that blew a 3-1 lead after 40 minutes, losing 6-4 to the Soviets at Lake Placid, NY.&ldquo;I really want to win the Canada Cup,&rdquo; Anderson said. &ldquo;Losing the way we did to the Russians really disturbed me. It&rsquo;s botnered me mentally for four years. I don&rsquo;t mind playing them for nothing.&rdquo;Performing in the NHL is an entirely different matter, though. While Juri Kurri has signed a new two-year deal, and Pat Hughes and Paul Coffey are close to inking new pacts, the situation is hardly cozy where Anderson is concerned.&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to stay here. but&hellip;the day I signed (in Sept., 1980) I was told if I produced and I was an all-star, I&rsquo;d be paid according to those standards,&rdquo; said Anderson, who accounted for 140 goals and 308 points during the past three campaigns.His complaint isn&rsquo;t with the first year of Sather&rsquo;s offer, presumably in excess of $200,000.&ldquo;The first year is okay, but there&rsquo;s a thing called inflation,&rdquo; said Anderson, who wouldn&rsquo;t mind signing a shortterm&mdash;say two years&mdash;deal and then renegotiate. &ldquo;But they don&rsquo;t want to do that. Five years is a long time to be tied up.&rdquo;Anderson admits there have been feelers from other clubs, &ldquo;and we (him and Perrick) haven&rsquo;t approached anyone yet.&rdquo;Unlike baseball, the National Hockey League&rsquo;s compensation rulings discourage movement of free agents. A club could lose one or two quality players by signing the likes of Anderson as a freeagent. But he adds a kicker.&ldquo;A lot of people don&rsquo;t know how the compensation thing works,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If a team makes me an offer, Edmonton does not have the right to match it.&ldquo;I&rsquo;d love to stay here, I want to stay. It&rsquo;s a great city, there&rsquo;s great fan support here and the team is made up by a great bunch of guys. But the way things are&hellip;it&rsquo;s a business.&rdquo;The 5-foot-11, 180-pounder could well wind up elsewhere, although Europe, as has been hinted, is strictly a longshot. Sather dealt Kenny Linseman, and remember who, in the company of The Rat, was rumored in trade talks back in February and March.&ldquo;I could also go fishing,&rdquo; joked Anderson, the son of a B.C. commercial fisherman. &ldquo;My dad wants me to come fishing with him.&rdquo;Fishing all right&hellip;fishing around the NHL.IN THE CREASE&mdash;Oiler general manager and coach Glen Sather is also negotiating with a couple of other free-agents&mdash;Mike Krushelnyski, acquired from the Boston Bruins in exchange for Ken Linseman, plus another former Bruin, defenseman Larry Melnyk. Melnyk came to the Oilers in a trading deadline deal involving John Blum, the American-born defenseman who married a sister of the Oilers&rsquo; Mark Messier during the off-season&hellip;Veteran Czech Jaroslav Pouzar. a free-agent without compensation, signed a new one-year contract with the Oilers. The 32-year-old&rsquo;s strong play in the playoffs was probably a determining factor in his return&hellip;Rick Chartraw, picked up as insurance last season, undoubtedly won&rsquo;t be back. &#9632;

f0012-01

Anderson Doesn’t Want A Long-Term Marriage

<div class="byline">BY FRANK ORR</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-011236/5130131-1-eng-US/f0013-012.jpg" title="f0013-01" width="409" height="359"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-02909/5130124-1-eng-US/f0013-022.jpg" title="f0013-02" width="409" height="359"></div>During the 1981 Canada Cup international hockey tournament, the event&rsquo;s head honcho, Alan Eagleson, looking tired and a little frayed on the edges, stood in the Montreal Forum and stated flatly that he didn&rsquo;t want to organize another such effort.Making that tournament work was, as they say in the country, like pulling hens&rsquo; teeth.&ldquo;At that time, I wasn&rsquo;t just sounding off when I said that I had had about enough of the Canada Cup to do me for a lifetime,&rdquo; Eagleson said recently. &ldquo;The &rsquo;81 Canada Cup was a struggle to pull off and I figured that if conditions for getting it together didn&rsquo;t change, I couldn&rsquo;t go through it again.<blockquote class="pullQuote">&lsquo;The &rsquo;81 Canada Cup was a struggle to pull off and I figured that if the conditions for getting it together didn&rsquo;t change, I couldn&rsquo;t go through it again.&rsquo;</blockquote>&ldquo;That had nothing to do with the outcome (the Soviet Union belted Team Canada, 8-1, in the final). Making the tournament a success required just too much time and effort.&rdquo;Three years later, Eagleson is gung-ho on the Canada Cup again and has everything rolling smoothly for the six-nation tournament that is jammed into 20 glorious days of hockey in September.The third Canada Cup shows signs of being the most competitive. Team Canada and the Soviet Union are the glamor teams, of course, while the Czechoslovak nats rate close to them and are capable of an upset. This year, Team USA is a serious contender for a berth in the final and if Sweden, a big disappointment in &rsquo;81, can be a tough out, the tournament will have a five-horse race.Finland is replaced by West Germany as the sixth team in this year&rsquo;s lineup, which brings new faces and a very unknown quantity.While Eagleson and his methods create controversy, there&rsquo;s really no other man who could make an event such as the Canada Cup work and show a profit. He&rsquo;s a chief international negotiator for Hockey Canada and the executivedirector of the National Hockey League Players&rsquo; Association. He has strong clout and connections in Canadian business and political circles.Eagleson confesses that the big change in his attitude on the Canada Cup is inspired by the presence of top-flight sponsorship by the Labatt Brewing Company, a heavy backing that has scuttled any potential for financial headaches.&ldquo;Back in 1981, the recession was going strong, the tournament had been delayed a year and we were just coming off the 1980 boycott of the Olympics in the Soviet Union, which was a fairly heavy setback for all sport,&rdquo; Eagleson said.&ldquo;There was really some hard work in selling the business community on involvement in the Canada Cup. Selling the TV package, a very important income source for something like this, was extremely difficult.&rdquo;Then, in 1982, Labatt&rsquo;s became deeply involved with Hockey Canada, signing a six-year agreement to be the major sponsor of Team Canada in all international hockey programs. That included heavy backing of the Canada Olympic team for the 1984 Games in Yugoslavia, the 1988 Games in Calgary and the 1984 Canada Cup.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-03736/5130117-1-eng-US/f0013-032.jpg" title="f0013-03" width="1503" height="2136"><figcaption class="caption-body">Soviet Union captain Valery Vasiliev and Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau have retired, but Alan Eagleson is still the man in the middle of the Canada Cup. (Photo by Bruce Bennett)</figcaption></div>Labatt&rsquo;s also purchased exclusive marketing, television, radio, film and promotional rights for the Canada Cup.&ldquo;Labatts&rsquo; involvement meant that the organizational thrust of the tournament could be concentrated on the hockey side of it,&rdquo; Eagleson said. &ldquo;Because of Labatt&rsquo;s and the CTV network, we were able to start the planning of the tournament with close to $4 million in the bank. The way costs are rising, to get something like this off the ground, that removed a great deal of the pressure.profit (divided between Hockey Canada for its scholarship programs and the NHL Players&rsquo; Association pension fund),&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;In 1981,&ldquo;For instance, the cost of air travel&mdash;a bigbudget item when you start to move six hockey teams around the globe and the country&mdash;is two-and-a-half times what it was in 1976. The tab for hotel and meals is double what it was per day in &rsquo;81.&rdquo;Eagleson estimates that the expenses have increased by $1 million for each Canada Cup.&ldquo;In 1976, expenses were $4 million but the gross was $7 million, which produced a nicey the profit was down because the Canada Cup took in $6.5 million but expenses were $5 million.&ldquo;This time, we should gross $7.5 million but expenses will be $6 million. However, the Canada Cup is on solid footing, its status on the world sports scene is now established and the future for it looks excellent.&rdquo;Because it was a late arrival on the international hockey scene, juxtaposed on such other global shinny competitions as the world championship tournament and the Olympic Games, time has been required for the Canada Cup to find its proper niche.<blockquote class="pullQuote">&lsquo;The Canada Cup is on solid footing, its status on the world sports scene is now established and the future for it looks excellent.&rsquo;</blockquote>The Canada Cup&rsquo;s stature received a large boost when Dr. Gunther Sabetzki, the head of the International Ice Hockey Federation, went on record with the claim that the tournament was &ldquo;the ultimate hockey championship,&rdquo; the only event that brings together the best hockey players in the world.&ldquo;Sabetzki&rsquo;s view is that the world championship doesn&rsquo;t have the best U.S., Canadian, Swedish and Finnish players, who are involved in the NHL playoffs when the tournament is held in the spring,&rdquo; Eagleson said.&ldquo;The Olympic hockey tournament is a glitter event but the absence of players who have played even one game in the NHL means that the world&rsquo;s best certainly aren&rsquo;t in it.&ldquo;The Canada Cup has the best teams and players of any hockey event and that makes it the top international tournament. Everyone is very pleased with the Canada Cup&rsquo;s situation now. It has the proper status and is on good, solid financial footing now.&rdquo;This year&rsquo;s Canada Cup has a somewhat nomadic look as pre-touranment and tournament games are set for nine cities. That schedule makes it truly a Canadian event as matches are set from Halifax to Vancouver, although the bulk of the games are in Montreal, Edmonton and Calgary.&ldquo;It boosts travel costs but having games all across the country shows the big interest there is in the Canada Cup in all areas of the country,&rdquo; Eagleson said.His one regret is that Toronto, one-two with any spot you can name among the world&rsquo;s great hockey cities and the Canadian media center, isn&rsquo;t involved in the tournament.In a Laurel and Hardy piece of philosophical fuzzification, Harold Ballard, owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Maple Leaf Gardens, won&rsquo;t allow the Soviets or any event in which they are involved to use his building.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s unfortunate that Toronto can&rsquo;t participate and a little sad that some great hockey fans won&rsquo;t get to see any games,&rdquo; Eagleson said.&ldquo;But the response from the other parts of the country makes up for it.&rdquo;Eagleson&rsquo;s big hope this year is that Sweden, the big &rsquo;81 disappointment with only one win, will be very competitive.&ldquo;The Canada Cup needs Sweden to be right in the thick of the hunt and turn it into a five-team scrap,&rdquo; he said.But the ultimate outcome for this devoted Canadian, The Eagle, would be forTeam Canada to sock the Soviets in the final. &#9632;

f0013-01

<div class="byline">BY ROD BEATON</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0015-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0015-011211/5130193-1-eng-US/f0015-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Team USA jersey courtesy of Syosset SportsNow that New York Islander all-star center Bryan Trottier is a citizen of the United States, Team USA can rely on him as a tremendous team leader and a major offensive weapon. (Photo by Bruce Bennett)</figcaption></div>Michael Jackson? So who is Michael Jackson?&rdquo;Bob Johnson, coach of Team USA was indignant. A Jackson family concert had a hand in depriving the American team of an exhibition date in Detroit. Didn&rsquo;t the Jacksons realize what they were doing? Johnson&rsquo;s team has a mission.Fortified by the addition of one of the newest American citizens, Bryan John Trottier, Team USA enters the tournament with great respect and greater expectations.&ldquo;I think this will be by far the best Team USA in the Canada Cup since its inception,&rdquo; said Washington general manager David Poile.Poile, an advisor to Team Canada, should know&mdash;his Capitals provided four Americans: Rod Langway, Dave Christian, Bob Carpenter and Bryan Erickson.&ldquo;I think they&rsquo;ve got a very legitimate shot at winning it,&rdquo; said Philadelphia GM Bob Clarke.Clarke should know. He&rsquo;s a former Canada Cup participant and only a few months ago had been skating in the NHL against most of the people who will make the U.S. lineup.That lineup was greatly strengthened with the recent addition of Trottier, plus defensemen Reed Larson and Dave Feamster, who were invited to camp to replace David H. Jensen (hepatitis) and Craig Ludwig (previous commitment).&ldquo;Any team that can add a Bryan Trottier has to improve dramatically,&rdquo; said Clarke. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve already got a real good, solid defense and (Tom) Barrasso is a helluva goaltender.&rdquo;Langway heads the defense. Two consecutive Norris Trophies attest to his ability.&ldquo;He might be the best in the world,&rdquo; said Clarke. &ldquo;Certainly he&rsquo;s the best defensively.&rdquo;Clarke was including the USSR&rsquo;s Vyacheslav Fetisov in that assessment.The accent in international hockey is on speed. Langway&rsquo;s strong suit is smarts and strength. Does that reduce his contribution? Hardly, say the experts.&ldquo;He was our best defenseman in 1981,&rdquo; said Johnson. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll be even better.&rdquo;&ldquo;It&rsquo;s still important to control the front of the net.&rdquo; said Team USA GM Lou Nanne.The European teams work the puck in close, disdaining long slapshots for high-percentage chances. Langway, with his great wing span, can fend that off.The other defensemen aren&rsquo;t exactly chopped liver. Gordie Roberts matured into a legitimate star last season. Mike Ramsey might have been a cut in 1981, but after three years as one of the NHL&rsquo;s consistent standouts, he&rsquo;s a given this time.Phil Housley was starring at South St. Paul High School in Minnesota in 1981. He will provide the kind of mobility and power-play wizardry the USA must have to contend.These four will be the heart of blueline corps and enjoy most of the ice time. But Johnson singled out Don Jackson&mdash;coming off a solid season in Edmonton&mdash;and &rsquo;84 Olympians Tom Hirsch and Chris Chelios.&ldquo;Hirsch and Chelios, they&rsquo;re close,&rdquo; said Johnson. &ldquo;They could really blossom. They&rsquo;re certainly familiar with international play. And Jackson had that good year in Edmonton.&rdquo;Team USA has even greater numbers up front. But except for Trottier, there is no forward in the class of the USSR&rsquo;s Igor Larionov, Viktor Krutov, Sergei Makarov and friends; Canada&rsquo;s Wayne Gretzky and Mike Bossy; or some of the more-faceless but talented top Czechoslovakians.Will the goals come?&ldquo;I think they&rsquo;ll score,&rdquo; said Clarke. &ldquo;(Pat) LaFontaine is a scorer, Trottier is a scorer, (Joey) Mullen, (Neal) Broten and (Dave) Christian can score, too.&rdquo;But all save Mullen are centers. Team USA is loaded with centers. At least four&mdash;Carpenter, Mark Johnson, Christian and Mike Eaves&mdash;arc expected to be shifted to the wing. There is no guarantee&mdash;and considerable doubt&mdash;they can produce on the wing, out of position, in normal fashion. The fate of Team USA rests in large part on left wingers Carpenter and Johnson and right wingers Eaves and Christian.Clarke is aware of what is required to make such a shift. Late last season. Bob McCammon shuffled Clarke to left wing&mdash;a move some thought akin to making Baryshnikov a tap dancer.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not that big an adjustment,&rdquo; said Clarke. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll have a month to master it with a lot of exhibitions.&rdquo;Christian should prosper. He is possibly the NHL&rsquo;s most versatile player, but is too good to be labelled a utility man. One of the defensemen in the 1980 Olympics, he has played and played well at all three forward positions.Johnson is better at center than left wing. His career has proven it. But his considerable playmaking and scoring skills could complement the right center, probably a physical one such as Trottier.Carpenter has been tried at left wing before. The Capitals have always been disappointed and moved him back. But Poile still believes Carpenter can make it there.Eaves will have no problem. He has proven his versatility before.Mullen has become a quality goalscorer. His 41 last season are bottom-line proof. The other wingers will be chosen from the likes of Ed Olczyk, David A. Jensen, Erickson, Bryan Mullen, Chris Nilan and Bob Brooke. There&rsquo;s a lot of potential there, but few NHL goals.The center-ice strength will not be reduced by the player shifts. Trottier, Neal Broten, Tom Fergus and LaFontaine should be starters. Aaron Broten, Brian Lawton and Scott Bjugstad will try to win spots. Lawton is a future star, but it will be interesting to watch his camp and see if he has improved enough from last season to make the team and if Nanne pushes him for a roster spot to vindicate choosing him first in 1983.Probably not. Nanne has long been a noisy booster of U.S. hockey and he realizes the high stakes here. Nanne and assistant Craig Patrick with administrators Art Berglund and Larry Johnson have presented Bob Johnson with a sound team. If Edmonton&rsquo;s Stanley Cup docs not disprove the adage that defense wins hockey games, Team USA has a good shot.&ldquo;They could possibly have the best defense and goaltending in the tournament,&rdquo; said Poile. &ldquo;The management and coaching has as much international experience as any in the touranment. Nanne and Craig Patrick played and coached in international hockey. Bob Johnson has coached in international hockey. There should be no surprises for them.&rdquo;But don&rsquo;t bet on it. Certainly adding Trottier&mdash;proving it was no idle boast from Nanne that it was possible&mdash;was a surprise.&ldquo;That could be like the Islanders getting LaFontaine and (Pat) Flatley for the playoffs, only with an even greater impact,&rdquo; said Poile. &ldquo;They have leadership on defense with Langway and a forward with Trottier.&rdquo;&ldquo;I think the one thing we need is chemistry.&rdquo; said Johnson, &ldquo;and that&rsquo;s what training camp is for.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0015-01

Best-Ever USA Lineup Fortified By Trottier

<div class="byline">BY FRANK ORR</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0016-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-011086/5130224-1-eng-US/f0016-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Sergei Shepelev and his Soviet Union teammates proved in 1981 that they had it all over their Canadian opponents, winning the championship game of the tournament 8-1 in Montreal. (Photo by Bruce Bennett)</figcaption></div>The hockey team that had it all doesn&rsquo;t any more.Vladislav Tretiak, the remarkable goaltender of the Soviet Union national team for the past dozen years, has retired and he could have a larger influence on the Canada Cup by not being there than any player who is on hand.Of course, there&rsquo;s been speculation that Tretiak&rsquo;s retirement will be short and when the USSR team arrives for the Cup, he&rsquo;ll be the goalie. However, all indications are that Tretiak has launched his new career as a goalie instructor at the Central Red Army sports club, leaving behind a hole that could turn out to be hockey&rsquo;s equivalent of the Grand Canyon.The vast Soviet hockey system&mdash;more than three million kids are in organized play&mdash;has produced the talent to maintain an orderly evolution in the national team roster. When the great 1960s&rsquo; teams with Anatoli Firsov, Veniamin Alexandrov and Alex Ragulin grew long in the tooth, Alexander Yakushev, Boris Mikhailov, Vladimir Petrov, Valeri Vasiliev and Valeri Kharlamov were there to boss international hockey in the &rsquo;70s.When the USSR lost the 1980 Olympics and had to make big changes in the roster. Viacheslav Fetisov. Alexei Kasatanov, Igor Larionov, Sergei Makarov and Nicoli Drozdetsky were set to win the 1981 Canada Cup and dominate international play for the next three years.However, no quality goalie has been groomed to replace Tretiak, unless the Soviets have had one hiding in the weeds ready to spring on the hockey world in the Canada Cup.Granted, one of the possible successors could turn out to be more than adequate. The logical contender is Vladimir Myshkin. Tretiak&rsquo;s back-up on the national team for the past five years. Myshkin, The goalie&mdash;sounds like something from Fiddler On The Roof, like Tevya The Milkman, doesn&rsquo;t it?&mdash;never has demonstrated front-line ability.Tretiak&rsquo;s back-up with Red Army, Alexander Tyzhnykh, is a candidate. So is Sergie Mylnykov from Traktor Cheliabinsk. Then there&rsquo;s Evgeny Belosheikin, 18. from the Soviet junior team.Tretiak, however, has been so good for so long, and that excellence such a big part of the Soviet sheme. that the comrades could have a very difficult adjustment to make to his absence. The confidence he supplied to the skaters in front of him was enormous.When the Philadelphia Flyers won those two Stanley Cups in the mid-&rsquo;70s, goalie Bernie Parent was their biggest asset. When he lost his edge in &rsquo;76, the Flyers&rsquo; reign ended quickly.&ldquo;When Bernie was at his peak, we never hesitated to take the extra little gamble, the chance that could backfire and give our opponents a good scoring chance, because we knew that Bernie would bail us out most times,&rdquo; said Flyer star, now team general manager. Bobby Clarke.&ldquo;When he slipped, we had to become more conservative and play cover-up. which meant we weren&rsquo;t as effective as a team.&rdquo;It could be that way now for the USSR nats.George Kingston, a member of the Canadian Olympic team coaching team in &rsquo;84. offered some interesting thoughts on Tretiak&rsquo;s departure.&ldquo;Every Soviet team for the past 12 years has been built on Tretiak&rsquo;s great goaltending and the players and coaches have no idea what it will be like to get along with ordinary goaltending,&rdquo; Kingston said.&ldquo;Their defensemen could take big gambles routinely because they had confidence the goalie would bail them out if they made a mistake. Look at what Tretiak did in the final of the 1981 Canada Cup. He held his team in the game in the first period when Canada could have been ahead by three goals.&ldquo;I think you can expect the Soviets to play a more conservative defensive game from now on. If they go to the attack the way they have, they&rsquo;ll be vulnerable without Tretiak.&rdquo;The remainder of the roster at coach Victor Tikhonov&rsquo;s disposal is extraordinary, one of the very best groups of players ever assembled on one team in hockey history.The defense is anchored by Viacheslav Fetisov and Alexei Kasatanov and it&rsquo;s difficult to remember a backline pair that combines the attributes of this duo. Perhaps Larry Robinson and Guy Lapointe when they worked together with Montreal Canadiens in the &rsquo;70s or Doug Harvey and Tom Johnson with the Canadien teams of the 50s brought as much to the dance.Fetisov skates backwards as fast as most players do forward, and both he and Kasatanov, large, strong men. handle the puck like small, slick forwards.&ldquo;Their mobility and acceleration are awesome; that&rsquo;s the only word for it,&rdquo; Robinson said after playing the USSR in a 1983 exhibition game.They have abundant aid, too, from Vasili Pervukhin, Zinetula Bilyaletdinov, Igor Stelnov and Sergei Starikov. Fetisov and Kasatanov are in a class by themselves and to demonstrate the USSR depth, quality doesn&rsquo;t drop all that far when they leave the ice.The forward cast is similarly deep and skilled. In fact, it&rsquo;s difficult to name the team&rsquo;s top attacker. Many European hockey experts rate Makarov as the best forward over there. But remember how ultra-quick Sergei Shepelev performed in the &rsquo;81 Canada Cup, especially in the final against Canada?At the Olympics, Drozdetsky, another beauty, popped out of the woodwork to produce 10 goals. NHL people drool when they watch Larionov, who plays center between Makarov and Vladimir Krutov on an exceptional forward line.Then there&rsquo;s hardboot centre Vladimir Kovin, a Dale Hunter type of pivot, who works on a fine line with his Gorky Torpedo wingers Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Varnikov.All the talent is masterminded by Tikhonov, a creative, brilliant coach who rules his troops with an iron hand.The Soviets have an advantage of much time as a unit with the national team. In addition, the heart of the team, a total of 16 national team players, are members of the Central Army club side, the perennial champs of Soviet hockey. The coach of that aggregation, of course, is Tikhonov.Thus, the Soviets provide an interesting feature to the Canada Cup. The absence of Tretiak makes them vulnerable and the way they compensate will be interesting to watch. &#9632;

f0016-01

Soviets May Be Vulnerable Without Tretiak

<div class="byline">BY FRANK ORR</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0017-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-01958/5130255-1-eng-US/f0017-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">One of the star Czechoslovakian nationals is forward Jiri Lala, above, who finished in a tie with young Jiri Dudacek as the team&rsquo;s leading scorer in the 1981 Canada Cup tourney. (Photos by Bruce Bennett)</figcaption></div>The game for the gold medal in the 1984 winter Olympic Games hockey tournament in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, was a neat, tidy affair, a trifle on the dull side, and the Soviet Union downed Czechoslovakia, 2-0.The USSR didn&rsquo;t really play to win; they played not to lose. The Czechs simply couldn&rsquo;t penetrate the Soviets&rsquo; excellent defensive shell to provide much of a menace for goalie Vladislav Tretiak.The silver medal and a good showing wasn&rsquo;t enough for the Czech hockey folks. Just as they were forced to reconstruct a sizeable portion of their national team after the 1980 Olympics, a move inspired, too, by the defection of Peter and Anton Stastny to the Quebec Nordiques, the Czechs didn&rsquo;t sit still after losing to the Soviets in Sarajevo.Because no world championship was held in an Olympic year, the big European hockey event of the spring was the Sweden Cup, a tournament for the top national teams. The Czechs employed a half dozen players who were not on the team in the Olympic Games and won the event, whipping the Soviets, 7-2, in the final.Some European hockey folks felt that the Soviets were not at their devastating best because the Swedish event was somewhat anti-climactic to the Olympics. But 7-2 over the USSR is, well, 7-2.&ldquo;Of course, such a win would have been better in the Olympics,&rdquo; said Dr. Miroslav Subrt, a long-time Czechoslovak hockey executive who is now the secretary of the Czech puck federation.&ldquo;But we were very pleased with the effort of our team, especially the potential displayed by some of the new players we used in Sweden. We&rsquo;re continuing to try to improve our team and the Canada Cup. where the level of play is very high, is a good test for us.&rdquo;The Czech lineup in the Canada Cup will contain two young players who loom large on the country&rsquo;s hockey horizon&mdash;Jiri Dudacek and Dominik Hasek.Dudacek. a winger, had a big year in 1981. then seemed to vanish from the game completely for three years. First, the National Hockey League&rsquo;s Central Scouting Bureau rated him as the best player available in the 1981 entry draft. Buffalo Sabres made Dudacek their first-round pick.Dudacek played impressively in the &rsquo;81 Canada Cup when he tied with Jiri Lala as the Czechs&rsquo; leading scorer. He surfaced in a few more events, then disappeared from international play. There was speculation that the Czechs didn&rsquo;t want him to defect to Buffalo and other rumbles that he was seriously ill.&ldquo;Dudacek did have some health problems,&rdquo; Subrt said. &ldquo;But he played extremely well with his club team (Dukla Jihlava) last season and then was strong in the Sweden Cup. Our coach (Ludek Bukac) feels that he can be a strong member of our team in the Canada Cup.&rdquo;After the retirements of Jiri Holecek, regarded as the best European goalie in the &rsquo;70s over Tretiak by many, and Vladimir Dzurilla, who played well against Team Canada in the &rsquo;76 Canada Cup, the Czechs had problems replacing them.Jiri Kralik and Karel Lang had shots at the job and didn&rsquo;t distinguish themselves. Jaromir Schindel played well in the Olympics but the Czech search for a top goalie continued.Hasek is only 19 but hopes are high that he&rsquo;ll be the man for the job. Now that Tretiak has retired and no quality replacment is available, the Czechs feel they could pass the Soviets if they had a high-quality goalie.&ldquo;Hasek is a goalie of very much promise,&rdquo; Subrt said. &ldquo;But don&rsquo;t forget that he is still just a boy. However, there&rsquo;s a very strong chance that he will be one of our two goalies (Schindel is the other one) for the Canada Cup.&rdquo;To make room for the roster additions, two more Czech veterans, defenseman Milan Chalupa and forward Frantisek Cernik. both 31, have been allowed to move to the NHL. They&rsquo;ve signed contracts with the Detroit Red Wings and won&rsquo;t play in the Canada Cup.&ldquo;Chalupa and Cernik have been very fine players for us and there is always a little pain when men who have contributed much to the team are replaced by younger players,&rdquo; Subrt said.&ldquo;But there is much transition in all sports in this time and if we want our hockey team to improve, then we must try new talent in important roles.&rdquo;The Czech backline is anchored by three good ones, all in their mid-20s, Miroslav Horava, Arnold Kadlec and Radoslav Svoboda.The Czech attack is fuelled by some forwards who rank with any in the world, all of them coveted by NHL teams.For instance, the leading Czech scorer in the Olympics was center Vladimir Ruzicka, an exceptionally talented, big, belligerent pivot. Toronto, who acquired center Peter Ihnacak on the second round of the 1982 draft, selected Ruzicka on a later round.Darius Rusnak, Jiri Hrdina. Lala, Vincent Lukatch, Pavel Richter, Igor Liba and Vladimir Caldr are other quality attackers.The Czechs have supplied Team Canada with some of its toughest competition in the two previous Canada Cup tournaments. Who can forget that wonderful 1-0 Czech victory in the &rsquo;76 Cup when Dzurilla blanked the Canadians and Milan Novy scored the goal in one of the best hockey games ever played? Or the second game of the final decided by Darryl Sittier&rsquo;s goal in overtime?In 1981, the Czechs battled the Canucks to a 3-3 tie in Winnipeg in another game that featured much heavy hitting by both teams.The ability to play the physical game has long been an attribute of the Czechs&rsquo; approach. They can use their great skill to play the European puck control game but they also are excellent forecheckers.Subrt claims the Czechs come to this year&rsquo;s Canada Cup with a modest ambition.&ldquo;The calibre of play in the Canada Cup is very good because all the best players in the world are there,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We are making some changes in our team and aren&rsquo;t certain how strong we will be.&ldquo;If we can participate in the semi-finals, we will be pleased because that is the first step we must take. We are looking forward to a very competitive tournament with much excellent hockey.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0017-01

Czechoslovaks Enter A Rebuilding Phase

<div class="byline">BY NEIL CAMPBELL</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0018-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-01988/5130286-1-eng-US/f0018-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Team Sweden will be missing a number of veterans with National Hockey League experience, but two who will be returning are Philadelphia Flyer defenseman Thomas Eriksson (16) and L.A. King forward Anders Hakansson (17), shown here against Team Canada&rsquo;s Mike Liut and Mike Bossy in the 1981 tournament. (Photo by Bruce Bennett)</figcaption></div>When the men of Tre Kronor realized the mess they made in the 1981 Canada Cup, they wept for what they had done.That coach Anders (The Duck) Parmstrom will not be around to open the Swedish floodgates as he did when he spoke at a private team dinner in 1981 is not the only reason there should be no tears in 1984.This time there should be none of the raised expectations that made 1981 such a disappointment for Swedish fans who had looked forward to a reunion of the heroes who had gone to North America to become rich.There should be no tears because, quite simply, nobody should expect very much. There will be too many amateurs and not enough of the old heroes in the Swedish lineup.Begin with the assumption that most of Sweden&rsquo;s best players now earn their livings in the National Hockey League and then say that the 1984 team has only 190 games of NHL experience from the blueline back and you have a picture of the challenge that faced new coach Leif Boork when he gathered his troops in Stockholm in July.Boork. who has had some success with Djurgarden of the Swedish Elite League, will do things a little differently than Parmstrom did in 1981. To begin with, he&rsquo;s had much more time to prepare.Parmstrom was a last-minute appointment and had to rely on the advice of some of his country&rsquo;s NHL veterans to pick a team. Boork, who knew about his assignment last Christmas, took a look at 24 of the 27 Swedes playing in the NHL on a quick Nonh American tour, then had another look at them on tape.The new coach and most other people associated with hockey in Sweden feel that Parmstrom&rsquo;s team left its best hockey behind it in a four-game pre-toumament series against the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. The Swedes lost 2-1 and 4-1 to the Soviets and first tied the Czechoslovaks, 5-5, then beat them, 7-3. They never played as well again. They were clubbed, 10-3, by Team Canada in an exhibition game in Winnipeg and, for Thomas Gradin and most of the Swedes, the tournament itself became a formality when they lost their opening game to the United States, the team they had to beat out for a playoff berth. After that, it was all downhill. When the Swedes concluded with a 7-1 loss to the Czechoslovak team they had beaten so easily back in Stockholm, the pain was obvious. &ldquo;If you lose 7-1,&rdquo; said Anders Hedberg, &ldquo;there is no explanation.&rdquo;As things came apart, the second-guessing began, with both players and a large Swedish press corps making Parmstrom the No. 1 target. &ldquo;1 don&rsquo;t want to get into boiling water over that.&rdquo; Hedberg said, but in private conversation his teammates were much more candid in criticizing Parmstrom&rsquo;s preparations.By the time the Swedes were eliminated. Toronto Maple Leaf defender Borje Salming was worn out from playing 40 minutes a game and Stefan Persson had had a nightmare of a tournament, playing the wrong side on defense.Hedberg, Salming and Persson all declined to go through more anguish in 1984. So did Jan Erixon, Hedberg&rsquo;s New York Ranger teammate; Bengt Lundholm of the Winnipeg Jets; Tomas Jonsson and Anders Kallur of the New York Islanders; and goaltender Pelle Lindberg of the Philadelphia Flyers, who first agreed to play, then changed his mind.Add to that list Islander veteran Bob Nystrom. who grew up in Canada but qualifies as a Swede because he was born in Stockholm, where his father was a policeman. Swedish officials wooed him all winter, but he told them Canada was his country.Salming is recovering from late-season knee surgery, but some of the other rejections angered Swedish hockey officials. &ldquo;I respect their decision but the younger players wouldn&rsquo;t be where they are without developing on the national team.&rdquo; Boork said.In Lindberg&rsquo;s absence, most of the goaltending load will fall on the shoulders of Peter Lindmark, who played better than his professional colleague in the 1981 tournament.It is on defense that the Swedes are in most serious difficulty. Only Thomas Eriksson of Philadelphia and Peter Andersson of the Washington Capitals, both of whom played their first full NHL seasons last winter, and Anders Eldebrink, who spent parts of two seasons with the Vancouver Canucks and Quebec Nordiques before going home to play for Sodertalje last winter, have professional experience.The only other defenseman back from 1981 is Djurgarden&rsquo;s Mats Waltin, who is 33. The best of the newcomers may be Ulf Samuelsson. who is large and mobile in the tradition of Swedish defensemen and who has signed to play with the Hartford Whalers.The Swedish forwards will be more familiar to North American fans. The holdovers from the 1981 team are Gradin, Patrick Sundstrom, a 38-goalscorer with Vancouver, veteran Kent Nilsson of the Calgary Flames. Anders Hakansson of the Los Angeles Kings, Thomas Steen of Winnipeg and Ulf Isaksson of Sweden&rsquo;s AIK club.Newcomers with NHL credentials are Calgary&rsquo;s Hakan Loob, Washington&rsquo;s Bengt Gustafsson, Mats Naslund of the Montreal Canadiens and Sundstrom&rsquo;s brother, Peter, of the New York Rangers.The rest of Tre Konor is the cream of the team that beat Canada to capture the bronze medal at the 1984 Winter Olympics.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re inexperienced,&rdquo; Gradin said. &ldquo;But with younger guys, we&rsquo;ll have more energy, more enthusiasm. Maybe we can do something with that.&rdquo;The youngsters will need all the enthusiasm they can muster if they get off on the wrong foot again in this year&rsquo;s tournament. They begin against the United States, but the one-two punch of the Soviets and Canada comes next. &#9632;

f0018-01

Swede’s Challenge: Win Minus Key Pros

<div class="byline">BY TOM RATSCHUNAS</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0019-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-01919/5130317-1-eng-US/f0019-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">One of the key West German players to watch is defenseman Uli Hiemer, who has signed with the NHL Devils and is shown here in action against Canada&rsquo;s Olympic Team last year. (Photo by Doug Shanks/Edmonton Sun)</figcaption></div>West Germany, to most North American hockey fans, heads into the 1984 Canada Cup as Brand X, the unknown quantity with a lot of unfamiliar faces, replacing Finland in the six-nation tournament.The Finns never mounted any sort of a serious Canada Cup challenge in the past two tournaments, but they did at least have some recognizable faces&mdash;Jari Kurri, Risto Siltanen and Reijo Ruotsalainen, to name just three&mdash;that hockey fans in Canada and the United States knew from National Hockey League play.Still, West German hockey is surging ahead and is in a period of relative prosperity. West Germany could be described as the United States of the European hockey scene&mdash;a large country where ice hockey is not a nationally-acclaimed sport, despite the fact that the game dates back to when hockey first arrived in Europe.Bavaria is the Minnesota of West Germany, the nursery for most of the hockey talent. It is this region which supplies the major league clubs with skillful, young players.West German hockey is on the crest of a wave since Xavier Unsinn took over as coach for the 1981-82 season. As far as the Canada Cup is concerned, the West Germans are more likely to cope better than the Finns with the North American syndrome. The Finns biggest problem was getting engrossed in the ambience of the event to such an extent that they lost concentration in the tournament.The Germans, on the other hand, know that the Canada Cup could be a once in a lifetime affair, a real honor, while the Finns have been taking their participation for granted.Since the early &rsquo;70s, the competitive backbone of the German national team has consisted of three elements&mdash;a hot goalie, a defensive anchor and an offensive star. The goaltending star for the past three years has been Winnipeg-born Karl Friesen. And since 1973. the defense and offense have been masterminded by only two players&mdash;defenseman Udo Kiessling, who played one game with the Minnesota North Stars in the spring of 1982, and giant attacker, 6-foot-7 Erich Kuhnhackl, the Czechoslovakian-born center who has resisted numerous National Hockey League offers, preferring to stay in Germany, where his salary is estimated to be anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000 (U.S.) per year.This will be the trio that must provide the leadership in the Canada Cup.Kuhnhackl is a veritable scoring machine who is nearing the end of an illustrious career. He&rsquo;ll be 34 in October and, while he&rsquo;s expected to play another couple of seasons, the Canada Cup may well be the crowning achievement in his career.He&rsquo;s strictly a one-way player, rarely returning to his own end of the ice. Some hockey people compare his role to that of a striker in soccer, waiting to be fed the puck and playing only offense.Compared to the West German team which competed in the Winter Olympics at Sarajevo last February, there are few changes. One player has been dropped and four new names have been added.Peter Obresa, selected as the top winger in West German league play last season, has only five appearances for the national team but is considered a rising young star. Dieter Medicus, Holger Meitinger and Peter Schiller are three players who have seen action with the national team before, but didn&rsquo;t make the Olympic squad. Now, they&rsquo;ve been recalled for the Canada Cup.Medicus was the last player dropped before Sarajevo. Schiller, a defensive forward whose approach to the game will help the West Gentians in the Canada Cup, was feuding with Unsinn last year and was left off the team. The two patched up their differences, so Schiller is back. Meitinger, a talented winger who has shown flashes of rivalling Kuhnackl&rsquo;s amazing offensive prowess, has been hurt by a series of injuries for the past two seasons, and he has yet to prove he is in top form.The West German national team includes the only two German-bom NHL draft choices ever. Dieter Hegen and Uli Hiemer were both third-round picks in the 1981 NHL entry draft.Hegen was taken by the Montreal Canadiens (46th overall) and Hiemer went to the Colorado Rockies (now New Jersey Devils) two picks later. Hiemer has signed a contract with the Devils and is expected to join them immediately after the Canada Cup tournament is over. Hiemer&rsquo;s best attributes are his size and tenacity, but Hegen is considered the budding superstar.Hegen has the pressure on him to become the new Kuhnhackl and he is steadily improving at the senior level, having been a wunderkid in the West German junior leagues.The squad also includes four Canadian-born players. Friesen, the No. 1 netminder, and Harold Kreis are from Winnipeg. Manfred Wolf is from Toronto and Ray Roedger is from Western Ontario. All four are national team veterans. Kreis has 83 national appearances with 11 goals and five major tournaments. Wolf has 69 games, 17 goals and four tournaments while Roedger has 51 games, 14 goals and three tournaments. Friesen has been guarding the German net on 49 occasions. His tournament stats include an .886 save precentage in 21 games.The appearance leaders on the German team are Kuhnhackl (192), Ignas Bernd (165), Kiessling (163) and Franz Reindl (138). It is no coincidence that these four are the only remaining players from West German&rsquo;s only major hockey success in the modem era, an Olympic bronze medal at Innsbruck in 1976.Kuhnhackl is also the all-time leading scorer with 124 goals, well ahead of retired runner-up Rainer Philipp, who had 90. All-time leaders in appearances are Lorenz Funk (225), Alois Schloder (206) and Philipp (199), with Kuhnhackl in fourth place. Schloder and Philipp were Kuhnackl&rsquo;s wingers on the national team.In recent years, though, only one man, Helmut Steiger, who plays on Landshutt with Kuhnhackl, has been a fixture on the star&rsquo;s line. A great many right wingers have been tried on the line, including Hegen, who was moved over from center. This year, Michael West, 22, of Rosenheim has been the most common choice.At the Olympics, the other lines were more or less permanent. Franz Reindl, Gerd Truntschka and Al Treffner form another unit. Canadians Wolf and Roedger usually play together with the third man changing from game to game.The skating ability&mdash;relatively average&mdash;of the West German team will be a little less critical in the Canada Cup. Playing on the smaller North American ice surfaces will be welcomed by the West Germans.The team&rsquo;s strongest point is its teamwork and cohesiveness. It has had much the same personnel for the past four years and the new players who have been added are from the same club teams as other national players, thus maintaining the unity.The style of play employed by the West Germans is more North American than European. They have little of the flow-and-motion offense that the Soviets, Czechs and Swedes employ on a regular basis. They have been strongly influenced by North American hockey and, at times, they play a dump-and-chase game.Before Unsinn arrived on the scene. West German hockey was in some turmoil. When Schloder. Kuhnhackl&rsquo;s long-time linemate, was dropped from the national squad, Kuhnhackl and Kiessling boycotted the national program and refused to play one year. Unsinn came in, smoothed over the rough spots and the team is a happy unit that has progressed steadily over the last few years.Having said all that, it isn&rsquo;t realistic to expect the West Germans to finish anywhere but sixth in the six-team tournament. Quite simply, they lack the world-class talent it takes to be competitive in a tournament such as the Canada Cup. But they&rsquo;re honored to be a part of it and they&rsquo;ll be working hard to give a good account of themselves. &#9632;

f0019-01

National Program Rides Crest Of Wave

<div class="byline">BY HOWARD BERGER</div>Despite some severe media criticism over the price of tickets for the 1984 Canada Cup, most of the eight venues report brisk sales&mdash;particularly in those games involving Canada or the United States.Single-game ticket prices, soaring as high as $35 for box seats in Edmonton and Calgary, caused somewhat of an up-roar when the Cup organizing committee announced the various stipends in midJuly. But those were nearing sellouts as the tournament&rsquo;s opening day of Sept. I approached.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re quite pleased with ticket sales in Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal and Halifax.&rdquo; reporteda spokesman for the Sports Management Group, promoters of the tournament. &ldquo;Vancouver has been a little disappointing, so far. but we expect things to pick up out there as the event grows closer. On a whole. I&rsquo;d say ticket sales are going at just about the exact rate we figured they would at this particular stage.&rdquo;Tickets in cities that will be host to more than one match are being sold in multi-game packages, with National Hockey League season-ticket holders receiving second-crack at the best seats.&ldquo;All of the tournament&rsquo;s major corporate sponsors have been promised X number of seats and season-ticket holders will be given the next choice on a first-come, first-serve basis,&rdquo; the spokesman said. &ldquo;Letters were sent out to season subscribers in all the cities and they had deadlines to meet before the remaining tickets went on sale to the general public.&rdquo;Here is a city-by-city breakdown on ticket information:EDMONTON&mdash;The Northlands Coliseum, home of the Stanley Cupchampion Oilers, will be host to a tournament-high seven games, including the second and possible-third games of the best-of-three final round, Sept. 18th and 20th. Currently, a seven-game package is being offered with prices quoted at $192.50, $157.50 and $115.50. After the lone pre-toumament match at Northlands (Canada vs. U.S., Aug. 15th). the remaining six tournament games will be sold in packages which cost $165, $135 and $99.&ldquo;The advantage in buying the sevengame package now is that you&rsquo;ll be guaranteed better seats for the regular games,&rdquo; explained the SMG spokesman. Individual seats for games in Edmonton cost $35, $27.50, $22 and $16.50.CALGARY&mdash;The Olympic Saddledome will be host to six games, all in the actual tournament. This includes the only doubleheader of the event. Sept. 8th, when Canada and the Czechs face off at I p.m., and Sweden and West Germany follow at five. Game One of the final will also be played in the Saddledome and the six-game package is worth $165. $135 and $90. Single-game tickets cost $35, $27.50, $22.50 and $15.VANCOUVER&mdash;Two games, including the Canada-Sweden match. Sept. 6th. will be played in the Pacific Coliseum. The package costs $50, $40 and $30 while single-game prices are $27.50, $22.50. $16.50 and $10. Tickets for all games in the west (Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver) are being handled through Best Available Seating Service (BASS) outlets in each city.MONTREAL&mdash;Each of the first two Canada titles were decided in the immortal Forum but this year&rsquo;s playoffs will be held out west. Montreal offers a six-game package, including three pretournament games. Ticket prices are $150, $132, $120, $108 and $90. Singlegame prices are $30, $25, $22, $20, $18 and $15.HALIFAX&mdash;The Metro Centre, scheduled to be host to two games, became the site of a third match when hockey fans in Detroit failed to respond to a proposed pre-tournament match between Canada and the U.S., Aug. 22nd. Halifax welcomed the game, which will be played Aug. 23rd, and tickets for the match are now on sale. The original two-game package, including the tournament match between Sweden and the U.S. (Sept. 2nd), is selling for $38 and $28.50. Individual tickets for the two games go on sale Aug. 23rd and cost $20 and $15.BLOOMINGTON, MN&mdash;The Met ropolitan Sports Centre, home of the North Stars, will be host to pretournament games, including the Canada-U.S. affair. Aug. 16th. The package costs $18. $12 and $9 (American funds) while individual-game tickets are $12. $9 and $6.LONDON, Ont.&mdash;The West Germans will play one pre and one regulartournament game at the 4,735-seat London Gardens. All seats for the exhibition match with Sweden, Aug. 29th, were purchased by Labatt&rsquo;s&mdash;the tournament&rsquo;s major sponsor&mdash;and will be sold through various charities in London. Tickets for the game against Czechoslovakia. Sept. 4th, cost $15 and $10 and can be purchased by sending a certified cheque or money order, plus a selfaddressed stamped envelope to: London Gardens Ltd., 1408 Wellington Rd. South, London. Ont. N6E 2Z5.BUFFALO&mdash;The U.S. and Czechs will face off in the Memorial Auditorium. Sept. 6th, and 5,000 Buffalo Sabre season-ticket holders responded to requests. The remaining tickets, which cost $19 across the board, are now on sale at the Auditorium box office. &#9632;

Tickets For Tournament Selling Briskly

<div class="byline">BY STAN FISCHLER</div>Team USA will win The Canada Cup.That&rsquo;s one man&rsquo;s opinion&mdash;and a minority view, at that&mdash;but it symbolizes the diversity in predicting the ultimate winner of the tournament that, to some, is the true World Cup of hockey.To obtain a consensus of experts, THE HOCKEY NEWS polled a crosssection of general managers, coaches, league executives and journalists for their views.The prevailing view, although by no means unanimous, is that the Canadians will win the Cup, which they lost to the Soviet Union in 1981 after capturing the inaugural title in 1976.Of the 23 polled, nine favored Canada to win it, three picked the Soviet Union and two opted for Team USA.Nine pundits were hesitant to make a definitive choice because of the uncertainty of the final roster to be submitted by the Soviets.One of those questioned. American Olympic coach Lou Vairo, believes that Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak will pull an 11th-hour surprise and play for his team, despite reports he&rsquo;s retired.&ldquo;When the Russians show up without him,&rdquo; says Vairo, now an assistant coach with the New Jersey Devils, &ldquo;then I&rsquo;ll believe it.&rdquo;Detroit Red Wing general manager Jimmy Devellano doesn&rsquo;t believe the Russians or Canadians will annex the trophy. Jimmy D. unequivocally opines that an upset is in the works and that the Americans will be doing the surprising.&ldquo;The Americans will win it,&rdquo; says Devellano. &ldquo;And I think Bryan Trottier will swing the pendulum for them. The advantage the Americans have is that they&rsquo;re very well coached and, on top of that, it helps that they&rsquo;re in the underdog position. The only thing that might hurt Team USA is lack of preparation.&rdquo;Other NHL general managers concede that the addition of Trottier gives Team USA a substantial boost but they add that it is not likely enough to put them over the top. Cliff Fletcher of the Calgary Flames holds that view.&ldquo;This is best team the United States has ever had,&rdquo; says Fletcher, &ldquo;but they will miss Mark Pavelich, Mark Howe and Ken Morrow. Trottier will make a significant contribution.&rdquo;The ultimate winner?&ldquo;I think Canada will prevail,&rdquo; Fletcher concludes, &ldquo;although it will be very close. I&rsquo;m not sure how the Soviets will react without Tretiak and because of that, I&rsquo;ll go with the Canadians.&rdquo;New York Islanders president-GM Bill Torrey agrees that goaltending will, ultimately, be decisive in determining the winner but disagrees that the absence of Tretiak will torpedo the Soviets.&ldquo;In my mind,&rdquo; says Torrey, &ldquo;the Russians are the favorites. You have to say that but the Americans, Canadians and Czechs all have good chances. In the end the team with the best goaltending will win it.&rdquo;Torrey&rsquo;s division rival. Max McNab of the Devils, picks Team Canada.&ldquo;The Edmonton (Oilers) players are the key,&rdquo; McNab asserts. &ldquo;And the home-town, home-ice advantage also will help the Canadians.&rdquo;McNab believes the tournament will be one of the most artistic of all time, and does not foresee any slippage in the Soviet play because of Tretiak&rsquo;s absence.&ldquo;The Russians will have someone good to take his place,&rdquo; says NcNab. &ldquo;As good as Team Canada is, the Russians will come in very highly-regarded because they spent the whole year preparing for a tournament like this. Their program is geared for the two-week tourney. But what I like about the Canadians in their intensity.&rdquo;McNab dismisses the Americans as a major challenger among the Big Three. After the Canadians and Russians, the Czechs will finish third, he suggests, adding that the &ldquo;U.S. will still do well.&rdquo;Neither the Czechs or Americans are given a tumble by Toronto Globe and Mail hockey writer Bill Houston. He notes that the Canadians have &ldquo;the best schedule&rdquo; but, in spite of that, picks the Russians.&ldquo;For Canada to win,&rdquo; Houston explains, &ldquo;it would have to be an upset. The Russians have the best national team in the world&mdash;even without Tretiak. They always come up with somebody just as good when a star retires.&rdquo;Many of those polled, such as Houston, estimate that the relatively short preparation time will hinder the Canadians and Americans.&ldquo;Unlike the two North American teams, the Russians have been preparing for the last few months,&rdquo; says Houston. &ldquo;And the Russians play together so much.&rdquo;Several prognosticators were unsure how much Trottier&rsquo;s presence would add to Team USA, although all agree that American manager Lou Nanne pulled a coup in landing him.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s the best two-way player in the NHL,&rdquo; says Nanne, &ldquo;and he gives us a big plus. But we&rsquo;re still a darkhorse. Russia and Canada are the cool favorites.&rdquo;Hartford Whaler GM Emile Francis is so little awed by the Russians that he foresees a final match-up between the Canadians and Americans.&ldquo;Canada,&rdquo; Francis points out, &ldquo;has the enthusiasm and the nucleus of the Stanley Cup champions. The U.S. has the goaltending of Tom Barrasso and Chico Resch, and a good defense. I don&rsquo;t see the Russians coming up with a new Tretiak.&rdquo;Both Francis and Nanne add that they are fervently hoping for a USA-Canada finale.&ldquo;That,&rdquo; says Nanne. &ldquo;is what we&rsquo;re dreaming about.&rdquo;Nanne&rsquo;s Minnesota North Star coach Bill Mahoney figures the Canadians will win the Cup.&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; says Mahoney, &ldquo;the Soviets are the favorites but I&rsquo;ll take the Canadians. They have the home ice and that&rsquo;s to their advantage.&rdquo;Mahoney gives the Americans a chance&mdash;&rdquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if they take it&rdquo;&mdash;and, similar to Vairo, would not be the least bit surprised if the Soviets pull Tretiak out of their hat and start him in the series.&ldquo;The Russians have been known to use those kinds of tactics,&rdquo; says Mahoney. &ldquo;Without Tretiak, the Soviets&rsquo; skating and checking game will have to be upgraded.&rdquo;Team Canada&rsquo;s head honcho Alan Eagleson, an ardent Canadian nationalist, likes the home club for interesting reasons.&ldquo;Canada will win,&rdquo; Eagleson declares. &ldquo;I say this first of all because I&rsquo;m a Canadian. Team USA will be second because all of its members are NHL union members. Sweden will be next because half of the Swedish team is made up of NHL union members. The Czechs will be next because about a third of their personnel is made up of NHL union members.&ldquo;Having said this I&rsquo;ll conclude that Canada, USA, the Soviets and Czechs all will have formidable squads.&rdquo;Less subjective was prize-winning author Roger (The Boys of Summer) Kahn, who frequently writes on hockey and witnessed the previous Canada Cup tourneys. Kahn likes the Russians.&ldquo;The Soviets are to the Canada Cup,&rdquo; says Kahn, &ldquo;what the Romanians are to gymnastics: They don&rsquo;t lose. One of the reasons I pick them is that I remember the 8-1 blasting they gave the Canadians and the presentation afterward. I never saw a worse looking grin on anyone&rsquo;s face than that on Pierre Trudeau when he gave the Russians the trophy.&ldquo;The Russians are very deceptive. They start the series at a low level and they keep raising the level of their game.&rdquo;New York Ranger GM Craig Patrick is hoping to raise the level of Team USA&rsquo;s game. Patrick, who is working with Uncle Sam&rsquo;s six, is the only expert, other than Devellano, who dares go out on a limb and predict an American victory.&ldquo;Naturally, I pick the U.S.,&rdquo; Many of those polled&mdash;including Phil Esposito, Bobby Clarke and Hal Trumble&mdash;remained in the undecided category. To wit:Phil Esposito: &ldquo;I have no idea who will win. I haven&rsquo;t been following it, and I probably won&rsquo;t watch it unless I am in Canada visiting my father. All can say is that I hope and pray that it is a U.S.-Canada final so that we can kick the pants off those Soviets and Czechs and the rest of the Communists.&rdquo;Bobby Clarke: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know who will win. I don&rsquo;t know a thing about the Soviets or the Czechs. I know that the U.S. and Canada have good teams, but it would be foolish to expect the Soviets not to send over a good team.Hal Trumble (executive director, Amateur Hockey Association of the United States): &ldquo;I just couldn&rsquo;t predict at this point. The Canada Cup involves the best six teams in the world. It&rsquo;s just so competitive and that&rsquo;s what makes it such a great tournament.&rdquo; &#9632;

Who’ll Win It All? Depends Who You Ask…

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-01666/5130613-1-eng-US/f0022-012.jpg" title="f0022-01" width="286" height="397"></div>GRANT FUHR, Edmonton Oilers&mdash;Fuhr established himself as the Oilers&rsquo; No. 1 goalie last season, sporting a 3.91 goals-against average in 45 games. He was especially good in the playoffs, recording a 2.99 average in 16 games. A first-round pick of the Oilers in 1981, Fuhr has had an up-and-down career, but the 21-year-old appears to have regained his form.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-02474/5130606-1-eng-US/f0022-022.jpg" title="f0022-02" width="284" height="394"></div>REGGIE LEMELIN, Calgary Hames&mdash;Considered one of the most underrated goalies in the league, Lemelin is the darling of the Flame fans. Had a 3.50 goals-against average in 51 games last season, and proved his value to the team in the playoffs, when the Flames almost upset Edmonton. Was given a new long-term contract in the offseason.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-03367/5130599-1-eng-US/f0022-032.jpg" title="f0022-03" width="291" height="401"></div>PETE PEETERS, Boston. Bruins&mdash;One of the National Hockey League&rsquo;s bulwarks in goal, Peeters played 50 games last season and had a 3.16 goals-against average. Had an amazing year in 1982-83, when he won the Vezina Trophy as the top goalie, with a 2.36 average in 62 games. Peeters, 27, broke into the league with Phi-ladelphia in 1978 and has shown at times he can be one of the best goalies in the league.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-04267/5130592-1-eng-US/f0022-042.jpg" title="f0022-04" width="293" height="408"></div>RAY BOURQUE, Boston Bruins&mdash;Bourque, 23, was a first-team all-star last season after producing 96 points. A first-round pick of the Bruins in 1979, Bourque won the Calder Trophy in his rookie year. Possesses both offensive and defensive skills, but stands out for his skating talents, which was one of the reasons he was chosen to play for Canada. Should be an important man on Team Canada&rsquo;s power play.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-05217/5130585-1-eng-US/f0022-052.jpg" title="f0022-05" width="288" height="397"></div>PAUL COFFEY, Edmonton Oilers&mdash;Became only the third defenseman in National Hockey League history to record at least 100 points, when he totalled 126 points last season. Coffey is considered one of the swiftest skaters in the league, though many people underestimate his defensive play. A free agent heading into the Cup, Coffey is considered to be close to signing a new contract with the Oilers.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-06173/5130578-1-eng-US/f0022-062.jpg" title="f0022-06" width="287" height="403"></div>RANDY GREGG, Edmonton Oilers&mdash;Gregg is valuable because he has international experience, having captained Team Canada in 1980. In terms of smarts, Gregg ranks among the top in the league. When he isn&rsquo;t playing hockey, he can usually be found with his nose in a medical textbook. They call him Dr. Randy Gregg, because he plans on working as a doctor after he&rsquo;s finished playing hockey.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-07152/5130571-1-eng-US/f0022-072.jpg" title="f0022-07" width="287" height="398"></div>CHARLIE HUDDY, Edmonton Oilers&mdash;Huddy was signed as a free agent in 1979 and worked his way up from the minor leagues to become the first-ever Emery Edge Award winner with the top plus-minus figure in 1982-83. Partnered with Paul Coffey on the Oilers, Huddy isn&rsquo;t flashy, but he&rsquo;s one of the steadiest at his position in the league and doesn&rsquo;t make too many mistakes.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-08137/5130564-1-eng-US/f0022-082.jpg" title="f0022-08" width="284" height="390"></div>KEVIN LOWE, Edmonton Oilers&mdash;In his first few years in the league, Lowe was known simply as Wayne Gretzky&rsquo;s roommate. But last summer his value to the Oilers became apparent when they rewarded him with a new long-term contract. He was the Oilers&rsquo; first-round pick in 1979, and each year he has shown steady improvement. He&rsquo;s 25, and it appears he&rsquo;s just hitting stride.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-09128/5130557-1-eng-US/f0022-092.jpg" title="f0022-09" width="298" height="416"></div>MARIO MAROIS, Quebec Nordiques&mdash;A replacement for Denis Potvin, Marois is no slouch. He&rsquo;s captain of the Nordiques, and has become one of the steadiest defensemen in the league, after stints in New York and Vancouver. Was the Nordiques&rsquo; leading defenseman last season, and had his best campaign in the NHL with 49 points. The 26-year-old missed most of the 1982-83 season after breaking his leg in an exhibition match against the Soviets.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-10117/5130550-1-eng-US/f0022-102.jpg" title="f0022-10" width="285" height="394"></div>JAMES PATRICK, New York Rangers&mdash;He&rsquo;s only 21, but Patrick has developed rapidly. Played for Team Canada at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia and was its top defenseman. He then signed with the Rangers and played amazingly well in the playoffs. He can move the puck better than anyone of the Ranger rear-guards, and should be a leading candidate for Rookie-of-the-Year honors this season.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-11112/5130543-1-eng-US/f0022-112.jpg" title="f0022-11" width="285" height="407"></div>LARRY ROBINSON, Montreal Canadiens&mdash;Robinson was the senior statesman on Team Canada in 1981 and three years later at age 33 he&rsquo;s again the old man on the Canucks&rsquo; roster. Aside from the &rsquo;81 competition, Robinson has played in the &rsquo;79 Challenge Cup and was the top defenseman in the &rsquo;81 World Championships. He&rsquo;s a twotime winner of the Norris Trophy, five-time all-star, and winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1978.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-12105/5130536-1-eng-US/f0022-122.jpg" title="f0022-12" width="280" height="403"></div>SCOTT STEVENS, Washington Capitals&mdash;One of the prinicipal reasons the Capitals are considered to have one of the best defense corps in the league. Stevens, only 20, has two years of National Hockey League ex-perience, including a selection of the All-Rookie Team in 1983. He is one of the strongest players in the league, and one of the best fighters. He&rsquo;s also exceptionally talented, and is willing to work hard to improve.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-1397/5130529-1-eng-US/f0022-132.jpg" title="f0022-13" width="288" height="400"></div>DOUG WILSON, Chicago Black Hawks&mdash;Wilson won the Norris Trophy as the top defenseman in 1982 and was also chosen as a first-team all-star. At age 27, he has seven seasons of National Hockey League play to his credit and his experience will come in handy on the green Team Canada defense. Still possesses one of the best slapshots in the league, and can move the puck well.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-1488/5130522-1-eng-US/f0022-142.jpg" title="f0022-14" width="289" height="391"></div>GLENN ANDERSON, Edmonton Oilers&mdash;Anderson played for Team Canada in the 1980 Olympic Games in Lake Placid, and has since become one of the best right wingers in the National Hockey League. Aside from being a great goalscorer (102 in the last two seasons, including 54 last season), he&rsquo;s possesses tremendous speed. When Anderson wants to play, he is among the hardest to stop. He could be an all-star if it wasn&rsquo;t for Finnish teammate Jari Kurri.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-1585/5130515-1-eng-US/f0022-152.jpg" title="f0022-15" width="283" height="395"></div>BRIAN BELLOWS, Minnesota North Stars&mdash;Bellows became the youngest captain in National Hockey League history last season, when he was given the &lsquo;C&rsquo; in the absence of Craig Hartsburg. He led the Kitchener Rangers to the Memorial Cup in 1982 and was one of the most sought after juniors that year. Came on strongly in the second half of his rookie year, and was impressive last season. Turns 20 on Sept. 1.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-1677/5130508-1-eng-US/f0022-162.jpg" title="f0022-16" width="281" height="391"></div>MIKE BOSSY, New York Islanders&mdash;Bossy, 27, played in the last Canada Cup and in the 1979 Challenge Cup. After scoring at least 60 goals in four of the past five seasons, Bossy slipped to 51 in last season, but he still finished on the first all-star team. More importantly, he received recognition for his all-around play, something in which he took a lot of pride.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-1770/5130501-1-eng-US/f0022-172.jpg" title="f0022-17" width="293" height="402"></div>BOB BOURNE, New York Islanders&mdash;It&rsquo;s interesting to note that in lieu of some of the publicity surrounding free agents such as Paul Coffey and Glenn Anderson, Bourne almost skipped the last Canada Cup three years ago because he was in the same situation and didn&rsquo;t want to risk an injury. He&rsquo;s 30 and is not the great player he was three years ago, but speed and experience may be in his favor. Although he&rsquo;s primarily a left winger, he can play center.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-1869/5130494-1-eng-US/f0022-182.jpg" title="f0022-18" width="292" height="394"></div>MIKE GARTNER, Washington Capitals&mdash;Gartner has the speed which Team Canada coach Glen Sather is using as a prerequisite in his selection process, but he&rsquo;s also a talented offensive player. He&rsquo;s averaged at least a point a game since joining the National Hockey League from the World Hockey Association in 1979-80. Only 24, Gartner played in the previous Canada Cup and was a leading performer in the &rsquo;81 World Championships.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-1969/5130487-1-eng-US/f0022-192.jpg" title="f0022-19" width="268" height="397"></div>MICHEL GOULET, Quebec Nordiques&mdash;Arguably the best left winger in the National Hockey League, Goulet has never looked back since abandoning junior hockey at the age of 18 to join the pros with Birmingham Bulls of the World Hockey Association in 1978. Since then, he has blossomed into a great goalscorer, and last season totalled at least 50 goals for the second consecutive year. He became a first-team all-star for the second consecutive season.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-2067/5130480-1-eng-US/f0022-202.jpg" title="f0022-20" width="295" height="397"></div>WAYNE GRETZKY, Edmonton Oilers&mdash;If you haven&rsquo;t heard of Gretzky by now, then you&rsquo;re living on the moon and don&rsquo;t have pay-TV. Gretzky, known as The Great One, The Kid, or simply, Wayne, is unparalleled in hockey. Last season, he added the Stanley Cup to his list of achievements. Some would argue that at 23, Gretzky has little left to accomplish, but the Canada Cup is one trophy which has eluded him.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-2163/5130473-1-eng-US/f0022-212.jpg" title="f0022-21" width="271" height="398"></div>MARK MESSIER, Edmonton Oilers&mdash;One of the best players in the game today. He can skate with just about anybody, and still come out ahead. His value to the team, aside from his goalscoring and recent Conn Smythe Trophy as the Most Valuable Player in the recent playoffs, is his versatility. He can play either left wing or center. Messier, 23, has been an all-star the last three seasons.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-2254/5130466-1-eng-US/f0022-222.jpg" title="f0022-22" width="302" height="404"></div>RICK MIDDLETON, Boston Bruins&mdash;Middleton, the man they call, Nifty, is the consummate winger in hockey today. He can put the puck in the net, or blanket an opposition player when he&rsquo;s not in the defensive zone. He&rsquo;s 30, but his talent seems to improve with age. With 105 points in 1983-84, he had his best campaign ever in 10 National Hockey League seasons. In addition to scoring, he has that all-important speed.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-2349/5130459-1-eng-US/f0022-232.jpg" title="f0022-23" width="290" height="394"></div>DENIS SAVARD, Chicago Black Hawks&mdash;Savard, 23, is an &rsquo;80s version of the Roadrunner, Yvan Cournoyer. He is one of the most exciting players in the world today, and has speed to burn. Also, he has exceptional moves, the ones opposition defensemen find hard to stop. While he may have slumped to 94 points last season after two consecutive seasons of over 100 points, he should excel in this type of competition.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-2439/5130452-1-eng-US/f0022-242.jpg" title="f0022-24" width="277" height="394"></div>AL SECORD, Chicago Black Hawks&mdash;Secord had a 54-goal season in 1982-83 and big things were expected of him last season, but a serious abdominal injury caused him to miss most of it. He&rsquo;s had a summer of rest, and if his health is okay, he&rsquo;ll be looking to get off to a good start at the Canada Cup. Secord, 26, was a first-round pick of the Bruins in 1978, but six years later he&rsquo;s playing for Chicago and is a star for the Hawks.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-2525/5130445-1-eng-US/f0022-252.jpg" title="f0022-25" width="274" height="409"></div>PETER STASTNY, Quebec Nordiques&mdash;Stastny, the middle brother of the Stastny clan, became a Canadian citizen last season. He&rsquo;s 28 and a veteran of international competition, but it will be interesting to see how he fares playing for a new country in this competition. He&rsquo;s already proven he can play in the National Hockey League, but playing in the Canada Cup will undoubtedly present a new challenge for him.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-2616/5130438-1-eng-US/f0022-262.jpg" title="f0022-26" width="294" height="397"></div>BRENT SUTTER, New York Islanders&mdash;Brent, the youngest of the Sutter brothers playing in the National Hockey League, joins his oldest brother, Brian, on Team Canada. Brent, 22, was the Islanders&rsquo; first choice in 1980 and has been an important man for them since earning full-time duty midway through the 1981 - 82 season. Thrives under pressure and is a good &lsquo;money&rsquo; man.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-2710/5130431-1-eng-US/f0022-272.jpg" title="f0022-27" width="299" height="397"></div>BRIAN SUTTER, St. Louis Blues&mdash;There may be a lot more talented players in the National Hockey League, but few play with as much grit as Sutter, the eldest (28) of the Sutter brothers from Viking, Sask. If Team Canada coach Glen Sather is looking for toughness along the boards, he&rsquo;ll receive that and more from Sutter. He&rsquo;s not pretty, but he likes to work hard and is not afraid to mix it up to help his team.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-286/5130424-1-eng-US/f0022-282.jpg" title="f0022-28" width="294" height="403"></div>JOHN TONELLI, New York Islanders&mdash;This is the one player whom every coach would love to have, because he has an endless supply of energy. He has risen from being a kid on Gordie Howe&rsquo;s line in the World Hockey Association to one of the best wingers in the National Hockey League. Tonelli, 27, has never totalled more than 71 points in the NHL, but his value can be measured in more than just points.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-295/5130417-1-eng-US/f0022-292.jpg" title="f0022-29" width="266" height="398"></div>SYLVAIN TURGEON, Hartford Whalers&mdash;Turgeon, nicknamed Sly, is only 19. However, he&rsquo;s just completed a good rookie year, in which he led the Whalers with 40 goals and was third in team scoring with 72 points. Was voted to the All-Rookie Team on left wing, despite being drafted as a center. Picked second overall in the 1983 draft and is a big man in the future of the Whalers.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-302/5130410-1-eng-US/f0022-302.jpg" title="f0022-30" width="289" height="410"></div>RICK VAIVE, Toronto Maple Leafs&mdash;Vaive, 25, is the captain of the Maple Leafs, and their best player. Recorded his third consecutive season of at least 50 goals in 1983-84, after becoming the first player in Leaf history to reach the magic 50 in 1981-82. Signed a new multi-year contract in the off-season, which will make him one of the best-paid athletes in the city. Vaive was one of six 18-year-olds who left junior hockey to play with Birmingham in 1978-79.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-312/5130403-1-eng-US/f0022-312.jpg" title="f0022-31" width="286" height="400"></div>STEVE YZERMAN, Detroit Red Wings&mdash;Multi-talented 19-year-old who starred in his rookie season with Detroit after the Wings selected him fourth overall in the 1983 entry draft. Finished second to Tom Barras-so of Buffalo in the Rookie-of-the-Year balloting, but was given a $25,000 bonus by Red Wing owner, Mike Hitch, for his outstanding season. Yzerman led the team in scoring with 87 points, including 39 goals.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-32/5130396-1-eng-US/f0022-322.jpg" title="f0022-32" width="286" height="403"></div>GLEN SATHER, General manager and coach&mdash;Sather guided Edmonton to their first Stanley Cup last season, after the Oilers lost in the finals in 1983-84. A tough winger in nine seasons in the National Hockey League, Sather became coach and vicepresident of hockey operations in in 1977 when the Oilers were part of the World Hockey Association. When the Oilers joined the NHL in 1979, Sather was given additional titles of general manager and president. &#9632;

f0022-01

TEAM CANADA ’84

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-01603/5130861-1-eng-US/f0023-012.jpg" title="f0023-01" width="281" height="387"></div>TOM BARRASSO, Buffalo Sabres&mdash;Barrasso, 19, moved directly from high school in Massachusetts to the National Hockey League last season and had an outstanding rookie year with the Sabres. Won the Vezina Trophy as the top goalie, the Calder Trophy as the top rookie, and garnered first-team all-star status. Considered an exceptionally-talented player, and is often compared to former Montreal great Ken Dryden.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-02413/5130854-1-eng-US/f0023-022.jpg" title="f0023-02" width="289" height="403"></div>MARC BEHREND, Winnipeg Jets&mdash;Drafted by the Jets in the fifth round in 1981, Behrend, 24, played for the U.S. Olympic Team last season and joined Winnipeg immediately after. Had a good playoff series aga: nst Edmonton, particularly in the second game of the three-game series, when he faced over 50 shots. Has good size (6-foot-1) and a promising future. Will come to the Jets&rsquo; camp as the No. 1 goalie.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-03300/5130847-1-eng-US/f0023-032.jpg" title="f0023-03" width="295" height="402"></div>GLENN RESCH, New Jersey Devils&mdash;The 36-year-old Resch is the oldest competitor on Team USA. This is his second appearance with the Team USA in the Canada Cup. Was a member of Team Canada in the &rsquo;76 Canada Cup but didn&rsquo;t play. Resch is the fan favorite in New Jersey and is highly-coveted by other teams in the league. Has made the best of a very poor situation in Jersey.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-04222/5130840-1-eng-US/f0023-042.jpg" title="f0023-04" width="299" height="408"></div>JOHN VANBIESBROUCK, New York Rangers&mdash;Vanbiesbrouck, who celebrates his 21st birthday Sept. 4, was THE HOCKEY NEWS&rsquo; Minor League Player of the Year after starring for the Turner Cup-winning Oilers last season. Drafted in the fifth round of the 1981 entry draft and was recently given a new contract by the Rangers. His experience with the Oilers earned him an invitation to Team USA&rsquo;s training camp, but he&rsquo;ll be competing for the third-string job.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-05186/5130833-1-eng-US/f0023-052.jpg" title="f0023-05" width="303" height="392"></div>CHRIS CHELlOS, Montreal Canadiens&mdash;Chelios, 22, played for Team USA at the 1984 Winter Olympics and then had an impressive debut with the Canadiens in the playoffs. Chelios is sure to become a star in Montreal with his puckhandling and skating skills and could be a serious candidate for Rookie-of-the-Year honors in 1984-85. Drafted by the Canadiens in the fifth round in the 1981 draft.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-06161/5130826-1-eng-US/f0023-062.jpg" title="f0023-06" width="299" height="409"></div>DAVE FEAMSTER, Chicago Black Hawks&mdash;Like Larson, Feamster was called in to replace one of the Americans&rsquo; injured defensemen. Feamster, who turns 26 on Sept. 10, has had to work his way up from the minors to earn a starting job with the Hawks. Played for Hawk coach Orval Tessier when the two won the American League championship with New Brunswick in 1981-82.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-07142/5130819-1-eng-US/f0023-072.jpg" title="f0023-07" width="285" height="397"></div>TOM HIRSCH, Minnesota North Stars&mdash;Hirsch is big (6-foot-3, 195-pounds) and very talented. Drafted by the Stars in the third round of the 1981 draft, he played U.S. hockey at University of Minnesota. Last season, played for Team USA at the Winter Olympics and then joined the Stars. A big favorite of Stars and Team USA general manager, Lou Nanne.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-08127/5130812-1-eng-US/f0023-082.jpg" title="f0023-08" width="285" height="347"></div>PHIL HOUSLEY, Buffalo Sabres&mdash;This multi-talented 20-year-old can do it all. The Sabres use him as both a center and a defenseman, but Team USA officials plan to play him exclusively on the bluelile. Came to the Sabres as a first-rounder in 1982, and was tagged the next Bobby Orr by Sabre boss Scotty Bowman. He hasn&rsquo;t dis-appointed either.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-09110/5130805-1-eng-US/f0023-092.jpg" title="f0023-09" width="285" height="395"></div>DON JACKSON, Edmonton Oilers&mdash;This 28-year-old veteran minor leaguer participated in the Oilers&rsquo; Stanley Cup win last season. Has never really stood out, but does his job with a lot of heart and determination. Was selling real estate in Minnesota when the Oilers acquired him from Minnesota in the Don Murdoch trade in 1981. At 6-foot-3, 210-pounds, he&rsquo;s one of the biggest players on Team USA.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-1098/5130798-1-eng-US/f0023-102.jpg" title="f0023-10" width="289" height="403"></div>ROD LANGWAY, Washington Capitals&mdash;Langway has won the Norris Trophy as the top defenseman in the National Hockey League ine last two seasons. The 27-year-old is captain of the Capitals, and leads by his workmanlike example. Was involved in one of the most controversial trades in the summer of &rsquo;82, when he was dealt along with three other players from Montreal in exchange for Ryan Walter and Rick Green.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-1184/5130791-1-eng-US/f0023-112.jpg" title="f0023-11" width="293" height="417"></div>REED LARSON, Detroit Red Wings&mdash;A last-minute replacement for Team USA, the veteran Larson will give the Americans an excellent point man. Larson, 28, has one of the hardest shots in the National Hockey League. He&rsquo;s an excellent offensive defenseman, and consistently leads the Wing rearguards in scoring. Larson was drafted 22nd overall by Detroit in 1976 out of the University of Minnesota.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-1270/5130784-1-eng-US/f0023-122.jpg" title="f0023-12" width="293" height="392"></div>MOE MANTHA, Pittsburgh Penguins&mdash;Mantha, 23, was acquired by the Penguins from Winnipeg as compensation for Randy Carlyle. Has has an up-and-down career since the Jets drafted him 23rd overall in the 1980 draft. Has good size at 6-foot-2, 195-pounds, but needs more playing time to develop. Will be an important man for Penguins this season, but most immediate task will be making the starting lineup of Team USA.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-1358/5130777-1-eng-US/f0023-132.jpg" title="f0023-13" width="291" height="389"></div>MIKE RAMSEY, Buffalo Sabres&mdash;Probably second only to Rod Langway as the best defensive defenseman in the league. At the age of 23, Ramsey is a veteran of international competition, having played for both the U.S. National and Olympic Teams in 1979-80. Played only a year at University of Minnesota before that. Selected in the first round in the 1979 draft, Ramsey joined the Sabres immediately after the Olympics.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-1451/5130770-1-eng-US/f0023-142.jpg" title="f0023-14" width="287" height="387"></div>GORD ROBERTS, Minnesota North Stars&mdash;One of the standouts on the North Star defense. Roberts was acquired by the Stars from Hartford for Mike Fidler in 1980, in a steal of a deal for Minny. Doesn&rsquo;t receive as much attention as Craig Hartsburg and Brad Maxwell, but just seems to improve each season. He had eight goals and 53 points in 1983-84 and was in the North Stars&rsquo; top-10 scoring.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-1542/5130763-1-eng-US/f0023-152.jpg" title="f0023-15" width="295" height="385"></div>SCOTT BJUGSTAD, Minnesota North Stars&mdash;Selected 181st overall in the 1981 draft, Bjug-stad, 23, played four seasons at the University of Minnesota and then was a member of Team USA at the 1984 Olympics. Will gain a lot of experience with the USA Canada Cup team, but faces tough competition to crack the starting roster.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-1635/5130756-1-eng-US/f0023-162.jpg" title="f0023-16" width="289" height="397"></div>AARON BROTEN, New Jersey Devils&mdash;Younger brother of North Stars&rsquo;, Neal Broten. The 23-year-old was one-third of the Devils&rsquo; kid line in 1982-83 and totalled 55 points. Had an off season in 1983-84 with only 36 points. The Devils are looking for bigger and better things from him, and he&rsquo;ll be aiming to do well with the Americans so he can come to New Jersey&rsquo;s camp in good shape.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-1725/5130749-1-eng-US/f0023-172.jpg" title="f0023-17" width="309" height="407"></div>NEAL BROTEN, Minnesota North Stars&mdash;He&rsquo;s only 5-foot-9 and 160-pounds, but the 24-year-old Broten plays as good as any big man. He was a third-round pick of the North Stars in 1979, and went on to star with Team USA at the 198o Olympics in Lake Placid. Won the Hobey Baker Memorial Trophy as the top U.S. college player in 1981. Was a member of the American team in the 1981 Canada Cup.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-1817/5130742-1-eng-US/f0023-182.jpg" title="f0023-18" width="288" height="405"></div>BOB BROOKE, New York Rangers&mdash;A 6-foot-3, 207-pounder who was acquired by the Rangers from St. Louis midway through last season and immediately signed to contract. Drafted 75th overall by the Blues in 1980 out of Yale, but chose to stay in college where he was a standout student and all-star. Was used as a defenseman on the U.S. Olympic Team, but is listed as a right winger for the Canada Cup.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-1913/5130735-1-eng-US/f0023-192.jpg" title="f0023-19" width="282" height="401"></div>BOB CARPENTER, Washington Capitals&mdash;Drafted out of high school in 1982, the 20-year-old Carpenter has never really developed into the star many people were predicting. But the fact he&rsquo;s been playing for the defensive-minded Caps has definitely been a factor. At the same time, his two-way play will help him in this competition. Judging by the team&rsquo;s strength on defense, he&rsquo;ll probably be allowed to open up a little more.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-209/5130728-1-eng-US/f0023-202.jpg" title="f0023-20" width="284" height="392"></div>DAVE CHRISTIAN, Washington Capitals&mdash;Another one of the former members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Team. Drafted 40th overall by Winnipeg, Christian, 25, played three-and-a-half seasons for the Jets and then was traded to Washington in the summer of &rsquo;83. Despite the Capitals&rsquo; tight, defensive approach, Christian had his best season in the National Hockey League with 29 goals and 81 points.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-217/5130721-1-eng-US/f0023-212.jpg" title="f0023-21" width="284" height="412"></div>MIKE EAVES, Calgary Flames&mdash;Played for Team USA at the 1980 Olympics and became a member of the 1981 team competing in the Canada Cup. Had a tough time in first two season in the National Hockey League as a result of concussions. Was traded to Calgary in the summer of &rsquo;83 at the behest of former college coach, (Badger) Bob Johnson, who felt Eaves was still good. Eaves justified that with 50 points in 61 games.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-226/5130714-1-eng-US/f0023-222.jpg" title="f0023-22" width="284" height="394"></div>BRYAN ERICKSON, Washington Capitals&mdash;A standout at University of Minnesota, Erickson was overlooked in the draft because of his size (5-foot-9, 170-pounds). However, the Caps signed him in the off-season, and after starting the season in the minors, he was called up and finished with 29 points in 46 games. Erickson, 24, should easily surpass those totals this season, given a whole year to play in the National Hockey League.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-235/5130707-1-eng-US/f0023-232.jpg" title="f0023-23" width="285" height="397"></div>TOM FERGUS, Boston Bruins&mdash;Fergus, 22, just keeps improving, and is one of the few offensive-type players on the plodding Bruins. Had 61 points in 69 games last season, and his two goals in the playoffs last season were the entire output for his team. Has good size and skating skills, but worked hard to make it to the National Hockey League. Born in Chicago, Fergus played junior hockey for Peterborough Petes.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-244/5130700-1-eng-US/f0023-242.jpg" title="f0023-24" width="301" height="365"></div>DAVID A. JENSEN, Hartford Whalers&mdash;Jensen was drafted in the first round of the 1983 draft by the Whalers out of Lawrence Academy in Massachusetts. He then played for Team USA at the 1984 Olympics, but chose to return to school immediately after the competition. This season, the Whalers are looking for the 19-year-old Jensen to add a little offense to the attack.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-253/5130693-1-eng-US/f0023-252.jpg" title="f0023-25" width="293" height="401"></div>MARK JOHNSON, Hartford Whalers&mdash;The 26-year-old Johnson has emerged as the No. 1 player on the Whalers. Produced 35 goals and 87 points last season, almost 20 points better than his best season in 1982-83. Was the Western Collegiate Hockey Association Player of the Year in 1979, when he had 90 points in 40 games. Had a lot of success with the gold-medal winning Team USA at the 1980 Olympics.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-263/5130686-1-eng-US/f0023-262.jpg" title="f0023-26" width="292" height="388"></div>PAT LAFONTAINE, New York Islanders&mdash;Born in St. Louis, the 19-year-old LaFontaine played his minor hockey in the Detroit area. Had a great season in only year of junior hockey in 1982-83, when he totalled 104 goals and 234 points with Verdun Juniors, and was named Canadian Major Junior Player of the Year. Played for Team USA in the 1984 Olympics, and then joined the Islanders late in the season. Had 19 points in 15 games.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-273/5130679-1-eng-US/f0023-272.jpg" title="f0023-27" width="296" height="390"></div>BRIAN LAWTON, Minnesota North Stars&mdash;Lawton, 20, was one of the most sought-after players in 1983. The North Stars drafted him first overall, and then the USA Olympic Team was calling for his services. But Lawton decided to turn pro, and signed a big contract with the Stars. He had a tough time in his rookie year, as he was plagued by a shoulder injury and totalled only 33 points in 58 games.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-283/5130672-1-eng-US/f0023-282.jpg" title="f0023-28" width="294" height="366"></div>BRIAN MULLEN, Winnipeg Jets&mdash;One-half of the Mullen brothers, Brian played for Team USA coach Bob Johnson at University of Wisconsin. Brian, 22, isn&rsquo;t as talented as his brother, Joey, but he&rsquo;s shown steady improvement in his two seasons in the National Hockey League. At 5-foot-10, 170-pounds, he won&rsquo;t knock anybody over, but he can cover his man.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-29/5130665-1-eng-US/f0023-292.jpg" title="f0023-29" width="309" height="371"></div>JOEY MULLEN, St. Louis Blues&mdash;Joey, the older brother of Brian, had his best season in 1983-84, when he set a record for American-born players with 41 goals. It was quite an achievement for a player who hasn&rsquo;t had an easy time since breaking into pro hockey with Salt Lake in 1979. He was the Most Valuable Player of the Central League in 1981, when he set a CHL record of 117 points. The following season he was promoted to the Blues<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-30/5130658-1-eng-US/f0023-302.jpg" title="f0023-30" width="305" height="363"></div>CHRIS NILAN, Montreal Canadiens&mdash;Nilan doesn&rsquo;t exactly overwhelm anybody with his offensive statistics. He has only 78 points in 263 National Hockey League games. But what he lacks in scoring, he makes up for in punch. He&rsquo;s one of the toughest wingers in the league, and commands a lot of respect. If Team USA needs a little muscle, Nilan will be more than willing to provide it.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-31/5130651-1-eng-US/f0023-312.jpg" title="f0023-31" width="292" height="395"></div>ED OLCZYK, Chicago Black Hawks&mdash;The native of Chicago was drafted by the hometown Black Hawks in a dream-come-true story for the 18-year-old. But the Hawks didn&rsquo;t just draft him for marketability. He&rsquo;s big and fast, and can play anyone of the forward positions. His versatility is an asset, as is his experience with Team USA at the 1984 Olympics. Previous to that, he played for Stratford in Ontario Junior B hockey.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-32/5130644-1-eng-US/f0023-322.jpg" title="f0023-32" width="301" height="411"></div>BRYAN TROTTIER, New York Islanders&mdash;The prize catch of Team USA. The 28-year-old native of Val Marie, Sask., wanted to play for the Americans and was given clearance on July 30 when he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. His addition gives the U.S. entry a bonafide superstar. Aside from having participated on four Stanley Cup teams. Trottier has numerous awards to his credit. &#9632;

f0023-01

TEAM USA ’84

TORONTO&mdash;Never let it be said that hockey trivia is trivial. How else would you explain more than 1,000 entries, many of which required a dozen or so hours of research, in THE HOCKEY NEWS Terrific Trivia Contest, which ran in the June 1, 1984 issue.When it was all said and done, a total of 24 ballots sported perfect marks. A random draw from that group produced three grand prize winners of $500, $250 and $100. The top prize went to Jerry Lahd of Calgary, Alta. Second prize went to Howard Detsky of Toronto, Ont., and third prize belonged to Brad Tymchuk of Vegreville, Alta.A random draw of all entries produced five winners of Trivial Pursuit games and their names will be published in the next issue of THE HOCKEY NEWS.Three of the 35 questions were eliminated due to errors on the part of THE HOCKEY NEWS. Question No. 7 should have read &ldquo;semi-final&rdquo; series games instead of &ldquo;final.&rdquo; The answer to Question No. 17 could have been interpreted as Bep Guido-lin so we failed to provide the right answer and Question No. 33 also failed to provide the right answer. The Dryden brothers have faced each other at least five times. THE HOCKEY NEWS regrets these errors and any inconvenience they may have caused.Below, the answers to each question can be found in the shaded area:1. Who scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1967?a) Dave Keon b) Bob Pulfordc) Jim Pappin d) Allan Stanley2. Against which team was Minnesota North Star Bill Masterton fatally injured in 1968?a) Los Angeles Kings b) Oakland Sealsc) Pittsburgh Penguins d) Detroit Red Wings3. Which Ontario Hockey League team did Wayne Gretzky first play for?a) Peterborough Petes b) Sault Greyhoundsc) Sudbury Wolves d) London Knights4. Who was the first player to score a hat trick in an NHL All-Star game?a) Wayne Gretzky b) Greg Polisc) Gordie Howe d) Ted Lindsay5. Which player led the Soviet Union in scoring in the 1972 Canada-USSR Summit Series?a) Boris Mikhailov b) Valery Kharlamovc) Alexander Yakushev d) Vladimir Petrov6. Who was the career scoring leader in the history of the World Hockey Association?a) Andre Lacroix b) Bobby Hullc) Gordie Howe d) Marc Tardif7. Who was the last player to score hat tricks in consecutive Stanley of final series games?a) Doug Bentley b) Clark Gilliesc) Maurice Richard d) Guy Lafleur8. Against which team did Gordie Howe score his 700th NHL goal?a) New York Rangers b) Philadelphia Flyersc) St. Louis Blues d) Pittsburgh Penguins9. What team did Pierre Pilote play his final NHL game with?a) Chicago Hawks b) Toronto Maple Leafsc) Detroit Red Wings di New York Rangers10. Who scored Team Canada&rsquo;s first goal in four of the eight games between Canada and the USSR in the 1972 Summit Series?a) Paul Henderson b) Phil Espositoc) Bobby Clarke d) Ron Ellis11. Does an empty-net goal count against an NHL goalie&rsquo;s goals-against average?a) yes b) no12. Is THN Editor-in-Chief Bob McKenzie any relation to ex-publisher and founder of THN, Ken McKenzie?a) yes b) no13. What team whipped the Washington Capitals 142 on Dec. 21, 1975 and accumulated an NHL record of 40 scoring points?a) Philadelphia Flyers b) Montreal Canadiensc) Buffalo Sabres d) New York Islanders14. Who was the first NHL player to equal Maurice Richard&rsquo;s standard of 50 goals in 50 games from the start of the season?a) Bernie Geoffrion b) Bobby Hullc) Mike Bossy d) Wayne Gretzky15. Which one of the following men did not coach Team Canada in the 1976 Canada Cup?a) Al MacNeil b) Bobby Krommc) Al Arbour d) Don Cherry16. What New York Islander scored an NHL record four consecutive game-winning playoff goals in 1977?a) Bryan Trottier b) Mike Bossyc) Clark Gillies d) Bob Nystrom17. Who was the head coach of the Edmonton Oilers immediately before C Sather?a) Ted Green b) Billy Harrisc) Bryan Watson d) John Muckier18. Who scored the first regular season goal in the history of the New York Islanders?a) Billy Harris b) Lome Henningc) Ed Westfall d) Phil Goyette19. What team did Terry Sawchuk record his last NHL shutout with?a) New York Rangers b) Toronto Maple Leafsc) Los Angeles Kings d) Detroit Red Wings20. What team did Bobby Hull play his last NHL game with?a) New York Rangers b) Chicago Black Hawksc) Hartford Whalers d) Winnipeg Jets21. What medal did the Soviet Union win at its first world championship in 1954?a) gold b) silverc) bronze d) none22. What team topped a Gallup poll released Mar. 31, 1983 as Canada&rsquo;s most popular NHL club?a) Toronto Maple Leafs b) Montreal Canadiensc) Edmonton Oilers d) Vancouver Canucks23. Did Montreal Canadien scoring sensation Maurice (Rocket) Richard shoot right or left?a) right b) left24. Before he arrived in Canada, Stan Mikita&rsquo;s name was:a) Stanislas Mikitavic b) Stanislas Gvothc) Stanislas Gvorken d) Stanislas Mikita25. Who portrayed Herb Brooks in the made-for-TV movie about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team?a) Tom Bosley b) Karl Maldenc) Michael Ontkean d) Ed Asner26. Who was in net for the Soviet Union in the final game of the 1979 Challenge Cup series against the NHL All-Stars?a) Vladislav Tretiak b) Vladimir Dzurillac) Vladimir Myshkin d) Anatoli Tarasov27. What team won the first World Hockey Association playoff title?a) Winnipeg Jets b) New England Whalersc) Houston Aeros d) Toronto Toros28. How many scoring championships did Bobby Hull win in the NHL?a) none b) onec) two d) three29. What is the rank of Red Army goalie Vladislav Tretiak?a) corporal b) majorc) colonel d) general30. Who was the first defenseman to be voted most valuable player in the Stanley Cup playoffs?a) Pierre Pilote b) Bobby Orrc) Serge Savard d) Denis Potvin31. What Montreal Canadien player became the first NHLer to be assessed a triple minor penalty?a) Doug Harvey b) Lou Fontinatoc) John Ferguson d) Gilles Lupien32. What year was the first NHL All-Star Game held?a) 1932 b) 1937c) 1947 d) 194933. How many NHL games sa Ken and Dave Dryden face each other in goa) zero b) onec) two d) four34. What U.S. network signed a four-year contract in 1972 for TV&rsquo;s Game of the Week in the NHL?a) ABC b) CBSc) NBC d) PBS35. Two teams won the Stanley Cup in 1907. One was the Montreal Wanderers. The other was:a) Toronto St. Pat&rsquo;s b) Montreal Maroonsc) Victoria Cougars d) Kenora Thistles &#9632;

Nothing Trivial About Hockey Trivia

<div class="byline">BY PERRY LEFKO</div>Hockey fans who are suffering from an insufficient amount of coverage of their favorite sport will receive a healthy fix with the 1984 Canada Cup.Both the television and radio coverage will be the best it&rsquo;s ever been in the I three-time tournament&mdash;both in content and style&mdash;which begins Sept. 1 and will conclude on Sept. 18 if the best two-of-three tournament is over in two games. If a third game is needed, it will be played on Sept. 20.The CTV Network in Canada will be televising all five Team Canada games in the first part of the tournament, the Sept. 2 game between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, plus all playoff action. The same coverage will be available on CTV&rsquo;s French network, TVA. There&rsquo;s been interest in other countries in picking up CTV&rsquo;s feed, so the Canada Cup is expected to be seen worldwide.<blockquote class="pullQuote">Some fans will be able to watch every game of the Canada Cup tournament, but it will cost them more for that privilege.</blockquote>Some fans will be able to watch the remaining games in the opening round of the tournament on television, but it&rsquo;s going to require paying a little extra for that privilege. The Sports Network (TSN), Canada&rsquo;s first-ever all-sports channel which begins programming the same day as the Canada Cup, will televise all the remaining games in the opening round of the tournament which CTV is not showing. So for the first time ever, all the tournament games will be televised.TSN, which expects to have to 250,000 subscribers when it begins programming, is available in every Canadian province with the exception of British Columbia. Prince Edward Island and Manitoba.The radio coverage will be available on Canada&rsquo;s all news and information network, CKO. which broadcasted the Toronto Maple Leaf games from 197880. CKO sports director John MacGil-livray says his station will be picking up independent stations across Canada, giving the Cup national coverage.CKO will also broadcast the pre-toumament exhibition game between Canada and the Soviets on Aug. 29.French radio coverage will be available on Radio MutueL otherwise known as CJMS.Radio coverage in the U.S. has not been finalized, but MacGillivray expects some U.S. stations to pick up CKO&rsquo;s feed. WBEN in Buffalo will broadcast the Sept. 6 game between the U.S. and Czechoslovakia at the Memorial Auditorium.While there&rsquo;s been a change in the amount of coverage from the previous tournament, there&rsquo;s also some altera tions in presentation. CTV will once again feature a veteran crew, but wil go with a &ldquo;rookie&rdquo; as its guest analyst. Darryl Sittler, the hero of the first-ever Canada Cup in 1976, will be be making his debut as a commentator, but CTV expects he&rsquo;ll do a good job.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve all the confidence in the world he&rsquo;ll do a great job,&rdquo; said CTV vicepresident of sports programming, Johnny Esaw. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s intelligent, articulate, and he&rsquo;ll make a valuable contribution to our presentation.&rdquo;TSN, aiming to attract a large audience, will feature two separate crews. Five games will be handled by the tandem of Ron Hewat, who was once involved in radio coverage of the Toronto Maple Leafs and has recently been the voice of Bobby Orr&rsquo;s Legends In Hockey, and Don Edwards, the Calgary Flames&rsquo; goalie who has experience in international competition. John Wells, who did an excellent job cohosting the recent Olympics for the CBC and has signed on with TSN, will be part of another team, but his working mate hasn&rsquo;t been finalized.TSN will switch to its studio in Toronto during intermissions, and will have a different crew for that. Jim Van Horne, a former sports reporter in Toronto who&rsquo;s been working in Calgary the last few years, will be the host, with analysis provided by former National Hockey League referee Bruce Hood and former NHL coach Roger Neilson.McGillivray will be doing the play-by-play for CKO, but it&rsquo;s unsettled who will be doing the color commentary. The Labatt Brewing Company, which holds the exclusive TV and radio rights for the Cup, will select a person to work with McGillivray. There&rsquo;s a strong possibility it will be a player, probably one who doesn&rsquo;t make the final Team Canada roster.At press time, it was uncertain what television coverage would be available in the United States, except to say that it would definitely be on cable, quite possibly the MSG (Madison Square Garden) Network. &#9632;

Radio-TV Coverage Gives Fans Their Fix

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0026-01596/5130999-1-eng-US/f0026-012.jpg" title="f0026-01" width="284" height="246"></div><h2>1976 FINAL STANDINGS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0026-02414/5130992-1-eng-US/f0026-022.jpg" title="f0026-02" width="601" height="229"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Canada 11, Finland 2Sweden 5, United States 2Czechoslovakia 5, Soviet Union 3Sweden 3, Soviet Union 3Czechoslovakia 8, Finland 0Canada 4, United States 2Soviet Union 11, Finland 3Czechs 4, United States 4Canada 4, Sweden 0Finland 8, Sweden 6Soviet Union 5, United States 0Czechoslovakia 1, Canada 0United States 6, Finland 3Sweden 2, Czechoslovakia 1Canada 3, Soviet Union 1<h3>PLAYOFFS</h3>Canada 6, Czechoslovakia 0Canada 5, Czechoslovakia 4(Canada wins best-of-three series 2-0 and Canada Cup tournament)<h3>FINAL SCORING LEADERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0026-03342/5130985-1-eng-US/f0026-032.jpg" title="f0026-03" width="599" height="262"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0026-04260/5130978-1-eng-US/f0026-042.jpg" title="f0026-04" width="610" height="617"></div><h2>1981 FINAL STANDINGS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0026-05211/5130971-1-eng-US/f0026-052.jpg" title="f0026-05" width="598" height="228"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Canada 7, Soviet Union 3United States 4, Finland 4Czechoslovakia 7, Sweden 1Canada 4, Sweden 3United States 6, Czechs 2Soviet Union 6, Finland 1Canada 4, Czechoslovakia 4Soviets 4, United States 1Sweden 5, Finland 0Canada 8, United States 3Soviet Union 6, Sweden 3Czechoslovakia 7, Finland 1Canada 9, Finland 0United States 3, Sweden 1Soviet Union 1, Czechs 1<h3>PLAYOFFS SEMI-FINALS</h3>Canada 4, United States 1Soviet Union 4, Czechs 1<h3>FINALS</h3>Soviet Union 8, Canada 1(Soviet Union wins championship and Canada Cup tournament)<h3>FINAL SCORING LEADERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0026-06177/5130964-1-eng-US/f0026-062.jpg" title="f0026-06" width="605" height="842"></div> &#9632;

f0026-01

Canada Cup Scoreboard

<div class="byline">BY PERRY LEFKO</div>The National Hockey League officials who are chosen to work the Canada Cup tournament look forward to the event, but it does take some adjustment.&ldquo;Looking at the challenge of it, it&rsquo;s a different atmosphere than say the Stanley Cup playoffs,&rdquo; said NHL vice-president of officiating, Scotty Morrison. &ldquo;This is country versus country. It&rsquo;s a different feeling that they have to get used to. They have to make sure they&rsquo;re totally impartial when officiating, yet they&rsquo;re Canadians and want to see their team do well.&ldquo;But they&rsquo;re professionals first and they can&rsquo;t let their other feelings get into it. This is something they don&rsquo;t have to worry about in the NHL. They don&rsquo;t care about the teams.&rdquo;Having said that, Morrison expects this year&rsquo;s officiating crew to be the best ever.He did, however, add that &ldquo;you never know what may happen. You may have some tough calls or disputes, but that can happen all the time.&rdquo;Morrison says that unlike other international competitions, the Canada Cup has had a good track record of officiating.The rules for selecting officials are that each country is allowed to bring one official, with the balance comprised of NHL officials, the majority of whom have Canada Cup experience. The three NHL referees are Bryan Lewis, Ron Wicks and U.S.-bom Mike Noeth, while the six linesmen are John D&rsquo;Amico, Ron Finn, Leon Stickle and Gerard Gauthier. The remaining two, Gord Broseker and Kevin Collins, are Americans.The Soviets and the Swedes are sending referees Yuri Karandin and Dag Olson, respectively. Morrision is familiar with both, as they&rsquo;ve been guests at previous training camps for NHL officials.The West Germans, who are participating in the Canada Cup for the first time, will send an official as will the Czechoslovaks, but details of who they are weren&rsquo;t available at press time.Morrison said the NHL officials were chosen according to experience and rating, with another important provision being availability. Andy van Hellemond, who&rsquo;s had previous Canada Cup experience, could not participate in this one because of back problems.In any particular game, the referee has to be agreed upon by both sides, a move which sits well with the Eastern Bloc countries but which is not too appealing to the Canadians and Americans.<blockquote class="pullQuote">The Soviets find it difficult to believe that an NHL referee could do his job and be impartial.</blockquote>&ldquo;They (the Soviets) find it difficult, almost impossible, to believe that Bryan Lewis or Ron Wicks could referee the game and be totally objective or impartial,&rdquo; Morrison said.The rules for the Canada Cup are similar to those used in the NHL. The lone difficulty, if there is one, is blending the officials together, Morrison said.The officials will have at least one or two sessions together before the tournament, but nothing as formalized once the tournament is underway because the Canada Cup will be spread out across the country and that it makes it impossible for all the officials to be in the same place at the same time.The selection for officials for the playoffs will be determined by a three-man committee which will make the decision based on performance in the preliminary round plus taking into account which teams make it to that stage.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not like the Stanley Cup playoffs because you have no way of knowing which teams will be playing in advance,&rdquo; Morrison said. &#9632;

Tournament Officials Relish The Challenge

<h2>CANADA</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-01560/5131065-1-eng-US/f0027-012.jpg" title="f0027-01" width="321" height="867"></div><h2>CZECHOSLOVAKIA</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-02360/5131058-1-eng-US/f0027-022.jpg" title="f0027-02" width="333" height="741"></div><h2>U.S.A.</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-03235/5131051-1-eng-US/f0027-032.jpg" title="f0027-03" width="369" height="888"></div><h2>SWEDEN</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-04161/5131044-1-eng-US/f0027-042.jpg" title="f0027-04" width="367" height="758"></div><h2>SOVIET UNION</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-05114/5131037-1-eng-US/f0027-052.jpg" title="f0027-05" width="399" height="842"></div><h2>WEST GERMANY</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-0691/5131030-1-eng-US/f0027-062.jpg" title="f0027-06" width="385" height="664"></div> &#9632;

f0027-01

Canada Cup Rosters

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0027-07" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-0776/5131103-1-eng-US/f0027-072.jpg"></div><h2>PRE-TOURNAMENT EXHIBITIONS</h2><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-0871/5131096-1-eng-US/f0027-082.jpg" title="f0027-08" width="1115" height="360"></div> &#9632;

f0027-07

Canada Cun Schedule

When THE HOCKEY NEWS was putting together its plan for coverage of the 1984 Canada Cup tournament, it wanted something special to adorn the cover of the main preview issue.Enter Jim Glen, artist and illustrator. The end result is what you see on the front cover, a mixed media illustration that captures the excitement and color of the Canada Cup tournament and tells you that Jim Glen is one of the premier sports illustrators in Canada.&ldquo;I really enjoy doing sports illustrations,&rdquo; said Glen, a native of Paisley, Scotland, who arrived in Canada in 1956 and went on to graduate from the Ontario College of Art in 1968.&ldquo;I try to capture the essence of the game. I like to get the feeling of speed and action in my paintings.&rdquo;This issue&rsquo;s cover, featuring Wayne Gretzky in his Team Canada uniform, isn&rsquo;t the first time Glen has used The Great One as a subject. When Gretzky recorded 212 points in the 1981-82 season, Glen paid tribute to the feat with a painting, which was recently purchased by the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.He&rsquo;s also drawn New York Islander Mike Bossy&mdash;after he scored 50 goals in 50 games&mdash;and the Isles purchased that piece of art.Now a resident of Toronto, where he operates his own business (Jim Glen Illustrations), he spends much of time doing sports illustrations including hockey, baseball, tennis, golf and soccer.He also does work for daily newspapers and many major advertising accounts. &#9632;

Cover Artist Glen: A Real ‘Good Sport’

One Canadian and two Americans have each won trips for two to any game of their choice&mdash;excluding final or semi-final games&mdash;in the 1984 Canada Cup tournament.Rocky Salerno of Geraldton, Ont., Rick Clark of Chicago, IL, and M.P. Filler of Simsbury, CT, are the three grand prize winners in the Labatt&rsquo;s Canada Cup contest, where entrants were permitted an opportunity to be the general manager of Team Canada or Team USA and select their version of the squad that would compete in the tournament.Each of the winner&rsquo;s prize package includes return airfare from the point of departure nearest their home, two nights&rsquo; hotel accommodation, tickets to the game, plus $200 (Cdn. funds) spending money.The contest, from a popularity standpoint, was an unequivocal success. An unprecedented 5,800 entries were received and when the initial training camp rosters were announced in mid-July&mdash;and published in the Aug. 1 issue of THN&mdash;a team of work ers began sorting through the entries to find the winning ballots.Nineteen proved to be the magic number. That was the most players correct that any ballot had listed and since Salerno, Clark and Filler had the earliest postmarks on their entries, they were declared the grand prize winners.In addition to the three grand prizes, 100 second prizes of Canada Cup &rsquo;84 souvenir packages (including official duffel bag, puck, cap and program) were awarded.Labatt&rsquo;s, the sponsor of the contest, and THE HOCKEY NEWS, which operated it on their behalf, would like to thank all those who enteredand congratulate all prize winners. &#9632;

Labatt’s Announces Its Contest Winners

<div class="byline">BY RON COBB</div>ST. LOUIS&mdash;Although a date still has not been set for a trial to settle a suit and countersuit between the National Hockey League and Ralston Purina Co., nuggets of information continue to be unearthed as the two sides prepare for battle.The latest revelation is that in December, 1982, Emile Francis, then the presilent and general manager of the Blues, as offered $250,000 in &ldquo;consulting fees&rdquo; that would be delivered upon the completion of the sale of the franchise to group that would have moved the team to Saskatoon.The offer was made in a letter to Francis on the stationary of Bill Hunter Enterprises Ltd. and was signed by Hunter. The letter is on file here in federal court.Hunter and Peter Batoni headed Batoni-Hunter Enterprises Ltd., which was thwarted in its effort to buy the Blues from Ralston Purina in May, 1983, when the NHL board of governors vetoed the sale.A week after the veto, Ralston Purina filed a $60-million anti-trust suit against the NHL. The league responded by filing a $78-million countersuit.Francis, now president and GM of the Hartford Whalers, had denied being offered the money when contacted in June by the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Late last month, however, NHL attorney Herbert Dym requested a copy of the letter in a supplemental affidavit.When contacted again, Francis said, &ldquo;There are depositions being taken all over the place on this thing, so you&rsquo;d better talk to our attorney.&rdquo;The Whalers&rsquo; attorney, David Hetcel, declined comment.However, a couple of weeks later, Hunter made it clear that Francis immediately turned down the offer of the consulting fees.Francis left the Blues in May, 1983 to join the Whalers, two weeks before the governors vetoed the sale to Batoni-Hunter Enterprises Ltd.The letter to Francis read: &ldquo;Following our meeting of last evening please have this letter serve as our organization&rsquo;s formal undertaking to pay you $250,000 as consulting fees following the successful completion of the sale of the St. Louis Blues Hockey Club and franchise to our organization and receipt of approval of such transfer by the National Hockey League board of governors.&ldquo;Thank you for your excellent cooperation and understanding in these negotiations.&rdquo; The letter is signed, William D. Hunter.BLUENOTES&mdash;Veteran forwards Guy Chouinard and Jack Carlson have been told that they will not be back with the team next season. Chouinard, 27, was entering the option year of a contract he signed last summer after the Blues acquired him from the Calgary Flames. Ron Caron, the Blues&rsquo; director of player perssonnel, said the club would exercise its option to buy out the remainder of the contract. Carlson, who turned 30 this month, became a free agent this summer. He played two seasons with the Blues after being obtained in the 1982 waiver draft.&ldquo;Guy helped us last year,&rdquo; Caron said, &ldquo;but his services aren&rsquo;t required as much as they were earlier. I thought he was instrumental in the first half last season, when we had such a good power play.&ldquo;If we hadn&rsquo;t acquired Doug Wick-enheiser and Dave Barr, he&rsquo;d still be around. Barr is moving upward and Guy is moving downward.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-01489/5131182-1-eng-US/f0029-012.jpg" title="f0029-01" width="551" height="857"><figcaption class="caption-body">Former Blues&rsquo; boss Emile Francis refused an offer of $250,000 in consulting fees.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0029-01

Francis Rejected Consulting Fees

<div class="byline">BY BOB FACHET</div>LANDOVER&mdash;When Paul Gardner began the 1983-84 season with the Pittsburgh Penguins, he had reasonable ex-pectations of reaching the 200 mark in both goals and assists. After all, Gardner needed just one goal and eight assists to attain those milestones, and he was coming off a creditable 28-goal. 55-point campaign.Returning too soon from a heel injury, Gardner found 200 elusive. In 16 games, he recorded only five assists, and he was shipped to Baltimore of the American League. Despite figures of 32 goals and 49 assists in 54 games, he was not recalled by the National Hockey League&rsquo;s worst team, and on June 30 the Penguins released him.It could have been the end of the line for the 28-year-old center, but instead he was granted a reprieve when the Washington Capitals signed him. More important, Capital general manager David Poile promised Gardner a chance to top 200, not a one-way ticket to Binghamton.A key to Gardner&rsquo;s future could be Bob Carpenter&rsquo;s performance with Team USA in the Canada Cup. It seemed likely that Carpenter would be used at left wing and, should the experiment succeed, Poile indicated he might keep Carpenter there during the regular season, which would open up a spot for an offensive-minded center.&ldquo;We lack offensive production and Paul Gardner could be a specialist for us on the power play,&rdquo; Poile said. &ldquo;Also, I&rsquo;d like to be able to set up our team with two offensive lines and two defensive lines.&ldquo;Last season, more often than not, we had one offensive line and three defensive lines. We were in every game, but an awful lot of them were 2-1 and 3-2. We need more firepower.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be interested in how Bobby Carpenter plays with Team USA if he plays left wing. That could put an opening for Paul Gardner. Regardless, he&rsquo;s going to get a shot. I think he&rsquo;s better than the forwards we&rsquo;ve called up in the past.&rdquo;Poile and coach Bryan Murray scouted Gardner in Baltimore last winter, but nothing developed and Gardner feared his career might be over, until his phone rang after he was dropped by Pittsburgh.&ldquo;The assistant trainer told me one night that I might be going up the road to play,&rdquo; Gardner recalled. &ldquo;It didn&rsquo;t happen then, but I&rsquo;m extremely pleased the Capitals kept me in mind when I became a free agent.&ldquo;Last year I hurried back from a heel operation and saw spot duty in Pittsburgh. I think I played regular only once in 16 games and of course I wasn&rsquo;t scoring. Then I was told to go to the minors, get my confidence back and get in shape. I was never heard from again.&ldquo;I told my wife that I&rsquo;d sure like one more shot, and I&rsquo;m glad the Capitals are giving it to me. I certainly hope I can contribute to them.&rdquo;Gardner, a first-round draft pick of Colorado in 1976, has scored 30 or more goals five times in the NHL, with a peak of 36 in 1981-82. He managed a laugh when he looked back to a career with the Rockies, Toronto and Pittsburgh.&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t want to figure my winning percentage in the NHL,&rdquo; Gardner said. &ldquo;Hopefully, it&rsquo;s time for a change.&rdquo;CAPPING IT OFF&mdash;The Capitals are constructing a new press box, with needed improvements in the areas of monitors, phones and security. The old box was an improvisation, since Capital Centre was built without provision for the hockey media&hellip;Eight Capitals have been selected for Canada Cup play, with Bob Carpenter. Rod Langway, Dave Christian and Bryan Erickson on the U.S. team. Mike Gartner and Scott Stevens will play for Canada, Bengt Gustafsson and Peter Andersson for Sweden&hellip;The Capitals&rsquo; 10-game exhibition schedule is a travel agent&rsquo;s dream. The club will play in Cleveland, Calgary, Lethbridge, Regina, Toronto, Waterloo (IA), Bloomington (MN), Hartford, Richmond and Hershey. &#9632;

Capitals Sign Gardner For Scoring Punch

<div class="byline">BY RICH CHERE</div>EAST RUTHERFORD&mdash;On the day Doug Carpenter got his first job in the National Hockey League, most newspapers within a 50-mile radius of the Meadowlands Arena were loading the cannons for a major assault on the Devils&rsquo; new coach.Before Carpenter even stepped to the microphone at his introductory press conference he was hearing, &ldquo;Doug who?&rdquo; It was suggested that he was a coach the Devils had settled on because John McMullen wouldn&rsquo;t dish out a longterm contract to a bigger name, and before his term had started Carpenter was already rumored to be losing the job to his own assistant, Lou Vairo.Carpenter has handled the bittersweet greeting with great dexterity, lending evidence that maybe the 41-year-old bachelor from Cornwall, Ont., is the right man to point the Devils in the right direction.He certainly doesn&rsquo;t feel the Devils settled on a second-rate coach just because they offered only a one-year contract.&ldquo;If they settled on me that&rsquo;s not my fault,&rdquo; said Carpenter. &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t they get the other guys? I&rsquo;m sure they interviewed other people. The only thing now is I&rsquo;ve got to coach well. I&rsquo;ve been given the opportunity, now I have to do a good job.&ldquo;Right now I&rsquo;m anxious to start the season.&rdquo;It has been suggested that when Carpenter gets a firsthand look at his roster in training camp, he will not be so anxious, even though the club has been strengthened by recent acquisitions such as Finnish goalie Hannu Kamppuri and ex-New York Ranger Doug Sulliman.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think it would be good to predetermine my roster or say this guy&rsquo;s no good,&rdquo; said Carpenter, whose late arrival gave him no input into New Jersey&rsquo;s draft. &ldquo;That would be totally wrong. It&rsquo;s the old story, seeing is believing. I&rsquo;ve never seen (Kirk) Muller play but you look at him and he&rsquo;s a tremendous kid. I&rsquo;ve heard nothing but great things about him. Not good things, great things. I can&rsquo;t really judge anyone until training camp.&rdquo;He has, however, judged Vairo, the management-picked assistant whose presence gives the Devils a head coach waiting in the wings for a Carpenter failure.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t even categorize him (Vairo) as an assistant,&rdquo; insisted Carpenter. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a coach like I&rsquo;m a coach. We&rsquo;re in this thing together. I think we both have the same thing to prove to people and I think we&rsquo;re both pretty hard workers.&rdquo;But can Carpenter trust a high-profile assistant he did not hand pick?&ldquo;Trust? You walk down that street trusting that guy in the car won&rsquo;t run you over. It&rsquo;s a gamble,&rdquo; admitted Carpenter. &ldquo;You can have one of two things. Either you can get the drinking buddy, the fellow that you&rsquo;ve know for years and have confidence in, the fellow that you know is going to be loyal to you. Or you can go to somebody entirely different, as has happened here, and still work together. I see no advantage to one or the other.&ldquo;Maybe there will be an advantage this way of not having someone that you take for granted. Or maybe it&rsquo;ll be a dis-advantage. I think he has something to prove and I have something to prove&mdash;&lsquo;Doug who?&rsquo; and &lsquo;Lou who?&rsquo; Not knowing each other we&rsquo;ll approach each other just like we don&rsquo;t know the 21 hockey players. It&rsquo;s just a matter of putting it together, them playing as a unit and us coaching as a unit. Mr. McMullen asked me if I was concerned (about Vairo). I&rsquo;m not concerned at all.&rdquo;Their compatability and willingness to decide on the same (and correct) style of team will unfold in the next months. It will also become apparent how the decision to install Tom McVie as general manager and coach at Maine of the American League affects New Jersey&rsquo;s &ldquo;team concept.&rdquo;Does Carpenter have any concern about following McVie, whom the Devils promoted from Maine as saviour after Billy MacMillan but refused to reward with more than a one-year contract?&ldquo;It was Tommie&rsquo;s decision not to come back,&rdquo; said Carpenter. &ldquo;Because of that I feel satisfied. In fact, I even talked to Tommie about this. I was concerned before I took the job. It was not my idea to take his job. It was his decision not to return. I didn&rsquo;t go behind his back.&ldquo;All I did was have an interview and I presented myself as I am. I didn&rsquo;t try to be flamboyant. I just tried to be myself. I was fortunate to be selected.&rdquo;It is curious how Carpenter considers himself to be fortunate with a one-year contract, an assistant who was the former coach of the U.S. Olympic team, and a team which posted a 17-56-7 record last season.HOT STUFF&mdash;The Devils signed goaltenders Hannu Kamppuri, ChiResch, Ron Low, Shawn MacKenzie and draft picks Chris Terreri (No. 2 in &rsquo;83), Craig Billington, (No. 2 in &rsquo;84) and Kirk McLean (No. 6 in &rsquo;84). Max McNab has denied any deals are the in works for Resch. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got NHL goaltending now. The last two years we&rsquo;ve been walking on eggs.&rdquo; &#9632;

Seeing Will Be Believing For Devils’ Coach!

<div class="byline">BY DICK BEDDOES</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-01558/5131261-1-eng-US/f0030-012.jpg" title="f0030-01" width="280" height="339"></div><h2>Canada Cup Trifling</h2>CANADA CUP hockey tournaments have, of course, no consequence in reality. They are a trifling patch on the seat of the world&rsquo;s trousers.Canadians accept that the last game, the 1984 championship game, will be played between Canada and the Soviet Union, with the burden on Canada to reverse the final 1981 score&mdash;a humiliating 8-1 score in the Soviet&rsquo;s advantage.But the sanest among us realize that no matter how big the final game, the fate of civilization will turn on extraneous events and that more than a billion Chinese couldn&rsquo;t care less.Only a game, played in North America by big boys for big bucks. Only a game, not an ideology no matter how it is flacked by bloody-minded patriots in Canada and the Soviet Union.Any vertebrae from age four up understands that patriotism, as the philosopher Hugo Backenforth said, is the last refuge of the scoundrel.If the Soviets win, the result will not alter the refusal of the Marxist revolutionaries to grant intellectual freedom.The incarceration of Russian thinkers on the lofty order of Andrei Sakharov reminds us of the price that the Kremlin dictators exact in return for the least improvement in the condition of the Soviet masses.<h2>Feeling Of Futility</h2>IF THE CANADIANS win, the result will not change the grinding depression that has worn the country down to its worst national feeling of futility in 50 years.A Canadian triumph won&rsquo;t restore a culture that has grown leprous with the absorption of cannibal values. Cannibal? Yes, friend. How else to explain the banks and mortgage companies foreclosing on farmers and businessmen beaten by economic oppression?So the Canada Cup conclave is only a series of games, some of them entertaining. No?No! That is the one-word retort of Canadian hockey fanatics who know few heroes beyond the confines of an ice rink.General Wolfe of Britain and General Montcalm of France fought a fierce, pivotal battle for possession of Canada in 1759, on a Quebec plain not far from where the modem Nordiques play.A flamboyant pilot named Billy Bishop was a Canadian air ace in the First Great War, winner of the Victoria Cross for uncommon valor. Warriors such as Major Paul Triquet of Quebec and Private Smokey Smith of British Columbia won the V.C. for remarkable bravery in the second Great War.But it is like the Toronto poet. Raymond Souster, has written. &ldquo;Canadian heroes are bom of hockey wars.&rdquo;Name them from the pages of old HOCKEY NEWS&rsquo;: Cyclone Taylor, the Stratford Streak, Eddie Shore, Joe Malone, The Rocket, Hull of the booming slapshot, ageless Number Nine of Detroit, the Big M., Bob Clarke, Bossy and Trottier. Robert Gordon Orr, nimble Ninety Nine of Edmonton.<h2>The Shallow Syndrome</h2>THEY REFLECT, THROUGH the Canadian years, the hockey syndrome which grips the nation beyond all reason. The syndrome has a far reach, but shallow.It bespeaks, let us say, of Schmautzie&rsquo;s father, who never got out of a stinking mine of Sudbury to gratify his hockey ambition. Thus, Schmautzie, to fulfill his father, must perform one of those second-generation feats that makes Canada, in hockey, the land of the rising son. Schmautzie must rise to the NHL.That is the burden which Gretzky and Messier and Fuhr and the rest carry into this Canada Cup tournament. Canadian fanatics will feel diminished if they lose. Ray Souster, the poet, summed up our Canadian immaturity:&ldquo;We never quite grew up, Who carry our first sticks with us, Still shoot tireless rubber From cradle to the grave!&rdquo;We have thrust Canadian pride on Canadian players in the international arena with increasing emphasis since 1972 when, by the grace of Paul Henderson&rsquo;s dramatic goal in the last minute of the last game, Canada beat the Soviet Union in the first series at the summit.Some of us, grown older, insist nothing in 1984 will match the absorbing adventure of 1972. A series at the summit, after all, is a bit like sex. There is only one first time. &#9632;

f0030-01

BEDCLOTHES

<div class="byline">BY CHUCK MOODY</div>PITTSBURGH&mdash;In the summer, virtually all hockey executives are optimists.Take, for example, Pittsburgh Penguin general manager Eddie Johnston.&ldquo;We feel now for the first time in a long time that everything&rsquo;s on the up and up and that we have a tremendous opportunity,&rdquo; Johnston said after signing all three of his first-round draft choices to contracts. &ldquo;We have a tremendous feeling in our organization.&ldquo;I think the city for the first time in a long, long time has been turned on to hockey again. Hopefully, we can put that product on the ice in the early part of the year.&rdquo;Pittsburgh&rsquo;s first-round picks were center Mario Lemieux, who signed earlier, defenseman Doug Bodger and forward Roger Belanger.&ldquo;Over the past 15 or 16 years of this organization, we&rsquo;ve been very fortunate to have one first-round draft choice, never mind having three.&rdquo; Johnston said.Bodger scored 21 goals and 77 assists for Kamloops of the Western Hockey League last season. The 6-foot-1, 196-pound Bodger was a first-team all-star selection and helped the Oilers make it to the recent Memorial Cup playoffs.&ldquo;This is a great honor for me.&rdquo; said the 18-year-old Bodger after he signed an NHL contract. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve waited a long time for this. It&rsquo;s been my dream since I was a little kid. I&rsquo;ve worked hard, and now it&rsquo;s finally paid off. I&rsquo;m getting anxious about training camp.&rdquo;&ldquo;If anybody knows one of our weaknesses on our hockey club, one of the positions is left defense,&rdquo; said Johnston. &ldquo;We feel very fortunate in the draft that we were able to have Dougie in that position, not only for him to come with us. but for us to have the opportunity to upgrade our hockey club.&ldquo;We feel with his speed, and his great hands and the offensive talent that he has, that he&rsquo;s going to be quite an addition to our organization.&rdquo;The 18-year-old Belanger scored 44 goals and 46 assists for the Kingston Canadians of the Ontario Hockey League. The 6-foot, 192-pounder is expected to play right wing.&ldquo;This is the most important year of my life,&rdquo; said Belanger. &ldquo;I waited all my lifetime for having a chance to play in the National Hockey League. It&rsquo;s just a great honor to be selected by Pittsburgh and to have a chance to play. As young as I am. it&rsquo;s a great feeling.&rdquo;Johnston believes both players have the size to break into the NHL right away.&ldquo;Both of these fellows are 6-foot-1, 6-foot-2,&rdquo; said Johnson. &ldquo;In prior years on our draft choices we&rsquo;ve had mostly 5-foot-8, 5-foot-9s, that type of player. The way the league is going now, with the speed and the big players, that we feel very, very fortunate to have Doug Bodger and Roger Belanger.&ldquo;The general feeling around the league is that both these players are going to come in and play right away. If that hapens, that&rsquo;ll be just a tremendous bonus, not only for the city of Pittsburgh, but for our organization.&rdquo;As optimistic as Johnston is, the facts are the Penguins have finished last in the NHL the past two seasons and accumulated only 38 points last year.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no question the No. 1 goal is getting back into the playoffs,&rdquo; Johnson said. &ldquo;By getting back into the playoffs, that is going to indicate that we&rsquo;ll be close to 80 points.&ldquo;If we double our points next year, that would be a great indication that we&rsquo;d be on our way. If these three young guys on our hockey club can come in and play, we definitely should be able to double up on our points next year.&rdquo;PENGUIN TRACKS&mdash;Eddie Johnston said he has come to a contract agreement with fifth-round draft choice Arto Javanainen of Finland. Javanainen. a right winger who scored 37 goals in 37 games last season, has to make a decision whether he wants to play in the NHL, Johnston said. Pittsburgh will open training camp Sept. 18 at the suburban Mount Lebanon Ice Rink. The Penguins will play six pre-season games, two each against Hartord. Detroit and New Jersey. The team will open the regular season on the road with games in Boston and Montreal before coming home to play host to Vancouver at the Civic Arena on Oct. 17. &#9632;

One Size Fits All Penguin Draftees

<div class="byline">BY RANDY SMITH</div>HARTFORD&mdash;The tentative roster for the Hartford Whalers&rsquo; 1984-85 training camp reflects the team&rsquo;s turnaround under the direction of president and general manager Emile Francis.Francis and his friends&mdash;coach Jack Evans, assistant Claude Larose, personnel director Steve Brklacich, trainer Tom Woodcock, among others&mdash;have made quite an impact on the Whalers, who Sputtered, stuttered and stalled under past managements. Not so long ago. it looked as if the Whalers might never improve, but in one short year, Francis has altered that outlook rather dramatically.&ldquo;There was a nucleus of good players here when I arrived.&rdquo; said Francis, singling out center Ronnie Francis and Mark Johnson, winger Ray Neufeld, defensemen Risto Siltanen and Chris Kotso-poulos and goaltender Greg Millen. &ldquo;We started with a lot less in St. Louis and New York. We had a good year, but we&rsquo;ve still got a ways to go. We&rsquo;re not finished by any means.&rdquo;Francis said that he would build around that nucleus and so he has. He acquired a 36-goal scorer in Bobby Crawford from the waiver list, made seemingly incidental trades that delivered center Greg Malone, defenseman Joel Quenneville and winger Torrie Robertson, all of whom performed well, and then made his one high draft pick count in the form of 40-goalscorer Sylvain Turgeon.At this time last year, the Whalers had ahalf-dozen reliable players. Today, that number has virtually doubled.Thus, while last year&rsquo;s training camp featured quantity&mdash;more than 70 players were invited&mdash;this year&rsquo;s will feature quality.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got spots up for grabs,&rdquo; Francis said, &ldquo;but it&rsquo;s not as if we have to rebuild from scratch.&rdquo;The tentative list of invitees includes just 50 players, which means that jobs will be hard to come by.&ldquo;A little competition never hurt anybody,&rdquo; Francis said. &ldquo;Players had better arrive in shape. I&rsquo;ll tell you that, because the guy next to &lsquo;em is looking for work.&rdquo;The Whalers, who won 28 games last year, the most in five NHL seasons, appear solid at center. Francis. Johnson and Malone will return with Mike Zuke, Dave Tippett and rookie Ray Ferraro ready to do battle for the fourth and final spot. It should be quite a battle. Zuke is a heady specialist who knows how to win. while Tippett impressed nearly everyone with his serious, workmanlike approach. In some key respects. Tippett is a younger version of Zuke, a player who under-stands that the team is greater than the individual. Ferraro, a scoring whiz from the Western League, could be any sort.Neufeld and Crawford return on the right side, with two spots up for grabs. Randy Pierce, Tony Currie and Mike Crombeen are veterans who will be pushed by youngsters Paul MacDermid and Kevin Dineen. Turgeon and Robertson return on the left side, with David Jensen, Dan Bourbonnais and Paul Lawless on the rise. Privately, the Whalers think that Jensen is a prospect who can&rsquo;t miss, but it&rsquo;s critical to their immediate future that Jensen clicks right away. Francis needs a pair of linemates. Now.The traffic jam at the blueline is taking on monstrous proportions. Siltanen. Kot-sopoulos and Quenneville are locks, but the other three or four spots could be won by almost anyone&mdash;top draft pick Sylvain Cote, youngsters Mark Paterson, Ulf Samuelsson. Scot Kleinendorst. Mark Fusco and Brad Shaw, or veterans Marty Howe, Jack Brownschidle and Richie Dunn. For these defensemen, training camp will be a serious&mdash;and risky&mdash;business.Millen, the team&rsquo;s Most Valuable Player as voted by the players a year ago, returns to man the net. something he did for 3,575 minutes in 60 games, incuding two shutouts, in 1983-84. Ask yourself, how many goaltenders can play 60 games or even want to. and you&rsquo;ll learn something about Millen&rsquo;s value. At 27, he fully intends to get better. Finding a backup will be one of the more pressing issues in camp. Ed Staniowski is the incumbent.The degree of difficulty of the Adams Division makes the Whalers&rsquo; task of reaching the playoffs problematic, but the team unquestionably is on the rise. Where there were questions last year, there are answers this year.&ldquo;Our primary goal is to keep improving,&rdquo; Francis said.Camp opens Sept. 17. Stay tuned.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0031-01508/5131316-1-eng-US/f0031-012.jpg" title="f0031-01" width="545" height="541"><figcaption class="caption-body">Risto Siltanen is one of the few defensemen on the Whalers assured of a job.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0031-01

Whaler Operative Word Is Quality

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0031-02" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0031-02351/5131347-1-eng-US/f0031-022.jpg"></div><h2>MISCELLANEOUS</h2>PLAYERS WANTED PORT-AUX-BASQUES Mariners of the Newfoundland Senior Hockey League require for the 1984/85 season, a player-coach plus other players. We are looking for players with junior, senior or pro experience. Please forward resume and qualifications to: Jack Evans, Box 50 Isle-Aux-Morts, Nfld., AOM 1J0, or call (709) 698-3776.NO PAY, BUT great fun! Hockey savants wanted in Calgary, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, areas for work on an ongoing hockey research project. Write: The Hockey News, Box SF, 85 Scarsdale Road, Suite 100, Don Mills, Ont., M3B 2R2.HOCKEY PLAYERS WANTED: 100 Mile House Coachmen of Cariboo Hockey League require players with Jr. A, Senior or Pro experience. Write: P.O. Box 2078, 100 Mile House, B.C., V0K 2E0 or call Bob Day (604) 395-2758 after 6:00 p.m. (PDT).<h2>JUNIOR PLAYERS WANTED</h2>With Junior A experience or capable of playing Junior A. Employment and scholarships available. Send replies to: Junior Hockey, P.O., Box 277, Yorkton, Sask., S3N 2V7 or phone (306) 783-3366.WANTED JUNIOR B PLAYERS: For Northeast junior league Green Machine franchise. (516) 367-8214.SCHOOLSPACIFIC COAST HOCKEY SCHOOLS Present:ON-ICE CONDITIONING PROGRAMBritannia Ice Rink, Vancouver, B.C. August 28 to September 1, 1984. Five 2 hr. sessions, 3 groups. Players from bantam to pro will benefit. $70 fee. Call International Ice Hockey Systems Inc., (604) 255-8778.PUBLICATIONSA COLLECTOR&rsquo;S DREAMFor the real authoritative fan&mdash;a perfect reproduction of the very first issue ever published of THE HOCKEY NEWS. Dated October 1, 1947, this 16-page issue is a MUST for every hockey collector. Read the way it was in hockey 37 years ago. Makes an excellent gift. Send $19.95 to:Classic Reproductions,2 Billingham Road, Suite 302, Toronto, Ont., M9B 6E1ACROSS THE BORDER. Register of over 3,000 U.S. college players who played in the CFL. $12 postpaid. UN, 1834 St. John St., Regina, Sask. Canada, S4P 1R9.<h2>MERCHANDISE EQUIPMENT</h2>HOCKEY SKATES, EQUIPMENT: Low discount prices. Write or call for a free price list: Holyoke Skate and Sport, P.O. Box 158, Agawam, MA, 01001, or call (413) 5324127.<h2>MERCHANDISE</h2>HOCKEY, BASEBALL, FOOTBALL Card sets. Collectibles. Free price list on request. Rich Unruh, P.O. Box 509, Faro, Yukon, YOB 1K0. &#9632;

f0031-02

The Classified

<div class="byline">BY GLENN COLE</div>MONTREAL&mdash;Larry Robinson sat in his usual spot in the Montreal Canadiens&rsquo; dressing room. Around him were some strange, but familiar faces.Larry Robinson is the representative of the Montreal Canadiens on the 1984 edition of Team Canada. Bob Gainey is not around, nor is Guy Lafleur. On an international team filled with Edmonton Oilers and New York Islanders, Robinson is the only link to the first Canada Cup team which won in 1976.&ldquo;The only difference for me is in 1976 when I was one of the youngest on the team to this time where I am the oldest,&rdquo; said the 33-year-old defensmean. &ldquo;I enjoy the competition against the Europeans. They are a lot of fun. In this instance, there is a little more seriousness to it because of what happened to us in 1981.&rdquo;What Robinson is referring to is Sept. 13, a Sunday night at the Forum, where Team Canada &rsquo;81, a veritable offensive machine, was smoked, 8-1, by the Soviet Union in the sudden-death final of the second edition of the Canada Cup.&ldquo;We have a sour taste in our mouths from that,&rdquo; Robinson admitted. &ldquo;1 felt we were a much better team than the score indicated. We now have a chance to go out and redeem ourselves.&rdquo;While Robinson is the only member of the Canadiens on Team Canada, he will be running into a few of his in-season teammates once the tournament gets underway. Chris Chelios and Chris Nilan were both expected to make Team USA while Mats Naslund is on Team Sweden. Craig Ludwig was invited to the USA training camp but could not attend because he could not find anyone to replace him at his water skiing school in Eagle River, WI. The new school has been a bigger success than originally anticipated and Ludwig attempted to find an instructor to take over in August, but could not.Many observers feel this will be the most competitive of the three Canada Cup tournaments. Unlike 1981, Team Canada is not cast in the role of a favorite which doesn&rsquo;t bother Robinson.&ldquo;So much hype has been given to the Russians which is par for the course when it comes down to these international competitions and this year is no different,&rdquo; Robinson said. &ldquo;You certainly cannot overlook the Czechoslovakians. I was talking to our No. 1 pick, Petr Svodoba, and he says the Czechs have a tremendous hockey team. We know most of the Americans because we have played against them and they are going to have a competitive team.&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know what to expect from Sweden. They didn&rsquo;t play all that well in 1981. I know in 1976 they gave us a tremendous game in Toronto which we ended up winning. You can&rsquo;t really count anyone out.&rdquo;There has been some speculation locally that this could be Robinson&rsquo;s last season with the Canadiens even though the club has extended his contract through the 1986-87 season. At 33, Robinson is getting to the edge of the hockey player&rsquo;s twilight zone, yet he is still the backbone of the Montreal defense as was shown in the Canadiens&rsquo; effort in the playoffs last spring.While he was used 30 to 35 minutes per game by Montreal last spring and was exhausted once the series with the Islanders came to an end, Robinson, similar to the rest of the Canadian team, was willing to give up the final month of his summer vacation.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t feel like the lonely Canadien because I don&rsquo;t look upon this as the Canadiens, the Bruins or whatever out on the ice,&rdquo; Robinson said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a group of players out there for the same reason&mdash;to win the Canada Cup. You can&rsquo;t go out there and feel sorry that some of your teammates aren&rsquo;t there. They had the same opportunity as everybody else had here. It&rsquo;s unfortunate you can&rsquo;t pick everybody but that&rsquo;s the way it is.&rdquo;Unlike the others, Robinson is with Team Canada and will be an extremely important part of any success the Canadians may have.&ldquo;I may talk about the fact that we are giving up our summer to play in Canada Cup, but I don&rsquo;t think I would ever turn it down,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It means so much to so many people. Given the opportunity to be involved in one of these things is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.&rdquo;Except, for Robinson, it&rsquo;s a thrice in a lifetime experience.IN PASSING&mdash;The Canadiens confirmed that head coach Jacques Lemaire agreed to a two-year contract which Lemaire says &ldquo;is long enough. &ldquo;.. Jean Perron, a coach with the Canadian Olympic team in &rsquo;84, will be Lemaire&rsquo;s chief aide-de-camp&hellip;Right winger Mark Hunter has agreed do a new contract with the club as has Craig Ludwig&hellip;Petr Svoboda, the Canadiens&rsquo; No. 1 choice and fifth overall in the 1984 entry draft, is quickly learning English and was an interested spectator at the Team Canada workouts. He took some time out to converse with Peter Stastny of the Nordiques, who is trying to win a spot with the Canadian team&hellip;Canadien trainer Eddy Palchak and assistant therapist Gaetan Lefevre are working with Team Canada&hellip;Patrick Roy, drafted by the Canadiens from the Granby Bisons of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, has signed a three-year deal with the Canadiens&hellip;No replacement has been named for Danny Gallivan as the TV play-by-play voice of the Canadiens. It is expected that Newfoundland&rsquo;s Bob Cole will be featured on the Montreal games. &#9632;

Robinson Sole Canadien On Canadians

<div class="byline">BY RANDY SCHULTZ</div>BUFFALO&mdash;It is generally considered that Olympic hockey is the elite class of international hockey competition.But anytime a hockey player represents his country in international competition it is still regarded as an honor.Such are the feelings of Mike Ramsey and Tom Barrasso, two of the three representatives from the Buffalo Sabres playing for Team USA in the Canada Cup series (Phil Housley is the third).Ramsey knows the feeling of being considered the best in the world, having played for the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic hockey team in the 1980 winter Olympics.Getting the chance to play for Team USA in the Canada Cup is an honor for Ramsey, but he knows there is a difference.&ldquo;With the Canada Cup, the team is thrown together and only given about three weeks to practise together before the series begins,&rdquo; said Ramsey, a defenseman with the Sabres. &ldquo;It is just not the same as playing for an Olympic team where you practise and play together for months.&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m still looking forward to playing for Team USA in the Canada Cup. I still get a great feeling playing for the U.S. and representing my country in competition.&rdquo;Barrasso, on the other hand, was a member of the 1984 U.S. Olympic hockey team for only a short time. After ing a spot on the team, he decided against & participating in the Olympics and turned pro with the Sabres.If there is a key to the success of Team 2 USA in the Canada Cup it may rest on the shoulders of Barrasso in goal. The National Hockey League&rsquo;s 1984 Calder and Vezina Trophy winner looks to the Canada Cup with great anticipation.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s always nice to be recognized as one of the best goalies to be representing the U.S. in this kind of hockey competition,&rdquo; Barrasso said. &ldquo;Of course, there is nothing like being on an Olympic team either.&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t think the workouts on the Canada Cup team will take as much out of me as the Olympic workouts did. I plan on using the Canada Cup series to get me geared up for the regular NHL season.&rdquo;Barrasso sees Team USA as a team to be reckoned with in the Canada Cup.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got a good defensive team, there is no doubt about that,&rdquo; said the 19-year-old netminder. &ldquo;Just take a look at some of the defensemen we have on our team.&ldquo;With a guy like Rod Langway, considered to be the best in the NHL, I think that speaks for itself. Then add guys like Housley and Ramsey from the Sabres and (Ken) Morrow from the Islanders among others (Ed note: Ken Morrow will not be playing because of bad knees), I think we may have an edge.&rdquo;Ramsey also feels that the U.S. team has the edge in defense, but not as strong as many believe.&ldquo;We won&rsquo;t have Mark Howe (Philadelphia Flyers) or Mike O&rsquo;Connell (Boston Bruins) on the team and I think that could hurt us a little on defense,&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;But we&rsquo;ll still have a good defense.&ldquo;And with Tom (Barrasso) in goal, we could have a distinct advantage there.&ldquo;As far as name players go, I think Canada has got the edge. I don&rsquo;t think Team USA has got the kind of horses they do.&ldquo;Of course I don&rsquo;t know yet what kind of teams will be coming over from Europe either. But you can bet they will be good.&rdquo;Does Ramsey mind the extended season by being a part of Team USA?&ldquo;I&rsquo;m like Tom because I think I&rsquo;m going to use the Canada Cup series to prepare for the upcoming NHL season,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m known as a slow starter in Buffalo.&ldquo;I hope with this early start I&rsquo;ll not only be ready for this series, but get a good start for the Sabres.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-01534/5131402-1-eng-US/f0032-012.jpg" title="f0032-01" width="541" height="753"><figcaption class="caption-body">Mike Ramsey thinks the Canada Cup competition will help him in the regular season.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0032-01

Sabre Players Like USA’s Chances

<div class="byline">BY VARTAN KUPELIAN</div>DETROIT&mdash;The hot, humid Michigan summer slipped quietly into August. No fuss, no bother and no blockbuster Red Wing trade to equal the one Jimmy Devellano pulled off during his first summer on the job as general manager.But the Wings did add a couple of veteran players to the roster, in the process exchanging the kind of intrigue normally associated with trades for a bit of international intrigue.Coach Nick Polano, accompanied by Jim Lites, the Wings&rsquo; executive vice-president, journeyed to Czechoslovakia and returned with two 31-year-old veterans of that nation&rsquo;s Olympic team, defenseman Milan Chalupa and forward Frantisek Cemick.The Wings negotiated with the Czech Ice Hockey Federation for the services of Chalupa and Cernik, agreeing to pay to the organization $100,000 a season for the pair. The players were offered, and accepted, two-year contracts, with the second season an option, to play in the National Hockey League.Polano called the players&rsquo; salaries &ldquo;average.&rdquo;&ldquo;It&rsquo;s unusual,&rdquo; Polano said of the transaction. &ldquo;In the first place, the Czech players aren&rsquo;t allowed to come over here. In most cases, they&rsquo;re here because of defection. In this case, the players are loyal citizens and this is sort of a reward from their government.&ldquo;The players, of course, are delighted to have the opportunity. They&rsquo;re both 31, and they&rsquo;ve both served the national team well. This is sort of to show the players that if they don&rsquo;t defect, they do have a chance to come here later on. Their government promised these two players this two years ago.&rdquo;Chalupa, a right-handed defenseman, and Cernik, a right-hand shooting forward who prefers the left side, played for Czechoslovakia&rsquo;s silver medalwinning team in the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.Polano scouted the pair at the world championship in the spring of 1983 in West Germany. The Wings drafted Chalupa on the third round of this year&rsquo;s entry draft and acquired the rights to Cernik from the Quebec Nordiques a few days before Polano went to Czechoslovakia in July.Chalupa was voted the third best player in Czechoslovakia last season while performing for Dukla Jihlava. Cernik scored 25 goals and 23 assists in 44 games with Vitkov and has averaged 25 goals a year in his career.Chalupa is 5-foot-10, 183-pounds.&ldquo;Chalupa is a very steady defenseman who handles the puck well in his own zone,&rdquo; Polano said. &ldquo;He starts the breakouts. He gets the forwards off&hellip;he plays smart hockey.&rdquo;Cernik is a shade under 5-foot-10, 189-pounds.&ldquo;His best asset is his tremendous speed,&rdquo; Polano said.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not a finesse player. He&rsquo;s more of a grinding type who plays hard all the time and uses his speed to get his scoring chances.&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s put it this way,&rdquo; Polano said. &ldquo;Anyone who has played in that kind of competition&mdash;and has been second best to the Russians in the last two years&mdash;should probably make our team.&rdquo;The Wings paid an undisclosed amount of cash to the Nordiques for the rights to Cemik.&ldquo;We knew there was no way Cemik would be allowed to play with Quebec after the defection of the Stastnys,&rdquo; Polano said.Otherwise, though, Polano said all&rsquo;s quiet on the Red Wing front.WING NOTES&mdash;The 1984-85 schedule has the Wings playing five home games on Friday night, and that very definitely is a departure from the past. The Wings will open the season in Chicago on Oct. 11 and play at home two nights later against New Jersey. How&rsquo;s this for an interesting start: The Wings will get a look at each of the top four draft choices&mdash;Mario Lemieux, Kirk Muller, Ed Olczyk and Al lafrate in October, along with Tom Bar-rasso, Sylvain Turgeon and Pat LaFontaine. Of course, Steve Yzerman will be on hand. too. That&rsquo;s the best of last year&rsquo;s crop. How would you like to start a franchise with those eight guys? &#9632;

Polano Likes Red Wing ‘Rookies’

<div class="byline">BY NEIL MILBERT</div>CHICAGO&mdash;Seeing the 1984-85 schedule is believing that November will make or break the Black Hawks.Between Oct. 30 and Dec. 2, the Hawks will play 14 games on the road and only two in the friendly confines of Chicago Stadium.And remember, this is the team that last year had the worst road record in the league (5-29-6).General Manager Bob Pulford prefers to think positively.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing wrong with our schedule,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve often thought it&rsquo;s better to play a lot of road games early. If you do well and play the way we did in November and December two years ago, you&rsquo;re really in good shape.&ldquo;In my mind, we&rsquo;re the team to beat (in the Norris Division). I think we should be the most improved team in the entire league over last year.&ldquo;In all the years I&rsquo;ve been in hockey I&rsquo;ve never seen a year with so many injuries to so many key people. How can you judge anything on what happened last year?&rdquo;Indeed, the hospital bills were enough to put Blue Cross on the brink of bankruptcy and the Hawks on the verge of not making the playoffs.Al Secord, a 54-goal scorer in 198283, missed 66 games because of a major groin injury. Curt Fraser, a fellow left winger, was out of the lineup for 51 after knee surgery. Captain Darryl Sutter&rsquo;s cheekbone was shattered; Doug Wilson&rsquo;s skull was fractured; Troy Murray&rsquo;s knee required surgery. Dave Feamster&rsquo;s shoulder was a consistent menace.<blockquote class="pullQuote">&lsquo;In all the years I&rsquo;ve been in hockey, I&rsquo;ve never seen a year with so many injuries to so many key people.&rsquo;</blockquote>&ldquo;This year I think we&rsquo;ll have four lines that can score,&rdquo; predicted Pulford. &ldquo;I think Lysiak and Sutter will have better years&mdash;I&rsquo;m confident they will.&ldquo;Our young players&mdash;guys like Troy Murray, Ken Yaremchuk, Ed Olczyk, and Wayne Presley&mdash;have the potential to help us a lot. I think the kid Presley (an Ontario League All-Star right winger from Kitchener) will play well. He definitely will get a good look at training camp.&rdquo;However, the injury hex is lingering. Defenseman Bruce Cassidy, Chicago&rsquo;s first choice in the 1983 draft and one of its most prized junior prospects, will miss training camp and the exhibition season because of tom knee ligaments.&ldquo;It happened in late July and it&rsquo;s pretty serious,&rdquo; said Pulford. &ldquo;He was playing ball hockey when it happened. He won&rsquo;t need surgery, but he will be out for about 10 weeks. Rather than report to us, I think it probably will be best is he stays with (his junior team) Ottawa.&ldquo;I only hope what we went through last year (the injury situation) isn&rsquo;t starting all over again.&rdquo;HAWK TALK&mdash;Bruce Cassidy, of Ottawa, scored 27 goals and assisted on 68 in 67 Ontario League regular-season contests, then contributed to the 67s&rsquo; winning the Memorial Cup, when he tied for the lead in scoring with seven goals and five assists in five games&hellip;Training camp will be held in Chicago Stadium again this year. The Hawks will launch their 10-game exhibition schedule with jousts in Winnipeg, Calgary, and Edmonton, Sept. 21-23. &#9632;

Hawks Face Critical Test With November Schedule

<div class="byline">BY PERRY LEFKO</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-01481/5131433-1-eng-US/f0033-012.jpg" title="f0033-01" width="545" height="783"><figcaption class="caption-body">Peter Ihnacak was a member of the &rsquo;81 Czechoslovakia team in the Canada Cup.</figcaption></div>TORONTO&mdash;The Toronto Maple Leaf brass will have more than a passing interest in the Canada Cup, as three players who have a connection with the team will be involved in the tournament.The most important of the three is captain Rick Vaive, who was was invited to try out for Team Canada. Vaive, who recently signed a new multi-year contract, will have stiff competition on right wing, but the fact he&rsquo;s earned an invitation is a testimony to his ability as one of the best at his position in the league. While he was a member of the 1982 Team Canada in the World Championships, he was overlooked last year and was more than a little upset about it. But after Vaive produced his third consecutive season of at least 50 goals, Team Canada general manager and coach, Glen Sather, couldn&rsquo;t pass up on the Leafs&rsquo; best player.Vaive, however, won&rsquo;t be the only Leaf chattel in the tournament. Center Vladimir Ruzicka and defenseman Eduard Uvira, whose National Hockey League rights are owned by the Leafs, are members of the Czechoslovakian team.Both Ruzicka and Uvira were selected in the 1982 entry draft, 73rd and 87th, respectively. That same draft year the Leafs selected center Peter Ihnacak 25th overall, using the pick they acquired in the trade for Darryl Sittier. Ihnacak was a member of the Czechoslovakian team in the 1981 Canada Cup, but later defected and was playing for the Leafs in 1982-83, along with fellow countryman, Miroslav Frycer. The Czech Connection, as they were dubbed, had respectable seasons in the first year with the Leafs, but injuries hampered them both last season and they&rsquo;ll be battling to keep their jobs&mdash;or more importantly, their health&mdash;this season.While Czechoslovakian players as a rule do not fare too well in the NHL&mdash;they&rsquo;re either past their primes by the team they&rsquo;re allowed to play here, or their motivation is suspect&mdash;both Ruzicka and Uvira would seem to be prize catches if the Leafs ever secured their services.Ruzicka, in particular, has it all. He&rsquo;s only 21, is 6-foot-2, 203-pounds, and was the leading scorer in the Czechos-lovakian first division last season, scoring 31 goals and 21 assists in 44 games for Litvinov. Ruzicka played for his country in the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia and was the sixthleading scorer in the tournament with four goals and six assists in seven games. He later played a major role in the Czechs winning the gold medal in the Swedish Cup, which immediately followed the Olympics. He scored two goals in the Czechs&rsquo; 7-2 win over the Soviet Union in the final.Uvira, who also plays for Litvinov, is 23 and is a solid 6-foot-2, 202-pounds. He&rsquo;s participated in two world championships and the &rsquo;84 Olympics. Uvira does not produce many points, but his defensive attributes are quite good. He was one of the few Czech players willing to muscle the Soviets in the final game of the Olympics, which Russia won, 2-0.While the Leafs have been keeping a watchful eye on both Ruzicka and Uvira, it&rsquo;s not certain the players will ever wear the blue and white uniform, though there have been rumbles that some Czech players are thinking of defecting.&ldquo;The situation is that we just own their NHL rights, and the problem is that by drafting them you show the Czech Federation that you have an interest in them (the players), and they (the federation) doesn&rsquo;t want their players to defect,&rdquo; said a Leaf spokesperson. &ldquo;If the players want to come over, they do. If they don&rsquo;t, they don&rsquo;t&hellip;The bottom line is if the player has to be 100 percent ready to come over.&rdquo;LEAFLETS&mdash;Borje Salming, a standout in the &rsquo;76 Canada Cup, was invited to play for his country in this Canada Cup, but chose to abstain on the advice of Leaf general manager Gerry McNamara, who felt his veteran defenseman should use the summer break to fully recover from the broken kneecap he suffered late last season&hellip;The Leafs are making a few moves in preparation for training camp. Bruce Boudreau and Pat Graham have been dropped from the Leafs&rsquo; minor-league farm team in St. Catharines and both will be playing in Europe next season. Center Lawrie Nisker, who played for Hint of the International League last season and played on a line with Stewart Gavin when they both with the Toronto Marlboros, has signed a tryout contract. The Leafs have also given tryouts to defensemen George Spezza and Jeff Triano, both with the Marlies last season, and left winger Jeff Fenton of Kelowna of the Western League. Triano, by the way, is a former draft choice of the Leafs, but became a free agent when the Leafs didn&rsquo;t sign him and he went through the draft again and wasn&rsquo;t claimed by any team. Triano&rsquo;s brother, Jay, played guard for Canada&rsquo;s basketball team in the Olympic Games, and was their best player&hellip;A Leaf official says there will be further tryouts given out by the team before the start of training camp Sept. 17, and added that Toronto will probably stock its minorleague team in St. Catharines with a few players whose rights belong to other NHL teams. Last season, Edmonton loaned veteran Garry Lariviere to St. Catharines and he won the Eddie Shore Plaque as the top defenseman and shared Most Valuable Player honors with Mal Davis of Rochester&hellip;The Leafs open their exhibition schedule Sept. 23 in Quebec and return home to Maple Leaf Gardens three days later to play the Nords in a return match. The Leafs then play seven more exhibition matches, including at home against Edmonton on Sept. 27. The opening game for Toronto is Oct. 11 in Minnesota, and the home opener is against Buffalo two days later. An interesting note is that the Leafs play three home games on Tuesday&mdash;a rarity for them&mdash;and two of the three are against Edmonton. Nov. 27 and Feb. 19&hellip;Leaf general manager Gerry McNamara became a proud father-in-law for the first time, when his eldest son, David, recently married. &#9632;

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Leafs Have Keen Interest In CUD

<div class="byline">BY TONY GALLAGHER</div>Louisville HockeyH&B 100 YEARS<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-01547/5131519-1-eng-US/f0034-012.jpg" title="f0034-01" width="273" height="205"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-02429/5131512-1-eng-US/f0034-022.jpg" title="f0034-02" width="542" height="919"><figcaption class="caption-body">Veteran Harold Snepsts refused to criticize the Canucks after they traded him to Minnesota.</figcaption></div>VANCOUVER&mdash;Reaction to the trade of 10-year veteran Harold Snepsts has stopped just short of an intense desire to have Canuck general manager Harry Neale strung up on the Grouse Mountain chairlift.Many saw it as a tacky move that wreaked of saving a few dollars and the locals didn&rsquo;t appreciate it too much. One columnist said, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re behind you 51 per cent, Harry,&rdquo; but the move disgruntled many fans and some of the corporate brewery types who give the club so much support.For one thing, the Canucks could have had Al MacAdam for a song anytime they wanted over the last two years. A phone call and he would have been there. Neale said he made the move because he was uncertain whether Darcy Rota would recover from his off-season neck surgery and that he couldn&rsquo;t go into the season with left wing in its present shambles state. But with all the due respect to MacAdam, the deal was at best a small, uncertain 32-year-old bandaid being thrown onto the sore spot while the city lost one of its most popular and still competent athletes.&ldquo;We needed help on the left side and we felt it would be in Harry&rsquo;s (Snepsts) best interest to move him from here with all our young defensemen,&rdquo; said Neale. &ldquo;It may give him another year or two in the league.&rdquo;While that last point is arguable, the others are true. But to kiss off Snepsts in such a minor deal seemed to demonstrate to every member of the Vancouver Canucks that if you stay loyal, spill your guts out your whole career for the one team you&rsquo;ve ever played for, you can look forward to being shipped out when your value dips a little.This way the Canucks have about as much chance of creating a tradition as Glen Sather has of winning a popularity contest in Calgary.The line of thinking in Vancouver is would the Philadelphia Flyers kiss off their veterans like that? Would the Montreal Canadiens flush away Guy Lafleur or an Yvan Coumoyer? It&rsquo;s not that Snepsts is in any way a talent comparable to those players, but he is the closest thing the Canucks had to player deserving to retire in the city he labored so long for.Snepsts, naturally, didn&rsquo;t say anything about the deal, preferring to go out in classy fashion, particularly because he wants to live here when finished playing and perhaps even stay with the organization.&ldquo;This will be most memorable for me, to last this long in the same city and to know what I&rsquo;ll be doing in the future,&rdquo; said Snepsts. &ldquo;I know where I will live once hockey is over for me. My only regret is that we weren&rsquo;t more successful as a team. Each summer I was getting sick and tired of people asking me what happened and being told to have a nice holiday&hellip;and being told what&rsquo;s wrong with the Canucks. And some of those people were right, too.&rdquo;To some extent you can sympathize with Neale. He has a boat load of defensemen, many young potential stars, but a misery similar to the poverty Mother Teresa speaks of exists on the forward lines.He has to get the young ones into the lineup, but at the same time he still has to decide which good young one to trade and make a deal that has a genuine chance of helping the team.As far as Snepsts is concerned, it&rsquo;s all a bonus now. The native of Edmonton never really expected to make the NHL To have lasted 12 years&mdash;he&rsquo;ll have a year and an option left when he starts his 684th game&mdash;is a pleasant shock to one who loves the life of a pro hockey player&ldquo;When I first started I hoped to play for three years,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Any year after that I considered would be a bonus. Nobody expected me to make the National League at all. I remember that there were lots of players who were 50 per cent better than I was. But for some reason they lost their enthusiasm or went to different things. I know a couple of them have come up to me in the last few years. They still feel they were better than I was and they tell me they should be playing in the NHL.&rdquo;But as Lou Nanne will soon see, nobody works harder and is more dedicated than Snepsts, who over the last 30 games last year was probably Vancouver&rsquo;s top defender. &#9632;

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Canuck Fans In Snit Over Loss Of Snepsts

<div class="byline">BY REYN DAVIS</div>WINNIPEG&mdash;Calling from a barn, where his daughter trains a stable of thoroughbreds, John Ferguson pounced on the opportunity to discuss his hockey team in the midst of his vacation.&ldquo;I think we have improved vastly with our new faces,&rdquo; said the Winnipeg Jet general manager, listing off names such as Randy Carlyle (recently signed to a multi-year deal), Perry Turnbull, Dave Ellett, and the Pooley twins, Paul and Perry.For that matter, the GM could add the name of Marc Behrend, the American goaltender whose stint with the Jets was brief following the 1984 winter Olympics.But one gaping hole remains to be filled. Sacrificing his captain, Lucien DeBlois, to the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for Turnbull, a burly left winger, Ferguson has weakened the right side at the expense of the left.&ldquo;We are still looking for a right winger,&rdquo; said Ferguson. &ldquo;We feel Andrew McBain can step in to do the job Lucien did. But we do have an opening there.&rdquo;Perry Pooley is advertised as a right winger but the Jets seriously doubt the 23-year-old rookie from Ohio State can crack the lineup as one of the first three right siders.He could change their minds in training camp. However, as it stands, Mike Lauen, one of their few promising prospects from Sherbrooke, is given the best chance of becoming the third right winger.There is also the possibility that one of the Jets&rsquo; many left wingers will be shifted to the right side Morris Luko-wich has played there on occasion as has Bengt Lundholm, Doug Smail and Jordy Douglas.At the outset, it would appear that the Jets&rsquo; first line will be comprised of Turnbull, Dale Hawerchuk and Paul MacLean.Likely destined for the second line are Scott Amiel, Laurie Boschman and McBain.A third line, featuring speed, would likely be composed of Smail, Thomas Steen and Lukowich.Fourth-line candidates would probably be Douglas, Brian Mullen, Paul and Perry Pooley, Ron Wilson, Lundholm, Tim Young, Murray Eaves and Lauen.Almost certain to be on defense are Dave Babych, Carlyle, Tim Watters, Robert Picard and Jim Kyte. Ellett, a rookie from Bowling Green, and big Wade Campbell, not to mention Bobby Dollas, have a task in front of them.The goaltending situation is also showing signs of depth. Doug Soetaert, the veteran, has the hearts of Winnipeg fans. But his heir apparents are Behrend and Brian Hayward, the Cornell grad. All three have a crack at becoming No. 1. Behrend would seem to be Ferguson&rsquo;s odds-on favorite.This should be their best-ever team, though the absence of another rightwinger of DeBlois&rsquo; ilk is a serious shortcoming that may force the Jets into an unpopular trade.BENCH BITS&mdash;The Jets caused some controversey with a couple of recent office decisions. One was a firing of a receptionist. Jane Garvie, for the worst of all reasons&mdash;because she worked too hard&mdash;while a second blunder that has come back to haunt them had office employees last season run-ning out to buy 200 issues of the morning tabloid, the Winnipeg Sun, which was conducting a poll to determine if its readers thought the city should have a downtown arena.. Tim Watters is expected to be named the next captain of the Jets.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-03329/5131550-1-eng-US/f0034-032.jpg" title="f0034-03" width="512" height="727"><figcaption class="caption-body">Jet general manager John Ferguson will be looking at various players for right wing.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0034-03

Jets Have A Hole On Right Wing

<div class="byline">BY JOHN GILBERT</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-04234/5131581-1-eng-US/f0034-042.jpg" title="f0034-04" width="539" height="791"><figcaption class="caption-body">Lou Nanne made North Star history when he signed European players in the summer.</figcaption></div>BLOOMINGTON&mdash;&ldquo;Check&rdquo; jokes are common in hockey (he can&rsquo;t check his hat, the only check he knows is the one he gets every two weeks, etc.), and in everyday life (the check is in the mail).But for the Minnesota North Stars, the hot topic sounds the same but is spelled differently. The Stars may still need to improve their checking, but they have definitely solidified their &ldquo;Czeching.&rdquo;General Manager Lou Nanne, taking time between attempts to recruit new U.S. citizens in time for the Canada Cup, signed Miroslav Maly, a 21-year-old defenseman who is 6-foot-2 and 195-pounds and was the club&rsquo;s fourth-round draft choice. Nanne had earlier signed Jiri Poner, 20, a rangy, quick, 6-foot-2 forward.Both were presented to the Twin Cities media at a posh luncheon featuring Czechoslovakian delicacies.Nanne has drafted several Europeans in recent years, but Maly and Poner are the first ones he&rsquo;s signed.<blockquote class="pullQuote">&lsquo;When we got Jiri Crha as backup goalie last season, he told me he knew of a Czech defector who could make our team at defense.&rsquo;</blockquote>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never seen Maly play,&rdquo; said Nanne. &ldquo;When we got Jiri Crha as backup goalie last season, he told me he knew of a Czech defector who could make our team at defense. He said we&rsquo;d always given players a chance to play, and that&rsquo;s why he&rsquo;d like to see us get Maly.&rdquo;North Star scout Dick Bouchard was dispatched to watch Maly.&ldquo;He skates like any forward, and he uses his size well,&rdquo; said Bouchard, who added that Maly was impressive despite coming off a mandatory 18-month suspension to play in Germany after defecting.Poner, who has dazzled some players at open hockey sessions in the Twin Cities during the summer, was the club&rsquo;s fifth-round draft pick. He bought a Trans-Am Firebird and is learning English rapidly with special tutoring.Poner is confident he has a shot at making the club, and so is Maly, despite the fact that he becomes one of 14 candidates for defense on a team that just obtained Harold Snepsts from Vancouver.&ldquo;At all costs, I would like to make the team,&rdquo; Maly said, through his interpreter and agent, George Kubes of Toronto. &ldquo;I am a playmaker from the back (defense), and I am not worried about adjusting. It can be managed.&rdquo;Poner and Maly are both unfamiliar with the North Stars. Both played in Germany after defecting from Czechoslovakia, Poner in the top junior league because he was under 20.But these Czechs are not in the mail, they are in Minnesota ready to play. And they are no joke.STAR DUST&mdash;Dave Jensen, the U.S. Olympian who played well in Minnesota and Salt Lake City at the end of the season, is sidelined with what is believed to be hepatitis. That knocks him out of Canada Cup tryouts and may slow him for Minnesota&rsquo;s training camp&hellip;Captain Craig Hartsburg, who sat out most of last season with knee surgery, is reported on schedule in his recovery and should be ready to go at camp. He reports tests of 95 to 100 per cent effectiveness on the recovering knee&hellip;Paul Holmgren is also progressing well after major surgery corrected two shoulder problems, but the Stars want him to take it slow and not olav until November. &#9632;

f0034-04

Stars Will Use Different Form Of Czeching

<div class="byline">BY MIKE KANE</div>Louisville HockeyH&B 100 YEARS<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-01518/5131619-1-eng-US/f0035-012.jpg" title="f0035-01" width="276" height="205"></div>SHERBROOKE&mdash;Ron Racette, the coach of the Sherbrooke Jets who spent two years fighting brain cancer, died July 21 at the age of 42.Racette was named the coach of the expansion Jets in 19X2, but during a vacation in Maine that summer he was stricken and underwent surgery to remove a tumor. He attempted to return to his post with the Jets during training camp two months later but was ordered by his doctors to take off the rest of the Reason.In the summer of 1983, Racette received permission to return to the job and he handled Sherbrooke from training camp until March, when he was again forced to step aside due to medical problems. Later in the spring he underwent a second operation.He is survived by his wife, Christiane, eight-year-old daughter Stephanie and four-year-old son Ron.Racette began his long career in hockey in his hometown of Orleans, Ont., at the age of 13 when he joined the Orleans Lions of the Ottawa-Carlton intermediate league. He spent three seasons in the league before moving to the Laval Juniors in 1958, where he set records for most points and penalty minutes. During the next few seasons he played with the Buckingham Beavers, Niagara Falls Flyers and Victoriaville Bruins. He joined the Bruins during the 1961-62 season, and that club, coached by Georges Guilbault, captured the league title. That season also marked the beginning of a 23-year association between Racette and Guilbault, who, as the Sherbrooke Jet general manager, hired Racette to be the team&rsquo;s coach.Following the completion of his junior career, Racette moved on to senior level play, first with the Drummondville Rockets and then with the Sherbrooke Beavers. He helped the Beavers win the Allan Cup title in 1965 but was released by the team at the end of the following season. He returned to Drummondville and in the playoffs during the 1966-67 season scored the game-winning goal against the Beavers at Sherbrooke that sent the Flyers on their way to the Allan Cup title.The expansion of the National Hockey League presented Racette with an opportunity to play professional hockey and he signed with the Philadelphia Flyers in 1967. He was injured during training camp and was assigned to the Quebec Aces of the American Hockey League. He was sent to Phoenix of the Western League, but returned to Quebec in January, 1968. During the &rsquo;68-69 season, he played for teams in Amarillo and Des Moines.In the fall of 1969 he was obtained by the Los Angeles Kings and played that season with teams in the Kings&rsquo; organization. He retired as a player in 1970 at the age of 28.Racette turned to coaching and was hired as the head coach of the Cornwall Royals of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. After two seasons in Cornwall, he returned to pro hockey as the trainer of the Long Island Cougars, but he returned to coaching in the QMJHL with the Quebec Remparts in 1975. He led the Remparts to a league title during his stay there and spent three more seasons as the coach at Shawinigan before Guilbault hired him in 1982 to coach Sherbrooke&rsquo;s entry in the AHL.AROUND THE LEAGUE&mdash;Glenn Merkosky, who played an important role in the Maine Mariners drive to the Calder Cup last season, signed a new contract with the New Jersey Devils. Merkosky is the third free agent from the Maine team to be re-signed by the Devils. Previously, center Bud Stefanski, the most valuable player in the playoffs, and Mitch Wilson agreed to new contracts. The Devils also signed center Steve Tsujiura, who played the last two seasons in the Philadelphia Flyers&rsquo; organization.. The Mariners will put their perfect record against NHL opponents on the line during the pre-season when they face the Devils at Portland. The Mariners&rsquo; own victories over St. Louis. Washington, Minnesota and Philadelphia and played the New England Whalers of the WHA to a tie&hellip;Forward Claude Larose, a unanimous first team all-star selection with the Sherbrooke Jets last season, has been signed to a new one-year contract by the Montreal Canadiens, the new owners of the Sherbrooke franchise. Two other former Jet players, defenseman Steven Fletcher and goaltender Paul Pageau, have been invited to the Canadiens training camp&hellip;Sherbrooke officials say that the response to the affiliation with Montreal this summer has been overwhelming and that season tickets are selling briskly&hellip;Former Springfield Indian trainer Ed Tyburskt, who lives in nearby Agawan, has returned to the team after a stint in the NHL with Hartford&hellip;Two members of the Moncton Alpines front office staff. Larry Haley and Judy Pal, have assumed similar positions with the Nova Scotia Oilers. Haley is the team&rsquo;s director of marketing, while Pal is the Oilers&rsquo; director of media relations&hellip;Right winger Jody Gage, the Adirondack Red Wings&rsquo; career leader in games played, goals and total points, signed a new contract with the Detroit Red Wings. Gage, who opened his pro career by scoring four goals in Adirondack&rsquo;s first game in the AHL in 1979, scored 40 goals and 72 points last season to lead Adirondack in both categories.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-02412/5131612-1-eng-US/f0035-022.jpg" title="f0035-02" width="549" height="799"><figcaption class="caption-body">Free agent Glenn Merkosky is the third Maine player to sign again with New Jersey.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Former Sherbrooke Coach Dies After Losing Fight Against Cancer

<div class="byline">BY BUD GALLMEIER</div>Louisville HockeyH&B 100 YEARS<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-01491/5131650-1-eng-US/f0036-012.jpg" title="f0036-01" width="273" height="209"></div>INDIANAPOLIS&mdash;First came the Capitols. Then it was the Chiefs. Next came the Racers. Finally the Checkers.All four were&mdash;or in the case of the Checkers are&mdash;hockey teams. All were based in Indianapolis. They represented four different leagues. One a second time.That would be the Checkers, who were part of the now-defunct Central Hockey League for five years. Now the Checkers are the eighth team in the International Hockey League, which will embark on its 40th consecutive season this October.Calling it a &ldquo;new chapter in the history of the International Hockey League,&rdquo; Al Savill announced on July 26 that Indianapolis will compete in the IHL during the 1984-85 season. The IHL board of governors, by a 5-0 vote, agreed to accept Indianapolis as the eighth team during a telephone conference but Indianapolis did not make the announcement official until a day later.&ldquo;They had to study the first draft of the schedule,&rdquo; said Ken Ullyot, the Fort Wayne Komets&rsquo; representative on the IHL board. &ldquo;They wanted to have a fair share of the weekend dates.&rdquo;Apparently the schedule was agreeable as the group, headed by Savill, made the board&rsquo;s vote stand up. Savill, now a Florida businessman, formerly lived in Indianapolis and also operated IHL franchises before in Columbus and Dayton, OH, and Grand Rapids, MI. Savill also was once a member of the board of the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League.&ldquo;I wanted to keep the Checkers name,&rdquo; Savill said. &ldquo;I wanted to keep the continuity of the team going.&rdquo;In addition to Savill, other key members of the new group include Fred Creighton, who was general manager and coach of the Checkers when they competed in the CHL, and two Indianapolis businessmen, James Budden and Gary Todd.All three, along with Savill, share the ownership. The New York Islanders, who owned the CHL Checkers, will also have a minority interest in the new club. Creighton will be the GM, but a new coach will be appointed in the near future.The IHL Checkers will play their home games in the 8,200-seat Indianapolis Fairgrounds Coliseum, the same rink in which the CHL Checkers competed. Players will be provided by the Islanders, Minnesota North Stars and Boston Bruins.Indianapolis was a member of the IHL for seven seasons almost three decades ago. The Indianapolis Chiefs joined the IHL for the 1955-56 season and lasted through the 1961-62 season, and won the playoff championship in 1958.Before the Chiefs, the Indianapolis Capitols were members of the American Hockey League in the 1940s and early &rsquo;50s. The Indianapolis Racers, with Wayne Gretzky as the star, were members of the World Hockey Association in the &rsquo;70s.The IHL earlier granted a &ldquo;temporary&rdquo; franchise to another CHL orphan, Salt Lake City, which will rank ninth in seniority although the franchise was awarded ahead of the Indianapolis franchise.&ldquo;Indianapolis will be the eighth team,&rdquo; said Ullyot. &ldquo;Salt Lake has no seniority as yet. No contract.&rdquo;The IHL did not award a permanent franchise because of the distance between Salt Lake and other IHL cities. While Salt Lake has agreed to pay the travel and other expenses for teams which make the trip to Salt Lake, some IHL governors aren&rsquo;t sure Salt Lake can meet all the financial commitments.&ldquo;Denver didn&rsquo;t make it (back in the &rsquo;60s) and they weren&rsquo;t paying any subsidy,&rdquo; Ullyot recalled. &#9632;

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Indianapolis Becomes Eighth Franchise

<div class="byline">BY PAT LYON</div>ERIE&mdash;The Atlantic Coast Hockey League will apparently remain as a five-team circuit for the 1984-85 campaign.Expansion hopes that centered on Johnstown and Syracuse looked bleak as the five returning teams planned a scheduling meeting to iron out the 64-game slate.Interested persons in Johnstown revealed they would like a year to get better organized while an investor was ready to go into Syracuse, but the league was getting little cooperation from the arena owners in the New York town.Last month, the ACHL announced a new format which features an emphasis on American-born players in the hope of becoming a true breeding ground for National Hockey League stars of the future.Under the direction of ACHL commissioner Ray Miron, the league has decided to field teams with 15 players, 10 of whom will be American-born rookies.Miron has been working on the new format and decided it would be best to have three regional camps before having a main camp for the best players found in the regional sites.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re still working on it, but we&rsquo;d like to have camps in the Minnesota area along with the Detroit area and Boston areas,&rdquo; explained Miron. &ldquo;From those three camps we would take the best players in a main camp which would be held sometime in October.&rdquo;The ACHL is expecting around 100 players at each camp which would be pared down to about 60-70 players for the final camp. Though a site for the main camp hasn&rsquo;t been announced, the Erie Golden Blades are making a serious pitch to hold it at their new Civic Center home.Teams will be drafting in their inverse order of finish last year which would mean last place Pine Bridge would draft first followed by Mohawk Valley, Virginia, Erie and defending regular-season champion Carolina.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m really excited about our new concept and I think it&rsquo;s going to work,&rdquo; said Miron. &ldquo;I think the fans will be surprised at how good the calibre of players will be in the league this year.&rdquo;AROUND THE LEAGUE&mdash;The Virginia Lancers are hoping for completion of their new arena by the beginning of the season, but just in case it&rsquo;s not finished they will begin their season at the Salem Civic Center&hellip;The Erie Golden Blades have yet to start their big September push, but the club revealed that advertising was up 200 per cent over last year while season-ticket sales have already eclipsed the previous season. &#9632;

Expansion Doesn’t Look Good For ACHL

BOSTON&mdash;Mats Thelin, D, 6th draft pick in 1981, signed to NHL contract from Sweden.BUFFALO&mdash;Yvon Lambert, LW, announced retirement as active player to become coach of Verdun of QMJHL.DETROIT&mdash;Rob McClanahan, RW, traded to Vancouver for Dave Williams, LW.EDMONTON&mdash;Jari Kurri, RW, signed to new two-year contract.HARTFORD&mdash;Torrie Robertson, LW, and Dave MacLean, RW, a 1982 draft pick from Belleville of OHL, signed to NHL contracts.LOS ANGELES&mdash;Jim Fox, RW, signed to new NHL contract. Steve Christoff, RW, Kevin Lavallee, LW, and Gary Laskoski, G, all declared free agents after Kings bought out their existing contracts.MONTREAL&mdash;Patrick Roy, G, 3rd draft choice in 1984 from Granby of QMJHL, signed three-year pro contract. Craig Ludwig, D, and Mark Hunter, RW, both signed new contracts.NEW JERSEY&mdash;Hannu Kampurri, G, signed multi-year contract as free agent from Finland. Chico Resch, G, Ron Low, G, Shawn MacKenzie, G, Chris Terreri, G, Craig Billington, G, 2nd draft pick in 1984 from Belleville of OHL, and Kirk McLean, G, 6th draft pick in 1984 from Oshawa of OHL, signed to NHL contracts.PHILADELPHIA&mdash;Ed Hospodar, D, signed as free agent from Hartford. Frank Bathe, D, and Randy Holt, D, both announced retirement from hockey. Bob Froese, G, Daryl Stanley, D, Lindsay Carson, LW, Ross Fitzpatrick, LW, Bobby Mormina, RW, and Dave Brown, RW, all signed to new contracts.TORONTO&mdash;Bruce Boudreau, C, and Pat Graham, LW, quit team to play in West Germany. Lawrie Nisker, C, signed to tryout from Flint of IHL.WASHINGTON&mdash;Marc Chorney, D, signed as free agent from Los Angeles. Paul Gardner, C, signed as free agent from Pittsburgh.WINNIPEG&mdash;Randy Carlyle, D, and Scot Arniel, LW, signed to long-term NHL contracts. &#9632;

Player Transactions

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0037-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-01429/5131729-1-eng-US/f0037-012.jpg"></div> &#9632;

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The Hockey News BookShelf

<div class="byline">BY JOHN HERBERT</div>Louisville HockeyH&B 100 YEARS<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-01502/5131760-1-eng-US/f0038-012.jpg" title="f0038-01" width="285" height="211"></div>TORONTO&mdash;Jeff Greenlaw is going to court because the Ontario Hockey League did not accommodate him at the midget priority selections May 30, according to his agent, Don Meehan.Greenlaw, a 16-year-old native of St. Catharines, was selected by the North Bay Centennials but wants to play for the Toronto Marlboros.&ldquo;The league has accommodated individuals in the past,&rdquo; Meehan said. &ldquo;We see it to the degree teams initiate contact with players long prior to the draft and make deals. If that&rsquo;s going on, and numerous names come to mind, it appears to be a practice within the league.&ldquo;What&rsquo;s good for others should be good for Greenlaw.&rdquo;Greenlaw, a 6-foot-1, 190-pounder, was rated the top midget prospect overall by the OHL Central Scouting in Ontario, the Maritimes and the U.S. Greenlaw scored 28 goals and 22 assists and accumulated 94 penalty minutes as a left winger for the St. Catharines Falcons junior B team last season.&ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t pass him up,&rdquo; said Centennial owner Reg Quinn. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll never get another opportunity for a player like this unless we finish last and we never intend to do that. That player can win us a Memorial Cup.&rdquo;Greenlaw&rsquo;s parents sent a letter to all clubs before the draft instructing them that their son intended to go to private school in Toronto and that he wanted to play hockey in 1984-85 at the most competitive level&mdash;the major junior league.Letters of warning are not new. Former London star Dave Simpson wanted to play for the Knights and got his way. Teams don&rsquo;t like gambling if it means losing their first pick. Belleville Bulls gambled a couple of years ago with Detroit midget Pat LaFontaine, the toprated midget, and lost, which has left club owner Dr. Robert Vaughan, who is also chairman of the OHL governors, with &ldquo;abitter taste.&rdquo; LaFontaine went to the Quebec League when he did not get to play for Cornwall Royals who spent considerable time recruiting him and had convinced him to play for them.One could side with the good intentions of the OHL, which aims to distribute the the best midget hockey players evenly. It is generally agreed sports leagues need regulations so clubs have equal opportunity to build competitive, if not championship, teams.This time, however, it will be interesting to see if the OHL has backed itself into a comer.While allowing some players to dictate where they might play, the OHL argues Greenlaw must play in North Bay or play in another league. Meehan says if other players can choose where they want to play, then Greenlaw should have the same freedom. In a similar situation several years ago, Peterborough Petes&rsquo; coach Roger Neilson picked Paul Reinhart off the Kitchener Rangers&rsquo; roster, despite warnings from lawyer Alan Eagleson he wouldn&rsquo;t report. At the last minute, to avert court action which would threaten the draft system, the OHL allowed Peterborough to &ldquo;loan&rdquo; Reinhart to Kitchener as part of a package deal which included the swapping of draft picks. The OHL has a rule which forbids teams from &ldquo;trading&rdquo; first draft picks.The matter of players or agents dictating where their client plays, or teams stickhandling under the table, has created problems.Last year, for instance, when London coach Don Boyd went to his first OHL draft, he quickly discovered that some top players didn&rsquo;t want to play in London for various reasons. Boyd feels there was a pre-arranged deal between Brantford, which drafted behind London, and Shayne Corson. London wanted Corson but didn&rsquo;t pick him. Boyd said he couldn&rsquo;t take the risk while trying to rebuild the club.Then there are the so-called &ldquo;abuses,&rdquo; Vaughan said.Last year, a highly-rated Toronto midget, Vito Cramarossa, wanted to remain in Toronto and live with his widowed mother. The other teams, out of sympathy for the family, agreed to back off. But when the Marlies waited until the second round to take Cramarossa and selected Ed Olczyk in the first round, several clubs were annoyed.Another example of fancy stickhandling was exhibited by Kitchener, which took Detroit Compuware midget Craig Wolanin, rated No. 3 by Central Scouting, in the first round (15th overall) in the recent draft. Other clubs were afraid Wolanin would exercise an option open to Americans and go to Quebec or Western Canada where some clubs pay bonus money. The prosperous Kitchener organization was able to satisfy Wolanin.&ldquo;There appears to be instances the draft has worked to one team&rsquo;s benefit and instances it has worked to another team&rsquo;s benefit,&rdquo; Vaughan said. &ldquo;There is a need for the league to put more teeth in the draft. I would agree there are abuses.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what the legal strategy in the (Greenlaw) matter is. All I know is they wanted the boy to live with his uncle in Toronto, attend a private school and play the best junior hockey level available. I don&rsquo;t think they should dictate any terms. I&rsquo;m glad somebody had the fortitude to go ahead and draft the boy.&rdquo;&ldquo;If none of these things (abuses) had happened, maybe this young man wouldn&rsquo;t have gotten the idea,&rdquo; said Marlie general manager Frank Bonello. &ldquo;Maybe it&rsquo;s our society. Everybody&rsquo;s got rights today. You have a hard time telling people what to do.&rdquo;Scott Morrison, who led the London Knights in scoring the last two seasons and was was their Most Valuable Player last season, expects to sign a tryout form and attend the Montreal Canadiens&rsquo; camp in September.Morrison, a 5-foot-7, 180-pound center, was offered the tryout contract by Montreal assistant general manager Andre Boudrias.Morrison, who produced 47 goals and 73 assists in his final year with the Ontario Hockey League club to finish eighth in the league, was not drafted by a National Hockey League club and was free to make his own deal.Morrison said he hopes to win a spot with the Montreal-Winnipeg shared farm club in Sherbrooke of the American Hockey League.&ldquo;I know I can play in Sherbrooke.&rdquo; Morrison said. &ldquo;I hope they make room for me. It is just a tryout. It doesn&rsquo;t mean much. Anyone can get a tryout. All they&rsquo;re doing is giving me a chance and that&rsquo;s all I can ask.&rdquo;Morrison has been concerned about his future since the Central Hockey League folded and the job market for pro players was reduced considerably. After the CHL folded, NHL clubs began to reduce their farm system rosters as they announced they were opting for sharing development clubs in the AHL to reduce costs.Morrison felt size was not a major reason he was not drafted.&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t see that being a problem,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There are a lot of players not overly large who got drafted. I played in the OHL for three years and almost every game. It&rsquo;s not like I couldn&rsquo;t handle it. I have a pretty good attitude and I play to win all the time. When I&rsquo;m on the ice, I give everything I have. I work my butt off and that&rsquo;s something teams look for.&rdquo;Morrison doubts he&rsquo;ll play for London as an overage player if he is unsuccessful in winning a pro job. Knight coach Don Boyd said he has offered Morrison the opportunity if he wants it, but Morrison said he would rather return to university and use a Hockey Canada scholarship he has been granted.&ldquo;I could go to school but I&rsquo;d rather not do that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather play hockey. School&rsquo;s my second option&hellip;maybe my third. I&rsquo;d like to play pro. Hockey&rsquo;s in my blood. That&rsquo;s all there is to it.&rdquo;Ottawa 67s owner Howard Darwin is getting some strange applicants, among the serious ones, for the coaching position vacated when Brian Kilrea joined the New York Islanders as an assistant.Among Darwin&rsquo;s 35-40 applicants is an icemaker from Brantford.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s been watching hockey very closely and figures he can do it all,&rdquo; Darwin said. &ldquo;He wants the opportunity.&rdquo;Darwin says there are about 15 &ldquo;serious candidates&rdquo; and hopes to have replacement by training camp. &#9632;

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Greenlaw Case Will Be Decided In Court

<div class="byline">BY BEN KUZMA</div>Louisville HockeyH&B 100 YEARS<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-01472/5131791-1-eng-US/f0039-012.jpg" title="f0039-01" width="285" height="211"></div>SASKATOON&mdash;If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then the memorabilia asthetically displayed on the walls in the Saskatoon Blades&rsquo; modem second-story office speak volumes. The problem is some stories are better than others and none have yet to end with everyone living happily ever after.Yes, there have been seasons to remember and forget as team photos and accompanying inscriptions vividly indicate.There was that fine 1972-73 squad which dropped only 11 regular-season games and appeared destined for an elusive Memorial Cup berth before losing out to the Medicine Hat Tigers in the Western Hockey League championship series. And there was that talented 197475 club complete with scoring leader Bernie Federko that bowed out to the New Westminster Bruins in a sevengame league final.As much as there were times to dwell on, the fact remains the Blades have yet to win the Cup and are coming off a season where they failed to reach the playoffs.So much for recent fond memories.The disappointment of missing postseason play last season has been replaced with expected optimisim. Daryl Lubiniecki has handed the coaching reins over to former Calgary Wranglers&rsquo; mentor, Marcel Comeau. Lubiniecki, who worked three-and-a-half seasons behind the Saskatoon bench, will stay on as general manager.&ldquo;It was my decision and I finally decided I just had enough,&rdquo; said Lubiniecki, who relinquished his coaching duties after Calgary beat the Blades with four seconds remaining to claim the sixth and final playoff position in the Eastern Division. &ldquo;It was time to get someone younger in. I told Rick (club owner Brodsky) when I took over coaching I wasn&rsquo;t going to be a permanent fixture. I don&rsquo;t look at our 36-36 record as a disappointment&mdash;most years it would have been good enough to make the playoffs.&rdquo;A popular misconception in the WHL is that Lubiniecki is intense behind the bench but loose as a goose when the game&rsquo;s over. Some said he ran too loose a ship off the ice and that it always caught up to the Blades in the stretch drive and playoffs.&ldquo;That&rsquo;s untrue,&rdquo; said Lubiniecki. &ldquo;When I played and coached or anything I do, I always give it 100 per cent. I guess you expect the players to do the same for you. You have to treat them like human beings.&ldquo;Win or lose, it would take me hours and hours to unwind after a game. That is what finally got to me. Maybe I made myself too available to the players or anything&mdash;some guys thrive on that. I enjoyed coaching and I have no regrets.&rdquo;Enter Comeau.Lubiniecki said in the back of his mind he was hoping Comeau would apply for the Saskatoon position.&ldquo;The biggest plus is he&rsquo;s very honest and sincere and a hard-working guy who handled the whole shot in Calgary last year,&rdquo; said Lubiniecki. &ldquo;He spent 11 years in the International Hockey League&mdash;that speaks a lot for itself.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s never been accused of running an easy practice. He&rsquo;s able to relate better to the kids and I think they&rsquo;ll like him right off the bat.&rdquo;Comeau said when opportunity came knocking at his door he couldn&rsquo;t ignore it.&ldquo;When the oppoortunity arose, the Calgary situation was still unsettled at that point in terms of ownership and Saskatoon wanted me badly,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Certainly I wanted to stay in the league and they (Blades) did offer me a two-year contract.&ldquo;I really think this is a step in the right direction. The 1HL has better people in it than the NHL gives it credit for.&rdquo;Since Comeau&rsquo;s departure, Sandy Hucul, former coach of the World Hockey Association Phoenix Roadrunners, has been hired as coach of the Wranglers while Hank Bassen is the GM.Comeau did a credible job in Calgary where his injury-plagued Wranglers finished at 36-36 despite missing key veteran personnel. Barry Bracko was lost for two months with mononucleosis while Scott Machej missed the last 25 games with a knee injury. Knee problems also kept Garth Hildebrand out of the lineup for the final 15 games.&ldquo;Those three guys put a crimp in our plans and it was a tough year in Calgary because we were quite a ways down the ladder what with the Olympic team training there (Calgary) and the Flames, university and college hockey too,&rdquo; Comeau said. &ldquo;The guys were used to bigger crowds and better coverage from the media. We always seemed to be on page eight of the sports section.&rdquo;With two seasons to convince Lubiniecki he&rsquo;s worth his weight in hockey pucks, Comeau plans to attract attention by cracking a whip in Saskatoon.&ldquo;I like people who work hard,&rdquo; said the 32-year-old former Edmonton Oil King junior forward who played nine seasons for the IHL Saginaw Gears before becoming the team&rsquo;s GM and coach. &ldquo;I played a lot in the minors and wasn&rsquo;t blessed with a lot of talent. Hard work is something you appreciate as a coach&rdquo; &#9632;

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August 31, 1984

Bruins Add Another Goalie To The Stable

Lambert Inherits Creamer’s Job

Canucks Sport Distinct European Flavor

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