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.

October 26, 1984

The Hockey News October 26, 1984

1. Who won the Lady Byng Trophy despite being traded during the season?2. Name an original Vancouver Canuck who was bom in Denmark?3. Name the last team to have the NHL scoring champ and penalty-minute leader in the same season?4. Which current NHL coach was once a hotel operator in Shawville.5. With which NHL team did Bernie Parent debut?6. What is the only individual NHL award never won by a Montreal Canadien?7. What Chicago Cubs player was once offered a tryout by the Pittsburgh Penguins?8. Name the last Montreal Canadien to win the Lady Byng Trophy?9. What is the fewest number of assists recorded by an NHL scoring champ?10. Who was the first NHL scoring champion to register 50 goals?Answers in next week&rsquo;s issue.Last Week&rsquo;s Trivia Answers1, Tony Esposito. 2. Rik Wilson. 3. California Seals. 4. Bobby Hull, 1961-62. 5. Phil Esposito. 6. Eddie Johnston. 7. Brad Park. 8. Winnipeg 4, Pittsburgh 2, Oct. 10, 1979. 9. Polo. 10. Liberal. &#9632;

IN THIS ISSUE

TRIVIA

<div class="byline">BY BOB DUFF</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0005-04" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-04458/6638415-1-eng-US/f0005-042.jpg"></div>that the NHL goaltenders who played the most minutes last season were: &#9632;

f0005-04

Did You Know…

<div class="byline">BY VARTAN KUPELIAN</div>DETROIT&mdash;Why Darryl Sittler?&ldquo;Because we don&rsquo;t have four centers who are better than he is,&rdquo; Detroit Red Wing general manager Jimmy Devellano said.Sittler, after balking at the trade that was to send him to the third team in his National Hockey League career, belatedly agreed to report. He was scheduled to join the Wings in time for the season&rsquo;s fourth game against the New York Islanders at Joe Louis Arena.&ldquo;Darryl&rsquo;s over the heartbreak,&rdquo; said his agent Alan Eagleson. &ldquo;He and his wife had a good weekend to review the whole thing. He&rsquo;ll be there with bells on.&rdquo;The Wings acquired Sittler from the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for two young left wingers, Joe Paterson and Murray Craven, Detroit&rsquo;s No. 1 pick in 1982. Craven is 20, Paterson 24.But instead of joining the Wings, Sittler contemplated retirement.&ldquo;His frame of mind wasn&rsquo;t right,&rdquo; said Tiger Williams, Sittler&rsquo;s close friend and linemate for six years with the Toronto Maple Leafs.&ldquo;When that happens, you&rsquo;re better off making sure about what you want to do. If you&rsquo;re not, you&rsquo;re not going to do yourself any good or the team any good.&rdquo;Eagleson said the reason the Sittler was hesitant had nothing to do with the Wings.&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t a dispute between Darryl and the Red Wings,&rdquo; Eagleson said. &ldquo;The Wings have done everything in their power, including extending his contract and agreeing to make it a no-trade.&ldquo;But Darryl was devastated by the trade. He is tom. He doesn&rsquo;t know what to do. His wife is adamant that she doesn&rsquo;t want to uproot the family again, not under any circumstances.&rdquo;Eagleson said Sittler was seriously considering retiring and living in Philadelphia, but &ldquo;to take a day, a week, a month if he needs it to think about it and be sure.&rdquo;And he did.Sittler&rsquo;s reluctance to report was costing him $1,400 a day, according to Red Wing general manager Jimmy Devellano. Sittler earns $275,00 annually. The Wings agreed to pick up the option year of his contract, making it a two-year deal for Sittler in Detroit.A major roadblock was ability (or inability) to sell a $350,000 home in Philadelphia. The Wings refused to provide any assitance in that area, making it clear Eagleson said, that they weren&rsquo;t in the real estate business.&ldquo;The real estate people looked over the house and satisfied Darryl he could get out of it what he has in it,&rdquo; Eagleson said. &ldquo;Darryl&rsquo;s been skating every day, and I said to Jimmy, he may as well get over there.&rdquo;An hour or so later, from their end, the Wings made the announcement of Sutler&rsquo;s return.Eagleson said the Wings were caught in the middle.&ldquo;They weren&rsquo;t aware that Darryl was going to get the Flyers&rsquo; captaincy or that during the summer he had made a decision to stay in Philadelphia rather than leave when he could have gone elsewhere to play,&rdquo; Eagleson said.Of course, it was Devellano&rsquo;s job to know those things before he made the trade. Devellano said he conducted negotiations with Flyer GM Bobby Clarke and did not talk to Eagleson or Sittler before the deal.Devellano said he expected Sittler to join the Wings when he &ldquo;realized it was in his best interest to play for us.&rdquo;Lanny MacDonald was the right winger on the formidable Leafs&rsquo; line with Sittier and Williams that enjoyed its heyday during the mid-to-late &lsquo;70s. The Wings now have traded for Williams, who was acquired during the offseason from Vancouver, and Sittler in the last few months.How about MacDonald, who now plays for the Calgary Flames?&ldquo;That&rsquo;s my next move,&rdquo; Devellano said, his tongue planted firmly in his cheek.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s not much chance of completing&rsquo;that deal.&rdquo;Devellano said the Wings&rsquo; position is never to renegotiate a contract, but he made concessions to Sittler by promising to pick up the second year of his existing contract and adding the no-trade clause.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s an option year, at the club&rsquo;s option,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve agreed to extend it&hellip;In other words, pick up the extra year which would mean he&rsquo;d come to Detroit with a two-year deal.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had no second thoughts. Whenever you make a deal, it&rsquo;s with the best interest of the club in mind. 1 feel good about the trade for a lot of reasons. We want Darryl Sittler because, like Brad Park and like Tiger Williams, he makes the playoffs every year. Without knocking anybody, the two players we traded for him, we felt couldn&rsquo;t play here. They&rsquo;d both been tried.&rdquo; &#9632;

…But He’ll Be Motoring In Detroit

<div class="byline">Stan Fischler&#x2019;s</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-011737/6638470-1-eng-US/f0006-012.jpg" title="f0006-01" width="377" height="442"></div><h2>ON THE CONTRARY</h2>It&rsquo;s time for our regular feature&mdash;&rdquo;Action-Reaction.&rdquo; Hockey gives you action, Fischler gives you reaction. Barristers, are you standing by, we&rsquo;re ready for take-off.ACTION: REFEREE ANDY VAN HELLEMOND EXPERIMENTS WEARING A HELMET WHILE OFFICIATING.REACTION: Better, van Hellemond and his fellow zebras wear glasses. That done, they might try reading the rule book. That done, they might try taking a crash course in consistency. That done, they might try reading the rulebook again; this time slowly. That done, they might realize that that a tripping penalty is the same in the third period as the first, and that there is such an infraction as interference. That done, they could throw away the dopey helmets and watch the game.ACTION: NORDIQUES SIGN DALE HUNTER AFTER SUMMER-LONG SALARY DISPUTE.REACTION: Hunter is the s.o.b.&rsquo;s s.o.b., the closest thing to a reincarnation of Ted Lindsay, arguably the meanest man in NHL history. (&lsquo;Twas said that Terrible Ted would have speared his grandmother if she went into the comer with him). I was very upset over rumors that Hunter might leave Quebec. The Nordiques need a Filthy McNasty the way Wayne Gretzky requires Dave Semenko. (Or, the way Andy van Hellemond needs glasses).ACTION: TIGER WILLIAMS SAYS HIS BOOK IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CANUCKS&rsquo; DECISION TO TRADE HIM.REACTION: Maybe if Tiger had sent free copies to Canuck general manager Harry Neale and bossman Arthur Griffiths instead of forcing them to buy copies he&rsquo;d still be on Team Sominex instead of Les Red Wings. But when Williams says &ldquo;my writing of this book contributed to the club&rsquo;s decision to trade me,&rdquo; you have to wonder if this is a Tiger put-on. What the hell does a simple book about a hockey player&rsquo;s life have to do with him remaining with the Canucks? Unless, of course, the Vancouver management figures its fans were liable to stay home and read the book rather than watch their (ahem) team play.ACTION: BOSTON TEENY-BOPPERS PROTEST MIKE KRUSHELNYSKI TRADE TO EDMONTON.REACTION: Now that beefcake has become more important than backchecking in Beantown, the Bruins are in trouble. Maybe they should swing a deal for Ron Duguay, although 1 always figured that Mike O&rsquo;Connell was 10 times sexier than Mike Krushelnyski on the best day Mike ever had. (Harry Sinden isn&rsquo;t bad looking either).ACTION: THE HOCKEY NEWS ADDS COLUMNS BY AL STRACHAN AND JAY GREENBERG.REACTION: This is obviously a move to satisfy sex-crazed, Krushelnyski-loving teeny-boppers who can&rsquo;t deal with beards.ACTION: JET COACH BARRY LONG DEMANDS THAT HIS PLAYERS HELP LAURIE BOSCHMAN WHEN SOME FILTHY MCNASTY BEATS UP ON HIM.REACTION: It all started during an exhibition game between the Jets and Canadiens. Craig Ludwig walloped Bosch-man while the Jets looked on and conspicuously did not help their buddy. Jet GM John Ferguson says it won&rsquo;t happen again. I say it will happen again unless John Ferguson comes out of retirement or the Jets make a deal for Dave Semenko.ACTION: HALL OF FAMER GLENN (MISTER GOALIE) HALL DENIES THAT BEING CRAZY IS A PREREQUISITE TO BEING A GOALTENDER.REACTION: Mister Goalie can deny it all he wants but nobody (but the other goaltenders) will believe him. But I like the distinction Hall makes, he says goalies are not crazy, they&rsquo;re loners. &ldquo;It never bothered me that people called me a loner,&rdquo; Hall explains. &ldquo;I just told them I was a loner for one reason; I liked the company.&rdquo;ACTION: KING GM ROGIE VACHON SAYS TOP DRAFT CHOICE CRAIG REDMOND IS A CARBON COPY OF PAUL COFFEY.REACTION: That must mean that when THE HOCKEY NEWS poll reveals Rod Langway is a better defenseman than Redmond, the King rookie will join Coffey on a hunger strike.ACTION: CHARLIE SIMMER SAYS HE SWEARS ON HIS SON&rsquo;S HEAD THAT HE NEVER SAID HE NO LONGER WANTS TO PLAY FOR THE KINGS.REACTION: It always bothers me when little kid&rsquo;s heads are brought into hockey disputes. Why couldn&rsquo;t he have said Al Strachan&rsquo;s moustache or Frank Orr&rsquo;s hairstyle or Fischler&rsquo;s dandruff. In any event, I take Charlies&rsquo;s word for it&mdash;and I certainly hope his son does, too. (Now, if we can only find another for Simmer to play for, everybody will be happy).ACTION: JOHN FERGUSON WILL AGAIN URGE THAT REFEREES USE VIDEOTAPE REPLAYS TO SETTLE DISPUTES DURING THE PLAYOFFS.REACTION: Your wasting your time, Fergie. I had to laugh when you said, &ldquo;We have the (electronic) technology, why don&rsquo;t we use it?&rdquo; Refs aren&rsquo;t interested in electronics improving their business. They want to stay in the 19th century; calling tripping in the first period but not the third and letting their whistles get lockjaw when interference happens. But, Fergie, if you&rsquo;ve got a good deal on helmets, call Van Hellemond.THE LIE DETECTOR: As a special service to HOCKEY NEWS readers, I am introducing a new feature expressly designed to separate truth from fiction in hockey history. I will take a tale that purports to be true and go directly to the source to determine whether it did happen or whether it was a figment of some author&rsquo;s fertile imagination. Our first test of the Fischler Lie Detector is The Story of Butch Keeling and the Missing Toilet. First the tale, then the test.Exactly 40 years ago the New York Rangers played the Ottawa Senators (then an NHL member) in Ottawa and beat them, 9-1. But instead of staying at a hotel, the team was booked to stay in a private railway car which would return to New York the next morning. Ranger manager Lester (The Silver Fox) Patrick instructed his men not to drink too much after the game because the Pullman&rsquo;s toilet was broken. &ldquo;If you must use the toilet facilities after you return this evening,&rdquo; warned Patrick, &ldquo;you are to use pails which will be hung outside the car.&rdquo;Following the win, all players headed for a beer party arranged by team captain Frank Boucher. After a few hours of guzzling, Boucher realized that the boss, Patrick, might be miffed if the players stormed aboard the sleeper and awakened him.&ldquo;Just before three in the morning, I decided we had better get back to our sleeping car,&rdquo; said Boucher. &ldquo;I was concerned that some of the boys, feeling no pain whatever, might wake Lester. So I cautioned them&mdash;&rsquo;Don&rsquo;t wake Lester. Don&rsquo;t wake Lester,&rsquo; and they were quiet as mice as we made our way to our berths.&rdquo;Boucher thought he had safely shepherded the entire flock to bed without Patrick knowing about any of the curfew-breakers.Boucher figured the &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t wake Lester&rdquo; admonition had worked.The next morning Boucher learned that it had not. He met Patrick over breakfast. &ldquo;Did you know,&rdquo; asked Lester, &ldquo;that Mister Keeling walks in his sleep?&rdquo;Keeling was the rollicking Ranger left winger and, as far as Boucher knew, he didn&rsquo;t walk in his sleep. But Patrick went on: &ldquo;Some time after we left Ottawa early this morning, the door to my compartment opened and there stood Mister Keeling. Are you aware, Mister Boucher, that Mister Keeling does not wear pyjamas? He wears only one of those silly undershirts that barely reaches his navel. As I came awake and stared incredulously at him, he began to urinate on my floor. I called out to him, &lsquo;Butch, Butch, what the devil are you doing?&rsquo;&ldquo;Mister Keeling put his finger to his lips and said, &lsquo;Shhhh, shhhh, don&rsquo;t wake Lester.&rsquo; Oh, Frank, it was delightful.&rdquo;In time the &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t wake Lester&rdquo; punch line was heard round the NHL and Keeling&rsquo;s performance in Patrick&rsquo;s compartment became a tale that was told and retold to the point of becoming legendary.Ah, but did it really happen, or was it a fabulous fib? For that we haul out the Lie Detector and bring in Butch Keeling, now retired and living in Toronto.The answer, says Butch, is yes, it happened precisely as recounted. Butch adds, &ldquo;Boucher had this French-Canadian friend who had a cottage near MacGregor Lake. Well, he poured plenty of beer and I drank plenty. When I got back to the train I went looking for the pail that was supposed to be hanging outside the car. I took a wrong turn somewhere, wound up in Patrick&rsquo;s compartment and that&rsquo;s when I whispered, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t wake Lester. &lsquo;It could have happened to anyone, but it happened to me.&rdquo;30-SECOND THIRD DEGREE: Mike Bullard of the Pittsburgh Penguins, please take the stand.Q: You scored 51 goals last season. Your coach says everyone is aware of you. What&rsquo;s going to happen this year?BULLARD: The players (Penguins) are looking to me to do it again and I just might.Q: What effect will Mario Lemieux have in terms of taking the checking pressure off you?BULLARD: It didn&rsquo;t happen in exhibition games. Like when we played the Devils, they had Mel Bridgman right on me. Last year the opposition was running me a lot and I&rsquo;m just going to have to live with it. If they check Mario it might leave me a little open and if they&rsquo;re going to check me, it might leave Mario open. Maybe each of us can gain by it if it happens that way.Q: What is your impression of Lemieux?BULLARD: He&rsquo;s a super hockey player and he&rsquo;s going to help us a lot. It&rsquo;ll take him a while to get in the right groove with everybody but his attitude is great.Q: Everybody&rsquo;s talking about Lemieux but your coach (Bob Berry) sounds enthused about another top draft choice, defenseman Doug Bodger.BULLARD: He was one of our best defensemen in training camp. I think he&rsquo;s super. If you ask me, he&rsquo;s going to be one helluva hockey player in the future.Q: No experts that I&rsquo;ve talked to believe your Penguins will make the playoffs. What about that?BULLARD: We&rsquo;re in the same predicament as New Jersey. We&rsquo;ve gotta work our hearts out because we&rsquo;re not expected to make it. Maybe we&rsquo;ll surprise a couple of teams in our division.Q: Your contract ends at the end of this season and you haven&rsquo;t re-signed. What does that mean?BULLARD: I was hoping we&rsquo;d have settled the contract last summer but we didn&rsquo;t and I&rsquo;m not going to let it bother me. I like Pittsburgh, but we were far apart on the contract just before the season started so I&rsquo;ll just have to see what happens. &#9632;

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Referees Would Be Better Off With Glasses

Next week&rsquo;s issue marks an important date in the evolution of THE HOCKEY NEWS. We&rsquo;ll be presenting our first-ever Magazine section, eight pages of features and coverage that you won&rsquo;t ordinarily find in the regular HOCKEY NEWS. This first of a monthly series includes an interview with hockey czar Alan Eagleson, a centerspread feature entitled &ldquo;Hockey Talk&rdquo; as well as a mini-referendum and a full-color photo essay. All that and much, much more.Plus, the issue&rsquo;s regular cover story will feature Pittsburgh Penguin rookie sensation Mario Lemieux and an assessment of how he fared in his first week in the National Hockey League.Don&rsquo;t miss it. &#9632;

NEXT WEEK IN THN

<div class="byline">BY TOM HENSHAW</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0003-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-011619/6638174-1-eng-US/f0003-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Rick Middleton, above, will miss the good rapport he had with talented linemate Barry Pederson, who is out with an injury.</figcaption></div>Rick (Nifty) Middleton noticed the difference right away, on the first shift in the opening game of the season against the Pittsburgh Penguins.Barry Pederson was missing.&ldquo;We have a lot of rapport,&rdquo; said Middleton. &ldquo;A lot of times I make plays without even looking, knowing that Barry&rsquo;s there.&ldquo;Tonight I did it a few times and Dougie (Kostynski) was there. Other times I put the puck over and he wasn&rsquo;t there. It&rsquo;s not his fault and it&rsquo;s not my fault. It&rsquo;s just a matter of getting used to it. Barry and I were used to playing with each other.&rdquo;Pederson, of course, will miss the first month of the season, probably some dozen games, with a broken knuckle on his right hand suffered in a fight with Mario Marois in Quebec Oct. 2.As far as anyone can remember, Middleton and Pederson played together for the first time Dec. 23, 1981, during Pederson&lsquo;s rookie year, in Landover, MD. Middleton had a hat trick. Pederson assisted on two of the three goals. The Bruins won, 7-4.They knew they had something special on Mar. 11, 1982, in a game against Winnipeg when Pederson twice got the puck at the boards, whirled and fired rinkwide passes to Middleton for breakaways that produced two goals in another 7-4 victory.&ldquo;He wasn&rsquo;t even looking at me,&rdquo; were Middleton&rsquo;s first words after the game.Since then the Bruins&rsquo; duo, who have been called the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of the rink, have rarely been separated. Over the past three years, they have accounted for 276 goals and 610 scoring points. Middleton had 147 goals, Pederson 186 assists.Unfortunately, this dependence on Middleton and Pederson for scoring punch up front cost the Bruins dearly in the 1983-84 season when the twosome scored 86 goals, a little over 25 per cent of the total Boston production only to be held to one point, an assist by Pederson, in three games in the playoffs.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve always been looked upon to score the big goals,&rdquo; said Middleton. &ldquo;We put in a lot of ice time. I never minded it. I&rsquo;ve always liked playing a lot. But we never felt that we were the only guys who were supposed to score goals.&ldquo;Unfortunately, if anything tired us out last year, I think it was the last game in New Jersey when we clinched first place. I know I was tired after that game. Physically and mentally, I think going into the playoffs we weren&rsquo;t quite ready.&ldquo;This year they say we&rsquo;re going to cut back a little bit. But when it comes down to it you get injuries and after awhile we&rsquo;ll go down to three lines and we&rsquo;ll be getting a lot of ice time. We&rsquo;re ready for it.&rdquo;Middleton feels that it is the lack of early season ice time that has burdened him with the unfair rap that he is a slow starter, the implication being that he is out of shape to start the season and plays himself into condition.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that I&rsquo;m a slow starter,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Somebody puts that label on me and I can&rsquo;t seem to shake it. I don&rsquo;t score all my points in the last half of the season, you know.&rdquo;Last season, Middleton had 11 goals after the first 20 games, 23 after the first 40 and 47 for the season. The year before, he was eight goals after 20 games, 16 after the first 40 and 49 for the season.&ldquo;We always start four lines at the beginning of the year to get everybody rolling,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;We only want to go with three lines as we get rolling.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always liked a lot of ice time and the more you&rsquo;re on the ice the more chance you have to play better, the better shape you get in and the more goals or points you get.&ldquo;The way this team is structured, they wait for everybody to start rolling and then they go with the guys they want.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t consider myself a slow starter but I do play better as I get more ice time. Of course, if I start out fast and die at the end of the year, people wouldn&rsquo;t be happy with that either. You can&rsquo;t please everybody.&ldquo;Then again, I don&rsquo;t know any guys who keep a fast pace all season. Like any sport, there are streaks. I always have a better second half than a first half, it seems, and I consider that better. &ldquo;Middleton figures he is starting the current season in the best early-season shape of his career, thanks largely to his participation with Team Canada in the Canada Cup competition.&ldquo;It got me in good shape,&rdquo; he said after the Pittsburgh opener in which he assisted on two of the four Boston goals.&ldquo;But the last week or so I came down with the flu or something. I&rsquo;m feeling better and getting my energy back but for about five days I was on my back every day. I don&rsquo;t know if I was run down from the Canada Cup or just the flu bug.&rdquo;Run down or not, Middleton looks upon Team Canada&rsquo;s victory in the Canada Cup series as the biggest thrill of his hockey career. He was told that some of the Edmonton Oilers considered it bigger than winning the Stanley Cup.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know about that,&rdquo; said Middleton, &ldquo;but I wanted to win something in my career. It was such a thrill to beat the Russians, especially in overtime. It was great revenge. The Russians won it in &lsquo;81 and they didn&rsquo;t even get into the finals this time.&rdquo;Middleton is all for continuation of the Canada Cup tournament in spite of the fears of some general managers that the risk of serious injury is too great. The Bruins lost goalie Pete Peeters for most of training camp with a sprained ankle.&ldquo;The pressure is on you to play,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You gotta go, in spite of everything.&ldquo;It can be embarrassing. If you don&rsquo;t make the team&hellip;some guys have never been cut from the team. All of a sudden these great hockey players are being cut.&ldquo;Then if you make it and you lose the tournament, especially if you&rsquo;re Canadian, then you&rsquo;re looked down upon.&ldquo;But if you win, it&rsquo;s all worth it. We won this year so anything was worth it.&rdquo; &bull; &#9632;

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Dynamic Duo Split

<div class="byline">BY TOM HENSHAW</div>It seems like we have a big black cloud over our heads,&rdquo; said Raymond Bourque.&ldquo;First Mike Gillis gets hurt a week into camp and he was going well. Barry Pederson, one of the top three centers in the league, he gets hurt.&ldquo;Gordie (Kluzak) was playing the best hockey of his career and he was going to have a super year. He goes out and wrecks his knee and is out for the season.&ldquo;Hopefully, it will stop some day but it doesn&rsquo;t look like it. Year after year it seems like we have more than our share of injuries to key guys. It never stops.&rdquo;That big black cloud that Bourque was talking about cost the Bruins something like 280 man-games lost to injury last season and already has cost them 80 games this year in the case of Gordie Kluzak.The big defenseman, who appeared ready to bloom in his third season in the NHL, suffered tom ligaments in his left knee when he collided with New Jersey defenseman Dave Lewis in the first period of the final exhibition game in Portland, ME.He underwent surgery Oct. 8 in Massachusetts General Hospital, a procedure that was described as a major reconstruction of the knee. He will be lost to the Bruins for the season.&ldquo;The doctors feel the repair was excellent and he should have full mobility within a year, &lsquo;said general manager Harry Sinden. &ldquo;They feel he&rsquo;ll be able to resume his career with about six months of healing and six months of rehabilitation.&rdquo;Kluzak, who just turned 20 last March, was the Bruins&rsquo; and the NHL&rsquo;s first draft choice in June, 1982. Boston passed up the highly publicized winger Brian Bellows for him. It appeared that he was about to justify Sinden&rsquo;s faith in him.&ldquo;He was playing better than I&rsquo;ve ever seen him play,&rdquo; said teammate Mike O&rsquo;Connell. &ldquo;You could see he was really starting to find his confidence. He talked about how he was going to make a major contribution this year.&ldquo;The way he was playing in the pre-season he was an intimidating force on the ice. He was dangerous on offense and sound on defense. There aren&rsquo;t many guys in the NHL able to combine all of those attributes.&rdquo;&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a terrible thing for him at his age and at a point in his career, &lsquo;said Sinden. &ldquo;You saw him in these last few games. He looked like a dominant force. What he showed offensively was something else. His shot was terrific and he was carrying the puck beautifully.&ldquo;He seemed to be reaching the level we have expected him to reach. He showed great signs. There&rsquo;s no reason to think he can&rsquo;t pick it up a year from now. It&rsquo;s quite a setback for him, but he&rsquo;s got too much talent, too much of a future, for this to be the end for him.&rdquo;The left knee is the same one that Kluzak injured Feb. 9, 1982, when he was playing for the Billings Bighorns and took a hip check from Brian Varga in a game with Medicine Hat. He had surgery to repair those tom ligaments, too.&ldquo;This has nothing to do with the previous injury,&rdquo; said Sinden. &ldquo;They weren&rsquo;t the same ligaments at all. It wasn&rsquo;t too bad the last time. In fact, it was marginal as to whether or not it needed surgery.&rdquo;The Bruins took the ice for their season&rsquo;s opener against the Pittsburgh Penguins with an injury list of four&mdash;Kluzak Gillis (broken leg), Pederson (broken hand) and goalie Doug Keans (pulled hamstring).<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-021296/6638205-1-eng-US/f0003-022.jpg" title="f0003-02" width="566" height="706"><figcaption class="caption-body">Gord Kluzak suffered an injury to the same knee in junior but it was less serious then.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;We can&rsquo;t even get into the regular season without injuries,&rdquo; said Sinden.NOTES&mdash;The Bruins traded defenseman Randy Hillier to Pittsburgh for a draft choice next season. &#9632;

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Bruins Sure Kluzak Will Be Back

THE INTERNATIONAL HOCKEY WEEKLYFounded in 1947 by Kenneth W. McKenziePUBLISHERDean HeineBUSINESS MANAGERTony DobranowskiEDITOR IN CHIEFBob McKenzieEDITORIAL DIRECTORCharlie HalpinASSISTANT EDITORPerry LefkoCONTRIBUTING EDITORSStan Fischler, Frank OrrDIRECTOR ADVERTISING SALESDanny LewickiADVERTISING SALES MANAGERRandy GreenADVERTISING SERVICES MANAGEREsther SumkaADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVESCanadian Consumer Product Sales:CCMC, Cliff Kivell, 287 MacPherson Ave.Toronto, Ontario M4V 1A4(416) 928-2909SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES MANAGERPatricia BackNEWSSTAND SERVICES MANAGEREsther SumkaCIRCULATION DEPARTMENTJudy HartmanRosanne TaninoACCOUNTING DEPARTMENTTom MoffatMary CarubiaSPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGERHughes MarketingHockey News Bookshelf(416) 499-8227ADVERTISING AND EDITORIAL OFFICES85 Scarsdale Rd., Suite 100Toronto. Ontario, CanadaM3B 2R2(416) 445-5702EXECUTIVE OFFICE850 Third AvenueNew York, New York10022NEWSSTAND DISTRIBUTORDistributed nationally by Disticor101 Duncan Mill Rd., Suite L4Don Mills, Ont., M3B 1Z3(416) 449-6430 &#9632;

The Hockey News

<div class="byline">Frank Orr</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-011636/6638260-1-eng-US/f0004-012.jpg" title="f0004-01" width="386" height="444"></div>JOHN BROPHY HAS a magnificent head of silver hair. Dan Maloney&rsquo;s hair probably will lean towards that shade rather quickly, if he follows the pattern of most National Hockey League coaches.Coaching the Toronto Maple Leafs has been the quickest route to white hair or ulcers or sleepless nights. Eventually, the street is on that route, too. Maloney, the rookie head coach, and Brophy, in his first try at an NHL job as assistant, are the latest to risk it with a team that has accomplished very little since 1967.Somewhere along the line this season, Maloney and Brophy can be forgiven if they kick a little furniture after a Leaf loss. That&rsquo;s the type of guys they&rsquo;ve been throughout their hockey careers.Maloney was a hard-working, hard-nosed winger with four NHL teams, a very useful player who parlayed a modicum of talent and a truckload of ambition into a solid career. Brophy was a fabled character in the old Eastern League, the circuit that inspired the movie Slapshot, one of the toughest, meanest dudes ever to play.Now, two chaps with that background working for a team owned by Harold Ballard could be expected to peel the paint off the dressing room walls with fiery oratory and terrorize those who didn&rsquo;t deliver sufficient effort to please them. That could happen at any time but through their first training camp and exhibition game series, the Leaf coaches have been the model of patience and decorum.Sure, a voice has been raised here and there but hellfire and brimstone haven&rsquo;t existed. Instead, Maloney and Brophy have featured patient repetition with the group and quiet one-on-one chats with individuals.From the start of camp, the Leaf coaches have worked on the installation of a basic system of play, stressing the fundamentals. There&rsquo;s a walk-through of every drill or play, then it&rsquo;s tried at speed when Maloney figures every man knows his role. If mistakes are made, the routine is stopped and the blunder corrected.&ldquo;A basic style of play must be engrained in the players, their reactions to situations automatic,&rdquo; Maloney said. &ldquo;When things go bad, it&rsquo;s not individualistic stuff that gets you out of it. You have to go back to the style that you have confidence in.&ldquo;The way to do that is through repetition. The things we&rsquo;re doing now are the things we&rsquo;ll be doing in February because that&rsquo;s the way a team learns.&rdquo;Maloney can list some splendid examples of how his approach is the only way to do it, especially for a team that doesn&rsquo;t have all-star talent falling off the bench.Back in 1974-75, Maloney was a Los Angeles King, under coach Bob Pulford. The Kings were a pack of journeymen but they acquired 105 points.&ldquo;Ttie only players the Kings had that season who were even close to being stars were Rogie Vachon and Butch Goring,&rdquo; Maloney recalled. &ldquo;The rest of us were just a batch of workers. But we had discipline. We executed Pulford&rsquo;s system well and we worked hard.&rdquo;These days, Maloney looks to the Washington Capitals and New York Islanders as glowing examples of how things should be done.&ldquo;It took (Cap coach) Bryan Murray a time to do it but that really shows what can be done when a team works on the basic things until it reacts automatically in any situation,&rdquo; Maloney said.&ldquo;It took time for them to reach that point, going over and over the same stuff in practice. We played them in an exhibition game and they had a half dozen top guys missing but they still had that excellent execution, especially in their own zone.&ldquo;The Caps are going to improve their offense, too, because of that discipline and execution. They force opponents into many mistakes because of how they play and those turnovers will result in goals.&ldquo;Of course, Al Arbour&rsquo;s Islanders are the great example of discipline and execution of a system. They became an exceptional defensive club, like the Caps have, then slowly moved to the top among offensive teams without sacrificing any defense.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re a long way from those teams, of course, but at one time in their lives, the Caps and Islanders were at our level. So they show it&rsquo;s not impossible.&rdquo; &#9632;

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It’s Back To Basics For The Leafs

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0004-02" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-021439/6638291-1-eng-US/f0004-022.jpg"></div><h2>FOR ARGUMENT&rsquo;S SAKE</h2>The scoring achievements of National Hockey League greats of the past are often forgotten in the face of high-volume modern-day scoring. This is sad, for what sport has so rich and profound a history as hockey?The exploits of Wayne Gretzky, while elevating the prosecution of offense to ever-higher levels, have helped to erase all memory of the game&rsquo;s past scoring stars. And because of that erasure from our collective memory, we lose the very sense of perspective needed to accurately judge Gretzky&rsquo;s skills in relation to the abilities of past stars.Gretzky scores great piles of goals and assists, but in an era when high totals are as common as frostbite in Flin Flon. He is certainly the most dominant playmaker of this era, but is he really the most dominant of all time?The best way to determine the extent to which an assist man is better than his peers in any given season is to compute the percentage by which the leading playmaker &ldquo;out-assists&rdquo; the secondbest playmaker&mdash;what we call the &ldquo;quality of victory.&rdquo;So, for example, if Player A wins the assist-scoring title with 40 assists in 48 games&mdash;.83 assists per game&mdash;and the runner-up that season, Player B, scores 30 assists in 50 games&mdash;.60 APG&mdash;the quality of Player A&rsquo;s victory is the percentage by which his APG total is better than Player B&rsquo;s, or 27.71 per cent. Simply put, Player A scored almost 28 per cent more assists per game than Player B.Where would Gretzky rank on such a scale, in which the numbers that reflect a man&rsquo;s playmaking skills are crystallized to the purest form&mdash;the extent to which the best player outperformed the second-best.Two often-overlooked stars of years past, Corb Denneny and Bill Cowley, finished in a virtual dead head for the top spot, both finishing with over 36 per cent more assists than their nearest competitors in the seasons of &lsquo;19-20 and &lsquo;40-41, respectively. But Denneny gets the nod, by one one-hundred-thousandth of a point.Don&rsquo;t be put off by Denneny&rsquo;s low assists total. It reflects a time in which official scorers were very stingy in handing out assists. The concept of assists was invented only in 1912 by the Patrick brothers for their Pacific Coast League. The NHL didn&rsquo;t even bother to award them until 1918-19, and throughout the &lsquo;20s they were so hard to come by that even the league&rsquo;s top playmakers could not expect to be credited with an assist more often than once every couple of games.In 1929-30, official scorers began to grant assists with much greater frequency. Whereas in preceding years an assist had to lead directly and unquestionably to a goal, the interpretation became much more liberal and roughly twice as many assists were handed out. Except for the free-scoring war era, assists were accumulated at much the same rate for the next 39 years.In 1968-69, Phil Esposito recorded 77 assists in 74 games, and in each year since, the league leader in assists has gotten at least one per game. Therefore, the history of assist-bestowal in the league can be divided roughly into three eras&mdash;&rdquo;The Age of Want,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Age of Balance,&rdquo; and &lsquo;The Age of Plenty&mdash;and you must bear this in mind when looking at scoring totals over the years.Corb Denneny, always to be overshadowed by his more illustrious brother, Cy Denneny, was the first-line left winger for Toronto St. Pats. Combined with his long-time center, Reg Noble, and the young phenom Babe Dye, Corb was an integral part of one of the most-feared scoring troikas of the day. However, after-five fine seasons he was relegated to substitute duty and bounced around the league as a back-up for four more years. Unlike his brother and his linemates he never made it into the Hall of Fame.Bill Cowley&rsquo;s story is a happier one. Twice the NHL&rsquo;s most valuable player with Boston, he was instrumental in taking Bruins to two Stanley Cups. In his 13 years in the NHL, the first with St. Louis Eagles and the rest with Boston, he amassed 548 points in 549 games, one of the very highest career figures of any player of any era.Every time a new record has been discovered for Gretzky to try and break, he has gone out and done it. The earth would not crack open and demons run amok in the cities were he to shatter this one as well. But for now, Gretzky has not yet matched the single-season achievements of Lindsay, Orr and Cowley in this measure of playmaking.And as for the number one man, Corb Denneny, we hope he is smiling somewhere in heaven, happy to finally receive the long-overdue recognition that had eluded him for his one great season on earth.<h2>The Best In Assists&hellip; &#9632;</h2>

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Corb Dennenv Leads All In Assists

<div class="byline">By Bruce Hood</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-011562/6638322-1-eng-US/f0005-012.jpg" title="f0005-01" width="338" height="448"></div>THERE ARE FEW rule changes this year, but some of those that have come about will have major significance, mostly in the National Hockey League but in other leagues, too.<h2>GOALKEEPERS WARMUP OUT</h2>For many years a goalkeeper coming into the game could get a warmup only if the player he was replacing was actually injured. This caused some &lsquo;timely&rsquo; injuries to show up when it was necessary to change goaltenders, so the league changed that rule to state that a &ldquo;two-minute warmup for the substitute goalkeeper be limited to one warmup per game,&rdquo; which was allowed at any time, injury or not.This became a farce over the past couple of seasons as more and more teams used the rule as a ploy for a &lsquo;timeout&rsquo;&mdash;putting the substitute goalkeeper in for the warmup and giving the team a break, then at the first stoppage of play thereafter, replacing him with the starting goalkeeper.Some nights it happened with only a few minutes to go in the game and with the score in the 6-3 range&mdash;not very progressive thinking. So now the backup goalie will have to be ready to go into action immediately.<h2>COINCIDENTAL PENALTIES RULE ALTERED</h2>There are two rule changes to do with the assessment of coincidental penalties. In the past if a team was shorthanded by a minor penalty and coincidental minor penalties were called, the players would be replaced on the ice and the team would still be shorthanded only one player. This rule was restricted in the past to only involve minor penalties but in the season ahead will include majors, misconducts, etc.The intent of this rule, which came about a few years ago, was again to take away a coach&rsquo;s masterminding to get an extra advantage. Once a team was a man short, the opposing team would send a player out, usually to the front of the net to stir things up and draw a minor penalty to both he and the opposing player. This created a four-player-against-three situation and a very probable scoring situation&mdash;hence the rule change.The second coincidental penalty rule that has been changed is one where three players are penalized, two from one team and one from the opposing team. Two penalties will be offset and the team with the extra penalty will play one man short.<h2>OVERTIME&mdash;NO END CHANGE</h2>When overtime was instituted, the format of teams changing ends was adopted, as they do in playoff competition.This year the teams will continue to defend the end they did during the third period and this has many benefits. The main one is that the teams do not have to pass each other to go to their dressing rooms when the game has ended and, therefore, will avoid conflict.Also, it eliminates the advantage created by that ambitious goalkeeper who, before he proceeds to the opposite end, digs holes in the crease for his opposing goalie to stumble in and with no time out for ice resurfacing can cause further problems.If you&rsquo;ve got an officiating question, write to:Ask The RefThe Hockey News85 Scarsdale Rd., Suite 100Don Mills, Ont.M3B 2R2 &#9632;

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ASK THE REFEREE

<div class="byline">By Randy Schultz</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-021124/6638360-1-eng-US/f0005-022.jpg" title="f0005-02" width="389" height="450"></div>WHERE ARE THEY NOW?Prior to the National Hockey League&rsquo;s first expansion in 1967, anyone who played in the league felt very lucky and honored to be a member of the &ldquo;Original Six.&rdquo; Such was the case of Ron Schock, who spent parts of 15 seasons in the NHL (1963-78), four of which in the old six-team league with the Boston Bruins (1963-67).&ldquo;I knew I was lucky to be with the Bruins, let alone being in the NHL,&rdquo; recalled Schock, who also played in the NHL for the St. Louis Blues, Pittsburgh Penguins and Buffalo Sabres. &ldquo;I think any of us who made it at that time just wanted to be wanted by someone.&ldquo;It was a different time for the players then as well. This was still the time before using jets was the in thing to do. At that time we still took trains. Because of that I think teams were closer because they spent more time together.&ldquo;I can still remember a lot of the old stories the veterans used to tell.&ldquo;But a lot of that changed when expansion took place. That&rsquo;s why I think I was hurt a little when I went to the Blues from Boston.&ldquo;But after being with the Blues for awhile I realized that somebody also wanted me (the Blues) and that made me feel better.&rdquo;That feeling didn&rsquo;t last too long, two seasons in fact, before he was on the move again; this time to Pittsburgh.&ldquo;That is a trade I&rsquo;ll never forget,&rdquo; Schock said. &ldquo;I had been playing golf with Blues&rsquo; owner, Sid Salomon, on a Friday and he had been telling me how well the team seemed to be going and how he was looking forward to having me on the team the next season.&ldquo;The following Monday, I was traded to Pittsburgh.&rdquo;Although he played eight seasons for the Penguins, they were ones of frustration for Schock, the team and their fans.&ldquo;We had a lot of promise going there when I first arrived,&rdquo; said Schock. &ldquo;Red Kelly was our coach and he seemed to be pulling things together for us.&ldquo;That first season (1969-70) we had a rookie on the team by the name of Michel Briere. He had good talent and looked like he had a good future with the team.&ldquo;Unfortunately after that first season he was killed in an automobile accident. That just seemed to be the luck of the team.&rdquo;Schock feels that the high point for Pittsburgh came in 1974-75. It also marked the beginning of the end for the Penguins of that era.&ldquo;The playoffs were a disaster for us that year,&rdquo; Schock said. &ldquo;We were up three games to none to the New York Islanders. All we needed was one more victory. But we never got it.&ldquo;The Islanders came back to win four straight. Had we won, it would have meant some more money for the franchise.&ldquo;Instead the franchise was sold again, and after a couple of more years some of the key players on the team were traded like myself, Syl Apps and Pierre Larouche. The team has been going down ever since.&rdquo;Today, Schock, a native of Chapleau, Ont., lives with his wife and family near Rochester, NY.&ldquo;I would love to get involved in pro hockey again,&rdquo; said the 40-year-old Schock who&rsquo;s now selling real estate. &ldquo;I love the game.&ldquo;Pro hockey allowed me to stay a teenager for an extra 14 years.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-03737/6638353-1-eng-US/f0005-032.jpg" title="f0005-03" width="1212" height="888"><figcaption class="caption-body">Ron Schock was golfing with the Blues&rsquo; owner and three days later was surprised when he was traded to Pittsburgh.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Expansion Marked Start Of Changes For Schock

Here&rsquo;s what was happening 20 years ago this week in hockey:Ted Lindsay re-joined Detroit after a five-year retirement and played in his 1,000th league game. In Chicago, Bobby and Dennis Hull became the league&rsquo;s newest brother combination.The National Hockey League established the Lester Patrick Trophy for the executive, manager or coach making the greatest combination to the hockey in the U.S.The Green Bay Packers of the U.S. Hockey League announced plans to play the Russian national team, the reigning Olympic champions, in an exhibition match. It was to be the first time the Soviets played in Wisconsin.Here&rsquo;s what was happening 15 years ago this week in hockey:The NHL season opened with Chicago&rsquo;s Bobby Hull maintaining his holdout, Dick Duff retiring in Montreal, and Tim Horton ending a brief retirement in Toronto after the Leaf management upped his annual salary from $42,600 to $70,000. &#9632;

THIS WEEK…20 Years Ago

<h2>HOCKEY NOTEBOOK</h2>The National Hockey League has announced another stastical category for the 1984-85 season&mdash;power-play rating.It is determined by adding a team&rsquo;s power play and shorthanded goals scored and subtracting the power play and shorthanded goals allowed.&ldquo;The power rating will put emphasis on two key skill areas,&rdquo; announced NHL president John Ziegler. &ldquo;Everyone will now pay even closer attention to scoring on and defending against power plays.&rdquo;If there is a tie between two teams in contention for the division titles, the first tie-breaker will be power-play goals scored. Using the rating formula, last year the Boston Bruins would have won with a plus-29, while the New Jersey Devils, with a minus-40, would have had the poorest rating.Pittsburgh and Hartford were the busiest of the 21 NHL teams during the waiver draft Oct. 9.The Penguins started things rolling when they claimed former 50-goal scorer Wayne Babych from St. Louis. To acquire Babych, the Pens gave the Blues cash and deleted forward Tom Roulston.Next came New Jersey, which plucked defenseman Dave Pichette off the Blues&rsquo; roster. The Devils gave up cash and deleted forward Gary MacAdam from their roster.Los Angeles passed, but Toronto, picking fourth overall, took tough forward Jeff Brubaker from Edmonton and surrendered hard-working forward Terry Martin.Hartford then took defenseman Wally Weird from Quebec and gave up cash as well as leaving defenseman Marty Howe unprotected.Chicago and Detroit passed but the Blues took defenseman Craig Levie from Minnesota. St. Louis surrendered cash and left defenseman Rik Wilson, a former first-round pick, unprotected.Six teams later, the New York Rangers reacquired defenseman Andre Dore, who had been traded to the Blues and later dealt to Quebec. The Rangers gave the Nords cash and left center Larry Patey unprotected.Edmonton closed out the first round by taking center Bill Carroll from the Islanders. The Oilers gave up cash and deleted defenseman Larry Melnyk.The Penguins and the Whalers made the only moves in the second round. pits claimed right winger Bruce Crowde from Boston and gave up cash and also deleted defenseman Greg Fox. The Whalers took Dave Lumley from the Oilers and gave Edmonton cash and deleted defenseman Jack Brown-schidle.Greg Millen is staying in Hartford. Millen, the Whalers&rsquo; No. 1 goalie, agreed to a two-year extension on his contract. Millen, who was entering his option year, had indicated he would seek free agency at the end of the season, but the Whalers negated that with the contract extension.Mario (The Magnificent) Lemieux, the highly-touted scoring whiz whom Pittsburgh selected first overall in the draft, answered his critics quickly when he scored on his first shot in the league. Unfortunately the Penguins lost the game, 4-3, to Boston on Oct. 11.Ed Olczyk, the third pick overall in the draft and a native son of Chicago, gave the hometown fans something to cheer about as he scored his first-ever NHL goal in the Black Hawks&rsquo; 7-3 win over Detroit on opening night.Petr Svoboda, the Czech defector whom the Montreal Canadiens drafted No. 5 overall, notched two assists in the Habs&rsquo; 4-3 loss to Buffalo.Sylvain Cote, the 11th pick overall in the draft, had an assist for Hartford in the Whalers&rsquo; 4-4 tie with the New York Islanders. &#9632;

Power-Play Rating Added To League Stats

<div class="byline">BY BOB DONNELLY</div>QUEBEC&mdash;The Nordiques made some roster changes to start the regular season, signing center Dale Hunter to a four-year contract and losing regular Wally Weir and Andre Dore in the waiver draft.&ldquo;The heart of the Nordiques was worth $1 million&rdquo; was how writer Claude Bedard of the Journal de Quebec summed up the Hunter deal.Nordique general manager Maurice Filion said eight teams were interested in acquiring Hunter, a free agent at the end of the season.&ldquo;Dale played exactly as we expected during pre-season games, playing the man as much as possible, even if he had not yet signed a new deal with us,&rdquo; added Filion. &ldquo;He is a leader for us, a central part of our quest for a Stanley Cup. We wanted him to stay in Quebec, and I&rsquo;m happy that we were able to come to terms.&rdquo;Weir, an eight-year veteran with Quebec, was drafted by Hartford. Dore, ticketed by Quebec management for Fredericton of the American League in any event, had his wish answered and ended up with the New York Rangers.Filion took the $20,000 rather than add a player to his roster.&ldquo;I was surprised that we lost Weir because 1 had offered him through waivers to everyone a couple of times and there had been no takers,&rdquo; Filion said. &ldquo;He always did his work honestly for us and he was very popular with the fans. I am happy for him and I wish him luck.&rdquo;&ldquo;I am very sad to leave Quebec, but I am happy that now 1 may have the chance to play a couple of more years in the NHL,&rdquo; said Weir. &ldquo;You simply cannot put eight years with an organization out of your mind just like that. I would have liked to end my career in Quebec but at least it will be American dollars now and my mother lives near Hartford. This news should please her anyhow.&rdquo;The roster changes coincided with the other moves the Nords made to pare down the team. The much-publicized goalie situation was partially resolved when popular Clint Malarchuk was sent down to Fredericton of the AHL. That leaves veterans Dan Bouchard and Richard Sevigny and rookie Mario Gosselin vying for the two jobs, with Gosselin and Bouchard likely to share the load.On defense, Bruce Bell is one of the new faces, at least for now. Bell was the surprise of the 1983 training camp, and he impressed Bergeron again this time around.&ldquo;We can keep him for 10 games and then ship him back to Hamilton (OHL) if we are not sure he can help us,&rdquo; Bergeron said. &ldquo;One thing is sure, and that is that he will play if he stays. He earned his place on the team through hard work. He is not spectacular but very steady.&rdquo;Up front, American Ed Lee started the season, as coach Michel Bergeron had little choice considering the three-game suspension to Peter Stastny.Center Mike Eagles was returned to Fredericton, but promised another shot when he fully recovers from a hand injury.Center Wayne Groulx and right winger Trevor Stienburg were sent back to junior for more seasoning. Swedish import Roger Haegglund was a surprise cut, but will get the chance to improve his defense playing with the Express. &#9632;

New Pact Keeps Hunter, Nords Together

The International Hockey WeeklyFounded in 1947Published by W.C.C. Publishing Ltd85 Scarsdale Road, #100, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3B 2R2.<h2>Trade Trouble</h2>IT DIDN&rsquo;T TAKE long for the first controversey of the National Hockey League season to flare up.On the eve of the first night of the season, the Philadelphia Flyers&mdash;expected to name Darryl Sittler as their new captain&mdash;instead traded the future Hall of Famer to the Detroit Red Wings in exchange for former first-round pick Murray Craven and journeyman Joe Paterson.That, alone, wasn&rsquo;t really too controversial. But when Sittler, who objected to uprooting his family and leaving Philadelphia, where he has become quite settled, refused to report to the Wings, the waters became muddied.Detroit general manager Jimmy Devellano requested that NHL president John Ziegler declare the trade null and void. Devellano&rsquo;s reasoning was that if Sittler didn&rsquo;t report, the Wings weren&rsquo;t getting what was rightfully theirs.As this issue went to press. Sittler hadn&rsquo;t reported to the Wings and was reportedly considering retirement, though many insiders felt he would go to Detroit once a few financial matters&mdash;the guaranteed sale of his Philly house, for one&mdash;were taken care of.And as for Devellano&rsquo;s request to kill the trade, there was nothing but silence coming from the league&rsquo;s head office, which is as it should be.On one hand, you can&rsquo;t blame Devellano for trying to have the trade reversed. After all, if Sittler does retire and the Wings come up empty-handed and with egg on their face, they&rsquo;ve got nothing to lose by petitioning the league office.But on the other hand, there is no way that Devellano&rsquo;s request should receive any more consideration that it already has.When you trade for a player, you run the risk he may not, for a variety of reasons, want to report. It&rsquo;s up to the general manager to convince him and that&rsquo;s why the league office shouldn&rsquo;t be involved.And as for those who point to the Sittler trade and bemoan the fact that a veteran player should be subjected to such treatment, take time to remember that this is professional hockey we&rsquo;re talking about.Trades, and the ensuing disruption of lives, are, unfortunately, part of the game. Many businessmen face the same type of upheaval with regards to transfers from one city to another.Keeping that in mind, Sittler has a decision to make. Jimmy Devellano isn&rsquo;t so fortunate, but, as they say, that&rsquo;s life. &#9632;

Well, that fan-oriented management of the Los Angeles Kings has struck again! Last year King games were broadcast on two radio stations, one a national public radio college station, the other a small power FM station in Redondo Beach. This year they&rsquo;ve outdone themselves.Our new radio station KWNK (670) in Simi Valley didn&rsquo;t even go on the air until Sept. 21, and in most parts of Los Angeles and Orange Counties it is completely drowned out by such clear channel and high power stations as KFI (640) in Los Angeles, KNBR (680) in San Francisco, KBOI (660) in Boise, Idaho and XTRA (690) in Tijuana, Mexico. In some areas of Eastern Los Angeles and Southern Orange Counties it can&rsquo;t be picked up at all, and in the rest of the basin (including my Westwood home less than 15 miles from the Forum) it is prone to static drifting.It is my opinion that nobody in the King management cares about the fans, including the season-ticket holders who might also enjoy hearing road games on the radio. When you consider that the Washington Capitals, who until last season had some pretty bad teams, have been with WTOP (a major D.C. station) since their inception, it is all the more shameful.I had hoped that with Rogie Vachon as general manager improvements would be made, not only in the quality of the team but in the quality of team promotion. Unfortunately, I am mistaken. It appears that Dr. Buss is purposely attempting to justify either a sale or move of the Kings to another location by claiming on the one hand that the city of L.A. doesn&rsquo;t support the Kings while slapping our faces with the other hand. Who in his right mind would continue to buy season tickets for the privilege of being treated like trash?I feel sorriest for Bob Miller, our outstanding play-byplay man, who does more single-handedly to improve relations between the fans and management than all of California Sports, Inc. combined. It&rsquo;s too bad that none of us can hear him anymore.I also look forward to the day when the Kings are broadcast on KLA, the flagship college station of UCLA, whose signal cannot be heard more than a quarter mile from the campus.Elise Beraru Santa Monica, CA<h2>THIRD-MAN RULE FOR BASEBALL</h2>Baseball should have a rule similar to hockey to prevent the benches from emptying during an altercation on the field.&ldquo;In hockey, a player(s) leaving the bench to participate in any fisticuffs is automatically ejected&rdquo; from the game, fined, and may be subject to further disciplinary action by the league office. The third man in a fight also gets the boot.Who stops the fight, then? Either tough umpires, as the linesmen do in hockey, or have security guards prepared to act immediately.Baseball should take a cue from hockey in this matter. Remember that hockey players wore uniform numbers before baseball players did.Vic Maestri Old Forge, PA<h2>PUT RANGERS ON COVER</h2>How many hockey players are in the National Hockey League? Do you think you might put someone other than Wayne Gretzky on the cover?That would be just short of a miracle. My suggestion to you is count up how many covers had Wayne on them, then count how many had a New York Ranger (within the last two years). I would like to know the result.Linda Revak Fairfield, CT<h2>FLAW IN STATISTICS</h2>Sports statistics being my avocation, I enjoyed Jeff Klein and Karl-Eric Reif&rsquo;s attempt to put Wayne Gretzky&rsquo;s amazing goal-scoring feats in historical perspective. While I applaud their efforts, I believe their method is basically flawed.Is Gretzky&rsquo;s 87-goal season really better than his 92-goal season? Is the greatness of Bobby Hull&rsquo;s &lsquo;65-66 season really dependent on Frank Mahovlich&rsquo;s scoring?The stated goal is to quantify the extent by which the goal scorer is better than his peers. Using the second best goal-per-game average is a very variable statistic and not the best indicator of the overall league scoring. This is evident when one considers a case of two players having great seasons in the same year. It seems incongruous to downplay the accomplishments of each player because of the other.I propose a statistic which would take the average goals-per-game of a player and measure it against the average goals-per-game for all the teams in the league during that season. This would more properly reflect the inflated scoring and longer season of today.Neal Schmidt NewYork, NY<h2>FAN FORUM</h2>Let your voice be heard! Send your comments to Fen Forum, THE HOCKEY NEWS, 85 Scarsdale Rd., Suite 100. Don Mills, Ont., Canada M3B 2R2. &#9632;

Kings Hard On Hearing

<div class="byline">Bob McKenzie&#x2019;s</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0008-011636/6638597-1-eng-US/f0008-012.jpg" title="f0008-01" width="396" height="452"></div>Editor&rsquo;s NotebookThe folks from The Journal, the CBC&rsquo;s nightly newsmagazine show, called the office recently, trying to get some background information on junior hockey in Canada. It seems one of their coming documentaries will focus on what has become one of the hottest topics of debate in the hockey world.Given the fact that the Journal researcher was trying to, among other things, unearth down-and-out junior hockey graduates who didn&rsquo;t make it to the professional ranks, and Ontario Hockey League commissioner David Branch, one of the brighter minds in the game today, hadn&rsquo;t even been contacted by the Journal, it&rsquo;s a good bet that the piece isn&rsquo;t going to emphasize the virtues of major junior hockey.But then it&rsquo;s fashionable these days to bash junior hockey, isn&rsquo;t it? Glen Sather was the latest in an increasingly long line to question the very raison d&rsquo;etre of major junior hockey, which is, of course, developing hockey players.Quite frankly, it has become something of a bore.Junior hockey&rsquo;s critics insist on comparing it to the U.S. college system. The U.S. college system, they say, does a good job of producing hockey players and educating them, too.Which is fine. There&rsquo;s no question the U.S. college system does a good job.But why must the two games&mdash;junior and college&mdash;be compared? Better still, why must they always line up on opposite sides, as competitors?The fact that they do is an abominable situation, one which requires 16-year-old hockey players, in both Canada and the United States, to make important decisions about their life long before they should be faced with such tedious matters.For this, we can thank the people who run college and university athletics in the United States and Canada.In the United States, the National Colleges Athletic Association has a ridiculous rule riddled by hypocrisy that makes any player who plays major junior hockey ineligible for a college hockey scholarship. Therefore, a 16-year-old torn between playing major junior or attending a U.S. college has to make an immediate decision. And there&rsquo;s no turning back.It is this artificially-created situation that puts major junior and U.S. college hockey on opposite sides of the fence.Of course, it doesn&rsquo;t help matters that, for the most part, Canadian universities are terribly afraid of providing a truly first-class athletic atmosphere.Oh, sure, there are some good Canadian university hockey players. And there are some good Canadian university hockey teams. But, by and large, Canadian university hockey has neither the inducements&mdash;the majority of scholarships do not even compare to the U.S. offerings&mdash;nor the atmosphere and aura&mdash;U.S. college hockey is an event; Canadian university hockey is often played before meagre crowds&mdash;to be considered truly big league.As a result, for most of the better hockey players, Canadian university hockey isn&rsquo;t a real alternative.Which is unfortunate, since that only helps to keep major junior and U.S. colleges at opposite ends of the spectrum.If you happen to a patriot or nationalist&mdash;either American or Canadian&mdash;there&rsquo;s another good reason to be unhappy with the way the system is set up. If you&rsquo;re a Canadian, you can&rsquo;t be thrilled with the fact that some of your nation&rsquo;s best young hockey talent go to the United States to become educated, often staying there upon graduation. If you&rsquo;re an American, you can&rsquo;t be totally pleased that foreigners are getting full rides to attend U.S. schools, perhaps at the expense of budding homegrown talent.Trying to come up with some logical way around these headaches and make college and junior hockey compatible is a tough chore. After all, one shouldn&rsquo;t mention logic and the NCAA in the same breath.But that shouldn&rsquo;t stop us from hypothesizing about an ideal set-up that would see college hockey and major junior hockey compliment each other.<h2>Try this on for size:</h2>&bull; Since the NCAA has set itself up as a paragon of virtue and defender of purity, why doesn&rsquo;t it go a step further with its eligibility requirements. Why doesn&rsquo;t it institute a quota system, strictly limiting the number of &ldquo;foreigners&rdquo; to receive scholarships. How about a limit of eight &ldquo;imports&rdquo; next year, decreasing by one each year until the level hits two.Wouldn&rsquo;t this eventually help to contribute to the development of U.S. hockey?&bull; Given the fact that fewer U.S. college scholarships would be available, it would be the responsibility of the Canadian universities to fill the void. This would mean they would have to come up with a good scholarship program and perhaps a national super league that would offer top competition and fan interest&bull; Since the Canadian universities aren&rsquo;t as hypocritical about eligibility requirements, major junior graduates would be able to have the best of both worlds. A 16-year-old player could play major junior for two or three years, give it his best shot at a pro career and if he either wasn&rsquo;t good enough or didn&rsquo;t want it, he could still get a scholarship, combining athletics and academics at a fine Canadian university.It all sounds really simple, doesn&rsquo;t it?That&rsquo;s because it is. There&rsquo;s no reason why a system along these lines couldn&rsquo;t be implemented.Well, no reason other than the fact it&rsquo;s difficult to get the wise men who hide in the ivory towers to think clearly, fairly and logically and in the best interests of the game. &#9632;

f0008-01

The Artificial World Of Junior Vs. College

<div class="byline">BY TIM MORIARTY</div>LONG ISLAND&mdash;There was no pomp on the night the New York Islanders opened their home schedule against the Chicago Black Hawks. No Stanley Cup banner to raise. No speeches.No pomp.But there was circumstance.Kelly Hrudey, the winning goalie, and Mike Bossy, who scored the winning goal, offered the best summations of the Islanders&rsquo; wild and woolly 7-6 victory in overtime.&ldquo;It was one of the most exciting games I was ever in,&rdquo; said Hrudey, who drew the starting assignment for the Isles&rsquo; home opener instead of Bill Smith. &ldquo;It had everything. Seven goals in the third period. A penalty shot. Overtime. It was great for the fans, but awful for the goaltenders.&rdquo;When somebody suggested to Bossy that it was like an old-time &ldquo;river hockey&rdquo; game, he nodded his head in agreement.&ldquo;I guess you could call it that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Not too much to be proud of, but&hellip;&rdquo;The Islanders are losing players to injuries at an alarming rate.Bossy had every right to be proud of his goal that ended the Nassau Coliseum shootout after 59 seconds of overtime. He took a pass from Bob Boume near the Chicago blue line and skated to the top of the right faceoff circle. Goalie Murray Bannerman moved out to meet the challenge, but Bossy simply blew the puck past him and into the net.The victory helped ease the pain the Islanders suffered in losing their season opener to the Devils, 7-2, only 24 hours earlier. That, too, was a game of some circumstance. Chico Resch registered his 200th NHL victory and his first over his former teammates.However, the Islanders are losing players through injuries at an alarming rate. Bryan Trottier came out of the Devils&rsquo; game with a bruised right knee and was scratched from the home opener.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s swelling in the kneecap,&rdquo; he disclosed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll probably need a couple of days (off) for the swelling to subside.&rdquo;Greg Gilbert bruised his right ankle in blocking a shot in the first period against the Black Hawks and was forced to leave the game. X-rays proved negative and he was listed on a &ldquo;day-to-day&rdquo; basis.Coach Al Arbour risked hurting Smith&rsquo;s pride when he left the veteran goalie out of his lineup for the home opener. Roland Melanson, the victim of the New Jersey debacle, dressed as Hrudey&rsquo;s backup. That produced immediate speculation that the Islanders were showcasing Hrudey as trade bait or they were close to trading Smith and didn&rsquo;t want him to get injured.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll leave that speculation to you reporters,&rdquo; general manager Bill Torrey said. &ldquo;All we&rsquo;re trying to do is get a goalie rotation that Al thinks is right.&rdquo;Arbour offered no apologies for starting Hrudey instead of Smith against the Black Hawks.&ldquo;I told you I&rsquo;d be giving Kelly more work this season,&rdquo; the coach said. &ldquo;I want to give him a good look right away. Hey, I&rsquo;ve had Smith for 12 years. I know what he can do.&rdquo;Smith accepted Arbour&rsquo;s decision with his usual nonchalance.&ldquo;What are ya gonna do?&rdquo; he said.The Islanders regained the services of Bossy and Dave Langevin for the start of the season. Both had missed the entire eight-game exhibition schedule; Bossy was nursing a sore kneecap that flared up during the Canada Cup tournament and Langevin required extra time to recuperate from off-season surgery on his left shoulder.Ken Mqrrow was the biggest casualty. The defenseman&rsquo;s right knee became swollen during the first week of training camp and he stopped skating. Asked then if he faced surgery, Morrow said, &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a last resort.&rdquo; He wound up in Manhattan&rsquo;s Lennox Hill Hospital on the eve of the season opener and underwent a two-hour operation.&ldquo;It was a general closeup (of the knee),&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They reattached a ligament, shaved down some bone spurs and removed some bone tissue.&rdquo;Morrow laughed at reports that he would miss the entire season.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be back by the end of January or early in February,&rdquo; he said.ON THE ISLE&mdash;Stefan Persson declined to discuss the five-game suspension he drew for clubbing Philadelphia&rsquo;s Daryl Stanley with his stick during an exhibition game. &ldquo;They asked me not to say anything, so I&rsquo;m going to shut up and take it,&rdquo; the defenseman said&hellip;The Isles opened the season with only one newcomer, defenseman Gerald Diduck&hellip;Bobby Nystrom is still recuperating from off-season surgery on his left wrist and is not expected to play until early November. &#9632;

No Pomp Or Pageantry For Isles’ Opener

<div class="byline">Joe Falls</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-011617/6638652-1-eng-US/f0010-012.jpg" title="f0010-01" width="383" height="447"></div>FLYING IS NOT my favorite sport. It&rsquo;s not even in the top 10.In fact, I have this fear of flying that takes a lot of the fun out of my job.One time it never bothered me. I was on the first flight ever taken by the Detroit Tigers. It was in 1956. We went from Lakeland. Fla., to Houston and the owner of the team&mdash;Spike Briggs&mdash;was so worried about his team going up into the air that he approved the flight only if the pilot agreed to follow the Florida coastline around to Texas and not go out over the Gulf of Mexico.I have been on planes that were on fire (the Detroit Lions&rsquo; landing in San Francisco), planes that rolled over on their side (Tigers flying out of Kansas City in a hail storm), planes that nearly collided with other planes (Big Ten Skyriders tour coming out of Minneapolis) and planes that shook so much two people had heart attacks during the flight (flying back from spring training).I was completely beside myself last January when I knew I would have to fly across the Atlantic ocean to cover the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.I said to my wife: &ldquo;What am I going to do&mdash;how am I going to get on that plane?&rdquo;She said there was an article in that morning&rsquo;s paper about a course on &ldquo;Fear of Hying&rdquo; at Oakland Community College in a suburb of Detroit.I went straight to the phone. I did not tell the lady on the line who I was or where I was going. I just said: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going out of the country on January 30. When do your classes start?&rdquo;She said: &ldquo;January 20.&rdquo;I muttered under my breath.&ldquo;How many classes can I take?&rdquo; I asked.&ldquo;Two,&rdquo; she said.&ldquo;I put my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and said to my wife: &ldquo;She says I can only take two classes before I go. What&rsquo;ll I do?&rdquo;My wife, in all of her wifely wisdom, replied: &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you ask her if you can take a &lsquo;crash course?&rsquo;&rdquo;So, my friends, I think of Frank On and Dick Irvin and Wayne Gretzky as this new hockey seasons begins and wonder how can they possibly sit on those airplanes in the middle of the winter, with the wind blowing and the snow swirling all around them, and make this grand tour of the National Hockey League?I&rsquo;d be scared silly.I keep wondering what it would be like to land in Winnipeg in the middle of a snowstorm.The same with Quebec, Montreal and Toronto. I have always been amazed that more hockey games aren&rsquo;t called off by the weather. They must have some very brave pilots in Canada.I loved the six-team league. We went by train. Detroit to New York. Montreal to Toronto. Toronto to Detroit. New York to Boston. Boston to Chicago. It was wonderful. A man could get a decent meal in the dining car and smoke a cigar and talk hockey half the night with the coach in his private suite. You did not have to keep looking out of the window wondering what were those grinding noises coming from the engines.On that first trip with the Tigers, they loaded up the plane&mdash;a two-engine DC-3&mdash;with all of the luggage, the bats, the balls, trunks, everything, and it was so heavy that the plane ran right off the runway on the take-off. Here we are, our first flight ever, and the plane is bouncing along in a field, trying to get airborne.I nearly fainted.Jack Homel, the trainer, sat across the aisle and took one look at me and started laughing.&ldquo;Your greatest story,&rdquo; he bellowed, &ldquo;and you won&rsquo;t be able to write about it!&rdquo;At that moment, the wheels lifted and we were on our way&mdash;but not without a lot of wet armpits all through the cramped cabin.What this is then, is an appeal to the veteran travellers of the NHL. I planned, perhaps foolishly, to take a few trips with the Red Wings this season, and perhaps Mr. Orr or Mr. Irvin or Mr. Gretzky&mdash;who is a white-knuckler himself&mdash;can give me some tips on how to handle the cold night air of the National Hockey League.One problem, guys: I don&rsquo;t drink. &#9632;

f0010-01

A Crash Course In White-Knuckle Fever

<div class="byline">BY DICK CHUBEY</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0010-02" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-021201/6638683-1-eng-US/f0010-022.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Newcomer Mike Krushelnyski was amazed when he discovered he&rsquo;d be playinq on the Oilers&rsquo; top-scorinq line.</figcaption></div>EDMONTON&mdash;Kevin Lowe probably doesn&rsquo;t realize it, but relief is spelled K-R-U-S-H-E-L-N-Y-S-K-I.Which is indeed a mouthful.Yet among the precious few newcomers assured of landing steady employment with the Edmonton Oilers in 198485, there does happen to walk a tail stranger, who is bilingual. Actually, trilingual!Montreal-born Mike Krushelnyski does not only include English and Ukrainian in his language repertoire, but the big center-left winger via the Boston Bruins can also get by in French.&ldquo;Not that well,&rdquo; cautioned the ever-modest Krushelnyski. &ldquo;Look at it this way: When we went to Quebec City last year, I was asked to do a television interview (in French). I said I wasn&rsquo;t that good, but the guy said, &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll give you a hundred bucks if we use it. &lsquo;Well, I never got the $100, so I guess they never used it.&rdquo;Not to worry. Kevin Lowe, the popular Oilers&rsquo; defenseman, will welcome any help that&rsquo;ll come his way accommodating French-language media when the Oilers venture into Montreal and Quebec&mdash;not to overlook the CBC&rsquo;s local French-language affiliate.Even if Krushelnyski isn&rsquo;t as fluent in French as he would like, Lowe certainly has someone with which to work. Save Curt Brackenbury&rsquo;s brief stint, Krushelnyski&rsquo;s presence will mark a first in this area in five NHL seasons for the likeable defenseman.Krushelnyski, it goes without saying, learned to speak French while growing up in Montreal, right?&ldquo;Not really,&rdquo; begged to differ the 6-foot-2,200-pounder, explaining when he and Luc Dufour were rookies with Boston. Bruin general manager Harry Sinden assigned him to look after Dufour&rsquo;s wellbeing. At the time, Dufour did not speak a word of English.&ldquo;I said to Mr. Sinden, &lsquo;Why me?&rdquo; said Krushelnyski. &ldquo;But as it turned out, Luc taught me French and I taught him English. I think he taught me more French than I learned in 12 or 13 years in school.&rdquo;Naturally, the Oilers aren&rsquo;t overly concerned what language the son of a Montreal credit union manager speaks. As long as he does his job, there wouldn&rsquo;t be too many complaints if he was fluent only in profanity.Which Krushelynski certainly isn&rsquo;t. In fact, he chose his words carefully during the training camp interview and whenever a coach or GM came up, he prefaced the name with the seldom-used, politeness-suggesting word, &lsquo;Mr.&rsquo;At the time he was traded to the Oilers for Kenny Linseman, Krushelnyski was honeymooning in the Bahamas.He had been out for the day when he returned to his hotel to find a message to phone his Montreal-based lawyers Jacques Levesque and Bob Beale. Before he could get a hold of either agent, he had a call from a Montreal reporter who sprung the.news of the one-for-one deal.&ldquo;Later Mr. (Bruce) MacGregor (Oilers&rsquo; assistant GM) phoned. It made me feel good he took the time to call.&rdquo;How did Krushelnyski react?&ldquo;I knew I was going somewhere,&rdquo; said the 24-year-old. &ldquo;Every other week I was going to a new club. Around Christmas I had heard Edmonton. Then it was Pittsburgh, Toronto, Minnesota, Vancouver, Winnipeg&mdash;about eight clubs, in all. I was happy it was Edmonton&mdash;a No. 1 club, the Stanley Cup winner. I&rsquo;d just like to get a position with two other guys and try to make it click as soon as possible.&rdquo;When the Oilers&rsquo; Team Canada nucleus re-joined the squad following a post-Canada Cup vacation, Krushelnyski was inserted on Wayne Gretzky&rsquo;s left side. He responded by scoring once, while right winger Jari Kurri struck for two, but the Oilers were beaten 5-4 in overtime in Montreal. However, he scored twice in the Oilers&rsquo; second-last pre-season game, a 3-2 win over St. Louis.&ldquo;Those guys are amazing,&rdquo; he said of his debut with Gretzky and Kurri. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve always got to be ready. They freaked me out on the first couple of shots. They gave me the puck so fast. And there were times I didn&rsquo;t see Wayne. He moves around so quick.&ldquo;I sat up all day thinking about playing with them. I didn&rsquo;t want to let them down.&rdquo;Gretzky compared Krushelnyski to Quebec&rsquo;s Michel Goulet, his Canada Cup left winger.&ldquo;They&rsquo;re very much alike, big guys who get room and who snap the puck quick,&rdquo; said Gretzky. &ldquo;But I realize it&rsquo;s tough for him to pick up where Jari and I are going. I&rsquo;m not an &lsquo;Xs&rsquo; or &lsquo;Os&rsquo; player. I just try to get where the puck is.&rdquo;IN THE CREASE&mdash;Bill Carroll and Terry Martin, claimed by the Oilers in the waiver draft, played with Dave Semenko in Edmonton&rsquo;s 2-2 seasoningopening tie against Los Angeles. The loss of Dave Lumley, taken by Hartford in the waiver draft, leaves the Qilers with only six players from their first year in the National Hockey League in 1979 (Semenko, Dave Hunter, Wayne Gretzky, Kevin Lowe, Mark Messier and Lee Fogolin). &#9632;

f0010-02

Oilers Hope Krushelnyski Knows Scoring Language

<div class="byline">BY AL MORGANTI</div>PHILADELPHIA&mdash;It&rsquo;s a good thing that Bobby Clarke, the player, didn&rsquo;t play his final years for Bob Clarke, the general manager&mdash;he might have traded himself.One thing is for sure, Clarke has fully and quickly made the transition from the locker room into the front office. If there was any doubt about that, it was all erased when Clarke shocked the team and and the city by dealing future Hall of Fame center Darryl Sittler to the Detroit Red Wings for two young, but unproven left wingers, Murray Craven and Joe Paterson.&ldquo;Now I know what the toughest part of this job is,&rdquo; said Clarke as he opened the surprise press conference on the eve of the Philadelphia Flyers&rsquo; season opener. &ldquo;I have the utmost respect for Darryl as a person and as a hockey player. It was a very difficult deal for me to do, but we feel we can get two young hockey players at a position, left wing, where we know the organization is weak.&ldquo;I talked to Darryl this afternoon. I don&rsquo;t think he was terribly excited, but he&rsquo;s going to an organization which is rebuilding, and an organization which tried numerous times over the summer to make a deal for him.&rdquo;Saying that Sittler wasn&rsquo;t &ldquo;terribly excited&rdquo; was kind of like saying that Sittler wasn&rsquo;t &ldquo;terribly happy&rdquo; during his last season with the Maple Leafs. In fact, Sittler was downright shattered and by the end of the day was balking at the deal and talking of retiring.As if the trade itself wasn&rsquo;t upsetting enough, Sittler was doubly hurt because just the night before he had been told he would be the team&rsquo;s new captain, replacing Clarke. On a team which averaged just over 24 years old, Sittler, 34, was supposed to be one of the rocks the kids could lean on.Now, in the matter of a couple of hours&mdash;immediately after the team was introduced to the city at a Chamber of Commerce meeting where a program was distributed with Sittler&rsquo;s name with the &ldquo;C&rdquo; after it&mdash;this rock was all of a sudden a rolling stone, heading for Detroit.&ldquo;They told me all summer I was going to be captain,&rdquo; said Sittler,&rdquo; who finally decided to report to the Wings. &ldquo;I was supposed to be introduced (as captain) at the luncheon.&rdquo;Sittler was at the luncheon, and he was introduced. But he wasn&rsquo;t introduced as captain, so he must have wondered if something was up. That something hit him square in the face when the team bus returned to the Spectrum after the luncheon. Sittler was called into Keenan&rsquo;s office where Clarke told him he had been traded.&ldquo;Actually, I thought they didn&rsquo;t make the announcement because they wanted to have a press conference later,&rdquo; said Sittler. &ldquo;Then I was called into Keenan&rsquo;s office. I told him something about how he had made a nice speech.&ldquo;Then I looked at Clarke&rsquo;s face. He wasn&rsquo;t smiling. I knew something was up, and it wasn&rsquo;t going to be good. I figured maybe I wasn&rsquo;t going to be captain. Then he told me about the trade.&ldquo;I just said, &lsquo;What a bleeping joke.&rsquo; Well at least someday it&rsquo;ll be a chapter in my book.&rdquo;Somewhere else in that book, Sittler is probably going to chronicle how he was led down the path by the Flyers.&ldquo;I could have been a free agent back in June,&rdquo; said Sittler, regarding a new, one-year deal he reached with the club, &ldquo;but they led me into believing I was going to be a big part of this club. With (Bill) Barber gone, and Clarke retired, and Paul Holmgren traded, they told me they were depending on me.&ldquo;In all the time there was a sense of trust. There was a sense that this year they were counting on me. They told me 1 was going to be captain. I was told that way back in June I was going to be captain.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0011-011460/6638714-1-eng-US/f0011-012.jpg" title="f0011-01" width="587" height="697"><figcaption class="caption-body">Darryl Sittler expected to be named as the captain of the Philadephia Flyers.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the thing that really bothers me, the captain thing. You know, Keenan was stunned to announce it (to the public) in his speech at the luncheon. If that had happened even two weeks down the road it might have been different than to have the rug pulled out right away, that bothered me.&ldquo;And then to watch Clarke on television, lying to people that he didn&rsquo;t know who the captain was going to be, that it was all up to Keenan. He knew.&rdquo;&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t lying,&rdquo; said Clarke. &ldquo;Yes, I told Darryl he would be captain. I told him I would ask Mike (Keenan) to name him captain. I&rsquo;m sure Mike was going to make him captain, but the final decision had to come from Keenan.&ldquo;All I said was that Darryl was my choice for captain, and he was. I know the timing was bad, but when you get a chance to make a deal you like, you make it then.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry about the timing, and I feel bad that Darryl is upset.&rdquo;Sittler was so upset he at first refused to report to Detroit, and he was very candid with Red Wings&rsquo; general manager Jimmy Devellano.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m serious about retiring,&rdquo; said Sittler. &ldquo;Detroit wanted me to void the deal rightly. I told Jimmy Devellano that it didn&rsquo;t make much sense to have a guy come in there who didn&rsquo;t have his whole heart in it. I&rsquo;m not that kind of a player. If I&rsquo;m going to play, I&rsquo;ve got to have my whole heart in it.&rdquo;Sittler&rsquo;s heart is not his only concern; there was also the matter of his family and his bank account.&ldquo;I know a lot of people will just say, &lsquo;Hey, those guys make a lot of money, what is he complaining about.&rsquo; But what am I supposed to do? I&rsquo;ve got a $350,000 house and a family that loves the area. Am I supposed to just pull up and go to Detroit, maybe for just one year?&ldquo;I&rsquo;m only human. I worry about my family and 1 want to do the best for them. My mind was really blown by the whole thing.&ldquo;I guess what I&rsquo;m really upset about is the loyalty thing. In retrospect, I probably should have had a no-trade clause in the contract. I&rsquo;m sure they would have put it in at that time, but they really led me to believe I was going to finish my career with the Flyers&mdash;or at least finish this season with them.&rdquo;However, Clarke does not think Sittler is finished.&ldquo;I think this whole thing will blow over,&rdquo; said Clarke. &ldquo;Myself and everybody else in the organization wish him the best of luck. And I want to make it clear that there was nothing lacking in Darryl that caused the trade.&ldquo;From the day we got him from Toronto, I think he&rsquo;s done nothing but help the team. He&rsquo;s been a great influence, on and off the ice. We just thought we had to make this move, and we&rsquo;re not scared of Darryl&rsquo;s age.&ldquo;In fact, he came out near the top on all our pre-season physical testing. The physician, who&rsquo;s tested more than 10,000 athletes, was amazed. He said that Darryl had the body of a 24-year-old.&ldquo;I think he&rsquo;s got three or four years left.&rdquo;But none with the Flyers.NOTES&mdash; With Darryl Sittler gone, the Flyers named Dave Poulin, 25, the captain&hellip;Thomas Eriksson exchanged his number six for Sittler&rsquo;s number 27, which he wore in Sweden. &#9632;

f0011-01

Trade Had Sittler Ready To Quit…

<div class="byline">BY ERIC DUHATSCHEK</div>CALGARY&mdash;Bob Johnson was talking about musicals. Or perhaps it was musical chairs.It had something to do with opening nights and the show must go on&mdash;even if the stars cannot. In a roundabout way, Johnsons&rsquo;s subject was Lanny McDonald, the Calgary Flames&rsquo; scoring star.&ldquo;Did you see 42nd Street?&rdquo; began Johnson, the Flames&rsquo; coach. &ldquo;The star singer got hurt? They had to find another singer? That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m trying to do; find a singer to replace Lanny McDonald.&rdquo;McDonald, the Flames&rsquo; 31-year-old captain, missed the start of the season with a pulled stomach muscle.Followers of the National Hockey League&rsquo;s emergency wards will recall that a similar injury sidelined Chicago Black Hawks&rsquo; Al Secord for most of last season.As a result, the Flames are treading warily with their mustached favorite son.They do not want to lose McDonald for an extended period. Hence, they will keep him on the shelf until he&rsquo;s absolutely, positively, certain that he is ready to play.&ldquo;What Lanny needs is rest,&rdquo; said Johnson. &ldquo;The injury didn&rsquo;t respond to treatment like he hoped. You read about pulls like that. Secord had one last year. He aggravated it and ended up missing a lot of time.&rdquo;&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think I haven&rsquo;t thought about that (Secord&rsquo;s injury),&rdquo; said McDonald.McDonald was injured in a collision with Scott Stevens in a pre-season game against the Washington Capitals.As McDonald fretted on the sidelines, trying to preach patience, his anxiousness became clear. This is an important season for McDonald.Injuries and some poor luck around the net cut his goal totals exactly in half last season&mdash;from the 66 he scored in 198283 to 33. It was the first time in nine seasons that he failed to score at least 35 goals.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s not much I can do but wait and be patient,&rdquo; said McDonald. &ldquo;I have to be honest with myself, I&rsquo;d be hurting the team if I tried to go right now and I&rsquo;d be hurting myself.&rdquo;With Mcdonald out, Johnson experimented by moving defenseman Paul Reinhart up to right wing. That lasted all of 30 minutes in the team&rsquo;s season opener against St. Louis Blues. Johnson found Reinhart more useful on defense and instead switched Kent Nilsson, who had been a left winger for the past three weeks, onto the right side. The Flames also retained rookie Yves Courteau as insurance on right wing.&ldquo;The thing that&rsquo;s disappointing is that we had a good camp,&rdquo; said Johnson. &ldquo;Then on opening night, some of our star performers were not ready to go.&rdquo;&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing new to us,&rdquo; said defenseman Steve Konroyd. &ldquo;If anything, we realize that we&rsquo;ll have to work that much harder with some of our key guys out.&rdquo;IN BRIEF&mdash; With Lanny McDonald injured and Doug Risebrough suspended, Bob Johnson named Paul Reinhart his temporary captain. Jim Peplinski. Mike Eaves and Steve Konroyd also received consideration&hellip;In making their final cuts, the Flames chose to keep Charlie Bourgeois as the seventh defenseman ahead of Tony Stiles and Mickey Volcan. They also retained Jim Jackson as the 13th forward. Jackson beat out rookies Brian Bradley, Neil Sheehy and Gino Cavallini for the final spot on the roster&hellip;Steve Bozek will miss the first month of the season, recuperating from a tom ligament in his baby finger&hellip;The Flames, who have had a series of eye injuries in the past 12 months, received a scare in their opener when an errant high stick grazed Tim Hunter&rsquo;s eye. However, doctors said it wasn&rsquo;t serious and cleared Hunter to play again right away.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-011576/6638769-1-eng-US/f0012-012.jpg" title="f0012-01" width="576" height="698"><figcaption class="caption-body">Lanny McDonald wants to bounce back after tailing off in point production last season.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0012-01

Flames Have To Make Do Minus McDonald

<div class="byline">Jay Greenberg</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-021274/6638800-1-eng-US/f0012-022.jpg" title="f0012-02" width="386" height="514"></div>THOUGH IT SEEMED too good to be true, the Spectrum didn&rsquo;t have to close its eyes to dream.On that January day in 1982, Darryl Sittler, the player the Flyers had come to most respect because he had beat them their way, was in a Philadelphia uniform.Sittler, wrung out from two years of persecution by Punch Imlach and Harold Ballard, was relieved. He had escaped the Maple Leaf zoo, landed on a contender and a Stanley Cup, on the way to his almost certain place in the Hockey Hall of Fame. The Cup was now a viable goal. The Flyers, only one year removed from a berth in the finals and leading the Islanders by a point in the Patrick Division race, had acquired the player that could put them over the top.Sittler and Bobby Clarke, two of a kind, happily ever after. How was paradise lost?Oh, in one sense, Sittler found the peace he deserved. He liked it in Philadelphia. As he had suspected, being another good player on a good team in the U.S. was much easier on his nerves than being a hero in Canada. His wife, Wendy, relished the privacy. The living was good here, the hockey was better, the existence less hassled.The Flyers&rsquo; management was generally sane, and even if it wasn&rsquo;t, Sittler was no longer the guy who would have had to stand up to it anyway. His new team was winning more games than the Leafs. He never had a single reason to regret his decision to force a trade.But that dream of a Stanley Cup was slipping further and further away. The Flyers did a terrific imitation of a legitimate contender in 1982-83, Sittler&rsquo;s first full season with them. They ran up the league&rsquo;s second-best regular season record and through February were playing the most consistent hockey in the league. But, a little old and a little slow in key spots, they came apart in three straight in the playoffs, and another rebuilding program was begun. And Sittler&rsquo;s happily ever after turned into borrowed time.There was something a little melancholy about that, but no real tragedy. Sittler was well compensated for what he did&mdash;about $275,000 annually&mdash;and he looked forward to an increasing leadership role as the Flyers grew younger and younger around him. He was the perfect soldier, willing to do anything that was asked and if he could finish his career with the Flyers, he would retire happily.It all blew up last week. Sittler, who says he was told over the summer that he was going to replace Bobby Clarke as captain, and who turned down free-agency over the summer in favor of a contract extension, was found picking the schrapnel out of his heart. The Flyers, whose trade talks with Detroit heated up too late to avoid Sittler&rsquo;s feeling of betrayal, were left with egg on their face.They wanted Murray Craven and when Red Wing GM Jimmy Devellano agreed to give him up, Sittler&rsquo;s promised captaincy was pulled out from under him on the very day he had been told he was going to be named.Clarke, the new GM, said all the right things about Sittler when he sent him away, but the clumsy handling of the captaincy made the separation unneccesarily cruel.Which is not to say the Flyers didn&rsquo;t have good reason for making the deal. While Sittler is an exemplary person and a quintessential team man, he had become more valuable to the Flyers in the locker room than on the ice.His fires still bum, he can still shoot a puck, and his devotion to his body can keep him in the league two or three more years. But the Flyers, reassessing what they are up against in the difficult Patrick Division, concluded that this future Hall of Famer had become a dinosaur.With an increasing premium on speed up the middle, it was wise only to play Sittler there against certain weaker and slower teams. He had played some left wing, both here and in Toronto, but wasn&rsquo;t as effective there as at center.He is not an especially good defensive player, either, something that caught the Flyers by surprise after they acquired him. And though this by no means singles Sittler out for an unrepresentative share of the blame for the Flyers&rsquo; three-straight first-round failures, the fact remains that in the last two he couldn&rsquo;t come up big when they needed it.The collapse was almost team-wide in the 1983 Ranger debacle. But last spring, a considerably younger Flyer team played a lot better in the first two games in Washington. The first night Sittler missed his man on the tying goal. The second night, he let his check get away on a winning one.The Flyers, who had enough kids to make those kinds of mistakes, had reason to expect more from a player of Sittler&rsquo;s experience. Committed to a massive youth movement and in no way a 1985 Stanley Cup contender, their reasons to keep Settler were mostly intangible ones. Detroit may have been their last chance to recycle him and the Flyers took it.After three straight first-round eliminations, the easy conclusion is that, at $250-275,000 per season, Sittler was a bad buy, but that wouldn&rsquo;t be completely fair.The price, which turned out to be Peter Ihnacak, Rich Costello and Ken Strong, hardly set the Flyers back. Their return was one excellent, 43-goal season, another 27 last year in a more complementary role, and now Murray Craven and Joe Paterson.And one more thing. If any of the young Flyers who survived him learned anything from Darkly Sittler&rsquo;s dedication, combativeness, public grace and unfailing willingness to sacrifice personal goals for those of the team, the Flyers still got most of what they paid for time-and-a-half years ago.&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t make that deal,&rdquo; Clarke said. &ldquo;But I thought it was a helluva trade. Darryl brought class and an attitude and a lot of goals. He gave us stability through a period of change. I think a lot of him. The way he takes care of himself, I&rsquo;ll bet he can play three or four more years.&ldquo;I wish him nothing but the best.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0012-02

Sittier’s Fairy Tale Ending Reads Like Paradise Lost

<div class="byline">BY RICH FRIEDMAN</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0013-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-011477/6638831-1-eng-US/f0013-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">New York Ranger forward Mark Pavelich will be sidelined with a broken leg suffered in a game against Minnesota.</figcaption></div>NEW YORK&mdash;The Rangers lost their most consistent offensive player, Mark Pavehch, and their team leader, Barry Beck, in a rash of early season injuries, as the team&rsquo;s medical report did the job of trimming an overloaded roster.If there was a silver lining to be found in the Rangers&rsquo; dark cloud, it was that their collective misfortune happened at the opening of the season rather than at mid-season. The team&rsquo;s short-term concerns remained the same&mdash;evaluating the personnel on a once-overloaded roster as players are still getting to know one another. The injured players will heal, and then the shakedown will occur.After all, what really counts is how the New York Rangers are playing come April, after a season-long tune-up. This is a year that will be discussed more and more here as the one which this team must win the Stanley Cup or be consigned to a bridesmaid status that could last far beyond the current 44 Cup-less years.What was significant and of more pressing concern was that on the seasons&rsquo;s opening night, the jitters, buildup and constant dwelling on the significance of their so-called moral victory over the New York Islanders last spring yielded a game that can best be described as pond hockey. It was a 4-4, come-from-behind tie with the Hartford Whalers that had some good play-making obscured by undisciplined, anything-but-textbook execution.The injuries and the lack of discipline, of course, are inter-related. The list of walking wounded made it impossible to practice with the same personnel day in and day out in training camp. The only stable forward line was former defenseman Reijo Ruotsalainen on left wing, Pavelich at center and Anders Hedberg on right wing. But even that changed when Pavelich went down for at least 10 weeks with a broken leg in a 3-1 loss to Minnesota Oct. 13 at the Met Center.The Ranger injury hex had struck again.&ldquo;What&rsquo;s really discouraging, what concerns me right now is there are five to seven guys who would normally be in the lineup who are now out of it, and we&rsquo;re just going to have to keep juggling,&rdquo; said Ranger coach Herb Brooks.&rdquo;The defense that had appeared to be so deep had suddenly become thin. Dave Maloney was suspended for the first three games of the season after coming off the bench in a brawl in Philadelphia. Other sidelined defensemen were Grant Ledyard (hip), James Patrick (groin) and Simo Saarinen (groin).Missing up front were Mike Allison (knee), Don Maloney (abdominal muscle), George McPhee (hip) and Mark Osborne (hip).In the Rangers&rsquo; opener, Bob Brooke went out in the first period with a shoulder injury, a type of separation that the club announced as a bruise. In the third period. Beck re-injured the same shoulder that sidelined him for the fifth and final game against the Islanders last spring. This, too, was announced as a bruise. He was expected to be off skates for a week. Pierre Larouche stopped a shot with his ankle but X-rays proved negative and he resumed play against the Stars.&ldquo;We showed character,&rdquo; said Ron Greschner, whose goal against the Whalers tied the score at 1-1.&ldquo;Quite frankly, I can&rsquo;t let it (injury list) bother me personally,&rdquo; said the veteran defenseman, whose back problems sidelined him for most of the 1981-82 and 1982-83 seasons. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m in the best shape of my life.&rdquo;Hedberg, the veteran whose leadership qualities are so vital to this team, put the injuries in perspective: &ldquo;Character does not show in one game. Our character will show with a long period of time, the next 20 or 30 or 40 games. You should never blame injuries. The team that we put out there tonight was good enough to beat Hartford. We didn&rsquo;t, but quite obviously we will be tested from here on out.&rdquo;The opening game marked the return of Andre Dore, whom the Rangers acquired in the waiver draft. Dore had been traded by the Rangers to St. Louis on Jan. 4, 1983 for Glen Hanlon, the Ranger&rsquo;s starting goalie, and Vaclav Nedomansky.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a big, strong right-hander,&rdquo; Brooks said. &ldquo;Thank God we have him now, the way people are going down.&rdquo;The Rangers assigned Rob Ftorek, goalie Ron Scott, and Blaine Stoughton to New Haven of American League.Nobody took Stoughton in the equalization draft, his high salary being a major factor. When the Rangers selected Dore, they exposed Larry Patey, but he remained unclaimed. &#9632;

f0013-01

Key Ranger Breaks A Leg On Broadway

<div class="byline">BY BOB FACHET</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-021045/6638862-1-eng-US/f0013-022.jpg" title="f0013-02" width="585" height="1027"><figcaption class="caption-body">Pat Riggin gave a sterling performance in the Caps&rsquo; opening game against Philadelphia.</figcaption></div>LANDOVER&mdash;Pat Riggin was voted the Washington Capitals&rsquo; most popular player by the team&rsquo;s fans last season. Riggin also was beloved by his teammates, while management found itself in something of an adversary position. If that seems a bit odd, considering Riggin&rsquo;s eventual status as the National Hockey League&rsquo;s No. 1 goalie and a second-team all-star, well, it was a strange season.In early January, Riggin carried a 0-91 record to Hershey, where he had finally consented after a couple of rejections to toil in the minor leagues for two weeks. Four days after his return, Al Jensen injured his back lifting weights and Riggin was thrown into a play-everyday situation.He started 17 straight games, went 13 without a loss, recorded three straight shutouts on the road and set a club record with 203 minutes and 52 seconds of goalless hockey. In the process, he chided management&rsquo;s &ldquo;loss of confidence&rdquo; in him to anyone who would listen.Riggin&rsquo;s horseshoe bent during the playoffs, when he suffered a bruised left wrist and had difficulty holding his stick. Then, during the summer, his feelings were bruised a bit when he kept hearing rumors that he would be traded.The usual scenerio had Poile dealing Riggin to Los Angeles for winger Charlie Simmer, something that never was discussed. It brought a typical reaction from Riggin and agent Alan Eagleson and Poile assured them there was no such trade in mind.Poile and Murray also made it clear that there was no No. 1 goalie, that Riggin and Jensen would be treated equally. Then Jensen bruised a knee in an exhibition at Minnesota, thrusting Riggin once more into the spotlight. Except, in Washington, the hockey spotlight is still lacking a few watts.On the morning of the Capitals&rsquo; first game, the Washington Post in all editions ran a picture with the cutline, &ldquo;Pat Riggin will be in goal in Philadelphia.&rdquo; The photo was of Jensen.On the bus to Philadelphia, Riggin endured predictable taunts from teammates, who wondered when Riggin had suddenly become so good looking. During the opening game, he was frequently flattened by aggressive Flyers, notably Dave Brown and Brian Propp.Afterward, when the three stars were announced following a 2-2 tie. Riggin&rsquo;s name was overlooked, despite a sensational 34-save performance that included stops on clean breakaways by Dave Poulin, Brad Marsh and Rick Tocchet.Riggin did get one bit of satisfaction, beyond the knowledge that he was still in top form. Afterward, Murray said, &ldquo;As far as I&rsquo;m concerned, Pat Riggin was the star of that game. He was sensational.&rdquo;Riggin modesdy agreed that &ldquo;I felt pretty good out there.&rdquo; Then he looked back a year, to the awful beginning that ended happily.&ldquo;I started off 0-3 the first week and it wasn&rsquo;t really justified,&rdquo; Riggin said. &ldquo;We lost a tough game in Philly. I faced 40 shots in Buffalo and then I lost in New York as the relief, when 1 gave up only two goals.&ldquo;What happens if we&rsquo;d won in Philly? There are a lot of ifs and buts. I know one thing: after last year, I can handle anything. If I didn&rsquo;t commit suicide then, I never will.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m more relaxed now and I know there&rsquo;s no way I can get that low again. Obviously, I can play the game. That&rsquo;s all I told them when they sent me to Hershey, that I can play in this league. I know now there&rsquo;s no way 1&rsquo;11 go from being an all-star to not being able to play in this league. Of course, I&rsquo;m not saying I&rsquo;ll be an all-star again.&rdquo;He was, though, giving management a broad hint that it ought to stop thinking of sending him elsewhere.NOTES&mdash;Gaeten Duchesne was lost for a month with a broken left hand. Gary Sampson was recalled to replace him&hellip;A broken thumb kept right winger Bryan Erickson out of the opener&hellip;Kevin Hatcher, the Capitals&rsquo; No. 1 draft pick, was returned to North Bay&hellip;After Edmonton tried unsuccessfully to claim him on waivers, Mike McEwan was assigned to Binghamton. &#9632;

f0013-02

Riggin Puts Troubles Behind Him

<div class="byline">BY STAN FISCHLER</div>Is a Herb Brooks-Lou Vairo feud sizzling? The Ranger coach denies it despite some pointedly sarcastic Vairo-directed quotes attributed to Brooks in the New York Post. Author Hugh Delano has Brooks denying that Vairo had anything to do with his 1980 gold-medal winning Olympic team. Others close to Brooks insist that Herb privately feels that Vairo has exaggerated his role with the 1980 champs. On the Jersey side, sources close to Vairo tell BLUELINES that Lou feels hurt by quotes attributed to Brooks. One in particular grates Brooklynite Vairo: &ldquo;Ask him (Lou) about his connection with the 1984 Olympic team.&rdquo; Pressed about the dispute, a Vairo associate says: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a one-sided feud. Herb has pushed it and it&rsquo;s got Lou ticked off. Lou can&rsquo;t understand why Herb has bad-mouthed him. It seems that he belittles Lou at every turn and he (Lou) is bewildered by it.&rdquo; Shown the Post with its headline, BROOKS-VAIRO FEUD COOKIN, Brooks tells BLUELINES: &ldquo;Lou and I have no simmering feud. I don&rsquo;t pay attention to the Post.&rdquo; Meanwhile, Vairo&rsquo;s future with the Devils remains a source of constant speculation in the New York-area media with scribes banging away at the Vairo-to-succeed-Doug Carpenter theme or Vairo-to-the-front-office scenario. Bill (Asbury Park Press) McLaughlin, one of the Met Area&rsquo;s better hockey writers, says &ldquo;Vairo will be promoted only if both the Devils on-ice fortunes and attendance go through the floor.&rdquo; Some Jersey insiders are reportedly saying that ex-coach Tom McVie (now in Maine) has become &ldquo;the coach-in-waiting,&rdquo; as McLaughlin puts it. Rookie coach Carpenter has, superficially, ignored the intrigue. As for McVie, a columnist for a New York daily says a Devils official told him that Tom was released last spring because he didn&rsquo;t work well with American players.Lethbridge Broncos owner-general manager Dennis Kjeldgaard is the latest to snipe at Canadian Olympic coach Dave King. Kjeldgaard would rather see Olympic-channelled money rerouted to junior hockey. He calls King &ldquo;the best-aided coach in hockey. For four years he never has to win a single game.&rdquo; King rebuts that Kjeldgaard doesn&rsquo;t realize the amount of background work necessary for developing the Olympians&hellip;Tim Kerr on his new contract: &ldquo;It (the negotiating) was bad in the sense that it took all summer but good that it&rsquo;s all over. &ldquo;&hellip;Word from the NHL inner sanctum is that the bitter Canadian-American TV war will be resolved and that the mood has improved among the combatants. &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; an NHL tipster in the east tells BLUELINES,&rdquo;it&rsquo;s just a matter of working out bottom lines and concessions.&rsquo;&rsquo;&hellip;Pittsburgh marketing director Paul Steigerwald will do color commentary for Penguin games on WPGH-TV alongside play-byplay man Mike Lange&hellip; Hall of Famer Glenn Hall (now goalie aide to the Hames) zings Tony Esposito: &ldquo;He (Espo) should have bowed out more gracefully. We can all see the writing on the wall sooner or later. I don&rsquo;t see why he should fail to read it.&rdquo;Mark Mulvoy, long a respected hockey critic and NHL gadfly, has been named managing editor of Sports Illustrated. Mulvoy orchestrated the Alan Eagleson expose in SI which the Eagle weathered. &ldquo;Eagleson&rsquo;s power has not diminished as a result of the article, &ldquo;an NHL power broker tells BLUELINES. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s still strong with the players and he&rsquo;s levelled with us (the governors).&rsquo;&rsquo;&hellip;Among the players, only Mike Milbury has urged that the SI article lead to a Players&rsquo; Association question of Eagleson but none appears forthcoming&hellip;In the current issue of SPORT, author Phil Musick puts the rap on Cap personnel director Jack Button who had been the Penguins&rsquo; GM in 1975 when Pittsburgh blew a three-games-to-none lead to the Islanders and lost the series. Musick says Button ignored advice to the contrary and elected to spend a three-day break in New York before the fatal fourth game, &ldquo;stoning their future in a sea of margaritas.&rdquo; To that Button tells BLUELINES: &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no sense commenting on something as illogical and irresponsible as that.&rdquo;&hellip;A Peter Marsh-Orval Tessier put-down contest could run all year. Marsh denounced his ex-coach and added that the rank-and-file Black Hawks loathed him last year. Tessier counterattacked that Marsh was his own worst enemy, specializing in defying curfews&hellip;Although Hab coach Jacques Lemaire and Nordique counterpart Michel Bergeron filmed a Coca-Cola commercial during the summer, friends say the pair still are implacable enemies&hellip;Boom Boom Geoffrion&rsquo;s son, Danny Geoffrion, has retired from hockey although he had a year left on his contract to play in Japan. The Japanese are discontinuing their practice of hiring Canadians and Geoffrion is suing for breach of contract&hellip;Plans are in the works for a new 5,000-seat arena in Saskatoon which can be expanded to NHL size if a franchise is granted&hellip;Bryan Trottier will film an anti-drunk driving TV spot to aid New York governor Mario Cuomo&rsquo;s safety campaign. Trots will open his own rink in Long Island next month. It will feature synthetic ice&hellip;Although an undercurrent of skepticism remains about Mario Lemieux, his notices are more positive than negative. Teammate Moe Mantha says: &ldquo;I hope Mario&rsquo;s the next (Wayne) Gretzky. It&rsquo;d be nice to say, when you retire from hockey, &lsquo;I played with Mario Lemieux.&rsquo;&rsquo;&hellip;For the first time in his career French-Canadian Lucien DeBlois of the Canadiens expects his name to be pronounced correctly. In New York, he was mistakenly called &ldquo;Deb-loooois.&rdquo; When he was with the Rockies, Denver fans pronounced it &ldquo;Debblue.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s really: Deb-low-ah. &#9632;

BLUELINES

<div class="byline">BY PERRY LEFKO</div>TORONTO&mdash;When the Maple Leafs drafted Al lafrate fourth overall in the 1984 draft, he was immediately tagged as a franchise-type player. He had all the tools, the Leafs said, but because he was lacking in game experience it was unsure when he&rsquo;d be playing in Toronto.Well, the Leafs answered that when they retained the 18-year-old defenseman at the start of the season. As for his inexperience, the Leafs are giving him an ample opportunity to catch up on what he&rsquo;s missed by using him as one of their six starters on defense, plus playing him on the the power play.&ldquo;The thing you&rsquo;ve got to do with his ability is put him in a situation where he can test it,&rdquo; said the Leafs&rsquo; rookie coach Dan Maloney, whose team is off to a fast start with two wins in their first three games. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve used him in some really key situations and he&rsquo;s handled it well. &ldquo;lafrate, who was paired in pre-season with steady veteran Bill Root and is now working with Bob McGill, doesn&rsquo;t think he&rsquo;s secured himself a job with the Leafs just because he wasn&rsquo;t sent back to the Belleville Bulls of the Ontario League.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if I&rsquo;ve made it yet,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re putting me on the power play and giving me a chance to play. I&rsquo;m just trying my hardest and they&rsquo;re going to put me where they think 1&rsquo;11 develop the fastest. Right now they&rsquo;re just testing me.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m young, so they&rsquo;re trying to find out whether I can play now. I don&rsquo;t think they want to put me on the bench and find out midway that I&rsquo;m not ready.&rdquo;After playing for the national midget champion Detroit Compuware team in 1983, lafrate, a native of Livonia, MI, was drafted in the first round of the Ontario Hockey League draft by the Belleville Bulls. But eight months would pass before lafrate played for the Bulls, as he decided to play for the U.S. Olympic team. While he didn&rsquo;t play much with the Olympians&mdash;partly because he was one of the youngest players on the team and also because he had a hard time adjusting to the European system&mdash;and didn&rsquo;t have a strong showing with the Bulls, he was still rated as an excellent prospect. And the Leafs, looking for a defenseman who could be the team&rsquo;s quarterback, figured lafrate could fulfill the role, though it may take a year in junior before he would be ready.But Maloney said it only took him a couple of days in training camp to know that lafrate was ready to play in the National Hockey League.&ldquo;Al lafrate is a kid with a lot of raw talent,&rdquo; Maloney said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a big man (6-foot-3, 200 pounds) and is one of the quickest players on the team. He handles the puck well and moves it well. He&rsquo;s got the ability to see all of the ice. It&rsquo;s a quality you don&rsquo;t see too often&mdash;that ability to see all of the ice and move the puck out at the right time.&rdquo;lafrate, who worked hard in the summer to prepare himself for traing camp, said he feels the pressure of being the Leafs&rsquo; top draft choice.&ldquo;All the writers and everyone said 1 wasn&rsquo;t going to make the team, but I&rsquo;m trying my hardest and they&rsquo;re giving me a good chance,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t sure I&rsquo;d make the team because I&rsquo;d never been to a training camp before. But after the first couple of days, you pick up the little things that the veterans can do, and you realize if you didn&rsquo;t have the ability, you wouldn&rsquo;t be drafted in the first round.&rdquo;It was, however, a nerve-wracking experience playing in his his first NHL game&mdash;which the Leafs won 1-0 in over-time in Minnesota.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-011562/6638924-1-eng-US/f0014-012.jpg" title="f0014-01" width="587" height="772"><figcaption class="caption-body">Mape Leaf rookie Al lafrate is being given every chance to prove he belongs.</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-021188/6638917-1-eng-US/f0014-022.jpg" title="f0014-02" width="585" height="786"><figcaption class="caption-body">Veteran goalkeeper Mike Palmateer is finished as a Toronto Maple Leaf.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;I was nervous the first couple of shifts,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I was always told to hit somebody and that&rsquo;s what I did. That kind of shook the butterflies out.&rdquo;So after three games, is Al lafrate ready for the NHL?&ldquo;He&rsquo;s adjusted to it, but he&rsquo;s still got a lot of things that young players do that have to be worked upon,&rdquo; Maloney said. &ldquo;But you have to realize this kid is only one year out of midget hockey.&rdquo;LEAFLETS&mdash; The Mike Palmateer-Maple Leaf battle heated up before the start of the season, when coach Dan Maloney revealed that the veteran goalie balked at practicing the morning after the Leafs&rsquo; first pre-season game. Maloney said that Palmateer didn&rsquo;t want to practice because he felt the extra work would shorten his career. Leaf owner Harold Ballard was so angered by Palmateer&rsquo;s brash behavior, he said the goalie would never play for the Leafs again&hellip;The Leafs&rsquo; season-opening 1-0 overtime victory against Minnesota was their first shutout since January, 1981. Miroslav Frycer scored the winning goal. He and linemate Peter Ihnacak are off to fast starts, but the third member of the line, Walt Poddubny, missed games two and three of the season with a pulled groin&hellip;Ailing Leaf publicist Stan Obodiac dropped the puck for the Leafs&rsquo; opener. The normally staid Leaf patrons showed some new-found enthusiasm by partaking in The Wave craze. They added on that by chanting, &ldquo;Albert, Albert,&rdquo; who is a character on a hockey commercial which has won a lot of critical response&hellip;Jeff Brubaker, picked up from Edmonton in the waiver draft, is the only Leaf not to wear a helmet. Terry Martin, whom the Oilers took from the Leafs in return, will be missed by his teammates. He was one of the popular players&hellip;Maloney showed a lot of pluck when he pulled goalie Allan Bester with a little more than two minutes remaining in the game the Leafs lost, 5-2, to Winnipeg. &#9632;

f0014-01

Iafrate Rising To The Test With A Healthy Workload

<div class="byline">BY JOHN GILBERT</div>BLOOMINGTON&mdash;Ever since he was a rookie sensation with the Minnesota North Stars, Don Beaupre has struggled to duplicate that first-year performance.He has had flashes of brilliance and, coupled with Gilles Meloche, the duo has given the Stars goaltending that has been a perfect complement. If one was not hot, the other was.As this exhibition season merged into the regular season, Beaupre got the first-game nod. But the Stars also kept Mike Sands, who had been sharp in exhibitions. So nothing was settled.The Stars opened with the season hoping to keep up the prolific scoring, which counted 345 goals last season, and to cut down the whopping 344 goals-against&mdash;worst in the team&rsquo;s history and ironic considering coach Bill Mahoney had sought all season to tighten the defensive play.This season, it appears at the outset that Mahoney&rsquo;s ideals are being met.Beaupre got the start in game No. 1, and was so sharp despite losing to Toronto that he also played games two and three.The loss proved two things&mdash;that Toronto may have been sorely underestimated by 17 of 20 HOCKEY NEWS correspondents who predicted the Maple Leafs would be last again in the Norris Division, and that Beaupre was hot.The teams battled to a goalless tie, then Toronto won it, 1-0, on Miroslav Frycer&rsquo;s goal at 2:51 of overtime.&ldquo;I guess that&rsquo;s as close as you can come to a shutout without getting one,&rdquo; said Beaupre, who never has had a shutout in regular-season play. &ldquo;It was a good pass out (by Peter Ihnacak) and he one-timed it, but I saw the shot. I thought I had it and I moved my leg for it. But I guess my leg isn&rsquo;t long enough.&rdquo;The Stars, however, had shown they could check, but a bigger chore was up next. A home-and-home series with the New York Rangers.Beaupre came back and, with rookie Scott Bjugstad scoring with his own rebound off a goal post to bread a 1-1 tie in the third period, Beaupre anchored a 3-1 victory with 42 saves at the Met Center.&ldquo;When you&rsquo;re hot,&rdquo; Beaupre said, &ldquo;the more often you play the confidence carries over.&rdquo;Mahoney gave Beaupre the chance to get right back in there in the second half of the Saturday-Sunday series, and Beaupre virtually duplicated the 3-1 victory with an identical conquest of the Rangers.In the rematch, he needed only 20 saves as his teammates, bolstered by four straight power plays in the second period, racked up 36 shots.But the picture was clear: Beaupre had faced 91 shots in three games plus an overtime, and yielded just three goals.He shared the glory with his teammates, who skated with intense, tight-checking efficiency.The 2-1 start might have registered more goals-for, but the Stars who led the NHL in power-play effectiveness last season, went O-for-15 before Ken Solheim converted Neal Broten&rsquo;s pass for a third-period power-play in the third game.Solheim, Bjugstad, Sands and defensemen Bob Rouse and Randy Velis-chek all saw regular duty in the first week of play. They earned their way, but the Stars&rsquo; continuing string of injuries cleared some openings, as well.Brad Maxwell went down with a cracked rib and, late in the exhibition season, Willi Plett dislocated a shoulder in a fight with Edmonton&rsquo;s Don Jackson and rookie defenseman Tom Hirsch went out with a separated shoulder as well. They join defensemen Dave Richter and Dan Mandich, and forward Paul Holmgren on the sidelines.STAR DUST&mdash;George Ferguson and Jiri Poner were sent down the day after popular defenseman Craig Levie was lost in the waiver draft, claimed by St. Louis. Levie scored a key goal in the Blues&rsquo; opening victory on the same night the Stars went without a goal against Toronto. Ferguson, 32, a popular and strong two-way forward, decided to retire from hockey instead of reporting to Springfield.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0015-011449/6638955-1-eng-US/f0015-012.jpg" title="f0015-01" width="588" height="784"><figcaption class="caption-body">Goalie Don Beaupre yielded only two goals in the Stars&rsquo; first three games.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0015-01

Beaupre Bullish Early In Season

<div class="byline">BY RICH CHERE</div>EAST RUTHERFORD&mdash;If there were any doubts that this was a new John MacLean who reported to the New Jersey Devils&rsquo; training camp this season, they were dispelled the first few times the right winger took the ice.Unlike a year ago when he reported as a No. 1 draft choice ready to save the franchise, MacLean seemed at ease, both on and off the ice.Of course, MacLean had no ambitions of saving a franchise when he showed as Billy MacMillan and Bert Marshall&rsquo;s top draft pick last summer. Those expectations were dealt to him by an anxious media in a new National Hockey League city. MacLean thought only of saving his only job.As it turned out, after 23 NHL games in which he scored just one goal and had no assists, MacLean failed to even save his own&rsquo; job.&ldquo;It was tough,&rdquo; MacLean said. &ldquo;I was getting down on myself, along with everyone else. I wasn&rsquo;t carrying the puck with much confidence, and 1 wasn&rsquo;t driving to the net.&ldquo;I guess I was a little&hellip;well, I guess confidence was a big thing. I worried too much about my check rather than taking shots and taking the puck to the net. I have more confidence now, and I&rsquo;m taking more chances.&rdquo;There are several reasons for MacLean&rsquo;s rise in confidence. First, of course, he enjoyed a successful season with the Ontario Hockey League Oshawa Generals as he completed his junior eligibility. Second, Kirk Muller is now the No. 1 draft pick drawing all the attention. And finally, first-year coach Doug Carpenter has displayed great confidence in MacLean.&ldquo;Coming in with the new coach, I don&rsquo;t think he ever saw me play,&rdquo; MacLean said. &ldquo;I knew I could play here, but I had to show him. I didn&rsquo;t want to get sent to Maine (of the American League) and I don&rsquo;t have junior to fall back on anymore. I wanted to stay here. I guess I also came in with more confidence because I knew what to expect.&rdquo;The Devils honestly did not know what to expect from MacLean. He was not a bad player last season; in fact, before being fired, MacMillan continually pointed out that the 6-foot, 195-pound forward was handling his defensive responsibilites comparable to a veteran, but there was no offense.MacLean&rsquo;s only goal came on Oct. 8 against Ed Mio in New Jersey&rsquo;s 6-3 victory in Detroit. It was the team&rsquo;s third game of the season and the Devils&rsquo; first victory of the season. MacMillan seemed relaxed and confident after the contest, but MacLean would not score another point all season, and the Devils would not win or tie again until Nov. 6 after losing the next 10 games.Carpenter has experimented with MacLean on two primary lines thus far. He skated on the right side with Muller and Devil captain Mel Bridgman and looked at ease. Then, Carpenter shifted MacLean to a line with Aaron Broten and Paul Gagne for a couple of games.&ldquo;All the veterans are good, they&rsquo;ve all helped me this year,&rdquo; MacLean said. &ldquo;There is a good atmosphere on this team. That helps, too. It&rsquo;s a little different than last year.&rdquo;Coming into camp, MacLean had no preconceptions about Carpenter.&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know much about Doug,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I just knew he liked guys that played hard. He&rsquo;s been good to me so far.&rdquo;He, in turn, has been good to Carpenter. Perhaps this is the season for MacLean to full his promise.If nothing else, MacLean will be able to help Muller deal with the ovewhelming pressure of high expectations.HOT STUFF&mdash; The Devils selected defenseman Dave Pichette from St. Louis in the waiver draft and didn&rsquo;t lose anyone off their own roster. To make room for Pichette, they sent Gary MacAdam to Maine. That brought their NHL roster to 25, which included nine defensemen, 13 forwards and three goalies&hellip;The Devils have created a hockey hotline. Fans can call 212-223-GOAL. The Devils also instituted a victory card program where any fan who attends four home victories can redeem the victory card for a $12.00 or $10.00 ticket to another game.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-011348/6638986-1-eng-US/f0016-012.jpg" title="f0016-01" width="591" height="904"><figcaption class="caption-body">John MacLean felt pressure last season being the Devils&rsquo; top draft pick.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0016-01

Confidence Is The Difference For MacLean

<div class="byline">Steve Simmons</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-021048/6639017-1-eng-US/f0016-022.jpg" title="f0016-02" width="401" height="440"></div>ANOTHER NATIONAL HOCKEY League season begins with some old friends and older faces missing for the first time.Tony Esposito is gone, perhaps a season too late. And gone too are Guy Lapointe and Jim Schoenfeld, both of whom have etched so many pictures in our minds.But this is not a piece about the stars who moved out but of the war-horses, the men who make every team go. Another season begins and Ken Houston and Wayne Merrick and Jamie Hislop have moved on.Ken Houston wasn&rsquo;t supposed to even play an NHL game but no one bothered to inform him of the fact. He did play, for nine seasons, until both time and opportunity ran out.Drafted as just another big defenseman, Houston was made into a big forward and he fought&mdash;similar to so many players we never hear or read about&mdash;for every goal he scored and every game he played.When I think of Ken Houston I smile, because I can&rsquo;t remember a player I&rsquo;ve ever admired more. I can&rsquo;t remember a player I have enjoyed watching more.He was an inspirational force on the most uninspiring of Flames&rsquo; teams. It is not surprising that the most success Kent Nilsson ever had was playing with Houston. It is not surprising that the beginning of good things for Washington Capitals came when he joined them.But when I think of Ken Houston, I think of one season and one playoff series. It was Calgary vs. Philadelphia. David vs. Goliath and big Ken Houston helped David win.It was the spring of 1981 and Houston had experienced his most difficult winter. He played just 42 games, battling a chronic case of hepatitis. His weight dropped. His strength had wilted and his stamina was decreasing quickly. When he spoke of road trips that season, he spoke not of trips to Madison Square Garden but of frequent visits to the Mayo Clinic for tests.For Houston, it was like the novel that read: the best of times and the worst of times.But when the money was on the line, it was Houston&rsquo;s scoring that pushed the Flyers out of the playoffs. In that quarter-final series, he entered the record books for the only time in his career&mdash;for most power-play goals in one series (five). It tied him with two nobodies named Andy Bathgate and Denis Potvin.When the Flames shocked the Flyers with a 3-1 victory in that seventh game in the Spectrum, the flight home was the most euphoric in franchise history. The Hames weren&rsquo;t used to winning playoff series. Especially against the Hyers. The flight home was one long drink and song.Except for Ken Houston. While those around him partied, he slept. He slept because he had to.That is a sight I&rsquo;ll never forget and it&rsquo;s a time in Ken Houston&rsquo;s life he&rsquo;ll never forget.Jamie Hislop was just a run-of-the-mill NHL winger until the night Anders Kallur accidentally flicked his stick in Hislop&rsquo;s face. The stick connected with his eye and the damage was done. With permanent damage to his eye, Jamie Hislop can play no more.He surprised himself by playing eight seasons in the NHL and World Hockey Association. But he surprised no one who knew him. No NHL player ever worked harder than Hislop.His story is not as heart-warming as Houston&rsquo;s battle with a disease, but in so many ways it is the same. Hislop got by because he loved to play and he made those around him love it too. He began in Cincinnati, then moved to Quebec, then on to Calgary. At each stop, he was a quiet leader, the leader in conditioning, a coach&rsquo;s player, a fan&rsquo;s favorite.His best days came as a linemate of the Stastny brothers when they first appeared in Quebec, and for a very brief time he was a threat. But Hislop will be remembered not for his short time as a scoring threat but as a man who prevented goals and did so much more.Twelve years after his St. Louis debut, Wayne Merrick has also retired, and another inspiration has moved on. Once traded for J.P. Parise and Jean Potvin in a deal that helped a dynasty to form, Merrick has rarely been given credit for what he did for the New York Islanders.Perhaps more than any other player, he mirrored the Islander style. He did his best during the season, but when the playoffs began, that&rsquo;s when Merrick shone. I remember the playoff season of 1981 with Merrick scoring at a pace alongside Trottier, Bossy, Potvin and Goring.Merrick, Houston and Hislop were all bom in southwestern Ontario and all three were nominees for the Bill Masterton Trophy, the trophy presented only to players of this genre.Journeymen, they are called, and now their journey is over. The Gretzkys and the Messiers of the hockey world go on, but it&rsquo;s the Houstons and Hislops and Merricks that make this game so enjoyable. &#9632;

f0016-02

When The Journey’s Over, It’s Time To Say Thanks

<div class="byline">BY RANDY SMITH</div>HARTFORD&mdash;Concerned about an overall lack of size and more importantly the unimpeded development of a handful of young players, the Hartford Whalers added some toughness in the National Hockey League waiver draft.The Whalers, who began the regular season with five rookies, including three on defense, claimed Wally Weir, a 6-foot-2, 205-pound all-around disturber, from Quebec in the first round and then grabbed Dave Lumley, a 6-foot, 185-pound right winger, from Edmonton in the second. Both players are 30.The Whalers may not be the smallest team in the NHL, but they&rsquo;re in the finals. Besides, if young defensemen Mark Fusco, Ulf Samuelsson and Sylvain Cote and young forwards David A. Jensen and Dave Tippett are to develop, they&rsquo;ll need some room.With the arrival of Weir and Lumley, the Hartford Civic Center rink just got bigger.&ldquo;Weir is a strong fellow,&rdquo; Emile Francis said. &ldquo;He sure won&rsquo;t hurt us. Lumley is a guy I tried to make a deal for last year and failed. We&rsquo;ve picked up two players who will be assets to our hockey team.&rdquo;Coach Jack Evans agreed.&ldquo;Weir and Lumley were our top two choices since the unprotected list first came out,&rdquo; Evans said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m surprised that Lumley was still available.&rdquo;So was Francis.&ldquo;Sure, I was surprised he was still around, but you have to get lucky now and then,&rdquo; he said.One player who might be excused for feeling lucky is Torrie Robertson, the team&rsquo;s designated enforcer who could use some help.&ldquo;Any team would be happy to get Weir, &ldquo;Robertson said.&rdquo; He adds toughness and Lumley likes to run around, too. Let&rsquo;s be honest, we need some big guys. All you have to do is look at the average size of our forwards.&rdquo;The Whalers spent $7,500 to get Weir and $10,000 for Lumley.To make room for the two additions, the Whalers sent goaltender Ed Staniowski, defenseman Marty Howe, and rookie wingers Kevin Dineen and Paul Fenton to Binghamton, their American League affiliate. Howe won the Emery Edge Award last year for the best plusminus on the team, making him the first Emery winner to begin the following season in the minors.&bull; Weir was unavailable for the first three games because of a suspension he received for a pre-season fight involving Quebec and Boston.&ldquo;He couldn&rsquo;t play for three games,&rdquo; winger Bobby Crawford said with? smile. &ldquo;But there are 77 others.&rdquo;Weir has spent the last eight years in Quebec, first in the World Hockey Association and then the NHL. In 272 NHL games, he has amassed 535 penalty minutes while scoring 19 goals. Finesse, it can be said, is not his game. But Weir, a defenseman by trade, can also play wing.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll use Weir the way Quebec did,&rdquo; Evans said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll either play up front or defense, depending on the teams we play.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-011203/6639055-1-eng-US/f0017-012.jpg" title="f0017-01" width="590" height="836"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-02910/6639048-1-eng-US/f0017-022.jpg" title="f0017-02" width="575" height="832"><figcaption class="caption-body">Both Dave Lumley (left) and Wally Weir (right) were acquired in the waiver draft to add some muscle to the Whaler attack.</figcaption></div>Lumley, who has spent the last five years with Edmonton, scored 32 goals and had 74 points in 1981-82, but scored 13 goals the following year and just six in 56 games last year. Guess which year he played alongside Wayne Gretzky?But Lumley has appeared in 50 playoff games and he&rsquo;s known as a player who won&rsquo;t back down.&ldquo;If you asked me before the draft. I&rsquo;d have said it was 90 per cent sure I&rsquo;d retire and 10 per cent I&rsquo;d go, regardless of the team that took me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But there are 200,000 reasons why I&rsquo;d be comfortable in Hartford.&rdquo;Lumley attended the University of New Hampshire and knows the New England area. &#9632;

f0017-01

Whalers Buy Some Beef To Protect Young Players

<div class="byline">BY RANDY SCHULTZ</div>BUFFALO&mdash;In this day and age of the National Hockey League, a player who is 28 is considered a veteran and beginning to enter the twilight of his career.For Mai Davis, a right winger for the Buffalo Sabres, 28 may mean just the beginning of an NHL career.For six seasons Davis had played professional hockey, mostly in the minor leagues and with only 46 games of experience to show for himself in the NHL.Signed as a free agent in 1981 by the Sabres after being released by the Detroit Red Wing, Davis has spent most of the past three seasons playing for the Sabres&rsquo; American League farm team in Rochester, NY.During his last two seasons in Rochester, Davis has scored 98 goals in 128 AHL regular-season games, a very impressive statistic. But not impressive enough for the Sabres.Until now.&lsquo;This training camp I decided not to put pressure on myself to make the team. I figured that if I put a lot of pressure on myself, that it would be bad.&rsquo;At least for the time being Davis is with the Sabres and showed his appreciation by scoring the winning goal in the team&rsquo;s opening-night 4-3 victory over the Montreal Canadiens.&ldquo;That goal was a big plus for me,&rdquo; remarked Davis, a native of Locksport, N.S. &ldquo;It seems that my job has been on the line every time I&rsquo;ve been up here.&ldquo;So this training camp I decided to try not to put pressure on myself to make the team. I figured that if I put a lot of pressure on myself, that would be bad for me.&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think about losing a job. I just went out and did the best job I could.&ldquo;I have already proved myself in the AHL. I needed another challenge and this was it for me. I hope I can prove myself now in the NHL.&rdquo;One who thinks that Davis has earned his spot on the Sabres is teammate and assistant coach, Craig Ramsay.&ldquo;Mel has really worked hard to get where he is on this team,&rdquo; says Ramsay. &ldquo;He played aggressively in camp and showed that he wanted to be here.&ldquo;And despite his impressive offensive statistics in the AHL, he has shown that he can play the whole game, both offensively and defensively.&ldquo;With his goal against the Canadiens he has shown me that he can also score the big goal when needed.&ldquo;But the bottom line with Mel is desire. And he has that. Anybody that wants to play as bad as he does in the NHL deserves to be here.&rdquo;Davis feels that he does have one distinct advantage.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think the goalies respect me in the AHL,&rdquo; Davis said. &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t know that much about me which leaves them with the element of surprise.&ldquo;And I hope to surprise a few of them.&rdquo;Another player who still has a few surprises in store for NHL goaltenders is Sabre veteran, Gil Perreault.The last of the original Sabres, Perreault is beginning his 15th season in the NHL, all with Buffalo. With an option year remaining on his contract, the Sabre captain is not thinking of retirement just yet.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m just going to go day-by-day and not worry about retiring yet,&rdquo; said Perreault, who suffered bad back problems late last season. &ldquo;I did a lot of exercises over the summer to stay in shape and to help my back.&ldquo;Even now I have to do a lot of stretching before a game.&rdquo;Perreault is looking forward to this season with great anticipation for the team.&ldquo;We had a great season last year,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think we have to show any improvement this season as far as points go.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s room for improvement in other places as well. Everybody can improve their skills in one way or another. Maybe one guy can improve his back-checking. Another his back-hand shot.&ldquo;There are a lot of little things like that that can improve a team overall to help you win games.&ldquo;And that&rsquo;s what really counts.&rdquo;SABRE NOTES&mdash; Defenseman Phil Housley sat out the first three regularseason games for the Sabres because of a suspension for being the first man off the bench during an altercation in an exhibition game between the Sabres and the Red Wings in Lake Placid&hellip;Craig Ramsay scored his 400th NHL assist in the home opener against the Canadiens. The opening-night victory against the Canadiens was the Sabres&rsquo; 12th win in a row against Montreal, including nine during the regular season and three straight playoff wins back in 1983. &#9632;

Davis Far From Entering The Twilight Zone

Even though Team Canada won the 1984 Canada Cup, it was considered something of an underdog throughout the entire six-nation tournament. But if the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association&rsquo;s Program of Excellence does it job, the days of Canada approaching international tournaments as underdogs to the Soviet Union could be over.This year during the Christmas season, five regional midget-age teams, stocked with the best 16-year-old players in the country, will play host to the Soviet Union&rsquo;s best under-17 team.And it&rsquo;s all part of the CAHA&rsquo;s Program of Excellence, which began with Dave King&rsquo;s Team Canada winning the 1981 world junior championships.&ldquo;The ultimate goal,&rdquo; says Keith Baulk of Kitchener, Ont., who helps to administer the Ontario region team, &ldquo;is to prepare this country&rsquo;s best young players for the 1988 Olympics.&ldquo;You figure that these kids are 16, going on 17, and four years from now at the 1988 Winter Games, they&rsquo;ll be 20 and 21, which is just about the average of the Olympic team. There is a very good possibility that some of this year&rsquo;s midget crop will be on the 1988 Olympic team.&rdquo;But aside from that, it is hoped that putting Canada&rsquo;s best teenagers against the best from the Soviet Union will help to develop their skills and get them accustomed to the international forum, which will undoubtedly help them down the line somewhere, perhaps in future Canada Cup tournaments.The goal of the program is to develop the players&rsquo; on-ice skills and expose to them to a variety of approaches and different concepts.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s really two-fold,&rdquo; Baulk says. &ldquo;First, the program, the cirriculum of which incidentally was designed by Dave King, is aimed at improving and developing the players&rsquo; skills. But the second part is to expose them to different attitudes about the game, different ways to approach it. This part is more of a mental education, as opposed to physical.&ldquo;Combine them and we should be developing better all-around hockey players who know what it&rsquo;s like to play in international competition.&rdquo;The process, which started in the summer with more than 500 players across Canada, has resulted in five regional teams&mdash;Atlantic (the four Maritime provinces), Quebec, Ontario, Central (Manitoba and Saskatchewan) and West (British Columbia and Alberta).The players selected to play for each regional team will get together several days before their first scheduled game against the touring Soviets. The players, Baulk says, come from various levels of hockey.&ldquo;Some of them are already playing major junior hockey in the Western, Ontario or Quebec Leagues, &ldquo;he says. &ldquo;Others are playing tier two. Some are playing Junior B. Still others are playing in midget leagues.&rdquo;Each region will play two games against the Soviets, with the first game slated for Dec. 21 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The Ontario team will play its second game in Ottawa with the tour moving into Quebec and the Maritimes before hitting the Central and West regions.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a rather complicated procedure,&rdquo; Baulk says of the selection process that pared the 500 prospects down to 100. &ldquo;The criteria for selections varied from region to region.&ldquo;But overall, the response has been favorable and positive. The CAHA has presented a total program that is aimed at making or keeping Canada among the top producers of hockey talent. This is being done by a systematic approach and I really think it augers well for the future.&rdquo;The regional teams are expected to get top-flight instruction and coaching. For example, the Ontario team will be coached by well-respected Dave Chambers, now at York University, and he&rsquo;ll be assisted by Kingston Canadian coach Rick Cornacchia and the University of Windsor&rsquo;s Bob Corran. &#9632;

CAHA Aims To Develop Elite Teen Players

The Minor Hockey Player Showcase allows us the opportunity to recognize and encourage the efforts and achievements of thousands of young hockey players throughout Canada and the United States.Starting with this issue of THE HOCKEY NEWS and in the next 22 editions, a JOFA Minor Player of the Week will be featured from nominees submitted by minor coaches and others in both Canada and the U.S.All nominees will be eligible for a draw and the winner will receive a special award to be presented by THE HOCKEY NEWS at its annual awards ceremony, to which the winner and his family will be invited to attend with all hotel and transportation expenses paid by JOFA. In addition, the youngster named Minor Player of 1984-1985 will receive a complete set of JOFA hockey equipment.Our showcase selection committee will not look only at the number of goals and assists in their decision for the Minor Player of the Week Award but also consider other categories such as: good sportsmanship, level of improvement, effort and overall achievement. The showcase is as the name implies, a spotlight on a minor hockey player.Minor hockey associations in Canada and the United States are encouraged to submit their nominees for the weekly showcase. Complete details on nominees including a black and white photograph and biography including pertinent statistics should be sent to THE HOCKEY NEWS, 85 Scarsdale Rd., Suite 100, Don Mills, Ont., M3B 2R2. &#9632;

JOFA Presents Minor Showcase

Steven M. Halko is beginning his fifth year of rep hockey in the Bolton Minor Hockey Association in Bolton, Ont., despite the fact that he&rsquo;s only 10 years old.He started his minor hockey career as a defenseman on the novice team. Since then, though, he&rsquo;s been playing up one age category, now entering his minor peewee season.He believes that a perfect hockey player is one who skates forward like Paul Coffey, backward like Viacheslav Fetisov, is a good sportsman and has the quick release of Mike Bossy, has a hard shot like Doug Wilson and the puck wizardry and anticipation of Wayne Gretzky.He says he would one day like to play pro hockey but would try to pursue his education like Edmonton Oiler Randy Gregg and Hall of Famer Ken Dryden.Steven is in grade five at Holy Family School in Bolton.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-011239/6639158-1-eng-US/f0018-012.jpg" title="f0018-01" width="564" height="982"><figcaption class="caption-body">Steven M. Halko</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Minor Hockey Showcase

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-02913/6639189-1-eng-US/f0018-022.jpg" title="f0018-02" width="726" height="1004"><figcaption class="caption-body">Rick Vaive played his minor hockey in three places, but says there wasn&rsquo;t any difference in the play.</figcaption></div>More than once in his life, Rick Vaive has known what it&rsquo;s like to be uprooted.From the start of his junior career with the Sherbrooke Beavers of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, he has since gone on to play for Birmingham of the World Hockey Association, then to Vancouver with the Canucks of the National Hockey League, and he&rsquo;s been a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs since coming over in a trade with Bill Derlago for Dave (Tiger) Williams and Jerry Butler in in 1979-80. That was a deal which has been registered as one of the greatest ever for the Leafs in their long history.But long before Vaive started moving around in his junior and pro career, he was jockeying around Canada playing minor hockey.He first played in Ottawa, Ont., his birthplace, then moved from the nation&rsquo;s capital to Charlottetown, P.E.I., and was even in Amherst, N.S., for a short while.When asked if there was any difference playing in the three provinces, the 25-year-old captain of the Maple Leafs said it all was the same.&ldquo;Minor hockey is minor hockey,&rdquo; Vaive says. &ldquo;I enjoyed it a lot and was fortunate to play on a lot of good teams and we won a lot of championships and tournaments.&ldquo;In Charlottetown, we won the Maritime championship every year I played there.&rdquo;Vaive, one of the best scorers in the league after totalling 50 or more goals the last three seasons, is still recognized in P.E.I. for his hockey ability. He&rsquo;s starting to improve his reputation by being host to a golf tournament for charity in the off-season. Last year, Wayne Gretzky was among the many celebrities who partook in the successful outing.Vaive, who plays right wing, has never known what it&rsquo;s like to play behind the blue line.&ldquo;I have always played forward,&rdquo; said Vaive, the only Leaf invited to play for Team Canada in the recent Canada Cup and a member of the Campbell Conference team in last year&rsquo;s All-Star game in New Jersey. &ldquo;I played center quite a bit and right wing. Those are the only two positions I ever played.&rdquo;At 6-foot-l, 190 pounds, Vaive has the all important size to play in the National Hockey League. One of the better checkers on the Leaf team, he uses that size effectively. But while Vaive may be one of the bigger Leaf players, he wasn&rsquo;t always one of the bigger ones on his minor hockey teams. In fact, it took a while before he started to sprout.&ldquo;I was always average (size) until about bantam,&rdquo; Vaive said, &ldquo;then I started becoming one of the smaller guys. I didn&rsquo;t really get any size at all until I was a junior at 17 or 18.&rdquo;Vaive said he began playing minor hockey at age seven in Ottawa. And he had some company in his two brothers, though he was the eldest.&ldquo;We were interested in it all along,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It was more or less, well, if you want to play, you can play. So he (his father) got us some equipment and we played. But my brothers never played on the same team. They were always too much younger than I was.&rdquo; &#9632;

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Minor Hockey Flashback: Rick Vaive

<div class="byline">BY GLENN COLE</div>Louisville HockeyMONTREAL&mdash;The move was not unexpected, although the timing was a little surprising.Just two days before the Montreal Canadiens were due to commence their 1984-85 National Hockey League season in Buffalo, they made the goaltending move most had anticipated.However, it was not Mike Liut, nor Richard Brodeur whom Hab managing director Serge Savard brought into to aid Steve Penney. Instead, Doug Soetaert, the odd man out in Winnipeg, was acquired in exchange for Mark Holden.Holden was bitter and rightfully so, while Soetaert was overjoyed at the propsect of joining ex-Winnipeg teammate Lucien DeBlois on the Montreal roster.&ldquo;I was planning on settling and starting the season in Winnipeg,&rdquo; Soetaert said. &ldquo;I thought I had a fairly good camp. They decided they wanted to go with their two younger kids (Brian Hayward and Marc Behrend) and that made me expendable. I was disappointed to leave Winnipeg, but 1 was very happy I was coming to Montreal.&rdquo;It is the second time Soetaert has had to move during his NHL career. A 29-year-old native of Edmonton, Soetaert was the New York Rangers&rsquo; second choice, 30th overall, in the 1975 entry draft. He remained with the Rangers&rsquo; organization until Sept. 8, 1981 when he was traded to the Jets for Winnipeg&rsquo;s third-round draft choice in 1983.&ldquo;Being drafted by New York, I always thought I would like to play my whole career there,&rdquo; Soetaert said. &ldquo;Being younger and not knowing how things work in the league, being traded the first time was a shock. Coming to Montreal isn&rsquo;t as hard on me. I thought I was going to be a Ranger forever. But 1 didn&rsquo;t know if I was going to be a Winnipeg Jet forever.&rdquo;Soetaert divided much of his earlier career in the Ranger organization between the NHL club and its American League farm teams in Providence and New Haven. The most activity he had in New York was in 1980-81, his last season with the Rangers, when he appeared in 39 games and had a 3.93 goals-against average.With Winnipeg, Soetaert appeared in 39 games in 1981-82, 44 in 1982-83 and 47 last season, including a start against Montreal last Oct. 19. He&rsquo;d just as soon forget that one, though, as the Canadiens blitzed him early en route to a 12-2 victory.&ldquo;That night we were pretty disorganized and were stung pretty bad,&rdquo; Soetaert said.Much of the contribution Soetaert will make depends on how well Penney holds up. Penney was the No. 1 goalie going into training camp and it is clear that neither Holden, nor 18-year-old junior Patrick Roy, nor Greg Moffett were good enough in the management&rsquo;s eyes to dislodge last year&rsquo;s playoff hero.&ldquo;Soetaert has NHL experience,&rdquo; Savard said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s the type of guy who can go in and get hot for six or seven games. He can play 25 or 30 games for us.&rdquo;Both Lemaire and Savard felt Holden had a good training camp as his 2.73 average might indicate. Obviously it was not enough to earn him a spot on a fulltime basis, at least not in Montreal.&ldquo;For the first time in three years, I had a legitimate chance to make this team,&rdquo; said Holden, who reported to Sherbrooke, the farm team the Canadiens now share in the AHL with the Jets. &ldquo;I played well enough to make this team. In my mind, I don&rsquo;t think I allowed a bad goal during the exhibition games.&rdquo;At 26 and with a one-year termination contract, Holden obviously has to question his future.Meanwhile, Soetaert isn&rsquo;t sure how much activity he will have with his new team. Roy dressed as Penney&rsquo;s backup for the 4-3 loss at Buffalo Oct. 11, which extended the Canadiens&rsquo; losing streak against the Sabres to 12 games (including a three-game sweep in the first round of the 1983 playoffs).&ldquo;Both Jacques Lemaire and Serge have talked to me and told me I would practise for a while to get into the flow of things,&rdquo; Soetaert said. &ldquo;When Jacques figures I&rsquo;m ready to play, he&rsquo;ll start playing me.&rdquo;IN PASSING&mdash; The Canadiens were minus defensemen Larry Robinson, Jean Hamel and Craig Ludwig for the opening night in Buffalo. Robinson was recovering from a concussion suffered in Boston a week ealier, the same night Hamel was struck in the eye by a Ken Linseman shot. Ludwig fractured the fourth knuckle on his hand, punching Dale Hunter in the head in the second-last pre-season game against Quebec. Ludwig, who did not miss a game for his first two seasons in the league, was expected to miss a month&hellip;Bobby Smith, acquired from Minnesota last year, is now the fifth center on the Canadiens behind Guy Carbonneau, Ryan Walter, John Chabot and Pierre Mondou. Smith played only four shifts against the Sabres, but still managed his first goal of the season&hellip;Rookie defenseman Tom Kurvers has inherited number 18, worn by Serge Savard during his career in Montreal. Last year, Bill Root, now with Toronto, had the number.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-011032/6639220-1-eng-US/f0020-012.jpg" title="f0020-01" width="576" height="808"><figcaption class="caption-body">Doug Soetaert would like to forget last-season&rsquo;s blitzing against the Canadiens.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0020-01

Soetaert Likes Coming To Habs…

<div class="byline">BY REYN DAVIS</div>WINNIPEG&mdash;Doug Soetaert, the goaltender who made a habit of delivering points for the Winnipeg Jets, received his expressions of thanks&mdash;a trade to the Montreal Canadiens.A proven goaltender by National Hockey League standards, the 29-year-old Soetaert was swapped evenly for the Canadiens&rsquo; No. 2 goalie, Mark Holden, 27, whom they promptly assigned to Sherbrooke.The trade places the onus directly on the shoulders of Brian Hayward and Marc Behrend, the two young goaltenders so highly touted by general manager John Ferguson.&ldquo;The truth be known, we&rsquo;ve been trying to trade Soetaert since the summer,&rdquo; said Ferguson. &ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t a big market for a goaltender who, at best, is average. Check the stats. He&rsquo;s always ranked near the bottom and he&rsquo;s always fizzled in the playoffs. At the very best, he&rsquo;s backup insurance.&ldquo;While he has been good for us, he&rsquo;s a .500 goaltender and we&rsquo;re trying to improve on that.&rdquo;Soetaert, who started 50 per cent of the games last season, delivered 59 per cent of the points. He had an 18-15-7 record on a 31-38-11 team.Both Hayward and Behrend expressed surprise that Soetaert would be the odd man out in the Winnipeg scheme of things.&ldquo;I thought for sure the Jets would keep one experienced goaltender and one younger guy,&rdquo; said Hayward. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m kind of shocked it happened this way.&rdquo;Behrend couldn&rsquo;t finish his meal upon hearing the news.&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t play particularly well in training camp,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t take charge like I had hoped. I was wondering what my status was. But I certainly didn&rsquo;t expect Doug would be traded.&rdquo;Soetaert had mixed feelings about leaving the Jets and Winnipeg, his adopted home.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not bitter, a little disappointed, maybe,&rdquo; he said, rushing to catch an evening plane to Montreal. &ldquo;I have had good years here, and I&rsquo;ve made a lot of friends. But I would be less than honest if I didn&rsquo;t say I&rsquo;m ecstatic about going to Montreal. Lucien (DeBlois) is there. So is Serge (Savard).&rdquo; Savard, the Canadiens&rsquo; GM, told Soetaert a furnished house had already been rented for him and his young family, due to expand by one.Soetart thought he had established himself as the Jets&rsquo; No. 1 goaltender during the pre-season games. He had appeared in all three wins while suffering one loss.&ldquo;I felt I had earned the spot,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I thought they would be sending one of the younger guys, either Marc or Brian, to Sherbrooke. I didn&rsquo;t have a clue this was happening.&rdquo;Despite his degree of success in goal, Soetaert never received the credit which seemed to be due from the precincts of the GM&rsquo;s office.Ferguson has been more excited about Behrend, a fifth-round draft choice selected in 1981. Now 23, the former U.S. Olympian arrived late last season, posting a 2-4-0 record, before two brilliant performances in the playoffs, both of which ended in defeat at the hands of the Edmonton Oilers.&ldquo;I hope we are able to do the job,&rdquo; Behrend said.Hayward views the trade as a vote of confidence in the abilities of himself and Behrend.&ldquo;This will be my opportunity to prove to a lot of people what I can do, &ldquo;said Hayward, 24, signed as a free agent out of Cornell.&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t play poorly, I felt, despite my record (7-18-2) last year. I just lost my confidence. For me, this is like being given a second chance. I want to make the most of it.&rdquo;Ferguson said the trade had been discussed for weeks with Montreal.&ldquo;Our scouts raved about Holden,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;All my coaches were involved in the decision. I wouldn&rsquo;t have made the deal without their blessings.&rdquo;BENCH BITS&mdash; Reducing their roster to 23, the Jets assigned center Tim Young, left winger Jordy Douglas and defenseman Wade Campbell to Sherbrooke. Young, an 11-year veteran of the NHL, said he wouldn&rsquo;t go. Clearing waivers three times, Young was offered again to six teams and one expressed interest. Douglas, 27, was contemplating retirement. Young, 29, feels he can play three more years in the NHL&hellip;Murray Eaves and Morris Lukowich are scrimmaging again. Eaves suffered a sprained ankle early in camp while Lukowich was coming off orthoscopic knee surgery&hellip;The Jets opened the season with four rookies&mdash;defensemen Bobby Dollasand Dave Ellett, center Paul Pooley and goaltender Marc Behrend. &#9632;

…While Jets Delighted With Kids

<div class="byline">BY RON COBB</div>ST. LOUIS&mdash;The last few days before the National Hockey League waiver draft, Ron Caron was like a patient headed for a trip to the dentist. He expected to be drilled.But when the draft had passed, the Blues&rsquo; director of player personnel had a big smile on his face. As the expression goes, it wasn&rsquo;t so bad after all.Caron anticipated the maximum loss of three players. For a team whose depth is suspect, this would be a blow.And so Caron and his staff went behind close doors on Oct. 9 to await the body count. When the draft was over and Caron emerged, he was beaming.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re very happy,&rdquo; he said.The Blues had come out smelling like a rose. The net loss was one player, not three, and the Blues probably improved themselves overall.With the first pick, the Pittsburgh Penguins took the Blues&rsquo; right winger Wayne Babych. Picking second, the New Jersey Devils selected defenseman Dave Pichette.With the eighth pick, the Blues chose defenseman Craig Levie, 25, of the Minnesota North Stars. The addition of Levie forced the Blues to drop a player from the list of their 16 protected players. That player was defenseman Rik Wilson, the Blues&rsquo; first-round pick in 1981, who went unclaimed through the rest of the draft.Jacques Demers immediately used Levie in the team&rsquo;s first game of the season against Calgary, a 4-2 win for the Blues.Levie, 5-foot-ll, 190 pounds, recorded six goals, 13 assists and 44 penalty minutes in 37 games for the North Stars last season.&ldquo;He moves the puck very well,&rdquo; Demers said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll help us move the puck out of the zone.&rdquo;None of the other available Blues&rsquo; players were selected&mdash;goaltender Rick Heinz and wingers Greg Paslawski, Pat Hickey, Denis Cyr and Kevin Lavallee.The Blues later announced that Heinz had been assigned to Peoria Rivermen of the International Hockey League.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m happy with him (Heinz) as a backup,&rdquo; Caron said. &ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t have that reserve last year.&rdquo;Caron also was happy that no one took any of the Blues&rsquo; wingers.When the Blues lost Babych, they took $12,500 rather than Pittsburgh forward Tom Roulston. When the Devils claimed Pichette, the Blues took $15,000 rathem than winger Gary MacAdam.Minnesota opted for $15,000 instead of taking Wilson.In Babych, 26, and Pichette, 24, the Blues lost players with big contracts who no longer fit into their plans. Babych, a 54-goal scorer in 1980-81, had averaged 16 goals over the last three seasons. He asked to be traded last spring.Caron said he didn&rsquo;t consider Babych a loss &ldquo;because I lost him in May. He wouldn&rsquo;t have played another game for the Blues. 1 tried to accommodate him all summer and it&rsquo;s unfortunate that I couldn&rsquo;t get more for him.&rdquo;Babych had hoped to wind up with his hometown team, the Edmonton Oilers. He had gone to the Oilers on a conditional basis at the start of training camp but was returned.&ldquo;1 wanted to come out west,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But Pittsburgh obviously wanted me bad and picked me first. It&rsquo;s a challenge and I&rsquo;ve got to look at it in a positive way. They&rsquo;re giving me an opportunity, and that&rsquo;s what I wanted.&rdquo;Babych said that asking for a trade was the toughest decision he ever had to make.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s tough leaving a bunch of guys like this,&rdquo; Babych said. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re super people. St. Louis was just like home. I couldn&rsquo;t have asked for anything more.&rdquo;Caron said Pichette had become expendable because of a strong showing by rookie Brian Benning at left defense.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m disappointed about leaving St. Louis because it&rsquo;s a beautiful city,&rdquo; Pichette said. &ldquo;This is a good group of guys with great leaders. But I&rsquo;m happy somebody picked me up because 1 don&rsquo;t think I figured into this team&rsquo;s plans from the beginning of training camp.&rdquo;The Blues&rsquo; decision to drop Rik Wilson from their protected list came as a surprise. They had praised him highly last season after he returned from a midseason stint in the minors. Despite Wilson&rsquo;s subpar performance in the playoffs, the Blues were counting on him as the third man on right defense.&ldquo;I was quoted as saying he was one of the three defenseman on the right side, but his play deterioted every game and every practice in training camp.&rdquo; Demers said.Wilson&rsquo;s problem, Demers said, was an obcession with weight lifting.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s good to look big and strong,&rdquo; Demers said, &ldquo;but hockey players don&rsquo;t function well with all that muscle. He went from 176 when they drafted him in 1980 to 218 when he reported this year. I was very concerned.&rdquo; &#9632;

Caron Waves Good-Bye With A Great Big Smile

<div class="byline">BY NEIL MILBERT</div>CHICAGO&mdash;Healthy and hungry, the Chicago Black Hawks opened their season by devouring the Detroit Red Wings, 7-3. Then, they got a taste of what life would be like in the Patrick Division, and it didn&rsquo;t agree with them.In their first road game, their never-say-die attitude was no antidote. To their dismay, they discovered the New York Islanders still are poison on Long Island ice. The Hawks, who haven&rsquo;t won in the Nassau Coliseum in more than 10 years, lost, 7-6, on Mike Bossy&rsquo;s goal at 59 seconds of sudden-death overtime.The following night, back in the friendly confines of Chicago Stadium, goaltender Murray Bannerman&rsquo;s meanderings up ice led the Hawks to their downfall. The Washington Capitals converted two of his mistakes into goals, and conquered Chicago, 5-3.Bannerman, who is considered one of the best passing goalies in the league, didn&rsquo;t try to pass the buck on the goals by Alan Haworth and rookie Jim McGeough.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always played aggressively,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Sometimes 10 times. It just backfired twice on the same night.With everyone back in the lineup for the first time since 1982-83, the Hawks played the Wings like the Norris Division champions they were that season rather than last year&rsquo;s team that fell to fourth place.&ldquo;You talk to yourself,&rdquo; admitted general manager Bob Pulford. &ldquo;You ask yourself, &lsquo;Are we the 104-point team of two years ago or are we the (68-point) team we were last season?&rsquo;&ldquo;Well, I say it wasn&rsquo;t a fluke that we made it to the semi-finals those two years. At the end of the second season we were one of the five best teams in the NHL, and we deserved to be there.&ldquo;Last year we just were decimated by injuries.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m saying we&rsquo;re still a good team. I&rsquo;m saying that with everyone back we&rsquo;re in the top seven in the league. I think the keys as a team are staying healthy and having a much better attitude. This year it seems very positive. I haven&rsquo;t done anything to make it so; it&rsquo;s just a feeling I have.&rdquo;A lot of Hawks seemed to share the feeling in the Detroit game, although they didn&rsquo;t win as easily as the score might suggest. The game was tied, 2-2, with four minutes left in the second period, and the Red Wings didn&rsquo;t say &ldquo;Uncle&rdquo; until late in the third.In the end, Detroit succumbed to a team that skated hard, created many scoring chances and forechecked with gusto.The Chicago goals were distributed among members of all four lines. They were scored by Troy Murray, Steve Larmer, Rick Paterson, Bill Gardner, Darryl Sutter, hometown rookie Ed Olczyk and Steve Ludzik.&ldquo;The attitude now is where it should be,&rdquo; said coach Orval Tessier after the game. &ldquo;We all got a shock when we didn&rsquo;t play well last year. During the summer, I sat down and took stock and told myself what I&rsquo;d have to do to change. You see, I&rsquo;m not much of a guy to pat people on the back. But there are times when people need that.&ldquo;I came to camp with a new attitude and, I discovered, so had my players.&rdquo;The loss to the Islanders was disappointing because the Hawks rallied repeatedly.&ldquo;We always kept fighting back which we didn&rsquo;t do last year,&rdquo; said Tessier. &ldquo;But allowing seven goals against the Islanders is way too many if you expect to beat them. On the (game-winning) goal, we missed an assignment on Bossy. You just can&rsquo;t do that because he&rsquo;s the best shooter in the league.&rdquo;The Hawks&rsquo; last victory in Nassau Coliseum came on Feb. 16, 1974. Since then, counting playoff games, they have a record of 0-20-7 in the building.HAWK TALK&mdash;Denis Savard, the Hawks&rsquo; leading scorer for the last three seasons, suffered an ankle injury in blocking a shot against the Islanders, forcing him to sit out the Washington game. Ken Yaremchuk replaced him on the line with Al Secord and Steve Larmer. The other line combinations for the first three games had Tom Lysiak centering for Darryl Sutter and Bob MacMillan; Troy Murray for Curt Fraser and Ed Olczyk; and Bill Gardner for Steve Ludzik and Rick Paterson&hellip;Gardner is off to a splendid start. He scored his second goal on a shot against the Islanders and got his third of the season against Washington&hellip;Olczyk, with two goals and one assist, has also been impressive.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0021-01806/6639299-1-eng-US/f0021-012.jpg" title="f0021-01" width="592" height="855"><figcaption class="caption-body">Murray Bannerman shouldered responsibility for the mistakes made against Washington.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0021-01

Hawks Plav With Never-Say-Die Attitude

<div class="byline">BY CHUCK MOODY</div>PITTSBURGH&mdash;Versatile.The description hangs around Mark Taylor&rsquo;s neck like an albatross.The 26-year-old Taylor is listed as a center on the Penguin roster but is also capable of playing either wing. However, he says he would prefer to play one position regularly on one line rather than be moved every few games.&ldquo;Every position has its advantages,&rdquo; Taylor said. &ldquo;I enjoy center ice because you get a chance to free-wheel it a bit more. I&rsquo;m faster with a little bit of a circle than just going straight up and down a wing.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not really stuck on any one position. On this team right now I don&rsquo;t really want to play center because we&rsquo;ve got a powerhouse of centers. For me to step in, it&rsquo;s kind of like me beating my head against the wall in one sense. You&rsquo;ve got Mario (Lemieux) and Bull (Mike Bullard) and Flockey (Ron Flockhart), who all like a lot of ice-time.&ldquo;I just want to try to get a position where I can help the team and get some ice-time. Whether it&rsquo;s right wing, or left wing or wherever they want to put me, I guess I&rsquo;ll just work hard and try to improve myself there. I&rsquo;d just like to get settled into one position and stay there for awhile.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-01926/6639330-1-eng-US/f0022-012.jpg" title="f0022-01" width="584" height="716"><figcaption class="caption-body">Forward Mark Taylor doesn&rsquo;t want to get into a position where he&rsquo;s just a filler.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to get the reputation that I&rsquo;m &lsquo;versatile&rsquo; and change every other game to a different position and just kind of be a filler I&rsquo;d like to get a set line and get a set position and try to work at it.&rdquo;Taylor came to the Penguins last season in a trade with the Philadelphia Flyers where he was languishing on the bench.&ldquo;I was quite excited because I saw it as a good opportunity for me to get a chance to prove myself as a hockey player, said Taylor about the trade.&rdquo; It had its frustrating moments last year, but I felt like I was part of a growing thing and something that is going to turn around in the near future. And I want to be part of it.&ldquo;In Philadelphia, I kind of was playing third line, fourth line, and I really didn&rsquo;t feel like a big part of a lot of the things. It was frustrating that way, but it was fun winning there. Both places had disadvantages. I was happy to come here and get an opportunity to play a lot.&rdquo;Taylor responded to his increased playing time in Pittsburgh by scoring 12 goals in his first 17 games before he was injured Nov. 29 in Minnesota.&ldquo;I partly tore my ligaments in my left knee,&rdquo; he recalled. &ldquo;I was along the side boards and I was killing a penalty. I had to block the puck from going back to the point and try to take the man out along the side boards at the same time.&ldquo;I was kind of in an awkward position as I hit him. It was a freak thing. I just twisted my knee as I went into the boards.&rdquo;<blockquote class="pullQuote">&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t want to get the reputation that I&rsquo;m versatile and change every other game to a different position.&rsquo;</blockquote>Taylor missed 13 games, but he didn&rsquo;t play as well when he returned to the lineup as he did before he was injured.&ldquo;The big thing is when you come back off an injury you&rsquo;re not quite as sharp as you were when you take a month off,&rdquo; said Taylor, who finished with 24 goals and 31 assists in 59 games. &ldquo;My timing was off and my conditioning was off. I was riding the bike a lot, but it&rsquo;s just not the same as jumping into game conditioning.&ldquo;Towards the end of the season I started to feel like I was getting back to where I was before I was injured. 1 started to score again and I was back on the power play and playing a lot, which obviously helps.&rdquo;Taylor was drafted by Philadelphia in the sixth round of the 1978 entry draft from the University of North Dakota. He was selected as the 1980 U.S. college player of the year his senior year and graduated with a degree in marketing.Taylor, 5-foot-ll, 185 pounds, is looking forward to better things this season with the Penguins after two straight last-place finishes.&ldquo;Pittsburgh has had its tough years the last few years, but there are a lot of new faces here,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The players that have been here for awhile have been frustrated over the years, but there&rsquo;s a lot of winners here.&ldquo;The older guys are very good leaders and they want to turn this thing around as badly as the new guys coming in. We&rsquo;ve got a combination of young guys and everyone pushing towards a positive goal that we can turn this thing around quickly&rdquo; &#9632;

f0022-01

Pens’ All-Purpose Man Wants One Position

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0022-02" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-02638/6639361-1-eng-US/f0022-022.jpg"></div>It&rsquo;s not as if St. Louis Blue captain Brian Sutter needs something special to motivate him. He&rsquo;s already one of the hardest workers in the National Hockey League. But getting cut from Team Canada in late August obviously hurt and he&rsquo;s wasted no time in showing that he&rsquo;s still one of the league&rsquo;s most valuable players.The Blues went 2-1 in their first three games and Sutter collected three goals and three assists, including the two gamewinners.That early-season effort earned him Player-of-the-Week honors for the period ending Oct. 15. &#9632;

f0022-02

Player Of The Week

<div class="byline">BY RICK SADOWSKI</div>LOS ANGELES&mdash;Pat Quinn does not intend to field a one-line hockey team in his first season as Kings head coach and&mdash;guess what?He just may to able to pull it off.Not that attempts at breaking up the Triple Crown Line&mdash;&rdquo;The Golden Crown Line, or whatever it&rsquo;s been called in the past,&rdquo; Quinn said&mdash;haven&rsquo;t been made before.But at some point in time, usually after a couple of weeks at best, Marcel Dionne, Dave Taylor and Charlie Simmer always wound up back together again.This apparently will not be the case this season.&ldquo;Unless they prove I can&rsquo;t split it up, I will,&rdquo; Quinn said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s been tried in the past and they&rsquo;ve always gone back as a Fast refuge, but to me that&rsquo;s saying, &lsquo;Well, we only have one good line.&rsquo;&ldquo;I believe we can split them up and make us a stronger team. And if we have to go back, that means we haven&rsquo;t taken any steps forward.&rdquo;The Kings were more than a one-line team a year ago, when Bernie Nicholls, Jim Fox and Brian MacLellan developed into an explosive offensive force.But the emergence of rookie Phil Sykes and the re-emergence of center Doug Smith during the Kings&rsquo; 5-3-1 exhibition season should enable this team to &ldquo;spread the scoring around even more.Teamed with former all-star Dave Taylor on the right side, this line was exceptionally strong in the pre-season, producing 11 goals and 12 assists.Taylor, his twice-fractured wrist now healthy, was playing as well as ever.Sykes, the 25-year-old former North Dakota All-American, took everybody by surprise and Smith, the former No. 1 draft pick who had expressed dissatisfacttion in the past, was simply sensational.Smith banged up his wrist early in straining camp and missed the first six &ldquo;exhibitions, but looked as confident as ever in the final three.&ldquo;Dougie has performed at a very high level, he has excelled in every game,&rdquo; said assistant coach Mike Murphy.So has Sykes, who was prepared to play in New Haven in this the final year of his contract, then give up the sport for good if he didn&rsquo;t make it with the Kings.&ldquo;If 1 didn&rsquo;t make it this year, I wasn&rsquo;t going to play hockey anymore,&rdquo; said Sykes, who has played in only 10 NHL games since being signed as a free agent in the spring of 1982.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-01827/6639392-1-eng-US/f0023-012.jpg" title="f0023-01" width="596" height="910"><figcaption class="caption-body">Doug Smith had a good exhibition season despite missing some games with a sore wrist.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;I would have played this year in the minors, they probably would have bought me out and 1 would have used my (marketing) degree to go to work.&ldquo;The last two years I played a couple of shifts in a couple of games and really had no responsibility. It was really just a courtesy call. Now they&rsquo;ve given me a real chance.&rdquo;Sykes played in 77 games with New Haven last year and received the kind of ice time he needed to regain his confidence. He skated a regular shift, played on specialty teams, and finished with 29 goals and 66 points.&ldquo;I&rsquo;d heard he was a real worker, a coach&rsquo;s delight, and he certainly has been that,&rdquo; Quinn said. &ldquo;But he&rsquo;s also proven he can put the puck in the net and do all the little things well. To me, he&rsquo;s been the biggest surprise at camp.&rdquo;The play of rookie right winger Steve Seguin, a 20-year-old who piled up 106 points at Peterborough last season, should also make the breakup easier. Playing on a line with Marcel Dionne and Charlie Simmer. Seguin had seven goals and three assists in nine pre-season games.KING NOTEBOOK&mdash;Lone holdover Mike Blake, who is playing out his option, was sent to New Haven three days before the season opener, leaving rookies Bob Janecyk and Darren Eliot to handle the goaltending. &#9632;

f0023-01

Quinn To Split Precious Jewels

<div class="byline">BY TONY GALLAGHER</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-02524/6639444-1-eng-US/f0023-022.jpg" title="f0023-02" width="438" height="594"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-03367/6639437-1-eng-US/f0023-032.jpg" title="f0023-03" width="438" height="590"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-04260/6639430-1-eng-US/f0023-042.jpg" title="f0023-04" width="468" height="588"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-05210/6639423-1-eng-US/f0023-052.jpg" title="f0023-05" width="444" height="594"></div>VANCOUVER&mdash;The Canucks have decided to abandon their decision to use defenseman Michel Petit at center because of a rash of injuries on the blue line.Petit, the Canucks&rsquo; top pick in the &lsquo;82 draft, worked hard enough at his new position but never seemed to get comfortable, and often didn&rsquo;t appear to know where to go at the crucial moments. He had so little confidence on faceoffs, his wingers were taking them.So when the injuries came along and he was put back at his old position, he lost no time in letting the coaches know that&rsquo;s where he preferred to play. In his first game back, which coincided with his first game back after a week off with a strained back. Petit made some outstanding plays out of his own end, cleared the front of the net well and generally became something of a dominant personality, something the club is hoping he&rsquo;ll become on a long-term basis.&ldquo;With the injuries we have, we decided to abandon the experiment at least on the short term,&rdquo; said new coach Bill LaForge. &ldquo;Also, as I&rsquo;m getting around the league a little more and looking at some of the forwards. I realize you&rsquo;ve got to have some big strong people back there.&rdquo;That realization on the coach&rsquo;s part seems to have given Petit a new, less-clouded outlook on the coming season.&ldquo;Playing defense lets me skate more with the puck and I like that much better,&rdquo; said Petit of the switch. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t have to look around behind me, like it is playing center. I can see the play developing better. Playing defense gives me more freedom.&rdquo;It may also give the Canucks a little more offensive thrust from the blue line, though Petit has much to learn defensively. He still frequently tries to carry the puck out when he&rsquo;s the last man back, but this year he seems to be able to bail himself out with his speed and size.While the Petit situation may be cleared up, it underlines the problems the club is having at center.Dave Simpson, a man whom the Canucks got in a conditional trade with the New York Islanders, was ordered back to the New York club by league president John Ziegler. But it was of no real consequence to the Canucks anyway.&ldquo;We would like to have used him in our last three exhibitions to help ease some of the workload,&rdquo; said general manager Harry Neale. &ldquo;But essentially Gary Lupul and Peter McNab had played as well, so we didn&rsquo;t think we would go ahead with the trade. We did want to give him one or two more looks, however.&rdquo;With Simpson not working out, there is mounting pressure for Neale to do something about making some improvements in the area by moving a goalkeeper.Frank Caprice, Richard Brodeur and John Garrett have all had excellent training camps, and LaForge is already on record as saying the team will not go with three goalies again this season. Caprice looked as though he would have to spend another wasted year in the American League when he clearly was ready to play in the bigs, but a 4-0 shutout victory he recorded against Winnipeg allowed him to stay with the club at the start of the season.&ldquo;He looks like he&rsquo;s ready to play in the NHL,&rdquo; said Brodeur of Caprice.Brodeur has been rumored to be the man on the block, but it hasn&rsquo;t influenced the way he&rsquo;s been with the team.&ldquo;Richard and John have both been so great to me, helping me in every way they could,&rdquo; said Caprice. &ldquo;This is just one of those difficult situations.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0023-02

Canucks End Experiment

<div class="byline">BY DICK BAKER</div>Louisville HockeyST. CATHARINES&mdash;Dave Farrish has been serving himself some food for thought.The food from his successful Toronto restaurant&mdash;Pat and Mario&rsquo;s&mdash;is leading Farrish to the thought of retirement, maybe after this season.Farrish, a former Eddie Shore award winner as the American Hockey League&rsquo;s best defenseman, has logged 430 National Hockey League games during an eight-year pro career that includes stops in New York (Rangers), Quebec and Toronto.Farrish wasn&rsquo;t surprised when he was passed over in October&rsquo;s waiver draft. He&rsquo;ll spend the year as a member of the St. Catharines Saints (unless he is traded by the parent Leafs) and debate his destiny at the end of the season.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m looking at this as possibly my last year,&rdquo; said Farrish. &ldquo;I could go to Europe for a year or two if I don&rsquo;t get another contract with another team. If 1 can&rsquo;t go to Europe, I&rsquo;ll just stick with my business.&ldquo;I own a restaurant in Toronto. It&rsquo;s the number one hot spot in the city. Sure, it would be tough to leave hockey. You just can&rsquo;t go and work behind a desk and feel the same as you do playing professional sports.&ldquo;So I&rsquo;m going to play hockey as long as I can&mdash;as long as it makes sense financially.&rdquo;Farrish has already turned down one offer he didn&rsquo;t think made sense. He&rsquo;s in his option year after nixing a modest two-year obligatory offer presented by the Leafs, designed to keep him from becoming a free agent without compensation.&ldquo;So many guys will sit in a bar for a year and wonder what they&rsquo;re going to do,&rdquo; said Farrish of post-playing days. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not going to do that.&rdquo;Farrish was among the first Leaf cuts, an indication that the 6-foot-l, 195-pounder no longer fits into their plans. He spent parts of four seasons in Toronto after being acquired with Terry Martin for Reg Thomas, Dec. 13, 1979.Farrish&rsquo;s career went downhill after he was chosen by the Nordiques from the Rangers in the 1979 expansion draft. Although he did sign a big contract, the Wingham, Ont., native who was the Rangers&rsquo; second-round draft pick, played only four games with Quebec before being sent down to the AHL.While with the Rangers, Farrish averaged 75 games a season and played regularly when they went to the Stanley Cup finals in 1978-79.However, the Rangers were allowed to protect only four defensemen in the expansion draft. Farrish was the one to go.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not worried about losing my incentive,&rdquo; said Farrish of the coming campaign. &ldquo;The year I was named as the league&rsquo;s best defenseman, I was on a one-way contract. I could have just gone down and collected my salary, but 1 didn&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;m too much of a competitor.&rdquo;And Farrish will be needed if the Saints are going to stand up to the tough AHL South.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to be a little weaker in the goal-scoring department,&rdquo; said Farrish, referring to five missing sharpshooters of a year ago. &ldquo;But if we can come up with a couple of kids that can turn on the offense, we&rsquo;ll be alright.&rdquo;One of the kids may be Greg Britz, who won rave reviews in training camp.&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t seen him in game action, of course,&rdquo; said Farrish. &ldquo;But from practice, I can tell you that he&rsquo;s really fast.He&rsquo;s going to get a lot of opportunities. If he can put the puck in the net, he has the potential of being a 40-goal scorer.&rdquo;In only 44 games with St. Catharines last year, Britz scored 13 goals and 16 assists.SOUTHERN SIDELIGHTS&mdash;Garry Lariviere has signed on with St. Catharines as a playing assistant coach&hellip;As if the Baltimore Skipjacks weren&rsquo;t strong enough, the Pittsburgh Penguins have assigned goaltender Roberto Romano, 23-6-1 a year ago&hellip; Binghamton&rsquo;s goaltending concerns ended with the arrival of Ed Staniowski from Hartford and Bob Mason from Washington. Washington also assigned Paul Gardner, who had 81 points in 54 games for Baltimore last year. On defense they picked up Marty Howe, Marc Chomey and Mike McEwan &hellip;Springfield took three out of four of their preseason contests aginst rival New Haven, but the Nighthawks were so undermanned during the series that Nighthawk GM Roy Mlaker had to round up Tom Price a Gerry McDonald and Tom Cronin for the Oct. 5 game at Springfield. Price owns a business in the New Haven area while Cronin and McDonald had been let go by Hartford&hellip;The Nighthawks got a&rdquo; lift just before the start of the season when Blaine Stoughton, Rob Ftorek and goaltender Ron Scott were assigned by the Rangers. Ftorek will be a playing assistant coach&hellip;The Indians lost a chance to get Craig Levie when he was selected in the waiver draft by St. Louis. They also missed out on getting center, George Ferguson when the 12-year veteran decided to retire rather than play at Springfield. &#9632;

Saints’ Farrish Has Some Food For Thought

<h2>Waiver Draft</h2>EDMONTON&mdash;Claimed Billy Carroll, C, from NY Islanders for $10,000.HARTFORD&mdash;Claimed Wally Weir, D, from Quebec for $7,500 and Dave Lumley, RW, from Edmonton for $10,000.NEW JERSEY&mdash;Claimed Dave Pichette, D, from St. Louis for $15,000.NY RANGERS&mdash;Claimed Andre Dore, D, from Quebec for $12,500.PITTSBURGH&mdash;Claimed Wayne Babych, RW, from St. Louis for $12,000 and Bruce Crowder, RW, from Boston for $15,000.ST. LOUIS&mdash;Claimed Craig Levie, D, from Minnesota for $20,000.TORONTO&mdash;Claimed Jeff Brubaker, LW, from Edmonton. The Oilers declined the money and claimed Terry Martin, LW, off the Leafs&rsquo; roster.<h2>SUSPENSIONS</h2>BUFFALO&mdash;Phil Housley, three games.CALGARY&mdash;Doug Risebrough, six games. AG (Buf), Wally Weir (Har) and Pater HARTFORD&mdash;Wally Weir, three games.ISLANDERS&mdash;Stefan Persson, five games.QUEBEC&mdash;Peter Stastny, three games.<h2>Others</h2>BOSTON&mdash;Randy Hillier, D, traded to Pittsburgh for fourth-round pick in 1985. Gord Kluzak, D, sidelined for rest of the season after undergoing knee surgery. Pete Peeters, G, returned to lineup from injury list for season opener.BUFFALO&mdash;Jacques Cloutier, G, Jim Wiemer, D, and Real Cloutier, RW, all assigned to Rochester of AHL.CALGARY&mdash;Lanny McDonald, RW, sidelined indefinitely with abdominal muscle strain. Bruce Eakin, C, sent to Moncton of AHL.CHICAGO&mdash;Darryl Sutter, LW, returned from injury list for opener. Jeff Larmer, LW, and Tom McMurchy, LW, assigned to Milwaukee of IHL. Wayne Presley, RW, and Mark LaVarre, RW, both returned to their junior teams.DETROIT&mdash;Corrado Micalef, G, Larry Trader, D, Claude Loiselle, C, Brad Smith, RW, Ed Johnstone, RW, all assigned to Adirondack (AHL).EDMONTON&mdash;Mike Moffat, G, Larry Melnyk, D, Steve Smith, D, Raimo Summanen, LW, Marc Habscheid, C, Kevin Cameron, C, all assigned to Nova Scotia (AHL).HARTFORD&mdash;Greg Millen, G, given two-year extension on contract. Ed Staniowski, G, Marty Howe, D, Kevin Dineen, D, Paul Fenton, C, all assigned to Binghamton (AHL). Paul Fricker, G, sent to Salt Lake of IHL. Sylvain Cote, D, Whalers&rsquo; first draft pick in 1984, retained by NHL team after originally being announced as returned to his junior club.LOS ANGELES&mdash;Mike Blake, G, Dean Kennedy, D, and Dave Gans, C, sent to New Haven of AHL.MINNESOTA&mdash;George Ferguson, C, announced retirement from hockey. Jiri Poner, C, sent to Springfield of AHL. Paul Holmgren, RW, sidelined for 1-2 months with shoulder injury. Jon Casey, G, and Miroslav Maly, D, assigned to Baltimore of AHL. Ward Komonosky, G, and Don Biggs, C, returned to their junior teams.MONTREAL&mdash;Mark Holden, G, traded to Winnipeg for Doug Soetaert, G. Craig Ludwig, D, out of action for month with broken nuckle. Mike Lalor, D, recalled from Sherbrooke of AHL. Thomas Rundqvist, C, sent to Sherbrooke.NEW JERSEY&mdash;Gary McAdam, RW, and Steve Tsujiura, C, assigned to Maine of AHL.NY ISLANDERS&mdash;Duncan MacPherson, D, returned to junior team.NY RANGERS&mdash;Ron Scott, G, Chris Renaud, D, Blaine Stoughton, RW, and Robbie Ftorek, C, assigned to New Haven of AHL. Terry Carkner, D, returned to junior team. Gary DeGrio, RW, recalled from New Haven and reassigned to Salt Lake of IHL. Mark Osborne, LW, sidelined indefinitely with hip injury.PHILADELPHIA&mdash;Darryl Sittier, C, announces retirement after refusing to report to Detroit following trade. Darren Jensen, G, Steve Smith, D, Mike Stothers, D, Ross Fitzpatrick, C, Paul Guay, LW, Todd Bergen, C, all assigned to Hershey. Ron Hextali, G, sent to Kalamazoo of IHL.PITTSBURGH&mdash;Roberto Romano, D, Petteri Lehto, D, Tom Roulston, LW, Tim Hrynewich, LW, Arto Javanainen, LW, Gary Rissling, LW, assigned to Baltimore (AHL). Greg Hotham, D, out of action with mononucleosis.QUEBEC-Clint Mslsrchuk, G, Roger Hage-glund, D, and Mike Eagles, C, assigned to Fredericton of AHL.ST. LOUIS&mdash;Rick Heinz, G, and Mike Posovad, D, sent to Peoria of IHL. Brian Benning, D, signed to multi-year contract.TORONTO&mdash;Rick St. Croix, G, Craig Muni, D, Bill Kitchen, D, and Cam Plante, D, all sent to St. Catharines of AHL. Grant Mulvey, RW, left team and announced he was retiring from hockey.VANCOUVER&mdash;Garth Butcher, D, sidelined with shoulder separation. Rick Lanz, D, out with strained neck. Stu Kulak, RW, sidelined with strained abdominal muscles.WASHINGTON&mdash;Bob Mason, G, assigned to Baltimore of AHL. Kevin Hatcher, D, returned to junior team.WINNIPEG&mdash;Wade Campbell, D, Tim Young, C, and Jordy Douglas, LW, sent to Sherbrooke of AHL.<h2>AMERICAN LEAGUE</h2>MONCTON&mdash;Yvon Vautour, RW, released outright.<h2>INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE</h2>INDIANAPOLIS&mdash;Bob Simpson, RW, signed as free agent.MILWAUKEE&mdash;John Flesch, RW, and Dale Yakiwchuk, C, sent to Kalamazoo of IHL on loan for season.MUSKEGON&mdash;Don Murdoch, RW, signed as free agent.PEORIA&mdash;Bunny Larocque, G, signed as free agent. John Goodwin, C, reported from St. Louis Training camp as free agent. &#9632;

PLAYER TRANSACTIONS

<div class="byline">BY MIKE KANE</div>SHERBROOKE&mdash;They are playing for keeps in Sherbrooke this season and the fruits of that effort are likely to be seen quite quickly in the North Divison standings.With a new parent team, a new coach, a host of new players and a very serious desire for success, the Sherbrooke Canadiens figure to be one of the best&mdash;if not the best&mdash;team in the division. It&rsquo;s a far cry from the Sherbrooke teams of the past two seasons, which were owned and operated by the Winnipeg Jets, that finished far back in last place.The Sherbrooke Jets are history now, replaced by the spanking new Canadiens. The changeover took place in June when the Montreal Canadiens moved their American Hockey League operation out of Halifax to Sherbrooke to replace the Jets, who found that they just did not have the personnel to stake a major league and a minor league team. The Canadiens, under the direction of Montreal general manager Serge Savard took charge of the operation, kept the Jets on as working partners and named Pierre Creamer to coach the team.Creamer, a veteran of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, believes that the best way to develop young hockey players is to place them in a good up-beat environment, and in any language that means a winning team.&ldquo;You want to develop players and a good attitude and you also have to win,&rdquo; Creamer said. &ldquo;When you&rsquo;re losing all the time, the attitude is very tough to develop. When you win, a team has good spirit, and when you lose it&rsquo;s tough to have spirit, in any place in any sport.&rdquo;The quality of the players supplied to Creamer by Montreal and Winnipeg should help him accomplish his goals. Sherbrooke breezed to a 3-1 pre-season record against AHL teams, picked up a few more players from the parent clubs and opened the season with a solid lineup of veterans and promising younger players.Left winger Claude Larose, the AHL scoring leader with Sherbrooke last year, headed the cast of experienced forwards. That group also includes centers Wayne Thompson and Brian Skrudland; left wingers John Newberry, Tom Martin and Norm Baron; right wingers Serge Boisvert, Remi Gagne, Mike Lauen, Larry Landon and Jeff Teal. The rookie forwards are right winger Perry Pooley, left winger Blair Heroux and centers Randy Bucyk and Thomas Rundquist.The Canadiens also figure to be strong defensively with veterans Greg Moffett and Mark Holden in goal, and defensemen Ric Nattress, Mike Lalor, Steve Smith, Jocelyn Gauvereau, Dave Allison, Michel Therrien, Wade Campbell, Craig Channell and Ted Fauss.Throughout training camp and into the start of the season. Creamer had an excess of players, a situation that he feels increases the competitive level on the team and gives him some flexibility.&ldquo;Our objective is to put a respectable team on the ice and every time we play we&rsquo;ll try to put the best players out there,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll have the potential to push all of the players, because if a player doesn&rsquo;t play we&rsquo;ll have a replacement as soon as possible.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no doubt that we have the talent and now it&rsquo;s the jobs of the coaches to choose the best players for each game. That&rsquo;s our responsibility.&rdquo;Creamer said that he is well aware of the pitfalls of having to deal with two organizations, but is confident that an open line of communication may solve any difficulties.&ldquo;I know that the Sherbrooke Canadiens are owned by the Montreal Canadiens but we do have an agreement with the Winnipeg Jets and we&rsquo;ll respect that agreement,&rdquo; Creamer said. &ldquo;I will be the one to defend my points about the utilization of players and I know we&rsquo;ve got our agreements, but what I want is a team that will go on the ice and make that effort.&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t make a decision before consulting with (Canadien general manager Serge Savard) and (Winnipeg GM) John Ferguson. I am a newcomer to this league and I have to see exactly what I am able to do. I&rsquo;ll discuss the possibilities with Mr. Savard in Montreal and Mr. Ferguson in Winnipeg and I&rsquo;ll defend my point. If they win their points, I&rsquo;ll respect that because, as I&rsquo;ve said, we want to make a good agreement between the two organizations. That&rsquo;s one of my responsibilities, but my responsibility starts with the discussion. If you don&rsquo;t discuss things and try to make all the decisions, you run into problems.AROUND THE DIVISION&mdash; The Adirondack Red Wings lost two key players, center Murray Craven and left winger Joe Paterson in the deal that sent veteran center Darryl Sittller to the parent Detroit Red wings from Philadelphia. Right winger Eddie Johnstone, acquired by Detroit from the New York Rangers in 1983, was assigned to Adirondack. The Wings also picked up center Claude Loiselle, right winger Brad Smith, defenseman Larry Trader and goalie Corrado Micalef from Detroit&hellip;The addition of a number of players from the parent Edmonton Oilers just before the start of the season gave the Nova Scotia Oilers a workable lineup. Mike Moffatt joins Mike Zanier to form the team&rsquo;s goalie tandem. Also added were defensemen Larry Melnyk and Steve Smith and forwards Marc Habscheid. Raimo Summanen and Kevin Cameron &hellip;Center Steve Tsujiura and winger Gary McAdam were the final players cut by the New Jersey Devils and sent to the defending Calder Cup champion Maine Mariners&hellip;Clint Malarchuk, a standout goalie with the Fredericton Express a couple of seasons ago, was sent back to the Express by the Quebec Nordiques along with center Mike Eagles. The Express lost defenseman Andre Dore, who was claimed in the waiver draft by the Rangers. Rookie defenseman Roger Haegglund. a Swede, will start the season with Fredericton&hellip;Moncton added center Bruce Eakin and dropped Yvon Vautour from its roster. &#9632;

It’s A Totally New Team In Sherbrooke

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0025-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-01811/6639547-1-eng-US/f0025-012.jpg"></div> &#9632;

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BookShelf

<div class="byline">BY PAT LYON</div>UTICA&mdash;Everyone from Atlantic Coast Hockey League commissioner Ray Miron down through the owners and coaches are eagerly awaiting the start of the first American rookie camp.The ACHL started this season to become a developmental league for the National Hockey League by featuring American-born rookies, and those players will be featured at the camp slated for Oct. 18-23 in Utica.Miron was unsure how many players would be on display, but at least 50 were expected for the five-day affair.&ldquo;I know we&rsquo;re getting a few really talented kids at the camp, but other than those we really don&rsquo;t know how good the rest will be. It&rsquo;s really hard to say,&rdquo; Miron said.Plans were for the players to be split into three or four teams&mdash;depending on the number of players&mdash;with much of the time being devoted to scrimmages.&ldquo;We may be short on certain positions, namely left wing,&rdquo; Miron said. &ldquo;But I do know there are going to be a lot of good goaltenders in camp.&rdquo;The league originally planned to feature 10 rookies on each of the five teams, along with five returning veterans, but thsoe plans may have to be changed depending on the talent of the rookies.After viewing the rookies, coaches will then select players in a special draft following the completion of the camp. The teams will draft in their inverse order of finish last year, which means that Pine Bridge goes first, followed by Mohawk Valley, Virginia, Erie and Carolina. Miron isn&rsquo;t expecting to find any sleepers who slipped past NHL scouts. Only players with some polish may someday become NHL-calibre players.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re not expecting to find NHLers off the bat,&rdquo; Miron said. &ldquo;What we do want is kids who want to improve. The big question will be just how much desire do they have.&rdquo;Another highlight of the camp will be the appearance of NHL supervisor of officials Frank Udvari, who will hold a clinic along with ACHL supervisor Richard Brinkman for league referees and linesmen.Carolina coach Rick Dudley knows what type of players he&rsquo;ll be looking for at camp.&ldquo;I figure the veterans I have coming back can play any position, so I&rsquo;ll be drafting the best athlete available and not by position,&rdquo; Dudley said.Dudley feels there should be five to seven top prospects and at least five rookies for every team who could have played in the league a year ago.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s hard to say how the league will change from last year, but I see the league being faster and more aggressive,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We may have lost a little in experience, but it should be made up in the intesity of the games.&rdquo;AROUND THE LEAGUE&mdash;Carolina coach Rick Dudley expects to share the head-coaching job with ex-goaltender Jim Warden this season for the Thunderbirds. &#9632;

Rookies To Show Talent At Atlantic Coast’s Camp

<div class="byline">BY BILL PICKETT</div>Louisville HockeyINDIANAPOLIS&mdash;If the Flint Generals can repeat as the Turner Cup champions of the International Hockey League, they&rsquo;ll pick up a $42,000 share of a league-record $162,000 playoff pool, according to league commissioner Bud Poile.&ldquo;It will be the largest playoff pool in league history,&rdquo; Poile said in announcing the league&rsquo;s playoff format on the eve of the season&rsquo;s start.When the regular-season play is finished, the top eight clubs in the nine-team circuit will start things all over again in the battle for the Turner Cup, which presently rests in Flint.All playoff rounds will be a best-of-seven format. The East Division winner will play the fourth-place finisher in that division or the fifth-place team in the West (if that team has a higher point standing); No. 2 in the East will play No. 3; the top team in the West will take on No. 4 and the second-place team will play No. 3.The second round will pit the winners in the East against each other and the West winners in a showdown. The finals, of course, will match the East survivor against the West.From the record purse, first-round losers will split $40,000; division-final losers will divide $44,000 and the playoff runner-up team will earn $36,000.Before all of that comes about, however, the teams will have to complete the 82-game regular season. Additionally, 10 pre-season exhibition contests were scheduled between Oct. 11 and Oct. 17, with each team getting in at least one game, with the exception of Salt Lake City. Exhibition trips to Salt Lake were not practical for economic reasons.Around the league, meanwhile, there were lots of bodies at training camps. As several owners and general managers had noted during the summer, the suspension of activities by the Central Hockey League put a lot of players out of work&mdash;at least 100, according to most estimates.Many of them are showing up as free agents at such places as Muskegon and Indianapolis. The newly-dubbed Lumberjacks of Muskegon expected 36 players at camp, a dozen of whom received early invitations. In Indianapolis, GM Fred Creighton wasted little time in signing five former Checkers and another ex-CHL defenseman.Muskegon GM Larry Gordon provided coach Rick Ley with centers Dave Lair and Jock Callander, left winger Pat Rabbitt, right wingers John Hill, Doug Kyle and Don Murdoch, and defenseman Todd Sheppard, Tim Molle and Darren McKay. Rounding out the dozen were three members of the former Mohawks: center Kevin Reeves, winger Neil Hawryliw and defenseman-winger Erie Switzer.Lair performed for Ley&rsquo;s Mohawk Valley club of the Atlantic Coast League last season and scored 64 goals. Callander, a CHL veteran, had 27 goals for Gordon at Montana last year. Kyle netted 56 goals at Saskatoon of the Western League in 1983-84 and Murdoch, a former first-round choice of the New York Rangers, had 36 goals playing at both Adirondack of the AHL and Montana of the CHL last season.First-year coach Darcy Regier expected 20 free agents at the Indianapolis camp but was surprised to find 30 players on hand when the Checkers took to the ice. The NY Islanders assigned five players, Minnesota and Boston two each. Scrimmages were rugged as some 28 skaters battled for positions.Ex-Checkers Rob Holland in goal, centers Charlie Skjodt and Garth MacGuigan, winger Kevin Devine and defenseman Tim Lockridge seemed assured of starting roles, as did former CHL and AHL defenseman Shawn Dineen. Among other free agents in Indy was Bobby Simpson, an eight-year pro with stints at Atlanta, St. Louis and Pittsburgh.There were fewer surprises and&mdash;perhaps&mdash;fewer problems at Milwaukee. The Chicago Black wrapped up 17 players and shipped them up the interstate line to where the Admirals will be the only Chicago developmental club.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0026-01885/6639578-1-eng-US/f0026-012.jpg" title="f0026-01" width="582" height="706"><figcaption class="caption-body">Don Murdoch will play for Muskegon after toiling in Adirondack and Montana last season.</figcaption></div>Defenseman Randy Boyd has the most NHL experience in the group&mdash;107 games&rsquo;, center Florent Robidoux has 52, including nine outings with the Black Hawks last season. Wingers Jim Camazzola. Bill McCreary, Perry Pelensky and Dan Frawley also have made trips to the NHL. The Admirals may have the biggest blue-liner in the league in the person of 20-year-old Mark Hatcher, a 6-foot-7, 245-pounder who played at North Bay of the OHL last year and isn&rsquo;t shy about tossing it around. He logged 226 penalty minutes a year ago.With the arrival of the contingent from Chicago, former Milwaukee players Dale Yakiwchuk and John Flesch were placed on loan to Kalamazoo for the 1984-85 season. Philadelphia assigned goalie Ron Hextall to the Komets.At Flint, GM-coach Dennis Desrosiers was looking forward to welcoming 30 prospects in the Flint camp, including two key members of last year&rsquo;s General defense. Defenseman Mike Brown and goalie Rick Knickle rejoined the club they helped win the Turner Cup. Knickle had a 3.46 goals-against average, while the 6-foot-5, 225-pound Brown scored nine goals and had 29 assists from his defensive post. That pair joins Jeff Pyle, Pete Horachek, Pierre Thibeault and Bernie Gallant on the Flint roster.Two Fort Wayne veterans returned to the Komets&rsquo; camp. Robbie Laird, 29, signed for his seventh outing with the team and defenseman Jim Burton, who played at Hershey last year, is also back. Already under contract at Fort Wayne are returnees Ron Leef and Doug Rigler, both centers, and right winger Dale Baldwin.Peoria, which isn&rsquo;t going to get a full squad from St. Louis, received defenseman Mike Posavad, ex-NHL goaltender Bunny Larocque and center John Goodwin. &#9632;

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Ante Is Upped For Winner Of Turner Cup

<div class="byline">BY TOM BURKE</div>BOSTON&mdash;It was less than a week to go before the first faceoff and Hockey East commissioner Lou Lamoriello made a rather surprising admission.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been procrastinating on some of these things,&rdquo; he said.Lamoriello isn&rsquo;t a guy who procrastinates. That&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s surprising. He gets things done.The things were both big and small. The small Ones consisted of new banners that will adorn all the arenas in his seven-team league, and the league patch on the zebra-striped shirts of game officials. The big one is the hiring of league information director Dennis Hanks of Michigan Tech.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re very happy with the way things have worked out,&rdquo; Lamoriello said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had a lot of meetings during the summer. The athletic directors met. The sports publicity directors met. The rink managers met. We wanted to do a lot of little things just right.&rdquo;Among the little extras that the league plans include subtle changes in the officiating setup. They will use the two-ref, one linesman system, with 12 referees and six linesmen available for duty. There will not be game-by-game reports filed by the coaches. Instead, mid-year and year-end summaries will be used. An observer will attend each game to monitor the officiating.&ldquo;We think the officials are more important than ever, so we get away from the single game reports,&rdquo; Lamoriello said. &ldquo;We want them to know we have confidence in them.&rdquo;Another big thing is the league&rsquo;s television package. A total of 27 games will be telecast. Eight will be on local TV and 19 will be on cable. It is the biggest such package ever for college hockey.Lamoriello and his league&rsquo;s coaches are happiest about the excellent exposure their game will receive from this TV deal. It&rsquo;s good to hear them talking that way, especially when one knows that the commissioners of all four major college hockey conferences continue to meet regularly to discuss common approaches to their sport&rsquo;s problems.On Oct. 8, Lamoriello, Scotty Whitelaw of the ECAC, Jim Ruehl of the CCHA, and Otto Breitenback of the WCHA conferred in Detroit. They will do so four times a year. While there may well be some lingering sour grapes about the breakups and reshufflings among these leagues in the past few years, it&rsquo;s good to know what the men at the top are taking the longer view.&ldquo;I&rsquo;d have to say that the single best thing that&rsquo;s come out of Hockey East&rsquo;s scheduling arrangement with the WCHA is the spirit of cooperation and the willingness to work out the little problems,&rdquo; Lamoriello said. &ldquo;I think my relationship with some of the western teams, particularly with Gino Gasparini and North Dakota, got us together to talk about the problems of having two small leagues. At the time, they had six teams and we had seven.&ldquo;We were amazed that we could arrange the schedules so that we missed even less class time than usual, taking our long trips in vacations and long weekends.&rdquo;Lamoriello is no stranger to mileage charts. Back in 1977, when the Ivy League was threatening its semi-annual secession from Eastem play, Lamoriello drew up a proposed round-robin schedule for the non-Ivy teams of the East. It proved that the mileage travelled by all the teams would be less than they trekked with Ivy teams included in the scheme of things. The threat died out for a while but a similar move by the Ivies in the summer of 1983 culminated in Hockey East.The league&rsquo;s leaders nominated Lamoriello to be commissioner. Pretty soon the coaches and assistant coaches were recounting his pep talks. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve all got to stick together,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Nothing&rsquo;s more important than the league&rdquo; were among the frequent quotes. He&rsquo;s earned their respect.Actually, Lamoriello has not been the most voluble of coaches over the years, before he relinquished the Providence College reins to Steve Stirling last season. Ask him a direct question and you&rsquo;ll get a direct and frank answer. But you have to ask.On several occasions in the past, Lamoriello has had a chance to mount a national soapbox as eager scribes and radiomen stood ready. He usually chooses not to blast away, or prefers to speak off the record. Nor does he like to praise individual players in the press. It might be good coaching, but it&rsquo;s poor copy.Lamoriello&rsquo;s best chance to rave on came in 1978 when his Providence team, seeded seventh, knocked off Cornell, 85, in Ithaca and then upset mighty Boston University, 5-1, in Boston in the ECAC playoffs. They lost the ECAC title game to Boston College, so the NCAA selection committee made them play BU again. The talk shows buzzed for awhile with the committee a big target of criticism, but Lamoriello said nothing.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-01838/6639633-1-eng-US/f0027-012.jpg" title="f0027-01" width="594" height="826"><figcaption class="caption-body">Hockey East commissioner Lou Lamoriello said it was summer full of meetings.</figcaption></div>That policy can be frustrating for writers, but it is one reason that Lamoriello is the Hockey East commissioner. He lets his deeds do the talking. &#9632;

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Lamoriello Has Plenty To Talk About

<div class="byline">BY VIRG FOSS</div>GRAND FORKS&mdash;The Western Collegiate Hockey Association has produced seven of the last nine NCAA Division One hockey champions.But the way the WCHA began its 1984-85 season, there&rsquo;s a lot of reason to doubt that the eventual national champion will come out of this league again.For starters, no WCHA team escaped the opening weekend unscathed, as all eight teams either had a tie, a loss or a pair of losses, including two losses each for North Dakota and Wisconsin, the teams who have been dominant on the national picture in recent years.Only Minnesota, the team picked by coaches to win the league title this season, came out of the opening weekend without a loss. Even so, the Gophers were tied at home by Denver University, a team predicted to Finish in the second division.North Dakota opened on the road and absorbed 5-4 and 7-3 losses from Providence College while Wisconsin lost twice at home, falling to East Coast power Boston University 6-5 and 4-2. Minnesota skated to a 4-4 overtime tie with Denver before rebounding for a 9-4 win. And even defending league champion Minnesota-Duluth, which finished second in the nation a year ago, had problems. The Bulldogs dropped a 5-3 decision to Colorado College on the road after winning 4-2 the night before. That split is either bad news for the Bulldogs or good news for Colorado College, since the Tigers were picked for the cellar in the WCHA.Even the new teams in the WCHA&mdash;Michigan Tech and Northern Michigan&mdash;had opening weekend problems. Michigan Tech whipped Northeastern 61 to open the season then took a 3-2 loss from Northeastern. And Northern Michigan didn&rsquo;t fare any better, splitting on the road against Lowell in another matchup of WCHA vs. Hockey East. Northern Michigan took a 6-5 overtime thriller from Lowell to open the season, then got shellacked 8-5 in the rematch after trailing 8-1 at one point.&ldquo;Certainly the way we played, we probably deserved what we got,&rdquo; North Dakota coach and newly-named athletic director Gino Gasparini said of the two losses his Sioux were handed by Providence.&ldquo;Not to take anything away from Providence, but the youthfulness of our team certainly showed,&rdquo; he said.The Sioux took seven freshmen on the road on their 20-man travelling squad.Gasparini says the early results of the WCHA may be misleading, however.&ldquo;I think a lot of the scores that transpired are indicative of the time of the year,&rdquo; he said.All college hockey teams had less than two weeks to prepare for the opening games under an NCAA rule which prohibits the coaches from taking charge of teams until Oct. 1.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re all in the same boat with the starting dates,&rdquo; Gasparini said. &ldquo;As a result, I think the quality of the games left a lot to be desired, due to the rustiness of the players.&rdquo;And in general, the WCHA is a league full of young players. So it would not be wise to judge the league by the opening weekend.The only thing obvious from the opening weekend is that no team established itself as a dominant force. &#9632;

WCHA Opens On Middle Ground

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-02520/6639702-1-eng-US/f0027-022.jpg" title="f0027-02" width="564" height="524"><figcaption class="caption-body">TIM ARMY Providence</figcaption></div><h2>HOCKEY EAST</h2>Providence College got off to a flying start in the first year of the new Hockey East Conference by sweeping a weekend series from North Dakota as center Tim Army showed the way for the Friars.Army, who was drafted by the Colorado Rockies in 1981, scored a hat trick in a 5-4 win over the Sioux to win the nod as Hockey East Performer of the Week.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-03337/6639695-1-eng-US/f0027-032.jpg" title="f0027-03" width="544" height="524"><figcaption class="caption-body">ROB HUGHSTON Ferris State</figcaption></div><h2>CCHA</h2>Goaltender Rob Hughston will be a big factor this season in the destiny of the Ferris State Bulldogs in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association race.The Bulldogs, who have been slowly working their way up to a contending position in recent years, made a great start to the new season by beating Bowling Green twice, 4-2 and 5-4, with Hughston backstopping both wins to win the honor as CCHA Performer of the Week.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-04232/6639688-1-eng-US/f0027-042.jpg" title="f0027-04" width="562" height="524"><figcaption class="caption-body">RICK ERDALL Minnesota</figcaption></div><h2>WCHA</h2>The Minnesota Gophers broke out of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association Conference starting gate with a 5-4 win and a tie against Denver as center Rick Erdall provided the offensive leadership.Erdall, a senior winding down his college career, had five scoring points in the two weekend games and was selected as the WCHA Player of the Week.THE BAUER PERFORMERS OF THE WEEK &#9632;

f0027-02

Bauer FIT FOR PERFORMANCE

<h2>HOCKEY EAST</h2><h3>OCTOBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-01880/6639754-1-eng-US/f0028-012.jpg" title="f0028-01" width="558" height="763"></div><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-02582/6639747-1-eng-US/f0028-022.jpg" title="f0028-02" width="534" height="217"></div><h2>WCHA</h2><h3>OCTOBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-03413/6639740-1-eng-US/f0028-032.jpg" title="f0028-03" width="546" height="1069"></div><h2>CCHA</h2><h3>OCTOBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-04292/6639733-1-eng-US/f0028-042.jpg" title="f0028-04" width="555" height="973"></div> &#9632;

f0028-01

GAMES TO COME

<h2>HOCKEY EAST</h2>(Standings on Wed. Oct. 17)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-05228/6639820-1-eng-US/f0028-052.jpg" title="f0028-05" width="554" height="238"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Fri. Oct. 12Boston Univ. 6 at Wisconsin 5N. Michigan 6 at Lowell 5Mich. Tech 6 at Northeastern 1No. Dakota 4 at Providence 5Sat Oct. 13Boston Univ. 4 at Wisconsin 2N. Michigan 5 at Lowell 8Mich Tec 2 at Northeastern 3No. Dakota 3 at Providence 7NONCONFERENCE GAMESW. Michigan 4, New Hampshire 1New Hampshire 7, W. Michigan 3New Brunswick 6, Maine 3<h3>LEADING SCORERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-06196/6639813-1-eng-US/f0028-062.jpg" title="f0028-06" width="552" height="242"></div><h2>CCHA CONFERENCE</h2>(Standings on Fri. Oct. 19)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-07176/6639806-1-eng-US/f0028-072.jpg" title="f0028-07" width="556" height="294"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Fri. Oct. 12Ferris State 4 at Bowling Green 2Lake Superior 4 at Illinois-Chicago 5Michigan 6 at Miami 4Ohio State 4 at Mich. State 5W. Michigan 4 at N. Hampshire 1Sat. Oct. 13Ferris State 5 at Bowling Green 4L. Superior 8 at Illinois-Chicago 5Michigan 3 at Miami 4W. Michigan 3 at N. Hampshire 7Sun. Oct. 14Ohio State 3 at Mich. State 6<h3>LEADING SCORERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-08160/6639799-1-eng-US/f0028-082.jpg" title="f0028-08" width="554" height="242"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-09149/6639792-1-eng-US/f0028-092.jpg" title="f0028-09" width="544" height="222"></div><h2>WCHA CONFERENCE</h2>(Standings on Fri. Oct. 19)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-10143/6639785-1-eng-US/f0028-102.jpg" title="f0028-10" width="546" height="274"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Fri. Oct 12Min-Duluth 4 at Colorado College 2Denver 4 at Minnesota 4Mich Tech 6 at Northeastern 1No. Dakota 4 at Providence 5N. Michigan 5 at Lowell 8Boston Univ. 6 at Wisconsin 5Sat Oct. 13Min-Duluth 3 at Colorado College 5Denver 4 at Minnesota 9Mich Tech 2 at Northeastern 3No. Dakota 3 at Providence 7N. Michigan 6 at Lowell 5Boston Univ. 4 at Wisconsin 2 &#9632;

f0028-05

HOW THEY STAND

<h2>NOVEMBER</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-11137/6639907-1-eng-US/f0028-112.jpg" title="f0028-11" width="550" height="650"></div><h2>DECEMBER</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-12130/6639900-1-eng-US/f0028-122.jpg" title="f0028-12" width="534" height="240"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-13120/6639893-1-eng-US/f0028-132.jpg" title="f0028-13" width="544" height="316"></div><h2>JANUARY</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-14105/6639886-1-eng-US/f0028-142.jpg" title="f0028-14" width="548" height="678"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-1599/6639879-1-eng-US/f0028-152.jpg" title="f0028-15" width="494" height="248"></div><h2>FEBRUARY</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-1680/6639872-1-eng-US/f0028-162.jpg" title="f0028-16" width="538" height="738"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-1764/6639865-1-eng-US/f0028-172.jpg" title="f0028-17" width="546" height="446"></div><h2>MARCH</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-1857/6639858-1-eng-US/f0028-182.jpg" title="f0028-18" width="508" height="310"></div><h2>ECAC PLAYOFFS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-1953/6639851-1-eng-US/f0028-192.jpg" title="f0028-19" width="434" height="152"></div> &#9632;

f0028-11

ECAC CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

<div class="byline">BY BILL CRAWFORD</div>EAST LANSING&mdash;You&rsquo;ll have to excuse Ron Mason if he just can&rsquo;t seem to vipe the smile off his face these days.You see. Mason is head hockey coach at Michigan State University here, and he&rsquo;s about to delve into season No. 7 at MSU with as awesome a collection of collegiate hockey talent as any coach has a right to claim.Deep is the best word to describe this season&rsquo;s Spartans.No, make that very deep. Enormously deep.Check just about any poll these days. Michigan State is ranked in the top five everywhere, ranked as the top team in most polls. The Central Collegiate Hockey Association coaches&rsquo; poll rates MSU tops, as do two different HOCKEY NEWS polls. Even newspapers and radio stations associated more with the rival Western Collegiate Hockey Association list the Spartans as No. 1 or, at worst, No. 2. About the biggest problem facing MSU this season is a lack of ice due to an ice-plant breakdown at Munn Arena. They&rsquo;ll be without home ice for about a month.&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s how I look at it,&rdquo; said Mason recently. &ldquo;Our recruiting and experience over the past three seasons, coupled with the fact that people know we have our best returning team in years, means something.&ldquo;I think it gives you a good chance at something. It doesn&rsquo;t prove anything to be ranked number one all over the place. We still have to carry it all out. We&rsquo;ve got to prove ourselves.&rdquo;While teams in the WCHA and Hockey East more or less look down on their brethren in the CCHA, they know that Bowling Green State is the defending national champion and they admit that Michigan State has the horses to do it all this time around.After all, the Spartans have five strong lines, two of the game&rsquo;s best goaltenders and seven capable defensemen, six with post-season experience.&ldquo;Depth is our secret,&rdquo; continued Mason. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;ve got that not everybody in our league (the CCHA) or the country can claim. We&rsquo;re experienced where it counts and, above all, we have a lot of people who know how to win. That&rsquo;s important. When we lose, our people don&rsquo;t wallow in it. They know they&rsquo;ll bounce right back and win.&rdquo;Mason, who began his coaching career 18 years ago at CCHA rival Lake Superior State then went on to Bowling Green before landing at MSU, doesn&rsquo;t worry about psyching up too early in a given season.<blockquote class="pullQuote">&lsquo;Peaking is the key. My coaching style is geared to having us ready for the playoffs. I only worry about being truly ready come the post-season. Our goal this year is to win the CCHA. something we haven&rsquo;t done&hellip;&rsquo;</blockquote>&ldquo;Peaking is the key,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My coaching style is geared to having us ready for the playoffs. I only worry about being truly ready come the post-season. Our goal this year is to win the CCHA (regular season title), something we haven&rsquo;t done.&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the whole point of coaching. All that counts is what you do in a one or two-game series. Anything can happen and you&rsquo;ve got to be ready. Anything can go wrong in a short series or one-game match up.&ldquo;Having the players realize how they got where they are is of utmost importance. There isn&rsquo;t one player on our team this season who doesn&rsquo;t need to work hard, to improve. That&rsquo;s the key to coaching. Recruiting is about 80 per cent of it&mdash;getting to the best players. But then you&rsquo;ve got to make them do it. You don&rsquo;t have to be a good coach to win with good players, but you do have to be a good coach to have a great team, to win championships.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-01770/6639938-1-eng-US/f0029-012.jpg" title="f0029-01" width="606" height="880"><figcaption class="caption-body">Ron Mason says recruiting top talent is the key to being a title contender.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0029-01

You’d Smile Too If You Had Mason’s Team

<div class="byline">BY JOHN HERBERT</div>Louisville HockeySUDBURY&mdash;The Ontario Hockey League may be going through a changing of the guard this season.Or do the standings lie?What were league champion Kitchener Rangers, who set league records last season with a 25-game winning streak, 52 wins and 106 points, doing on the bottom of the pack with a 1-4 record after five games?What&rsquo;s happened in Ottawa to the 67s, who started the season with a 1-3-1 record under new coach Cliff Stewart after five straight seasons with more than 40 wins, capped by the Memorial Cup victory last May under Brian Kilrea?Obviously, time is the only measuring stick.But for now, the traditional doormats, Sudbury Wolves, were off and howling with a 4-1-1 record as they try to restore hockey credibility in their northern city under new coach Andy Spruce. There were even hints that the Sudbury hockey fan, long dormant while the Wolves slipped to three last-place finishes the past four years in the Emms Division, was beginning to appreciate the team again. A total of 2,500 took in the home opener, and though it dipped to under 1,500 for the next two home games club officials attached part of the blame to baseball&rsquo;s World Series on television.There was one good sign, though: they were talking about the Wolves around town again and that hasn&rsquo;t happened since the glory days of the 1979-80 and 1975-76 seasons, when Ron Duguay, Dave Farrish, Randy Carlyle, Mike Foligno and the rest of the Wolves piled up a 47-11-8 record and topped the Leyden Division in the first year the OHL went to divisional play.Those were also the days of the 6,666 crowds at Sudbury Arena.Many hockey people around the OHL are silently hoping the Sudbury franchise can turn things around. Commissioner Dave Branch has expressed concern that the league&rsquo;s No. 1 problem this year is putting more fans in the seats and, although he wasn&rsquo;t pointing at Sudbury, that has been the league&rsquo;s main problem zone.For the past few seasons the attendance line on the bottom of newspaper hockey summaries from games out of Sudbury used to read &ldquo;not available.&rdquo; Of course, who would want to brag about crowds in the 500 or less range on some nights?The success in the north hasn&rsquo;t been strictly in the Wolves&rsquo; country.The northern teams, Soo Greyhounds. Sudbury and North Bay Centennials, were running 1-2-3 in the Emms Division standings in the early going, and Greyhound owner-governor Jim McAuley can&rsquo;t recall that ever happening since junior hockey moved into the Soo in the early &lsquo;70s. In the up years of the Wolves, the Hounds were doormats. When the Hounds became a power five or six years ago, the Wolves were slipping to the bottom. Of course, Reg Quinn has only had his franchise in North Bay for two seasons.At least one of the northern clubs&mdash;Sault Ste. Marie&mdash;is expected to compete for first place all season.General manager Sam McMaster says his club has more depth than ever in his five years in the organization.&ldquo;If we get the three back from NHL clubs, it could be the best club we&rsquo;ve ever had,&rdquo; McMaster said. &ldquo;We have a big defense, we&rsquo;re very strong at right wing and we&rsquo;re quite a physical hockey club. We have finesse players, too.&rdquo;So far, McMaster is two for three. Only defenseman Jeff Beukeboom, who was rated the No. 1 player in Edmonton Oilers&rsquo; farm system a year ago in a confidential evaluation listing their top 10 prospects, remained in the Oiler camp when the NHL season opened.He was quickly replaced by overage defenseman-left winger Chris Felix who was a first-team OHL all-star last season.The Hounds are relying on Marty Abrams and Jerry luliano in goal while the defense is well-stocked with Ken Sabourin, John English, Tom Hoover, first draft pick Rob Zettler and Windsor castoff Brian Rome. Only Hoover is under six feet. There&rsquo;s size, and muscle on the wings, with Alex Haidy and Chris Brant.Up front, Wayne Groulx will supply much of the scoring power after finishing third in the OHL race last year with 137 points. But after four games, he hadn&rsquo;t produced a goal, while adjusting to new linemates.&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll come out of it, don&rsquo;t worry,&rdquo; coach Terry Crisp said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll get his points. It has a lot to do with him not having regular linemates yet because he just came back from Quebec.&rdquo;Graeme Bonar, another former Windsor player the Spits got last year in a trade for defenceman Mike Neill, may finally be filling his potential. He was the early season OHL scoring leader with six goals and 12 assists for 20 points in six games followed by sophomore Mike Oliverio, a promising talent who produced 17 goals last season as a minor midget.Crisp is taking a little more cautious approach than McMaster.&ldquo;This could be one of our better clubs but I think the one we had with Kenny Latta, Dirk Rueter, Dougie Shedden, John Goodwin, Steve Gatzos and those fellows my second year was the best club,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That was the year we lost to Kitchener and they went to the Memorial Cup in Windsor.&rdquo;This could also be Crisp&rsquo;s swansong in the OHL, provided an NHL job materializes. He is entering a new one-year contract, but says he&rsquo;s ready to listen to an NHL offer.In the Leyden Division, Peterborough Petes were off to a blazing start as expected even though Derrick Smith was still in NHL. The Petes rolled to three straight wins before losing to Toronto, but gave up only nine goals in the four games.Top returning scorer Scott Tottle produced two goals and 10 assists in his first four games while captain Randy Burridge and rookie Brad Aitken each had six goals. The Petes and Oshawa Geneals quickly restored their rivalry as Pete coach Dick Todd and Oshawa counterpart Paul Theriault exchanged barbs after a game.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-01872/6639969-1-eng-US/f0030-012.jpg" title="f0030-01" width="597" height="808"><figcaption class="caption-body">Sudbury coach Andy Spruce has his troops in high gear early in the season.</figcaption></div>In Cornwall, the Royals&rsquo; top scorer, Ray Sheppard, was confidently hoping for 60 this season after notching 44 last season. &#9632;

f0030-01

It’s A Happy Howl Up In Sudbury

(Final Standings)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-05209/6640000-1-eng-US/f0030-052.jpg" title="f0030-05" width="558" height="673"></div><h2>GAMES COMPLETED</h2>Fri. Sept. 21Chicago 2, Winnipeg 0Sat. Sept. 22Buffalo 7, Boston 2Chicago 5, Calgary 3Edmonton 6, Montreal 5Hartford 11, Pittsburgh 2Vancouver 5, Los Angeles 3Minnesota 6, Philadelphia 3Washington 3, NY Rangers 1Sun. Sept. 23Buffalo 7, Boston 2Detroit 4, Pittsburgh 3Edmonton 4, Chicago 3Philadelphia 4, Minnesota 4NY Rangers 7, NY Islanders 1Toronto 1, Quebec 1Winnipeg 7, Montreal 2Los Angeles 4, Vancouver 3Tue. Sept. 25Calgary 6, Washington 1Hartford 3, New Jersey 1NY Islanders 6, NY Rangers 2Buffalo 7, Quebec 5Edmonton 7, Vancouver 2Los Angeles 6, Winnipeg 4Wed. Sept. 26Calgary 6, Washington 3Chicago 4, Detroit 2Minnesota 3, Edmonton 0Montreal 5, Philadelphia 5Quebec 3, Toronto 2Los Angeles 4, Winnipeg 2Thu. Sept. 27Calgary 4, Los Angeles 2Quebec 6, Minnesota 4Montreal 3, Boston 1St. Louis 5, Chicago 1Toronto 6, Edmonton 0Fri. Sept. 28NY Islanders 2, Buffalo 2St. Louis 4, Chicago 4NY Rangers 3, New Jersey 2Boston 5, Philadelphia 3Hartford 4, Pittsburgh 3Washington 5, Calgary 3Sat. Sept. 29Detroit 7, Buffalo 3Montreal 5, Edmonton 4Boston 5, NY Islanders 3Pittsburgh 4, New Jersey 2Minnesota 4, Quebec 4Washington 6, Toronto 3Sun. Sept. 30Calgary 8, Vancouver 4Edmonton 6, Chicago 5Buffalo 6, Detroit 1Toronto 3, NY Rangers 2Boston 3, Quebec 1Los Angeles 7, Winnipeg 4Washington 6, Minnesota 1Mon. Oct. 1Montreal 2, Philadelphia 1Toronto 9, St. Catharines (AHL) 3Tue. Oct. 2Edmonton 7, Vancouver 4New Jersey 3, Hartford 3Winnipeg 5, Los Angeles 4Washington 5, Minnesota 3Philadelphia 4 NY Rangers 4Quebec 7, Boston 5Wed. Oct. 3Calgary 7, Minnesota 0Chicago 4, Detroit 2Washington 5, Hartford 4New Jersey 4, Pittsburgh 3Philadelphia 5, NY Islanders 4Buffalo 5, Toronto 4Vancouver 4, Winnipeg 0Thu. Oct. 4Boston 6, Montreal 4Washington 6, Hartford 3Vancouver 5, Los Angeles 5NY Islanders 4, Philadelphia 1Winnipeg 4, St. Louis 3Fri. Oct. 5Quebec 3, Buffalo 1Boston 7, NY Islanders 6Washington 5, Philadelphia 2Vancouver 4, Calgary 3Minnesota 7, Edmonton 5Sat. Oct. 6Toronto 4, NY Rangers 3Quebec 6, Montreal 3Boston 6, Philadelphia 3Minnesota 5, Chicago 3Edmonton 3, St Louis 2Detroit 3, Hartford 0Sun. Oct 7Edmonton 4, Toronto 1Pittsburgh 5, Detroit 0NY Islanders 3, Buffalo 3Montreal 4, Quebec 3Boston 6, New Jersey 4Philadelphia 8, NY Rangers 3Minnesota 6, Chicago 2St. Louis 5, Vancouver 4Los Angeles 5, Calgary 4Mon. Oct. 8Hartford 4, Detroit 3(End of exhibition schedule) &#9632;

f0030-05

EXHIBITION SCOREBOARD

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-02583/6640045-1-eng-US/f0030-022.jpg" title="f0030-02" width="570" height="553"><figcaption class="caption-body">GRAEME BONAR S.S. Marie</figcaption></div><h2>ONTARIO LEAGUE</h2>A new hockey season often presents a new challenge and Graeme Bonar of the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds appears to be accepting it.The 18-year-old right winger scored only 15 times last season in 65 games but this year he has already counted eight goals in his first six games and won the nod as the OHL Player of the Week after an 11-point performance.Bonar, drafted in the fifth round by Montreal in 1984, leads the OHL with 22 points.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-03402/6640038-1-eng-US/f0030-032.jpg" title="f0030-03" width="570" height="559"><figcaption class="caption-body">DOUG TRAPP Regina</figcaption></div><h2>WESTERN LEAGUE</h2>Doug Trapp was returned to junior hockey by the Buffalo Sabres after training camp but the NHL team knows he&rsquo;ll be back in the near future.Trapp, the Sabres&rsquo; No. 2 draft pick in 1984, was chosen the WHL Player of the Week after he produced 13 scoring points in four games for the Regina Pats. One of his accompishments included seven assists in the Pats&rsquo; 12-3 romp over Seattle to tie a league record for most assists in one game.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-04286/6640031-1-eng-US/f0030-042.jpg" title="f0030-04" width="561" height="556"><figcaption class="caption-body">CLAUDE LEMIEUX Verdun</figcaption></div><h2>QUEBEC LEAGUE</h2>One of the promising right-wing prospects of the future for the Montreal Canadiens is 19-year-old Claude Lemieux, who has been on a scoring spree since returning from the Habs&rsquo; training camp.The six-foot, 208-pound Lemieux counted eight goals, including a pair of hat tricks in three games for the Verdun Canadiens to win the selection as QHL Player of the Week.Lemieux has scored 17 times in his first 11 games back.At the end of the current season. THE HOCKEY NEWS will select a Micron Junior Player of the Year. &#9632;

f0030-02

MICRON JUNIOR PLAYERS OF THE WEEK

<div class="byline">BY BEN KUZMA</div>Lotiisville HockeyMEDICINE HAT&mdash;Have no fear, Sauter is here.While that may not be the official welcoming sign to the southern Alberta city, you can bet it could be if Doug Sauter lives up to his Western Hockey League track record with the Medicine Hat Tigers.Sauter is a winner.He proved it with the New Westminster Bruins who captured back-to-back Memorial Cup championships with Sauter on the coaching staff. In Calgary, Sauter always iced competitive clubs in his five seasons with the Wranglers. He was rewarded with Coach-of-the-Year-honors in the 1978-79 season.And after last year&rsquo;s successful stint with Springfield Indians of the American Hockey League, Sauter has returned to junior. But it wasn&rsquo;t meant that way.&ldquo;My attitude was I had to coach where and if I waited too long all the good jobs would be gone,&rdquo; said the 31-year-old Sauter of his off-season coaching predicament. &ldquo;One reason I chose Medicine Hat is because it&rsquo;s a solid franchise. They&rsquo;ve done a good job getting players and the talent I saw at training camp is as good as any in the league.&rdquo;Although Sauter is satisfied with his one-year contract, the road to Medicine Hat took a lot of strange turns before it reached the Tigers&rsquo; office.&ldquo;We had a good season in Springfield. We played over .500 hockey and it was the best the team had done in 10 years,&rdquo; said Sauter. &ldquo;Chicago (Black Hawks) was in the last year of a two-year agreement with Springfield, and when I left after the season everything looked good.&ldquo;But then Springfield called the Black Hawks and said their services were no longer required and that they had sota and the (New York) Islanders lined up. Chicago then informed me they didn&rsquo;t have a team for me to coach.&rdquo;The soap opera continued but Sauter never gave up hope. But an accident back home in Kenosee Lake, Sask, put a damper on his professional coaching plans.&ldquo;I was naturally concerned,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was looking forward to another good year and we had gone through a trying one&mdash;we went through 45 players. I was set to go to the NHL summer meetings but three days before them 1 broke my leg in a freak golfing accident.&ldquo;The brakes or. the cart failed and I went down a 250-yard hill at between 25-35 mph. The cart flipped and hit the trees.&ldquo;It was very traumatic for a few days because Chicago had a ticket ready for me to fly to the NHL draft. It was the first one I&rsquo;ve missed in seven years. I had to do something so a friend flew me to Medicine Hat and the club made me a good pitch.&rdquo;Medicine Hat general manager Russ Farwell was intent on acquiring Sauter to guide the Tigers, who placed second last season with a 45-26-1 record under coach Ray McKay. Medicine Hat made it to the Eastern Division final before bowing to the Regina Pats. Good reason for optimism but why the sudden change? Is there more to it than just a winning record?&ldquo;Medicine Hat is a long ways behind in a lot of areas like public relations, selling the club to the city or anything like even souvenirs. We didn&rsquo;t sell any last year,&rdquo; said Farwell. &ldquo;Scouting is one thing that&rsquo;s come along and Doug is another big plus.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s real strong with the team and knows what he wants from the guys. His discipline is very good. He meets people easily and will do a good selling job for the team. And he adds credibility. He&rsquo;s a winner and does well in the playoffs. He gets a lot from limited talent.&rdquo;Now that Sauter has arrived, does he feel pressure to live up to his name?&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never had to coach under pressure. I believe in hard work and a disciplined team. You get results if you instill that in a hockey club. Some people expect us to be a powerhouse but we put our skates on one at a time just like everybody else.&rdquo;Although Sauter will adhere to a defensive style which made his Calgary club so successful, he has another asset to dwell on.&ldquo;I think all good clubs start strong from their own end and work out,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Our speed at center ice is something I&rsquo;ve never had, even back in New Westminster. If we can get some solid, tough wingers we&rsquo;ll be okay.&rdquo;The centers of attention are Al Conroy, Bob Bassen, Matt Kabayama and rookie Jeff Wenaas. Conroy was second in team scoring last season with 112 points while Bassen had 58 and Kabayama 62.Sauter has also been impresseed with goaltender Gary Johnson and newcomers Troy Gamble and Mark Fitzpatrick. Kevan Guy and Al Pederson are back to anchor the defense.The Tigers became the talk of the town again last winter and enjoyed their first sellout in eight years in January. The ball kept rolling into the playoffs and Farwell hopes the momentum remains this season under Sauter.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a long process,&rdquo; said Farwell. &ldquo;I think Doug is a little reluctant, and the next time something comes along he&rsquo;ll have learned a bit. I think we&rsquo;re better off with a guy who&rsquo;s hungry to get somewhere, and I think he&rsquo;ll be looking for something more solid the next time. I think we may have him for two years.&rdquo;And what about the season ahead? The eight-team Eastern Division possesses a lot of talent. Where do the Tigers fit it?&ldquo;I think we&rsquo;re close enough with the rest of the team that we can be competitive,&rdquo; said Farwell. &ldquo;We&rsquo;d like to be one of the top three teams by Christmas.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0031-01807/6640076-1-eng-US/f0031-012.jpg" title="f0031-01" width="591" height="559"><figcaption class="caption-body">Doug Sauter has had a winning track record in previous stints in the Western League.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0031-01

Sauter Hopes To Rack Up Wins In The Hat

<div class="byline">BY RICK MAYOH</div>DRUMMONDVILLE&mdash;The Voltigeurs may not have enjoyed the express route taken by the Longueuil Chevaliers when the teams entered the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League two years ago, but they are making up for lost time.Under coach Jacques Lemaire, now with the Montreal Canadiens, the Chevaliers advanced to the league final in their expansion season and duplicated the feat last year.Drummondville struggled to a lastplace 11-57-2 finish its first year with former Vancouver defenseman Jocelyn Guevremont starting the season behind the bench. He was replaced by Andre Ruel before Christmas.Ruel gave way to Ron Ward at the beginning of last season and the club jumped to a 35-35 finish, good for sixth place. The Voltigeurs upset the third-place Shawinigan Cataractes in the quarter-finals before falling to eventual champion Laval Voisins in the semis.This year under Michel Parizeau, Drummondville&rsquo;s goal is to finish among the top four teams during the regular season, an objective that appears to be modest.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no doubt there is a lot of talent here. I&rsquo;ll be very disappointed if we don&rsquo;t finish there,&rdquo; said Parizeau, who coached the Chicoutimi Sagueneens last season. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re an experienced team at the top of the cycle and we have to produce this year.&rdquo;The Voltigeurs have 20-year-old defenseman Tom Karalis, eight 19-year-olds and six 18-year-olds on the roster.&ldquo;This should be the year of the Voltigeurs, that&rsquo;s what the experts say, but you have to do it on the ice,&rdquo; Parizeau said. &ldquo;Just one thing worries me, the thought of wasting all that talent by playing too offensively.&rdquo;Last year&rsquo;s club listed eight players with 25 goals or more, six with 30 or more and led the Dilio Division in scoring. Many of them are back and this year&rsquo;s team could be the best defensive performer in the circuit. Jude Labillois, a 19-year-old invitee who emerged from juvenile AAA in Vai d&rsquo;Or was outstanding in goal last year. Combined with Daniel Berthiaune, 18, and promising rookie Patrice Cote, Drummondville may have the strongest goaltending in the league. Joining Karalis on defense are Steve Duchesne, who signed with the Los Angeles Kings recently; James Gasseau, who attended Buffalo&rsquo;s camp; former all-star and captain Mario Carrier, top midget pick Eric Tremblay and another strong rookie in Eric Gravel. Again, one of the best defensive alignments in the league and one that can move the puck well.Up front, there is depth at center with Guy Benoit, Steve Pepin and Denis Gosselin, who is also skating at left wing. Veterans Michel Couvrette, Pt Brisson and hard-hitting Serge Roberge are back.Right winger Jose Charbonneau is expected to be one of the first players drafted from the league this year and No. 2 pick Daniel Vincelette, a 6-foot-2, 195-pound left winger, has potential.Although the Voltigeurs are off to a 7-3-1 start and are in first place in their division, none of them are among the league&rsquo;s top 10 scorers. But a half dozen are averaging more than a point a game.&ldquo;I was born and raised near Drummondville and have a tavern there with my dad,&rdquo; said Yvon Lambert, the former Montreal Canadien in his first season as coach of the Verdun Junior Canadiens. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve talked to a lot of people there and they should be on top. They have the people behind them.&rdquo;&ldquo;They&rsquo;re very balanced and they have the experience,&rdquo; said Claude Fournel, owner and general manager of the defending champion Voisins.Montreal native Parizeau, 36, played his junior hockey in Drummondville with the Rangers of the Provincial League.&ldquo;I was first in scoring both years. The first year we finished last and the second we won the pennant and the championship. Then we lost to Guy Charron (Quebec Remparts coach) and the Verdun Juniors of the Metro League.&rdquo;Parizeau had an 11-year career as a professional starting in 1968-69 with three seasons in Omaha of the Central League. He split the 1971-72 season between St. Louis and Philadelphia then skated four seasons at all of the forward positions with the World Hockey Association Quebec Nordiques. He finished his career with the Indianapolis Racers and Cincinnati Stingers.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a lot easier for me to work in Drummondville,&rdquo; Parizeau said, following a disappointing ninth-place finish in Chicoutimi last, missing the playoffs by one point. &ldquo;It was a tough year, a tough way to learn, but there is no easy way. I just hope not to make the same mistakes.&rdquo; &#9632;

This May Be Year Of The Voltigeurs

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1834/6640456-1-eng-US/f0032-182.jpg" title="f0032-18" width="544" height="378"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1930/6640449-1-eng-US/f0032-192.jpg" title="f0032-19" width="538" height="364"></div> &#9632;

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National League Scoring Leaders

(Standings on Mon. Oct. 15)<h2>CAMPBELL CONFERENCE</h2><h3>NORRIS DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-2027/6640508-1-eng-US/f0032-202.jpg" title="f0032-20" width="542" height="174"></div><h3>SMYTHE DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-2125/6640501-1-eng-US/f0032-212.jpg" title="f0032-21" width="546" height="182"></div><h2>WALES CONFERENCE</h2><h3>ADAMS DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-2223/6640494-1-eng-US/f0032-222.jpg" title="f0032-22" width="544" height="174"></div><h3>PATRICK DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-2322/6640487-1-eng-US/f0032-232.jpg" title="f0032-23" width="548" height="206"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Thu. Oct. 11Pittsburgh 3 at Boston 4Hartford 4 at NY Rangers 4 (OT)Montreal 3 at Buffalo 4Quebec 5 at Vancouver 2Washington 2 at Philadelphia 2 (OT)Toronto 1 at Minnesota 0 (OT)Detroit 3 at Chicago 7St. Louis 4 at Calgary 2Edmonton 2 at Los Angeles 2 (OT)Fri. Oct. 12NY Islanders 2 at New Jersey 7St. Louis 1 at Edmonton 5Sat. Oct. 13Boston 2 at Hartford 3 (OT)Buffalo 3 at Toronto 4 (OT)Pittsburgh 3 at Montreal 4Quebec 2 at Calgary 7Chicago 6 at NY Islanders 7 (OT)NY Rangers 1 at Minnesota 3New Jersey 1 at Detroit 4Philadelphia 4 at Washington 2Vancouver 6 at Los Angeles 5 (OT)Sun. Oct. 14Hartford 2 at Boston 4Detroit 4 at Buffalo 1Quebec 2 at Edmonton 9Minnesota 3 at NY Rangers 1Washington 5 at Chicago 3Toronto 2 at Winnipeg 5St. Louis 5 at Los Angeles 2Calgary 7 at Vancouver 5 &#9632;

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THE NHL SCOREBOARD

BOSTON&mdash;Fergus 1,2, Linseman 1, O&rsquo;Connell 1, Bourque 1, Nill 1, O&rsquo;Reilly 1,2, Crowder 1, Byers 1. Winning goals&mdash;Bourque, O&rsquo;Reilly.BUFFALO&mdash;Andreychuk 1,2, Perreault 1,2, Patrick 1, Davis 1, 2, Seiling 1, Foligno 1, 2, Jutila 1, Ruff 1, Ramsay 1. Winning goals&mdash;Davis, Foligno.CALGARY&mdash;Kromm 1, 2, Loob 1, Reinhart 1,2,Tambellini 1,2,3, Wilson 1,2,3, Peplinski 1, Baxter 1, Quinn 1, Jackson 1, Beers 1. Winning goals&mdash;Reinhart, Jackson.CHICAGO&mdash;T. Murray 1,2, Larmer 1, Paterson 1, Gardner 1, 2,3, Sutter 1,2, Olczyk 1,2, Ludzik 1, Lysiak 1, Savard 1, B. Wilson 1, Secord 1. Winning goals&mdash;Gardner.DETROIT&mdash;Larson 1, Duguay 1,2,3, Barrett 1, Park 1, Ogrodnick 1,2, Williams 1, Foster 1, Boldirev 1. Winning goals&mdash;Duguay.EDMONTON&mdash;Coffey 1, 2, Huddy 1, 2, 3, Semenko 1,2, Anderson 1, 2, Sherven 1,2, 3, Kurri 1, Krushelnyski 1, Gretzky 1, Carroll 1. Winning goals&mdash;Huddy, Sherven.HARTFORD&mdash;Turgeon 1, 2. Francis 1, Kotsopoulos 1, Fusco 1, Crawford 1, Sulliman 1, 2, Neufeld 1. Winning goals&mdash;Siltanen.LOS ANGELES&mdash;Taylor 1,2, Sykes 1, Kelly 1, Dionne 1, Galley 1, Smith 1,2,Hakansson 1. Winning goals&mdash;none.MINNESOTA&mdash;Bellows 1, 2, Bjugstad 1, Maruk 1, Ciccarelli 1, Solheim 1. Winning goals&mdash;Bellows 2.MONTREAL&mdash;DeBlois 1, Smith 1, Walter 1, 2, Carbonneau 1, Chelios 1, Robinson 1. Winning goals&mdash;Robinson.NEW JERSEY&mdash;Broten 1, Verbeek 1, Bridgman 1, Gagne 1, Preston 1, Sulliman 1, Lever 1, Muller 1. Winning goals&mdash;Bridgman.NY ISLANDERS&mdash;Bossy 1,2, Tonolli 1,2,3, Boutilier 1, D. Sutter 1, LaFontaine 1, Gillies 1. Winning goals&mdash;Bossy.NY RANGERS&mdash;Greschner 1, Ruotsalainen 1,2, Sandstrom 1, Rogers 1, Hedberg 1. Winning goals&mdash;none.PHILADELPHIA&mdash;Sinisalo 1, 2, Kerr 1, 2, Howe 1, Dvorak 1. Winning goals&mdash;none.PITTSBURGH&mdash;Lemieux 1, Young 1, 2, Bodger 1, Fox 1, Mantha 1. Winning goals&mdash;noneQUEBEC&mdash;A. Stastny 1,2, Goulet 1,2, Berglund 1, Paiement 1, Sauve 1. McKegnay 1, 2. Winning goals&mdash;Berglund.ST. LOUIS&mdash;Hickey 1,2, Levie 1. Sutter 1,2, 3, Anderson 1, Federko 1, Mullen 1, Barr 1. Winning goals&mdash;Sutter 2.TORONTO&mdash;Frycer 1, Terrion 1, Gavin 1, Ihnacak 1. 2, Benning 1, Korn 1. Winning goals&mdash;Frycer, Benning.VANCOUVER&mdash;Neely 1, 2, 3. Tanti 1, 2. 3, Gradin 1, McNab 1, 2, Lupul 1, Hall 1. MacAdam 1, 2. Winning goals&mdash;LupulWASHINGTON&mdash;Haworth 1, 2, Carpenter 1.2. Hidi 1. Gartner 1 2. McGeough 1, Gould 1. Winning goals&mdash;Carpenter.WINNIPEG&mdash;McBain 1. Lundholm 1. MacLean 1. Boschman 1. Arniel 1. Winning goals&mdash;MacLean.Hat tricks&mdash;Sherven (Edm).Penalty shot goals&mdash;Peplinski (Cal), Gardner (Chi).Overtime winners&mdash;Frycer (Tor), Benning (Tor), Siltanen (Har), Bossy (NYI), Lupul (Van). &#9632;

NHL SCORERS THIS WEEK

<h2>Thu. Oct. 11 PITTSBURGH 3, BOSTON 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-01867/6640418-1-eng-US/f0032-012.jpg" title="f0032-01" width="558" height="812"></div><h2>HARTFORD 4, RANGERS 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-02599/6640411-1-eng-US/f0032-022.jpg" title="f0032-02" width="560" height="994"></div><h2>MONTREAL 3, BUFFALO 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-03417/6640404-1-eng-US/f0032-032.jpg" title="f0032-03" width="560" height="76"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-04289/6640397-1-eng-US/f0032-042.jpg" title="f0032-04" width="582" height="644"></div><h2>QUEBEC 5, VANCOUVER 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-05215/6640390-1-eng-US/f0032-052.jpg" title="f0032-05" width="582" height="696"></div><h2>WASH 2, PHILADELPHIA 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-06179/6640383-1-eng-US/f0032-062.jpg" title="f0032-06" width="584" height="132"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-07152/6640376-1-eng-US/f0032-072.jpg" title="f0032-07" width="588" height="612"></div><h2>TORONTO 1, MINNESOTA 0</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-08134/6640369-1-eng-US/f0032-082.jpg" title="f0032-08" width="598" height="704"></div><h2>DETROIT 3, CHICAGO 7</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-09112/6640362-1-eng-US/f0032-092.jpg" title="f0032-09" width="592" height="874"></div><h2>ST. LOUIS 4, CALGARY 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-10101/6640355-1-eng-US/f0032-102.jpg" title="f0032-10" width="598" height="450"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1186/6640348-1-eng-US/f0032-112.jpg" title="f0032-11" width="558" height="232"></div><h2>EDMONTON 2, LOS ANGELES 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1278/6640341-1-eng-US/f0032-122.jpg" title="f0032-12" width="566" height="698"></div><h2>Fir. Oct. 12 ISLANDERS 2, N. JERSEY 7</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1373/6640334-1-eng-US/f0032-132.jpg" title="f0032-13" width="564" height="840"></div><h2>ST. LOUIS 1, EDMONTON 5</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1465/6640327-1-eng-US/f0032-142.jpg" title="f0032-14" width="572" height="754"></div><h2>Sat. Oct. 13 BOSTON 2, HARTFORD 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1559/6640320-1-eng-US/f0032-152.jpg" title="f0032-15" width="590" height="476"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1656/6640313-1-eng-US/f0032-162.jpg" title="f0032-16" width="554" height="264"></div><h2>BUFFALO 3, TORONTO 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1744/6640306-1-eng-US/f0032-172.jpg" title="f0032-17" width="558" height="864"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-01785/6640299-1-eng-US/f0033-012.jpg" title="f0033-01" width="574" height="92"></div><h2>PITTSBURGH 3, MONTREAL 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-02536/6640292-1-eng-US/f0033-022.jpg" title="f0033-02" width="570" height="208"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-03398/6640285-1-eng-US/f0033-032.jpg" title="f0033-03" width="594" height="380"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-04311/6640278-1-eng-US/f0033-042.jpg" title="f0033-04" width="594" height="208"></div><h2>QUEBEC 2, CALGARY 7</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-05260/6640271-1-eng-US/f0033-052.jpg" title="f0033-05" width="600" height="132"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-06225/6640264-1-eng-US/f0033-062.jpg" title="f0033-06" width="600" height="382"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-07205/6640257-1-eng-US/f0033-072.jpg" title="f0033-07" width="560" height="306"></div><h2>CHICAGO 6, ISLANDERS 7</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-01874/6640250-1-eng-US/f0034-012.jpg" title="f0034-01" width="554" height="1144"></div><h2>RANGERS 1, MINNESOTA 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-02616/6640243-1-eng-US/f0034-022.jpg" title="f0034-02" width="566" height="756"></div><h2>NEW JERSEY 1, DETROIT 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-03482/6640236-1-eng-US/f0034-032.jpg" title="f0034-03" width="556" height="912"></div><h2>PHILADELPHIA 4, WASH. 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-04373/6640229-1-eng-US/f0034-042.jpg" title="f0034-04" width="554" height="554"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-14119/6640222-1-eng-US/f0035-142.jpg" title="f0035-14" width="560" height="160"></div><h2>VANCOUVER 6, L. ANGELES 5</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-15105/6640215-1-eng-US/f0035-152.jpg" title="f0035-15" width="558" height="1078"></div><h2>Sun. Oct. 14 HARTFORD 2, BOSTON 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1698/6640208-1-eng-US/f0035-162.jpg" title="f0035-16" width="562" height="352"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1780/6640201-1-eng-US/f0035-172.jpg" title="f0035-17" width="592" height="508"></div><h2>DETROIT 4, BUFFALO 6</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1872/6640194-1-eng-US/f0035-182.jpg" title="f0035-18" width="598" height="848"></div><h2>QUEBEC 2, EDMONTON 9</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1965/6640187-1-eng-US/f0035-192.jpg" title="f0035-19" width="592" height="264"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-2060/6640180-1-eng-US/f0035-202.jpg" title="f0035-20" width="588" height="732"></div><h2>MINNESOTA 3, RANGERS 1</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-2152/6640173-1-eng-US/f0035-212.jpg" title="f0035-21" width="594" height="672"></div><h2>WASHINGTON 5, CHICAGO 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-2243/6640166-1-eng-US/f0035-222.jpg" title="f0035-22" width="596" height="220"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-2339/6640159-1-eng-US/f0035-232.jpg" title="f0035-23" width="592" height="646"></div><h2>TORONTO 2, WINNIPEG 5</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-2434/6640152-1-eng-US/f0035-242.jpg" title="f0035-24" width="590" height="906"></div><h2>ST. LOUIS 5, LOS ANGELES 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-2530/6640145-1-eng-US/f0035-252.jpg" title="f0035-25" width="586" height="70"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-2628/6640138-1-eng-US/f0035-262.jpg" title="f0035-26" width="572" height="616"></div><h2>CALGARY 7, VANCOUVER 5</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-2724/6640131-1-eng-US/f0035-272.jpg" title="f0035-27" width="568" height="1060"></div> &#9632;

f0032-01

NATIONAL LEAGUE SUMMARIES

Every week during the 198485 hockey season, THE HOCKEY NEWS will select a Chrysler Rookie of the Week. This tribute to the stars of tomorrow will culminate with THE HOCKEY NEWS rookie of the year award being presented by Chrysler at the annual HOCKEY NEWS awards luncheon.Last year&rsquo;s rookie winner, goaltender Tom Barrasso of the Buffalo Sabres, is presently making good use of his prize, a Chrysler Laser.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-08169/6640563-1-eng-US/f0033-082.jpg" title="f0033-08" width="567" height="904"></div>Good things are worth waiting for, and this certainly applies to James Patrick of the New York Rangers.Patrick, a 21-year-old defenseman, was the first-round pick of the Rangers in 1981 from the University of North Dakota, but it wasn&rsquo;t until last spring that the Winnipeg native joined the team.After starring for University of North Dakota for two years, he played for the Canadian Olympic Team in the &lsquo;84 Olympics. After a minor contract dispute, he inked a multiyear deal with the Rangers and played an important role in their exciting playoff series against the crosstown-rival Islanders.He proved to everyone that he possesses excellent rushing skills, and has the ability to become a star in the Big Apple in the future, if not now. &#9632;

f0033-08

Chrysler Rookie Spotlight

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0034-09" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-09204/6640594-1-eng-US/f0034-092.jpg"></div> &#9632;

f0034-09

NHL TEAM ROSTERS

<h2>OCTOBER</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-05302/6640646-1-eng-US/f0034-052.jpg" title="f0034-05" width="536" height="358"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-06268/6640639-1-eng-US/f0034-062.jpg" title="f0034-06" width="558" height="388"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-07246/6640632-1-eng-US/f0034-072.jpg" title="f0034-07" width="544" height="390"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-08227/6640625-1-eng-US/f0034-082.jpg" title="f0034-08" width="530" height="384"></div> &#9632;

f0034-05

NHL GAMES TO COME

<h2>AMERICAN LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Tue. Oct. 16)<h3>SOUTHERN DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-01833/6640761-1-eng-US/f0035-012.jpg" title="f0035-01" width="542" height="236"></div><h3>NORTHERN DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-02609/6640754-1-eng-US/f0035-022.jpg" title="f0035-02" width="540" height="206"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Wed. Oct. 10Nova Scotia 5 at Adirondack 5Thu. Oct. 11Rochester 6 at Binghamton 6St. Catharines 3 at Fredericton 5Fri. Oct. 12Hershey 7 at Baltimore 4New Haven 2 at Rochester 3Nova Scotia 0 at Sherbrooke 9Maine 3 at Springfield 3Sat. Oct. 13Nova Scotia 5 at Adirondack 5Hershey 3 at Binghamton 3Sherbrooke 0 at Maine 5St. Catharines 3 at Moncton 8Springfield 7 at New Haven 4Sun. Oct. 14St Catharines 3 at Nova Scotia 4Hershey 1 at Rochester 5Adirondack 4 at Sherbrooke 4<h3>LEADING SCORERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-03494/6640747-1-eng-US/f0035-032.jpg" title="f0035-03" width="546" height="236"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-04398/6640740-1-eng-US/f0035-042.jpg" title="f0035-04" width="548" height="72"></div><h2>ONTARIO LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Tue. Oct. 16)<h3>LEYDEN DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-05336/6640733-1-eng-US/f0035-052.jpg" title="f0035-05" width="544" height="238"></div><h3>EMMS DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-06306/6640726-1-eng-US/f0035-062.jpg" title="f0035-06" width="556" height="268"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Mon. Oct. 8Kitchener 4 at Windsor 7Tue. Oct. 9Toronto 5 at Peterborough 4North Bay 3 at Sudbury 4Thu. Oct. 11S.S. Marie 2 at Windsor 6Belleville 5 at Hamilton 9Peterborough 3 at Cornwall 7Fri. Oct. 12S.S. Marie 3 at London 4Peterborough 6 at Ottawa 4Sudbury 4 at Kingston 8North Bay 1 at Guelph 4Sat. Oct. 13Sudbury 2 at Belleville 6North Bay 4 at Toronto 8Sun. Oct. 14Windsor 1 at S.S. Marie 6Sudbury 5 at Oshawa 10London 4 at North Bay 3Kingston 6 at Cornwall 7Kitchener 4 at Guelph 6Peterborough 4 at Hamilton 7Belleville 4 at Ottawa 5<h3>LEADING SCORERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-07282/6640719-1-eng-US/f0035-072.jpg" title="f0035-07" width="554" height="264"></div><h2>WESTERN LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Mon. Oct. 15)<h3>EAST DIVISON</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-08252/6640712-1-eng-US/f0035-082.jpg" title="f0035-08" width="546" height="264"></div><h3>WEST DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-09232/6640705-1-eng-US/f0035-092.jpg" title="f0035-09" width="554" height="208"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Mon. Oct. 8Medicine Hat 6 at Prince Albert 4Moose Jaw 3 at Brandon 4Victoria 1 at New Westminster 4Portland 5 at Kamloops 7Lethbridge 3 at Calgary 5Tue. Oct. 9Victoria 11 at Calgary 5Prince Albert 6 at Saskatoon 8Portland 2 at Kelowna 11Wed. Oct. 10Seattle 3 at Regina 12Thu. Oct. 11Saskatoon 2 at Medicine Hat 6Seattle 5 at Brandon 8Fri. Oct. 12Regina 5 at Prince Albert 5Kamloops 4 at Kelowna 5Calgary 3 at Lethbridge 5Sat. Oct. 13Calgary 0 at Medicine Hat 4Victoria 5 at Brandon 8Seattle 3 at Saskatoon 6Prince Albert 7 at Moose Jaw 4New Westminster 7 at Portland 8Kelowna 2 at Kamloops 6Sun. Oct. 14Victoria 1 at Regina 4Prince Albert 5 at Brandon 7Seattle 6 at Moose Jaw 9<h3>LEADING SCORERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-10204/6640698-1-eng-US/f0035-102.jpg" title="f0035-10" width="548" height="292"></div><h2>QUEBEC LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Mon. Oct. 15)<h3>LEBEL DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-11179/6640691-1-eng-US/f0035-112.jpg" title="f0035-11" width="550" height="206"></div><h3>DILIO DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-12158/6640684-1-eng-US/f0035-122.jpg" title="f0035-12" width="545" height="235"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Mon. Oct. 8Chicoutimi 4 at Laval 5Tue. Oct. 9Quebec 5 at Longueuil 2Wed. Oct. 10Drummondville 6 at Hull 5Shawinigan 3 at Verdun 5Thu. Oct. 11Granby 14 at Plattsburgh 7Fri. Oct. 12T-Rivieres 7 at Chicoutimi 4Laval 6 at Drummondville 7Longueuil 4 at Granby 6Quebec 4 at Shawinigan 8Hull 4 at St. Jean 7Sat. Oct. 13Verdun 14 at Plattsburgh 3Sun. Oct. 14Drummondville 8 at Granby 6Shawinigan 6 at St. Jean 3Plattsburgh 2 at T-Rivieres 16Quebec 5 at Verdun 13<h3>LEADING SCORERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-13140/6640677-1-eng-US/f0035-132.jpg" title="f0035-13" width="546" height="328"></div> &#9632;

f0035-01

MINOR SCOREBOARD

AHL&mdash;Adirondack (Det), Baltimore (Pit), Binghamton (Harwas), Fredericton (Que-Van), Hershey (Pha-Bos), Maine (NJ), Moncton (Cal), New Haven (LANYR), Nova Scotia (Edm), Rochester (Buf), St. Catharines (Tor), Sherbrooke (Mtl-Wpg), Springfield (NYI-Min).IHL&mdash;Flint (Buf), Fort Wayne (Was-Wpg-NJ), Kalamazoo (Det-Pha-Van), Muskegon (Edm-Pit-Que), Toledo (LA-Tor), Milwaukee (Chi), Peoria (StL), Salt Lake (Har-Cal-NYR), Indianapolis (NYI-Min-Bos). &#9632;

NHL Affiliations

<div class="byline">BY PERRY LEFKO</div>When the word came down that Darryl Sittler had been dealt to Detroit, where he would be joining former Maple Leaf linemate Tiger Williams, Toronto fans couldn&rsquo;t help but think Lanny McDonald would be the next one to go to make it a perfect reunion.But, when asked about it, McDonald said he hasn&rsquo;t heard anything to suggest he&rsquo;d be moving from Calgary, and that he&rsquo;s not really interested in moving anyway.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m very happy here and hopefully I can finish my career here,&rdquo; said McDonald, a native of Hanna, Alta., who joined the Flames midway through the 1979-80 season.McDonald and Sittler were almost inseparable when they played with the Leafs in the &lsquo;70s. You couldn&rsquo;t mention one without talking about the other.&ldquo;Anytime you play with a guy for four-and-a-half years on the same line and six years on the same team, you see a lot of each other,&rdquo; McDonald said. &ldquo;We were friends on the ice and best of friends off the ice, too.&rdquo;&lsquo;It&rsquo;s a big loss for Dairy to retire. Not ony is he a fine ambassador of the game, but he&rsquo;s a great competitor.&rdquo;In fact, it was quite an emotional time for Sittler and McDonald when Lanny was traded to Colorado in 1979 in what would become the first major move of the Punch Imlach Maple Leaf purge. But though they&rsquo;ve gone their separate ways, McDonald said the two have maintained their close relationship and were in Toronto in the summer to do some charity work, something both players did a lot&mdash;and still do&mdash;when they were with the Maple Leafs.In McDonald&rsquo;s opinion, Sittier&rsquo;s decision not to report to the Wings (see page 11 and 12) is something which will be felt throughout the league.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a big loss for hockey for Darryl to retire,&rdquo; McDonald said, assuming, of course, that Detroit can&rsquo;t woo Sittler to the Motor City. &ldquo;Not only is he a fine ambassador of the game, but he&rsquo;s a great competitor and still is. I feel he still has a few years left in him. Whether it&rsquo;s one, two or three, I don&rsquo;t know. He keeps himself in great shape. But that (the trade) is just one of the unfortunate things of hockey.&rdquo;When Sittler and McDonald played with the Leafs, they formed one of the deadliest duos in the league&mdash;Sittler with his intensity and playmaking and McDonald with his deadly wrist shot. They forged many good memories, and years later they&rsquo;re still vivid for McDonald.&ldquo;The key thing is to look back and remember the good things,&rdquo; McDonald said, &ldquo;and let the bad memories pass through.&rdquo;For McDonald, &ldquo;one of the highlights&rdquo; of his career came in the playoff series against the Islanders in 1978, in which he scored the overtime goal that won it for the Leafs.&ldquo;One team goes home ecstatic, the other team can&rsquo;t believe it,&rdquo; McDonald said. &ldquo;I was just happy we went home ecstatic.&rdquo;For Sittler, his best game&mdash;at least in terms of total points&mdash;was the night he got 10 points against Boston. He could do no wrong in that game and while it will be Sittler&rsquo;s keepsake until someone shatter&rsquo;s it, McDonald won&rsquo;t soon forget it.&ldquo;Just to sit back and remember what happened, the goals and that, was special for the entire team,&rdquo; McDonald said. &ldquo;To know that you were a small part of it was great.&rdquo;McDonald, who missed the opening of the Flames&rsquo; season with a pulled stomach muscle (see page 12), is now in the twilight of a very distinguished career. But that does not mean to say he does not possess the same skills he had when he was younger. Only two years ago, he had a running battle with Wayne Gretzky in the goals department. Though McDonald lost out in the end, he had his best season ever with 66 goals and 32 assists, and was voted to the all-star team.But with his former center perhaps calling it quits&mdash;albeit sooner than he would have liked to&mdash;there is the question how much longer can McDonald keep playing.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s always hard to say,&rdquo; said the 31-year-old right winger. &ldquo;You play a position, and as long as you feel you can contribute, you keep going. You take it one year at a time. A lot of things change. The key is trying to stay healthy and taking it one year at a time and reassessing things after each year.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/c0004-01240/6640816-1-eng-US/c0004-012.jpg" title="C0004-01" width="574" height="622"><figcaption class="caption-body">Lanny McDonald had his life up rooted when he was traded from Toronto to Colorado.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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October 26, 1984

TRIVIA

Did You Know…

…But He’ll Be Motoring In Detroit

Referees Would Be Better Off With Glasses