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

November 16, 1984

The Hockey News November 16, 1984

<div class="image-hero"><img title="Cover-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/cover-01835/5544427-1-eng-US/cover-012.jpg"></div> &#9632;

Cover-01

IN THIS ISSUE

The Hockey News

<div class="byline">BY RICH FRIEDMAN</div>NEW YORK&mdash;By April, when it really counts, some of the most frequently expressed reservations about the New York Rangers&rsquo; performance may no longer be valid. Other concerns, however, may be so familiar and so unchanged that mentioning them may be like beating a dead horse.That having been stated, it pays to have a look at the Oct. 30 confrontation between the Rangers and the Islanders at Nassau Coliseum that found the Rangers on the short end of a 7-3 score. That game emphasized once again the Rangers&rsquo; vulnerability to physical intimidation that is becoming their trademark, and the trouble this club finds itself in when its power play breaks down.Minus the services of defenseman Barry Beck and forward Mark Osborne, two of the teams most physical players who were both nursing injuries, and tough forward Nick Fotiu, the Rangers were subjected to a physical onslaught by the Islanders.They also entered the game first in the league on the power play, but the story of the night was the failure of that special team, which went two-for-11.&ldquo;Tonight we didn&rsquo;t enter the offensive zone on the power play properly,&rdquo; was the analysis by coach Herb Brooks. &ldquo;Thus we never really got a functional power play going. The power play was our main problem tonight.&rdquo;In previous games, the Rangers&rsquo; power play consisted frequently of Reijo Ruotsalainen starting the play behind the net, two men on the blue line, two at center, bang-bang passes and a swift and effective moving of the puck. But not on this night, when lethargy was the word that came most readily to mind.&ldquo;The power play was brutal,&rdquo; said defenseman James Patrick. &ldquo;The special teams had carried us until tonight.&rdquo;There was more to it than that, though. Prior to that, the only game in which the Rangers had played a good 60 minutes of hockey was the Oct. 27 victory in Quebec. Against the Islanders, the Rangers once again had had a first period in which they were ineffective. Including Mike Bossy&rsquo;s goal at 1:03 of the third period, the Islanders scored on five of the 13 shots Glen Hanlon faced. The first goal of the game, at 59 seconds, was a long slap shot by Duane Sutter off Hanlon&rsquo;s stick.&ldquo;It seems every game it&rsquo;s the same thing&hellip;I don&rsquo;t know what it is&rdquo; said Patrick, trying to put his finger on the Rangers&rsquo; poor starts in almost every contest this season. Is it a lack of mental sharpness? Over-anxiousness? Patrick groped for an answer.&ldquo;Maybe sometimes when you think a lot about it, you tend to overwork to compensate and then it only gets worse,&rdquo; he said.Meanwhile, the Islanders attacked the Rangers With a fury. Clark Gillies punched and swung his stick at Tomas Sandstrom, and drew a double-minor for roughing and high sticking.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure, I didn&rsquo;t do anything to provoke it,&rdquo; Sandstrom shrugged. &ldquo;It was lucky he hit my helmet.&rdquo;And Dave Langevin crosschecked Don Maloney across the head, which had Maloney seeing spots in front of his eyes and coach Brooks seeing red over the officiating of referee Bob Myers, who did not call a penalty on the play.&ldquo;I think we all witnessed one of the most questionably officiated games ever,&rdquo; said Brooks, who usually is able to control the impulse to comment on the refereeing.What was odd about the entire affair was that in the Islanders, the Rangers had an opponent that also was struggling, and they were unable to close in for the kill. Aside from the fact that they had been giving up a lot of goals, the Islanders had been notoriously weak on penalty-killing and on defensive play, but these were factors that proved irrelevant to the Rangers that night.Overall, though, the Rangers had not been playing a balanced brand of hockey, and Brooks&rsquo; comment just prior to the game with the Islanders proved profoundly prophetic.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re leaving it all to our special teams,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not good enough, because they&rsquo;re going to fail sooner or later, and then where will we be?&rdquo;They got their answer from the Islanders, and what was left was the task of regrouping without the help of some very important players. That was a job that was beginning to resemble the predicament of the little boy in the fable trying to stop the floodwaters by sticking his finger in the dam&mdash;only to see it spring another leak just beyond his reach.In the Rangers&rsquo; case, it was the disheartening news that Mike Allison, having just recovered from a knee injury, was suffering from a lower-back strain and would have to pass up the Rangers&rsquo; first visit of the season to Pittsburgh, to face a team that hopes to mount a challenge for the fourth playoff spot in an increasingly tight Patrick Division.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-011435/5542256-1-eng-US/f0010-012.jpg" title="f0010-01" width="590" height="841"><figcaption class="caption-body">James Patrick says the Rangers may be thinking too much and that&rsquo;s making things worse.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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It’s The Same Old Thing Bothering Rangers

Brian Engelhardt is a 10-year-old goalie from West Bloomfield, Ml who plays in the Birmingham Hockey Association.The fifth-grader, who currently plays in the Squirt Division, has been voted the team&rsquo;s No. 1 player in three games this season because of his spectacular play. In one of these games, Brian stopped 21 shots on goal.Brian&rsquo;s biggest thrill in hockey was attending a special two-day goalie clinic conducted by former National Hockey League goalies Eddie Giacomin and Jimmmy Rutherford. The first game he played in after attending the clinic he recorded a shutout, helping the team to a 2-0 win.The 4-foot-7 inch, 69-pound goalie is a member of the &ldquo;Zero Club&rdquo; in the Amateur Hockey Association of the United State.Brian says his future plans include playing college hockey in the ECAC with Yale, where he plans to attend medical school.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-02427/5542899-1-eng-US/f0025-022.jpg" title="f0025-02" width="562" height="778"><figcaption class="caption-body">Brian Engelhardt</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Minor Hockey Showcase

<div class="byline">BY RANDY SCHULTZ</div>BUFFALO&mdash;Maybe it was just one of those weeks. More likely it was one of those months for the Buffalo Sabres.It began when the Sabres lost four consecutive games on the road. That was followed by the surprising move made by general manager-coach Scott Bowman to send second-year goaltender Tom Barrasso to the Rochester Americans of the American League.After that came a story, written by a local Buffalo columnist, suggesting that maybe Bowman should be sent to Rochester and Amerk coach, Jim Schoenfeld, called up.It ended on Halloween night when the visiting Philadelphia Flyers came from behind to tie the Sabres, 3-3, giving reason why the Sabre dressing room was very quiet and subdued following the game.All of the above added up to a very frustrating 5-4-1 record for Buffalo through the month of October.&ldquo;We haven&rsquo;t played a real good game as a team yet this season,&rdquo; said defenseman Mike Ramsey. &ldquo;Maybe the only one we really played well together was a 6-2 win over the Calgary Flames here. That was a really good, solid game.&ldquo;But we need to play together as a 20-man team. So far we really haven&rsquo;t been able to put that all together yet. Everyone on this team knows the potential we have. We just have to do it.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s just very frustrating.&rdquo;If there has been a positive aspect about the Sabres its their power play. Through the first 10 games of the season the team was 14-44 for a success rate of 31.8 per cent, much better than their 21.6 success rate for all of last season.What, or maybe who, is the the reason for the increased success on the power play?<blockquote class="pullQuote">&lsquo;There was no doubt that our power play wasn&rsquo;t that good last year. But this year we have been working on it and we have improved it a lot.&rsquo;</blockquote>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got to give Joe (Crozier, associate coach of the Sabres) a lot of the credit for the power play&rsquo;s success so far this season,&rdquo; said John Tucker. &ldquo;When I was in Kitchener (of the Ontario League) with Joe as my coach, we had a real good power play there.&ldquo;Joe had the same success last season in Rochester.&ldquo;There was no doubt that our power play wasn&rsquo;t that good last year. But this year we have been working on it every practice for a good portion of time, and We have improved it a lot.&ldquo;We play two separate lines, each out on the ice for one minute. We also have four different point men who play the same amount of time limit as well.&ldquo;In that way we don&rsquo;t have to depend on one unit for the power play&rdquo;The forwards who play the power play include Gil Perreault, Mel Davis, Dave Andreychuk, Adam Creighton, Tucker, Mike Foligno and Gilles Hamel. The point men are of Phil Housley, Ramsey, Hannu Virta and Perreault.Defensemen Lindy Ruff (out with a separated shoulder) and Timo Jutila have also been used at times.&ldquo;It helps that we have a lot of different players we can draw from for the power play,&rdquo; said Ramsey. &ldquo;Andreychuk has been real good around the net on the power play. If you can get the puck to him while he&rsquo;s around the net he can be dangerous.&ldquo;But we don&rsquo;t just have one play either on the power play. Scotty and Joe have devised several different plays for us. We&rsquo;re working on them every practice and do very well with them during game situations.&ldquo;So something is working for us.&rdquo;SABRE POINTS&mdash;Joe Byron, who sang both the American and Canadian national anthems for Sabre home games since the team&rsquo;s inception in 1970, died on Oct. 30. He had been in ill health for several months. &#9632;

Just One Of Those Months For The Sabres

In next week&rsquo;s issue, we&rsquo;ll feature one of the National Hockey League&rsquo;s top guns&mdash;Calgary Flame defenseman Al Maclnnis. Maclnnis is reckoned to have one of the hardest shots in the entire league and this season, as the Flames aim to mount a challenge to the Edmonton Oilers, he&rsquo;s using it to its fullest advantage.But Maclnnis&rsquo; future didn&rsquo;t always look so cheery. A year ago, there were more than few hockey people wondering if the former first-round pick had what it takes to play in the NHL.On top of that, we&rsquo;ll also have the United States&rsquo; all-time all-star team as seen through the eyes of Jeff Z. Klein and Karl-Eric Reif in For Argument&rsquo;s Sake. &#9632;

NEXT WEEK IN THN

&ldquo;We were really getting organized.&rdquo;&mdash;Plattsburgh Pioneer owner and coach Denis Methot on his Quebec League franchise that folded after losing 17 straight games, being outscored 185-56 and losing close to $500,000. Story on Page 36. &#9632;

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

<div class="byline">BY JEFF Z. KLEIN AND KARL-ERIC REIF</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0003-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-011378/5541809-1-eng-US/f0003-012.jpg"></div>Which National Hockey League club offers the best deal on ticket prices?Well, the answer to that question depends entirely on how you go about figuring it out. Perspective, it seems, is the key.Over there on Plan B, you&rsquo;ll find a very subjective analysis of ticket prices combined with on-ice performance, giving you the best and worst teams as far as providing value.But, for those weak of heart or executives of the clubs that take a beating in Plan B, here are the straight goods on ticket prices across the NHL board.If you&rsquo;re looking for commentary and analysis, opt for Plan B. Plan A deals with facts, and only facts.First, a few words of explanation. The average ticket prices for each of the 21 clubs are not determined by taking the highest-priced seat and the lowest-priced seat and dividing by two.That method is pure folly since only a few tickets at the top and bottom end of the scale may be available. Therefore, the average is determined by figuring out the distribution of all price levels and weighting each accordingly compared to total capacity.Eighteen of the 21 NHL clubs were most cooperative in providing their seating breakdown. But three&mdash;Boston, Hartford and Montreal&mdash;did not want to release their figures on seating distribution. Therefore, their averages are estimated.So, according to the factual scale of averages, who has the lowest prices in the NHL?The Pittsburgh Penguins, with an average ticket price of $12.23, 25 cents less than Los Angeles&rsquo; $12.48. The remaining averages are as follows: Philadelphia $12.55; Detroit $12.73; Chicago $12.81; New York Rangers $12.95; Toronto $13.33; Buffalo $13.67; Washington $13.73; St. Louis $14.42; Winnipeg $14:59; Hartford and New Jersey $14.75; Minnesota $15.61; Boston $15.92; Vancouver 15.93; Quebec $16.25; Montreal $16.45; Calgary $16.95; Edmonton $17.00 and New York Islanders $20.42.As far as individual ticket prices go, the Calgary Flames top the list of the most expensive seat available. It&rsquo;s $40, which is $10 more than runner-ups Edmonton and St. Louis. The Isles are third in this department, with a top-end figure of $24, followed by Montreal at $22.Detroit offers the cheapest premium seat at $14, with Pittsburgh and Washington not far off at $15.50 for their best seats in the house.At the other end of the scale, the most expensive cheap seats are, in order: New York Islanders $15; Boston $12.50; Vancouver $11.55; Winnipeg $10.50 and Edmonton $10.The cheapest cheap seats can be found in Los Angeles ($5), Chicago ($6) and Toronto ($6.50).All of these prices, of course, are for single-game tickets and do not take into account season-ticket plans.So, having digested the straight goods on ticket prices, perhaps you&rsquo;re ready to take a walk on the wild side and see where your club stacks up on the value chart.If so, move up and over to Plan B.<h2>PLAN B:</h2>Hey, you, c&rsquo;mere. Yeah, you, the Islander fan. You wanna know something? You are being ripped off. Taken to the cleaners. Shaken down. Gouged. Getting your pockets picked.And you guys over there in Vancouver and Calgary, you&rsquo;re getting grabbed by the ankles and held upside down &lsquo;til the money comes pouring out of your trousers.C&rsquo;mon you guys, wake up! These hockey teams are taking you for a ride. They&rsquo;re charging you way too much to see them play. Now take your pals in New York, Buffalo, Philadelphia and Washington, they&rsquo;re realizing enormous savings, getting a real bargain, saving big bucks.Okay, maybe we got a little carried away. Or did we?Take a look at the graph below. It shows each team&rsquo;s ticket price as measured against how well that team plays. If each club in the NHL charged their fans an amount directly proportionate to the quality of each club&rsquo;s play on the ice, all the bars would be at about the same height. The Islanders would charge the most money for a ducat, the Maple Leafs would charge the least money, and the North Stars would be about halfway between&mdash;in other words, each team would charge an amount commensurate to their skills on the ice, so that each club&rsquo;s bar on the graph would be about the same.But the Isles&rsquo; ticket prices are way out of proportion, even if they have won the Stanley Cup four of the past five years. And the Canucks, a wan and dreary side for years, are exacting terribly high prices for games involving such a lacklustre team (which helps to explain why there are so few sellouts in Vancouver).There are some surprises among the teams offering the best bargains. Buffalo and Philadelphia, where in each case there has been consistently good hockey for over a decade, offer great prices, but rarely sell out these days. In Washington, where good hockey has just arrived and management has kept prices down to attract fans, the fans are indeed beginning to turn out. In New York, were you&rsquo;d expect ticket prices to be sky-high for the always sold-out Rangers, prices are astonishingly low. And perhaps most delightfully of all, the mighty Oilers&mdash;home of Gretzky and the Stanley Cup&mdash;have not gone the hubris-ridden route of the Islanders, and instead kept their prices to a reasonable level.Of course, clubs set their ticket prices by that golden rule of capitalism, the Law of Supply and Demand. That&rsquo;s why the Isles, playing to a fairly wealthy audience that is appropriately reverent to one of the greatest teams of all time, can charge such shockingly high prices. And it&rsquo;s why the dreadful Leafs, also playing to a fairly wealthy audience but in one of the three world capitals of hockey, can charge some pretty steep prices of their own.These are the conclusions to our study, but how have we arrived at them? We started by assigning a numerical value to the hockey played in each city&mdash;a figure we call &ldquo;the quality of hockey.&rdquo; Then, taking into account ticket distribution at each price level, we took the average ticket price for each rink and divided it by this &ldquo;quality of hockey&rdquo; rating. This left us with a figure that expresses how much you pay for each unit of hockey quality you see. The more you pay for each unit, the worse off you are.This kind of formula&mdash;taught in reputable business schools across the continent&mdash;cannot be exact because there are far too many variables involved. But it does clearly show trends that enable one to judge where the bargains are.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-021116/5541802-1-eng-US/f0003-022.jpg" title="f0003-02" width="1834" height="1286"></div>Our method is founded on the assumption that seeing a game between the two best clubs in the NHL is a 100 per cent more enjoyable experience than seeing a game between the two worst clubs. Therefore, we divided the 21 teams in the league into five groups, with the best teams earning a rating 100 per cent higher than the worst teams&rsquo; rating.We based these ratings on how well the teams did last season, and on how well they can reasonably be expected to do this season. This is what we came up with:The Best (8 points)&mdash;Edmonton and New York Islanders.The Good (7 points)&mdash;Boston, Buffalo, New York Rangers, Quebec and Washington.The Pretty Good (6 points)&mdash;Calgary, Chicago, Minnesota and Philadelphia.The Mediocre (5 points)&mdash;Detroit, Hartford, Montreal, St. Louis, Vancouver and Winnipeg.The Bad (4 points)&mdash;Los Angeles, New Jersey. Pittsburgh and Toronto.We know the ratings may be debatable in specific, but we believe that this is a reasonable assessment of the clubs in the league.The next step is to take the average rating of each club&rsquo;s divisional opponents&mdash;those teams that most often come into the rink as visitors&mdash;and then to add that to the club&rsquo;s ratings to get a &ldquo;quality of hockey&rdquo; rating. The results of that calculation:<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-03717/5541795-1-eng-US/f0003-032.jpg" title="f0003-03" width="498" height="694"></div>The Islanders&rsquo; &ldquo;quality of hockey&rdquo; rating is higher than Edmonton&rsquo;s because the Isles&rsquo; divisional opponents are better than the Oilers&rsquo;.Now all that&rsquo;s left to do is to take the average ticket price&mdash;and please remember that the &ldquo;average&rdquo; is based on the number of seats at various price levels as opposed to taking the highest and lowest and dividing by two&mdash;and divide it by this &ldquo;quality of hockey&rdquo; rating. For example, the price for the average seat at Chicago Stadium is $12.81. Divide that by the Black Hawks&rsquo; rating of 11.00 and you get $1.16&mdash;the price the average Hawks fan pays per unit of hockey quality he sees.Besides each team&rsquo;s average ticket price, we&rsquo;ve also included the price of each team&rsquo;s most expensive seats and cheapest seats, and submitted those to the same acid test. This shows that the Kings offer a real bargain with their $5 seats (offered to students and military personnel), as do the Hawks with their low price of $6 for cheap seats. And if you can get the highest-priced ticket for a Red Wing game, by all means take it, because it&rsquo;s a real buy at only $14. Likewise, an expensive seat in Quebec is quite costly, but the cheaper tickets are a great bargain.It&rsquo;s worth noting that we are looking only at ticket prices for individual games, rather than prices for season tickets. Several clubs offer discounts for season tickets or have partial season-ticket plans, and if you can afford one (or perhaps you could divide one up with one or two other people) it might be worth looking into.Finally, a word on U.S. currency. Even though the U.S. dollar is worth about 25 per cent more than the Canadian dollar, it isn&rsquo;t a factor in our calculations. For the most part, Canadian teams deal in Canadian dollars, American teams in American dollars. As long there isn&rsquo;t a great deal of crossing back and forth, a dollar is a dollar, whether you live in Canada or the United States. &#9632;

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PLAN A:

<div class="byline">Frank Orr</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-011397/5541864-1-eng-US/f0004-012.jpg" title="f0004-01" width="380" height="454"></div>JIM GREGORY, WHO now is the chief of the National Hockey League&rsquo;s central scouting bureau, once had a fantasy life as general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, which is equivalent to being chairman of the Harper Valley PTA.Early in the 1976-77 season, the Leafs were having their bi-monthly slump and anxiety attack. Accompanied by a hockey writer, Gregory was pacing the lobby of a hotel in suburban Detroit on the afternoon of a game against the Red Wings.A small man with red hair came through the door, dragging a large hockey equipment bag behind him.&ldquo;James, your troubles are over,&rdquo; Mike Palmateer said.That night, Palmateer started his NHL goaltending career with a victory over the Wings, a roller-coaster existence of good and ordinary performances and bad knees that definitely is in a holding pattern these days.The only place Palmateer plays goal is in his living room. Although the salary is good ($220,000 U.S. per year) and there are no boos or bruises, Palmateer would prefer if a few slap shots were coming his way.Maybe that&rsquo;s not such a good idea. When the Leafs told Palmateer, 30, to go home and wait for the call on his future, they instructed him to leave his equipment in the dressing room.&ldquo;Gerry McNamara (Leaf general manager) told me to go home, leave the gear at Maple Leaf Gardens and wait for their call,&rdquo; Palmateer said. &ldquo;There have been no additional exchanges between the Leafs and myself.&ldquo;Of course, the money makes it easier but I want to play. It&rsquo;s no fun to be in shape to play and hungry to do it and have nothing to do but sit around.&rdquo;The Leafs decided to employ two 20-year-old kids. Allan Bester and Ken Wregget as their goalies this season. Veteran Rick St. Croix went to the minors; veteran Mike Palmateer went into limbo.From the start of camp, Leaf rookie coach Dan Maloney insisted that the two goalies who had the best pre-season performances would earn the jobs. Palmateer claims he was puzzled by that one and doesn&rsquo;t figure that 30 minutes against Quebec Nordiques and two periods against the Leafs on behalf of the farm team represented a large opportunity to show what he could do.Maloney claims that when Palmateer expected to be granted a day off from workouts after he played a game, it represented an attitude with which the new coach could not live. That&rsquo;s a privilege Palmateer has enjoyed since his knees became gimpy and certainly not a unique situation for an older goalie.The Leafs really try to do things differently. They&rsquo;ve tried to deal Palmateer, who missed much of last season&rsquo;s second half with knee problems, but didn&rsquo;t showcase him in a full game or two during the pre-season. It&rsquo;s the same as a used car dealer asking top price for a set of wheels but won&rsquo;t let you test drive it around the block. &ldquo;Mike wants to play and he&rsquo;s better than many teams&rsquo; No. 2 goalies and better than a few clubs&rsquo; top man,&rdquo; said his agent, Alan Eagleson. &ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t blame teams for not wanting to take a chance on him because they haven&rsquo;t seen him work a full game.&ldquo;Mike will be a free agent in June with no compensation. If the Leafs don&rsquo;t make a deal for him, I guess he&rsquo;ll sit, collect his pay and try to get his career restarted in &rsquo;85-86.&rdquo;Thus, another player who offered good service to the Leafs for an extended period leaves the organization with a sour taste in his mouth Joining Dave Keon, Norm Ullman, Darryl Sittler and Lanny McDonald, a few of the good blue-and-whiters who were tossed aside by the organization.Palmateer was around Maple Leaf Gardens for a long time, a star with Marlboro juniors, excellent for four seasons with the Leafs in the &rsquo;70s, exiled to the Washington Capitals and recovered from there to anchor the team&rsquo;s modest rebirth in the second half of the &rsquo;82-83 season.&ldquo;I came to camp in good shape, my legs were fine and so was my attitude,&rdquo; Palmateer said. &ldquo;It was a little puzzling to read that the two best goalies of the four in the camp would have the jobs and then not get a chance to play in the pre-season.&ldquo;Maybe Harold (owner Harold Ballard) had something to do with it but I hope not. I&rsquo;ve broken just about every bone in my body for you-know-who. I&rsquo;ve spent a lot of my summers with this organization in a cast, working hard to be ready for the next season.&rdquo; &#9632;

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Palmateer Plays In Living Room

<div class="byline">BY JEFF Z. KLEIN AND KARL-ERIC REIF</div>If you wanted to know which National Hockey League team was the best ever in regular-season play, what would you do? Buy an official NHL record book and look it up, eh?What would you look under? Most points, team, one season, right? And what would it tell you&mdash;the &rsquo;76-77 Montreal Canadiens finished with 132 points. So, therefore, you would conclude that the &rsquo;76-77 Habs had the best regular-season finish ever, right?Wrong. It&rsquo;s not your fault, of course, because you were relying on the official record book. And the record book is misleading, because although it tells you which team had the most points, nowhere does it tell you which team had the best record.The &rsquo;76-77 edition of Les Glorieux was a fine one, to be sure, but they were only the third-best team in NHL regular-season history. The reason they had the most points of any team ever is because they played more games than any team prior to 1974-75, when the 80-game schedule was instituted. And since the schedule was only 44 or 50 games long for much of the league&rsquo;s 67-year history, there&rsquo;s no chance that any of these earlier teams would show up under the heading for &ldquo;Most points, team, one season.&rdquo; In order to find which teams were the best over the course of any given NHL regular season, all you have to do is figure out the winning percentage of the top teams for each year. It&rsquo;s a very simple task that would take you no more than half an hour to do. Of course, the league has never done it. Lets take a look at the top 10 regular-season finishes in NHL history.It&rsquo;s startling, but true. The Canadiens and the Boston Bruins have compiled the 10 best regular season records between them. The Flying Frenchmen&rsquo;s six representatives on this list are drawn from the war years and from their dynastic reign of the &rsquo;70s. The Bruins&rsquo; four teams here are culled from three eras&mdash;their early flowering at the start of the Great Depression, their renaissance as the dark clouds gathered for World War II, and their second renaissance during the Bobby Orr-Phil Esposito years just prior to Watergate. (If the Bruins ever make this list again, head for the fallout shelters.)To give you some idea of how good a team would have to be in order to make this list, let&rsquo;s look at some excellent teams of recent years. For example, last year&rsquo;s Edmonton Oilers, a team many amusingly call the best ever, had a winning percentage of .744&mdash;good, but still a fair ways off the &rsquo;71-72 Bruins&rsquo; l0th-best figure of .763.The New York Islanders, during their long Reign of Terror, never finished a regular season with better than a .738 mark. The &rsquo;79-80 Flyers, a club that totalled a record 35 games without losing, wound up that season with a .725 winning percentage. Even the powerhouse Red Wings, during their glory years of the early &rsquo;50s, never did better than .721.The number one team of all time was the Bruins of 1929-30. This was the side that won 14 straight games, a record that would stand until 1982, when the Islanders finally broke it by one. When that 14-game streak was finally stopped, they started another one three weeks later by going and to start another skein of 12 consecutive wins. The club featured no less than seven men who later would enter the Hall of Fame: forwards Cooney Weiland. Dit Clapper. Marty Barry, Harry Oliver, Mickey Mackay; defenseman Eddie Shore and goaler Tiny Thompson. The Bruins were excellent on both offense and defense, but the most impressive stats were rolled up by the center Weiland, whose 73 scoring points set a record that would not fall for 14 years.Yet for all their overwhelming power, this club failed to win the Stanley Cup. They were the defending Cup champions, and they rolled over the Montreal Maroons, three games to one, in the semi-finals. But in the best-of-three final they were stonewalled by Canadien goalie George Hainsworth, and lost two games to none. It was all over for the finest regular-season side the league would ever see.Their stunning demise would be reprised in 1970-71, when another awesome Boston scoring machine would fall victim to a rookie goalie named Ken Dryden. Thus the Montreal tradition of tormenting excellent Beantown teams would be renewed.As for the red, white and blue, the Canadiens of &rsquo;43-44 iced the second-best regular-season of all time. On that squad were six eventual Hall of Famers: forwards Toe Blake, Elmer Lach, Rocket Richard, Philippe Watson; defenseman Butch Bouchard and goalie Bill Duman. Offensive production was remarkabley balanced among all three lines, making it impossible to stem the red tide with a checking line, and Durnan&rsquo;s impeccable goaltending behind a fair defense corps allowed the Habs to press the attack to the full without fear for their own half of the ice.Montreal never stumbled in their march to the Cup that year, besting Toronto in the semi-final, four games to one (including an 11-0 coup de grace), and wiping out Chicago in a four-game sweep. It was from this crucible of excellence that Maurice Richard began to emerge as a superstar, and the next year he would astonish the hockey world by scoring 50 goals in 50 games.Can any of this year&rsquo;s teams play excellently enough to crack the all-time Top 10? Edmonton fans may be confident the &rsquo;84-85 Oilers can make the list, but it could be mediocre Smythe Division opponents more than the distinguished pedigree of a Montreal or Boston club that help them get there.<h2>Best Single-Season Team&hellip;</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-021286/5541895-1-eng-US/f0004-022.jpg" title="f0004-02" width="981" height="574"></div> &#9632;

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But Goalie Named Hainsworth Proved To Be Even Better

<div class="byline">By Bob Duff</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-011282/5541926-1-eng-US/f0005-012.jpg" title="f0005-01" width="394" height="447"></div>Q: Is it true that Cobalt, Ont., once had a franchise in the National Hockey League?Al Roy New Liskeard. Ont.A: Well, almost. The silver rush that hit northern Ontario in the early 1900s created a number of instant millionaires. A hockey league was set up in the area in 1905, known as the Temiskaming Mines League. It included the towns of Cobalt, Haileybury and New Liskeard. They lured star players such as Newsy Lalonde, Fred (Cyclone) Taylor and the Patrick brothers, Frank and Lester, by more than tripling their salaries. By 1910, Haileybury and Cobalt joined with five other teams to form the National Hockey Association, the forerunner to the NHL. The other teams in the league included Ottawa, Renfrew and three from Montreal&mdash;the Canadiens, Shamrocks and Wanderers.Fans jammed the Cobalt rink, getting a chance to watch the best hockey players in the world at that time. In fact, an overflow crowd one night caused the arena roof to collapse.Unfortunately for people of these small mining towns, the money just wasn&rsquo;t there to support major professional hockey. Cobalt and Haileybury both sold their players to the new Quebec franchise in 1911.Q: Who played the most seasons in the NHL without playing on a Stanley Cup winner?Jjm Hunter Halifax. N.S.A: There is a popular fallacy that Bill Gadsby holds this title. However, this is not true. This dubious distinction belongs to Dean Prentice, who toiled for 22 seasons with five clubs without ever copping the Cup. Second to Prentice is Harry Howell, who played 21 Cupless years. Gadsby is tied for third with former Leaf and Red Wing Norm Ullman. Each played 20 years without winning a Cup.Among active players, Detroit&rsquo;s Brad Park has played, up to this season. 16 seasons without tasting the bubbly from Lord Stanley&rsquo;s mug.Q: Who are the 10 leading all-time career scorers in major junior hockey?Greg Lawton Harris. Sask.A: The list of career scoring leaders in junior hockey is as follows: Normand Dupont, Quebec (Quebec Major Junior Hockey League) 568 points; Mario Lemieux, Laval (QMJHL) 562 points; Sylvain Locas, Chicoutimi (QMJHL) 545 points; Guy Lafleur, Quebec (QMJHL) 540 points; Mike Bossy, Laval (QMJHL) 529 points; Brian Propp, Brandon (Western Hockey League) 511 points; Jacques Richard, Quebec (QMJHL) 507 points; Dale Derkatch, Regina (WHL) 480; Dale McCourt. Sudbury-Hamilton-St. Catharines (OHL) 479; Ray Allison, Brandon (WHL) 476 points.If you want your question answered, write to:ASK THE DUFFER115 3rd Avenue South, 316Saskatoon, Sask.Canada, S7K 1L7All letters will be read, but only those published will be answered. Personal responses are not possible. &#9632;

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ASK THE DUFFER

<div class="byline">BY RANDY SCHULTZ</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-02937/5541964-1-eng-US/f0005-022.jpg" title="f0005-02" width="387" height="450"></div>One of the more exciting plays-in hockey is the penalty shot. Considered the &ldquo;High Noon&rdquo; of a hockey game, it is the only time&mdash;other than a breakaway&mdash;when a lone shooter and a goaltender face each other in a one-on-one situation.Since 1934-35, when the penalty shot was introduced to the National Hockey League, many players have been successful in their attempts to score what some consider &ldquo;an easy goal.&rdquo;But the player credited with scoring the first goal on a penalty shot was defenseman Ralph (Scotty) Bowman.Bowman, who played in the NHL for seven seasons (1933-40) with the Ottawa Senators, St. Louis Eagles and Detroit Red Wings, recalled that night of Nov. 13, 1934 in St. Louis when, as a member of the Eagles, he scored that famous goal against the Montreal Maroons.&ldquo;A penalty had been called on one of our players and the referee called a penalty shot,&rdquo; said Bowman. &ldquo;In those days they had the players on the ice line up against the boards and the coach would pick one of us.&ldquo;Eddie Gerard, who was our coach, picked me to take the shot. Why he picked me I&rsquo;ll never know. But he did and I went out there.&ldquo;The puck was placed in a big circle. I had my choice of shooting the puck standing still or shooting it on the run.&ldquo;I shot it on the run, shooting it just inside the circle that was facing the goalie in those days. I can still see it going over (goalie) Alex Connell&rsquo;s right leg and into the net.&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t score many goals in my career (eight total), but that was one I&rsquo;ll never forget.&rdquo;Unfortunately some people did forget and when another Scotty Bowman came along in the late &rsquo;60s they began giving him credit for scoring the goal. That other Scotty, of course, is William Scott Bowman, who is a coach but never played in the NHL.&ldquo;I never met the man myself,&rdquo; said the elder Bowman. &ldquo;But I do know that when he first came along some people thought he was the one who scored the goal. But he soon set them straight on that record.&rdquo;Bowman was also a part of another historical NHL game as a member of the Red Wings, when they played against the Maroons in the longest Stanley Cup game ever played, in 1936.&ldquo;The game lasted six overtimes and ended at about 2:30 (2:25 to be exact) in the morning, when Modern (Mud) Bruneteau scored the only goal of the game to win it for us,&rdquo; recalled Bowman. &ldquo;That was a lot of hockey for one night.&ldquo;We were one tired bunch of players after that game. I don&rsquo;t know how our goalie (Norm Smith) did it, but he shut them out.&rdquo;After his retirement from pro hockey, the native of Winnipeg, Man., went to live and work in Flint, MI, as a product engineer for General Motors.While living in Flint, Bowman began and develped a youth hockey program for the kids in the area.&ldquo;It started as a hockey school in the early 1950s,&rdquo; said Bowman, now 73 and living in retirment in Rotunde West, FL. &ldquo;But after my first year with it I had so many kids turn out that I had to open a league the next year. You see, there was no hockey of any kind there before I came.&ldquo;So I worked with the parents, taught them the game of hockey and turned them into coaches. The program has really grown over the years and today they have one of the finest around.&ldquo;One guy who came through the league when I was still there was Ken Morrow, who now plays for the New York Islanders. His dad was one of the many coaches I had.&rdquo;Bowman feels he was paid very well for his efforts in Flint.&ldquo;The biggest thrill and payment I got was seeing the kids have fun and helping them,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I remember one young boy who, through this league, I saved from going down the wrong path in life. That made the whole thing worthwhile to me.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-03652/5541957-1-eng-US/f0005-032.jpg" title="f0005-03" width="586" height="1031"><figcaption class="caption-body">Ralph (Scotty) Bowman, above, says he&rsquo;s never met the other Scotty Bowman.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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History Has This Scotty Scoring First Penalty Shot

Here&rsquo;s what was happening 20 years ago this week in hockey:&bull; The Boston Bruins finally won a game after going zero for 10, and it couldn&rsquo;t have come at a better time to take the heat off general manager Lynn Patrick and coach Milt Schmidt. Before Boston&rsquo;s 5-2 conquest of Chicago at Boston Garden, petitions were circulated among 12,000 fans calling for the immediate firing of Patrick and Schmidt.&bull; A tight race was forming to win the Calder Trophy for the National Hockey League&rsquo;s No. 1 rookie for the season. Running neck-and-neck for the lead were Montreal&rsquo;s Yvan Cournoyer, Toronto&rsquo;s Ron Ellis and Detroit&rsquo;s Roger Crozier.Here&rsquo;s what was happening 15 years ago this week in hockey:&bull; The Toronto Maple Leafs appointed Dave Keon as the team&rsquo;s new captain. Keon succeeded George Armstrong, who had retired.&bull; Dean Prentice, Pittsburgh Penguins&rsquo; 34-year-old left winger, scored his 300th goal, putting him in a class with only 11 other players at the time. &#9632;

THIS WEEK…20 Years Ago

1. Which NHL club drafted the New York Islanders&rsquo; Bob Bourne?2. Name the last member of a Stanley Cup winning team to lead the league in penalty minutes?3. The St. Louis Blues retired uniform number eight. Who wore this sweater?4. Who scored the Pittsburgh Penguins&rsquo; first NHL goal in their opening league game?5. What NHL veteran scored his 400th career goal in that same game?6. Name the last Toronto Maple Leaf to lead the NHL in goals scored?7. Who was the first player to score 50 goals in a season with a club that didn&rsquo;t make the playoffs?8. Against which NHL team did Gordie Howe score his 700th career goal?9. Name the last New York Ranger to lead the NHL in penalty minutes?10. Of all the NHL teams that have captured the Stanley Cup, only one winner has never had a NHL scoring champ in its history. Name that team?<h2>Last Week&rsquo;s Trivia Answers</h2>1. Toronto Maple Leafs. 2. Pierre Mondou. 3. Minnesota North Stars. 4. New Jersey Devils. 5. Detroit and Los Angeles. 6. Borje Salming. 7. Randy Carlyle. 8. Bill Cowley, Boston, 1940-41.9. Bryan Trottier, 47 in 1978-79. 10. Toronto, 35. &#9632;

TRIVIA

<div class="byline">BY BOB DUFF</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0005-04" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-04427/5542043-1-eng-US/f0005-042.jpg"></div>that the teams with the most consecutive losing seasons are: &#9632;

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Did You Know…

<div class="byline">Stan Fischler&#x2019;s</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-011464/5542074-1-eng-US/f0006-012.jpg" title="f0006-01" width="377" height="446"></div><h2>ON THE CONTRARY</h2>They&rsquo;re playing the numbers game again in Boston and, frankly, I&rsquo;m confused. I don&rsquo;t know whether to laugh or cry, it&rsquo;s so damn stupid.The numbers game started last year when Bruin general manager Harry Sinden had the wonderful (or was it horrible?) idea of giving Guy Lapointe the number five jersey.No problem, right?Well, it shouldn&rsquo;t have been a problem, yet it brought down the wrath of the Gallery Gods and some furious fulminations from the Dit Clapper family since Clapper wore number five a bazillion years ago.The Clapper Clan regarded it as considerably worse than sacreligious that a Bruin other than Hall of Famer Dit had the right to wear any number between four and six.The Right-To-Fivers, a militant left wing group headed by me, sided with Sinden. Why not give a distinguished veteran such as Lapointe his choice of any number between four and six? I figured it was a hell of a thoughtful gesture by Harry. So, for that matter, did Sinden.Alas, us Right-To-Fivers lost, but this is another year and now we have a new and no less furious numbers game. The question is: Does any Bruin, other than displaced Bostonian Phil Esposito, have the right to wear number seven? (And if you don&rsquo;t think this is important, you haven&rsquo;t read the Boston Herald, home of my favorite fiery writer, Joe Fitzgerald.)Thanks to Joe Fitz&rsquo;s fury, I have just formed a militant right wing group called &ldquo;Share-The-Seven&rdquo; club. I mean it, I&rsquo;m angry.The reason I&rsquo;m angry is that Joe Fitz and some other distinguished Bostonians including Bobby Orr want Esposito&rsquo;s number seven jersey retired, even though it currently is being worn by Ray Bourque.Worse than that, even Bourque wants to get out of the seven and into another number.&ldquo;I never asked for seven when I joined the Bruins,&rdquo; he says.Personally, I think Bourque has been under undue pressure to put the number in the frozen uniform department alongside Eddie Shore&rsquo;s number two, Lionel Hitchman&rsquo;s three, Orr&rsquo;s four, Clapper&rsquo;s five, Johnny Bucyk&rsquo;s nine and Milt Schmidt&rsquo;s 15.If you ask me, this number nitpicking is somewhat to the left of ridiculous, Joe Fitz and Bobby Orr are wrong in thinking that the retirement of a number (or, non-retirement) has any effect on the reverence in which a Hall of Famer is held.Do they really believe that anyone in Boston Garden thinks any less of Phil Esposito because Bourque wears number seven? Of course not. Or, that anyone thinks more of Bobby Orr because his number four is held in captivity?Come, now, fellows, what&rsquo;s in a number anyway? Leave Bourque alone. Let him wear number seven without making a federal case of it.Better yet, consider the spanking new Fischler Foolproof No More Number Arguing Plan:Let&rsquo;s bring every retired number&mdash;from Orr&rsquo;s four to Gordie Howe&rsquo;s nine to Rod Gilbert&rsquo;s seven&mdash;out of retirement.Low numbers are important to hockey; they are part of its heritage. And it shouldn&rsquo;t mean a damn thing to Orr, Howe, Bucyk or even Rocket Richard if a young kid comes along and wears the same number as the Hall of Famer.As a matter of fact, it&rsquo;s fun to watch the development of a rookie who inherits a Hall of Famer&rsquo;s number. Take New York, for example. Formore than a decade, Frank Boucher, who wore number seven, was one of the greatest Rangers. After his retirement, Boucher&rsquo;s number was passed on to Phil Watson, a damn good center in his own right. Watson ultimately passed his seven on to Red Sullivan, who passed it onto Gilbert.At no time during the transfer of the jersey did the ice melt, nor the roof cave in at Madison Square Garden.Quite the contrary. It always was fascinating to see how the new number seven compared to the predecessor. Besides, it retained the wonderful hockey tradition of wearing low numbers; something we need more of in today&rsquo;s game.Face it, hockey players don&rsquo;t look right wearing big numbers such as 34 or 61. Only a Wayne Gretzky can get away with wearing number 99 without getting a hemia.No wonder so many players are injured these days; they can&rsquo;t handle the weight of those big numbers. Let&rsquo;s get back to basics and a new rule: no numbers over 20. (If a guy with, say, number eight, is injured and he is replaced by a farmhand, the replacement will be given eight with an asterisk next to it.)Or, if you don&rsquo;t like that idea, why don&rsquo;t we scrap the system altogether and start over? Let&rsquo;s retire all numbers. Instead we&rsquo;ll give them letters from A to Z.We&rsquo;re going to start with you, Bourque. You&rsquo;re getting an E. (No, not as in excellent, as in Esposito.)PLAYERS AS FANS: It may seem incomprehensible for the fan, but the players were once fans, too. The Wayne Gretzkys, Larry Robinsons and Rob Ramages once were on the other side of the boards, rooting like crazy for their favorites.From time to time in this space, I&rsquo;m going to tell you about hockey players as hockey fans. This time we&rsquo;ll deal with the Washington Capitals.DOUG JARVIS&mdash;&ldquo;When I was a kid my two favorites were both centers&mdash;Jean Beliveau of the Canadiens and Dave Keon of the Maple Leafs. I got to know their styles while watching the games on Hockey Night In Canada. To me, they were perfect contrasts; Beliveau the tall, rangy center who played effortlessly, and Keon, a little guy with terrific speed. Both were very important to their teams and I always dreamed of, perhaps, someday being out there. Unfortunately, I could never get to see the games. I grew up in Brantford, Ont., and I saw all of two NHL games before I actually got to play in the NHL.&rdquo;CRAIG LAUGHLIN&mdash;&ldquo;I grew up in Toronto but it was almost impossible to get tickets to Maple Leaf Gardens so I only went to a few games. So, I watched the games on television. I liked Bobby Orr when he was with the Bruins and Frank Mahovlich and Norm Ullman when they played for Toronto. We had a ritual every Saturday night; the whole family would sit in front of the TV. My dad would have his beer and we&rsquo;d have our popcorn and Coke. On Sunday nights before we went to bed, the night before school, we&rsquo;d listen to Leaf away games on the radio.DAVE CHRISTIAN&mdash;&ldquo;Even though I grew up in Warroad, Minnesota, I used to be able to get Hockey Night In Canada telecasts. That was when the Bruins were in their heyday and my favorite was Bobby Orr. I enjoyed and admired the way he skated, the way he controlled the play. I only saw a couple of games in person and those were exhibitions played in Winnipeg, which was only a two-hour drive from us.&rdquo;MIKE GARTNER&mdash;&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t have any idols, but there were two players I tried to form my style after&mdash;Gordie Howe and Bobby Hull. I looked up to them. Once in a while my dad got tickets for games at Maple Leaf Gardens and I watched the games on television every Saturday night. I&rsquo;d sit down with my Coke and chips, watch it to the end and then go to bed. When we played down at the rink we&rsquo;d throw our sticks in a pile on the ice, then pull them out and we&rsquo;d say, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll be Bobby Orr or I want to be Gordie Howe.&rsquo; Everyone had his favorites, so I tried to be Gordie Howe as often as I could.&rdquo;ROD LANGWAY&mdash;&ldquo;I loved Rick Ley. He had been a defenseman with Toronto, then he jumped to the WHA (World Hockey Association) and played for the New England Whalers. I tried to play like Rick Ley. He had a great hip check and he moved the puck extremely well. I couldn&rsquo;t afford to go to many games, so I watched a lot on TV and followed up on the radio. I caught most of the games from Boston and also liked Phil Esposito, Bobby Orr, Gerry Cheevers and Johnny Bucyk.&rdquo;ALAN HAWORTH&mdash;&ldquo;We lived in Drummondville, Quebec, about 60 miles from Montreal, and we always had the Tuesday night games on TV but I didn&rsquo;t watch that much. Mostly I played, but I had two big-leaguers I really liked: Bobby Hull and Jean Beliveau, but mostly Bobby Hull. Just about every Canadian boy growing up at that time was looking at those two.30-SECOND THIRD DEGREE&mdash;Bob Froese of the Philadelphia Flyers, please take the stand.Q: How has Bobby Clarke&rsquo;s relationship with the Flyers changed since he became general manager?FROESE: &ldquo;He&rsquo;s gone from one of the boys in the schoolyard to headmaster. He&rsquo;s still the same guy, but he&rsquo;s got more responsibility, and we all realize that. The relationship isn&rsquo;t the same, it can&rsquo;t be. In a sense, it&rsquo;s too bad it went that way but, on the other hand, it&rsquo;s best for the hockey team. It was kind of tough for some of the guys who had been pretty tight with him&mdash;like myself.&rdquo;Q: What about allegations around the league that the Flyers are trying to bring back goon tactics?FROESE: &ldquo;A team can&rsquo;t afford to be pushed around on the ice. The Flyers won the Stanley Cup with that philosophy. Clarke knows what he wants and he&rsquo;s going to go out and get it. &ldquo;Q: What are the particular problems that every young goalie experiences in the NHL?FROESE: &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a lot of pressure and it was proven by the case of Grant Fuhr. He had problems at the beginning. That&rsquo;s one of the benefits of playing in the minors, you learn to cope with those problems. I was in the minors for four-and-a-half years so I know what I&rsquo;m talking about. For some guys the biggest part of goaltending is getting your head on straight, learning to think in stride. Try not to get too high and try not to get too low. That&rsquo;s tough to do when you&rsquo;re only 20 years old.Q: Bernie Parent, the last of the truly great goalies, played a stand-up style. Can that style work in the years to come?FROESE: &ldquo;With the kind of high-speed hockey teams like Edmonton are playing you can&rsquo;t afford to be a stand-up goalie as much. To be a successful stand-up goalie, you need defensive defensemen and, nowadays, the defensemen are more offensive-minded, so goalies are getting shots from all over. You can still be a stand-up goalie but you have to be a challenging goalie and a goalie who can go from one side of the net to the other. More young goalies are flopping, or maybe not just flopping but going down. That&rsquo;s the trend. There are very few Bernie Parents around anymore. &#9632;

f0006-01

Scrap The Numbers And Start Using Letters

Stan Obodiac, the longest-serving publicity director in the National Hockey League, died Nov. 3. He was 62.Obodiac, who had served as the Maple Leaf Gardens&rsquo; p.r. director for 26 years, suffered from cancer, a disease he called, &ldquo;this insidious thing.&rdquo;Before his death, he received two of the greatest honors in his life. The first one was receiving communion from Pope John Paul II, about whom Obodiac, a devout Roman Catholic, had written a book. Obodiac dedicated the communion to a young boy who had a brain tumor.Obodiac, a noted author and a frequent contributor to newspapers, wrote of that experience in the Toronto Sun on Sept. 12.&ldquo;I felt as though I was prematurely being passed on to Heaven,&rdquo; he said, adding that &ldquo;it has often been said that the Lord works in mysterious ways and this chapter in my life is an indication of that.&rdquo;On Oct. 13, the home-opener for the Leafs, Obodiac received another honor, when he dropped the puck for the ceremonial opening faceoff. It is a privilege which is usually reserved for dignitaries and out-of-town guests, but Leaf owner Harold Ballard, who respected his longtime employee, broke tradition because he knew Obodiac was critically ill.Obodiac&rsquo;s funeral was delayed so the Leafs, who had been on a road trip, could be on hand for the burial.Mike Doran, the assistant general manager of the Winnipeg Jets, remained in critical condition on Nov. 5, four days after he was injured in a car accident in Oshawa.Doran, a 40-year-old native of Toronto, was on his way to a junior hockey game in Peterborough, when his car went out of control. He suffered massive internal injuries, and was rushed to Oshawa General Hospital and later taken to Sunnybrook Medical Center in Toronto, where brain surgery was performed.Gary Stewart, a 20-year-old defenseman with Salt Lake Golden Eagles of the International Hockey League, probably will not play again for the balance of the season, after suffering a stab wound Oct. 29 in Milwaukee.Stewart, along with teammate Eric Magnuson, 23, received the injuries after leaving a nightclub with two women and being robbed of $250. Magnuson recovered from his injury and was able to resume playing, but Stewart&rsquo;s was more serious as the knife pierced an area around his heart.Stewart was originally listed in critical condition, but he improved enough to be transferred from intensive care to a hospital ward.Eagle owner A. J. Teece said Stewart should recover from the injury, but doesn&rsquo;t expect him to play again this season.Tom Barrasso, sent by the Buffalo Sabres to Rochester Americans of the American Hockey League on Oct. 27, has been recalled by the parent team, along with defenseman Jim Wiemer.Barrasso, who had a 3-1-1 record and a 1.30 average in five games with the Amerks, joins goalies Bob Sauve and Jacques Cloutier, who had been called up to replace Barrasso.Timo Jutila, the young, Finnish defenseman, has been sent down to Rochester.Richard Brodeur, the goalie known around Vancouver as King Richard after his performance in the finals of the 1982 Stanley Cup, cleared waivers and was sent down by the Canucks to Fredericton of the AHL on Nov. 1.Brodeur, 32, was in his fifth season with the Canucks.Leif Boork, the controversial head coach of the Swedish National team, has agreed to apologize to Soviet Sport authorities for allegations that Soviet players are regularly doped.Boork made the statement after being told that by Soviet defenseman Alexander Ragulin in the &rsquo;70s, but refused to elaborate.But Boork later said he had no proof of his allegations and agreed to apologize.&ldquo;We wrote to the Russians saying we regretted his statement as we have no proof whatever that Soviet players are doped,&rdquo; said Jan-Ake Edvinsson, the Swedish federation&rsquo;s secretary general. &#9632;

Leaf P.R. Director Loses Bout With Cancer

<div class="byline">BY TIM MORIARTI</div>LONG ISLAND&mdash;Mike Bossy accepts the adage that clothes make the man. In fact, he believes that a new wardrobe he purchased recently has helped him to gain the fastest start in his eight years with the New York Islanders.If that sounds strange, let Bossy offer his own explanation.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether or not playing in the Canada Cup tournament had anything to do with it, but I felt a lot younger when I walked away from that experience,&rdquo; the 27-year-old right winger said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m dressing younger now. I&rsquo;m wearing clothes you see on 20-year-olds, and I don&rsquo;t feel out of place.&ldquo;I bought almost an entire new wardrobe when I got home from the Canada Cup. It wasn&rsquo;t that I felt I dressed like an old man in the past, but I made a point of buying things that were out of character for me. Now I might be a little crazy, but I&rsquo;m doing things on a whim. I&rsquo;m more relaxed and maybe that has helped me on the ice.&rdquo;<blockquote class="pullQuote">&lsquo;I had a good time with the Oilers, with one exception. After the tournament, Paul Coffey claimed I was a complainer. That hurt. Why didn&rsquo;t he say that to my face?&rsquo;</blockquote>This was the day after Bossy scored four goals in a game against the Canadiens at Montreal on Nov. 1. He had scored at least one goal in each of the Islanders&rsquo; first 10 games this season to match a team record he set six years ago.Despite Bossy&rsquo;s heroics, the Islanders bowed 6-5 to the Canadiens in overtime. Two nights later, the Nordiques stopped Bossy, limiting him to two shots and no goals, and beating the Islanders 5-4.No player in the history of the NHL ever gained a faster start than Bossy did this season. He was named Player of the Month for October and was battling Wayne Gretzky for the National Hockey League&rsquo;s scoring lead.Bossy, who has never won a league scoring title, said, &ldquo;The season is so long, it&rsquo;s difficult to get excited when there are so many games left. I&rsquo;m extremely happy, though, about the start I got, and even if I don&rsquo;t keep up this pace. I&rsquo;d like to stay up there. I&rsquo;d love to win the scoring championship. I&rsquo;ve never tried to hide that.&rdquo;Asked about his relationship with Gretzky and other members of the Oilers during the Stanley Cup tournament, Bossy said: &ldquo;I had a good time with the Oilers, with one exception. After the tournament, Paul Coffey claimed I was a complainer. That hurt. We had been together for six weeks. Why didn&rsquo;t he say that to my face?&ldquo;Wayne Gretzky? We got along fine. Maybe we didn&rsquo;t go out to dinner every night, but we got along&hellip;I have to accept the fact that I have no control over what Wayne does, just what I do. I&rsquo;d like to keep it going, though.&rdquo;Bossy disclosed that he has two objectives not related to the immediate future: he wants to play for Team Canada in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and he wants to continue his education when his playing days are over.&ldquo;They are talking about letting the pros play in the Olympics and I&rsquo;d love that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Of course, I&rsquo;d have to work out a deal with (Islander general manager) Bill Torrey if it came to that because I&rsquo;d be in the last year of my contract and I&rsquo;d have to leave the team in the middle of the season.&ldquo;What sort of promises would I have to make to Bill? I&rsquo;d probably have to promise to stay with the Islanders for at least another year.&rdquo;Regarding his plans for retirement, which he insists will come at an early age, Bossy said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m already preparing to take my high school equivalency test. Once that is done, I&rsquo;d like to take some correspondence courses for college. I can&rsquo;t attend any summer classes though, because I have too many things to do in the summer&hellip;I don&rsquo;t know what type of college courses I&rsquo;ll take, either, but they&rsquo;ll probably deal with business and finance.&rdquo;ON THE ISLE&mdash;The Islanders completed their three-game road trip at Boston, where they suffered a 6-2 defeat. It marked the first time since the 1975-76 season that they had lost three consecutive games on a road trip&hellip;Netminder Bill Smith, who had not dressed for the first nine games, made his season debut against the Canadiens. He also started and finished the next game against the Nordiques&hellip;Bryan Trottier remained sidelined with a pulled abductor muscle in his left leg. &#9632;

Bossy Dresses For Success With The Isles

The International Hockey Weekly Founded in 1947Published by W.C.C. Publishing Ltd.85 Scarsdale Road, #100, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3B 2R2.<h2>Compounding Punishment</h2>DESPITE THE CRIES of righteous indignation, the National Hockey League&rsquo;s 10-game suspension of Minnesota North Star Paul Holmgren for highsticking Hartford&rsquo;s Torrie Robertson near the eye is consistent and very much in keeping with other punishments meted out over the years.Whether this consistency is something to be proud is certainly debatable, but that may well be another topic for another today.Surprisingly, Holmgren, when asked for his reaction to the sentence, said it was fair and that he regretted the move, which could easily have inflicted serious damage to Robertson&rsquo;s eye. As it was, the Whaler had to be stitched up around the eye.That Holmgren would say it was fair is both surprising and expected. It&rsquo;s surprising because most players, when they are suspended, howl long and hard, claiming they were only retaliating to a more serious foul. It&rsquo;s expected because Holmgren, one tough dude who is considered a &ldquo;character&rdquo; player, has a good working knowledge of the NHL&rsquo;s discipline system.And therein lies the topic for today&rsquo;s debate.Should Holmgren, who has been suspended by the league office on five previous occasions, have been hit with a stiffer sentence, given his history of misbehaving?The answer is unequivocally yes.In the past, while a member of the Philadelphia Flyers, Holmgren received a six-game suspension for a stick foul on New York Ranger Carol Vadnais. He sat out five games after striking referee Andy van Hellemond. And on three other occasions, he sat out a total of nine games for various infractions.So while Holmgren is considered a good guy to have in the dressing room and on the ice, he is also a habitual offender.That&rsquo;s why, when he came up for discipline this time around, his suspension should have been increased.If a first-time offender committed the same stick foul, chances are he, too, would have received 10 games. So why should Holmgren, given his record, be accorded the same treatment.Perhaps the NHL should consider doubling the standard sentence for any player who makes the mistake of committing a crime more than once.In light of his past record and the seriousness of this foul, 20 games for Holmgren would be, to use his word, fair. &#9632;

<h2>FAN FORUM</h2>Let your voice be heard! Send your comments to Fan Forum, THE HOCKEY NEWS, 85 Scarsdale Rd., Suite 100, Don Mills, Ont., Canada M3B 2R2.OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCES by some Soviet hockey players once they had passed the age of 30 deserve mention in response to Phil Esposito&rsquo;s recent address, &ldquo;The Russians have had only a very few players on their national team who had passed the big three-oh. That&rsquo;s because they work so hard and long at conditioning, their bodies are just worn out by the time they hit 30.&rdquo;Boris Mikhailov led the Soviets to victory and was named the most valuable player in the 1979 Challenge Cup at the age of 34. Aleksandr Maltsev, then 32, was named the all-star center at the 1981 world championships in Sweden, and Vladimir Petrov led all scorers at the 1979 world championships, also at the age of 32.It&rsquo;s a matter of record that since 1972, more than 20 players over the age of 30 have contributed at various times to the success of the Soviet national team, which boasts eight world championships, three Olympic gold medals and one Canada Cup title.Esposito didn&rsquo;t exactly bum himself out in research before making such an exaggerated statement.Denis Gibbons Burlington. Ont.<h2>HOCKEY FREAK SHOW</h2>It&rsquo;s no wonder the National Hockey League is considered a &ldquo;freak show.&rdquo;I just watched a recent game between the Philadelphia and St. Louis on cable TV and could not believe the stuff the referee let Philadelphia get away with. Two minute penalties were assessed to Philadelphia players running at the St. Louis players with their sticks and elbows up. Without a doubt, these were intentional attempts to injure, and not good, clean hits.I don&rsquo;t mind a good, hard game, I love football. But the Flyers had guys skating around with their sticks in the noses of the St. Louis players the whole game.If the NHL is ever going to be on an even par with the other American sports (baseball, football, basketball), it&rsquo;s going to have to put people such as Philadelphia&rsquo;s Ed Hospodar where they belong&mdash;and that&rsquo;s not in hockey.Homer C. Gilmore Royal Palm Beach, FL<h2>THE BALLARD BREAD LINE</h2>I am sick and tired of watching the Toronto Maple Leafs play hockey. They are a team with absolutely no character. Every year we hear the Leafs are in a rebuilding stage. Heaven sakes alive. I&rsquo;ve been hearing that since Borje Salming came in the NHL and that&rsquo;s been 10 years ago. It isn&rsquo;t that they don&rsquo;t get high draft picks because they do, so you can&rsquo;t blame the draft.The Leafs have drafted Jim Benning, Gary Nylund, Russ Courtnall and Al lafrate in the first round the last four years, so why haven&rsquo;t they improved?I&rsquo;ll tell you why, it starts with Harold Ballard! In my opinion, Ballard has created a can&rsquo;t-win aura around the Leafs&rsquo; heads and it will be with them until he departs.Take a look over the past years how he handled the Roger Neilson situation, the Darryl Sittler case and how he&rsquo;s cutting Rick Vaive to pieces.The Toronto Maple Leafs need to clean house starting with Harold Ballard and Gerry McNamara. How can a team go for so long and play so bad and have the gall to tell their fans they&rsquo;re in a rebuilding stage?If Ballard could look beyond his gate receipts he would shake his head also. Harold, get out of the Maple Leaf organization. If you look at the team as a business why don&rsquo;t you buy the Edmonton Oilers and give the Toronto fans a fresh start? At least with the Oilers you would be a champion this year, next year would be another story.John D. Dobbin Gondola Point, N.B.<h2>DON&rsquo;T FORGET THE TURTLE</h2>I had a few chuckles from your &ldquo;Official Hockey Dictionary,&rdquo; however, there was one category overlooked&mdash;turtle.Turtle happens when one player entices another into an altercation, then proceeds to lay face down on the ice, draws arms, legs and head into his uniform while the opposing player proceeds to draw a seven-minute penalty (and is often ejected from the game). The turtle comes out of his shell smiling. That&rsquo;s when turtles should be put on their backs.Donna Brash Saskatoon, Sask.<h2>STAN&rsquo;S OUT TO LUNCH</h2>When I saw that Stan Fischler was rating the uniforms of the 21 NHL teams in his column, 1 quickly looked to see if he had the good sense to put the Vancouver Canucks in 21st place.Noting that he didn&rsquo;t, I knew enough not to bother reading the rest of the column. Anyone who won&rsquo;t admit the Canucks have the most ghastly uniforms in the NHL is out to lunch.Donald Gordon Mississauga, Ont. &#9632;

The Straight Soviet Facts

<div class="byline">Rod Beaton&#x2019;s GUEST SHOT</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0008-011394/5542201-1-eng-US/f0008-012.jpg" title="f0008-01" width="392" height="448"></div>The Minnesota North Stars have enough injuries to fill a segment of Hill Street Blues. The Minnesota North Stars have had a start slow enough to double Lou Nanne&rsquo;s phone bill and thin out his hair even more than it already is.But the Minnesota North Stars have another problem almost as unsettling&mdash;an image problem.The North Stars are widely perceived as having more crybabies than a nursery. It&rsquo;s a speculative comment that has been published in at least two national magazines, spoken in 21 press boxes and sneered at in 20 dressing rooms.I wouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if Mike Wallace and his 60 Minutes camera crew descended on the Met Center for an expose.They&rsquo;d be disappointed. The North Stars are victims of a bad rap&mdash;not totally inaccurate but exaggerated. It&rsquo;s very similar to the &ldquo;arrogant Edmonton Oilers&rdquo; stigma that has been perpetuated by a few incidents (congaline high fives after goals and singing on the bench once during the playoffs) and from Glen Sather&rsquo;s occasional smirks.But that&rsquo;s a matter for another day. The North Stars are the case on this docket. People&rsquo;s Exhibit No. 1 is Paul Holmgren.Knowing Paul, I&rsquo;d venture no team with a Holmgren will have an active whiner. If it did, he&rsquo;d be wearing his crying towel where the sun don&rsquo;t shine. Paul came over from Philly and told one and all he&rsquo;d tolerate no criticism of coach Bill Mahoney or of other teammates. Any transgressors would answer to him, a rather bleak prospect. Just ask Torrie Robertson.But Paul being Paul, volcanic and injury prone, he is not always in uniform. That brings us to People&rsquo;s Exhibit No. 2, Craig Hartsburg. Hartsburg was described as &ldquo;a players&rsquo; captain, not a management captain&rdquo; by Brad Maxwell. That was a succinct way of saying he&rsquo;s more appropriate for the job than his stand-in Brian Bellows.A superb young player, Bellows was just not ready to be captain, especially on the Good Ship North Star. He said so himself. If his rumored dressing-room punch-out with Al MacAdam is true, it&rsquo;s more evidence Bellows wasn&rsquo;t right for the position.That MacAdam wanted out was a sign that there was a malaise. Sports Illustrated in advisedly referred to MacAdam as a whiner. MacAdam is one of the NHL&rsquo;s classiest people. That he asked to be traded and was indicates something was amiss. Stung by SI, MacAdam won&rsquo;t say what it was.Others will. The North Stars&rsquo; complaints have been in two areas: ice time and coach-player communication. Mahoney has improved the latter, meeting each player one on one to explain his expectations. Furthermore, the players now have Hartsburg as an advocate. And if they can&rsquo;t catch an ear from assistants J.P. Parise and Murray Oliver or scouts Glen Sonmor or Gump Worsley, then they must be mute.The ice-time issue is more pressing. Without injuries, the North Stars have a roster that is extremely deep in players of comparable skills. Mahoney has chosen to go with four lines, which is his perogative. If the players have problem with that, perhaps they are the problem.Sure, Mahoney used to come on to the players as a crusty, frosty guy, somewhat more benign than Captain Bligh. So big deal. Toe Blake wasn&rsquo;t Mr. Congeniality. Scott Bowman is not on a lot of Christmas card lists. Al Arbour doesn&rsquo;t get down and boogie.Most North Stars have come to grips with that situation. There was a poll of 12 players this summer, conducted by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, that revealed strong player dissatisfaction.&ldquo;But now the guys are sorry they said what they did,&rdquo; said Hartsburg. &ldquo;We learned not to air our dirty laundry in the press.&rdquo;With Lou Nanne always in high profile as a lightning rod, this talented team will always get extra close scrutiny. So far this season, it has borne up well.New players&mdash;Harold Snepsts, for example&mdash;rave about the club&rsquo;s atmosphere. Others, such as Tom McCarthy and Gordie Roberts, are finally overcoming unfair reputations the way, say, Ron Duguay, has overcome his.Sure, the North Stars have some whiners. Nanne has admitted having four. With the probable exception of Boston, Washington and Edmonton, every team has a few. I can think of several teams with more bad actors than the Met set.Let&rsquo;s give the North Stars a break and put the cork on the whine. &#9632;

f0008-01

Putting A Cork On The North Stars’ Whine

<div class="byline">BY NEIL MILBERT</div>CHICAGO&mdash;There are times when big Black Hawk defenseman Behn Wilson seems as menacing on the ice as Dick Butkus was on the gridiron when he played for the Bears.Wilson&rsquo;s body-talk can be provocative and punishing to opponents.And yet Chicago coach Orval Tessier believes that Wilson&rsquo;s words have almost as much impact as his body contacts. And for a player who&rsquo;s 6-foot-3, 210 pounds, that&rsquo;s saying a lot.It&rsquo;s Tessier&rsquo;s opinion that Wilson&rsquo;s pep-talks are partly responsible for the improved play of forward Ken Yaremchuk and defenseman Jerome Dupont.&ldquo;Behn is very good with younger guys,&rdquo; said Tessier. &ldquo;He has really encouraged Dupont. Behn keeps talking to him, on the ice and on the bench. 1 think by doing it he&rsquo;s giving Jerome a lot of confidence.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never seen Jerome calmer than since I&rsquo;ve started using him as Behn&rsquo;s partner. It used to be every time Jerome was on the ice, he felt obliged to fight somebody. On the bench, he was a bundle of nerves. Now, he&rsquo;s talking to Behn and relaxing, and he waits until their turn is coming up before he psyches himself.&ldquo;Behn is on Yaremchuk 24 hours a day. That really helps. He won&rsquo;t let Kenny get down or take it easy for a single shift. And, when Kenny makes a big play, Behn&rsquo;s the first one to pat him on the back.&rdquo;Meanwhile, Wilson is starting to function the way general manager Bob Pulford envisioned when he sent finesse defenseman Doug Crossman to Philadelphia for Big Behn in the summer of &rsquo;83.His best game in the season&rsquo;s first month was the Hawks&rsquo; 9-3 rout of Vancouver in which he tallied his second and third goals.Although he can&rsquo;t shoot the puck as hard as fellow defenseman Doug Wilson, Behn has the ability to be much more of a factor offensively than he was last year when he scored 10 goals and assisted on 22.With the Flyers four years ago, he had 16 goals and 47 assists and spent a career-high 237 minutes in the penalty box.But Behn believes the Broad Street Bully syndrome, still alive in the City of Brotherly Love, subconsciously worked toward the detriment of his hockey career.&ldquo;I got into a rut in Philadelphia,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I got into bad habits because of the way the Flyers play the game.&ldquo;I came here wanting to help the team but it takes time to break habits. Last year, I played tentatively.&ldquo;It took me a long time to get used to playing with someone with the great ability Keith Brown has. I&rsquo;d think I was leading a rush and he&rsquo;d go right past me. I&rsquo;ve never been with a defenseman that fast, and I wanted to make sure I didn&rsquo;t take away from his game.&ldquo;Eventually, I adjusted. A player with the great talent Keith has can cover up for alot of your mistakes.&ldquo;It just hasn&rsquo;t been any problem readjusting to Jerome. He plays more like other defensemen I&rsquo;ve played with. I see Jerome coming into his own. He&rsquo;s getting his chance, and he&rsquo;s making the most of it.&rdquo;Tessier is encouraging his defensemen to be more offensive-minded, and Wilson believes this will be a stimulus.&ldquo;I know how difficult it is to stop an attacking defenseman,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And we have unselfish forwards who will pass you the puck if you&rsquo;re open. That&rsquo;s a key to being effective.&ldquo;So much of this game is mental. Last year, after all our injuries, we&rsquo;d get up by a goal or two and then the game would get close and we&rsquo;d hope for a tie instead of trying to win. My main goal is to develop confidence, have the right attitude and make sure I don&rsquo;t get scored on as much.&ldquo;The key to this season for us as a team is to bear down in November. If people don&rsquo;t want to play, we&rsquo;ll be in a lot of trouble.&rdquo;He was referring to the 16-game span between Oct. 30 and Dec. 1 that finds the Hawks getting a foot on enemy ice 14 times.HAWK TALK&mdash;Behn Wilson scored his fourth goal of the season when the Hawks began their journey by skating to a 5-5 tie in Minnesota. Denis Savard played his best game of the season, scoring the first two goals and assisting on the next three. Another major contributor was Steve Larmer with two goals and a pair of assists&hellip;In three games against St. Louis, Hartford and Minnesota, Savard, Larmer and linemate Al Secord have accounted for six of the eight goals scored by Hawk forward&hellip;Production on the other lines has nosedived after a splendid start. &#9632;

When Behn Wilson Talks, Everyone Listens

<div class="byline">Bill Fleischman</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-021095/5542287-1-eng-US/f0010-022.jpg" title="f0010-02" width="404" height="452"></div>SOME EARLY SEASON likes and dislikes and, do you agree that October is the best month of the year? The leaves (not Toronto&rsquo;s) stage their remarkable colorful show, the World Series is on, football is into the heart of its schedule, pro basketball cranks up another season, but, best of all, hockey starts.&bull; I like the way the Edmonton Oilers have sprinted from the gate. There aren&rsquo;t many awesome teams in sports any more&mdash;free agency and ridiculously overpaid athletes have taken care of that. But the Oilers look as though they&rsquo;ll be difficult to beat for many years&mdash;which is good for hockey.Remember when the Montreal Canadiens were losing only eight or 10 games a season? Whenever an opponent managed to win a game from Montreal, it felt like celebrating. That&rsquo;s how opponents feel now about Edmonton.When Glen Sather makes brash remarks such as, &ldquo;We want to kill the other team&rsquo;s will to win. We want them in awe of us,&rdquo; conservative hockey people (that&rsquo;s redundant, isn&rsquo;t it?) shake their heads in dismay. They say, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s that Sather, talkin&rsquo; trash again.&rdquo;But I love it when Sather or his players talk like that. When you&rsquo;ve got it, flaunt it. People scoffed at Joe Namath when he predicted a Super Bowl victory for the Jets over the mighty Colts, but Namath backed up his promise. Let the Oilers swagger&mdash;as long as they can keep winning.&bull; I don&rsquo;t like the reports I read about Jim Schoenfeld &ldquo;rescuing&rdquo; poor, young Tom Barrasso from those mean Rochester television reporters. That&rsquo;s not the personable Jim Schoenfeld I&rsquo;ve known, the redhead with the beaming smile and bone-crushing handshake. I suspect Schoenfeld is just following Scott Bowman&rsquo;s orders, which may have gone something like this: &ldquo;Tell the kid to concentrate on hockey and not answer questions from those nosy reporters.&rdquo;According to one dispatch, the Rochester club issued a news release saying that Barrasso would not be available for interviews while he was serving his sentence in Rochester. C&rsquo;mon guys, this is 1984. Professional sports means you are in the entertainment business. Interviews go with the territory. If you don&rsquo;t want to answer a question, tell the poor wretches with the notepad or microphones. But don&rsquo;t send the league&rsquo;s Rookie of the Year and All-Star goalie to the minor leagues and then announce that he won&rsquo;t do interviews. If there is one 19-year-old in pro sports who can handle himself with interviews, it is Barrasso. Barrasso overdosed on confidence at an early age.Prediction: Bowman&rsquo;s surprising move of demoting Barrasso to the minor leagues will work. The youngster will return to Buffalo with his pride and skill restored and play like the All-Star goalie of his rookie season.&bull; I like the way Calgary and Philadelphia have started the season. Kent Nilsson is playing the way he should while young players such as Carey Wilson, Colin Patterson and Al Maclnnis have injected some excitement into a Calgary attack that can give Edmonton its only competition in the Smythe Division.In Philadelphia, Tim Kerr is playing like a superscorer. He acts as if he is determined to prove that last season&rsquo;s 54 goals weren&rsquo;t a mirage and justify that $200,000 contract. Brian Propp continues to play like one of the game&rsquo;s best two-way left wingers, and the goaltending has been top quality. It is Philadelphia&rsquo;s newest players, however, who are causing the most talk and putting the spirit back into the Spectrum. Peter Zezel, Rick Tocchet and Derrick Smith are Flyer draft choices who can play.Toss in Murray Craven, who is making the controversial Darryl Sittier trade look very good from new general manager Bob Clarke&rsquo;s standpoint, and you have the nucleus of a solid team. These guys even look as though they&rsquo;ll survive the Dave Michayluk Rule. That&rsquo;s the rule that withholds judgment on players until they have played at least 20 NHL games. In Michayluk&rsquo;s first few games two years ago, he had the earmarks of a bonafide NHLer. Observers raved about his passing. Sadly, the raves quickly turned to nays and Michayluk was back in the minor leagues, where he remains.&bull; I don&rsquo;t like what I&rsquo;m reading about Ken Linseman. I thought the Rat had cleaned up his biting and scratching act. Biting and scratching? Is this hockey we&rsquo;re talking about? I thought biting and scratching went out with gross misconducts for hair-pulling. I felt like throwing up in the press box. Anyway, maybe these latest charges against Linseman are just rivals reviving Linseman&rsquo;s nasty reputation, although those bites on Lee Fogolin&rsquo;s face looked real. Linseman is too good a player to have to resort to such tactics.&bull; I like Clark Gillies&rsquo; comeback and the story he tells about him struggling two years ago. &ldquo;One time,&rdquo; Gillies recalled, &ldquo;I kissed my kid before going to the game and said I would score a goal for her. My wife told her, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t hold your breath.&rsquo;&rdquo;&bull; Finally, I like seeing Kevin O&rsquo;Brien happy. O&rsquo;Brien is the former Colorado Rockies&rsquo; publicist who now works in the motorsports division of the St. Louis-based Fleischman-Hillard agency. O&rsquo;Brien spends most of his time on the road at Indy-car racing stops where he wins friends for rookie driver Roberto Guerrero and his sponsors.The inaugural Indy-car race at the Meadowlands last summer was a bittersweet nostalgic stop for O&rsquo;Brien. His Rockies are now the New Jersey Devils. O&rsquo;Brien could have been the Devils&rsquo; publicist, but he didn&rsquo;t want to move east. As anyone who worked with O&rsquo;Brien will tell you, if the rest of the Rockies&rsquo; organization had been as efficient as he was, the team would still be in Denver. And thriving. &#9632;

f0010-02

The Oilers May Be Brash, But So Was Broadway Joe

<div class="byline">BY BOB FACHET</div>WASHINGTON&mdash;The new, improved Bob Carpenter has all the attributes envisioned three years ago, when he became the first player to jump from an American high school into the National Hockey League. If critics found his first three seasons disappointing, no doubt they were living in a dream world inhabited only by Tom Barrasso.In his first nine games, Carpenter collected seven goals and six assists to lead the Washington Capitals in scoring. He had at least one point in eight of those games, despite shifting between left wing and center as dictated by injuries to teammates.Carpenter scored the seven goals in only 25 shots, for a 28 per cent success ratio that was more than double his accuracy figure of a year ago. Besides his patience and resulting production on offense, he was playing the other end of the ice as well.&ldquo;There have been only two periods where Bobby Carpenter has not played very well,&rdquo; said coach Bryan Murray. &ldquo;Beyond that, he has been outstanding. He&rsquo;s dominating situations, jumping in and helping his teammates, creating chances for himself and them. He&rsquo;s playing big and strong.&rdquo;Both Murray and Carpenter agree that time has been the major factor in Carpenter&rsquo;s improvement. He was 18 when he broke into the NHL, and while his goal-scoring figures of 32, 32 and 28 are hardly shabby, it took him a while to team the facts of hockey life at a level far above St. John&rsquo;s Prep in Massachusetts.<blockquote class="pullQuote">&lsquo;The Canada Cup helped me a lot, giving me confidence. Everyone was loose and I was playing with the best people.&rsquo;</blockquote>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s just a matter of experience,&rdquo; Carpenter said. &ldquo;I used to get about 300 shots and only 32 goals. You have to work on things like that, getting to know how much time you can take without losing the chance to shoot.&ldquo;The Canada Cup helped me a lot, giving me confidence. Everyone was loose and I was playing with the best people. It made me feel humble, but they treated you just like a regular person.&ldquo;The style we play, not going all out offensively, we don&rsquo;t have any 50-goal scorers. But playing with guys like Mike Gartner or Davey Christian, I get a lot of chances and we do need more scoring, so I hope that&rsquo;s a department I can fill.&rdquo;When Carpenter is a left winger, as he was in six of the Capitals&rsquo; first nine games, he generally has Christian as his center. When he moves into the middle, Gartner is usually on the right side. Where Carpenter once resisted placement on the right wing, he now enjoys the variety.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind playing left wing at all,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If somebody is hurt, I&rsquo;m the first to change. It gives me more ice time, it puts me more into the game, because moving to a different position makes me think more, and I like the responsibility.&rdquo;Murray shifted Carpenter to left wing when he replaced Gary Green as the Capitals&rsquo; coach, one month into Carpenter&rsquo;s inaugural NHL season. Washington started out 1-14 that year, and Carpenter was overwhelmed by the club&rsquo;s lack of success and the relentless demands of the media.&ldquo;It was difficult and I guess I didn&rsquo;t always handle it right,&rdquo; Carpenter said. &ldquo;At times, after a bad game, I wanted to be by myself and think about it, but people always were all over there. There&rsquo;d be five different guys and they&rsquo;d all ask the same questions. Then the next city there&rsquo;d be 10 more, asking the same thing.&ldquo;Usually, it had nothing to do with the game. It was always the same questions about how my father felt about me going to Washington, or whether my mother thought I should have gone to college. Questions about the game, okay. But about my family, I didn&rsquo;t like that.&rdquo;Despite his difficulties in adjusting to life in the NHL, Carpenter is convinced he made the right decision passing up college and the 1984 Olympics.&ldquo;Right now, if I&rsquo;d gone to college, I wouldn&rsquo;t be playing a major role with this team,&rdquo; Carpenter said. &ldquo;I feel this year will be a very good year, but without the three years under my belt I&rsquo;d probably be bouncing up and down like Gary Sampson.&ldquo;With this team we&rsquo;ve got, I wonder if I could even have made it. I&rsquo;d never have played this well at this age. I needed the experience and there were lessons I had to learn. You can&rsquo;t get NHL experience in college. I&rsquo;m just starting to get comfortable.&rdquo;After dipping to 28 goals a year, in large part because he played the first 20 games with a sore shoulder and scored only twice, Carpenter decided to play out his option this season and let his performance determine his future pay.&ldquo;I discussed it with (general manager) David (Poile), but we were so far off I didn&rsquo;t want to get involved in a lot of talk,&rdquo; Carpenter said. &ldquo;I signed to play out my option, rather than talk after training camp, or talk after 10 games, or have it as a distraction at all.&ldquo;The pressure is on me to perform well and I like it that way. Next summer maybe there will be a little pressure on him.&rdquo;NOTES&mdash;Center Bengt Gustafsson&rsquo;s right hamstring, first injured during the Canada Cup, was aggravated a second time in Calgary and he was not expected to return until after Christmas&hellip;The Capitals recalled center Paul Gardner from Binghamton and shipped left winger Andre Hidi to the Whalers&hellip;With Al Jensen hampered by a sore knee, Pat Riggin played eight of the first nine games in goal. &#9632;

It Was Only Matter Of Time For Carpenter

<div class="byline">BY GLENN COLE</div>MONTREAL&mdash;Serge Savard will be able to continue rebuilding the Montreal Canadiens.Ronald Corey, the Canadiens&rsquo; president, announced that Savard&rsquo;s employment with the team would be extended until 1988 and he would also get a raise.&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t ask for it,&rdquo; said Savard. &ldquo;Mr. Corey came to see me and asked me if I&rsquo;d like to extend the contract by two years. It was very hard to refuse. I really enjoy what I&rsquo;m doing and I accepted the offer. I didn&rsquo;t expect to get it, and I didn&rsquo;t go looking for it.&rdquo;&ldquo;As a player, the longest contract I signed was two years,&rdquo; Savard added. &ldquo;Now I have a four-year contract for the first time in my life and that doesn&rsquo;t bother me at all.&rdquo;The announcement of Savard&rsquo;s contract extension came just a few hours before the Canadiens defeated the Quebec Nordiques 4-2 for their second triumph over their provincial arch-rivals. Three nights later, the Canadiens overcame the New York Islanders 6-5, snapping a 0-5-2 winless streak against the Islanders which stretched back to Dec. 29, 1981.Savard is one of the few people in the National Hockey League not surprised by the Canadiens&rsquo; good start. They were 7-2-1 this year, compared to 4-6-0 after 10 games last season. The Canadiens have been a better team to watch, approaching the games more enthusiastically and aggressively.&ldquo;I think we have the finest defensemen in the league or pretty close to it,&rdquo; Savard noted. &ldquo;It is going to be that way for the next 10 or 12 years. We have to add some punch on our offense and we will be great contenders.&rdquo;It is unlikely that the Canadiens would be able to sacrifice one of their young defensemen&mdash;Chris Chelios, Tom Kurvers or Craig Ludwig&mdash;to find what is perceived to be a major need on offense. There isn&rsquo;t a game breaker among the forwards, and in the victories against the Nordiques and Islanders, the goals came from people such as Mark Hunter, Mike McPhee and Chris Nilan.With the team doing as well as it has since the beginning of the year, Savard is in no hurry to be knocking on the doors of the other general managers. While he knows what he wants, Savard is in a position to wait and let someone come to him to make a reasonable offer.Whatever Savard does is fine with the team president Corey.&ldquo;I wanted Serge to have this extension because we are delighted with the progress this organization has made since he took over,&rdquo; Corey said in a prepared statement.Corey added that the upper-level management people were equally as pleased with Savard&rsquo;s effort to put a competitive American hockey team in Sherbrooke and a solid Quebec Major Junior club in Verdun.Savard took over the managing director&rsquo;s job from Irving Grundman following the Canadiens&rsquo; elimination from the Stanley Cup playoffs in 1983. He has been willing to make trades to shore up the hockey club, although not all of them have been successful.In his tenure, Savard has dealt Keith Acton and Mark Napier to Minnesota for Bobby Smith, exiled Doug Wickenheiser, Greg Paslawski and Gilbert Delorme to St. Louis for Perry Turnbull and then moved Turnbull to Winnipeg this summer for Lucien DeBlois.Savard also sent goaltender Rick Wamsley to St. Louis for the Blues&rsquo; first choice (eighth overall) in last summer&rsquo;s entry draft which gave the Canadiens a chance to select Shayne Carson. Also moved out was goaltender Mark Holden, who went to the Winnipeg organization for Doug Soetaert, now the back-up to Steve Penney.&ldquo;Giving this contract to Serge is a vote of confidence,&rdquo; Corey concluded. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe that there is another man in hockey that can guide the Canadiens as well as he has done since returning to our organization. I want him to continue his work with peace of mind and satisfaction.&rdquo;IN PASSING&mdash;Defenseman Craig Ludwig returned to duty against Quebec, and just in time too. Rookie Petr Svoboda was knocked out of action for two weeks in Montreal&rsquo;s 6-5 loss at Pittsburgh when an official stepped on his right hand cutting the third, fourth and fifth fingers. The official was trying to break up Svoboda&rsquo;s fight with Pat Boutette&hellip;Tom Kurvers, who suffered a facial injury when struck in Quebec on Dec. 23, resumed skating with the Canadiens a week later. Ryan Walter suffered a concussion when hit cleanly by Andy Brickley late in the third period in the loss at Pittsburgh&hellip;Coach Jacques Lamaire benched Guy Lafleur for the second half of the third period against Quebec. There were no cries for Lafleur emanating from the stands and no great controversy this time&hellip;Kent Carlson, Mark Hunter, Chris Nilan, John Chabot and Bobby Smith served as goodwill ambassadors for the Canadiens with a visit to the Montreal Childrens&rsquo; Hospital on Halloween. Nilan and Chabot were the favorites among the young patients.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-011407/5542342-1-eng-US/f0012-012.jpg" title="f0012-01" width="586" height="920"><figcaption class="caption-body">Serge Savard has the Canadiens off to a much better start than this time last season.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Corey Gives Savard Extension On Contract

<div class="byline">Al Strachan</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-021174/5542373-1-eng-US/f0012-022.jpg" title="f0012-02" width="392" height="459"></div>FOR THE MOST part, hockey people admire and respect Roger Neilson. They say that he is innovative and intelligent&mdash;basically a good coach.There are a few detractors. Every public figure has them. In Neilson&rsquo;s case, those detractors say that he has occasionally exhibited difficulties in getting his strategies across to his players. There are even a couple of National Hockey League coaches, perhaps jealous of Neilson&rsquo;s reputation, who say that he is overrated. But I have never heard anyone, anywhere, say that Roger Neilson doesn&rsquo;t work hard. In fact, it is generally conceded that when Neilson was a head coach, he worked as hard as anyone in hockey.He worked so hard in Toronto that Maple Leaf owner Harold Ballard decided to test the limits of his dedication and sent a girl up to his hotel room during a road trip. But Neilson was working on future game plans and would have nothing to do with the girl.He worked so hard in Vancouver that he never once began a practice without having first gone through the films of the previous game and isolating an area that needed work. That&rsquo;s not as easy as it sounds. Games can finish late and practices can start early. Sometimes Neilson would watch a period or two after everyone else had left the arena, then get up at six the next morning to go back to the rink and watch the rest of the game.And when you&rsquo;re a coach, you can&rsquo;t just sit back idly, a cold beer at your side, and glance at the film from time to time. You have to watch closely, spot tendencies that might have gone unnoticed, make notes and devise remedies for flaws.But Neilson did all that in Vancouver, just as he did it in Buffalo and Los Angeles and Toronto.The difference between the Vancouver situation and the others is that in Vancouver, it paid off. Neilson got the Canucks to the Stanley Cup finals in 1982, a notable achievement when you consider that the Canucks had never even got as far as the semi-finals before&mdash;and haven&rsquo;t since.That&rsquo;s why it comes as something of a surprise that after all Neilson&rsquo;s hard work and his production of the only bright moment in the Canucks&rsquo; sorry history, the Vancouver management has forced Neilson to go to court to try to get the remainder of his salary.When he was fired last season, Neilson had another full year remaining on his contract. Having always been told that the Canucks were a class operation&mdash;a fact that remains generally true despite this one instance&mdash;Neilson felt sure that he would get his money with no further ado.He felt that up to that point, the Canucks had been fair with him and he, in turn, had tried to be fair with them.For instance, he had originally wanted a four-year contract. The team had offered three. As a compromise, Neilson accepted a four-year contract with a clause which allowed the team to terminate it with half-pay for the fourth year if they weren&rsquo;t satisfied.But the Canucks say that because Neilson went to Los Angeles Kings after being fired by the Canucks, they have no obligation to pay him for the duration of the contract.This is the point in dispute and one which we will not discuss here because the matter is now before the courts.But the specifics of the contract aside, there was little else that Neilson could do when the Kings made the offer other than accept. He honestly felt that he was to be given the general manager&rsquo;s postition once the season was over. He did not know at that time that Rogie Vachon had already signed a two-year contract as GM.But it is because he took the Los Angeles job that the Canucks say they have no obligation to pay off his contract.Now, Neilson is an assistant coach with the Chicago Black Hawks and caught in the middle of a battle with lawyers because his own lawyer lives in Ontario and he has to use a British Columbia lawyer to fight the Canucks in Vancouver.He deserves a better fate. &#9632;

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Neilson’s Hardest Chore May Take Place In Court

<div class="byline">BY BOB DONNELLY</div>QUEBEC CITY&mdash;It usually snows in Quebec City some time in early November, cooling off the days of Indian Summer and announcing the arrival of the ski season.For Quebec coach Michel Bergeron and general manager Maurice Filion, the cool days of early November were warmed up by some considerable heat resulting from criticism by Quebec fans.The fans had reason to be upset. Quebec went through a miserable week after bombing the Toronto Maple Leafs, 12-3. That week was highlighted by consecutive losses to arch-rival Montreal (42 and 3-1) and in between those two games the Nordiques also lost 5-2 to the New York Rangers and could do no better than a 2-2 draw with Toronto at the Colisee.<blockquote class="pullQuote">&lsquo;This is not the time to panic and we are not considering any major changes.&rsquo;</blockquote>&ldquo;This is not the time to panic, and we are not considering any major changes,&rdquo; said Filion, while at the same time talking seriously to at least three NHL teams. &ldquo;Last year we had a really rough time in November, and this year it seems to be happening in October. I hope that this is the end of it and that we can put it all behind us as soon as possible.&rdquo;Bergeron said that he had two goals set for October: one was to play .500 hockey in that month, and the other was not to let Montreal build up a lead in the Adams Division. Bergeron did not meet with much success, not with Montreal at the top of the Adams Division, and with Quebec winning only three times in their first 10 starts.&ldquo;We just have to keep working and take one game at a time,&rdquo; Bergeron said.Defenseman Randy Moller, a veteran at 21 and the best behind the blue line for the Nordiques along with rookie Bruce Bell, echoed his coach.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s difficult to understand why everyone is so quick to panic,&rdquo; said Moller. &ldquo;I know it is not the case with the players. We know what we have to do. Neither the fans nor the media can play for us or score the goals for us. We are confident and we know we can get it going. We are certainly a much better team than our record shows.&rdquo;The Nordiques did actually make one move, sending hard-working forward Louis Sleigher to Boston for Luc Dufour. Many Quebec fans, as well as Montreal coach Jacques Lemaire, were saying that Boston got the better of the deal. However, Filion refuted that.&ldquo;While we had nothing but the greatest respect for Sleigher, we got a younger player in Dufour (Dufour will be 22 in February and Sleigher was 26 last month), and we also got Boston&rsquo;s fourth-round pick in the draft next year,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We talked to our assistant coach Guy Lapointe who had played with Dufour and he recommended him.&rdquo;That fourth-round pick originally belonged to Pittsburgh, and unless Mario Lemieux can work wonders for the Penguins this year, it will be an early fourth-round choice. Many Quebec fans, however, are not looking that far ahead. They had come to accept Sleigher as a hard worker, out of the Boston mold so to speak, and they regretted his departure.The lack of success for Quebec through late October and early November was highlighted by a lack of scoring after the 12-3 romp in Toronto. The Nords managed just seven goals in their next four games, plus their power play was suffering.&ldquo;A couple of victories and we can turn it all around,&rdquo; said Bergeron, doing his best to stay positive. &ldquo;We are moving the puck well on our power play. I am trying different combinations. We are still working hard for the the most part and we have to be patient.&rdquo; &#9632;

Nords’ Start Has Fans Turning Up The Heat

<div class="byline">BY STAN FISCHLER</div>The National Hockey League may be involved in a revolutionary television &ldquo;first.&rdquo; BLUELINES has learned that the 1985 Stanley Cup finals conceivably could be shifted to a pay-TV tier in hot hockey markets in the United States. Should current plans gel, it would mark the first time a national pro-sports championship would be seen live on pay cable television. Although the USA Network is paying the NHL $4-million for its Game of the Week package this year, the league has retained the rights to sell the Cup finals to an ad-hoc pay cable network comprised of existing regional outlets. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a chance it will happen for this year&rsquo;s playoffs and certainly next year&rsquo;s,&rdquo; says the NHL&rsquo;s broadcasting boss, Joel Nixon. &ldquo;But we still have to do a lot of studying to see if there&rsquo;s enough interest.&rdquo; If the new TV deal works out, the USA Network would be obliged to black out some important hockey markets. But the NHL had that in mind when it worked out the deal with USA last summer. Nixon says he still must talk with the teams, networks and operators but sounds optimistic about the breakthrough. &ldquo;We (the NHL) will be the first people (in sports) to do this,&rdquo; he tells BLUELINES&hellip;NHL insiders see a battle in Minnesota between the Gund brothers, George and Gordon, owners of the North Stars, and the Met Center commission over subsidization&hellip;Beefs against the Flyers&rsquo; aggressive style are echoing through NHL corridors. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re returning to the old goon tactics,&rdquo; complains one league biggie, &ldquo;and the league should not tolerate it.&rdquo;&hellip;When the Bruins learned that Charlie Simmer&mdash;whose wife is a former Playboy centerfold&mdash;had been traded to the Bs, several Bruins were asked how they felt about the deal. One shrugged, &ldquo;About Charlie, what&rsquo;s the big deal. But I&rsquo;m very excited about his wife coming to Boston.&rdquo;Demoted Buffalo Sabre goalie, Tom Barrasso, was so miffed over a Sports Illustrated story in which he claims to have been misquoted that he&rsquo;s thought about suing the mag. SI&rsquo;s&nbsp;Jack Falla, who wrote the article in question, could not be contacted for comment&hellip;The new heavy involvement of Stroh&rsquo;s Brewery in league marketing has chagrined the folks at Anheuser-Busch, BLUELINES has learned&hellip;Designation of Bryan Trottier as the new president of the NHL Players&rsquo; Association startles one stickhandler who lauds the decision but says he never was told there was a vote. &ldquo;I had to read about it in the papers,&rdquo; he adds&hellip;Guy Lafleur remains the center of controversy in Montreal vis-a-vis ice time. The feeling in the province of Quebec remains that the Canadiens, no matter how grave the disenchantment with Lafleur might be, would never trade him for fear of PR repercussions&hellip;Comment from a Toronto network sports executive on the Maple Leafs and the media: &ldquo;No matter what the Leafs do&mdash;whether they&rsquo;re successful or whether they fail&mdash;the players consider themselves superstars just because they are hockey players, playing in Toronto.&rdquo;&hellip;Former Islander Wayne Merrick has gone into business and also runs a racquetball club on Long Island&hellip;Ex-Flyer Ted Harris is coaching the hockey club at the University of Pennsylvania&hellip;Onetime Sabre Rick Martin sounds as angry at management as he did when he left the NHL, particularly when it comes to his ex-boss Scott Bowman. &ldquo;Scotty,&rdquo; snaps Martin, &ldquo;is the only coach I know who would have made Mike Bossy a 20-goal scorer.&rdquo;Oddity about Wayne Gretzky&rsquo;s Canon camera commercial being shown all over the States is that The Great One wears an Oiler uniform but his foes wear generic jerseys. Turns out the ad people wanted the opponents to be either Rangers or Black Hawks but were turned down because those clubs objected to having Gretzky score so many goals (on camera) against them&hellip;Ref supervisor Matt Pavelich tells BLUELINES the officials are calling more penalties away from the play&hellip;Atlanta Flames&rsquo; Fan Club not only is flourishing but publishes a monthly newsletter, &ldquo;Fireline&rdquo;. The next NHL fan club convention will be held next summer in Oakland, hosted by the Seals&rsquo; Fan Club next summer&hellip;Flame defenseman Paul Baxter writes a regular column for the Calgary Sun. So far, it&rsquo;s been a lot softer in tone than Baxter&rsquo;s bodychecks.Analyzing his choice of Bill LaForge as coach, Canuck general manager Harry Neale says he had several possibilities, including Mike Keenan and Ron Smith. &ldquo;Unfortunately for Smitty, I wanted new blood,&rdquo; Neale tells BLUELINES. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t want a retread.&rdquo; As for the Charlie Simmer to Boston deal, Neale opines, &ldquo;It might be a good deal for the Kings in the future but right now it helps the Canucks. L.A. traded 48 goals for a 15th-to-21st draft pick. As a GM, Neale says he sympathizes what his King colleague, Rogie Vachon, went through having a disgruntled Simmer on his hands. Says Neale: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s hard enough to win games with players who want to be on your team.&rdquo;&hellip;Asked how he plans to stop the Oilers, LaForge replies, &ldquo;Go to church! A lot!&rdquo; LaForge has borrowed a page from the Fred Shero coaching manual. &ldquo;My plan,&rdquo; he tells BLUELINES, &ldquo;is to beat the opposition for the puck and get there in ill humor.&rdquo; LaForge says the major difference between junior and NHL hockey is the speed with which the pros make the &ldquo;transition from defense to offense&rdquo;&hellip;Jim Taylor, the Vancouver Province columnist who co-authored Wayne Gretzky&rsquo;s book with Walter Gretzky, was asked how the book got started. To that, Taylor chuckled, &ldquo;In a manger.&rdquo;.&hellip;A Philadelphia-based rumor suggests that Flyer aide Ted Sator would be a potential successor to Bill Mahoney should North Star GM Lou Nanne give Mahoney the hook. &#9632;

BLUELINES

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-011387/5542466-1-eng-US/f0014-012.jpg" title="f0014-01" width="568" height="579"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-021080/5542459-1-eng-US/f0014-022.jpg" title="f0014-02" width="556" height="579"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-03756/5542452-1-eng-US/f0014-032.jpg" title="f0014-03" width="647" height="584"></div> &#9632;

f0014-01

BEAVER TALES

<div class="byline">BY RICH CHERE</div>EAST RUTHERFORD&mdash;The hats, along with a few stray Halloween masks, came sailing onto the Meadowlands Arena ice, but Uli Hiemer did not bother to pick up any souvenirs of his first National Hockey League hat trick. Perhaps he was too busy celebrating, or maybe he wasn&rsquo;t used to it.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not a tradition in Germany,&rdquo; explained the New Jersey Devils&rsquo; 22-year-old defenseman. &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t have hats like this.&rdquo;A 7-6 loss to the Patrick Division-rival Pittsburgh Penguins was not an evening Hiemer wanted to remember, especially since it marked New Jersey&rsquo;s third straight loss. However, it was the first real taste the Devils got of the West German defenseman they had drafted three years ago while the club was still in Colorado.&ldquo;One guy did surface tonight&mdash;Uli Hiemer,&rdquo; said Devil coach Doug Carpenter, who along with general manager Max McNab has been a Hiemer supporter from the first day of camp. &ldquo;One thing Uli Hiemer does well is shoot the puck, and that was evident. He overpowered the goalie (Pittsburgh&rsquo;s Denis Herron) on all three of his goals.&rdquo;They were the first three goals of Hiemer&rsquo;s brief, eight-game NHL career. Two came on power-play slap shots from the left point, and the third came at even strength, capping a three-goal comeback by New Jersey in the final period which fell short.&ldquo;I would feel better if we did not lose,&rdquo; admitted Hiemer.More than anything, Hiemer&rsquo;s performance was a confidence builder. The Fussen, West Germany, native is still trying to adjust to the larger North American rinks and the gruelling NHL schedule. As the first West German to play in the NHL, he is also battling the strain of culture shock.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re delighted with the progress Uli is making,&rdquo; offered McNab. &ldquo;Coming from West Germany to a new country, playing a different kind of hockey in the NHL is a big adjustment for him. Uli is very conscientious, he wants to do well, help the team and not hurt it. There&rsquo;s a certain amount of tension for him. I hope this (three goals) helps him relax.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not easy for Uli. He doesn&rsquo;t know the players over here yet. He never saw most of the players. He has to get to know the inside-outside moves they use, the dekes they make, faking a shot, making a pass, all the little tricks. It takes time.&rdquo;His biggest obstacle has been fatigue. Carpenter has noticed a drop in Hiemer&rsquo;s effectiveness when he plays the night after a game. But can the Devils wait out Hiemer&rsquo;s adjustment to the wear and tear of the NHL schedule?&ldquo;We have no choice,&rdquo; said Carpenter. &ldquo;We have to. That&rsquo;s why we have eight defensemen.&rdquo;No question this is a different defensive corps than the past few seasons. With Hiemer, Dave Pichette and Bruce Driver, New Jersey defensemen are moving the puck with success. With any luck they&rsquo;d also be filling the net with pucks. In the loss to Pittsburgh, Hiemer, Pichette and Joe Cirella combined for five goals and two assists.&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t anticipate any defensemen getting three goals, but we know the type of player Uli Hiemer is,&rdquo; said Carpenter. &ldquo;He hadn&rsquo;t shown his potential up to that point.&rdquo;Hiemer was Colorado&rsquo;s third-round draft selection in 1981, but remained in his homeland and West Germany&rsquo;s Elite League until now. Unlike other Europeans (Tapio Levo comes to mind), Hiemer has made an effort to assimilate into his new surroundings. Before he even made the team in training camp he was promoting the Devils back home.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-04518/5542497-1-eng-US/f0014-042.jpg" title="f0014-04" width="588" height="824"><figcaption class="caption-body">Devil rookie Uli Hiemer wasn&rsquo;t used to having hats thrown his way after scoring three goals.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;My friends, they&rsquo;ve got New Jersey Devils bumper stickers,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;B.M.W.&rsquo;s, Volkswagens, they all put them on their cars. Even my father, he&rsquo;s got one.&rdquo;Before playing for West Germany in the Canada Cup series, Hiemer had made only three brief visits to North America. But his father, a guest house proprietor, helped him learn to skate by age eight and his sights were always set on the NHL. Hiemer was a three-time member of the West German national junior team (1979-82) and a four-year member of the country&rsquo;s national team before gaining worldwide attention in the 1984 Olympics. He had hoped to key West Germany in Canada Cup play before suffering a fractured nose early in that series.&ldquo;Playing in the NHL was a dream since I was a kid,&rdquo; said Hiemer. &ldquo;This league is called the best in the world. I could have made a good living staying in West Germany, but if I had done that for 10 years I think I would have been bored. This is more challenging, a new lifestyle, another country.&rdquo;HOT STUFF&mdash;Uli Hiemer is the third rookie in franchise history to score three goals in one game. Paul Gardner and Barry Beck both did it back in 1977 when the Devils were the Colorado Rockies&hellip;Veteran defenseman Mike Kitchen cleared waivers and was assigned to Maine (AHL), but spent a week at his parents&rsquo; home in suburban Toronto to settle personal affairs&hellip;Mitch Wilson (right knee ligaments) is progressing slowly&hellip;Tim Higgins set a Devil record by scoring a goal in four straight games&hellip;Chico Resch equalled a franchise mark for three straight victories. &#9632;

f0014-04

Hats Off To Devil Rookie For Scoring Three Goals

<div class="byline">BY DICK CHUBEY</div>EDMONTON&mdash;Shots! The variety of which there is little shortage.Shots come out of firearms, in shooter glasses, from cutting tongues&hellip;But, the shot-warnings causing concern in certain comers of the Edmonton Oilers&rsquo; forecast are strictly physical. The totals have been staggering&mdash;47 against in a 3-3 tie with Washington, 46 in a 6-4 triumph over Calgary, 39 in a 7-4 win in Winnipeg and 47 as the Oilers outlasted the North Stars 7-5 in Minnesota.Can&rsquo;t one just hear the verbal snickering from disrespectful eastern climes around the National Hockey League?The Oilers undoubtedly could care less, but there was a frightening Realistic side&hellip;How long were they expected to remain unbeaten if this barrage was to continue? Or, more significantly, how long were goalies Andy Moog and Grant Fuhr expected to continue holding up mentally and physically under the strain?Fuhr indicated he didn&rsquo;t mind the heavy workload for the time being, but cautioned there could be harmful long-term effects.&ldquo;I enjoy it actually&mdash;the more work, the sharper you stay,&rdquo; said the 22-year-old. &ldquo;But, if it was to happen all year, eventually you&rsquo;ll tire out. Forty-five shots may be good for a night&rsquo;s work, but do it against the (New York) Islanders and they might have a tendency to bury you.&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t want to end up having an off night, or you&rsquo;re in big trouble. You could wind up with nine or 10 against. So, until we cut the shots down, you can&rsquo;t have an off-night.&rdquo;Following an Oct. 24, 3-3 deadlock with the Capitals, Moog confessed the single-night&rsquo;s activity was his most hectic of the young campaign. He mentioned when the Caps finally figured in the scoring late in the second period, momentum swung in their direction and couldn&rsquo;t be regained by the Oilers.The following day, Moog pulled in his horns.&ldquo;A goalie who worries about his average is a selfish player,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t worry about that when the object is to win the game. This team has a reputation of not giving up a lot of shots when we play the contending teams. Against Boston, what did I have? Twenty shots? The guys checked them into the ground.&rdquo;The Caps most certainly rate as one of the powers that be around the NHL.&ldquo;There were two types of shots&mdash;the shots we let them take and the shots they earned,&rdquo; Moog said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s obvious we let them have the easy ones, the tough ones they earned.&rdquo;According to the Oilers&rsquo; shot chart, 17 of Washington&rsquo;s 47 shots were labelled as &ldquo;quality.&rdquo;&ldquo;Everybody&rsquo;s blowing this shots thing way out of proportion,&rdquo; nonchalantly shrugged assistant coach John Muckier. &ldquo;The only game in which there were a lot of great shots was in Minnesota (Oct. 18). That&rsquo;s when we probably should have lost the game. Not probably, we should have lost it. Grant won it for us.&ldquo;But the Winnipeg game was never in question, neither was the Calgary game. Against Washington, we buggered up our flow by taking a lot of penalties.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never seen our goaltenders so happy. They&rsquo;re like pigs in mud. They&rsquo;ve had more protection this year than in the past, because of the low quality of shots. And, when they have been tested, they&rsquo;ve come up big.&rdquo;The chaps up front realize they must consider the well-being of the goalers.&ldquo;They&rsquo;re rotating now but, in the long run, they&rsquo;re going to get tired,&rdquo; said captain Wayne Gretzky. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got to give them a couple of nights off.&rdquo;&ldquo;There are times,&rdquo; added Dave Hunter, &ldquo;when we&rsquo;ve got to dump the puck out instead of trying to carry it out. In the other team&rsquo;s zone, we&rsquo;ve got to stay on top of them, forecheck them. When we have the puck, we don&rsquo;t have to worry about it.&rdquo;Left winger Mike Krushelnyski, who played for Boston last season, said the Oilers stress offense while the Bruins preached defense.&ldquo;Here we attack, there you waited for a mistake,&rdquo; said Krushelnyski, whose comment is backed up by the fact the Bruins allowed 550 less shots (2,642-to-2,094) last season. &ldquo;In Boston, if a shot came from the point, Cheesie (coach Gerry Cheevers) would be all over the winger who allowed it.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s tough to avoid giving up shots, but it is something we have to work on. But, as long as we&rsquo;re winning, things can&rsquo;t be that bad?&rdquo; &#9632;

Black Rubber Rains Down On Oiler Goalies

<div class="byline">BY ERIC DUHATSCHEK</div>CALGARY&mdash;Even in the dark ages, the Calgary Flames always had a successful power play.Sometimes, it was the only thing they had.In the early days, when the Flames annually finished in the middle of the National Hockey League pack. Guy Chouinard&rsquo;s passes and Eric Vail&rsquo;s shooting helped the Flames to some exceptional results in the power-play statistics.Kent Nilsson was a part of all the old power plays too. but after participating in the newest edition of the team&rsquo;s power play, he has concluded that this is the most powerful of all.&ldquo;Other years, we had a good power play because of the talent,&rdquo; said Nilsson. &ldquo;Now we know exactly what we want to do with the puck. If they play one way, four-on-three, then we play another way. We always know what we&rsquo;re doing.&rdquo;Nilsson&rsquo;s words came on the heels of another exceptional power-play performance in a game against Washington Capitals on Oct. 25. The Flames clicked three times with the man advantage, marking the fourth time in six games that they had scored three or more power-play goals.Heading into the rematch with the Capitals on Oct. 31, the Flames had the No. 1 power play in the league. But the Caps clamped down on Calgary and shut them out in 3-2 win.Constants in this year&rsquo;s power play are Nilsson at the left point and second-year defenseman Allan Maclnnis on the right side. Paul Reinhart, normally a defenseman, plays up front with the man advantage. Four of Reinhart&rsquo;s first six goals came from the forward position on the power play.What all the Flames&rsquo; power-play specialists have in common is good puckhandling skills. All except for Nilsson. His puck-handling skills are exceptional.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m giving him lots of ice time,&rdquo; said coach Bob Johnson. &ldquo;With all the players we have out, I have to.&rdquo;Essentially, the Flames&rsquo; success with the man advantage can be traced to just before the halfway mark of last season.Mired in 18th place in the power-play stats and unable to replace the departed Chouinard with anyone on their major-league roster, the Flames promoted Maclnnis from the minors.Maclnnis, who possesses one of the hardest shots in the league, began as a power-play specialist, but gradually worked his way into a regular shift. In 51 games, he scored 45 points and added another 14 in 11 playoff games.In the early season, Maclnnis and Nilsson both flitted in and out of the top 10 in scoring, mostly because of their power-play prowess.In Johnson&rsquo;s mind, the power play must get work every day to stay sharp. Not only do the Flames work the standard five-on-four power play, they practise five-on-three and four-on-three so they&rsquo;re ready for anything.Against the Capitals, the Flames scored twice with the rare four-on-three situation.&ldquo;Sometimes you get two like that in one night,&rdquo; said Nilsson. &ldquo;Then you may not get it again for the next 10 games. The thing is, everybody knows what they&rsquo;re supposed to do. On the first power play, (Haken) Loob didn&rsquo;t have to skate so they put (Colin) Patterson in there. He knew what to do and he scored a goal.&rdquo;The win over the Capitals also put the Flames into the NHL record book. It was the 231st game in a row in which the Flames had not been shut out. The last time they were blanked was on Nov. 10, 1981 when they lost 7-0 to Mike Liut and the St. Louis Blues.In the midst of all this, the Flames have been operating without Lanny McDonald and Doug Risebrough, their co-captains and team-leaders.Risebrough went from the injured list in the exhibition season to the suspended list and back to the injured list with tendonitis in his groin area. It is not clear when he would be able to return.Risebrough compared the injury to a baseball pitcher with a sore arm.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not painful because they told me to lay off when I experience any pain.&rdquo; said Risebrough. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting paranoid about the thing because I don&rsquo;t know what to do. Everytime it starts to hurt, I shut it down.&rdquo;As for McDonald, he underwent a catscan that finally allowed doctors to diagnose the mysterious ailment that kept him out of all but one of the Flames&rsquo; first eight games. He has a slight muscle tear in the stomach.&ldquo;It was bleeding inside, but it&rsquo;s healing.&rdquo; said McDonald. &ldquo;Now, it&rsquo;s just a matter of not pulling it again. &ldquo;Coach Bob Johnson suggested mid-November might be a realistic date for Mcdonald&rsquo;s return. Johnson also expected center Steve Bozek, out with torn ligaments in his baby finger, to be back by then.However, Jim Jackson broke his ankle in an Oct. 31 game in Washington and will be out a minumum of six weeks. &#9632;

Nilsson Gives Star Rating To Hot Flame Power Play

<div class="byline">BY VARTAN KUPELIAN</div>DETROIT&mdash;The Detroit Red Wings, in need of a laugh to help smooth a bumpy start, got it. compliments of Scott Bowman.The Wings scored three empty-net goals in a 43-second span of the final minute to turn a 4-3 lead into a 7-3 victory over Bowman&rsquo;s Buffalo Sabres at Joe Louis Arena on Oct. 26.Danny Gare, a former captain of the Sabres, scored two of the empty-net goals and cracked, &ldquo;Wish we had more time.&rdquo;&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve ever seen that happen,&rdquo; said John Ogrodnick, who also scored twice for the Wings&mdash;with a goaltender still guarding the Buffalo net.Bowman pulled his goalie, Tom Barrasso. with 69 seconds left and kept him out after Bob Manno scored. Five seconds later, Gare scored into the empty net&hellip;and Bowman still kept his goalie on the bench.So Gare scored again.The Wings were socked 6-1 in Toronto two nights earlier and the painful memory of that defeat lingered.&ldquo;We took a second look at ourselves after that one,&rdquo; Gare said. &ldquo;It was really a dismal night.&rdquo;In more ways than one.Darryl Sittler, playing in only his fourth game with the Wings, suffered a fractured cheekbone when he was checked by Toronto defenseman Jim Korn and went head-first into the boards. He underwent surgery the next day and returned to Detroit in time for the Buffalo game.Wing coach Nick Polano charged Korn with deliberatley trying to injure Sittler. The Wings filed a formal protest with the league, labelling Korn&rsquo;s actions as &ldquo;a vicious attack.&rdquo; A similar protest last season resulted in a three-game suspension to Chicago&rsquo;s Behn Wilson who had high-sticked Steve Yzerman. Korn, similar to Wilson, was not penalized by the referee.On his return to Detroit, Sittler, the left side of his face discolored and swollen, said, &ldquo;I feel good but I don&rsquo;t look too good.&rdquo;Sittler retaliated by punching Korn and was assessed a minor penalty for roughing.&ldquo;I know it was deliberate,&rdquo; Sittler said of Korn&rsquo;s actions. &ldquo;Whether the check was clean or not, I know it was deliberate because he kept pressure on my head all the way down through until I hit the boards. I felt my jaw snap and my cheek snap. It felt like my eye was out of its socket.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether it (the retaliatory punch) was out of frustration or anger or what but I knew the side of my face was caved in. I told him he&rsquo;d broken my jaw.&rdquo;Sittier is under strict orders from doctors &ldquo;to do nothing at all for a few weeks,&rdquo; and he&rsquo;ll be out of action indefinitely.In their next start, in Pittsburgh, the Wings lost their fifth straight on the road, 4-3. They had only one line going against the Penguins and it wasn&rsquo;t enough. Ron Duguay scored twice for Detroit, linemate Ogrodnick had the other goal and their center, Steve Yzerman, assisted on all three. Duguay&rsquo;s second goal pulled the Wings to within a goal with 3:34 left but they couldn&rsquo;t get the equalizer. The most disconcerting thing for Polano is that it was an opportunity squandered. The Wings were 3-0 last season against Pittsburgh, and the Penguins again figure to be a team they must handle.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s tougher to get a point,&rdquo; Polano said. &ldquo;Teams all through the league have fewer weaknesses.&rdquo;But the Wings have sprung a leak or two&mdash;especially on offense. &#9632;

Wings Enjoy Good Laugh, But It Doesn’t Last Long

<div class="byline">BY RON COBB</div>Louisville HockeyLouisville HockeyST. LOUIS&mdash;As of Nov. 2, St. Louis center Bernie Federko had scored at least one point in all nine of the Blues&rsquo; games this season.His streak was worth a note at the end of a newspaper story, but it didn&rsquo;t seem such a big deal. Federko&rsquo;s scoring consistency is something that you take for granted.With nine assists in nine games, Federko moved into a tie with Syl Apps for 49th place on the all-time assist list. With 13 points, he moved up to 55th place in all-time scoring.At 28, Federko hopes to reach two milestones&mdash;1,000 points and 750 assists&mdash;before retiring. Heading into this season, Federko had 640 points, including 414 assists.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-011177/5542576-1-eng-US/f0016-012.jpg" title="f0016-01" width="588" height="820"><figcaption class="caption-body">The Blues&rsquo; Bernie Federko has his sights set on milestones for points and assists.</figcaption></div>Federko is gradually bypassing some impressive names in the record book. The unfortunate thing is that his accomplishments often go unnoticed.As Federko put it, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m in the record book, but who reads the record book?&rdquo;Recognition does not come easily for a player on a low-profile team such as the Blues.&ldquo;It is disheartening when you go back to Canada in the summer and people don&rsquo;t even know who the St. Louis Blues are,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t know where we&rsquo;ve finished or what we did. It&rsquo;s like your playing in another league.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t consider myself a flashy player. I just get the job done. When players like (Wayne) Gretzky and (Marcel) Dionne are skating, they look like they&rsquo;re flying. They have great moves, and they&rsquo;re crowd pleasers. I&rsquo;ve never been like that.&ldquo;But we just don&rsquo;t get the national exposure that teams in New York, Toronto, Montreal and Canada, in general, get.&rdquo;Federko has chalked up points so steadily that he is ranked 10th all-time in both points per game and assists per game. In a city such as New York, he wouldn&rsquo;t have been able to climb those lists so quietly.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s great when you&rsquo;re playing well to get all that attention,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But there comes a time when you&rsquo;re going to play bad.&ldquo;I really haven&rsquo;t had a bad season yet&mdash;touch wood&mdash;so it probably would have been really good to play one of those media centers because of all the exposure. But with every good comes a bad. They can bury you when you start going through rough times.&rdquo;Federko has been overlooked more often than he&rsquo;s been rewarded. He was a coach&rsquo;s addition to the 1980 and &rsquo;81 Campbell Conference All-Star teams, but he hasn&rsquo;t made the squad since. Last season, when he set a club record with 107 points and was ranked in the top 10 in league scoring virtually all season, he was awarded neither an all-star berth, nor an invitation to try out for the Canadian team in the Canada Cup.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what they look for,&rdquo; Federko said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s one man doing the picking and everybody has a different opinion. But there are a lot of great centers in this league, so I can&rsquo;t feel bad about being picked behind guys like Gretzky and Dionne.&ldquo;I was disappointed that I didn&rsquo;t even get a chance to try out for the Canada Cup, but I can&rsquo;t say that (Glen) Sather picked a bad team. After all, they won it.&ldquo;He had his reasons for not picking me. I don&rsquo;t know what they are, but you learn to live with it. I feel I&rsquo;ve had a lot of good years. Obviously, some people don&rsquo;t feel that way.&rdquo;Federko knows that when criticism is directed his way, it is usually based on defense.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never been given a chance to play in defensive situations, so how do they know?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;ve started to get more of an opportunity to play the whole game and not just in offensive situations. I&rsquo;d like to prove that I&rsquo;m a good, all-around player.&rdquo;BLUENOTES&mdash;Defenseman Brian Benning, St. Louis&rsquo; first pick (26th overall) in the June entry draft, was sent to Kamloops of the Western League after playing in three games with the Blues. The feeling in the front office was that he wasn&rsquo;t strong enough now to play in the National Hockey League&hellip;A goal by left winger Brian Sutter at 1:08 of overtime gave the Blues a 6-5 victory over Toronto on Oct. 31 and snapped a three-game losing streak. The overtime goal was Sutter&rsquo;s second in two seasons&hellip;Center Doug Gilmour and right winger Joe Mullen had played in 87 consecutive games until they were sidelined for a game Oct. 27 against Chicago. &#9632;

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Recognition Eludes Blues’ Big Man

<div class="byline">BY RICK SADOWSKI</div>LOS ANGELES&mdash;Finally, two and a half weeks and 10 games into the season, Pat Quinn and his Los Angeles Kings had reason to celebrate.After getting off to a 0-8-3 start&mdash;the worst in the club&rsquo;s inglorious history&mdash;victory No. 1 for the Kings and their new coach was discovered in Winnipeg.&ldquo;Hopefully,&rdquo; Quinn said, his fingers crossed, &ldquo;we can build from this.&rdquo; It was a big win for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the fact the Kings missed the playoffs a year ago mainly because they found it impossible to beat the Jets, losing five and tying three.The Kings managed to beat Winnipeg three times during the pre-season, however, and now they had proved they were capable of doing it when it counted.&ldquo;The Jets have a good-skating, hardworking team,&rdquo; said center Doug Smith, who had a goal and an assist in the 5-3 victory, &ldquo;but I couldn&rsquo;t see any reason why we couldn&rsquo;t beat them.&rdquo;And now that they have?&ldquo;It&rsquo;s such a good feeling, one I hope none of us will forget,&rdquo; Smith said. &ldquo;Right now the feeling is, &lsquo;Let&rsquo;s stay out of the cellar for the rest of the year.&rsquo;&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no reason why we can&rsquo;t get third place&hellip;and hold it.&rdquo;Such is life in the Smythe Division where just about every position except first and second (those two are reserved for Edmonton and Calgary) is up for grabs.For the 21-year-old Smith, whom Quinn was playing regularly, there&rsquo;s been a change for the better in his play.Skating on a line with J.P. Kelly and rookie Phil Sykes&mdash;Dave Taylor had been at right wing before being moved back with old sidekick, Marcel Dionne&mdash;Smith started to find the form which made him a second-round pick overall in 1981.&ldquo;This is probably the most promising point in my career as far as the future goes,&rdquo; said Smith, who had asked to be traded twice just a year ago when his lack of playing time frustrated him so much.&ldquo;I came to camp with the feeling that, if I wasn&rsquo;t going to be traded, I was going to work hard for a spot. I had a good camp, he (Quinn) saw that, and he&rsquo;s given me everything I&rsquo;ve gotten so far.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a two-way street, I know nothing&rsquo;s for free. He feels he deserves a good effort and he expects you to work hard, and that isn&rsquo;t much to ask. I&rsquo;m just happy to be playing and, hopefully, I&rsquo;ll be productive.&rdquo;KING NOTEBOOK&mdash;Coach Pat Quinn was juggling his lines a bit following the trade of Charlie Simmer to Boston, but he&rsquo;d just as soon &ldquo;everybody learns how to play with everybody&rdquo; anyway. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s how it was when I was in Philadelphia,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Check out the teams which have won Stanley Cups the last several years and you&rsquo;ll find the same thing. Too often one guy gets hurt and the other two wind up being ineffective because they haven&rsquo;t played with anybody else.&rdquo;&hellip;Three days before the victory in Winnipeg, the Kings dropped an 8-2 decision in Edmonton, after which Quinn said, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not making the elementary defensive plays. We could put a board in front of the net and it wouldn&rsquo;t make any difference.&rdquo;&hellip;Quinn was impressed with the play of No. 1 draft pick Craig Redmond, who had the reputation of being an offensive defenseman but hadn&rsquo;t scored his first NHL point 10 games into the season. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s concentrating on his defensive game,&rdquo; Quinn said. &ldquo;The rest will come.&rdquo;&hellip;Marcel Dionne became the seventh player to reach the 800 mark for career assists and needed 12 more to tie John Bucyk (813) for sixth place on the all-time list. He needed 15 goals to tie Bobby Hull (810) for third on that list. &#9632;

Here’s One Reason For Kings To Celebrate

<h2>NATIONAL LEAGUE</h2>BOSTON&mdash;Greg Johnston, LW, returned to Toronto Marlboros of OHL. Mike Bloski, G, recalled from Hershey of AHL and reassigned to Mohawk Valley of ACHL.BUFFALO&mdash;Tom Barrasso, G, and Jim Wiemer, D, recalled from Rochester. Timo Jutila, D, sent down to Rochester.CALGARY&mdash;Jim Jackson, LW, out indefinitely with a broken ankle.MINNESOTA&mdash;Paul Holmgren, RW, suspended for 10 games for hitting butt-ending. Tom McCarthy, LW, back from injury list.MONTREAL&mdash;Craig Ludwig, D, and Mario Tremblay, RW, back from injury list. Petr Svoboda, D, sidelined for two weeks with cut hand. Ryan Walter, LW, out of action with a concussion.NEW JERSEY&mdash;Mike Kitchen, D, assigned to Maine of AHL.NY ISLANDERS&mdash;Gord Lane, D, activated from retirement list and inserted into lineup. Roger Kortko, C, returned to Springfield of AHL.NY RANGERS&mdash;Barry Beck, D, sidelined indefinitely. Mike Allison, C, out of action with back injury.PITTSBURGH&mdash;Norm Schmidt, D, sent to Baltimore of AHL. Rick Kehoe, RW, sidelined indefinitely with circulatory problem. Dave Hannnan, C, recalled from Baltimore as replacement for Roger Belanger, C, who is out with knee injury.QUEBEC&mdash;Dave Shaw, D, recalled from Fredericton of AHL.ST. LOUIS&mdash;Brian Benning, D, returned to Kamloops Oilers of WHL.VANCOUVER&mdash;Andy Schliebener, D, and Dave Morrison, RW, recalled from Fredericton of AHL. Peter McNab, C, and Petri Skriko, RW, back from injury list. Richard Brodeur, G, assigned to Frederiction. Tony Tanti, RW, sidelined for two to three weeks with strained knee ligaments.WASHINGTON&mdash;Andre Hidi, LW, sent to Hershey of Binghamton of AHL. Peter Sidorkiewicz, G, and Ed Kastelic, C, recalled from Binghamton and reassigned to Fort Wayne of IHL. Bengt Gustafsson, LW, out indefinitely after reinjuring hamstring. &#9632;

PLAYER TRANSACTIONS

<div class="byline">BY TONY GALLAGHER</div>VANCOUVER&mdash;It wasn&rsquo;t anywhere nearly as serious as the traditional vote of confidence, but Arthur Griffiths did come out in support of Harry Neale and Bill LaForge, the general manager and coach, respectively, of the Vancouver Canucks.Griffiths, the assistant to the chairman of the Vancouver hockey club, said with considerable justification that injuries were the reason for the Canucks&rsquo; woeful beginning, and that it would be grossly unfair to judge anybody under the present circumstances.&ldquo;If we were healthy and had a record like this, we would be very concerned,&rdquo; Griffiths said. &ldquo;But with so many injuries, we really don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s going to happen next.&rdquo;The latest to fall were three players in an Oct. 28 game with the Washington Capitals. The most serious casualty was the club&rsquo;s top goal scorer, right winger Tony Tanti. The Maltese Falcon, as he is referred to, suffered strained knee ligaments when hit by Bobby Carpenter and is lost to the team for at least two weeks. It was a cruel blow to a lineup already ravaged with hurts. Other injured players included Doug Halward and J. J. Daig-neault, though these mishaps were far less serious. Daigneault twisted his ankle instead of his knee for a change.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had six signifcant knee injuries in seven days,&rdquo; said Canuck medical trainer Larry Ashley. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never seen a run quite like it. They have all been injuries which are serious, and many very serious. (Jiri) Bubla, (Peter) McNab and Tanti all had the same problem, while Taylor Hall and (Cam) Neely were much worse. Counting (Thomas) Gradin&rsquo;s bruised knee, which caused him to miss one game and be slowed down in a couple of others, it makes it six knees in 10 days. It&rsquo;s enough to make a man take up drinking.&rdquo;After a 7-0 shelling in Edmonton Oct. 30, LaForge still had his humor intact.&ldquo;The Vancouver Canucks are going to make one of the biggest trades in the NHL some time next week,&rdquo; said LaForge. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re getting six guys for a doctor.&rdquo;LaForge referred to the fact many of the Canucks will be returning in fairly short order. Only Darcy Rota (neck surgery) is being delayed and Hall is through for the season after undergoing surgery for tom knee ligaments.The general hospital scene hasn&rsquo;t thrilled Neale much, but he&rsquo;s getting a little fed up with using it as an excuse.&ldquo;The injuries have been a major factor in our slow start, but I think some of our guys have been sulking a little bit that they have to go out there without a regular lineup and try to win some games,&rdquo; Neale said. &ldquo;Like Stan Smyl did against Washington, we are looking for a couple of our more experienced players to come out and take over the leadership.&rdquo;Given the woes, Vancouver recalled defenseman Andy Schliebener and Neil Belland along with forward Dave Morrison from Fredericton of the American League. But Belland couldn&rsquo;t report because of an injured hand.Neale and LaForge, meanwhile, can be thankful the Griffiths family is understanding, particularly in light of the displeasure expressed by the fans at the Pacific Coliseum.&ldquo;We made our decision on the general manager and the coach and that the decision is for the long term,&rdquo; said Griffiths. &ldquo;We are not going to let this interfere with our long-range plans.&rdquo;The club did get some bright news. Finnish winger Petri Skriko had the cast removed from his fractured thumb and has been able to return to the lineup. &#9632;

Neale, LaForge Given Vote Of Confidence

<div class="byline">BY PERRY LEFKO</div>TORONTO&mdash;The Toronto Maple Leafs can run but they cannot hide from the fact they have deficiencies which will surface no matter whey they play.The Leafs, who started off the season with two wins and had everybody believing that they had shrugged off last season&rsquo;s lethargy, fell back into their same bad habits and had only one win and a tie in a nine-game stretch.At times they have shown they can be very good, only to negate that by being very bad.In a word, they have been inconsistent.<blockquote class="pullQuote">The Leafs had hoped to find happiness on the road, but they found no solace there.</blockquote>But if they feel the plight of the team is in direct proportion to the pressure of playing at home, then they&rsquo;ve cancelled that notion with a similar lacklustre performance on the road.Before leaving on a journey which would see them make stops in St. Louis, Los Angeles and Minnesota, the Leafs, particularly captain Rick Vaive, expressed the feeling that they were looking forward to going on the road because they were too tight at home. It was not the first time Leaf players had expressed this thought, but in this case their reasons may have had more to do with the media than the demanding Maple Leaf Gardens fans.Vaive and Leaf coach Dan Maloney had become involved in a whirlpool of controversy, following Maloney&rsquo;s benching of Vaive in a game against Calgary Oct. 27. Maloney was angered that Vaive gave away the puck during one point of the game, and later on took a penalty which cancelled a Leaf power play.For two days, the Toronto media played up the incident because there really was nothing else to discuss. By the third day, Vaive, who had refused to discuss the matter, said he would talk to the media &ldquo;but not about that (the benching).&rdquo; Maloney, who has maintained a fairly good rapport with the media, had had enough. He didn&rsquo;t want to discuss the matter anymore, and as he brushed by reporters, he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m polishing my pistols,&rdquo; referring to the media&rsquo;s mention of a feud.So off the Leafs went in hopes of finding the groove which they had lost after the first two games of the season. They started off sluggishly against the Blues, allowing them a 3-0 lead before replying with two goals by a pumped-up Vaive, but were down 5-2 heading into the third. Then they mounted a comeback with three third-period goals, including two in the final three minutes, only to lose the game in overtime, following a bad bounce.It was a good effort, but in the following game against the Kings, they again surrendered three goals in the first period, though they had outshot Los Angeles, 10-9. And they went on to lose 7-0, with the pivotal point being a shorthanded goal by the Kings&rsquo; Anders Hakansson, in the second part of a two-man advantage by the Leafs.What happened in L.A.?&ldquo;We had opportunities in their end and just couldn&rsquo;t finish them off,&rdquo; Maloney said. &ldquo;They had opportunities in our end and they capitalized.&rdquo;So if the road trip was designed to uplift the team&rsquo;s spirits, it had obviously failed to materialize after the first two games.While Maloney didn&rsquo;t shy away from the team&rsquo;s obvious woes, he did point out that the season is still young.The only solution, Maloney says, is for the team to go back over the basic fundamentals which he stressed in training camp and which carried over early into the season.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to involve a lot of hard work and a lot of repetition,&rdquo; Maloney says.Will it be easy to turn things around?&ldquo;If it was, I wouldn&rsquo;t have any problems rectifying them,&rdquo; Maloney says.LEAFLETS&mdash;Left winger Walt Poddubny, demoted along with defenseman Gary Leeman to St. Catharines, had a productive start in the minors. In five games, he had three goals and five assists, and scored the game-winner against Rochester which stopped the Amerks&rsquo; unbeaten streak at 12 games. Leeman, who was initially upset with the demotion but decided to report after talking with his agent, Bill Watters, had a goal and an assist&hellip;Leaf coach Dan Maloney used defenseman Al lafrate on the wing against Los Angeles. He also pulled goalie Allan Bester in the game, something he&rsquo;s refrained from doing so far. But Maloney is really not concerned with the play of either Bester or his partner, Ken Wregget, both 20&hellip;Craig Redmond, the University of Denver product who openly stated he wouldn&rsquo;t report to the Leafs if they selected him, has been having a rough start with the Los Angeles Kings (who took him sixth overall) but, ironically, scored his first NHL goal against Toronto&hellip;The Leafs, to a man, all expressed sympathy for Maple Leaf Gardens&rsquo; publicist, Stan Obodiac, who passed away Nov. 3 after a lengthy illness. Obodiac was well respected by the players.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0021-01646/5542703-1-eng-US/f0021-012.jpg" title="f0021-01" width="594" height="772"><figcaption class="caption-body">Leaf coach Dan Maloney feels the only solution is hard work and repetition of fundamentals.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Road Trip Does Little To Solve Leaf Woes

<div class="byline">BY REYN DAVIS</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-01752/5542734-1-eng-US/f0022-012.jpg" title="f0022-01" width="588" height="752"><figcaption class="caption-body">Coach Barry Long is concerned that three lost points against L.A. will haunt him.</figcaption></div>WINNIPEG&mdash;Divisionally speaking, the Winnipeg Jets are weak. The news is out already. Winless in their first four starts within the Smythe Division, the Jets are inviting trouble. What started as a little game of footsy has turned into a shin-kicker. Suddenly, the Calgary Flames look as awesome as the Edmonton Oilers. Vancouver Canucks have never had trouble beating the Jets and Los Angeles Kings, the team they once milked, are even starting to balk.The Kings were ready to be buried when they came to Winnipeg for a Saturday-Monday doubleheader. Thoughts of 10-point spreads flitted through the Jets&rsquo; minds.When the mini-series was over, Los Angeles had its first win and its third tie and the Jets were 3-3-1 with six home games behind them.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid these three points we lost could come back to haunt us,&rdquo; said Barry Long, the Jets&rsquo; coach.The lessons learned from the series were many.Teams that grind still give the Jets scads of trouble. The light left side, minus Perry Turnbull, is particularly vulnerable. Doug Smail, Brian Mullen, Ron Wilson and Morris Lukowich do wear down.Shaking off grinders by opening up big leads requires a degree of talent the Jets may lack. The skaters are there. So are the chances. But the team suffers from an acute case of stone hands.For all their woes, the Kings are far from dead. They have every intention of melding as a team in the wake of the Charlie Simmer trade.Goaltending could be a grey area in Winnipeg. The Kings needed only 14 shots to beat Brian Hayward five times. Hayward, now 1-3-1, has trouble delivering wins. The fault is not his entirely but the team, for some reason, has difficulty producing in front of him.The Winnipeg power play is the pits. All the opportunities are there, but too many players insist on staying out longer than their prescribed minute, in which case their effectiveness suffers. This illustrates a lack of discipline.Scott Amiel, the team&rsquo;s leading goal scorer, says the Jets have a tendency of laying back with a little lead and a lot of time to go.&ldquo;For us to be successful, we have to be forechecking hard,&rdquo; Amiel says. &ldquo;We must bear down on our chances, the two-on-ones and three-on-ones and three-on-twos. When we break down the effect seems to snowball.&rdquo;The best teams, he claims, are the ones which seize their multiple breaks and make the most of them.Inconsistency plagues the Jets. The Thomas Steen line, which splurged for five goals in an 8-4 win over Hartford, couldn&rsquo;t come up with one in the two games with Los Angeles.The 5-3 loss to Los Angeles on Oct. 29 ended an unbeaten streak that had lasted for 10 games. In the span, the Jets had posted six wins and four ties. The points acquired at the expense of Los Angeles was a ticket to the playoffs.But what began as a single 4-3 victory on March 15, 1983 ended over a season later.&ldquo;I thought we deserved a better fate,&rdquo; says captain Dale Hawerchuk, less than resigned to any notion that the Jets are subservients in their own division.BENCH BITS&mdash;Defenseman Robert Picard played the 500th game of his NHL career on Nov. 1 in Philadelphia. In many respects, Picard is playing the best hockey of his career for the Jets. Randy Carlyle has played exceptionally well, too, as has Tim Watters. But coach Barry Long is worried about Dave Babych who &ldquo;must realize there is a time to play and a time to sleep.&rdquo;&hellip;Morris Lukowich has taken off a visor to protect his eyes. Lukowich and Brian Mullen have been sharing the left wing slot on Dale Hawerchuk&rsquo;s line&hellip;Andrew McBain says the Jets suffer from a condition called &ldquo;Happy Hands,&rdquo; otherwise known as an inability to finish a play. &#9632;

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Division Rivals Preying On Jets’ Problems

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0022-02" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-02527/5542765-1-eng-US/f0022-022.jpg"></div>More than a month has passed since the Canada Cup, but New York Islander right winger Mike Bossy continues to hold a hot hand&mdash;the same hand that produced the game-winning goal for Team Canada against the Soviet Union in the semi-finals.Bossy produced five goals&mdash;including four in one game&mdash;and five assists to earn Player-of-the-Week honors.Bossy, who is off to his best season in the National Hockey League, is tied with Wayne Gretzky in scoring with 33 points, but his 17 goals are tops. &#9632;

f0022-02

Player Of The Week

<div class="byline">BY AL MORGANTI</div>PHILADELPHIA&mdash;Technically, the correct answer to the question about the last goalie to play in the National Hockey League without a mask is Andy Brown.However, there are some people in Philadelphia who might give you an argument on that. In their eyes, there is still a guy playing goal without a mask&mdash;Brad Marsh, Philadelphia&rsquo;s stay-at-home defenseman who lives quite comfortably in the Flyers&rsquo; crease.&ldquo;It might be an unorthodox way to play,&rdquo; said Bob Froese, one of the Flyers&rsquo; two real goalies, &ldquo;but, I&rsquo;ll tell you, when the pressure is on and you&rsquo;re out of the play, it&rsquo;s an awfully nice feeling to turn around and see that old bearded galloot blocking the net behind you.&rdquo;That &ldquo;old, bearded galloot&rdquo; is Marsh, who is only 26, but a veritable fossil within the Flyers&rsquo; youth movement. He&rsquo;s already a seven-year veteran, a former captain of the Calgary Flames, and a leader to the young Flyers.After a dozen games this season, the Flyers had picked up a four-point lead on the New York Islanders (16-12) to lead the Patrick Division, and Marsh is one of the reasons the Flyers had made such a quick start. Teamed with Thomas Eriksson, a mobile Swede, Marsh looks like a dinosaur, but his old-fashioned habits have kept the opposing forwards honest.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not trying to fool myself or anybody else,&rdquo; said Marsh. &ldquo;I know what my skills are, and I know what I have to do to be effective. Mostly, what I have to do is play on instinct. If my first thought is to drop down to block a shot, then I drop down. You can&rsquo;t think about it too much.&rdquo;As is the case with any shot-blocking defenseman (what few there are left), the style of play presents its ups and downs. After playing perhaps his best game as a Flyer during a 7-2 win over the Blues, he then suffered through a tough night during the Flyers&rsquo; first home loss of the season, a 7-4 setback to Winnipeg, When he was on the ice for five of the Jets&rsquo; goals.On the ice, Marsh might be a dropdown defenseman, but in the dressing room, he&rsquo;s a stand-up guy, and he didn&rsquo;t duck any responsibility.&ldquo;It was just one of those days at the office,&rdquo; said Marsh &ldquo;Everything went wrong. Shots which usually bounce off me and go into the stands went right past me and past Bob (Frcese). It wasn&rsquo;t his fault, I usually block mose.&rdquo;One way or another, he usually does block the shots. Either or his knees in the crease or just outside in the slot. With no helmet, the only protection he&rsquo;s got up over his shoulders is a big, bushy beard he grew during the off-season which makes him look more like an Amish farmer from the nearby Pennsylvania Dutch country than an NHL defenseman.By unofficial count, Marsh already has six saves this season, but he also found himself falling on a loose puck in the crease behind goalie Pelle Lindbergh in Buffalo on Halloween night, which led to a successful penalty shot by John Tucker. If Marsh hadn&rsquo;t jumped on it, the puck would have slid across for a goal anyway, but there was no question as to what Marsh would do&mdash;he&rsquo;s just the type of guy who&rsquo;d probably jump on a hand grenade if it was rolling toward his platoon.The one knock against Marsh is, of course, his speed. Or. rather, his lack of speed.&ldquo;The problem with Brad,&rdquo; said Flyer general manager Bob Clarke, &ldquo;is that his feet are as big as his heart.&rdquo;The limousines that Marsh wears on his feet are size 13, and sometimes it appears that they are better designed for blocking shots than leading breakaways. None of which bothers Marsh, who is used to all the good-natured teasing about his &ldquo;speed.&rdquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m used to all of it,&rdquo; said Marsh, &ldquo;and it never gets to me because I&rsquo;m not worried about being too slow. I&rsquo;ve learned to play with the kind of speed I have.&ldquo;Maybe I&rsquo;m not the fastest skater, but I never get beat on an icing call or anything like that because I know how to position myself. My feeling is that I can make up for a so-called lack of speed by knowing how to play my position.&ldquo;Recently, many people have been saying that the type of player I am will be phased out of the league because the game is getting so fast. I don&rsquo;t believe that. I think if you learn your craft, you can help a team by playing defensively.&rdquo;Although his early-season success at shot blocking has been met by approval with both the Flyers&rsquo; management and the Spectrum crowd, such was not the case a couple of years ago when former coach Pat Quinn scolded Marsh for flopping too much.&ldquo;I think that affected me for a while,&rdquo; said Marsh. &ldquo;Maybe, at that time, I was doing a bit too much. But then I started thinking about it. It got to a point where I&rsquo;d question whether I was going to block a shot or not.&ldquo;You just can&rsquo;t play like that, at least not effectively. My thinking now is that I just do what my instincts tell me.&ldquo;If I think I can block a shot, I try to block it. If I think I can help out a goalie, I&rsquo;ll dive in and help out.&rdquo;And, if somebody rolled a hand grenade into the slot, Marsh would probably execute a perfect bellyflop on it. He might get stung a little, but if it stopped the goal, he wouldn&rsquo;t complain.NOTES&mdash;Flyer right winger Tim Kerr notched his fourth game with two or more goals when he scored a pair in a 5-1 win over the North Stars. Kerr&rsquo;s reaction to the goals, which gave him 12 goals in 12 games, was nothing more than a shrug. &ldquo;What do you want me to do,&rdquo; Kerr joked later. &ldquo;If I jumped up and down after evey goal, I&rsquo;d wreck my knees.&rdquo;&hellip;Pelle Lindbergh had the unique opportunity of facing penalty shots in two consecutive starts. After being beaten by John Tucker in Buffalo, he stopped the North Stars&rsquo; Scott Bjugstad just three nights later&hellip;The Flyers scratched right winger Ray Allison in 11 of the first 12 games and defenseman Miro Dvorak in six consecutive games. &#9632;

Marsh Plays Like Goalie Without The Mask

<div class="byline">BY JOHN GILBERT</div>BLOOMINGTON&mdash;Paul Holmgren has never compromised in his eagerness to compete.He is big and tough, and his competitive zeal is legendary around the National Hockey League. He is capable of scoring key goals, but he is best suited for knocking opponents off the puck in the comers or along the boards, and for tying up traffic in front of opposing goals.And if a teammate gives less than a full effort, he must answer to Holmgren on the bench or in the dressing room.It was all of those qualities that caused Minnesota North Star general manager Lou Nanne to obtain him from Philadelphia last season. A shoulder in dire need of surgery and a wobbly knee were small liabilities in the whole package.And it was the same characteristics that caused coach Bill Mahoney to wait anxiously to get Holmgren into the lineup for his faltering team. The Stars beat the New York Rangers in back-to-back games the first weekend of the season, then failed to win even once (0-6-2) in the next eight games.Now they have lost Holmgren for 10 games, following a league-imposed suspension for striking Hartford&rsquo;s Torrie Robertson with a stick in the face. Robertson needed several stiches to repair cuts resulting from the blow.Holmgren offered no excuse for what he did, but it goes back to those competitive characteristics. He had just come back from his shoulder surgery. He played against his old team, the Philadelphia Flyers, and then he played against the Whalers.He was wearing a special shoulder harness, because he was returning earlier than he was supposed to&mdash;which was no surprise, because Holmgren had been pleading to play since the season began. The harness, however, restricted him from moving his arm as much as half way up.He knew one thing&mdash;that he couldn&rsquo;t fight in that condition. And for a player who has always been willing to fight, such a restriction is considerable.But the urge to play was so strong he was willing to play harnessed. Yet he was humbled by what he did.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no excuse,&rdquo; Holmgren said. &ldquo;I know I did wrong. There&rsquo;s no excuse for using my stick&hellip;Brad Maxwell threw the puck in and I was going after it. Robertson was interfering with me. He rubbed me into the boards right by the Hartford bench. The butt end of his stick hit me on the side of the head, and he rubbed his glove in my face as we went into the boards.&ldquo;I turned to skate after the puck and he grabbed both my arms from behind. I turned around, and I knew he probably wanted to fight. The last thing I wanted to do was fight, because of my shoulder and the harness.&ldquo;We both had our sticks up, and it happened so fast, I wasn&rsquo;t even thinking of hitting the guy with my stick. It may seem like it sounds easy to say it now, but I didn&rsquo;t have it in my mind to hit him. We both swung. He barely missed me.&rdquo;When Holmgren lashed out, his stick blade caught Robertson on the forehead, cutting him near the eyebrow. Robertson swung back with his stick but missed. Both got minor penalties, with Robertson also receiving a five-minute major for slashing, and Holmgren a 10-minute match penalty, requiring the automatic hearing.Of the incident, Mahoney said: &ldquo;An incident like that is not really Paul Holmgren. He has all kinds of class and concerns for the team, and he makes a tremendous difference in our team.&rdquo;Holmgren, a St. Paul native who went to Harding High School and the University of Minnesota before turning pro, has always been an aggressive player, but his incidents with sticks have been rare&ldquo;I had one, six years ago,&rdquo; said Holmgren. &ldquo;Carol Vadnais cut me with a spear to the throat. I hit him on the helmet with my stick. He didn&rsquo;t even get a penalty.&rdquo;Holmgren got a six-game suspension for his part in that incident.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not like I&rsquo;ve used my stick in a lot of cases,&rdquo; said Holmgren. &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s no excuse. What I did was stupid.&ldquo;Ten games is a long time, but it was a fair punishment for what I did,&rdquo; Holmgren said, regarding the suspension. &ldquo;It will give me time to think about what I did&mdash;I came very close to putting another player&rsquo;s eye out.&rdquo; &#9632;

Holmgren Thinks His Sentence Is Fair…

<div class="byline">BY RANDY SMITH</div>HARTFORD&mdash;It was a memorable conflict between the Hartford Whalers and the Minnesota North Stars that included 14 power plays, 100 penalty minutes and, from the Whalers&rsquo; point of view, a punishment that did not fit the crime.When Paul Holmgren arrived in Minnesota from Philadelphia, North Star general manager Lou Nanne proclaimed him to be &ldquo;our John Wayne.&rdquo; A former champion for the Flyers, Holmgren was expected to lend the Stars some much-needed character. Holmgren had earned a reputation of being tough, but fair.But in one violent moment, that reputation was forever altered.&ldquo;I was stunned,&rdquo; Torrie Robertson said. &ldquo;I never thought he&rsquo;d do something like that, especially him.&rdquo;Robertson was referring to a spear administered to his face by Holmgren. It produced a six-inch cut on Robertson&rsquo;s left eyebrow and a three-inch cut on his eyelid.&ldquo;Another fraction of an inch and I don&rsquo;t have a job, or an eye,&rdquo; Robertson said.The incident happened so fast that it caught everybody by surprise. Most of all, Robertson.&ldquo;I held him up from breaking in on the defense,&rdquo; said Robertson. &ldquo;He pushed me with a backhander and I pushed him back. It&rsquo;s something that happens about 20 times a game. We both skated around in opposite ways and then turned to face each other. I was ready to go and I thought he might be, too. Then he speared me.&rdquo;Defenseman Chris Kotsopoulos was standing beside Robertson when it happened.&ldquo;I remember thinking, &lsquo;Oh boy, I&rsquo;m not going to miss this one, Torrie against Holmgren,&rsquo;&rdquo; Kotsopoulos said. &ldquo;I wanted a ring-side seat. I saw Torrie begin to drop his gloves and I looked at Holmgren. Then came the spear.&rdquo;In the Whalers&rsquo; minds, it was a deliberate attempt to injure, even maim.&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the worst I&rsquo;ve ever seen,&rdquo; goaltender Greg Millen said. &ldquo;He should be suspended for the rest of the year.&rdquo;Whaler coach Jack Evans agreed.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been around for a long time and I&rsquo;ve never seen anything worse,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen plenty of threatening gestures, but I&rsquo;ve never seen someone spear a guy deliberately in the face.&rdquo;It was not an accident, the Whalers concluded.&ldquo;After he did it, I put my stick around Holmgren so he couldn&rsquo;t go anywhere,&rdquo; Kotsopoulos said. &ldquo;I had a good hold of him. I began telling him he was gutless and that he, of all people, should never go for a guy&rsquo;s face because he&rsquo;s had one or two eye injuries himself.&ldquo;He never said a word. That&rsquo;s how I know he regretted doing it. But, hey, he did it. You can&rsquo;t take it back.&rdquo;After the incident, Robertson was not in the mood for discussing it.&ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t like talking about things like this too much,&rdquo; Robertson said. &ldquo;They happen.&rdquo;Even after league vice-president Brian O&rsquo;Neill gave Holmgren a 10-game suspension, Robertson refused to air his feelings.The Whalers, while they were angered with O&rsquo;Neill&rsquo;s decision, did not publicize their opinion, but the feeling was that Holmgren got less than he deserved.WHALER SCUTTLEBUTT&mdash;The Whalers recorded two club records, running their home unbeaten streak to seven (6-0-1) over two seasons and their home winning streak to five, before bowing to Quebec&hellip;Tony Currie, coming off the bench after sitting out seven straight, was inserted on the left side of Ronnie Francis in David A. Jensen&rsquo;s spot, and made an immediate impact. Currie picked up four assists in his first two starts. Jensen Was benched in the 11th game. The 19-year-old rookie had no goals and four assists. Francis, meanwhile, registered points in the team&rsquo;s first 11 games with six goals and eight assists&hellip;Dave Lumley, over from Edmonton in the waiver draft, was shifted to right wing next to Francis. After Bobby Crawford&rsquo;s performance (36 goals) last year, the waiver list appears to be something of a charm for general manager Emile Francis. &#9632;

…But Whalers Feel It Isn’t Enough

<div class="byline">BY TOM HENSHAW</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0025-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-01647/5542868-1-eng-US/f0025-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Goalie Pete Peeters lowered his average and earned player-of-the-week honors, as the Bruins turned it around.</figcaption></div>BOSTON&mdash;&ldquo;It feels good,&rdquo; said Boston Bruin coach Gerry Cheevers. &ldquo;Five hundred feels good when you consider the way we started. Everyone joined in to make this happen&mdash;management, the coaches and, most of all, the players.&rdquo;Now, for a team that fancies itself as a Stanley Cup contender, a .500 record is not normally something to feel good about. But, for the Bruins, their return from a 3-3 western swing almost called for a day of thanksgiving.They lost 7-2 to Edmonton, 8-2 to Calgary and 3-2 to Winnipeg, and the defeats were not flukes. Even their opponents noticed it.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not trying to demean them, but that was the easiest game we ever had against them,&rdquo; said Oiler captain Wayne Gretzky.But after that, something happened to give Cheevers a good feeling.General manager Harry Sinden, in one 24-hour period, dealt for Charlie Simmer and Louis Sleigher without tearing the team apart, giving up minor leaguer Luc Dufour plus first- and fourth-round draft choices.Goalie Pete Peeters, whose bad ankle had him on shaky pins for three games, suddenly came around, lowering his goals-against average to a respectable 3.25 and earning NHL player-of-the-week honors.And the Bruins as a team turned it all around with wins over St. Louis (4-1), New York Islanders (8-3) and the Rangers (6-4).Certainly Simmer, who was spotted at left wing on a line with Ken Linseman and Rick Middleton, was a contributing factor in the rejuvenation of the Bruins. He had two goals and two assists in the three victories.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s like a guy in football,&rdquo; said Cheevers, &ldquo;a gamebreaker, a big-play guy. You don&rsquo;t have the production Charlie Simmer has had for all these years without being a class player. Class fits anywhere.&rdquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve found it easy to fit in with the guys here and they&rsquo;ve made it real easy for me,&rdquo; said Simmer. &ldquo;Their style is easy to play. I&rsquo;ve been watching it all these years and it&rsquo;s basic up and down hockey.&rdquo;Simmer said he noticed the difference between hockey in Boston and Los Angeles right away.&ldquo;It takes more of an individual effort to play hockey there,&rdquo; he said, noting the laid-back California lifestyle. &ldquo;There are distractions. But if everyone had the proper mental preparation to play, they could play there.&ldquo;Nobody accepts losing, but those distractions take more of a personal motivation to get ready to go to work. Here, in Boston, there&rsquo;s more of an atmosphere. You hear people talking hockey. Winning is expected of you.&ldquo;Los Angeles has a hard core of guys who are up for every game, but here everyone&rsquo;s up. They had lost three in a row when I got here and it was like the end of the world. But there wasn&rsquo;t any panic. They just wanted to get it over with and start winning again.&ldquo;I look at it as being fortunate, a new life coming to Boston this late in my career. If I&rsquo;d had a choice, I would have come to Boston.&rdquo;Barry Pederson, who has averaged 43 goals a year in three seasons, was given the go-ahead to skate for the first time since he suffered a broken hand in an Oct. 2 exhibition game. He should be ready to play by mid-November.Pederson&rsquo;s return will create a pleasant problem for coach Cheevers: Should he break up the smoothly functioning Simmer, Linseman and Middleton line and reunite Pederson with Middleton? That&rsquo;s the kind of problem a coach enjoys.Goalie Doug Keans, who missed the first six games of the season with a pulled left hamstring, returned to the bench as Peeters&rsquo; backup in St. Louis and rookie Cleon Daskalakis, who filled in ably, was sent to the Bruins&rsquo; Hershey farm team.Captain Terry O&rsquo;Reilly, who missed the fun part of the road trip when he sprained his left ankle in Winnipeg, was mending nicely and should return to the lineup about the same time as Pederson.Meanwhile, Sinden was reported to be seeking another deal, this time for a defenseman to add some experience to a blue line corps that has three rookies.&ldquo;You&rsquo;re never finished,&rdquo; said Sinden, &ldquo;but we think we&rsquo;ve got a good club and should go with it.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0025-01

Bruins Don’t Want To Be Known As Bad

You can submit a player for consideration for the JOFA Minor Player Showcase. Just enclose a photograph, along with all the pertinent information and mail to: JOFA SHOWCASE, 85 Scarsdale Rd., Suite 100, Don Mills, Ont. M3B 2R2. &#9632;

JOFA Entries

Rick Middleton recalls his minor hockey days as the best of times.&ldquo;It was a lot of fun in those days,&rdquo; said the outstanding right winger of the Boston Bruins who grew up in Scarborough, Ont., and played pee wee hockey with Wexford bantam, midget and junior B with Toronto Young Nationals and Junior A in Oshawa.&ldquo;My mother and father were big fans, as I guess most parents are. We always had a good team, and we used to go to a lot of tournaments. My father was a printer, and he used to print up signs, &lsquo;Go Wexford, Go!&rsquo; They&rsquo;d have bus trips for the parents, too. I can&rsquo;t wait myself to have a son and maybe go on a few of them, too.&rdquo;His sport was baseball until the age of seven.&ldquo;My baseball coach was a hockey coach, too, and he talked my father into bringing me out,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They had me on defense. They said I skated backward as bad as I skated forward so they might as well put me on defense.&rdquo;Middleton&rsquo;s skating was always a concern to his coaches in minor hockey.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-03277/5542954-1-eng-US/f0025-032.jpg" title="f0025-03" width="730" height="1010"><figcaption class="caption-body">Rick Middleton was a poor skater until he hooked up with a coach who turned around his game.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;We used to sit around and say, &lsquo;What are we going to do with him?&rsquo;&rdquo; said Jim Cathcart, one of his coaches at Wexford.&ldquo;I had weak ankles,&rdquo; said Middleton. &ldquo;I used to wear ankle supports in my skates right up to minor midget years. Then I got a coach named Frank Miller, who turned my whole hockey career around because he was a power skating coach. He turned me into a strong skater in two years.&ldquo;I had good coaching all the way. Frank Miller and Glenn Mortley at Wexford were the main coaches. They covered me from age eight to 16. I was fortunate. I didn&rsquo;t get to bounce around from organization to organization and coach to coach.&ldquo;They were the fun days with Wexford, and then it sort of became a business once I got to the Young Nationals.&rdquo;The high point of the fun days in Wexford came when the team went to the Quebec Pee Wee tournament only to lose to the Detroit Roostertails, who had Gordie Howe&rsquo;s sons, Mark and Marty.&ldquo;We were a little awestruck by the Howe name,&rdquo; said Middleton. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t remember seeing Gordie there, but I remember Marty scoring from center ice on a slap shot.&ldquo;It was a thrill for me because we had a kid named Billy Marshall, who was captain every year. He was a great hockey player but he came down with knee trouble at a young age. He was injured the year we went to Quebec and I was captain.&ldquo;Mark Howe was captain of the Roostertails. It was a thrill playing captain against captain. Maybe I was a little awestruck. We lost in the second game to Detroit. The team that won it that year was behind us in the standings in Toronto and that got us a little mad.&rdquo;If he had a son, Middleton said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to see him do what he wants to do, not necessarily the way I did it. If he likes hockey. I&rsquo;d like him to play hockey. If he likes music, then I&rsquo;d like him to be a musician. Having something to concentrate on and get some discipline from is important. &#9632;

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Minor Hockey Flashback: Rick Middleton

This year sports enthusiasts will be easy to please at Christmas time. The huge success last year of Ken Dryden&rsquo;s, The Game ($19.95 hardcover), has encouraged the publishing community to produce more books for the sports lover&mdash;and that makes shopping easier.The following books are available and are highly recommended:<h2>PERSONALITY BOOKS</h2>Tiger: A Hockey Story&mdash;by Tiger Williams and James LawtonThis could be one of the bestselling sports books this year. The controversial Tiger Williams tells his life story in a no-holds-barred style. Recently traded by the Vancouver Canucks to the Detroit Red Wings, he even tells us how this book helped to bring about that change in employment. 20 photographs. Hardcover. Cost, $16.95.Gretzky: From Backyard Rink to the Stanley Cup&mdash;by Walter Gretzky and Jim Taylor.This is the book that made the headlines last year when Walter Gretzky agreed to write about his son. Now that it&rsquo;s here it is everything promised&mdash;and more. Wayne has even written a chapter himself. Fans of the Great One will love this. 16 photographs. Hardcover. Cost, $17.95.Ballard: A Portrait of Canada&rsquo;s Most Controversial Sports Figure&mdash;by William Houston.The first book about &lsquo;Pal Hal,&rsquo; the owner of the Leafs and Maple Leaf Gardens. Harold Ballard&rsquo;s life story, published against his wishes, minus the cussing. Hardcover. Cost, $19.95.The Game&mdash;by Ken Dryden.If you haven&rsquo;t read it, buy the hardcover, read it and give it as a Christmas gift. The paperback is now on sale, but some hardcovers are available and it still makes a terrific gift. Hardcover. Cost, $19.95.And, speaking of goalies, The Hockey I Love, by Vladislav Tretiak, published in 1977, has been unearthed to the delight of his many fans and collectors. An inspiration to young goaltenders. Hardcover. Cost, $10.95.<h2>SKILL BOOKS</h2>The Hockey Drill Book&mdash;by Dr. Guy Palmer.Contains 11 chapters of drills and a sample practice schedule. Dr. Palmer has produced a most sophisticated, yet easy to follow, book. 360 pages. Paperback. Cost, $21.95.<h2>PICTURES</h2>Ice Palaces&mdash;by Fred Anderes and Ann AgranoffAn unusual and beautiful art book depicting ice palaces from 18th century Russia to modern ones in Montreal, Quebec City and Ottawa. Two hundred illustrations (50 in color) make this book a winter carnival lover&rsquo;s dream. Paperback. Cost, $22.95.Shots on Goal&mdash;by Jack NemchinFollowing the success of his previous books, The Hockey Album and The Goalie Album, this new book shows poster-size shots from the 1983-84 season. Steve Penney, Tom Barrasso and Billy Smith are featured in this color and black and white book. Paperback. Cost, $12.95.<h2>INFORMATION AND TRIVIA</h2>TV Game Book&mdash;from CBC SportsJust published, it contains team profiles, trivia, statistics from 1983-84 and lots of color and black and white photographs. Paperback. Cost, $9.95.Guinness World Records 1985 Desk Calendar.A novelty item for desk, counter, any flat surface. One page for every day of the year in 1985 with the record set that day in history. Most records are sports-related, all make fascinating reading. Boxed $9.95.<h2>GAMES</h2>Trivial Pursuit Master Game (with board).Still going strong ($31.95). Three other editions also available but must be used with the board in the Master Edition. These are: Baby Boomer for, those of that generation, Silver Screen for movie buffs and All-Star Sports for, you guessed it, sports trivia nuts. Each of these are $27.95.Any of the items mentioned are available from THE HOCKEY NEWS Bookshelf by using the coupon in this issue or using your credit card and phoning (416) 499-8227. &#9632;

A Bumper Christmas For Sports Book Fans

<div class="byline">BY CHUCK MOODY</div>PITTSBURGH&mdash;The chants of &ldquo;DEE-ON, DEE-ON, DEE-ON,&rdquo; have returned to the Civic Arena this season with the impressive goaltending of Michel Dion. Three seasons ago Dion started for the Prince of Wales team in the National Hockey League All-Star game after being signed by the Pittsburgh Penguins as a free agent. He played in 62 games, posted a 3.79 goals-against average and almost led the Pens to an upset of the eventual Stanley Cup champion New York Islanders in the preliminary round of the playoffs, losing the fifth and deciding game in overtime.But things went downhill for Dion and the Penguins the last two seasons. Two years ago, Dion&rsquo;s average rose to 4.26, and last year it ballooned to 5.33 with a 2-19-4 record. Pittsburgh finished last in the league both seasons.&ldquo;Last year, in 11 years of pro hockey and five more of amateur hockey, it was probably my worst,&rdquo; admitted Dion. &ldquo;It was a hell of a year. I hope I never get another one like that, because if I do I might get out of the game.&rdquo;But this season, Dion, who is deeply religious, has a new conviction and a number of new teammates.&ldquo;My job is to try to concentrate the hardest and the best I can all the way through despite the circumstances for or against you,&rdquo; Dion said. &ldquo;We certainly hold our composure a lot better. We forecheck a lot harder in their end, and are conscious we must keep it (the puck) in their end the last minute. We&rsquo;ve been doing it well.&ldquo;I think this team not only has more talent than last year, but more brains and possibly more character. We feel great. We had a great camp, we worked hard and we&rsquo;ve been playing some tough games in the season and holding our own. We&rsquo;re looking forward to continuing.&rdquo;The 30-year-old native of Granby, Que., was a catcher in the Montreal Expos&rsquo; organization before turning to pro hockey. He says the presence of all-star catcher Gary Carter with the Expos helped to convince him his future was in hockey.Dion began his pro career in the World Hockey Association. In 1975-76 with Indianapolis, he led the league with a 2.74 mark, and two seasons later with Cincinnati he was tops in shutouts (four).But those years, similar to last year, are in the past.&ldquo;This year I&rsquo;m looking forward to giving it my best shot every game I play,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m trying to keep my composure out there when things go great as well as when things go bad.&rdquo;Dion is well aware of the fickleness of hockey fans.&ldquo;Either they praise you or boo you,&rdquo; he said, referring to the fans chanting his name when he makes an outstanding play. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s great when they praise you. It&rsquo;s encouraging and I thank them. But you&rsquo;ve still got to keep your composure and think about serving your teammates. That&rsquo;s who you play for.&rdquo;Even if the cheers turn to boos, Dion says he&rsquo;s prepared for it.&ldquo;I just say to myself I&rsquo;m going to play calm, cool and collected this year no matter what happens,&rdquo; Dion said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to give it my best shot whatever is said or thought about me. I can&rsquo;t help it.&rdquo;Dion also thinks his religious beliefs will help him to deal with his job.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m just going to try to praise the Lord in my play,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If I keep my cool, that&rsquo;s how I can praise Him and play my best. You never play better than when you&rsquo;re peaceful.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to concentrate on doing that all year, because if I can do that, the puck&rsquo;s going to start hitting me and the results are going to be good.&rdquo;PENGUIN TRACKS&mdash;Michel Dion broke a 12-game winless streak with a victory over the Philadelphia Flyers. Center Dave Hannan and left winger Bob Errey were assisgned to Baltimore of the American Hockey League, reducing the roster to 23 players, three over the number allowed to dress. Errey was Pittsburgh&rsquo;s first-round draft choice in 1983, but he scored only nine goals and 13 assists in 65 games last season. &#9632;

Dion Hears Cheers, But Has Higher Calling

<div class="byline">BY DICK BAKER</div>Louisville HockeyLouisville HockeySPRINGFIELD&mdash;As Halloween howled out yet another defeat, the suffering Springfield Indians were ready to concoct some sort of witches&rsquo; brew in hopes of halting a seven-game losing streak.After an opening-night tie with the Maine Mariners at home, followed by a road win against the New Haven Nighthawks, the troubled Tribe tripped up on two home games (Adirondack and Bing-hamton) before losing another five straight in its first Maritime swing.&ldquo;Washington was 0-7 last year and they finished only three points out of first place,&rdquo; reminded rookie coach Lorne Henning, the former New York Islander center and assistant coach. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s been a little frustrating, but the spirit&rsquo;s been good. They&rsquo;re not giving up.&rdquo;Injuries to the parent New York Islanders and Minnesota North Stars&mdash;who were both having on-ice troubles of their own&mdash;played a large part in Springfield&rsquo;s slow start. When the Indians lost their seventh straight game, they had three goaltenders but only four defensemen. It marked the fifth consecutive game Springfield was forced to get by with only four defenseman.Since training camp, the Islanders and North Stars had a combined total of 22 injuries. Meanwhile, the Indians suffered the loss of defenseman Ken Leiter (maybe their best) and crafty center Scott Howson. Leiter, who required reconstructive hand surgery, is expected to be out for at least two months. Howson, with a fractured finger, is on the shelf for about a month.&ldquo;The injury to Ken Leiter was a particularly big blow to us,&rdquo; said Henning, who otherwise played down the significance of the injuries.Between Maritime losses, Henning had the phone wires burning. He was confident Islander president-general manager Bill Torrey would supply the necessary players to fill the holes. There was even some discussion of signing a free-agent defenseman for Springfield.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re only one or two players away,&rdquo; said Henning in explaining what it would take to get the Indians rolling. &ldquo;If we get that, then some of the guys can be rested. It makes a big difference at crucial points in a game when you have only four defensemen. They tend to get tired late in the game and they can make a costly mistake.&ldquo;You can get away with it for awhile, but eventually it catches up to you.&rdquo;Most frustrating was the way the Indians were losing. They dropped a 2-1 overtime decision at Fredericton, despite a 47-save performance by goaltender Lorne Molleken. Then, after coming from behind 5-1, they lost 5-4 at Halifax. They lost to the Oilers again when Nova Scotia snapped a 4-4 deadlock with four unanswered goals early in the third period. Springfield outshot the Oilers 3824 in that contest.At Moncton, the Tribe, trailing 2-1 in the third period, took nine of the first 10 shots in the final period before a Dan Bolduc breakaway sealed the Halloween victory for the Golden Flames.Through it all, Henning has found several bright spots.&ldquo;Alan Kerr (right wing) has been outstanding,&rdquo; said Henning. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s only scored one goal, but he&rsquo;s had three or four good chances each game.&ldquo;Defenseman Vem Smith has really progressed. He had some bad habits coming out of junior, but he&rsquo;s corrected them. And getting Roger Kortko back (injured ankle) has been a big plus. His leadership is contagious.&ldquo;There are a lot of positive things, they&rsquo;re not all negative. Maybe two months from now, we&rsquo;ll be able to look back at this and see how far we&rsquo;ve come.&rdquo;It couldn&rsquo;t start coming fast enough for Springfield fans. Since 1979, the Indians have been affiliated with Hartford, Boston, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. The latest combination (Islanders and North Stars) looked to be the best deal yet. However, the frustrated local fans (only one playoff appearance&mdash;last year&mdash;in that span) were already voicing their concern over the lack of muscle during the home losses to the Red Wings and Whalers.Having lost their patience long ago, Springfield fans appear to be demanding results. That means more pressure on Henning and the Indians to get this thing turned around in a hurry.DOWN SOUTH&mdash;The Rochester Amerks are the Detroit Tigers of the AHL, racking up a team record 10th straight victory in a 4-1 triumph over St. Catharines, Oct. 31. Goaltender Tom Barrasso. sent down by the parent Buffalo Sabres, needed to make only 17 stops in recording his second straight Amerk victory&hellip;Some South teams having troubles on home ice. When Hershey managed only a 5-5 tie with New Haven, it marked the fourth consecutive home game the Bears had failed to win (0-2-2). Meanwhile, the Skipjacks were 1-4-2 at the Baltimore Civic Center. Springfield was 0-2-1 on friendly ice. Binghamton was only 1-1-2. New Haven had a 3-2 mark at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, but were 0-5 on the road&hellip;The Whalers had a bad penalty-killing streak, yielding nine power-play goals in 18 attempts. They also had to worry about goaltending again as Bob Mason was called up to Washington and Ed Staniowski had a disappointing 4.92 goals-against average in five games. Binghamton center Paul Gardner was recalled to Washington&hellip;The Amerks, averaging over5,600 per game, became the fifth team in AHL history to record 1,000 victories when they defeated the Hershey Bears 5-4 Others in the 1,000 club are Hershey, Providence, Springfield and Cleveland&hellip;The Saints received winger Walt Poddubny and defenseman Gary Leeman from the parent Toronto club. &#9632;

Indians Need Emergency Replacements

<div class="byline">BY BILL PICKETT</div>Louisville HockeyLouisville HockeyKALAMAZOO&mdash;Bill Inglis says he&rsquo;s enjoying it in Kalamazoo.And well he should. After all, the coach who captured two Turner Cup championships in three seasons at Toledo had his Wings in first place in the East division of the International Hockey League after six games.He realizes, though, there is still a long road ahead, and while he was carrying about 20 players for the first couple of weeks, Inglis was looking to Nov. 12, when the rosters must be trimmed.At that time, teams can only dress 15 skaters and two goaltenders for each game.&ldquo;That&rsquo;s when things are going to settle down,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;When you get down to 17 players, you&rsquo;ve got to get something out of every one of them. Numbers don&rsquo;t have that much importance then.&rdquo;Then Wings are getting most of their help so far from the Philadelphia Flyers. Six of 21 players in the Kalamazoo camp were assigned from Philly. Detroit provided one and Vancouver contributed goaltender Shawn Kilroy, who played with Sherbrooke of the American League last season.Kilroy had his first outing against Indianapolis and held the Quakers to a pair of goals with a steady performance. The Wings were beaten in overtime, however, on a second 55-foot shot off the stick of Indianapolis defenseman Jim File.Inglis appeared to have bolstered his squad just before the season got under way when he obtained forwards Dale Yakiwchuk and John Flesch on loan from Milwaukee. The Chicago Black Hawks, of course, have put their only developmental club in Milwaukee and that made Yakiwchuk and Flesch available.Inglis also was pleased with the assignment of Wayne Crawford from the Detroit organization. Crawford, who played with Adirondack of the American League the last three seasons, had three goals and two assists in his first six games.The newest Wing is Dave Michayluk, assigned from Philadelphia. He played at Springfield last season, where he scored 62 points, including 18 goals.Defense has been the name of the game for the Wings in the early going. They were averaging slightly more than three goals a game on offense, but giving up less than three a game on defense. And Kalamazoo had surrendered only one power-play goal in 21 opportunities.Goaltender Georges Gangon (two wins and a tie) was tied with Salt Lake&rsquo;s Marc D&rsquo;Amour with a 2.27 average, second best in the league behind the 1.96 mark of Peoria&rsquo;s Rick Heinz.IHL NOTES&mdash;Muskegon&rsquo;s Don Murdoch scored his second hat trick of the early season and is atop the league in the goal-scoring department&hellip;Bernie Gallant of Flint and Kevin Robinson of Milwaukee also notched hat tricks. Gallant&rsquo;s play earned him a share of IHL Player of the Week honors with Rick Heinz&hellip;Salt Lake City&rsquo;s first trip east got off to a shaky start as the Golden Eagles dropped three of their first four outings. Their only victory came in Indianopolis when they scored four times in a span of 3:12 of the final period for a 4-2 triumph.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0031-01598/5543081-1-eng-US/f0031-012.jpg" title="f0031-01" width="582" height="826"><figcaption class="caption-body">Bill Inglis is gearing up for the deadline when teams are forced to pare their rosters.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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So Far So Good For K-Wing Coach

<div class="byline">BY MIKE KANE</div>ADIRONDACK&mdash;A player who was considering a legal challenge may receive an exemption from a controversial American Hockey League bylaw that has yet to be enforced.AHL president Jack Butterfield said that he might petition the league&rsquo;s Board of Governors to reinstate former Moncton Alpine player Ross Lambert, by granting him a waiver for his violation of league bylaw 8a. In late October, league officials ruled that Lambert, who is a now represented by Boston attorney and player agent Brian Burke, could not sign a contract with the Nova Scotia Oilers because he had begun the season in a league in West Germany.Lambert, the 21-year-old brother of Detroit Red Wings&rsquo; Lane Lambert, had agreed to play in Europe after failing to find a hockey job in North America, but that contract was voided shortly after the start of the season and he returned to his home in Prince Albert, Sask.Butterfield said that the unusual circumstances of the case might merit a review by the league&rsquo;s governors.&ldquo;Right at the moment, I&rsquo;m waiting to hear from Mr. Lambert,&rdquo; Butterfield said. &ldquo;He talked to me and asked me if he documented everything would I make an appeal on his behalf. I stated that I would, and I&rsquo;m still waiting to hear from him.&rdquo;Lambert has agreed to provide proof that the only reason he went to Europe was because he could not get a tryout in Canada or the United States. Butterfield said that would make for a special case.&ldquo;The difference would be that, according to him, he wrote to every club in the National Hockey League seeking employment, which would certainly put him in a different category than someone who jumps the AHL to go over there and make more money,&rdquo; Butterfield said.When Lambert returned home, he received an offer from Larry Kish, Nova Scotia&rsquo;s general manager-coach, but AHL officials have prohibited him from joining the Oilers, saying that he violates the terms of the bylaw. In a letter sent to league officials on Oct. 25, Burke asked that the rule be waived&mdash;as it was late last season when he challenged it on behalf of defenseman Mike Busniak&mdash;and Lambert be allowed to play.The bylaw was adopted in Dec. 1983 after member clubs complained that certain teams&mdash;notably the Maine Mariners&mdash;signed a number of North American professionals returning from a season in Europe and added them to their roster for the final few weeks of the season and the Calder Cup playoffs. The officials who lodged the complaint argued that the practice of signing players from the European leagues late in the AHL season upset the competitive balance of the league, and gave wealthier teams an unfair advantage.Under the terms of bylaw, players who competed in the AHL during one season and moved to Europe the following season were not eligible to play in the league at any time during that second season. However, the rule does not exclude players who have been away from the AHL for more than one full season or never competed in the AHL before going to Europe.Burke said that he would prefer that the league grant Lambert an exemption but pointed out that he would seek a legal ruling, if necessary.&ldquo;I think the rule should be done away with,&rdquo; Burke said. &ldquo;I told them that last spring, that if they just waived it that I would be back sometime this year and, obviously, I was right. They&rsquo;ve got to do away with the rule in its entirety, in terms of a long-term solution. As for an immediate solution, if they want to waive it and permit Ross to play, that would suit me just fine as far as Ross goes. I just want to get him on the ice.&rdquo;Burke, a onetime right winger at Providence College and with the Mariners during their first season in 1977-78, said the rule should be thrown out and has offered to help the league draft a new policy. He prefers an earlier date for freezing rosters, with few exceptions permitted.&ldquo;The rule itself is a crystal-clear anti-trust violation,&rdquo; Burke said. &ldquo;It couldn&rsquo;t be clearer. This is true, even though I personally agree with the intent of the rule. If the league&rsquo;s intent is to keep a team from loading up in March and making a run at the playoffs, that&rsquo;s a good intent. Think of the guys who played all year in the league and did their jobs and then all of a sudden are beaten out by ringers. That, to me, is a legitimate interest, and I think the league is right to try and curb that in some way. But the way that they&rsquo;ve done that is totally unrelated to the goal.&rdquo;AROUND THE DIVISION&mdash;Fredericton lost Dave Morrison and Andy Schliebener on recall to Vancouver and Dave Shaw on recall to Quebec. Neil Belland and Mark Kumpel have been sidelined with injuries. The Express are taking a look at Jiri Amicek, a 20-year-old Czech center&hellip;Mariner goalie Shawn MacKenzie was named the AHL Player of the Week. MacKenzie held New Haven goalless in a relief appearance and posted back-to-back wins over Fredericton and Adirondack. He has a goals-against average of 1.76&hellip;Larry Floyd leads the balanced Mariners&rsquo; scoring with 13 points in nine games. Maine has lost Gary McAdam and Kevin Maxwell with injuries. Maxwell could miss a month with a knee injury&hellip;Nova Scotia added yet another player&mdash;defenseman Dave Allison&mdash;a veteran who played with the Voyageurs in Halifax. He was released by the Sherbrooke Canadiens, who replaced him on the roster with Stephen Fletcher, a member of the Sherbrooke Jets&rsquo; team last year&hellip;Adirondack continues to have serious problems with injuries. The situation was so bad that on Oct. 28, in a game at Maine, coach Bill Dineen had just 12 skaters&mdash;nine forwards and three defensemen for the final two periods. Defenseman John Beukeboom will miss five weeks after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his left knee, and rookie left winger Carmine Vani may miss up to three months after surgery to repair a separated right shoulder. Through the first nine games, Adirondack players missed 41 games because of injuries. &#9632;

AHL’s ‘European’ Bylaw To Become Issue Again

<div class="byline">BY TOM BOGGIE</div>TROY&mdash;With most of the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) schools putting veteran teams on the ice this season, the adjective that&rsquo;s going to be heard a lot this year is much-improved. Two of the teams that will definitely fall into that category are Vermont and Yale.Vermont, under the guidance of first-year coach Mike Gilligan, boasts one of the East&rsquo;s top left wingers in senior Kevin Foster. Supporting Foster is a strong cast of supporting forwards, as well as good goaltending from three returning netminders, but the defense as a whole could be a problem.At Yale, Tim Taylor, who took a year off to serve as assistant coach with the U.S. Olympic team, returns just in time.&ldquo;We had a sensational January and February last year,&rdquo; said Taylor. &ldquo;The players and the coaches deserve a lot of credit for coming back that way. Hopefully, that momentum will carry us to a good start this season.&rdquo;If that momentum isn&rsquo;t enough, Taylor can rely on an excellent defense, led by sophomore goalie Mike Schwalt and an offense with unlimited potential.VERMONT&mdash;First-year coach Mike Gilligan inherits a proven corps of snipers, but the defense may give him some grey hairs.The offense features one of the East&rsquo;s most exciting players in senior winger Kevin Foster, the team&rsquo;s leading scorer last year with 21 goals and 36 assists. He will be joined by sophomores Jeff Capello (6-15-21) and Shannon Deegan (5-510), along with senior Mike O&rsquo;Connor (7-9-16). Among the top recruits is 6-foot-1, 195-pound winger Toby Ducolon, a third-round pick of the St. Louis Blues.But then there&rsquo;s the defense, where the Catamounts lost four starters. Expected to make major contributions on the blue line are co-captain Henry Owen and Jukka Vertola. The goaltending appears solid, with sophomore Tom Draper (4.08) returning with senior Gregg Thygeson and junior Mike Mundorf.BROWN&mdash;After losing just three seniors to graduation, Brown coach Herb Hammond is anxiously awaiting the start of the 1984-85 season.Among the losses is goalie Paul McCarthy, but senior John Franzosa, who had a 4.31 average a year ago, will step right in. Senior Tim Nelson is the leading candidate for the backup spot.The defense is improving with age. Three-year starter Scott Whittemore, sophomores Mike Girouard and Greg Murphy, junior Sam Kopchick and senior Ed Pizzo are the top returnees, while newcomers Bruce McColl and Mark Stonich can make instant contributions.The offense will be led by sophomore Dan Allen, who had a sensational freshman year with 11 goals and 10 assists. Junior Bobby Jones (9-7-16) also returns at center. Junior Tom Wallack (5-9-14), senior Jim White (6-8-14) and sophomore Steve Climo (5-8-13) should be improved this season.YALE&mdash;Yale finished with a flurry last season, posting a 9-3-1 mark from mid-January to the end of the season, and coach Tim Taylor hopes that the momentum carries through to the 1984-85 campaign.The Elis look to have the players necessary to secure the playoff berth that eluded them last year. There&rsquo;s no ques-tion about the goaltending where Mike Schwalb compiled a team-best 2.91 average as a freshman, Mickey Kapalis, a transfer from Notre Dame, and senior Scott Ralick will serve as the backups.Although the right side of the offense appears a little weak, the rest is solid. The experience will come from senior center Norris Tobin and captain Kevin Conley. Bob Kudelski (14-12-26) led the team in scoring last year as freshman. He will be centering for Sean Neely (13-1225) and Bob Logan (9-13-22), last year&rsquo;s MVP.The kingpins of the defense are senior Peter Sawkins (2-14-16), who is 6-foot-3, 190 pounds, and juniors Tom Hzenzut, Gary Davidson and Paul Marcotte.&ldquo;We have to generate more offense, but we&rsquo;ll be better defensively,&rdquo; said Taylor.DARTMOUTH&mdash;After building a national Division Three powerhouse at Rochester Institute of Technology, rookie coach Brian Mason will be trying to work that same magic with the Big Green. Dartmouth only won three games last year, but that doesn&rsquo;t deter Mason.&ldquo;The situation is not as gloomy as some people may think,&rdquo; he said.Offensively, only two of last year&rsquo;s top six scorers are back. Senior Doug Hirsch, an excellent stickhandler, had nine goals and 13 assists last year while sophomore Ke ven McCann (4-10-14) was a pleasant surprise. They will get help from co-captain Bob Jangre and two hard-hitting juniors, Marty Sima and Dan Nugent.The situation on defense is competitive; where Mason has co-captain Todd Soutor returning with sophomore Jack Bohn, senior Jeff Leonard and senior Dan Bourque. Three sophomores return in goal. Jeff Bower played in 18 games last year but Jay Sarek and Mark Hoppe are battling for the starting assignment.ST. LAWRENCE&mdash;Saint coach Mike McShane will have to work some miracles to patch all the holes left by graduation.The defense was hit hardest, losing Mark Leach, Rick Rafter and Steve Smith. Freshmen will build this year&rsquo;s unit around senior Steve Tuite and sophomore Tom Pratt.The situation on offense is a little less severe. Senior Ray Shero, last year&rsquo;s leading scorer (15-27-42) is back, along with explosive Benoit Quesnel, junior Chris Gunnarson, senior Paul Castro, who led the team in scoring as a freshman and the brother act of Mike and Bill Gerrie, both sophomores.ARMY&mdash;Army coach Jack Riler faces the toughest schedule of his long coaching career, but he has the personnel to give some of the teams in the conference fits.Senior Mike Symes returns to run the offense. He was the top scorer in the East last year with 39 goals and 42 assists for 81 points. Also back is senior Frank Shea (30-46-76), giving the Cadets a lot of firepower.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-01629/5543136-1-eng-US/f0032-012.jpg" title="f0032-01" width="576" height="723"><figcaption class="caption-body">Tim Taylor is back at Yale after working with the U.S. Olympic team last season.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0032-01

Vermont, Yale Should Be Better

<div class="byline">BY TOM BURKE</div>BOSTON&mdash;Isbister. You can have a lot of fun with variations of that name. Substitute a vowel here, add a consonant there. Snicker, snicker.If you&rsquo;re an opposing goaltender in the Hockey East, however, you won&rsquo;t have much fun figuring out Rod Isbister. By the time you&rsquo;re set for him, the puck is behind you, or on the stick of a well-positioned teammate of Sir Rodney. Too late for chuckles.Isbister is a junior center from Northeastern University. He&rsquo;s twice been named Player of the Week in the Hockey East, and if he maintains his present scoring pace he could earn further honors. He had 16 points in six games and a solid hold on the league scoring lead.Due largely to Isbister&rsquo;s efforts, Northeastern is hanging right behind Boston University in the Hockey East standings.That Northeastern would be doing so well in Hockey East competition is a surprise; that Isbister would be leading them is not. He was regarded as coach Femie Flaman&rsquo;s top veteran forward after graduation snatched four regular forwards and three defensemen.Flaman has built his offense around Isbister, pairing him with several left wingers in an effort to get maximum production out of all his forward lines. Thus far, Isbister&rsquo;s been paired with Jim Madigan, Roman Kinal, Greg Pratt and Joe Maclnnes to his left. Mark Lori, an old teammate of Isbister&rsquo;s from Windsor Royals Junior Bs, has been his regular right winger, even though the two never played on the same line in Canada.Isbister also kills penalties and works the power play, in which Flaman inserts freshman Kevin Heffernan on the left side. Normally a center, Heffernan is another Isbister type with the puck.&ldquo;They move it around like the Montreal Canadiens,&rdquo; said Boston College coach Len Ceglarski.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m trying to use him as much as I can without burning him out,&rdquo; Flaman said of Isbister. &ldquo;Up until now, there&rsquo;s really been only one line scoring. I know the rest of the offense will come around. It&rsquo;s really not a problem. I&rsquo;m more concerned about the defense.&rdquo;The 5-foot-10, 170-pound Isbister agrees with his coach, citing Jay Heinbuck and Stewart Emerson as two dangerous scorers who will help him lead the Huskies to a better finish than the predicted sixth in the seven-team league.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m now a solid 178 pounds,&rdquo; said Isbister, stressing the word solid.He gained 10 pounds over the summer in his first weight training regimen ever. Now suddenly, he&rsquo;s not so easy to shove from the crease area any more. At age 16, he&rsquo;d done some good scoring in Junior B, hockey but only weighed 130.&ldquo;This team has a lot of heart and de4 sire,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re better than people think. Everyone was counting on us not doing very well.&rdquo;NU&rsquo;s only eastern crown came in 1982, and undoubtedly that figured in the recruiting of Isbister and Lori. In Isbister&rsquo;s case, he was brought to Boston by Windsor neighbor Ken Manchurek, who led NU in scoring last season before graduating. The Hounds did win the 1984 Beanpot Trophy, however, for just the second time in history. So NU hockey has indeed broken the tradition of losing teams and second division finishes.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re really solid up front,&rdquo; Isbister said. &ldquo;The defense has to pull up its socks a bit, but they&rsquo;re doing it.&rdquo;Freshman goalie Bruce Racine has been a pleasant find. He will alternate, with senior Tim Marshall for the foreseeable future, according to Flaman.Racine was a late summer recruit, brought in when the NU coaches discovered that another netminder who&rsquo;d been| on academic probation wasn&rsquo;t doing well enough in summer school. Former NU. player Doug Harvey was Racine&rsquo;s coach in junior, which undoubtedly helped the cause. &#9632;

Isbister’s Name Is Hardly A Joke

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-02459/5543205-1-eng-US/f0032-022.jpg" title="f0032-02" width="475" height="527"><figcaption class="caption-body">PETER DOURIS New Hampshire</figcaption></div><h2>HOCKEY EAST</h2>Peter Douris of New Hampshire is doing everything in his power to get the Wildcats out of the Hockey East Conference basement.Douris, a 6-foot-l, 195-pound center who was drafted by the Winnipeg Jets as their No. 1 pick in 1984, came up with a seven-point burst to spark New Hampshire&rsquo;s sweep of Michigan and 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/f0032-03309/5543198-1-eng-US/f0032-032.jpg" title="f0032-03" width="536" height="521"><figcaption class="caption-body">RAY STASZAK Illinois-Chicago</figcaption></div><h2>CCHA</h2>Ray Staszak of Illinois-Chicago continues to dominate the CCHA individual scoring race while the Flames battle to hold first place.Staszak has scored 14 times, the best in the nation, in eight CCHA outings to regain first place with 19 scoring points as he won selection as CCHA Performer of the Week for the second time this season.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-04194/5543191-1-eng-US/f0032-042.jpg" title="f0032-04" width="521" height="524"><figcaption class="caption-body">PERRY BEREZAN North Dakota</figcaption></div><h2>WCHA</h2>Perry Berezan of North Dakota scored 28 goals last year as a freshman and judging by his start this season, he&rsquo;ll probably surpass that figure.Berezan, a 20-year-old sophomore center for the Sioux, collected eight scoring points as North Dakota beat and tied Denver, making Berezan the WCHA Performer of the Week. Drafted by Calgary in 1983, Berezan already has six goals in eight games.THE BAUER PERFORMERS OF THE WEEK &#9632;

f0032-02

Bauer FIT FOR PERFORMANCE

<div class="byline">BY VIRG FOSS</div>MINNEAPOLIS&mdash;It&rsquo;s no surprise that The Minnesota Gophers are sitting atop the Western Collegiate Hockey Association standings. After all, that&rsquo;s exactly There the league coaches predicted the Gophers will be when the season comes to a close in late February. But what is a bit surprising is that coach Brad Buetow&rsquo;s Gophers, known over the years for their offensive punch, are getting the job done defensively this season.&ldquo;Usually the team that leads the league in goals against, tops the league in the final standings,&rdquo; Buetow pointed out.While veteran Frank Pietrangelo and newcomer John Blue have been solid in goal for the Gophers, improved play defensively has been the major reason for the turnabout in Minnesota&rsquo;s style of play.&ldquo;Our goaltending has been very sound,&rdquo; Buetow said, &ldquo;and our overall team defense has been just excellent. The key thing is that we&rsquo;ve been improving every week.&rdquo;Minnesota&rsquo;s success has come despite the absence of two quality forwards. Tom Rothstein and Corey Millen have both been sidelined with injuries, but the Gophers continue to roll on. Rothstein has back problems and the oft-injured Millen will be out several weeks with a shoulder separation.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if there&rsquo;s a better forward in the country than Millen,&rdquo; Buetow said.Up front, the Gophers have only one senior in the lineup, Rich Erdall, who was among the league leaders.Junior Pat Micheletti, one in a line of Micheletti brothers to play for the Gophers, has picked up a lot of the slack created by the absence of Millen and Rothstein. Micheletti was tops in the league in scoring with 10 goals and seven assists in six games. Micheletti was at his best in a recent series against Maine when he potted three and assisted on the fourth in a 4-2 win, then came back the next night for one goal and two assists in a 8-1 win. It&rsquo;s exactly that kind of firepower which has made the Gophers such a strong offensive team over the years.While Minnesota has the early lead in the WCHA, Buetow stops short of labeling the Gophers as the dominant team in the league, or even the country.&ldquo;From what I&rsquo;ve seen so far, I don&rsquo;t know if there is a dominant team in the country,&rdquo; Buetow said. &ldquo;I feel we&rsquo;ve got a strong team, but I don&rsquo;t know if we&rsquo;re a dominating one.&rdquo;Nor is Buetow deceived by the early-season standings which find Wisconsin and North Dakota, two traditional powers, and Minnesota-Duluth, last year&rsquo;s champion, all tied for last place.&ldquo;That won&rsquo;t last long,&rdquo; Buetow said.&ldquo;As the season goes on, I think you&rsquo;ll see those clubs back in the race. North Dakota and Wisconsin are very young clubs and Duluth will get rolling when (goalie) Rick Kosti gets hot.&rdquo;Speaking of hot, freshman Paul Broten has been just that for Minnesota. Broten, the youngest brother of NHLers Neal and Aaron, was one of the top players in Minnesota high school hockey last year while helping Roseau to a berth in the state tourney.But there were those who questioned whether the youngest Broten, at 5-foot-10, 150 pounds, was physically strong enough to step in as a freshman in the WCHA and get the job done. Broten responded to that by netting four goals in his first six games, three of them coming in one game against Maine.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s got great instincts and he&rsquo;s performed well for us,&rdquo; Buetow said. &ldquo;We thought he could play for us as a freshman, but we didn&rsquo;t think he&rsquo;d do this well this early. He&rsquo;s a very deceptive player.&rdquo;Buetow stays away from any comparisons between Paul and his older brothers, who also played for him.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s hard to make comparisons and 1 don&rsquo;t think it would be fair to Paul to do that,&rdquo; Buetow said.WCHA NOTES&mdash;Minnesota-Duluth has won its last 14 games at Duluth Arena&hellip;Duluth&rsquo;s Bill Watson, last year&rsquo;s WCHA champion, has scored in 19 straight games for the Bulldogs&hellip;When Colorado College swept New Hampshire recently, it marked the first two-game sweep for coach Mike Bertsch&rsquo;s Tigers in his three years as head coach&hellip;Michigan Tech has lost sophomore center Ally Cook for four to five weeks with a shoulder dislocation&hellip;Part of the reason Wis-consin has gotten of to a slow start is because veteran forwards Paul Houck and Dave Maley have been sidelined with injuries. Houck, the 16th overall leading scorer for the Badgers, has scored 58 goals in the last two seasons. Both are now back in the Wisconsin lineup&hellip;Duluth goalie Rick Kosti recently played in his 43rd consecutive game before getting a rest in the second game of a non-conference series with Alaska-Fairbanks. &#9632;

Gophers Shows They Can Play Two Ways

<div class="byline">BY BILL CRAWFORD</div>SAULT STE. MARIE&mdash;The comer&rsquo;s been turned and things are looking up at the Division One hockey school once dubbed Lake Inferior State.Hardly &ldquo;inferior&rdquo; any longer, Lake Superior State is favored by most Central Collegiate Hockey Association insiders to not only be much improved this season, but to finish in the top four.The Lakers, located at the eastern tip of Michigan&rsquo;s Upper Peninsula, almost remotely north of the other conference teams, are traditionally listed among the &ldquo;also rans&rdquo; when it comes to predictions.However, the Lakers have undergone a facelift over the past four or five seasons that has seen them develop steadily.Last season. Lake Superior finished eighth in the CCHA, gaining the final playoff berth. But, enroute to that finish, the Lakers twice felled the eventual national champion, Bowling Green, on the Falcons&rsquo; ice, and also knocked off Minnesota-Duluth on the road and powerful Michigan State at home.The big change was instituted by former coach Bill Selman, who took over five years ago, and has been carried on and fine-tuned by present coach Frank Anzalone, now in his third season.The last hurdle between the Lakers and a truly superior product is as simple as establishing consistency.After four series, one a nonconference appearance at the University of Minnesota, the Lakers were 3-4 overall. having split CCHA sets at Illinois-Chicago and Ohio State and at home against Bowling Green.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re better, a lot better.&rdquo; said Anzalone, a native of Brooklyn, NY, who played college hockey at New Hampshire. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re capable of winning big. but we&rsquo;re not consistent yet. We haven&rsquo;t yet learned to win. But it&rsquo;s coming.&rdquo;To play for the Lakers, you&rsquo;ve got to like the small-school approach to both academics and hockey. You&rsquo;ve got to appreciate knowing not only your teammates and classmates, but your professors and half the folks in this upper Michigan town of 13,000 just across the St. Mary&rsquo;s River from its Canadian twin city of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s fantastic,&rdquo; said Laker captain Chris Dahlquist, who played high school hockey in Minnesota before enrolling at LSSC four years ago. &ldquo;I love the closeness of the campus, the community and the personal aspect of life here. It&rsquo;s the only place to go to school and play hockey.&rdquo;&ldquo;The recruits are better each year and the guys are fitting in better each season,&rdquo; continues Dahlquist, a business major. &ldquo;This is not a traditional college hockey program. It&rsquo;s relatively new. And it&rsquo;s been re-made. We&rsquo;ve got the talent now to be a good team. It&rsquo;s attitudes and positiveness that are the keys now.&rdquo;The Lakers lost only three players to graduation last spring and returned 18 for 1984-85.Now, there are nine experienced forwards, five veteran defensemen and one tested goaltender.&ldquo;We aren&rsquo;t worried about our personnel,&rdquo; said Anzalone, an intense, devoted type who spends every waking moment trying to improve Laker hockey. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got the talent. Our recruiting is up. Our team pride is up. We&rsquo;re a legitimate Division One team.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got a great facility (the 3,200-scat James A. Norris Center), a personal small-campus look like Colorado College and Clarkson, good fan support and a coming team. We&rsquo;ve had it all to offer fora long time. But nobody was out there letting potential players know about us. They know now.&rdquo; &#9632;

Lakers Climbing To Respectability

<h2>CCHA CONFERENCE</h2>(Standings on Fri. Nov. 9)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-01642/5543340-1-eng-US/f0034-012.jpg" title="f0034-01" width="546" height="287"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Fri. Nov. 2Ferris State 2 at Mich. State 8Miami 5 at Illinois-Chicago 1Ohio State 7 at Bow. Green 3W. Michigan 6 at Lake Superior 3Michigan 4 at New Hampshire 7Sat. Nov. 3Bow. Green 8 at Ohio State 4Miami 5 at Illinois-Chicago 6Mich. State 3 at Ferris State 4W. Michigan 2 at Lake Superior 5Michigan 4 at New Hampshire 9<h3>LEADING SCORERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-02494/5543333-1-eng-US/f0034-022.jpg" title="f0034-02" width="550" height="384"></div><h2>HOCKEY EAST</h2>(Standings on Tue. Nov. 6)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-03385/5543326-1-eng-US/f0034-032.jpg" title="f0034-03" width="548" height="234"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Tue. Oct. 30Boston College 4 at N. Hampshire 3Wed. Oct. 31Providence 6 at Lowell 8Fri. Nov. 2Min-Duluth 6 at Bost. Univ 6Maine 3 at Mich Tech 2Northeastern 1 at Minnesota 6Sat. Nov. 3Min-Duluth 3 at Bost. Univ 2Maine 2 at Mich. Tech 10Northeastern 5 at Minnesota 6Sun. Nov. 4Providence 6 at Boston College 5<h3>LEADING SCORERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-04283/5543319-1-eng-US/f0034-042.jpg" title="f0034-04" width="548" height="292"></div><h2>WCHA CONFERENCE</h2>(Standings on Fri. Nov. 9)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-05222/5543312-1-eng-US/f0034-052.jpg" title="f0034-05" width="552" height="268"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>North Dakota 5 at Denver 4Maine 3 at Mich Tech 2Min-Duluth 6 at Boston Univ. 6Northeastern 1 at Minnesota 6Wisconsin 2 at N. Michigan 8Sat. Nov. 3North Dakota 4 at Denver 4Maine 2 at Mich Tech 10Min-Duluth 3 at Boston Univ. 2Northeastern 5 at Minnesota 6Wisconsin 5 at N. Michigan 9<h3>LEADING SCORERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-06191/5543305-1-eng-US/f0034-062.jpg" title="f0034-06" width="552" height="234"></div><h2>ONTARIO CONFERENCE</h2>(Standings on Mon. Nov. 5)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-07175/5543298-1-eng-US/f0034-072.jpg" title="f0034-07" width="554" height="408"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>York 16, Ryerson 1Queen&rsquo;s 3, Waterloo 1Toronto 5, Brock 3Queen&rsquo;s 11, Ryerson 5Windsor 6, York 2Waterloo 7, Brock 5<h2>ONTARIO COLLEGES</h2>(Standings on Mon. Nov. 5)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-08164/5543291-1-eng-US/f0034-082.jpg" title="f0034-08" width="542" height="268"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Centennial 5, Sheridan 2Seneca 6, Centennial 3Humber 7, St. Clair 6<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-09150/5543284-1-eng-US/f0034-092.jpg" title="f0034-09" width="542" height="204"></div> &#9632;

f0034-01

HOW THEY STAND

<h2>HOCKEY EAST</h2><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-10145/5543434-1-eng-US/f0034-102.jpg" title="f0034-10" width="572" height="1030"></div><h3>DECEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-11135/5543427-1-eng-US/f0034-112.jpg" title="f0034-11" width="564" height="994"></div><h2>CCHA</h2><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-12131/5543420-1-eng-US/f0034-122.jpg" title="f0034-12" width="532" height="66"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-13121/5543413-1-eng-US/f0034-132.jpg" title="f0034-13" width="552" height="932"></div><h3>DECEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-14117/5543406-1-eng-US/f0034-142.jpg" title="f0034-14" width="536" height="645"></div><h2>WCHA</h2><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-15112/5543399-1-eng-US/f0034-152.jpg" title="f0034-15" width="535" height="591"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-16110/5543392-1-eng-US/f0034-162.jpg" title="f0034-16" width="524" height="801"></div><h3>JANUARY</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-17101/5543385-1-eng-US/f0034-172.jpg" title="f0034-17" width="541" height="151"></div><h2>ECAC</h2><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-1896/5543378-1-eng-US/f0034-182.jpg" title="f0034-18" width="526" height="645"></div><h3>DECEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-1990/5543371-1-eng-US/f0034-192.jpg" title="f0034-19" width="536" height="537"></div> &#9632;

f0034-10

GAMES TO COME

<div class="byline">BY JOHN HERBERT</div>Louisville HockeyLouisville HockeyLONDON&mdash;The room at the top of the Ontario Hockey League&rsquo;s Emms Division standings has become stuffy now that the London Knights have joined the pack.After four seasons struggling to be a .500 club, the Knights are on a record course and in hot pursuit of the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. After opening the season with three losses, all by one goal, the Knights won nine consecutive games, surpassing the club record of eight, set in 1972-73.The Knights have also left behind another legacy, one that they are a team which can be intimidated.All this is not to suggest the Knights have become the force of the Emms group. The Greyhounds did not go out of business during the same stretch, piling up an impressive 11-4 record. But the Knights are doing enough positive things to suggest possibilities unheard of in the past five seasons.Much of the credit for the Knights&rsquo; rise belongs to second-year coach Don Boyd and his two assistants, Skip Cummins and Doug McLean. Boyd&rsquo;s positive attitude and hard-working style has had a great impact on the players. Cummins&rsquo; is in charge of the Knights&rsquo; splended defense and McLean, who is taking his masters in special education at the University of Western Ontario, joined the club this season after coaching tier II in the Maritimes.It was a move Boyd made after the second of three consecutive losses, insisting on more discipline and restraint by his players that turned the club around. During a 6-5 overtime loss in Windsor, Knight players Jim Sandlak and Greg Smyth were ejected and drew suspensions.At the time, the Knights were playing good enough to win but still losing, and Boyd chalked it up to discipline. Once they had that under control, the law of averages took care of the rest and the Knights took off.&ldquo;There may have been some misguided thoughts about certain players&rsquo; roles on the hockey club which did not lend itself to team play,&rdquo; said Boyd.&ldquo;And we took too many penalties.&rdquo; Dave Lowry, a 19-year-old left winger who played minor hockey on a line with Steve Yzerman in Nepean, Ont., was the key player in the Knights&rsquo; streak with 13 goals. In his first two seasons, Lowry was hit by injuries, and his hardworking style seemed to be overshadowed by London&rsquo;s usual array of high-scoring centers such as Brian Bradley and Scott Morrison.There was no denying Lowry this time.The Knights&rsquo; captain helped turn the team around before the Calgary Flames returned Bradley to junior and came up with a pair of two-goal games as the Knights won for their seventh and eighth straight games. Bradley missed both games with a cracked finger.A silent worker who goes about his job without much fanfare, Lowry came to the Knights as an eighth-round midget pick and didn&rsquo;t give himself much chance of making the Knights three seasons ago.&ldquo;I had already made arrangements to play with another team,&rdquo; Lowry recalled. &ldquo;The Knights had three left wingers coming back and their fifth pick was a left winger. 1 figured they&rsquo;d go with him. All I came to camp for was experience and to see what it was like.&rdquo;The tipoff came the second day of camp.&ldquo;They took me to a boarding house,&rdquo; Lowry said. &ldquo;That takes a bit of pressure off you when they move you out of the hotel. You start to get the feeling you might be around for some time.&rdquo;Boyd&rsquo;s main contributions in London include instilling a winning attitude.&ldquo;Now everybody wants to win.&rdquo; Lowry said. &ldquo;We want to win because we&rsquo;d always ended up paying if we didn&rsquo;t&hellip;like in practice.&rdquo;Boyd, 32, came to the Knights from the Regina Pats where he had resigned after a half-season. Before that, Boyd played goal for Bowling Green, coached junior D in the London area and then was an assistant at the University of Michigan and the University of North Dakota. Boyd was with North Dakota when the school won two NCAA titles.Boyd is also trained as an educator and comes equipped with a bachelor&rsquo;s degree in science and a maters degree in education. In direct terms, he does not consider himself in a teacher-student role with his players but feels his background is important to the coaching of junior hockey.He certainly communicates well with his players, and has their total respect.In goal, last year&rsquo;s No. 1 draft pick Jeff Reese has played every game and has been strong. Defensively, Bob Halkidis leads the group and has been excellent, but the most improved is Doug Thiel. This year&rsquo;s No. 1 draft, minor midget Joe Ranger, 16, has made a quick and fine transition to OHL.OHL HAPPENINGS&mdash;Sudbury sent Chris McRae to Oshawa for Brad Walcott and the rights to a tier II player, Paul Dey. Ottawa gave up Richard Adolfi, Joel Brown and the rights to overage defenseman Brad Shaw in exchange for Kitchener&rsquo;s Bert Weir. Tom Allen and Greg Sliz. Should Shaw, Ottawa&rsquo;s captain and the OHL&rsquo;s runnerup in best defenseman voting last season, turn up in Kitchener at some future date, the Rangers would have pulled a major coup.Shaw is playing in Salt Lake City in the IHL&mdash;at the moment.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-01607/5543465-1-eng-US/f0035-012.jpg" title="f0035-01" width="590" height="788"><figcaption class="caption-body">Captain Dave Lowry has been one of the reasons the Knights have been on a roll.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0035-01

Knights On A Team-Record Tear

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-02475/5543510-1-eng-US/f0035-022.jpg" title="f0035-02" width="557" height="570"><figcaption class="caption-body">ROB DEGAGNE North Bay</figcaption></div><h2>ONTARIO LEAGUE</h2>Rob DeGagne of the North Bay Centennials is a little behind the rest of the Ontario Hockey League but he&rsquo;s catching up fast since his return.The 19-year-old, who missed six games with an attack of pneumonia, came back to the Centennials&rsquo; lineup in splendid shape, collecting 10 points, eight of them in one game, in two outings to win the nod as the OHL Player of the Week.DeGagne already has 13 scoring points in seven games, moving him into the leading 10 scorers.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-03379/5543503-1-eng-US/f0035-032.jpg" title="f0035-03" width="410" height="565"><figcaption class="caption-body">TERRY HOULDER Lethbridge</figcaption></div><h2>WESTERN LEAGUE</h2>Terry Houlder is a rookie in the Western Hockey. League this season and already he&rsquo;s making an impression as a point scorer.The 18-year-old center of the Lethbridge Broncos was selected as the WHL Player of the Week after a 13-point explosion that is highly untypical of the defensive-minded Broncos.Houlder ranks fourth in the league in rookie scoring this season.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-04311/5543496-1-eng-US/f0035-042.jpg" title="f0035-04" width="559" height="568"><figcaption class="caption-body">MARC DAMPHOUSSEE Shawinigan</figcaption></div><h2>QUEBEC LEAGUE</h2>The Shawinigan Cataracts are a team to be reckoned with this season, and they seem to be doing it with a better offense led by Marc Damphoussee.The 19-year-old left winger came up with a nine-point outburst in three Shawinigan games to win the selection as QHL Player of the Week.Damphoussee, 5-foot-ll, 188 pounds, has been the key man in the current Shawinigan drive, which has seen the team win its last nine games.At the end of the current season. THE HOCKEY NEWS will select a Micron Junior Player of the Year. &#9632;

f0035-02

MICRON JUNIOR PLAYERS OF THE WEEK

<div class="byline">BY BEN KUZMA</div>Louisville HockeyLouisville HockeyPRINCE ALBERT&mdash;Terry Simpson doesn&rsquo;t leap tall buildings in a single bound and isn&rsquo;t faster than a speeding bullet.But the mild-mannered general manager-coach of Prince Albert Raiders does possess powers of persuasion when it comes to getting the most out of hockey players.You won&rsquo;t find Simpson darting into a phone booth to change into a fancy costume and cape as the national anthem plays. No. he just takes his customary place behind the bench and gets the job done the old-fashioned way.Never one to back down from a challenge, Simpson guided his Raiders to four national tier II championships. He then rolled up his sleeves and went to work to lift a cellar-dweller out of the Western Hockey League basement. For that accomplishment, Simpson was named Coach of the Year in the WHL last season.But the latest challenge afforded Simpson will put his coaching methods and decision-making ability to the supreme test. Simpson, named recently to the head coaching position for Canada&rsquo;s national junior team, will be under pressure to make sure the nation&rsquo;s representative at the World Junior Championships Dec. 23 to Jan. 1 in Helsinki, Finland, has the right stuff.Last year Simpson was an assistant to Brian Kilrea when Canada finished a disappointing fourth at the world championships in Sweden. Some people said the squad lacked the right stuff&mdash;too many good players weren&rsquo;t on the team.Kilrea, now an assistant coach with the New York Islanders, came under some fire for his roster selections but of course he won&rsquo;t have to answer to those charges this time around. It&rsquo;s now up to Simpson to get Canada into the medals or feel the heat.&ldquo;Last year we didn&rsquo;t get a medal but we were very close to winning the gold,&rdquo; reminded Simpson. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s so close when you get into a goals-for and goals-against situation. I don&rsquo;t know if the players realize that. Had we beaten the Soviets by two goals instead of tying them (3-3) and then beat Czechoslovakia the next night, we would have won the gold.&ldquo;We got behind 3-0 in our first game to Finland in the first few minutes and lost 4-2&mdash;that cost us. The players did not realize what to expect off the bat.&rdquo;Going into international competition with the right ammunition is what it&rsquo;s all about. Show up with blanks and those Europeans will blast you right out of the rink.Last year, there was a summer camp and a lot of decisions were more or less made then. But not all players hit stride at the same time. Some, such as Brandon Wheat King center Ray Ferraro, didn&rsquo;t start rolling until Christmas.Ferraro went on a scoring binge in Brandon after being dealt from Portland in the summer. Ferraro set three scoring standards and was named the league&rsquo;s Most Valuable Player but wasn&rsquo;t a member of the national team.&ldquo;I feel last year and every year we will make mistakes,&rdquo; admitted Simpson. &ldquo;I think we made mistakes with about four or five players last year. Look at Ray Ferraro. There&rsquo;s a kid who probably should have been there, not knocking the players we had.&ldquo;We lost two or three players to the NHL on recall and we had to play Dale Derkatch at left wing&rdquo;This year Simpson will rely on WHL GMs and coaches to give him the word on who should be included in the list of 44 players to be invited to training camp in Belleville, Ont., Dec. 10-16. Simpson doesn&rsquo;t expect WHL excutives to play favorites or shield talent.&ldquo;I got good cooperation last year and I&rsquo;m sure they (GMs and coaches) have the players&rsquo; best interests at heart. I will be frank and honest when it comes to the final assessment. About the most we can ask for is two off every club unless they want to make sacrifices.&ldquo;And it&rsquo;s not fair for me to ask Regina for four players and then have us turn around and play them a number of times.&rdquo;Simpson won&rsquo;t be making all the decisions.Ron Lapointe of Shawinigan in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League will act as an assistant coach while Sherry Bassin of Oshawa of the Ontario Hockey League will be director of player personnel. Jim Gregory of the National Hockey League and Dave King, GM-coach of the Olympic team, will act as advisors.After pooling all their information, the committee will have to decide who gets the nod for camp. So what does it take to make a winner?&ldquo;We want players with speed and puck-handling ability,&rdquo; said Simpson. &ldquo;The first 15 spots should be no problem but after that it&rsquo;ll be tough. Every team needs role players and those with character&mdash;guys who can get team unity going real quick. There are some tough decisions to make, and it&rsquo;ll be a hell of a lot tougher than last year.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-01581/5543541-1-eng-US/f0036-012.jpg" title="f0036-01" width="581" height="818"><figcaption class="caption-body">Terry Simpson is expecting cooperation from the other teams in the league.</figcaption></div>Yeah, but that&rsquo;s what Simpson said after he won his first national tier II championship.WHL WEEK&mdash;Dan Hodgson of Prince Albert is leading the league in&rdquo; scoring with 32 points, and his 18 assists are also tops in that category. Teammate Ken Morrison and Greg Evtushevski of Kamloops followed at 29, with Morrison having a league-high 16goals. Next were Al Conroy of Medicine Hat and Doug Trapp of Regina, 26; Mark Mackay of Moose Jaw, 25; Len Nielsen of Regina, 24; Byron Lomow of Brandon and Gord Walker of Kamloops, 22.Gary Johnson of Medicine Hat was the top netminder with a stingy 2.14 goals-against average.Kalmoops traded right winger Walter Shutter to Portland for future considerations.In Canadian Major Junior Hockey League top 10 rankings, Regina was first with an 10-1-1 record. &#9632;

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This Is A Job For ‘Super-Simpson’

<div class="byline">BY RICK MAYOH</div>PLATTSBURGH, NY&mdash;The Plattsburgh Pioneers have played their last game in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s pretty well over for Plattsburgh,&rdquo; said Denis Methot. the owner, president, governor, general manager and coach of major junior hockey&rsquo;s first all-American team. &ldquo;There is a slight possibility we can move somewhere else but we can&rsquo;t move to Canada and we&rsquo;d still need some more investors. This is not an area for hockey, I guess.&rdquo;Methot, 40, a sports sciences teacher at the University of Quebec-Trois-Rivieres, and a local Plattsburgh family are the team&rsquo;s main investors and stand to lose almost $500,000 on the project, which seemed ill-fated from Day No. 1.Methot said he was looking into moving the team to Lake Placid or Massena, NY. Massena received approval for a Jr. A franchise in the Central (Ontario) Junior Hockey League but decided not to compete when the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association ruled only Canadian teams are eligible to compete for the national championship.The Pioneers lost 9-3 to Drummondville Voltigeurs in Drummondville for their 17th consecutive loss and were outscored 185-56.The team was attracting about 500 fans to home games in the upper New York state city of 35,000, an hour&rsquo;s drive south of Montreal. Methot conferred with executives of the league and its board of governors in an emergency meeting in Montreal and said he needed another $120 000 to last the season.Earlier this fall, the Plattsburgh City Council granted Methot a two-week extension on the monthly arena lease payment of $2,000. But then both the October and November payments came due and the team was unable to deliver.The leauge placed a six-day moratorium on the Pioneers and suspened games against St. Jean Beavers and Laval Voisins. As this issue went to press, it was not expected that the U.S. franchise would be revived.&ldquo;Denis told me it&rsquo;s not going to work unless there&rsquo;s a miracle,&rdquo; said league president Dr. Guy Morissette.And that miracle wasn&rsquo;t expected. The league told Methot he would have to tell it where he&rsquo;s going to play, the name of a new coach and demonstrate solid proof of his financial backing. Even then, Morissette added, the league could reject his proposal to move the franchise.The Plattsburgh media was waiting for an announcement that a group of local investors had bailed the franchise out for the rest of the season. But the potential investors backed off at the last minute.Plattsburgh mayor Carlton Rennell said they didn&rsquo;t have enough money to sustain the team for the rest of the year.The Pioneers had to give the city a $200,000 letter of credit for the city&rsquo;s renovations to the 1,300-seat Crete Memorial Civic Center and Rennell said the city will keep the money and cancel, the club&rsquo;s lease on the arena.&ldquo;I think I know council well enough to say the team&rsquo;s time has gone by,&rdquo; Rennell said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a big loss. People&rsquo;s hopes and expectations were high. I still think it&rsquo;s a good business venture for Plattsburgh.&rdquo;Right to the end, things went from bad to worse for the Pioneers. The team&rsquo;s last home game against St. Jean was postponed after the ice compressor broke down. There were 800 fans in the stands, the second largest crowd of the season.&ldquo;My first feeling is that I&rsquo;m sorry for Methot,&rdquo; Morissette said. &ldquo;Unfortuantely, it had to happen the way the team was structured. He was a one-man show.&rdquo;As is often the case, the players were unaware of the club&rsquo;s tenuous status.&ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t know anything,&rdquo; said John O&rsquo;Donnell, 19, a 6-foot-l, 190-pound defenseman from Weymouth, MA. &ldquo;The mayor talked to us a couple of weeks ago and said everything was alright. All we had to do was go out and play hockey. We didn&rsquo;t know we already had an extension.&rdquo;The club&rsquo;s demise will pose numerous problems for the league.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to have to have a new schedule and we&rsquo;ll have to discuss what happens to the standings, the division, alignments, and if there will be a dispersal draft,&rdquo; Morissette said. &ldquo;They have a heckuva goalie in Joel Kiers (Cranston, RD and five other players who could play for any team in the league.&rdquo;&ldquo;We had players coming in and Georges Lariviere was helping a lot on the ice,&rdquo; Methot said. &ldquo;We were really getting organized. &#9632;

Pioneer Spirit Dies In Plattsburgh

<h2>Mon. Oct. 29 QUEBEC 2, MONTREAL 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-01506/5543904-1-eng-US/f0037-012.jpg" title="f0037-01" width="564" height="740"></div><h2>LOS ANGELES 5, WINNIPEG 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-02370/5543897-1-eng-US/f0037-022.jpg" title="f0037-02" width="572" height="902"></div><h2>Tue. Oct. 30 RANGERS 3, ISLANDERS 7</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-03287/5543890-1-eng-US/f0037-032.jpg" title="f0037-03" width="548" height="1104"></div><h2>DETROIT 3, PITTSBURGH 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-04237/5543883-1-eng-US/f0037-042.jpg" title="f0037-04" width="546" height="412"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-05207/5543876-1-eng-US/f0037-052.jpg" title="f0037-05" width="592" height="498"></div><h2>CHICAGO 5, MINNESOTA 5</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-06178/5543869-1-eng-US/f0037-062.jpg" title="f0037-06" width="598" height="992"></div><h2>VANCOUVER 0, EDMONTON 7</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-07155/5543862-1-eng-US/f0037-072.jpg" title="f0037-07" width="596" height="264"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-08127/5543855-1-eng-US/f0037-082.jpg" title="f0037-08" width="592" height="530"></div><h2>Wed. Oct. 31 QUEBEC 5, HARTFORD 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-09109/5543848-1-eng-US/f0037-092.jpg" title="f0037-09" width="590" height="994"></div><h2>PHILADELPHIA 3, BUFFALO 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-10100/5543841-1-eng-US/f0037-102.jpg" title="f0037-10" width="566" height="187"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-1183/5543834-1-eng-US/f0037-112.jpg" title="f0037-11" width="588" height="702"></div><h2>PITTSBURGH 7, N. JERSEY 6</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-1272/5543827-1-eng-US/f0037-122.jpg" title="f0037-12" width="590" height="996"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-1366/5543820-1-eng-US/f0037-132.jpg" title="f0037-13" width="566" height="151"></div><h2>CALGARY 3, WASHINGTON 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-1460/5543813-1-eng-US/f0037-142.jpg" title="f0037-14" width="560" height="764"></div><h2>TORONTO 5, ST. LOUIS 6</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-1553/5543806-1-eng-US/f0037-152.jpg" title="f0037-15" width="568" height="702"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-01274/5543799-1-eng-US/f0040-012.jpg" title="f0040-01" width="566" height="530"></div><h2>LOS ANGELES 10, VANC. 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-02180/5543792-1-eng-US/f0040-022.jpg" title="f0040-02" width="572" height="994"></div><h2>Thu. Nov. 1 QUEBEC 1, BOSTON 7</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-03130/5543785-1-eng-US/f0040-032.jpg" title="f0040-03" width="572" height="318"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-04101/5543778-1-eng-US/f0040-042.jpg" title="f0040-04" width="594" height="700"></div><h2>ISLANDERS 5, MONTREAL 6</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-0583/5543771-1-eng-US/f0040-052.jpg" title="f0040-05" width="588" height="736"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-0671/5543764-1-eng-US/f0040-062.jpg" title="f0040-06" width="606" height="176"></div><h2>WINNIPEG 7, PHILADELPHIA 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-0763/5543757-1-eng-US/f0040-072.jpg" title="f0040-07" width="608" height="1136"></div><h2>CALGARY 9, DETROIT 5</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-0856/5543750-1-eng-US/f0040-082.jpg" title="f0040-08" width="604" height="1138"></div><h2>Fri. Nov. 2 HARTFORD 1, BUFFALO 8</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-0949/5543743-1-eng-US/f0040-092.jpg" title="f0040-09" width="602" height="181"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-1049/5543736-1-eng-US/f0040-102.jpg" title="f0040-10" width="572" height="647"></div><h2>MINNESOTA 2, N. JERSEY 2</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-1147/5543729-1-eng-US/f0040-112.jpg" title="f0040-11" width="578" height="800"></div><h2>WINNIPEG 3, DETROIT 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-1244/5543722-1-eng-US/f0040-122.jpg" title="f0040-12" width="572" height="852"></div><h2>CHICAGO 2, EDMONTON 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-1342/5543715-1-eng-US/f0040-132.jpg" title="f0040-13" width="596" height="820"></div><h2>Sat. Nov. 3 BOSTON 1, MONTREAL 3</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-1435/5543708-1-eng-US/f0040-142.jpg" title="f0040-14" width="554" height="880"></div><h2>BUFFALO 4, HARTFORD 4</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0041-01228/5543701-1-eng-US/f0041-012.jpg" title="f0041-01" width="564" height="295"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0041-02147/5543694-1-eng-US/f0041-022.jpg" title="f0041-02" width="594" height="376"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0041-03106/5543687-1-eng-US/f0041-032.jpg" title="f0041-03" width="594" height="260"></div><h2>ISLANDERS 4, NORDIQUES 5</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0041-0487/5543680-1-eng-US/f0041-042.jpg" title="f0041-04" width="607" height="75"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0041-0575/5543673-1-eng-US/f0041-052.jpg" title="f0041-05" width="608" height="381"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0041-0668/5543666-1-eng-US/f0041-062.jpg" title="f0041-06" width="554" height="330"></div><h2>RANGERS 7, PITTSBURGH 5</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-1149/5543659-1-eng-US/f0043-112.jpg" title="f0043-11" width="562" height="1088"></div><h2>NEW JERSEY 4, WASH. 6</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-1246/5543652-1-eng-US/f0043-122.jpg" title="f0043-12" width="564" height="936"></div><h2>MINNESOTA 1, PHILAD. 5</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-1343/5543645-1-eng-US/f0043-132.jpg" title="f0043-13" width="562" height="154"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-1443/5543638-1-eng-US/f0043-142.jpg" title="f0043-14" width="598" height="652"></div><h2>TORONTO 0, LOS ANGELES 7</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-1539/5543631-1-eng-US/f0043-152.jpg" title="f0043-15" width="594" height="736"></div><h2>CHICAGO 4, VANCOUVER 6</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-1636/5543624-1-eng-US/f0043-162.jpg" title="f0043-16" width="586" height="792"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-1732/5543617-1-eng-US/f0043-172.jpg" title="f0043-17" width="572" height="101"></div><h2>CALGARY 2, ST. LOUIS 5</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-1827/5543610-1-eng-US/f0043-182.jpg" title="f0043-18" width="571" height="726"></div><h2>Sun. Nov. 4 ISLANDERS 2, BOSTON 6</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-1926/5543603-1-eng-US/f0043-192.jpg" title="f0043-19" width="567" height="787"></div><h2>EDMONTON 2, WINNIPEG 1</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-2019/5543596-1-eng-US/f0043-202.jpg" title="f0043-20" width="576" height="556"></div> &#9632;

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NATIONAL LEAGUE SUMMARIES

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0038-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-01586/5543963-1-eng-US/f0038-012.jpg"></div><h2>GOALTENDING STATISTICS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-01554/5543956-1-eng-US/f0039-012.jpg" title="f0039-01" width="570" height="2191"></div><h2>GOALTENDING LEADERS</h2><h3>GOALS AGAINST AVERAGE</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-02386/5543949-1-eng-US/f0039-022.jpg" title="f0039-02" width="570" height="178"></div><h3>MOST WINS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-03288/5543942-1-eng-US/f0039-032.jpg" title="f0039-03" width="569" height="180"></div><h3>SAVE PERCENTAGE</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-04236/5543935-1-eng-US/f0039-042.jpg" title="f0039-04" width="539" height="149"></div> &#9632;

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NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE SCORING

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0039-05" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-05194/5543994-1-eng-US/f0039-052.jpg"></div> &#9632;

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NHL TEAM ROSTERS

<h2>USA Network 1984 NHL</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-06165/5544053-1-eng-US/f0039-062.jpg" title="f0039-06" width="544" height="358"></div><h3>NOVEMBER</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-07148/5544046-1-eng-US/f0039-072.jpg" title="f0039-07" width="548" height="360"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-08134/5544039-1-eng-US/f0039-082.jpg" title="f0039-08" width="554" height="410"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-09118/5544032-1-eng-US/f0039-092.jpg" title="f0039-09" width="536" height="414"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-10103/5544025-1-eng-US/f0039-102.jpg" title="f0039-10" width="546" height="418"></div> &#9632;

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NHL GAMES TO COME

<h2>National League Rookie Leaders</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-1535/5544091-1-eng-US/f0040-152.jpg" title="f0040-15" width="508" height="357"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-1633/5544084-1-eng-US/f0040-162.jpg" title="f0040-16" width="506" height="368"></div> &#9632;

f0040-15

CHRYSLER SCOREBOARD

(Standings on Mon. Nov. 5)<h2>CAMPBELL CONFERENCE</h2><h3>NORRIS DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-1730/5544143-1-eng-US/f0040-172.jpg" title="f0040-17" width="543" height="174"></div><h3>SMYTHE DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-1826/5544136-1-eng-US/f0040-182.jpg" title="f0040-18" width="551" height="174"></div><h2>WALES CONFERENCE</h2><h3>ADAMS DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-1924/5544129-1-eng-US/f0040-192.jpg" title="f0040-19" width="545" height="175"></div><h3>PATRICK DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-2023/5544122-1-eng-US/f0040-202.jpg" title="f0040-20" width="547" height="204"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Mon. Oct. 29Quebec 2 at Montreal 4Los Angeles 5 at Winnipeg 3Tue. Oct. 30NY Rangers 3 at NY Islanders 7Detroit 3 at Pittsburgh 4Chicago 5 at Minnesota 5 (OT)Vancouver 0 at Edmonton 7Wed. Oct. 31Quebec 5 at Hartford 3Philadelphia 3 at Buffalo 3 (OT)Pittsburgh 7 at New Jersey 6Calgary 3 at Washington 4Toronto 5 at St. Louis 6 (OT)Los Angeles 10 at Vancouver 3Thu. Nov. 1Quebec 1 at Boston 7NY Islanders 5 at Montreal 6 (OT)Winnipeg 7 at Philadelphia 4Calgary 3 at. Detroit 5Fri. Nov. 2Hartford 1 at Buffalo 8Minnesota 2 at New Jersey 2 (OT)Winnipeg 3 at Detroit 3 (OT)Chicago 2 at Edmonton 4Sat. Nov. 3Boston 1 at Montreal 3Buffalo 4 at Hartford 4 (OT)NY Islanders 4 at Quebec 5NY Rangers 7 at Pittsburgh 5New Jersey 4 at Washington 6Minnesota 1 at Philadelphia 5Toronto 0 at Los Angeles 7Chicago 4 at Vancouver 6Calgary 2 at St. Louis 5Sun. Nov. 4NY Islanders 2 at Boston 6Edmonton 2 at Winnipeg 1 &#9632;

f0040-17

THE NHL SCOREBOARD

BOSTON&mdash;Middleton 4, 5, Simmer 4, 5, Linseman 7, O&rsquo;Connell 4, Byers 2, Silk 3, 4, 5, Fergus 5,6,7, Courtnail 3. Winning goals&mdash;Simmer, Fergus.BUFFALO&mdash;Andreychuk 5, 6, 7, Tucker 3, 4, Hamel 3, 4, Perreaut 6, Seiling 4, 5, Peterson 2, Creighton 2, Housley 1, Davis 8, Ramsey 3. Winning goals&mdash;Tucker.CALGARY&mdash;Patterson 6, Quinn 4, Beers 6, Reinhart 8, 9, Maclnnis 3, Kromm 6, 7, Loob 3, Eloranta 1, Wilson 5, 6, 7, Peplinski 3. Winning goals&mdash;Reinhart.CHICAGO&mdash;Savard 4, 5, B. Wilson 4, Larmer 4, 5,6, Yaremchuk 2, T. Murray 4,5, D. Wilson 4, Fraser 4. Winning goals&mdash;none.DETROIT&mdash;Duguay 5, 6, 7, 8, Ogrodnick 6, Larson 2, 3, Yzerman 3, 4, Gare 4, Foster 3. Winning goals&mdash;none.EDMONTON&mdash;McClelland 3, Coffey 5, Kurri 10, 11, Messier 2, 3, Gretzky 11,12, Sherven 7, Anderson 7, 8, 9. Winning goals&mdash;McClelland, Kurri.HARTFORD&mdash;Johnson 4, Malone 2, Francis 6, Tippett 1, Neufeld 5,6, Kotsopoulos 3, Currie 1. Winning goals&mdash;none.LOS ANGELES&mdash;Smith 4,5, Galley 2,3,4, Fox 3, 4, Sykes 3, Taylor 3, 4, 5, 6, Nicholls 6, 7, 8, Dionne 3, Evans 1, Kelly 2, MacLellan 3, Hakansson 2, Redmond 1, Ruskowski 3. Winning goals&mdash;Galley, Taylor, Nicholls.MINNESOTA&mdash;Trimper 1, Hartsburg 1, 2, Bjugstad 2, 3, Payne 3, Ciccarelli 2, Ashton 1. Winning goals&mdash;none.MONTREAL&mdash;Gainey 4, Chelios 2, McPhee 1, 2, Nilan 2, Chabot 1, Hunter 3, 4, Naslund 2, Mondou 1, 2, DeBlois 4, Tremblay 1. Winning goals&mdash;McPhee, Mondou, Tremblay.NEW JERSEY&mdash;Hiemer 1, 2, 3, Cirella 2, 3, Bridgman 2, Higgins 5, Lever 3, Gagne 3, Sulliman 4, 5, Verbeek 4. Winning goals&mdash;none.NY ISLANDERS&mdash;D. Sutter 2, Jonsson 3, B. Sutter 9,10,11,12, Kallur 1, Bossy 13,14,15,16, 17, Boutilier 4, Gillies 5,6,7, Tonelli 7, Gilbert 1. Winning goals&mdash;Kallur.NY RANGERS&mdash;Patrick 2, Sundstrom 2, 3, 4, Larouche 3,4, Gagner 2, Sandstrom 7, Hedberg 6, McPhee 2. Winning goals&mdash;Hedberg.PHILADELPHIA&mdash;Propp 8, 9, 10, McCrimmon 2, Howe 4, Craven 5, Sinisalo 4, Zezel 3, Ron Sutter 2, Kerr 11, 12, Eriksson 2. Winning goals&mdash;Ron Sutter.PITTSBURGH&mdash;Bullard 5, Babych 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Young 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, Bodger 2, Crowder 2, 3, Lemieux 2, Hamilton 1. Winning goals&mdash;Babych, Young.QUEBEC&mdash;A. Stastny 5, Savard 3, McKegney 6, 7, 8, Goulet 7, 8, P. Stastny 5, 6, Marois 2, Paiement 4, M. Stastny 1, Berglund 3. Winning goals&mdash;Goulet, P. Stastny.ST. LOUIS&mdash;Gilmour 3, 4, Hickey 3, Petterssen 1, Federko 4, 5, 6, Sutter 5, 6, Mullen 3, Reeds 1. Winning goals&mdash;Federko, Sutter.TORONTO&mdash;Vaive 3, 4, Derlago 5, Courtnall 2, Salming 1. Winning goals&mdash;none.VANCOUVER&mdash;McNab 3, 4, Lidster 1, Lupul 4, Smyl 4, Gradin 2, Skriko 1, Lemay 2, 3. Winning goals&mdash;Lemay.WASHINGTON&mdash;Carpenter 7, Laughlin 1, Erickson 1, 2, Gartner 6, 7, 8, Gardner 1, McGeough 3, Haworth 6. Winning goals&mdash;Gartner 2.WINNIPEG&mdash;MacLean 2,3, Hawerchuk 3,4,5, Ellett 1, 2, Mullen 2, 3, Wilson 2, 3, Picard 2, Lukowich 2, Smail 4. Winning goals&mdash;Picard.Four-goal games&mdash;Bossy (NYI), 1.Hat tricks&mdash;McKegney (Que), Hiemer (NJ), Taylor (LA), Anderson (Edm).Penalty shot goals&mdash;Tucker (Buf).Overtime winner&mdash;Gartner (Was), B. Sutter (StL), Mondou (Mtl). &#9632;

NHL SCORERS THIS WEEK

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0041-0760/5544198-1-eng-US/f0041-072.jpg" title="f0041-07" width="560" height="1195"></div>If you wanted to write a fairy tale with a real-life happy ending, then consider the story of Tom Hirsch.Hirsch, 21, is a defenseman with the Minnesota North Stars, although he is currently on the sidelines with a shoulder injury.Hirsch grew up in Minneapolis, and he later played for the University of Minnesota. In 1981, his local-boy-makes-good story reached new heights when he was drafted in the third round by the North Stars.He continued to play university hockey, and then joined the United States Olympic team in 1984. Following his tenure with Team USA, his dream came true when he suited up in a North Star uniform. He played 15 regular-season games and six playoff games.The 6-foot-3, 195-pound defenseman, who has earned rave reviews from North Star general manager Lou Nanne, is sure to help the Stars when he comes back from the injury list.And he&rsquo;s also expected to be a cornerstone of the North Stars&rsquo; defense for many years to come. &#9632;

f0041-07

Chrysler Rookie Spotlight

<h2>AMERICAN LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Wed. Nov. 7)<h3>SOUTHERN DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-01237/5544292-1-eng-US/f0043-012.jpg" title="f0043-01" width="540" height="241"></div><h3>NORTHERN DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-02176/5544285-1-eng-US/f0043-022.jpg" title="f0043-02" width="545" height="206"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Tue. Oct 30Maine 0 at Fredericton 4Wed. Oct 31New Haven 5 at Hershey 5Springfield 1 at Moncton 4St Catharines 1 at Rochester 4Nova Scotia 3 at Sherbrooke 2Thu. Nov. 1Baltimore 2 at Fredericton 4Springfield 6 at Moncton 4Nova Scotia 6 at St. Catharines 6Fri. Nov. 2Nova Scotia 0 at Rochester 5New Haven 3 at Sherbrooke 5Binghamton 10 at Springfield 1Sat Nov. 3Sherbrooke 2 at Adirondack 5New Haven 6 at Binghamton 3Rochester 3 at Hershey 3Fredericton 1 at Maine 5Baltimore 3 at Moncton 1St Catharines 3 at Springfield 5Sun. Nov. 4Adirondack 0 at Maine 12Baltimore 0 at Nova Scotia 2St Catharines 5 at Rochester 4Moncton 2 at Sherbrooke 5<h2>INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Wed. Nov. 7)<h3>EAST DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-03149/5544278-1-eng-US/f0043-032.jpg" title="f0043-03" width="551" height="150"></div><h3>WEST DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-04108/5544271-1-eng-US/f0043-042.jpg" title="f0043-04" width="549" height="207"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Tue. Oct 30Muskegon 1 at Indianapolis 2Wed. Oct. 31Salt Lake 2 at Peoria 6Fri. Nov. 2Toledo 3 at Indianapolis 3Flint 4 at Milwaukee 3Salt Lake 4 at Kalamazoo 6Muskegon 3 at Fort Wayne 4Sat Nov. 3Salt Lake 4 at Fort Wayne 3Peoria 3 at Kalamazoo 6Toledo 7 at Indianapolis 4Sun. Nov. 4Salt Lake 2 at Milwaukee 4<h2>WESTERN LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Mon. Nov. 5)<h3>EASTERN DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-0596/5544264-1-eng-US/f0043-052.jpg" title="f0043-05" width="548" height="267"></div><h3>WESTERN DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-0682/5544257-1-eng-US/f0043-062.jpg" title="f0043-06" width="545" height="206"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Tue. Oct. 30Medicine Hat 4 at Moose Jaw 0Brandon 3 at Kamloops 6Lethbridge 3 at Victoria 7New Westminster 4 at Saskatoon 7Wed. Oct. 31New Westminster 4 at Regina 7Lethbridge 5 at Portland 6Saskatoon 1 at Prince Albert 5Thu. Nov. 1Victoria 5 at Kelowna 7Fri. Nov. 2Medicine Hat 7 at Calgary 5Moose Jaw 4 at Regina 5Brandon 3 at Portland 5Lethbridge 3 at New Westminster 2Victoria 4 at Kamloops 6Sat. Nov. 3Moose Jaw 2 at Medicine Hat 7Brandon 5 at Victoria 3Saskatoon 1 at Kelowna 0Seattle 9 at Portland 7Sun. Nov. 4Regina 2 at Prince Albert 5Moose Jaw 4 at Lethbridge 2Saskatoon 0 at Kamloops 9<h2>ONTARIO LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Mon. Nov. 5)<h3>LEYDEN DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-0776/5544250-1-eng-US/f0043-072.jpg" title="f0043-07" width="545" height="237"></div><h3>EMMS DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-0865/5544243-1-eng-US/f0043-082.jpg" title="f0043-08" width="542" height="266"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Wed. Oct. 31Oshawa 1 at Belleville 4Thu. Nov. 1Ottawa 2 at Peterborough 10London 5 at Windsor 4Kitchener 1 at Hamilton 4Belleville 3 at North Bay 5Oshawa 0 at Cornwall 6Guelph 3 at Sudbury 7Fri. Nov. 2Toronto 5 at S.S. Marie 6Hamilton 3 at Kitchener 4Windsor 4 at London 1Oshawa 2 at Ottawa 1Cornwall 4 at Kingston 9Peterborough 4 at Guelph 2Sat. Nov 3Guelph 4 at Belleville 10Sun. Nov. 4Toronto 4 at Sudbury 3Hamilton 2 at Oshawa 3S.S. Marie 1 at North Bay 4Peterborough 7 at Cornwall 5Kingston 2 at Kitchener 5<h2>QUEBEC LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Mon. Nov. 5)<h3>LEBEL DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-0961/5544236-1-eng-US/f0043-092.jpg" title="f0043-09" width="542" height="207"></div><h3>DILIO DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-1055/5544229-1-eng-US/f0043-102.jpg" title="f0043-10" width="551" height="268"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Wed. Oct. 31Quebec 5 at Hull 10Drummondville 1 at Laval 7St. Jean 9 at T-Rivieres 7Fri. Nov. 2Verdun 2 at Drummondville 4Hull 9 at Granby 8Chicoutimi 1 at Quebec 3T-Rivieres 2 at Shawinigan 6Plattsburgh at St. Jean (ppd)Sat. Nov. 3Laval at Plattsburgh (ppd)Sun. Nov. 4Drummondville 4 at Chicoutimi 6St. Jean 4 at Granby 7T-Rivieres 1 at Hull 7Shawinigan 9 at Quebec 4Longueuil 5 at Verdun 9 &#9632;

f0043-01

MINOR SCOREBOARD

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/c0004-01204/5544372-1-eng-US/c0004-012.jpg" title="C0004-01" width="290" height="290"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/c0004-02122/5544365-1-eng-US/c0004-022.jpg" title="C0004-02" width="324" height="282"></div><h2>MONTREAL</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/c0004-0367/5544358-1-eng-US/c0004-032.jpg" title="C0004-03" width="482" height="228"></div><h2>TORONTO</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/c0004-0436/5544351-1-eng-US/c0004-042.jpg" title="C0004-04" width="486" height="234"></div><h2>WINNIPEG</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/c0004-0522/5544344-1-eng-US/c0004-052.jpg" title="C0004-05" width="490" height="236"></div><h2>CALGARY</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/c0004-0620/5544337-1-eng-US/c0004-062.jpg" title="C0004-06" width="488" height="240"></div><h2>EDMONTON</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/c0004-0715/5544330-1-eng-US/c0004-072.jpg" title="C0004-07" width="490" height="240"></div><h2>VANCOUVER</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/c0004-0812/5544323-1-eng-US/c0004-082.jpg" title="C0004-08" width="494" height="240"></div> &#9632;

C0004-01

THREE-STAR STANDINGS

TORONTO&mdash;The defending Stanley Cup champion Edmonton Oilers have not lost a game in the 1984-85 season, and their success is reflected in the National Hockey League standings and in the Molson Cup standings too.Wayne Gretzky, the Oiler captain, is leading all players with 35 points, 15 better than teammate, Jari Kurri, and Calgary Flames&rsquo; Kent Nilsson, the highest point man on any of the other five teams.Here&rsquo;s the breakdown of all the teams:&rsquo;CALGARY&mdash;Nilsson, the Magic Man who was a member of Team Sweden in the Canada Cup, is leading the spirited Flames with 20 points. The rejuvenated Steve Tambellini, who has found a home on the wing, is tied with Carey Wilson, Jim Peplinski and Colin Patterson at 15.EDMONTON&mdash;Gretzky, the big shooter as always for the Oilers, has 35 Cup points. Linemate Jari Kurri follows at 20. Gord Sherven, the ex-member of the Canadian Olympic team, and goalie Grant Fuhr are tied at 10. Winger Glenn Anderson has five.MONTREAL&mdash;The Canadiens are maintaining the success they enjoyed in last season&rsquo;s playoffs, and their scoring, as indicated in the Cup standings, is definitely not the work of one player. Four players&mdash;Chris Chelios, Guy Carbonneau, Tom Kurvers and Guy Lafleur&mdash;are tied with 10 points apiece. Goalie Steve Penney has five.TORONTO&mdash;Goaltending is one of the key areas for the Leafs, and young Allan Bester is working hard. Bester, along with the ever-improving, Jim Benning and captain Rick Vaive, | has l0 points. Bill Derlago and Stewart I Gavin have five points apiece.VANCOUVER&mdash;The Canucks have been hit hard by injuries, and it&rsquo;s reflected in the Cup standings. Cam Neely and Taylor Hall, two of five players who each have five points, are sidelined. The other three tied for the lead are Gary Lupul, Thomas Gradin and Patrik Sundstrom.WINNIPEG&mdash;When the Jets made Dale Hawerchuk the team&rsquo;s captain this season, it was hoped the added! responsibility would help his play. And it seems to be working. Hawerchuk is leading the Jets in the Cup race with 15 points. Three other players, Thomas Steen, Robert Picard and Laurie Boschman, each have 10. Winger Brian Mullen, a member of Team USA in the Canada Cup, has five. &#9632;

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November 16, 1984

The Hockey News

It’s The Same Old Thing Bothering Rangers

Minor Hockey Showcase

Just One Of Those Months For The Sabres