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.

April 5, 1985

The Hockey News April 5, 1985

<div class="byline">BY JEFF Z. KLEIN AND KARL-ERIC REIF</div><h2>FOR ARGUMENT&rsquo;S SAKE</h2>Let us now praise infamous men.At Goon Island, this remote Pacific atoll is about as far as it&rsquo;s possible to get from the frozen lands where good hockey is played. It is an appropriate home, then, to the Hockey Hall of Shame, a shrine to all that is bad in hockey&hellip;While jetting back from scouting the tryouts for the 1988 Japanese Olympic Team in Sapporo, we&rsquo;ve stopped over here to catch the opening of a new wing. In addition to the Rogue&rsquo;s Gallery of National Hockey League single-season and career penalty-minute leaders, the Hall now features an Annex of Antagonists, citing those who were, hand over fist, the most rude and brutal in any given year.The Hall&rsquo;s new standard of ignominy&mdash;the percentage by which the penalty-minute leader&rsquo;s total exceeds that of his runner-up in the same season&mdash;is variously known as &ldquo;The Quality of Thuggery,&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Quality of Shame.&rdquo; The sense of it is explained by an inscription above the entrance to this Library of Louts: &ldquo;When all are villains, evil has no meaning.&rdquo; We thought it was an epigram of Voltaire&rsquo;s, but the curator of this Goon Island Institution, Alice, a very large woman with a small flowered hat, attributes it to Canadian comedians Wayne and Shuster. The idea, at any rate, is that the average skating thug is more outstandingly offensive in an era of gentlemanly play than when he&rsquo;s merely one of many stick-swinging bullies appearing as blots on NHL rosters.The Roll Call of Ruffians appears in the table below. With our Bedeker of Bad Guys in hand, we head down the Crimethink Corridors in search of Twelve Angry Men.The mug shots of many notorious and familiar cementheads are at once before us&mdash;Schultz, Magnuson, Williams&mdash;but it is ancient Hall-of-Famer, Sprague Cleghorn, who occupies center stage in the Auditorium of Assault. Cleghorn was a great scorer as a defenseman with several teams in the NHL and its forerunners from 1909-26, but he was a master of mayhem as well. He amassed 63 penalty minutes in just 24 games with Canadiens in 1921-22, 55.56 per cent more than Toronto&rsquo;s playmaking wingman Corb Denneny, who was second in the NHL with just 28. Sprague&rsquo;s teammates, his brother Odie and Bert Corbeau, tied for third with 26 each. Sprague is, indeed, often remembered for a vicious attack on Ottawa&rsquo;s excellent young defenseman, Lionel Hitchman. which cost Cleghorn a $200 fine from Leo Dandurand&mdash;his own manager.Red Homer, for 12 years the hit-man for Toronto, finished second in the Folio of Thugs, more than doubling the penalty-minute figure of Montreal Maroon rearguard Al Shields in 1935-36. Homer is often noted for decking and nearly braining Boston&rsquo;s brilliant and even more brutal Eddie Shore, in immediate retaliation for Shore&rsquo;s legendary near-lethal charge which ended the career of Homer&rsquo;s teammate, Ace Bailey, in a game in Boston late in 1933. Homer also appears at fourth and 11th place on the Registry of Roughnecks.Dave (The Hammer) Schultz needed an all-time record 472 penalty minutes in 1974-75&mdash;the Heyday of Hooliganism&mdash;to make third place in this Directory of Dolts. An easy-going chap who later tried to reform, Schultz was for years a brainless berserker with the noisome Flyers, and he also shows up at seventh in the Yellow Pages of Yahoos.Of incidental interest is the Geriatric Wing at the Hall of Shame. The oldest players ever to lead the NHL in penalty minutes are here&mdash;Montreal defenseman Bad Joe Hall was 36 when he crashed his way into fifth place on the Quality of Thuggery list in the final season of his life. Then there&rsquo;s the dear boy himself, Mervyn (Red) Dutton, later the National Hockey League president, who was 34 when he was the NHL&rsquo;s baddest in 1931-32. Third among the Elderly Enforcers is the malevolent and much-travelled Bryan (Bugsy) Watson, who was 33 when he topped all NHL assailants in 1975-76.Even more notable, however, is Terrible Ted Lindsay, who often advised youngsters to &ldquo;Lay the lumber on &lsquo;em,&rdquo; and followed that advice in 1964-65 to finish second in the NHL in penalties. Lindsay was 39 then. Hockey may well be &ldquo;a boy&rsquo;s game played by men,&rdquo; but here in the dignified Geriatric Wing we indeed have grown men acting like little boys.A long lay-over at L.A. International affords us the opportunity to catch the Buffalo Sabres and the Los Angeles Kings at the Fatuous Forum. Bernie Nicholls tries to decapitate Jim Schoenfeld, Sean McKenna mops up the ice with Doug Smith, and each team blows a two-goal lead en route to a sloppy 4-4 tie, which lasts until midnight thanks not to the inconclusive overtime session but to an interminable bench-clearing brawl in the third-period, during which Mike Foligno teaches a graduate course in Italian sign language for the benefit of some less hospitable King fans. Actually, neither team carries a goon of any sort on its roster. But a Confederacy Of Dunces still exists in the NHL. Here&rsquo;s the Litany of Lunkheads as of March 18: John Blum (14 points, 205 penalty minutes) and Brian Curran (one, 115), Boston; Gary Rissling (16, 183) and Rod Buskas (nine, 170), Pittsburgh; Perry Anderson (II, 132) and Dwight Schofield (five, 140), St. Louis; Colin Campbell (six, 124), Detroit; Dave Brown (nine, 158), Philadelphia; Torrie Robertson (35, 294), Hartford and, of course, the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of Toronto, Jeff Brubaker (10, 169) and Bob McGill (three, 227). &#9632;

Departments

Saluting Hockey’s Hall Of Shame

<h2>FAN FORUM</h2>Let your voice be heardl Send your comments to Fan Forum, THE HOCKEY NEWS, 85 Scarsdale Rd., Suite 100, Don Mills, Ont., Canada M3B 2R2.Rarely do I write letters to editors because, as a former sportswriter myself, I realize that the newspaper employee can virtually always have the final word.However, in the interests of accuracy, I felt compelled to write a brief response to an article in your For Argument&rsquo;s Sake (Feb. 15). There were some inaccuracies and clarifications required.In the opening paragraph it is stated that &ldquo;this is the 40th anniversary of the Hockey Hall of Fame.&rdquo; It is, in fact, the 42nd anniversary as the Hall was founded in 1943. The first elections were made in 1945, which may have been your writers&rsquo; misunderstanding.There is reference to Soviet hockey players who, in the opinion expressed, should be elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame. This is a very multi-faceted consideration, which has international and political overtones and cannot be simply solved. It should be remembered that (Anatoli) Tarasov is elected as a builder; there are no non-North American players elected (nor have they been considered) to this time.And finally, in the article it is suggested that Guy Lafleur and Bobby Clarke are &ldquo;a shoo-in for the selection this year.&rdquo; Please keep in mind that there is an automatic three-year waiting period after retirement from pro ranks before a player&rsquo;s name is considered. In some special circumstances, that period has in the past been waived&mdash;a total of eight times through 173 player elections. It is unlikely to be waived again, however, as it is felt that three years is a relatively short waiting time. It was not waived for such recent outstanding honorees as Tim Horton (even though he was deceased), Stan Mikita, Bobby Hull or Phil Esposito, although a case could probably be made for each of them for earlier election.M.H. (Lefty) Reid Director and Curator Hockey Hall of Fame and Museum&nbsp;Toronto, Ont.<h2>CHECK YOUR FACTS</h2>In Ron Beaton&rsquo;s Guest Shot column (Feb. 2), he notes that the last three-way deal he could remember was back in 1971 and involved Philly, Boston and Toronto. Well, for future reference, back in 1982, Mark Howe came to Philly, Ken Linseman went to Edmonton and Risto Siltanen ended up in Hartford as a result of a three-way deal.Keep up the good work THN, but get your facts right.Joe CosenzoQueens, NY<h2>FALLS IS OUT IN COLD</h2>Quick, call me an ambulance. Joe Falls&rsquo; brain has frozen and shows no sign of activity. His comments in theFeb. 22 issue confirm this finding.Maybe if Joe moved to Florida his brain would thaw and he could think reasonably. Isn&rsquo;t trudging through the snow fun, Joe? Don&rsquo;t you love your car not starting in the morning? Stay warm, Joe, we&rsquo;re thinking about you in sunny Florida.Michael Ryan&nbsp;Winter Park, FL<h2>FAN OF FTOREK</h2>Being a fan of Robbie Ftorek&rsquo;s since his playing days here with the Roadrunners, I cannot let Stan Fischler&rsquo;s comment (March 1, Bluelines) go unnoticed. To say that Ftorek would be the leading candidate for the Ranger coaching job if not for his poor sense of public realtions is pure stupidity. Who the hell does Fischler think he is anyway? I remember many times where Robbie would devote his time working with various charities, particularly the Toys for Tots campaign. He was the fans&rsquo; favorite and always will be because of his excellent relations with the fans. Ask anybody in the Nordique front office who their No. 1 p.r. man was when he played in Quebec. Although he didn&rsquo;t speak French, this did not keep him from doing what he does best. So, Stan, before you stick your big foot in your even bigger mouth, check out your story first before you make stupid statements.Scott Walters&nbsp;Phoenix, AR<h2>MAD ABOUT MARIO TREATMENT</h2>Something has to be done!A game between the Penguins and Jets was turned into a terrible brawl, because of the officiating that has gone on all season. The referees have given permission to anyone who wants to take a cheap shot at Mario Lemieux.Mario has taken more abuse than any other young hockey player&rsquo;s first year in the NHL.Usually when some &ldquo;tough guy&rdquo; takes a shot at a rookie, they try to do it when the referee isn&rsquo;t looking.Not with Mario. Anyone who steps on the ice can crosscheck, high stick in full view of the referee.The referees should keep things under control by calling a fair game. If more referees are needed, get them.Mary Jackson&nbsp;Pittsburgh, PA &#9632;

Lefty Sets Record Straight

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0004-03" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-031088/5502800-1-eng-US/f0004-032.jpg"></div> &#9632;

f0004-03

IN THIS ISSUE

Roll Call Of Ruffians

<div class="byline">BY CHUCK MOODY</div><h2>PITTSBURGH PENGUINS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-04255/5503802-1-eng-US/f0020-042.jpg" title="f0020-04" width="123" height="102"></div>PITTSBURGH&mdash;It&rsquo;s been a bad season for Pittsburgh Penguin captain Mike Bullard, but he&rsquo;s hoping to salvage what&rsquo;s left of it.The 24-year-old center began the year on a bright note when he was named captain by new coach Bob Berry during training camp. But when the season began, Bullard saw his ice time cut dramatically by the presence of the National Hockey League&rsquo;s No. 1 draft choice, Mario Lemieux.Bullard scored 15 of his 51 goals last season on the power play. But with Lemieux playing center during most man-advantage situations, Bullard&rsquo;s time on the power-play was restricted to an occasional shift at left wing.Bullard also was playing in the option year of his contract after being unable to reach a new agreement. Then trade rumors started and didn&rsquo;t stop until after the league&rsquo;s deadline, March 12.Bullard admits the contract impasse and the threat of a trade affected his play.&ldquo;I guess that&rsquo;s part of hockey,&rdquo; Bullard said about rumors of moving to another team. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t been playing the best, and when you&rsquo;re not playing too well I guess the rumors do come out.&rdquo;Bullard, who suffered a chip fracture of the shoulder and missed several games midway in the season, also admits Lemieux&rsquo;s presence on the team has frustrated him at times.&ldquo;Everybody probably kind of says that&rsquo;s the problem,&rdquo; Bullard said. &ldquo;Maybe sometimes I might think like that. But Mario&rsquo;s having such a super year. If I wouldn&rsquo;t have gotten hurt, the two of us would have been having just great years, and we would have been one, two the whole time.&ldquo;I lost a step by getting hurt, and it kind of hurt the whole suituation. I&rsquo;ve been struggling and pressing and that kind of hurt the team a little bit, especially being captain. Everything was coming on me and people were booing me because I wasn&rsquo;t showing leadership. If Mario gets his ice time, I get my ice time and Johnny (Chabot) gets his ice time, we&rsquo;re going to win a lot of games.&rdquo;Bullard broke out of his slump with two goals in one game and another the next night.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a goal scorer, and if he&rsquo;s not scoring goals it probably gets to him a little bit,&rdquo; said Berry. &ldquo;Whether it was a slump or not, I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;&ldquo;It feels good to finally get on track and play with a lot of confidence out there,&rdquo; Bullard said. &ldquo;Everything it seemed I was doing out there was just wrong. Instead of trying to get myself up, I was more or less just getting myself down. Instead of helping myself, I was kind of putting myself in a little hole there. It was just one of those things.&rdquo;Bullard, who scored 24 goals and 22 assists in his first 52 games, also faces a hearing in late March on a drunken driving charge in which his car allegedly struck two people.With all the pressure building on him, Bullard went to have a talk with general manager Eddie Johnston.&ldquo;I went in to see Eddie,&rdquo; Bullard recalled. &ldquo;I never told him I wanted to be traded. I just didn&rsquo;t think things were going too well right now. I just wanted to talk to him about my contract and everything.&ldquo;We sat down and had a good talk for about an hour. I just said, &lsquo;E.J., show some confidence in me. Guys give me a little support.&rsquo; Bob&rsquo;s been doing it lately. I felt good, and I felt like they really counted on me.PENGUIN TRACKS&mdash;Edward DeBartolo Jr., son of Penguin owner Edward DeBartolo Sr., has confirmed that discussions have been held concerning the sale of the team to a group headed by Bill Ballard, son of Toronto Maple Leaf owner Harold Ballard, and Michael Cohl, who are interested in moving the team to Hamilton, Ont. The junior DeBartolo said the family will take a &ldquo;wait and see&rdquo; stance before deciding on the future of the team. &#9632;</div>

f0020-04

Frustrated Pens’ Captain Trying To Finish Strongly

In the April 12 issue of THE HOCKEY NEWS, we&rsquo;ve got an unbeatable one-two punch&mdash;the eight-page THN Magazine supplement and part one of our two-part Stanley Cup Playoff Preview.The Magazine features an in-depth interview with the Edmonton Oilers&rsquo; controversial general manager-coach, Glen Sather, as well as a centerspread feature on the heaviest letter in the hockey alphabet&mdash;&rsquo;C&rsquo;&mdash;as in the captaincy of a team.And we&rsquo;ve also got the Pros and Cons of the NHL&rsquo;s playoff system and a pictorial salute to a dying breed in hockey.In part one of our Playoff Preview, we&rsquo;ll take a look at the Edmonton Oilers&rsquo; chance of repeating as Stanley Cup champions. And we&rsquo;ll also look at the pretenders and contenders in the Campbell Conference, rating their chances at winning Lord Stanley&rsquo;s coveted mug.Don&rsquo;t miss it.<h2>QUOTE OF THE WEEK</h2>&ldquo;Hockey is a religion here. We&rsquo;re all priests. It&rsquo;s sacred. You don&rsquo;t trade priests.&rdquo;&mdash;Retired star Guy Lafleur on why the Montreal Canadiens wouldn&rsquo;t meet his trade requests. Story on Page 6. &#9632;

NEXT WEEK IN THN

<div class="byline">BY JAY GREENBERG</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0003-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-011368/5502707-1-eng-US/f0003-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">In spite of tougher legislation, there are still National Hockey League players who will drop the gloves. But in today&rsquo;s highspeed game, with the influx of European and hybrid power plays, the fighter had better be able to play some hockey, too.</figcaption></div>They come and they go. When the next kid&mdash;a little stronger, a little less questioning of his role and decidedly more willing to do whatever it takes&mdash;comes along, the fighter&rsquo;s days are numbered. Like any commodity, the hockey tough guy is discardable.Forgive Dave Schultz, as he practically begged in his book The Hammer: Confessions Of A Hockey Enforcer, he knew not what he was doing. But even during Schultz&rsquo;s High Noon from 1973 to 1976, this gunslinger always recognized that sooner or later he was going to buy one in the back.It was insecurity, the fear of getting traded, that helped Schultz to continue to work up his nightly lather, but ultimately it was his frenetic nature which sent him away. His act, and all those misconduct penalties, were wearing a little thin. The Flyers still had a Moose Dupont and a Jack Mcllhargey and now a first-round draft choice named Mel Bridgman who could not only fight but play, too. A new rule meant another penalty to kill for the team whose player had instigated the fight. Two draft choices from Los Angeles were on the table. The Hammer thus became the Dinosaur. It is a recurring theme.Ten years later the job description has survived, but the role has been refined. Despite a plethora of legislation in the National Hockey League against its more repugnant aspects, fighting is still in the game. Physical intimidation has lessened thanks to the European influence and the development of hybrid power plays, but the game is still one of contact and there will always be opponents who will both scare and be scared.Every team still has its tough guy or two, but more of them can play a little, too. And the fighter walks a tightrope that becomes thinner all the time.What he has to do to survive was once more clear cut. It used to be just a question of willingness. The day a wife&rsquo;s nagging finally caused a fighter to begin to question what he was doing, the day he looked at his battered hands and face and wondered if it was worth it anymore, was the day the bell began its inevitable toll. The exceptions such as Clark Gillies and John Ferguson, tough guys who became not just passable players but good ones and still didn&rsquo;t mind regularly &lsquo;bruising their knuckles, have been few and far between.Now with the price of the extra penalty increasing, the sheer will to both take a punch and give one won&rsquo;t do it anymore. The tough guy has to be under enough control to pick his spots. If the can&rsquo;t, he&rsquo;s gone.One supposes he is no more or less a throwaway than the goal scorer who has lost his touch or the goalie who can&rsquo;t get up anymore for a I rebound or the defenseman whose body has broken down. But, because the fighter&rsquo;s career span is so much shorter than the skilled player&rsquo;s, there is something sadder about his end.He was used. Not that he didn&rsquo;t use the system, too, to get to the NHL ahead of players who could do more with the puck, but a long career was always a false dream.The day Schultz was traded, he was asked if the thought the Flyers had taken advantage of his nature and put him into an ultimately untenable position.&ldquo;You could look at it that way,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But in a sense I used them, too.&rdquo;Touche, one supposes. But his book later told a different story; one of a man, now that it was all over, wrestling with his conscience. Could that really have been him, Schultz asked himself?Yes it was. Anyone who as been around this game will testify to the contradiction between the snarling, uncontrollable lout who the public sees and the thoughtful, friendly gentleman off the ice. It&rsquo;s amazing how often the reviled goon is the same guy you might let your daughter marry. Then the game starts and the salt of the earth is now pouring himself into the opposition&rsquo;s open wound.That&rsquo;s a generalization, though. Not all tough guys come the same. The real Tiger Williams, say many who have been exposed to him at any length, is usually what you see on the ice. Most, however, are gentler sorts with an assortment of psychological profiles.Schultz, who was the guy who was pushed around as a kid, said he had to work at his change of personality. But as it became his means to an end, the new Schultz did become the real him.He would agree today that it was insecurity which drove him. He wanted to be part of it all, craved and fed off the approval of his teammates and fans and loved the notoriety. Dave Schultz was a very agreeable person.The press took its part in his exploitation, too. If one stood in front of him with a tape recorder long enough, Schultz would say just about anything you wanted He was never really crazy about the downside&mdash;the bad press, the vilification&mdash;but Schultz rationalized it as part of the territory at the time.Paul Holmgren does his thinking off the ice. That, too, is often the problem. An intelligent man with a heart of gold, he has had to apologize for the personality change that comes over him when the puck is dropped. It was the other Holmgren who shoved Andy Van Hellemond, who almost took out Tome Robertson&rsquo;s eye. And Holmgren humbly and almost invariably has wished that his other self would stop doing these things. Age will sometimes bring a mellowing. Holmgren, effective enough to play without the other stuff, is still waiting for it.Others of the genre are more secure about themselves and less questioning. Jack Mcllhargey, unskilled and undrafted, fought his way up from the low minors and learned how to play well enough to get by for seven years in the NHL. In the meantime, one never got the impression that there was a self-serving bone in Mcllhargey&rsquo;s body. He did what he could do for the team and was totally secure within that role. He did whatever he could to help and ultimately earned employment as an assistant coach with Vancouver.Randy Holt, no more selfish, no less a team man, also did what he felt he had to do, but was anxious to justify it to anyone who would listen. Some of Holt&rsquo;s rationalization washed, others didn&rsquo;t, but as long as he was talking he felt better. He had insights into the game which belied his reputation as a cementhead and was often worth listening to as well.Thus, these men came to acceptable terms. The Flyers once had kid named Dave Hoyda who couldn&rsquo;t.A third-round pick in the 1977 draft, Hoyda was a longshot to make it as a player. But whatever chance he had to develop, the Flyers took away from him by yanking him up to the NHL before the kid had completed even one season in the American League.Fred Shero used Hoyda like an armament in the Soviet May Day parade. Hoyda sat on the bench until called upon to fight once or twice a game, It was after a brawl with the New York Islanders that Sports Illustrated called Hoyda a goon. He broke down crying when he read that.It was only a matter of time until the Flyers let him go in die expansion draft the next year. Winnipeg, which already had a Jimmy Mann to fulfill the function, dropped Hoyda when his contract ran out. It was a sad case of the system not allowing a kid to learn how to play and then letting him go because he couldn&rsquo;t.All these guys came to mind a few weeks ago when the Flyers traded Glen Cochrane to Vancouver for a third-round draft choice.Cochrane had worked very hard to overcome his limitations and had played competently in stretches over his five years with the Flyers. His willingness was not a question, but the very reason the Flyers finally chose to move him.Cochrane was the victim of the times, a new coach who didn&rsquo;t want to put up with his penalties anymore and of himself, too. The Flyers had two other guys, Ed Hospodar and Dave Brown, who were more under control than Cochrane and. therefore, the greater assets&mdash;at least until something better comes along.The Flyers said the real culprits were the referees who wouldn&rsquo;t let Cochrane play.&ldquo;No matter what he did, they gave him a penalty for it,&rdquo; said the team&rsquo;s general manager, Bobby Clarke. &ldquo;Maybe if he gets out of the orange and black, he&rsquo;ll have a chance to play.&rdquo;Whether the Flyers really believe this or not was not really important. The same Cochrane will be playing in Vancouver games, which are worked by the same referees who handled the ones involving Philadelphia. It was easier to blame them than hurt Cochrane&rsquo;s feelings, but when you scrape away the scapegoats and excuses, do you realize what Clarke was actually saying? Cochrane is not the Flyers&rsquo; problem anymore.The nature of the game is that the people who run it never have to say they&rsquo;re sorry. There&rsquo;s something a little sad about that, but that&rsquo;s show biz. There is always another kid who will do anything to get his chance. &#9632;

f0003-01

Fighting’s Still Part Of The Game

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-021279/5502745-1-eng-US/f0004-022.jpg" title="f0004-02" width="383" height="427"><figcaption class="caption-body">Frank Orr</figcaption></div>MAYBE IT SIGNIFIES a rapid approach to old-goat status. But a good memory is needed, which balances out the indications of advancing age. Anyway, I actually remember when the Toronto Maple Leafs were a good hockey team.Yeah, there was a time in history that when April was approaching, folks even remotely associated with the team had a little tingle of anticipation because you just knew something interesting would happen in those six weeks of spring.Now, the approach of April means something a little different&mdash;that the entire blue-and-white mess will vanish for the season on the last night of the schedule and the big league teams will take center stage.Oh, of course, the Leafs will express optimism about the future because of the bright young prospects they have in their organization, or the improvement of a couple of lads on the NHL team, or the fact that, once again, they have a good entry-draft pick&mdash;this time, the first overall selection.But somehow, none of it contains much conviction or much validity that there&rsquo;s a great deal of hope for the franchise. When you hear the same sad song warbled every spring, after a few years, the lyrics don&rsquo;t count for a great deal.The &lsquo;60s were a great time for hockey in Toronto. The Leafs wedged their way in between a couple of Montreal Canadien dynasties and won the Stanley Cup four times in the decade. Three consecutive crowns were by the splendid early &lsquo;60s&rsquo; team; the fourth was captured by the wonderful, creaky old troop of &lsquo;67. That team had 10 of 19 players on the far side of 35 years of age.But when those old chaps went over the well-known hill, that was it for the Leafs. Of course, there was a modest revival in the late &lsquo;70s when the Leafs appeared to have the nucleus of a legimate contender, but about three incredibly bad trades stripped away any depth the team had, the front office was changed and the organization has been hockey&rsquo;s equivalent of the Harper Valley PTA ever since.From the start of the 1967-68 season after the old men won the Cup for the Leafs, the first term of expansion, through the 71-game mark of the &lsquo;84-85 term, the Leafs played 1,338 games. They have 557 wins, 633 losses and 219 ties.This season, the Leafs plumbed new depths by finishing absolutely, totally, dead last among the 21 NHL teams, losing more games than any roster in the history of the club.But, as always, the men who own and operate the Leafs spouted the ususal baloney. Owner Harold Ballard said he had great faith in the men who operated the team and was sure that Stanley Cup contention was a couple of years in future.In a rare interview, general manager Gerry McNamara appeared on television and, in a magnificent performance, assured the world that the team might have hit a couple of bumps on its trail but everything was splendid. Big Mac sounded like the captain of a cruise ship, talking to the passengers on the public address system and saying: &ldquo;Sure, the boat has a hole in it, there are icebergs all around us and the crew has staged a mutiny, but everything is okay. Don&rsquo;t worry.&rdquo;The truly strange happening on the Toronto scene&mdash;the Leafs&rsquo; No. 21 finish isn&rsquo;t strange; it was very predictable&mdash;is the way the club devours its captains. It started with Dave Keon in the mid-&rsquo;70s, continued with Darryl Sittler in the early &rsquo;80s and now involves Rick Vaive, the team&rsquo;s best player and wearer of the C since Sittler&rsquo;s departure.Vaive was benched by coach Dan Maloney for a game after the Leafs were out of the playoffs, not mathematically but every other way. Maloney criticized Vaive&rsquo;s lack of effort and the captain responded to a practice confrontation with a statemenu Moses once used: &ldquo;Go forth and multiply!&rdquo; Or words to that effect.Now, Vaive, too, is finished with the Leafs, a guy who scored 50 goals in three consecutive seasons. He hasn&rsquo;t been traded yet and probably won&rsquo;t be, although a total adjustment in the Vaive-Maloney relationship is needed before he can be a truly productive Leaf.Old folks like to talk about Leaf traditions, but when they do, just go along with it. There&rsquo;s no such a thing as a Leaf tradition. Close to 20 years have passed since the team meant anything at all and that does place a dent in any positive tradition they might have had. The only tradition the Leafs have now is mediocrity and chaos.<h2>The Hockey News</h2>THE INTERNATIONAL HOCKEY WEEKLYFounded in 1947 by Kenneth W. McKenziePUBLISHER Dean HeineBUSINESS MANAGER Tony DobranowskiEDITOR IN CHIEF Bob McKenzieEDITORLAL DIRECTOR Charlie HalpinASSISTANT EDITOR Perrv LefkoCONTRIBUTING EDITORS Stan Fischler, Frank OrrADVERTISING SALES MANAGER Randy GreenADVERTISING SERVICES MANAGER Esther SumkaADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVESFor Canadian Consumer Advertising Only Call: CCMC, Cliff Kivell, 287 MacPherson Ave. Toronto, Ontario M4V IA4 (416) 928-2909SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES MANAGER Patricia BackNEWSSTAND SERVICES MANAGER Esther SumkaCIRCULATION DEPARTMENT Jurale KakneviciusRosanne TaninoACCOUNTING DEPARTMENT Tom MoffatMary CarubiaSPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGERHughes MarketingHockey News Bookshelf (416) 499-8227ADVERTISING AND EDITORLAI OFFICES85 Scarsdale Rd., Suite 100 Toronto. Ontario. Canada M3B 2R2 (416) 445-5702EXECUTIVE: OFFICE850 Thitd Avenue New York, New York 10022NEWSSTAND DISTRIBUTORDistributed nationally by Disticor101 Duncan Mill Rd., Suite L4 Don Mills. Ont. M3B 1Z3 (416) 449-6430THE HOCKEY NEWS, (ISSN 0018-3016) is published weekly except monthly June and bimonthly July and August by W.C.C. Publishing Ltd., 85 Scarsdale Road #100, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3B 2R2 (416) 445-5702. In U.S. c/o W.C.C. Publishing Corp., 850 Third Ave., New York, N.Y. 10022.40 ISSUE SUBSCRIPTION RATES $24.95 in the U.S.A. $24.95 in Canada. $54.95 in Foreign Countries Send all Canadian and Foreign subscription orders to THE HOCKEY NEWS. P.O. Box 13055. Postal Station &lsquo;A&rsquo;, Toronto. Ont. M5W IV7, U.S. subscription requests should be mailed to Box 904, Buffalo. N.Y. 14240. Please allow 4-6 weeks for processing.SEND ADDRE SS CHANGES TO THE HOC KEY NEWS, 85 Scarsdale Road #100, Toronto, Ontario. Canada M3B 2R2. Second Class mail Registration No. 1327. All inquiries pertaining to subscriptions should be addressed to Subscription Dept., The Hockey News. 85 Scarsdale Road. #100. Toronto. Ontario. Canada M3B 2R2.IN THE UNITED STATES: Second class post age paid at New York. N.Y and at additional mailing offices. U.S. POSTMASTER send address change to: The Hockey News, P.O. Box 904. Buffalo. N.Y. 14240<div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-011391/5502738-1-eng-US/f0004-012.jpg" title="f0004-01" width="67" height="75"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div>Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations &#9632;

f0004-02

Columnists

Leafs Spring Into Playoff Retreat

<div class="byline">By Bob Duff</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-011273/5502831-1-eng-US/f0005-012.jpg" title="f0005-01" width="408" height="453"></div>Q. Why do NHL teams wear their white jerseys at home. In the 1960s they wore their dark sweaters. Do they not alternate every decade?Derek Rogers&nbsp;Oromocto, N.B.A. The National Hockey League board of governors decided at the 1970 NHL meetings to switch home teams to the white-based uniforms. It was felt this would be better for the fans because it would give them more variety, as they would see the more colorful dark-based uniforms of the other clubs in the league.Q. If there was a tie for the last playoff spot in an NHL division at the end of the regular season, what format is used to break the tie?Derek Oger&nbsp;Thunder Bay, Ont.A. The NHL uses a three-pronged formula to decide ties for playoff spots, and it applies to deadlocks for any position in a division. Firstly, the club with the most total wins would advance. Last season, for example, Vancouver and Winnipeg finished tied for third in the Smythe Division with 73 points. Vancouver got the nod though, because it had 32 wins, while the Jets had only 31. However, if the win totals are equal, the next step is to move on to the club&rsquo;s record in head-to-head competition. Naturally, the team with the best record here would gain the advantage. If the issue still cannot be settled, the team with the most goals for in head-to-head competition would earn the spot.Q. There was a bench-clearing brawl during the Islander-Ranger game on Feb. 17, 1985. Starting goaltenders Kelly Hrudey and John Vanbies-brouck were both ejected from the game for leaving their respective creases to join in the fighting. What would have happened if the replacement netminders, Billy Smith and Glen Hanlon, had to leave the game through injury or ejection?John and Kathleen Sherman&nbsp;Plainview, NY and Sam Thompson&nbsp;Brooklyn, NYA. According to Gary Meagher at the NHL office in Montreal, if either club had lost its backup goalie for whatever reason, it would have been allowed under NHL rules to dress a third goaltender should one have been available. However, this netminder would have to be under contract to the club. For instance, if this incident had occurred early in the season when the Isles were still employing three goalies, Roland Melanson would have been allowed to suit up and take over if Smith could no longer continue. However, if a third goaltender is not available, then a player from the team would have to take over in goal.If you want your question answered, write to:ASK THE DUFFER115 3rd Avenue South, 316 Saskatoon, Sask.Canada, S7K 1L7All letters will be read, but only those published will be answered. Personal responses are not possible. &#9632;

f0005-01

ASK THE DUFFER

Here&rsquo;s what was happening 20 years ago this week in hockey:&bull; Chicago Black Hawks&rsquo; center Stan Mikita won the Art Ross Trophy after scoring 28 goals and a record 59 assists. Toronto&rsquo;s Terry Sawchuk won the Vezina Trophy as the best goaltender, but said he wouldn&rsquo;t accept the award if teammate Johnny Bower&rsquo;s name was left off the trophy. &bull; Len Lunde, of the AHL&rsquo;s Buffalo Bisons, became only the sixth player in American Hockey League history to score 50 goals in a single season.Here&rsquo;s what was happening 15 years ago this week in hockey:&bull; Former Boston defense great Eddie Shore was presented the Lester Patrick Trophy to honor his promotion of hockey in the United States. &bull; Leaf netminder Johnny Bower retired as an active player and agreed to continue working with the organization as a goalie coach. &#9632;

THIS WEEK… 20 Years Ago

<div class="byline">BY RANDY SCHULTZ</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-02928/5502893-1-eng-US/f0005-022.jpg" title="f0005-02" width="384" height="452"></div>When Jack Adams, the late general manager for the Detroit Red Wings, used to talk about his dynasty team of the early &rsquo;50s, he referred to Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay, Red Kelly and Marty Pavelich as the four key hockey players around whom he built the team.Howe, Lindsay and Kelly were the scorers, the guys who made the offense run. But it was Pavelich, a left winger, who had the tougher job. of killing the penalties and checking some of the best right wingers in the history of the National Hockey League.One such opponent was Maurice (The Rocket) Richard of the Montreal Canadiens. Pavelich considered him his greatest challenge.&ldquo;To me, Richard was the greatest goal scorer ever to play in the NHL,&rdquo; said Pavelich, who played 10 seasons (1947-57) with the Red Wings. &ldquo;Gordie Howe was the greatest hockey player ever. He could do everything well.&ldquo;But Richard had that something special when it came to goal scoring. He was just unbelievable from the blue line in. It just seemed as though he could smell a goal when he got in that close.&ldquo;And the only way I could stop him was to stay close to him and skate him off into a comer.&ldquo;I certainly had my share of battles with him.&rdquo;Pavelich recalled one game where he played Richard a little too close.&ldquo;He damn near killed me in one game,&rdquo; said Pavelich. &ldquo;It all started when I hit him with a good body check behind the net. I cut him a little over the eye. Next thing I know he took a run at me and got a penalty.&ldquo;He got a couple of more penalties that night as well. It was right after he had served his third that he came out of the penalty box and had me lined up.&ldquo;The only thing I remember is that a teammate of mine, Bobby Goldham, yelled for me to look out. I ducked just in time as Richard&rsquo;s stick grazed the top of my head.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-03644/5502886-1-eng-US/f0005-032.jpg" title="f0005-03" width="563" height="1188"><figcaption class="caption-body">Marty Pavelich knew it was time to quit when he was about to be sent to the minors.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;Ironically, after that incident Richard and I became pretty good friends on the ice. I would always kid him. And he never went after me like that again.&rdquo;Although he considered checking his specialty, Pavelich considered penalty killing the toughest part of his job.&ldquo;During the time I played, if a minor penalty was called the player would stay in the penalty box for the full two minutes,&rdquo; said Pavelich.&ldquo;If the team on the power play scored a goal, the guy in the penalty box would stay in there, it didn&rsquo;t matter how many goals were scored were scored. That made it tough on guys like me.&ldquo;I can remember one game when Camille Henry (of the New York Rangers) scored three goals by himself during one power play. My line was out for the first one. The coach pulled us and put Howe&rsquo;s line out there. He scored again.&ldquo;Finally my line went out again and Camille scored his third within the the two-minute span. It was just one of those nights.&rdquo;Today, the native of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., owns his own company, Marty Pavelich Sales, in the Detroit, MI, area. The company sells for a manufacturing firm that makes parts for auto companies.&ldquo;I got out of hockey and into business when Ted Lindsay was traded from the Red Wings,&rdquo; stated Pavelich, who lives with his family in the Detroit area. &ldquo;Ted and I had a business together at the time.&ldquo;Ted announced that when he was traded I would stay behind and run the business. Mr. Adams didn&rsquo;t appreciate that.&ldquo;When I came in to talk with Mr. Adams he told me that he had tried to trade me as well. But there were no takers, so he was going to send me to the minors.&ldquo;That helped me make my mind up. So I retired.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0005-02

Pavelich Was Important To Red Wings’ Dynasty

1. What current NHLer led the Central League in playoff scoring in 1982?2. What Hartford Whaler farmhand recently had his uniform number retired by his junior club?3. What player played the most games last season without scoring a goal?4. Name the player on the St. Louis Blues&rsquo; roster who was named Canadian Major Junior player of the year in 1979?5. What current Los Angeles defenseman led the NHL in plus-minus during the 1980-81 season?6. Name the Hartford Whalers&rsquo; first-round draft pick in 1980. who gave up hockey to pursue a career in medicine?7. The Edmonton Oilers, while still in the WHA, purchased Wayne Gretzky from Indianapolis in 1978. What other two players did the Oilers pick up in the same deal?8. When was the last season that theToronto Maple Leafs posted a winning record?9. Who is the Los Angeles Kings&rsquo; career leader in penalty minutes?10. What team originally drafted Pittsburgh&rsquo;s Warren Young?Answers in next week&rsquo;s issue.<h2>Last Week&rsquo;s Trivia Answers</h2>1. Sierre. 2. Mike Bossy, NY Islanders, 1981-82&mdash;147 points. 3. Montreal, 1970-71. 4. Boston. 5. Doug and Max Bentley, 194748.6. Bob Manno. 7. Ab McDonald. 8. Bobby and Dennis Hull, Chico and Wayne Maki. 9. Dan Maloney. 10. Atlanta Flames. &#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/f0005-04419/5502948-1-eng-US/f0005-042.jpg"></div>that the highest plus-minus rating by a player for one NHL season is: &#9632;

f0005-04

Did You Know…

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-011455/5502979-1-eng-US/f0006-012.jpg" title="f0006-01" width="391" height="458"><figcaption class="caption-body">Stan Fischler&rsquo;s ON THE CONTRARY</figcaption></div>Don&rsquo;t let anyone tell you that a head coach&rsquo;s brain power is limited to closing the door to his players&rsquo; bench.That bromide went out with the Kansas City Scouts (anyone remember their first coach?). A superior mentor can mean the difference between third and fifth place (ask the Vancouver Canucks).That&rsquo;s why the Jack Adams Award, given to the National Hockey League coach adjudged to have contributed the most to his team&rsquo;s success, is the most important prize of the year. And that&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m writing this column.1 want the voters (broadcasters) to once and for all get it right. Boys, don&rsquo;t waste your time and come up with a guy who&rsquo;s going to get fired next season. No Orval Tessiers, please.Picking the winner is as easy as exhaling. All you have to do is have common sense and select the bloke who&rsquo;s done the very best job&mdash;or who has a dog named Blue. So let&rsquo;s get right down to brass tacks and copper knuckles and examine the candidates by division.<h2>NORRIS</h2>JACQUES DEMERS&mdash;A solid case could be made for Demers as the best of them all. He is carefully attuned to the contemporary hockey player, rarely is overbearing and not only has his skaters liking him, they even win for him. The St. Louis Blues&rsquo; lofty finish this spring&mdash;a major upset if you had read the pre-season polls&mdash;is the difference between Demers and fired coaches Bill Mahoney and Orval Tessier. Jacques is an automatic finalist in the coaching derby. Sorry, Bob Pulford, but there are no other qualifiers in the Norris nest.<h2>SMYTHE</h2>GLEN SATHER&mdash;The large community of Sather-knockers forget that the bottom line is top spot, and his Edmonton Oilers are there. Period. Wayne Gretzky, Paul Coffey and the rest have helped, to be sure, but Slats has managed to dissipate dissension and other dilemmas that often afflict the rich. Because of Gretzky, however, he cannot be a finalist. Sorry, Slats.BARRY LONG&mdash;He deserves the Vic Tanny Award just for shaping up Randy Carlyle. For lifting the Jets to Calgary&rsquo;s level, I rate Long over Bob Johnson. To rate consideration, Johnson should have done better than he has with the Flames. Specifically, if he had made a season-long success out of Steve Tambellini, he would have rated. Sorry, Badger, not this season. Long is the Smythe Division finalist.PAT QUINN&mdash;Anyone who could lead the Kings to Respectability Street should not be taken lightly. But 1 was less than impressed with the way L.A. blew its chance for second in the stretch. And besides, Quinn won the Adams award (1980) once before, so there&rsquo;s no way I&rsquo;ll give it to him again so that he can get canned once more.<h2>ADAMS</h2>JACQUES LEMAIRE&mdash;The Canadiens remained at or near the top of the Adams for most of the season, which wasn&rsquo;t easy with a bunch of kids, the turmoil surrounding Guy Lafleur&rsquo;s retirement and the departure of a civic monument such as Steve Shutt to Los Angeles. Still, there&rsquo;s something missing in Lemaire (it must be his hairdo.) Sorry, Jacques, but you&rsquo;re not going to be a finalist this year.MICHEL BERGERON&mdash;Anyone who can turn a super-flop such as Brent Ashton into a super-find rates a standing O. Ditto for what he did to Anton Stastny. Since he speaks better French (and English) than Jacques Lemaire, we&rsquo;ll make him a finalist. Sorry, Jacques.<h2>PATRICK</h2>BRYAN MURRAY&mdash;Remember back in January when the Caps were touted as the next Stanley Cup champs? One reason was Murray goosing them into being the hardest workers in the league. Extracting all possible potential from Mike McEwen is a feather in Bryan&rsquo;s fedora. But the horrendous homestretch forces me to give him the hook. Sorry, Bryan. Besides, you scream too much.MIKE KEENAN&mdash;When I think of the job this rookie has done in Philly, I&rsquo;m reminded of the words from a terrific old tune called Some Enchanted Evening. It went like this: &ldquo;Who can explain it, who can tell you why; fools give you reasons, wise men never try&hellip;&rdquo; Look where the Flyers are and you have every reason why this Irishman is a finalist.<h2>NOT-ON-MY-LIST-BUT-ON-OTHERS</h2>DOUG CARPENTER&mdash;At one point he was touted with Keenan, Demers and Quinn for the award, but the Devils&rsquo; home-stretch downfall wipes him off the list. At first glance, I was tempted blast him as an abject failure but there is evidence that he was sabotaged by some pivotal players.The Carpenter case proves that a small collection of overage, and overpaid, veterans (Chico Resch excluded) can sabotage positive work done with the kids. How much blame Carpenter should absorb for failing to make a good run for fourth place is debatable, but he certainly didn&rsquo;t do enough to rate in the Adams award running.<h2>AND NOW FOR THE FINALS&hellip;</h2>We have here, Barry Long, Jacques Demers, Michel Bergeron and the everpopular Mike Keenan. We will do this by the process of elimination. The first to go is Bergeron. Reason: the Tiger of Quebec has been around so long I was getting tired of waiting for him to become a good coach. So, on the grounds of length-of-leaming, Bergeron is rejected. The second to go is Long, because I have the feeling that John Ferguson is really coaching the Jets.On the basis of great-guyedness, Demers wins the prize&mdash;almost nobody could have done a better job with the Blues. (Nobody could have done a better job. Period.) But this is Year Two in the bigs for Demers, not to mention his stewardship in the World Hockey Association. Therefore, the winner is Mike Keenan.I still can&rsquo;t believe this is the same guy who called me up looking for a coaching job three years ago and I recommended him to the Devils. If Keenan was in Jersey this year, the Devils would have clinched a playoff berth by March 1.Can you believe Keenan has taken a green mixture of Zezels, Cravens, Tocchets, Carsons and refused to permit them the luxury of a slump. He has distilled new methods, adroitly handled assistant coaches and has done more with less than anyone this side of Joe Schlump The Midget. Congratulations, Mike Keenan, may you never get fired in this century.THE EDMONTON EXPRESS&mdash;Sorry, but I always had this notion that Eddie Shore would live forever.That&rsquo;s why I found it incredible reading that he had died recently at age 82 of failing health.My last meeting with the Hall of Famer who received 900 stitches and too many broken bones to mention was at the Madison Square Garden press room 15 years ago. The indes-tructable defenseman was in town to receive the Lester Patrick Trophy. He regaled us with stories and then climbed out of his chair to demonstrate his technique for maintaining balance while skating backwards.He put himself in a sitting position in the middle of the room and then defied me to try and knock him over. I gave the old guy a couple of shoves that enraged him. &ldquo;Damn it 1&rdquo; barked Shore. &ldquo;Hit me harder.&rdquo; Try as I might&mdash;and you damn well better believe that I tried&mdash;I couldn&rsquo;t budge the man they once called The Edmonton Express.The episode hardly surprised anyone who had the rare good fortune to have seen Shore perform for the Boston Bruins between 1936 and 1940. If there was a stronger athlete alive his name was Pithecanthropus Erectus. But Eddie Shore was not merely strong, he was one of the most remarkable hockey players ever.It wasn&rsquo;t merely the innumerable awards that Shore collected that made him special, it was the way he played the game. I rated him a much better defenseman than Bobby Orr because he could do everything Orr did offensively but was 10 times better&mdash;and tougher&mdash;in his own end. One time former Bruins&rsquo; trainer Hammy Moore put it best when he said: &ldquo;I never saw anybody like Eddie&mdash;every time he got the puck the entire building would be on its feet.&rdquo;As owner-manager of the Springfield Indians, Shore was the ultimate innovator.&ldquo;He was doing things that the Russians got credit for, but Eddie did it years ahead of the Russians,&rdquo; says New York Islander assistant coach Brian Kilrea, who played several years for Shore. &ldquo;At least 12 guys on our Springfield team wound up coaching. That says it all about Eddie Shore&rsquo;s hockey mind.&rdquo;My favorite Shore story is about the night in the late 1920s when he missed the Bruins&rsquo; train to Montreal (there were no commercial flights then), commandeered a millionaire friend&rsquo;s chauffeur and limousine and drove through the horrendous blizzard over the White Mountains to Canada. When the chauffeur refused to drive at the start. Shore took over. Incredibly, Shore made it to Montreal by five the next evening. Despite blowouts, a skidding episode that landed the car in the ditch, and the fact that he had to remove the windshield (it was possible in those days) since the wipers had frozen, he made it to Montreal. Shore&rsquo;s hands were locked to the wheel when he pulled in front of the hotel and his manager Art Ross sent him to bed because he was obviously unfit to play.What happened after that was uniquely Shore. He demanded that his roomate awaken him (which was extremely difficult since Shore had passed into a deep slumber) and then insisted that Ross allow him to go to the Forum with his fellow Bruins. Shore played 58 minutes of the 60-minute game, pausing only for a two-minute penalty. The Bruins won the game 1-0 and, if you haven&rsquo;t guessed by now, Shore scored the only goal.Shore retired from full-time play in 1940 and invested his savings in the acquisition of the Springfield hockey club. His investment was a major one and, no doubt, helped to shape Shore&rsquo;s budgetary philosophy, which, according to some observers, was something to the right of frugality.&ldquo;When he got the franchise.&rdquo; said Jack Riley, former president of the American League, &ldquo;he used to park cars outside the arena until about 10 minutes before game time. Then Eddie would go in, suit up and play defense for his team.&ldquo;His players would take inner tubes from their automobile tires, cut them up into rubber bands and put them around hockey stockings to save the cost of tape. During the ice show at the arena, Shore operated one of the spotlights himself to save expenses. But you can&rsquo;t knock him. Not when he invested all his time right back where it came from.&rdquo;Whoever coined the line &ldquo;after him they threw away the mold,&rdquo; must have had Eddie Shore in mind. &#9632;

f0006-01

Keenan Over Demers For Coaching Award

<h2>HOCKEY NOTEBOOK</h2>The Vancouver Canucks are spearheading a project which could have a dramatic impact on the operations and futures of both the American and Western Hockey Leagues.Arthur Griffiths, the Canucks&rsquo; assistant to the chairman, says the NHL club is proposing a new minor pro development league to be located in British Columbia next season.Griffiths said the Canucks plan to have their No. I minor league team play out of either the PNE Agrodome in Vancouver or the Sun God Arena in suburban Delta. And he adds that at least three other NHL teams, which he refused to identify but are likely Edmonton, Winnipeg and Calgary, will also pull out of existing arrangements in the American League to do the same.Langley and Chilliwack in the Fraser Valley and Nanaimo on Vancouver Island are also being considered as possible franchise sites.The Flames, Oilers and Jets have also expressed interest at one time or another in setting up a small-scale, low-expense development league in western Canada.Vancouver is currently sharing an AHL farm team in Fredericton with the Quebec Nordiques. Edmonton is the sole operator of an AHL franchise in Halifax and Calgary operates a club in Moncton. The Jets share a farm team with the Montreal Canadiens in Sherbrooke.The benefits of this type of league are obvious. The NHL&rsquo;s western teams would be closer to their farm teams, the expenses would be lower&mdash;less travel, all Canadian dollars&mdash;and the emphasis would be placed on developing players as opposed to providing an entertainment package.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not interested in spending a lot of money to keep players in a competitive league like the AHL,&rdquo; says Flames&rsquo; general manager Cliff Fletcher, giving Griffith&rsquo;s proposal a resounding endorsement. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m interested in spending money to develop players for the Calgary Hames and not in winning hockey games on the farm. Such a league also could develop coaches, trainers and referees for the NHL.&rdquo;Jet GM John Ferguson says it&rsquo;s &ldquo;financial suicide&rdquo; for a western NHL team to operate a farm club in eastern Canada.&ldquo;An under-23 league on the mainland, with a restricted number of older players allowed on the rosters, makes a lot of sense for all NHL western teams.&rdquo;And Griffiths says the new league would mean an influx of $1.5 million to the B.C. economy.Naturally, should all this come to pass, it would have significant impact on the current development system, especially the AHL and WHL. The AHL, which depends upon NHL sponshorship for its survival, would be losing several members. And the WHL, which operates major junior franchises in western Canada, would be, in some cases, competing with the new league for fans.&ldquo;We realize we will get some static from certain junior hockey operators, but&hellip;we would expect fairly positive receptions from the communities.&rdquo;Guy Lafleur wanted to continue playing, but the Montreal Canadiens refused to trade him, according to a report by United Press International.&ldquo;I asked three times for a trade,&rdquo; the 33-year-old Lafleur told a reporter from UPI. &ldquo;I thought that in another city, I could start a new life.&rdquo;However, Lafleur claims that his former teammate, Serge Savard, now managing director of the Canadiens, wouldn&rsquo;t deal the onetime superstar.&ldquo;Serge said he wouldn&rsquo;t trade me for any considerations,&rdquo; Lafleur said.&rdquo;Lafleur said he heard from Edmonton&rsquo;s Wayne Gretzky that Oiler general manager-coach Glen Sather tried to deal for him, but the Canadiens wouldn&rsquo;t listen.&ldquo;Hockey is a religion here,&rdquo; Lafleur said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re all priests. It&rsquo;s sacred. You don&rsquo;t trade priests.&rdquo;However, Savard said Lafleur never said he wanted to play elsewhere and that he wasn&rsquo;t contacted by any other general manager about a possible trade.Savard added that he is willing to trade Lafleur &ldquo;if that&rsquo;s what he wants.&rdquo;Lafleur, who retired Nov. 26 and now works in a public relations capacity for the Canadiens, said he had no regrets about leaving the game as a player, but would be &ldquo;pleased&rdquo; if another team approached the team about a trade because &ldquo;it would show I&rsquo;m not finished.&rdquo;As for whether he would attempt a comeback, Lafleur said he is unsure.&ldquo;I would listen,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m happy today. I miss the competition, but I had my good years. I don&rsquo;t regret anything.&rdquo;Lafleur said he retired because he had lost his confidence (he had only two goals this season) and felt he couldn&rsquo;t fit into coach Jacques Lemaire&rsquo;s defensive system.&ldquo;There is no big offensive trio on the team,&rdquo; Lafleur said. &ldquo;With the style of play they have here, they don&rsquo;t need a big scorer.&rdquo;Lafleur said Lemaire turned down his suggestion to use him with center Guy Carbonneau and left winger Mats Naslund on a designated scoring line.&ldquo;He (Lemaire) refused,&rdquo; Lafleur said. &ldquo;He said he needed Carbonneau for defensive purposes.&rdquo; &#9632;

Canucks Push New Development League

<div class="byline">BY DICK CHUBEY</div><h2>EDMONTON OILERS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0007-011300/5503034-1-eng-US/f0007-012.jpg" title="f0007-01" width="123" height="114"></div>EDMONTON&mdash;Wayne Gretzky was told to take a hike. Paul Coffey was told to get lost. And Jari Kurri, too.The Edmonton Oilers, as underlined by the giggles heard throughout the National Hockey League, hit skid row. They couldn&rsquo;t win for losing&mdash;or occasionally tying&mdash;and general manager-coach Glen Sather concluded some of his big guns required a rest.Gretzky and Coffey were nominated after the Oilers were beaten 5-4 in Los Angeles on St. Patrick&rsquo;s Day by the Kings.And, where Gretzky goes, his trusty Finnish sidekick isn&rsquo;t far behind. Thus, Kurri, who had accounted for 14 goals in 13 games to assume the NHL lead, was also told to stay away from the Northlands Coliseum for a couple of days.&ldquo;Wayne and Paul looked to me like they&rsquo;ve been out of it for the last while,&rdquo; explained Sather. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve tried everything. I&rsquo;ve given them crap, but nothing has worked. I didn&rsquo;t even get any reaction from Paul. I figured it was time to go another route.&rdquo;Gretzky&rsquo;s production had slipped to an extent where his stats over a 10-game Oiler skid suggested mortality. As the Oilers went 2-5-3, No. 99 collected only four goals. In seven of those games, he was held to a solitary point.&ldquo;This is the longest dry spell I&rsquo;ve ever seen him go through,&rdquo; said Sather. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re talking 10 games here, not one or two. Even if he&rsquo;s not contributing offensively, he&rsquo;s got to take care of his own end defensively. He seemed too tired.&rdquo;Sather had suggested that Gretzky remain in L.A. for a couple of days, soaking up the sun. But wouldn&rsquo;t you know it? It was pouring rain as the Oilers departed southern California. Gretzky opted for the seclusion of his apartment.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if I&rsquo;m tired but I have been playing a long time,&rdquo; said the 24-year-old whose season started in early August with the Canada Cup training camp. &ldquo;Maybe a rest is what I need. It&rsquo;s not so much physical, but mental.&rdquo;Gretzky admitted that he&rsquo;d been guilty of letting the team down of late.&ldquo;The worst thing you can do is lose sleep over not putting the puck in the net,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been getting chances but my shooting percentage is way down (21 percent),&rdquo; said Gretzky, citing nine shots against the Rangers March 9 when he had one goal and seven when he was held goalless in L.A. as examples.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had chances to put games away for us, that&rsquo;s bothered me more than anything.&rdquo;Coffey has also experienced problems that cannot be linked as mere coincidence to the Oilers&rsquo; skid.&ldquo;He has to do it himself&hellip;and he knows what he has to do,&rdquo; said Sather. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s been a long year. He plays a lot of hockey. The rest will do him good. It won&rsquo;t hurt him, he&rsquo;s in good shape.&rdquo;Coffey admitted part of his problem is that he doesn&rsquo;t leave the game at the rink.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a mental thing,&rdquo; said the 23-year-old. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not saying I need a rest, but I&rsquo;ve got to do something different. If he (Sather) says, &lsquo;Take a couple of daysoff,&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve got no choice, eh?&ldquo;The last week-and-a-half I haven&rsquo;t been able to take my mind totally off the game when I leave the rink. It wears your mind down to a point where the concentration hasn&rsquo;t been there on the ice fulltime. You don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s doing anything to you, but it is wearing you down.&rdquo;Okay, how did the chosen few react to this rest?&ldquo;I was a hermit for two days, I didn&rsquo;t do anything,&rdquo; grinned Gretzky, who missed three practices and returned in time to collect two assists in a 6-4 triumph over the Chicago Black Hawks on March 20, a win which locked up first place in the Smythe Division for the Oilers. &ldquo;It was a good break to stay away.&rdquo;Coffey, whose 28th goal put the Oilers ahead to stay late in the first period, admitted the break was what he needed.&ldquo;For the first time, and I don&rsquo;t remember when, I was excited to go to a game-day skate,&rdquo; he said.Ironically, it was two other members of Team Canada who were the Oiler leaders over Chicago. Glenn Anderson scored his second home-ice hat trick&mdash;both against the Black Hawks&mdash;of 198485 and defenseman Kevin Lowe drew three assists to gain nomination as the first and second stars, respectively.Anderson had also scored four goals against the Black Hawks two years ago for a single playoff game team record, which he shares with a number of teammates.&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ask me why, but I guess that&rsquo;s just the way it&rsquo;s worked out against them,&rdquo; shrugged the son a B.C. fisherman, who had accounted for 18 of his 40 goals at home this season.Does he have a shot at repeating as a 50-goal scorer?&ldquo;It&rsquo;s definitely not out of the question,&rdquo; replied Anderson. &ldquo;But the important thing at this stage is the team concept, not individual stats.&rdquo;Which is why Sather wasn&rsquo;t exactly doing cartwheels after the Chicago game.&ldquo;It was pretty much a controlled effort,&rdquo; said Sather of a end-of-the-second-period 4-1 lead that sat at 5-1 with less than seven minutes remaining. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a psychological barrier they must get over. They have to realize they must play for each other and for pride for 60 minutes&mdash;not 50 minutes one way and 10 for individual accomplishments.&ldquo;We got sloppy because they tried to pad their scoring,&rdquo; added Sather of the fact the Oilers were outscored 3-1 in the final six minutes. &ldquo;Oh well, we had 90 percent of the apple as far as I&rsquo;m concerned. The other 10 percent will come.&rdquo;A testy coast-to-coast five-game Oiler road swing will prove to be the ultimate test if this slump is indeed about to conclude. &#9632;</div>

f0007-01

Sather Gives Struggling Stars Brief Rest

PERHAPS ONE OF the biggest problems facing the business of hockey in the past has been the absence of teamwork, a lacking of the sense of unity that everyone&mdash;from the 21 NHL precincts to the minor pro leagues to major junior to U.S. college&mdash;is in the same game.If you think of the various levels of the game as spheres, the biggest problem to date has been that, too often, the spheres have been acting independently when it&rsquo;s perfectly clear that they continually cross over with a high degree of interaction.So why is it that the left hand continues to keep the right hand in the dark?The most recent case in point involves the Vancouver Canucks and their bid to form a new minor-pro development league in British Columbia that would act as a feeder for western-based National Hockey League franchises (see story on Page 6).There is no question that the idea has some merit. Western-based NHL teams&mdash;the Canucks, Oilers, Flames and Jets&mdash;are forced to locate their top development teams in the eastern half of the country, far from home base and in the American League, where they not only have to concern themselves with developing players but also attracting fans and providing an entertainment package.The proposed regional league, with an emphasis on low budgets and intense development, would, in many ways, suit the NHL teams&rsquo; circumstances perfectly.But at the same time, any move to this format would have a great impact on all other levels of the game&mdash;the AHL and major junior hockey in Canada, in particular.Yet when the Canucks&rsquo; proposed league becomes a news item, has anyone in major junior hockey or the minor leagues been made aware of it?No. Now, this is not to say that every time an NHL team makes a move, it should consult the entire hockey world.But doesn&rsquo;t it make sense that if a team proposes a new social order of sorts, it would be advantageous to at least examine how the hockey world in general will be affected?Which is why it&rsquo;s time for a summit meeting between all levels of the game to try to work out some kind of master plan with regards to development.There&rsquo;s no guarantee for success, but it would be nice to see all levels of the game at one table discussing what&rsquo;s good for the game, not just their own narrow interests. &#9632;

Let’s Get Together

<h2>A Message To The Reader</h2>This year marks the 35th anniversary of THE HOCKEY NEWS Awards and to help celebrate it, readers will be given the opportunity to vote on two of the major presentations&mdash;the Bridgestone-NHL Player of the Year and the Chrysler-NHL Rookie of the Year.In addition to casting a vote for the awards, one voter, in a random selection of all ballots received, will win an all-expense paid trip for two to Toronto to attend the annual THN Awards Banquet, June 27 at the Westin Hotel.&ldquo;We were looking for an appropriate way to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the awards,&rdquo; said THN publisher Dean J. Heine, &ldquo;and decided that we wanted to give our readers a bigger role in what we feel has become a special event.&ldquo;We will continue to have THN editorial staff vote on other major awards, but commencing this year the readers will decide the Bridgestone-NHL Player-of-the-Year and Chrysler-NHL Rookie-of-the-Year awards.&rdquo;Ballots for both categories are in all April issues of THE HOCKEY NEWS.In this issue and next week&rsquo;s, the ballot can be found on the subscription insert card. In the last two April issues&mdash;the 19th and 26th&mdash;the ballot will be printed in the paper.And we&rsquo;ll also accept write-in ballots. Voters may select one of the nominees listed on the ballot&mdash;Mike Bossy, Wayne Gretzky, Jari Kurri and Rod Langway for Player of the Year; Mario Lemieux, Carey Wilson, Warren Young and Peter Zezel for Rookie of the Year&mdash;or fill in the player of their choice.Mail all ballots to: THN AWARDS, 85 Scarsdale Rd., Suite 100, Don Mills, Ont., Canada. M3B 2R2.All ballots must be postmarked no later than May 1, 1985. The draw for the all-expense paid trip for two to Toronto will be held May 22, with the winner announced in the June 30th issue of THN.In addition to those two awards, THE HOCKEY NEWS, in conjunction with a number of corporate sponsors will be doling out another eight awards, honoring hockey at every level.They include:THN-NHL Coach of the Year&mdash;Voted on by THN&rsquo;s editors, writers and columnists, this award goes to the National Hockey League coach they deem to have done the best job in the 1984-85 season. Last year&rsquo;s winner was Washington Capital Bryan Murray.THN-NHL Executive Year of the Year&mdash;Voted on by THN&rsquo;s editors, writers and columnists, this award goes to the NHL general manager or front-office personality whose efforts in the executive suite have met with great success. Last year&rsquo;s winner was Buffalo Sabres&rsquo; Scott Bowman.THN Minor-League Coach of the Year&mdash;Voted on by THN editors and minor-league correspondents, this award goes to the minor-league coach (American, International or Atlantic Coast Leagues) who is deemed to have done the best job. Last year&rsquo;s winner was Tom Webseter, then with the CHL Oilers.THN Minor-League Player of the Year&mdash;Voted on by THN editors and minor-league correspondents, this award goes to the minor-league player who has the most outstanding season. Last year&rsquo;s winner was netminder John Vanbiesbrouck, then with the CHL Oilers.THN-Lafeatt&rsquo;s International Personality of the Year&mdash; Voted on by THN editors, this award goes to the North American player, coach, manager or executive who has made the greatest impact on the international scene in the previous season.THN-BAUER College Player of the Year&mdash;Voted on by THN editors and U.S. college correspondents, this award goes to the U. S. college player deemed to have had the most outstanding season. Last year&rsquo;s winner was Ohio State&rsquo;s Paul Pooley.THN-Micron Junior Player of the Year&mdash;Voted on by THN editors and major junior correspondents, this award goes to the Canadian major junior player deemed to have had the most outstanding season. Last year&rsquo;s winner was Laval Voisin Mario Lemieux.THN-JOFA Minor-Hockey Player of the Year&mdash;A new award, the winner will be selected in a random draw from the many entries in the JOFA Minor Hockey Showcase, which ran for 22 weeks this past season in THN.Two finalists in each of the categories&mdash;except THN-JOFA Minor Hockey Player of the Year&mdash;will be announced in the June 30th issue of THN. The winners will be announced at the banquet, with complete coverage of the affair in the July 31 issue of THN. &#9632;

Here’s A Chance To Vote On THN Awards

<div class="byline">BY REYN DAVIS</div><h2>WINNIPEG JETS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0009-011344/5503137-1-eng-US/f0009-012.jpg" title="f0009-01" width="113" height="115"></div>WINNIPEG&mdash;Riding the bench on a night when you could be putting your team in the history books of hockey seemed a tad incongruous.One goal was all Brian Mullen needed to carve a place for the Winnipeg Jets among the National Hockey League&rsquo;s most prolific-scoring but well-balanced teams.&ldquo;Nobody wants the 30th more than I do,&rdquo; said Mullen. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m getting a little frusfrated. Maybe I&rsquo;m trying too hard.&rdquo;The record the Jets want is shared by two teams&mdash;the 1974-75 Buffalo Sabres and the 1976-77 New York Islanders. Both clubs had six players with 30 goals or more.The Jets have five who have scored at least 30 goals with another, Mullen, on the verge. Dale Hawerchuk leads with 46 while Paul MacLean (38), Thomas Steen (30), Laurie Boschman (30) and Doug Smail (30) follow.Dismayed, but hardly bitter, Mullen sat and watched as his teammates reeled off their seventh consecutive win, a club record.&ldquo;How can there be a downside?&rdquo; wondered Mullen. &ldquo;Everything is going great. You couldn&rsquo;t ask for anything better than this.&rdquo;The Jets are piling up their wins. On top of the seven wins in a row are 10 victories in 11 games, 11 out of 13, 2110-3 since the midway mark and 40-27-7 overall after 74 starts.While club records have been falling every night, only one NHL record has attracted the Jets&rsquo; attention.Matching the league mark for 30-goal scorers would put the Jets in distinguished company. Buffalo reached the Stanley Cup finals with the 1974-75 team while the 1976-77 Islanders were warming up for four successive championships.Obviously, the one person who was posing as the sixth to complete the set was not doing anybody any good sitting on the bench.&ldquo;Brian is going through a phase when his timing isn&rsquo;t there,&rdquo; said Jet assistant coach Rick Bowness. &ldquo;You have to work your way out of it. I don&rsquo;t think he should be alarmed.&ldquo;When you are involved in something like this you develop a slight hesitance. You have a tendency to wait for things to happen. Brian is too good a player to stay down long. He&rsquo;ll get his goal and one or two more.&rdquo;To his credit, Mullen is having his most productive season since his decision to leave the University of Wisconsin to turn pro in 1982.The native New Yorker had 29 goals and 35 assists, despite missing 11 games earlier. The team sagged terribly at Christmas as Mullen recovered from strained knee ligaments.Recently, he signed a new contract for three more years. He had been playing out his option.Since joining the Jets he has seen the team go unnoticed through the NHL.&ldquo;Just lately we have started to be recognized,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But, at the same time, a lot of people are saying, &lsquo;The Jets are hot right now.&rsquo; Nobody is saying we have been a good team all season long.&rdquo;Similar to his teammates, he is amused to see the Jets repeatedly quoted as underdogs by Las Vegas oddsmakers in U.S. newspapers on the days of games.&ldquo;Some of those guys never read a sports page,&rdquo; said Mullen.The Jets have won 20 road games and in 16 cities this season. The only teams they have failed to beat on the road are Buffalo, Minnesota, Calgary and St. Louis.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re the fourth best team in the league and we are always considered the underdog,&rdquo; said Mullen. &ldquo;Someday they will learn.&rdquo;BENCH BITS&mdash;Defenseman Randy Carlyle pulled a muscle in his leg but the injury wasn&rsquo;t deemed serious and he resumed skating in two days&hellip;As they are prone to do, the Jets exploded for four goals in the third period to beat the Buffalo Sabres 5-3 on March 17. It was only the second time in 32 games the Sabres have blown a lead going into the third period&hellip;Defenseman Bobby Dollas has been sent to Sherbrooke as has left winger Tom Martin&hellip; Brian Hayward recorded his 30th win in goal, a 5-2 victory over the Minnesota North Stars on March 20&hellip;None of Doug Smail&rsquo;s 30 goals was scored on a power play. Wade Campbell set a personal high with three assists in the win over Minnesota. &#9632;</div>

f0009-01

Next Mullen Goal Goes Into Record Book

<div class="byline">BY ERIC DUHATSCHEK</div><h2>CALGARY FLAMES</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0009-02974/5503168-1-eng-US/f0009-022.jpg" title="f0009-02" width="136" height="120"></div>CALGARY&mdash;The two Calder Trophy winners, Willi Plett and Eric Vail, couldn&rsquo;t do it.The Gretzky of Sweden, Hakan Loob, couldn&rsquo;t do it.The scoring stars of the current team&mdash;Allan Maclnnis, Paul Reinhart, Eddy Beers&mdash;couldn&rsquo;t do it.Since the 1973-74 season, the second year in the franchise&rsquo;s history, just about every scoring mark in the Calgary Flames&rsquo; record book fell under the onslaught of shooters such as Kent Nilsson and Guy Chouinard and all of the above. The one exception was Tom Lysiak&rsquo;s rookie scoring record. It held up while all the others fell.Until now.Carey Wilson, currently battling half-a-dozen other first-year players for the right to finish behind Mario Lemieux in the rookie-of-the-year race, tied Lysiak&rsquo;s mark with a winning goal in a 5-3 win over the Boston Bruins, March 16.Two nights later, he established the record with his 65th point of the season in a 4-4 tie with the Minnesota North Stars.Wilson, who had been reduced to fourth-line duty much of the past month, suggested it was &ldquo;about time&rdquo; he started contributing again.&ldquo;I could see it (the Calder Trophy) slipping away after the All-Star game,&rdquo; said Wilson. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think I was playing up to par and he (Lemieux) continued to play consistently good hockey.&rdquo;Wilson, a graduate of the Canadian Olympic team, started to pick things up again when coach Bob Johnson installed him at center on a unit euphemistically known as the Tank Line. Aside from the 6-foot-1,200-pound Wilson, the line includes rookie Gino Cavallini, 6-foot-1, 215 pounds, plus hard-rock Tim Hunter, 6-foot-2, 205 pounds.Aesthetically, the line did not quite look right because it combined Wilson, a playmaking center, with two low-scoring wingers. Of course, paper work never won hockey games. Hard work does.&ldquo;Remember, I was always on the checking line,&rdquo; said Wilson. &ldquo;Playing with (Richard) Kromm and (Colin) Patterson, they&rsquo;d put us out against Gretkzy&rsquo;s line or Bossy&rsquo;s line or Dionne&rsquo;s line all the time earlier in the season. We were the checking line, but people didn&rsquo;t think of us in those terms because we were scoring, too.&rdquo;Perhaps it is Wilson&rsquo;s main failing as a player, his tendency to overplay the puck, that made him effective with Hunter and Cavallini. As Wilson explains: &ldquo;With them, if I hold the puck longer, it doesn&rsquo;t take as much away from their games as it would if, say, I were playing with Kent Nilsson. Playing with Kent, he would need the puck more to be effective. With the other two, it&rsquo;s not such a big deal if I hold on to it an extra second.&rdquo;In discussing Wilson&rsquo;s play, coach Bob Johnson suggested that his rookie center needed to learn &ldquo;how to play with good players.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s just the same with (Joel) Otto,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Whenever we get somebody in here the first time, they always come from a team where they were the star. They get 30 or more minutes of ice time and their coach just turns them loose. The hardest part of their adjustment is learning to use the other players around them. They&rsquo;re all pretty good, too.&rdquo;Wilson&rsquo;s play and that of another young player, second-year center Dan Quinn, gives the Flames a big boost in the stretch drive. Quinn, who played intermittently in the first half, made a startling turnaround just after the All-Star game.Quinn said: &ldquo;I figured I&rsquo;d sulked and moped long enough. During the break, they put me with with Lanny (McDonald) and Eddy (Beers) and we said to ourselves, &lsquo;As a line, let&rsquo;s finish strong together.&rsquo; From there, I got my timing and confidence back and the coach developed more confidence in me. More ice time gets you involved in the game, and when you&rsquo;re playing, if you make a mistake, you know you&rsquo;ll get the chance to make up for it later on.&rdquo;&ldquo;He had a problem,&rdquo; Johnson said. &ldquo;He thought he was there. He wasn&rsquo;t and he isn&rsquo;t there yet. But you can understand. He had success in the OHL. He thought it would be easy. It&rsquo;s never easy. He took a good reading of himself and he&rsquo;s improved. He&rsquo;ll be better next year.&rdquo;Perhaps no single player is more affected by McDonald&rsquo;s knee injury than Quinn. When he has had success in the National Hockey League, it has been as McDonald&rsquo;s center. Johnson tried moving Nilsson into McDonald&rsquo;s spot and eventually settled on Loob.&ldquo;I analyzed it,&rdquo; admitted Johnson. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I gave him Loob. Is Loob as good as McDonald? Can Quinn be as good as (Mike) Eaves? I don&rsquo;t know. But Quinn can hit the open net. He passes well.&rdquo;&ldquo;I think it is going to happen for us,&rdquo; said Quinn. &ldquo;I played with Lanny 52 games last year and I&rsquo;m used to playing with him. But I&rsquo;ve played with Eddy a lot this year and I&rsquo;ve played with Hakan on special teams. It may take us a few games to get rolling, but I think we&rsquo;ll be alright.&rdquo; &#9632;</div>

f0009-02

Wilson, Quinn Over All-Star Blues

<div class="byline">BY TOM HENSHAW</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-03706/5503199-1-eng-US/f0010-032.jpg" title="f0010-03" width="563" height="935"><figcaption class="caption-body">Former Boston great Bobby Orr is part of a group seeking to buy the Bruins.</figcaption></div><h2>BOSTON BRUINS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-021092/5503206-1-eng-US/f0010-022.jpg" title="f0010-02" width="118" height="121"></div>BOSTON&mdash;As of March 21, the Boston Bruins had lost 288 man-games to injuries. They had undergone the trauma of a mid-season coaching change. Four key players had not even been on the roster when the season began.And, as if that were not distraction enough, now came word that the club was on the verge of being sold to a group that planned to tear down the hockey rink and replace it with a $2-billion development that would include a new 15,500-seat sports arena.Furthermore, the group included the most hallowed name in all of Boston hockey, Bobby Orr.The group, which also included former U.S. Senator Paul Tsongas and ex-Bruin Wayne Cashman, was not deterred by the fact that Paul Mooney, the club president, denied that negotiations were underway, and the club owners, the Jacobs brothers of Buffalo, NY, said neither the team nor Boston Garden were for sale.Word of the impending sale, that may not be so impending after all, was leaked to the Boston Herald as sort of a trial balloon on or about March 16.Sam Gifford, spokesman for Delaware North, the Jacobs brothers&rsquo; corporate entity, fanned the flames by saying, &ldquo;The Bruins are an investment. They are supposed to be a profit-making thing. But, like all investments, they probably are for sale at some point.&rdquo;By March 20, the prospective purchasers had sampled reaction to the plan enough so that they were able to hold a news conference to &ldquo;clear the air.&rdquo;The financial angel behind the proposal was Roaslind Gorin, a high-powered Boston real estate tycoon who was already engaged in plans to build a $ 100-million, 28-story office building in the downtown.The plan for the Boston Garden area included 5.5 million square feet of office space, a 900-room hotel and parking facilities for 5,000 cars as well as the 15,500-seat arena. All of it would be privately financed.And the Bruins? Well, it turned out that the Tsongas-Gorin-Orr-Cashman group was not even close to making an offer for the club, nor had any negotiations ever been held.Tsongas said he sent a letter to Jeremy Jacobs on March 4 asking to discuss the possible purchase. A Delaware North vice president told him on the phone: &ldquo;The Garden and the Bruins are not for sale, but we will listen to an offer.&rdquo; A meeting was scheduled with Mooney, but the Bruins&rsquo; president cancelled it when the group&rsquo;s intentions were leaked out.Gorin and Tsongas told the news conference that they really did not need the Bruins or the Garden to make their project fly.&ldquo;It was always our assumption that we would have active opposition from Delaware North,&rdquo; Tsongas said. &ldquo;Their nonparticipation is not fatal because their non-participation was assumed.&rdquo;Boston Garden, Tsongas said, could be taken by the city through eminent domain proceedings as part of a general program to clean up a &ldquo;blighted&rdquo; area of the city.But it was Orr&rsquo;s participation in the deal that fascinated hockey fans.The famed No. 4, walking with a cane after recently undergoing a surgical procedure on his left knee for the ninth time, told the news conference that neither he nor Cashman had commitments for jobs or part ownership if the deal for the Bruins was consummated.&ldquo;I want to make it very clear that Ros Gorin and Paul Tsongas are not using Bobby Orr or Wayne Cashman,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We went to them. They didn&rsquo;t come to us.&ldquo;Ros has offered me no guarantees. All she has said that Cash and 1 would be given every consideration if the opportunity comes to acquire the club.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always said I had no desire to be connected with a pro hockey team again and 1 meant it. But now I guess you could say a spark has been rekindled.&rdquo;Orr, who lives in suburban Weston, works as a spokesman promoting such firms as Nabisco, Cullinet and Pandick Press and is frequently seen on television commercials for Baybanks, a group of local banking institutions.</div><div style="clear: both;"></div>Meanwhile, on the ice, the Bruins appeared to have settled into fourth place in the Adams Division after three wins a row, two consecutive losses to Calgary and Quebec and a 1-1 tie with St. Louis. &#9632;

f0010-03

Orr And Bruins Make News Again

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-011426/5503237-1-eng-US/f0010-012.jpg" title="f0010-01" width="365" height="453"><figcaption class="caption-body">Joe Falls</figcaption></div>HOCKEY, FROM A to Z:A&mdash;Adams, as in Jack, those wonderful days when he would take the writers and photographers to Lock Ober&rsquo;s in Boston for six-hour meals.B&mdash;Bentley, as in Max and Doug, the way they slicked their hair back, and darted around the ice like waterbugs.C&mdash;Carr, as in Lome, the pictures of him on the old hockey programs,looking so handsome in his white Maple Leaf jersey.D&mdash;Dion, as in Connie, the man who played at the other end of the rink the night the Red Wings stoned Ken McAuley and the Rangers 15-0. He got his shutout with nine saves. They didn&rsquo;t have to clean off his end of the ice.E&mdash;Ezinicki, as in Wild Bill, who made things so exciting with the Maple Leafs, especially when he took off the gloves with Ted Lindsay.F&mdash;Forum, as in Montreal, the exhilaration of that first night, all but losing my breath as we got out of the cab in front of the lobby, knowing that a lifelong dream was about to be realized.G&mdash;Goldham, that long, sad face and the bright smile that turned it all around.H&mdash;Harvey, as in Doug, the way he would whirl around in his own end and start up the ice, making the puck dance on the end of his stick as if it were on a string.I&mdash;Ivan, as in Tommy, the man who coached the Red Wings in the middle &lsquo;50s and who always took time out in later years to say something nice about your work. Even hockey writers need a little love.J&mdash;Johnstown, as in Blue Jays, how big and tough they seemed when they would come into Madison Square Garden for a Sunday afternoon game against the New York Rovers in the mid &lsquo;40s.K&mdash;Klukay, as in Joe, a hard worker for the Leafs&mdash;never a big name but an earnest man on the ice.L&mdash;Leger, as in Roger, a rolly-polly defenseman who rushed up the ice like an out-of-breath businessman chasing a trolly car.M&mdash;Mawers, as in John, the old Red Wing goalie who survived five heart attacks, open heart surgery and a pacemaker and is now the unofficial grandfather of our family.N&mdash;Nesterenko, as in Eric, a man who could poke the puck off your stick from half the ice away&mdash;a man who frustrated my Red Wings for years.O&mdash;Ogrodnick, as in John, a simple man, a quiet man, a hard-working man&mdash;a man who minds his business and does the job for a weak team in Detroit.Plante&mdash;As in Jacques, it was so sad, Monsieur, that he wore ze mask because then we could not see ze agony on his face.Q&mdash;Quackenbush, as in Bill, and listening to those French language broadcasts, and the announcer calling him, &ldquo;Bill Quack-in-the-bush.&rdquo;R&mdash;Real, as in Chevrefils, who was fun to be around, just because it was fun to say his name.S&mdash;Sawchuk, as in Terry, who was once traded for Real Chevrefils, and who can forget that day in Boston when Sawchuk screamed at the photographer who tried to take his picture in the dressing room and threw his skates at the photographer, as he beat a retreat out the door?T&mdash;Tim, as in Ecclestone, who used to drive you crazy when you were on deadline because you never knew whether there were two C&rsquo;s or one C in his name.U&mdash;Unger as in Garry, how young he seemed to be playing on a line with Gordie Howe and Frank Mahovlich&mdash;but how good he was.V&mdash;Vezina, as in trophy, and how it used to mean something in the old days when one goalie played all the games and won the award.W&mdash;Worsley, as in Gump, and how come he didn&rsquo;t smoke a cigar as he guarded the pipes?X&mdash;Xavier, as in Rescigno, who pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates in &lsquo;43, &lsquo;44 and &lsquo;45, and if you wonder what he has to do with hockey, mail me an x and I&rsquo;ll print it.Y&mdash;Y van, as in Coumoyer, and if I could have been anyone in my life it would have been Yvan Coumoyer, and 1 would have scored a goal in the Montreal Forum on a Saturday night in the middle of winter.Z&mdash;Zeidel, as in Larry, who played for the Red Wings in 1953, my first year in Detroit and was pleasant to a very frightened rookie reporter. &#9632;

f0010-01

Adams To Zeidel: A Hockey Alphabet

<div class="byline">BY GLENN COLE</div><h2>MONTREAL CANADIENS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0011-011298/5503268-1-eng-US/f0011-012.jpg" title="f0011-01" width="135" height="96"></div>MONTREAL&mdash;Mark Hunter had read most of the rumors. Those he did not read, he heard.Yet, when the National Hockey League trade deadline came and passed March 12, Hunter was still a member in good standing of the Montreal Canadiens.It is understandable for a player to become concerned when his name appears in the local newspapers almost every day. History will note, however, that usually when a player has his name appear, he is seldom the man to be moved.&ldquo;A lot of rumors go around before the deadline,&rdquo; Hunter said. &ldquo;You never know. Anybody could go. The more rumors you hear about, the more you get to wonder if you are going to stay or not.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nice to get back to a situation where I won&rsquo;t have to worry about it and just play the game.&rdquo;Through the first 70 games played by the Canadiens, Hunter had 18 goals, matching his previous NHL career high in his rookie season four years ago. He has been relatively healthy, although his right knee has been kicking up a bit since he was knocked to the ice in Toronto on Feb. 10. Just a week before the deadline, Hunter&rsquo;s knee still was not 100 per cent, and all of sudden he found himself sitting in the stands in Winnipeg, watching his teammates beat the Jets and a touch concerned that he might not be around for the rematch between the two teams a week later in Montreal.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s hard to ignore it when you read in the paper that you are going to be gone the next day,&rdquo; Hunter admitted. &ldquo;A lot of it is reporters speculating and it doesn&rsquo;t come from (coach) Jacques (Lemaire) or (managing director) Serge (Savard).Also prominent in trade rumors were Alfie Turcotte, Ryan Walter and Ron Flockhart. Turcotte, Walter and Craig Ludwig were rumored to be headed to Pittsburgh for Mike Bullard, which Pittsburgh would have loved. Hunter, Turcotte and Walter were reported bound for Vancouver in exchange for Stan Smyl and Thomas Gradin, and when that rumor didn&rsquo;t come true, Flockhart&rsquo;s name was dropped in as well. Flockhart, who has been traded twice, went as far to engage Hunter in a friendly wager for lunch that Hunter would not be on the move.With the playoffs approaching, Hunter can now concentrate on the things which Lemaire wants him to do, such as improve his game. The Hunter trademark is aggressiveness and that has been a problem for him this season. He has not been hitting with the consistency expected of him.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not satisfied with what I&rsquo;ve done,&rdquo; Hunter said. &ldquo;The season isn&rsquo;t over yet. I talked to Jacques a few games ago and he said that he wanted me to skate more. It seemed that 1 wasn&rsquo;t in a position to play physical.&ldquo;You have to skate well to be in a position to hit somebody and to be aggressive.&rdquo;As far as his injured knee is concerned. Hunter does not feel there is any major problem with it, which is good news for the Habs as they prepare for the opening round of the playoffs. Last spring. Hunter was a key factor in Montreal&rsquo;s ambush of the Boston Bruins and Quebec Nordiques in the Adams Division series. He wants to repeat that effort.&ldquo;I think the playoffs mean so much,&rdquo; Hunter said. &ldquo;I have seen guys have great seasons but they didn&rsquo;t do anything in the playoffs and all of a sudden, they were nobodies.&ldquo;If you have a so-so season and have a great playoff, nobody remembers the season. They just remember you had a great playoff.&rdquo;IN PASSING&mdash;Pierre Mondou is not expected to return until playoff time. There is still some blood in his injured left eye and he has been told to continue to rest. Coach Jacques Lemaire has tried every center on the team to replace Mondou between Mario Tremblay and Mats Naslund and used Ron Flockhart between them to start a two-game series against Washington&hellip;Managing director Serge Savard announed the possibility of calling up left winger Steve Rooney, who is finishing out his college career at Providence&hellip;Patrick Roy, who was brought from the Granby Bisons of the Quebec League while Steve Penney was injured in late February and early March, has been sent to the Sherbrooke Canadiens to aid them in their battle for a playoff spot in the AHL&rsquo;s Northern Division&hellip;Larry Robinson is still being hampered by a sore left elbow, an injury which kept him out of games against Hartford during the second weekend of March. &#9632;</div>

f0011-01

Hunter Glad Rumors Are Over—For Now

<div class="byline">BY BOB DONNELLY</div><h2>QUEBEC NORDIQUES</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0011-02965/5503299-1-eng-US/f0011-022.jpg" title="f0011-02" width="127" height="114"></div>QUEBEC CITY&mdash;The Quebec Nordiques are placing immense importance on finishing in first place in the Adams Division this season.Quebec coach Michel Bergeron has made it clear that he will go all out for first place. Although the Buffalo Sabres might appear to have the better schedule of the contending teams in the Adams Division, the Nordiques will also be battling arch-rival Montreal, and that always adds a little extra incentive, if indeed any more was necessary.Nordique general manager Maurice Filion agrees with his coach&rsquo;s approach.&ldquo;We will give it everything we have and even a little more to finish first,&rdquo; Filion told Claude Larochelle of Le Soleil. &ldquo;This is something we can&rsquo;t afford to lose if we have the chance. It is all the more important because the playoffs are so unpredictable. No matter what you do in the regular season it is difficult to foretell what will happen in a short series in the playoffs. We want that championship and we have to go for it all the way.&rdquo;Veteran Quebec defenseman Pat Price said there are several reasons for wanting to finish in first.&ldquo;Not only will it be the first time for Quebec to finish first, but the bonus money isn&rsquo;t that bad either,&rdquo; said Price. &ldquo;The important thing is that it would give us pride and confidence heading into the playoffs.&rdquo;Price got into a little hot water with his teammates and coach after criticizing his team&rsquo;s overall efforts in a 3-2 overtime loss to Winnipeg at the Colisee, March 15.&ldquo;This was probably the most important game ever for Quebec (first place was at stake in Adams Division) and we didn&rsquo;t give a complete effort for three periods,&rdquo; said Price.He later admitted that he had spoken a little too quickly and that it wasn&rsquo;t his job to motivate his teammates, at least not in that manner.&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all behind us now,&rdquo; Bergeron later said.The Nordiques bounced back March 18 with an 8-4 triumph over Boston, a game in which the Bruins used every possible means of intimidation.That triumph in Boston moved Quebec into a first-place tie, and for once the Nordiques won a big game after falling short on a couple of occasions earlier this season. Once again Bergeron put all his shooting power on one line. Peter andAnton Stasny, along with Michel Goulet, played a solid game offensively on the same line, contributing 12 points, including five goals and seven assists. This line could play an important role for the Nordiques in the playoffs, whether or not Quebec finished in first place, but Bergeron is not committed to using his top guns together for the rest of the way.&ldquo;If my other lines can handle the work defensively, then I will not be afraid to use my three best players on one line,&rdquo; said Bergeron. &ldquo;But if the other lines can&rsquo;t handle the job, then I will put Michel back with Dale Hunter. I do know that when we had those three together in the past they were successful on offense.&rdquo;Bergeron will also call up Gord Donnelly and Jimmy Mann from the Fredericton Express of the American League for the playoffs. This is just a little insurance in case the Nordiques meet the Bruins in the first two rounds.&ldquo;The only way to stop Quebec is to hit them and never stop hitting them,&rdquo; said Bruin general manager-coach Harry Sinden.The Nordiques can take the hitting, according to Price and his teammates, but if the opposition wants to carry that a step further, Bergeron doesn&rsquo;t want to see the Stastny brothers or Goulet in the penalty box for any extended period. That explains the promotion of Donnelly and Mann. &#9632;</div>

f0011-02

Nordiques Want To Finish In First

<div class="byline">BY RANDY SCHULTZ</div><h2>BUFFALO SABRES</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-021165/5503330-1-eng-US/f0012-022.jpg" title="f0012-02" width="122" height="115"></div>BUFFALO&mdash;Just how badly do the Buffalo Sabres want to win the Adams Division title?If you take a look at some recent results you could say they don&rsquo;t want it very badly, or if they do they aren&rsquo;t showing it.With only a handful of games remaining in their regular-season schedule, the Sabres found themselves in a three-way battle for first place with the Montreal Canadiens and Quebec Nordiques. But not one of these three teams seemed to want it.The Sabres recently concluded a four-game road trip out west, tying two (Los Angeles and Edmonton) and losing two (Vancouver and Winnipeg). That&rsquo;s two out of a possible eight points.They returned home for three games and sandwiched a win over Pittsburgh in between losses to the Canucks and Boston. That&rsquo;s two more points out of a possible six.The Sabres could have taken sole possession of first place if they had beaten Vancouver or Boston. And in five of the seven aformentioned games, the Sabres either had the lead going into, or sometime during, the third period and managed only a tie at best.So what is going on here? There have to be some answers.Sabre defenseman Mike Ramsay may have summed it up best following the team&rsquo;s loss to the Bruins at home. Sitting in his locker and shrugging his shoulders, Ramsay said: &ldquo;If we find a way, we find a way to lose. It&rsquo;s really frustrating. I don&rsquo;t know how else to explain it.&rdquo;Added John Tucker: &ldquo;When we had 20 games remaining in the schedule, we wanted to have a good last 20 to get ready for the playoffs. That didn&rsquo;t work, so now with only 10 games left we want to have a good 10-game span.&ldquo;But that is not off to a good start either. It seems like we are blowing the whole thing ourselves. We can&rsquo;t seem to take advantage of the chances.&rdquo;Sabre general manager-coach Scott Bowman listed a couple of reasons for his team&rsquo;s faltering play but remained optimistic.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re giving up too many goals,&rdquo; Bowman said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got to knock that down. We&rsquo;re also spending too much time in our own end when killing penalties. It&rsquo;s tough to kill penalties when you are in your own end.&ldquo;But I&rsquo;ve been through this before. You have to remember that we still have eight games (as of March 25) remaining in our schedule. Being only one point out of first is not so much to do.&rdquo;It might be if the Sabres suffer any additional injuries.Besides defenseman Bill Hajt, who has been out of the lineup since Feb. 9 with a separated left shoulder, defenseman Larry Playfair is out on a day-to-day basis with a thigh injury, Jerry Korab is also day-to-day with a pulled groin and center Dave Andreychuk is gone for three weeks after suffering a fractured collarbone prior to the Pittsburgh game.&ldquo;Sure we miss these guys and they would be a great help to our team if we had them playing,&rdquo; said Paul Cyr. &ldquo;But we can&rsquo;t use them as excuses for losing.&ldquo;And it doesn&rsquo;t matter what Scotty or Joe (associate coach Joe Crozier) say. It is the 20 guys on this team that will have to work our butts off to turn this around.&rdquo;One way the Sabres hope to do it is by playing aggressively.&ldquo;We got together as a team awhile back and decided that we should get involved more and muck around in the corners a little more,&rdquo; said defenseman Jim Schoenfeld. &ldquo;We want to make things happen out on the ice.&ldquo;We have to get our noses dirty. We are not looking to start anything. We just want teams to know that the Sabres are on the ice. Being physical is part of the game.&rdquo;SABRE POINTS&mdash;Sabre trainer Frank Christie is in stable condition after undergoing chest surgery March 23 to have a portion of his lung removed&hellip;The 3-1 victory over the Penguins broke a five-game winless streak for the Sabres&hellip;Gil Perreault is four points away from tying Guy Lafleur for eighth place on the all-time scoring list. &#9632;</div>

f0012-02

Sabres Frustrated In Pursuit Of First Place

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-011398/5503361-1-eng-US/f0012-012.jpg" title="f0012-01" width="365" height="521"><figcaption class="caption-body">Jay Greenberg</figcaption></div>IF THE PHILADELPHIA Flyers stopped to think about what they have done this season, they would probably get dizzy. So it was without instruction to go out and sniff the roses that Mike Keenan had given them the day off.This was not a reward for a winning streak that had reached seven games the day before, or an opportunity to pinch themselves at their sudden six-point Patrick Division lead. No, business remained business. With a four-game week coming up, Keenan simply felt that rest would serve his team better than another workout.For the coaching staff, it was business as usual. Assistants Ted Sator and E.J. McGuire were filling out player evaluation forms. Keenan was in his office looking at, of all things, the remaining schedule of the Edmonton Oilers.As impossible as it would have seemed in October, the Flyers were within four points of having the best record in the National Hockey League.&ldquo;We have a game in hand on them,&rdquo; Keenan said. &ldquo;And they still have a tough Eastern swing.&ldquo;If we&rsquo;re close, I&rsquo;d like to go for it. I think it would be an accomplishment.&rdquo;And you wondered, while the Flyers made up 17 points on Washington in five weeks time, what was driving them? No, silly, we don&rsquo;t mean catching Edmonton. First place overall has no tangible reward and was something that had never even occurred to anyone until the Stanley Cup champions hit a slump.You missed the point. It is Keenan. It is a rookie coach taking a team with four rookies and eight second-year players, past the Rangers, Islanders and Washington, too, and now using a day off to set his sights on the next viable goal.&ldquo;He makes us play better than we ever thought we could,&rdquo; said Flyer captain Dave Poulin a few months ago.They believe in Keenan now, so maybe it&rsquo;s time the rest of us should begin to believe in the Flyers, too. No, they shouldn&rsquo;t be this good yet, but the more you see them you have to concede that they really are.You remember some young teams that overachieved and then slipped back in subsequent seasons, the victims of unrealistic expectations. You also remember that the Flyers have lost nine consecutive playoffs games over three Aprils and wonder, too, if they aren&rsquo;t setting themselves up for their most flaming trip through the trap door yet.But then you catch yourself and say that&rsquo;s totally stupid. What the Flyers are doing is learning how to win. And that is a skill that will always stand them in good stead.But how? How are they, a consensus and entirely logical pick to finish fourth in their division when the season started, doing this?They looked like they had some promise then. They did run up 98 points last season even as it was becoming obvious that the three future Hall of Famers they leaned on&mdash;Bobby Clarke, Darryl Sittler and Bill Barber&mdash;could no longer do it every night.But questions? Boy, did the Flyers have questions. Who would lead in the locker room and on the ice with Clarke now in the general manager&rsquo;s chair? How could the Flyers be building a defense around the inconsistent Brad McCrimmon and Brad Marsh?Could Pelle Lindbergh bounce back from a disastrous sophomore season? After Brian Propp, did the Flyers have another bonafide major league left winger? Tim Kerr, Poulin, Ron Sutter, Mark Howe and Propp were all good players, but where was the superstar or two that a legitimate Stanley Cup contender must have?The questions have been answered. Kerr, scoring 50 goals for the second consecutive season, became the star.Howe, unspectacular, but oh-so-noticeably effective every game, has, through a variety of physical problems, remained one of the NHL&rsquo;s best defensemen.Propp, overshadowed by Clarke and Barber in his first five seasons in the league, took it upon himself to be a guy who shows up in the big games. Lindbergh, given a chance to run with the No. 1 job because of Bob Froese&rsquo;s injuries, has had a season in which you can count his number of bad games on three fingers.Poulin grew quickly into a captain&rsquo;s role in only his second NHL season. Marsh and McCrimmon, with personal problems behind them, got off to good starts and then thrived on Keenan&rsquo;s workload.The left-wing problems solved itself within a month. Derrick Smith, a third-round pick a year ago, came out of nowehre to remind Scotty Bowman, who should know, of a young Bob Gainey. Murray Craven, smart beyond his 20 years and skilled in every area, came in the Sittler trade from Detroit. Lindsay Carson, who missed most of last season with a broken arm, came back to fill an important role on the checking line.Rookie Peter Zezel has averaged a point a game and will become one the game&rsquo;s top playmaking centers. Ron Sutter accepted his assignment as a checking center and, for the most part, has avoided the sophomore blues.The Flyers could use another hitting defenseman, but they think a draft pick named Greg Smyth will do the job. And they could use another playmaking center but, between Len Hachbom, Todd Bergen and Swedish wunderkind Per Erik Eklund, the odds are in&rsquo; their favor that they&rsquo;ll come up with that, too.The pieces then, have fit together rather quickly, but it shouldn&rsquo;t be forgotten it took a few years to gather them. And Bob McCammon should be smiling.It was he who made a spot for free-agent Poulin. It was McCammon, who in his one draft as the team&rsquo;s GM, picked Zezel, Smith and Tocchet. It was McCammon who had previously encouraged Keith Allen to make the Ken Linseman-for-Howe and McCrimmon-for-Pete Peeters deals and who made sure Ron Sutter and Poulin played a lot in their rookie seasons.It was McCammon who recognized that the Flyers had to upgrade their speed and who was prepared to let the Flyers slip back a little last season while they sorted out a new order. The fans, after a 106-point team collapsed against the New York Rangers the previous April, weren&rsquo;t prepared for anything but winning a playoff series or two, and McCammon, who was not as good a coach as he was a judge of talent, took the fall History will be more kind to him than the fans were.But there is also no question the Flyers upgraded themselves behind the bench when Clarke hired Keenan. He has coached like nobody&rsquo;s rookie, creating just enough insecurity and demonstrating enough confidence in everyone to make it all come together.The Flyers aren&rsquo;t going to win it all this season. Nobody goes that far, that fast. But younger, quicker, better schooled and much more in control of themselves than ever, their time is clearly coming. &#9632;

f0012-01

Keenan Has Young Flyers Heading On Cup Course

<div class="byline">BY RON COBB</div><h2>ST. LOUIS BLUES</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-011317/5503392-1-eng-US/f0013-012.jpg" title="f0013-01" width="114" height="120"></div>ST. LOUIS&mdash;It was hard to say who was in more pain, St. Louis center Doug Wickenheiser in a leg cast or coach Jacques Demers in a quandry.In the days following surgery to repair extensive damage to his left knee, Wickenheiser center lay uncomfortably in a hospital while Demers wrestled fitfully with his dilemma&mdash;how to take up the slack?The loss of Wickenheiser, combined with a lack of depth in the organization, prompted Demers to undertake a major revamping of the Blues&rsquo; lines, not only from game to game but practically from period to period. Nothing seemed to work. The Blues lost their first three games after Wickenheiser&rsquo;s injury&mdash;two to Hartford and one in overtime to Toronto.In one-goal losses to the Whalers and Leafs, the Blues lost key faceoffs that Wickenheiser ordinarily would have taken.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not a one-man team,&rdquo; Demers said. &ldquo;But we don&rsquo;t have anybody to replace him. We&rsquo;ve had two major injuries, and our (lack of) depth right now is showing. Losing Wick is a major problem.&rdquo;The Blues never did really fill in the gap created by a season-ending knee injury on Jan. 18 to Kevin LaVallee, who was skating on a line with Bernie Federko and right winger Joe Mullen.It was hoped that Luc Dufour would offset LaVallee&rsquo;s loss, but the left winger acquired from Quebec on Jan. 29 didn&rsquo;t pan out. Mark Johnson, obtained from Hartford on Feb. 22, was supposed to fill the void on the Federko-Mullen line, but Demers was confident that Wickenheiser, with his size and checking ability, would give the line a dimension it needed. But that same day, Wickenheiser&rsquo;s season ended when he was hit by a car.That put Demers back at square one. He moved Mark Reeds from right wing to Federko&rsquo;s left wing. Dave Barr was moved from center to right wing. Johnson went from left wing to center. Defenseman Craig Levie was plugged in at right wing.Then, all that changed with a 5-4 loss at home to Hartford on March 16 in a game that Demers called the Blues&rsquo; worst of the season. Like a chess player gone crazy, Demers moved his men around again before facing Toronto.&ldquo;I have a right winger (Reeds) playing left wing, I have a center (Barr) playing right wing and a defenseman (Levie) playing right wing,&rdquo; Demers said. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t patch up like that all the time. Everybody was so confused. We&rsquo;re going to leave it this way and hope it works out.&rdquo;After the Blues blew a 3-2 lead in the last minute and lost 4-3 in overtime to Toronto on March 18, however, Demers changed lines again. This time, he reunited left winger Brian Sutter with Federko and Mullen.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like to break up lines,&rdquo; Demers said. &ldquo;I hate it, I like to go with three guys so they get to know each other.&rdquo;But as he looked at the Blues&rsquo; roster, he counted nine players who have played on left wing with Federko and Mullen this season.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve changed my lines more in the last week than I have all season,&rdquo; Demers lamented. &ldquo;I have to find the right cominbations if we&rsquo;re going to finish well and have a good playoff.&rdquo;Thanks to Chicago&rsquo;s loss to the Edmonton Oilers on March 21, the first-place Blues&rsquo; lead in the Norris Division remained at four points, despite St. Louis&rsquo; four-game losing streak. A 1-1 tie at Boston one night later increased the divisional lead to five points.Wickenheiser, meanwhile, was made available for interviews one week after his accident. He said he was 100 percent certain that he would be able to resume his career, despite the severity of the injury.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got no doubt about it at all,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m young and I&rsquo;ve never had problems with my knees before. It&rsquo;s unfortunate it happened, especially at this time. All I can do now is look forward to getting back and playing again.&rdquo;BLUENOTES&mdash;The Blues&rsquo; four-game losing streak was their longest of the season&hellip;Goalie Rick Wamsley&rsquo;s unbeaten streak was snapped 8-0-2 with a 5-0 loss to Hartford&hellip;Despite the Blues&rsquo; slump, defenseman Terry Johnson turned in strong performances&hellip;A 4-3 loss to Toronto on March 18 was the Blues&rsquo; second overtime loss in two seasons. Overall, their overtime record is 4-2-18. &#9632;</div>

f0013-01

Demers Laments Loss Of Wickenheiser

<div class="byline">BY PERRY LEFKO</div><h2>TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-02957/5503423-1-eng-US/f0013-022.jpg" title="f0013-02" width="135" height="141"></div>TORONTO&mdash;Exactly eight days after he benched his top line for all or parts of a critical game, Toronto Maple Leaf coach Dan Maloney is looking like a genius.Maloney, who sat out his captain and best player Rick Vaive for a game against Philadelphia&mdash;that was the one which set a team record for losses in a season&mdash;and linemates Bill Derlago and John Anderson for almost the entire first period of that game, may be kicking himself for not going to the whip a little sooner. In the four games the week after the disciplinary measure, the Leafs sported a 2-11 record. And yes, Vaive, Derlago and Anderson found their scoring touches.In total, the line totalled 24 points. Anderson, with seven goals and two assists, led the way. He, more than the other two, would seem to have more reason for doing well. Vaive and Derlago signed new contracts last summer, but Anderson is entering his option year and would love to buy some time.Earlier in the week, after the Leafs beat St. Louis 4-3 in overtime and the big guns exploded (Anderson scored two goals including the game winner, Vaive had a goal and an assist and Derlago an assist), Maloney was reminded of his benching the three players.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not surprised at all with the way the line played tonight,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Sometimes things have to be done to get things going the way you want. All three came back with a helluva flourish.&ldquo;The reaction from benching them made me feel like I took a shot at the Prime Minister. It wasn&rsquo;t a personal thing. They came back really strong.&rdquo;While Anderson said he felt as though the &ldquo;world&rdquo; had been lifted from his shoulders, Vaive would not comment about the benching. However, upon arriving in Calgary for the Leafs&rsquo; first game of a three-game road trip, he opened up to a Calgary reporter, saying he deserved to be benched for his recent play, but that Maloney was wrong to pin the blame of a 4-0 loss to Washington squarely on he and his linemates. Vaive added that he doesn&rsquo;t want to leave Toronto, but if the Leafs continue to falter, he&rsquo;d be happier in a winning environment.The Leafs lost 7-4 to the Flames&mdash;they were down 4-0 in the first period before Anderson and Vaive scored goals withless than three minutes remaining&mdash;and would have had their life-support system shut off in their next game had it not been against Edmonton. The Oilers are playing about as good (or is that bad?) as the Leafs, and it took a shorthanded goal by Wayne Gretzky with less than seven minutes remaining in the game to tie it 3-3. Had it been the real Oilers, this form of hockey euthanasia would finally be over. But the nine-lives Leafs hung on, and the victory over Detroit gave them a slight glimmer of hope of playing in postseason competition.Should the Leafs win all their remaining games and Minnesota lose all of theirs, Toronto would make it to the playoffs. And if that ever happened&mdash;and you have to remember we&rsquo;re talking about the Leafs&mdash;it would rank right up there with the Amazing Mets.But it should be noted that the better the Leafs play, the more it hurts them in the long run. It&rsquo;s no secret the Leafs are coveting Saskatoon Blade defenseman-winger Wendel Clark, whom scouts say has the ability to play in the National Hockey League next season, but if they continue to win, they&rsquo;ll lose the dubious distinction of picking first overall.LEAFLETS&mdash;Defenseman Bill Root was added to the crowded injury ward with a broken finger. Craig Muni was called up from St. Catharines to take his place. Todd Gill was called up from Windsor after his team was bounced from the Ontario League play-offs&hellip;Word has it that the Leafs put in a call to Saskatoon Blades because they were concerned that Wendel Clark, who the Leafs are expected to select first overall in the draft, had a &ldquo;bad attitude.&rdquo; Clark, in fact, is said to have an excellent attitude and had indicated he&rsquo;ll play for any team next season, just as long as it&rsquo;s in the NHL&hellip;Top draft pick Al Iafrate turned 19 on March 21 and celebrated his birthday a few days early with a third-star performance against St. Louis. &#9632;</div>

f0013-02

Leafs’ Big Line Finds Its Scoring Touch

<div class="byline">BY STAN FISCHLER</div>Rick Vaive won&rsquo;t be a Toronto Maple Leaf next season if he can help it. While Vaive hasn&rsquo;t come right out and said he wants to be traded&mdash;and his agent Bill Watters isn&rsquo;t adding any fuel to that fire&mdash;the winger has made it clear the problems between him and coach Dan Maloney are not solved. The root of the problem can be traced to the days when Maloney and Vaive were teammates and didn&rsquo;t get along. But the big problem, according to Leaf insiders, is that the club&rsquo;s management asked Vaive earlier this season to surrender the captaincy. Vaive refused, putting the onus on management to take it away from him. They didn&rsquo;t and there&rsquo;s be no respect on either side since then&hellip;Militant anti-Al Eagleson talk has begun to surface now that the potential players&rsquo; strike next fall is being discussed by the rank and file. The Bruins&rsquo; Mike Milbury, Eagle-son&rsquo;s most persistent critic, warns the union boss that players are more interested in free agency than matters such as security, career counselling and severance pay, which Eagleson has been pushing. &ldquo;Eagleson should realize,&rdquo; says Milbury, &ldquo;that the only thing that counts is player movement.&rdquo; Eagleson retorts that he&rsquo;ll make judgments based on an entire player consensus. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not concerned with Milbury&rsquo;s opinion,&rdquo; Eagleson tells BLUELINES. &ldquo;My opinion will be reduced to this common denominator&mdash;that which is satisfactory to the majority. My job is to do the best possible for the average guy.&rdquo; However, other union members, such as New York Rangers&rsquo; Anders Hedberg, voice little confidence in Eagleson. &ldquo;As long as Eagleson is president of the Players&rsquo; Association there will not be a strike,&rdquo; Hedberg tells BLUELINES. &ldquo;We haven&rsquo;t even come close to pushing the owners in past negotiations because Eagleson is too buddybuddy with (NHL president) John Ziegler.&rdquo; Vancouver Canuck goalie John Garrett suggests that if the players call a strike next fall, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure the owners might lock the players out for about as month or so to slap back at the union.&rdquo;The Philadelphia Flyers are furious over the recent Sports Illustrated piece which links their current success to the Broad Street bullying of a decade ago. &ldquo;We are in no way like the Broad Street Bullies,&rdquo; Flyer publicist Rodger Gottlieb tells BLUELINES. &ldquo;Jack Falla (STs writer) is the only one who has seen the Flyers in that light.&rsquo;&rsquo;&hellip;Ref Bob Hall fingers the Caps&rsquo; Bryan Murray as the worst Zebra-baiter in the NHL. &ldquo;Murray is extremely vocal, constantly yelling at everybody&mdash;his players, the officials, whatever.&rdquo; Hall adds that the most dramatic change in a coach&rsquo;s attitude towards refs is in Minnesota&rsquo;s Glen Sonmor. &ldquo;He used to be very, very vocal but now he&rsquo;s a completely different person.&rdquo; Murray figures Hartford goofed in not being more patient with David Jensen, acquired on trade deadline day by the Caps. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a kid,&rdquo; says Murray, &ldquo;but look how well he played for the (U.S.) Olympic team.&rdquo; Others, including Flyer assistant coach Ted Sator, figure Jenson has the &ldquo;raw materials&rdquo; to make it once he matures &ldquo;on and off the ice.&rdquo;&hellip; Phil Esposito&rsquo;s name continues to emerge as a potential sucessor to Ranger general manager Craig Patrick. The New York Times most recently had an oblique reference to Espo&rsquo;s interest in the job, and during a recent Ranger defeat at Madison Square Garden fans began chanting, &ldquo;Espo-Espo,&rdquo; and some unfurled an &ldquo;Espo GM-Coach Now&rdquo; banner at the start of a game. Meanwhile, Espo seeks financial support for his foundation. &ldquo;We need help from the Player&rsquo;s Association and the league,&rdquo; Espo tells BLUELINES. &ldquo;I wish the NHL would have each team throw in five grand. That won&rsquo;t break &lsquo;em.&rdquo;A reporter asked the Caps&rsquo; Rod Langway if he was Irish. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered the two-time Norris Trophy winner, &ldquo;but I drink enough beer to be Irish&rsquo;.&rdquo;&hellip;Calgary followers say Alan Maclnnis fires the puck harder than Bobby Hull ever did yet Hull, who recently was on a Flames&rsquo; flight, said he didn&rsquo;t even know who Maclnnis was. Hull rarely sees NHL action any more&hellip; Hartford fans aren&rsquo;t the only ones displeased with the deal which sent Mike Liut to St. Louis for the Whalers&rsquo; Greg Millen and Mark Johnson. Insiders report that Whaler owners Aetna Life are displeased because Millen and Johnson displayed so positive an image. &ldquo;They traded the two s3aightest guys on the team,&rdquo; moans one Whaler, &ldquo;and the two cleanest. All that&rsquo;s left are the kids, the malcontents and Ronnie Francis.&rdquo;&hellip; Mark Howe admits that the best player he ever saw at retaliation was his dad, Gordie. &ldquo;Everybody always gave him plenty of skating room,&rdquo; says Mark, &ldquo;but he had to earn it first, with his elbows, his sticks, whatever it took.&rdquo; Players are shooting the puck so hard these days that breakage of the supposedly &ldquo;unbreakable&rdquo; glass around the NHL rinks has become a problem. Half-inch panes, which were once considered ideal, may now have to be changed&hellip;Although Craig Patrick says Blaine Stoughton may have a future with the Rangers, nobody else believes that the erstwhile 50-goal scorer will make it out of New Haven. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s sad,&rdquo; says Nighthawk coach Nick Beverley. &ldquo;If he&rsquo;d apply himself a little, or been a little more consistant, he&rsquo;d still be in the NHL.&rdquo;&hellip;NHL moguls scoff at the bid by Harold Ballard&rsquo;s son, Bill, to buy the Penguins and move them to Hamilton. One old-line boss says the last thing Penguin owner (Ed Debartolo, Sr.) wants to do is sell the team. &ldquo;If he&rsquo;d do anything, he&rsquo;d move the Penguins to San Francisco.&rsquo;&rsquo;&hellip;Detroit captain Danny Gare says the players are bigger today than when he came into the league in 1974, &ldquo;but the skill has gone up, too.&rdquo; &#9632;

BLUELINES

<div class="byline">BY NEIL MILBERT</div><h2>CHICAGO BLACK HAWKS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-011378/5503478-1-eng-US/f0014-012.jpg" title="f0014-01" width="116" height="108"></div>CHICAGO&mdash;Which ever team faces the Chicago Black Hawks in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs isn&rsquo;t going to have it easy. Just ask Calgary coach Bob Johnson.Johnson watched his team lose 3-1 to the Hawks and was impressed by what he saw.&ldquo;Now that Chicago has everybody healthy, I wouldn&rsquo;t want any part of that team in the first round of the playoffs,&rdquo; he said.The victory over Calgary concluded a successful three-game road trip for the Hawks. They opened with a 6-4 win in Vancouver, lost by the same score in Edmonton and regrouped to register the victory in Calgary.The win in Vancouver&mdash;with Murray Bannerman making his 11th consecutive start in goal&mdash;was the Hawks&rsquo; first since Jan. 24, 1979, when Tony Esposito shut out the Canucks 5-0. In the interim, they had lost seven games&mdash;two in the 1982 Stanley Cup semifinals&mdash;and tied five in the Pacific Coliseum.Rookie Ed Olczyk played his best game of the season against the Canucks, setting up three goals and scoring an empty-netter.Warren Skorodenski was the goaltending victim of the setback in Edmonton after a month on the disabled list because of pulled groin muscles. His No. 1 nemesis was Glenn Anderson, who had three power-play goals.Nonetheless, Skorodenski was back in goal two nights later in Calgary, where he had played junior hockey. It also was the rookie&rsquo;s 25th birthday, and he celebrated it with an outstanding performance. Gino Cavallini&rsquo;s goal ruined Skorodenski&rsquo;s bid for his second shutout with 3:38 remaining.&ldquo;Skoro played a great game,&rdquo; said Bob Pulford, the Hawks&rsquo; general manager-coach. &ldquo;Any time you hold the second-best scoring team in the league to one goal, it&rsquo;s a great game.&rdquo;The road trip was followed by the rematch of the Islanders&rsquo; Billy Smith and the Hawks&rsquo; Curt Fraser at Chicago Stadium. Smith broke Fraser&rsquo;s cheekbone Jan. 13 and the largest crowd of the season, 17,832, turned out to see the Hawks bury Smith in retaliation.The purists hoped it would be with an avalanche of goals. Others had something more insidious in mind.But, Smith never left the bench, as Islander coach Al Arbour elected to go with Kelly Hrudey, the young man who monopolized the spotlight and was magnificent. Hrudey made an incredible goalmouth stand in the final 22 seconds, enabling the Islanders to escape with a 4-3 victory.&ldquo;We had four open, open nets,&rdquo; said Steve Larmer, who scored two Hawk power-play goals in the second period. &ldquo;We couldn&rsquo;t have asked for better chances.&rdquo;For Arbour, discretion turned out to be the better part of valor.&ldquo;The Fraser thing was built up quite a bit, and there was no need to use Billy,&rdquo; said Arbour, who had started the controversial stick-swinger in the three previous games.Fraser had major surgery, missed seven games and now must play with a protective shield because of Smith&rsquo;s stick work.Although Smith is the most-penalized goalie in National Hockey League history and has been a principal in innumerable similar incidents, he got off with a six-game suspension, the first of his 13year career.During the warmups, Fraser skated past Smith, raised his stick provocatively and spoke his piece.&ldquo;I just let him know how I felt about things,&rdquo; said Fraser. &ldquo;Nobody ever has to do what he did. I just raised my stick as if I was going to return him the favor.&ldquo;But it wasn&rsquo;t the place, it wasn&rsquo;t the time. His time will come. Somebody will get him.&rdquo; &#9632;</div>

f0014-01

Healthy Hawks Peaking As Playoffs Draw Near

<div class="byline">BY RICH FRIEDMAN</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-03714/5503509-1-eng-US/f0016-032.jpg" title="f0016-03" width="549" height="752"><figcaption class="caption-body">Robbie ftorek is one of the key injured players who the Rangers will miss.</figcaption></div><h2>NEW YORK RANGERS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-011167/5503516-1-eng-US/f0016-012.jpg" title="f0016-01" width="117" height="123"></div>NEW YORK&mdash;The New York Rangers faced the final fortnight of the season trying to figure out how to play without their captain, defenseman Barry Beck&mdash;again&mdash;and trying to determine just how ready they were for their probable first-round playoff opponent, the Philadelphia Flyers.There were no good answers to be found in an 8-4 loss to the Patrick Division&rsquo;s first-place team at the Specturm. March 21. It was their fifth loss in five games to the Flyers this season&mdash;they&rsquo;ve been outscored 26-12&mdash;and it left them with some even more discouraging statistics, such as a 2-12-2 record in their last l6 road games, a 1-5-1 record in their last seven games overall and an 8-16-2 mark under interim coach Craig Patrick.The absence of Beck can be the excuse for a close loss, but not for a decisive 8-4 defeat. Beck has been out so much in the past year that it is hard to tell what his game is anymore and the Rangers must adapt to playing without him.This time, he was expected to be gone for the lineup for two weeks after reinjuring his shoulder during a fight between teammate George McPhee and New Jersey&rsquo;s Bob Hoffineyer early in a 7-3 win over the Devils at Madison Square Garden, March 17.This is the same shoulder that took Beck out of the playoffs last spring late in the series against the crosstown Islanders and then sidelined him again this past fall. He cannot be expected to be anywhere near 100 per cent when he returns, either for the tail end of the regular season or for the playoffs.The day before the win over the Devils. the Rangers lost Robbie Ftorek for the season when they were shut out 5-0 by the Penguins in Pittsburgh. That leaves them with an even larger void in leadership: Ftorek a playing assistant-coach, led them with his actions on the ice and his words off the ice since being brought in mid-season. His injured knee may require surgery to repair ligament damage&mdash;that decision is likely to be made after a summer of rehabiliation&mdash;which could result in him missing part of next season and possibly premature retirement.Willie Huber is also expected to be sidelined for a couple of weeks after arthroscopic surgery on his chronically-aching knee.Pierre Larouche and Mike Rogers were benched in Pittsburgh, hampering the team&rsquo;s offense.Goalie Glen Hanlon, who had played more consistently than John Vanbies-brouck in recent weeks, played against the Flyers as Philadelphia took a 4-0 lead in the first period. The Rangers then showed they could battle back, outscoring Philadelphia 3-1 in the second and closing within two.But Dave Poulin&rsquo;s shorthanded goal in the third put the game out of reach at 6-3.If there were encouraging signs in all of this, it was the fact that the team showed confidence against the Devils.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve really wanted to play well for a while now, and because of this I think we&rsquo;ve been overworking,&rdquo; Patrick said. &ldquo;Tonight was a case of us being more patient with the puck, which is what we&rsquo;ve been trying to do all along, but our emotions haven&rsquo;t allowed us to.&rdquo;They lapsed into their same tight pattern against the Flyers, though, a tenden cy that has confounded them all season and has not changed since Herb Brooks&rsquo; firing in January.&ldquo;There are moments when we look like Stanley Cup champions,&rdquo; said Don Maloney, &ldquo;and moments when we look like 2lst in the league.&rdquo;NOTES&mdash;Ranger rookie goalie John Vanbiesbrouck received the Rangers&rsquo; Good Guy Award, for courtesy and cooperation with the press, at the awards luncheon of the New York chapter of the Professional Hockey Writers&rsquo; Association. It&rsquo;s doubtful that any previous honorees were recognized in more adverse circumstances, or handed those circumstances with more grace. Vanbiesbrouck has never ducked the press after a game: &ldquo;It helps me get back to reality, let some emotions out, keep some in,&rdquo; he said. Anders Hedberg, who will retire at the end of this season, received the Al Laney award for service to hockey, his career and impact on the game speak for themselves. Ron Greschner got the Toots Shor Crumb Bum Award for service to New York youngsters. Greschner also provided a possible window on the team&rsquo;s future in his remarks to Hedberg: &ldquo;Stay in New York&hellip;come down and teach us, maybe you can coach us, you never know.&rdquo;</div><div style="clear: both;"> &#9632;</div>

f0016-03

Injuries Sideline Rangers’ Leaders

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-02932/5503547-1-eng-US/f0016-022.jpg" title="f0016-02" width="443" height="450"><figcaption class="caption-body">Steve Simmons</figcaption></div>JOHN FERGUSON TOOK a trip to the Boston Garden recently&mdash;just to watch the Calgary Flames play.A Winnipeg Jet scout tripped to Bloomington, MN, awhile afterward, just to watch the Flames play.&ldquo;Wherever they&rsquo;re going, we&rsquo;re going,&rdquo; John Ferguson said on a long distance line. And when the genera) manager of the Winnipeg Jets speaks these days, people listen.&ldquo;Right now, the Flames are the most puzzling team in the league and we intend to watch their every move,&rdquo; Fergie said.&ldquo;They&rsquo;re a puzzling club and we have to solve the puzzle.&rdquo;With just days remaining in the National Hockey League season, the Flames appeared to have wrapped up second place in the Smythe Division. That was the way it was planned. The prognisticators, however, forgot to tell the Winnipeg Jets.The Flames are in third place, not so much because of their inability, but because of the play of the shockingly strong Jets.A third-place finish for the Flames seems likely, and even more likely is the first-ever best-of-five opening-round playoff meeting with the Jets.The Jets are now the NHL&rsquo;s most difficult team to believe. In the span of a two-month period, only the Philadelphia Flyers have been better. Winnipeg has solved the mystery of the Edmonton Oilers after a prolonged dry-spell. In a two-game scries, the Jets beat the red-hot Quebec Nordiques. They&rsquo;re winning in Montreal, coming from behind to beat Buffalo, doing everything that a winner is supposed to do.Except beat the Calgary Flames.As well as the Jets have played, it&rsquo;s never shown against the Flames. This season, the Jets have lost five of six games to Calgary. Last season, the Jets won only one of the eight meetings. The season before, they managed two wins in eight bouts.For those scoring the knockdowns, that&rsquo;s four Jet wins in the past 22 games against the Flames.The two teams are now on a collision course. One team will call its season a success, the other will terminate it a failure. If the Flames do not go further than the first round of the playoffs, it will mark the first time in Bob Johnson&rsquo;s three seasons that he has failed to do so. If the Jets lose to the Flames, all the regular-season improvement will be lost with early elimination.That&rsquo;s where the advance scouting comes in. The Jets will be watching the Flames, charting their goaltenders, filming their power play, rating their lines, the consistency of the coaching moves. Everything.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to find out everything about them,&rdquo; said Ferguson, who&rsquo;s tired of being beaten by the Flames.&ldquo;Hey, they&rsquo;re a good hockey team. I watched them in Boston and they played just the way you have to play to beat Boston. Those new guys (Joel) Otto and (Gino) Cavallini are pretty good. The team&rsquo;s playing well, especially when you consider what they&rsquo;re missing.&ldquo;But the way they&rsquo;ve dominated us? It doesn&rsquo;t make sense. We&rsquo;re doing something wrong against them. 1 don&rsquo;t know what it is. I&rsquo;ll tell you one thing, we&rsquo;re going to find out.&ldquo;We have to start taking advantage of our strength. You just have to look at the Molson Cup standings to see we&rsquo;re strong at center. (Dale Hawerchuk is leading, followed by Thomas Steen and Laurie Boschman). Right now, it&rsquo;s a pleasure to watch those guys play.&rdquo;It&rsquo;s also been a pleasure to watch Brian Hayward, their young goaltender. Of all the deceiving NHL stats, the biggest is the number of wins Hayward has totalled. Pelle Lindbergh leads the league, but Hayward is second, ahead of either Edmonton goalie&mdash;Andy Moog or Grant Fuhr&mdash;Pat Riggin or Terrible Tom Barrasso.Right now, Ferguson is smiling about his team, his goaltending, everything except the Flames.The growth of the Jets has been a fascinating rise. And along the way no one has been criticized more than Ferguson. He was criticized when he named the inexperienced Barry Long as coach, but the move has been successful. Long&rsquo;s strongsuit, his honesty, has been a great boon to the Jets.Ferguson was even scoffed at for trading a first-round pick and Moe Mantha to Pittsburgh for Randy Carlyle, hockey&rsquo;s best fat defenseman. Carlyle is as much the reason for the Jets&rsquo; success as anybody.&ldquo;I always knew we had the personnel,&rdquo; said Fetguson. &ldquo;It was just a matter of showing some patience.&rdquo;Patience is hardly a virtue John Ferguson has been known for in his years as player, coach and manager.And he&rsquo;s grown impatient losing to the Flames. &#9632;

f0016-02

Ferguson Hoping To Find Secret To Dousing Flames

<div class="byline">BY RICK SADOWSKI</div><h2>LOS ANGELES KINGS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-011024/5503578-1-eng-US/f0017-012.jpg" title="f0017-01" width="175" height="111"></div>LOS ANGELES&mdash;With two consecutive victories over the Edmonton Oilers&mdash;three overall with one more regular-season game to go&mdash;it seemed the Los Angeles Kings had forged a bit of momentum should they meet the defending Stanley Cup champion in the first round of the playoffs.Or had they?&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think it means anything, once the playoffs start it&rsquo;s all brand new,&rdquo; said Marcel Dionne after the Kings&rsquo; latest victory over the Oilers, a 5-4 decision at the Forum on St. Patrick&rsquo;s Day.Coach Pat Quinn, decked out in a green velvet jacket, green velvet bowtie and a green carnation&mdash;yes, he&rsquo;s Irish&mdash;said as much, though he was still hoping his team could move out of fourth place and meet somebody else.&ldquo;The playoffs are so different,&rdquo;Quinn said. &ldquo;They (the Oilers) have the experience, they&rsquo;ve been there, they&rsquo;ve taste victory. I don&rsquo;t think you can place too much emphasis on this victory. It&rsquo;s a great feeling, but we&rsquo;re going to see an awesome machine&hellip;if we have to play them.&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve been struggling lately and things haven&rsquo;t been falling into place for them. I&rsquo;m sure things will, come playoff time.&ldquo;1 don&rsquo;t think these games do anything now except maybe boost us up a bit. One thing you learn quickly about this business is to accept the joy of the moment because things have a way of changing quickly for you.&rdquo;So much for making pre-playoff statments.Dave Taylor, in fact, admitted the fear factor had played a part in the Kings&rsquo; second victory in a row over the Oilers since blowing a five-goal lead in Edmonton en route to an incredible 8-7 loss in January.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s probably some fear,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t play well against them you can get beat by eight or 10 goals. You have to play hard.&ldquo;Games like this probably help us, but we&rsquo;re still trying to move up so we don&rsquo;t have to play Edmonton first. But, if it does come down to them, we know we can play with them.&rdquo;The Kings were batting .500 against the Oilers, 3-3-1 with one more to go, and even though the Oilers were mired in a post All-Star break slump, they still managed to pepper goaltender Bob Janecyk with 38 shots, including 21 in a frenzied third period that had the Kings&rsquo; club record eighth sellout crowd of the season on its feet.&ldquo;Edmonton is such an awesome machine,&rdquo; Quinn said. &ldquo;When they get it rolling&hellip;you&rsquo;ve got to get high-quality goaltending, and we&rsquo;ve certainly got that.&rdquo;The Kings also received a good defensive effort from Dionne&rsquo;s line, which was responsible for applying clamps to Wayne Gretzky. The Great One did earn an assist&mdash;he has a staggering 100 points in 39 career games against the Kings&mdash;but that was all.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s most dangerous when he has the puck,&rdquo; said Dionne, who recorded his fourth consecutive multiple-point game to total 34 on the year. &ldquo;What you have to do is try and keep it away from him. But just because it worked tonight doesn&rsquo;t mean it&rsquo;ll work later.&rdquo;Phil Sykes had been used to shadow Gretzky in most of the previous matchups, but when Quinn was asked why the change had been made, he said, &ldquo;1 just wanted to try something different, it was nothing special.&rdquo;Most likely, he merely wanted to keep the Oilers guessing, just in case they prove to be the Kings&rsquo; first-round opponent.KING NOTEBOOK&mdash;The Kings officially clinched their first playoff berth in three years on March 15, when cellar-dwelling Vancouver was beaten by Detroit. &ldquo;This is what our goal was, but we&rsquo;re still hoping to move up,&rdquo; said coach Pat Quinn.&hellip;Jim Fox needed one goal to join Marcel Dionne, Bernie Nicholls, Dave Taylor and Brian MacLellan as 30-goal scorers, to give the Kings five for the first time in their history&hellip;Rookie goalie Bob Janecyk was on a roll, starting 10 of 12 games and going 7-2-2 with a 3.08 average in his last 11. His 21 wins were only two less than the Kings managed all last year-&hellip;With a 32-26-15 record and 77 points with nine games left, the Kings were 27 points ahead of last year&rsquo;s pace. &#9632;

f0017-01

Kings Keep Oiler Success In Perspective

<div class="byline">BY TONY GALLAGHER</div><h2>VANCOUVER CANUCKS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-02804/5503609-1-eng-US/f0017-022.jpg" title="f0017-02" width="105" height="96"></div>VANCOUVER&mdash;The Vancouver Canucks may be through for the season, but several players will be participating in the world championships in Prague, beginning April 17.And while one might reasonably expect the players to be representing three different countries, Patrik Sundstrom and Thomas Gradin will not be playing for Sweden.Both centers have decided that starting the season last July 23 to prepare for the Canada Cup is quite enough hockey, thank you. Both have been asked by the Canucks not to play and both are complying, happy that somebody in authority has given them an excuse to say no.Gradin, for one, has been playing the last six weeks with a hairline fracture in his leg, an injury that just recently showed up in X-rays taken when the pain persisted over a long period of time. Gradin can finish out the season, but with all the hockey he&rsquo;s played, plus the pain in the leg, he&rsquo;ll pack it in and come back fresh next season.&ldquo;Patrik and I also have the problem of not wanting to come in at the last minute before the team is selected and take somebody else&rsquo;s position when that guy has been working all year back home to play in the world championships,&rdquo; Gradin said. &ldquo;The coach (Leif Boork) asked me to play but 1 didn&rsquo;t want to.&rdquo;Sundstrom, who fractured his wrist in the last game of the Canada Cup and could not start the regular season, told Boork much the same thing.But Swedes aren&rsquo;t all the Canucks have going for them. Petri Skriko is expected to accept an invitation from the Finnish national team, which should improve its chances of making it to the final four.&ldquo;I will ask permission to play and assuming 1 get it, I will go ahead,&rdquo; said Skriko, who has enjoyed an excellent first season, scoring 20 goals despite extremely limited ice time.Many Canucks have been asked if hey are interested in joining the Canadian team, including general manager-coach Harry Neale.Alan Eagleson made inquiries to Vancouver owner Frank Griffiths about the chances of Neale coaching the team but was rebuffed.&ldquo;That&rsquo;s just as well because while I would have been interested in the job if I&rsquo;m not going to be kept here,&rdquo; Neale said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;d be better off spending time trying to find another job. If I&rsquo;m to keep the job here, then there are a lot of things that will need immediate attention.&rdquo;The players who will play include defensemen Doug Lidster and Doug Halward and forwards Stan Smyl, Cam Neely and Tony Tanti.Goaltender Richard Brodeur had been a candidate, but was quickly crossed off Eagleson&rsquo;s list because he had asked for assurances he&rsquo;d be playing plus finanical compensation.&ldquo;We can&rsquo;t be giving every player that assurance, and guys like MarcelDionne never asked for such concessions so why should he?&rdquo; said Eagleson. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll use someone else.&rdquo;Tanti, whose offensive thrust is up to 35 goals, also had his reservations, but decided to go anyway.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going into my option year,&rdquo; he said before making his commitment to Eagleson. &ldquo;What happens if I get hurt? There isn&rsquo;t much security.&rdquo;Canuck associate coach Ron Smith, who is certainly on thin ice with the Vancouver organization, has been approached about the possibility of helping coach the squad, which has its first exhibition game in Finland April 10.NOTES&mdash;Veteran defenseman Jiri Bubla has rejoined the Canucks after a month absence with a tom rib cartilage. &#9632;</div>

f0017-02

Swedes Passing Up Tourney Invitation

<div class="byline">BY RICH CHERE</div><h2>NEW JERSEY DEVILS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-03606/5503640-1-eng-US/f0017-032.jpg" title="f0017-03" width="93" height="83"></div>EAST RUTHERFORD&mdash;It won&rsquo;t take Ron Low long to forget this season. When the curtain closes on the New Jersey Devils&rsquo; 1984-85 campaign, Low will eagerly write off a season in which he missed 32 games because of knee and back injuries.Not that the pain of two knee injuries, arthroscopic surgery or a vigorous rehabilitation program have bothered Low the most.&ldquo;I hate watching hockey games with a passion,&rdquo; admitted Low. &ldquo;I find myself sweating in the stands worse than playing. To watch it on TV is not bad, but I just can&rsquo;t stand watching games live at the rink. And 1 guess 1 rode the (exercise) bike enough this season to go from here to Taiwan and back.&rdquo;A stretch of three straight victories in late November elevated Low to the status of New Jersey&rsquo;s top goalie for first-year coach Doug Carpenter, but the 34-year-old&rsquo;s troubles began when he hyperextended his left knee late in the first period on Dec. 19 in Pittsburgh.Back spasms prevented him from returning to the lineup when he felt ready and then, on Jan. 31 in Philadelphia&rsquo;s Spectrum, disaster struck.With 42 seconds remaining in the first period, Low made a save on Brad Marsh&rsquo;s shot, and then fell to the ice in obvious pain. On Feb. 2 he underwent arthroscopic surgery to remove damaged cartilage.It wasn&rsquo;t until March 14 at the Meadowlands Arena that Low was able to play again. By then his season appeared lost as he suffered a 7-4 loss to the Boston Bruins followed by a 4-1 defeat to the Washington Capitals five nights later.&ldquo;You look back at the possibilities for this year if I hadn&rsquo;t gotten hurt,&rdquo; said Low after his record dropped to 4-9-4. &ldquo;For sure, I don&rsquo;t think they&rsquo;d have drilled Chico (Resch) into the ground. I don&rsquo;t say we&rsquo;d have won any more games, but there could have been a freshness factor there. The way this season started off it could have been one of the best. I had very high expectations for myself and the team. To be injured like that, to miss from Dec. 19 to March 14 with only two games in between, you might as well call it a lost season.&rdquo;Even so, it wasn&rsquo;t Low`s most frustrating season in the National Hockey League.&ldquo;The year after I made the playoffs with Edmonton was my most disappointing,&rdquo; he recalled. &ldquo;I broke my thumb 10 games into the next season (1980-81) and when I came back, I played four games and broke it again. That was most frustrating because that year I had the No. 1 job bagged from the year before. But (Andy) Moog goes into the playoffs, stands on his head and it&rsquo;s history.&rdquo;That&rsquo;s how the 11-year NHL veteran wound up with the Devils via a 1983 trade for Lindsay Middlebrook and Paul Miller.Low has been a solid goalie in his two-and-a-half seasons with the Devils, complementing Resch perfectly. But now the picture may not look so bright for the two aging netminders as New Jersey&rsquo;s front office looks closer at its stable of young talent.Among the club&rsquo;s goaltending prospects are: Craig Billington, the team&rsquo;s second-round draft choice in 1984 who sported a 26-17-0 record and 4.15 goals-against average for the Belleville Bulls of the Ontario League; Kirk McLean, the No. 6 pick who was 22-16-2,3.30 for the Oshawa Generals of OHL; Chris Terreri, the fifth pick in 1983 who was 15-13-5, 3.49 at Providence College and 26-year-old Karl Friesen, signed Jan. 15 from West Germany.And, of course. Devil goalie Hannu Kamppuri, who is 1-10-1 with a 5.02 GAA.They&rsquo;re likely in a position where they&rsquo;re going to look long and hard at some of the kids.&ldquo;That&rsquo;s just a matter of common sense,&rdquo; Low said. &ldquo;When you&rsquo;ve got two goalies 34 and 36, you&rsquo;ve got to start looking. One thing in our favor is they don&rsquo;t know if they have anybody who can play in the NHL and they know we can.&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like it to be just like it was last year (only Low and Resch), but I wouldn&rsquo;t be surprised seeing one of us not here next year. I wouldn&rsquo;t be surprised seeing one of us not signing.&rdquo;Both will become free agents in June and because each are over 32, they can sign with another NHL club without the Devils&rsquo; receiving compensation. The Devils have the right to match any offer.&ldquo;I&rsquo;d say the odds are real good Ronnie will be back,&rdquo; said Resch. &ldquo;But will they want to keep us both? Next year will probably be the last for me. After that they nave to make a move with a young goalie. Next year could even be the year they make a move with one of the young kids, but a kid has to come at the right time period. Next season could be the time, but is this team going to be better next year?&rdquo;Low would like to remain with the Devils but he is also not afraid of other possibilities.&ldquo;There should be at least three or four teams interested in experienced backups.&rdquo; said Low. &ldquo;I think there will be a job for me the next three or four years, whether it&rsquo;s here or somewhere else. I&rsquo;d like to stay here, but if it isn&rsquo;t here. I&rsquo;ll tell you what, it isn&rsquo;t too tough to adjust no matter where it is.&rdquo;HOT STUFF&mdash;Chico Resch started eight of nine games during a key stretch period and appeared in all nine contests&hellip;Garry MacAdam was recalled from Maine under emergency conditions on March 14 when Rocky Trottier was sent to the AHL and Greg Adams separated his shoulder. &#9632;</div>

f0017-03

Veteran Devil Goalie Low Concerned About Future

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-02806/5503702-1-eng-US/f0018-022.jpg" title="f0018-02" width="510" height="835"></div>Toronto Maple Leaf left winger John Anderson scored seven goals and two assists, including two game-winners and a hat trick, in four games to earn THE HOCKEY NEWS&rsquo; NHL Player-of-the-Week honors for the period ending March 24.The outburst gives him 25 goals and 28 assists in 69 games. &#9632;

f0018-02

Player Of The Week

<div class="byline">BY TIM MORIARTY</div><h2>NEW YORK ISLANDERS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-011061/5503671-1-eng-US/f0018-012.jpg" title="f0018-01" width="132" height="125"></div>LONG ISLAND&mdash;It was a dreary, raw and damp spring day on Long Island. Greg Gilbert had been discharged from a Manhattan hospital the previous night and now he was seated in the living room of his Long Island home with his surgically repaired left knee elevated and propped on a pillow.The New York Islanders&rsquo; red-haired left winger was watching a telecast of a National Collegiate Athletic Association college basketball playoff game between Oklahoma and Memphis State.&ldquo;I like college basketball more than the pros,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I also watch the NBA playoffs once they get to the finals.&rdquo;Gilbert will be doing a lot of TV watching this spring because he won&rsquo;t be playing hockey. In fact, he won&rsquo;t be able to lace on a pair of skates until next season.</div><div style="clear: both;"></div><blockquote class="pullQuote">Gilbert didn&rsquo;t want to risk playing in the playoffs.</blockquote>Gilbert suffered ligament damage in his left knee in a game against the Flames at Calgary, Feb. 27. He underwent arthroscopic surgery, hoping he might return to the Isles with the aid of a brace. But when the knee failed to respond to treatment, Gilbert underwent surgery for a major reconstruction job. The operation lasted two hours.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been told that everything went well,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now I just have to take it easy for awhile and then look ahead to rehabilitation.&rdquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;11 be back early next season, but if I had postponed this and tried playing in the playoffs, I could have stretched some other ligaments and maybe ended my career.&rdquo;Gilbert damaged the knee in a freak accident. He was carrying the puck near the side boards in the Olympic Saddledome when he slammed into an open gate at the visiting team&rsquo;s bench. The Islanders were in the middle of a line change at the time.&ldquo;Somebody went off&mdash;I think it was Brent Sutter&mdash;and John Tonelli opened the gate to let him in,&rdquo; Gilbert said. &ldquo;I got hit from behind by Jamie Macoun and he drove me into the gate. I was bent forward so I took the brunt of it with my chest.&ldquo;At first, I wasn&rsquo;t worried about the knee. I figured I just bruised it. But later I couldn&rsquo;t stand on it. It was too painful.&rdquo;Gilbert was a 31-goal scorer in his first full season with the Islanders last season. He was looking forward to increasing his goal total this season but was hampered by injuries. He had 13 goals in 68 games at the time of his accident.&ldquo;I stretched ligaments in my left ankle while jogging just before training camp,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That set me back, then I got hit in the right ankle by a Doug Wilson shot in a game against the Black Hawks. He&rsquo;s go quite a shot, believe me.&rdquo;Despite these setbacks, Gilbert remains optimistic about the future.&ldquo;You have to look at things in a positive way,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Sure I feel bad because I won&rsquo;t be able to play in the playoffs, but I had the opportunity to make my own decision on the surgery and I figure I made the right decision. I&rsquo;ll be back.&rdquo;But will the Islanders be back as Stanley Cup champions?Gilbert smiled at the question.&ldquo;Well, we&rsquo;ve been struggling all season because of the injuries,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now the young guys are looking at the old guys for help and the old guys are hoping the young guys can carry the load.&ldquo;Once we get some the the injured guys back, we&rsquo;ll do okay.&rdquo;Gilbert&rsquo;s operation and the continued absence of Clark Gillies (sprained right ankle) and Bob Bourne (hand surgery) left the Islanders with only one regular left winger&mdash;Tonelli. And when Brent Sutter suffered a shoulder separation, the Isles were left with only one veteran center, Bryan Trottier.To compensate for these losses, three rookies were called up from the Springfield farm club&mdash;center Roger Kortko, left winger Dale Henry and right winger Alan Kerr. Also, Bob Nystrom was shifted from right to left wing.ON THE ISLE&mdash;Anders Kallur had two goals and Duane Sutter scored in his sixth consecutive game to help the Isles win their season rubber match against the Rangers, 5-2 on March 24. It was the Isles&rsquo; first victory at Madison Square Garden in eight games dating back to 1982&hellip;The Isles have been carrying nine defensemen. Coach Al Arbour tried rotating eight of them during a 5-1 loss to the Nordiques, March 21. &#9632;

f0018-01

Gilbert Optimistic Following Knee Surgery

<div class="byline">BY VARTAN KUPELIAN</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-01856/5503733-1-eng-US/f0020-012.jpg" title="f0020-01" width="557" height="763"><figcaption class="caption-body">Wing goalie Greg Stefan has been in top form since returning from a shoulder injury.</figcaption></div>Louisville Hockey&reg;Louisville Hockey&reg;<h2>DETROIT RED WINGS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-02579/5503740-1-eng-US/f0020-022.jpg" title="f0020-02" width="140" height="96"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div>DETROIT&mdash;Healthy, wealthy and wiser. Add hot, too. That&rsquo;s Greg Stefan.Since returning to the Detroit Red Wings&rsquo; lineup on Feb. 16 after missing five weeks with a strained left shoulder, Stefan&rsquo;s record is 7-6-1. His season mark is 18-17-3. The Wings&mdash;23-38-11 &mdash; have won only five games this season in which Stefan did not tend goal. Stefan&rsquo;s .500 record is noteworthy because it has been 11 seasons since a Red Wing team played better than break-even hockey over the course of an entire season.The conclusion is obvious&mdash;the Wings don&rsquo;t win very often without Stefan playing, and playing well.After emerging as a top National Hockey League goaltender last season, a lot was expected of Stefan going into 1984-85, but he didn&rsquo;t get off to a particularly good start. Okay, but nothing to brag about.But now&hellip;&ldquo;Stefs been playing great since he&rsquo;s been back,&rdquo; said Darryl Sittler. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why we&rsquo;ve been winning games.&rdquo;Added Ivan Boldirev: &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s face it. Even thouugh we&rsquo;ve won some lately, without Stef we&rsquo;d have been blown out in a lot of those games.&rdquo;There are a number of factors, not the least of which is a new four-year contract he quietly signed a month ago.&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter what else happens, without solid goaltending like we&rsquo;ve been getting from Stefan, you don&rsquo;t win, especially on a team like ours,&rdquo; said coach Nick Polano. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got to have outstanding goaltending.&rdquo;Dave Dryden, the Wings&rsquo; goaltending consultant who spent parts of nine seasons in the NHL with Edmonton, Buffalo, Chicago and the New York Rangers, said Stefan&rsquo;s improvement from a rather ordinary start this season is more mental than anything else.&ldquo;Technically, I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s anything at all different,&rdquo; Dryden said. &ldquo;At Christmas time, when I saw him in Buffalo, he looked tired to me. He wasn&rsquo;t reacting as fast on the second shot.&ldquo;Now he&rsquo;s got a higher energy level. Nothing&rsquo;s a gimme goal against him now. He&rsquo;s not giving up anything easy.&ldquo;I think so much of this game is mental&mdash;or emotional, however you want to say it&mdash;and not physical. That first game back (Feb. 16) after his injury, Stef was as puffed up as I&rsquo;ve ever seen him.&rdquo;Stefan agrees with Dryden&rsquo;s assessment.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m in a good groove,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The confidence is going good. I&rsquo;m playing a lot and I&rsquo;m in top shape. Every game is like a playoff at this stage and I try to be extra mentally prepared.&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve given me confidence. They&rsquo;ve told me I&rsquo;m going to be playing until I drop.&rdquo;Stefan said getting the contract signed and out of the way &ldquo;is one less thing to worry about.&rdquo;Being away from the team and its troubles also helped the healing process.&ldquo;It was a recuperation, physically and mentally,&rdquo; Stefan said.Dryden said &ldquo;hunger&rdquo; is a good word to describe Stefan&rsquo;s rejuvenation.&ldquo;Stefs taking it as this is his team and his job is to get &lsquo;em into the playoffs,&rdquo; Dryden said. &ldquo;He sees a need and wants the team to win. He goes out and fills the need. It&rsquo;s a good feeling for a goalie and he&rsquo;s getting a lot of reinforcement.&ldquo;The other thing is, he is anticipating beautifully. He is seeing everybody on the ice. Nobody is fooling him. He&rsquo;s aware of what&rsquo;s going on around him.&rdquo;Dryden, who lives in Toronto, drops by occasionally to consult with the Wings&rsquo; goalies&mdash;Stefan, Corrado Micalef and Ed Mio, who&rsquo;s currently with Adirondack of the American Hockey League.&ldquo;I like it that way,&rdquo; Stefan said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like a guy around all the time trying to change different things. You&rsquo;ve got to, let each goalie be himself. Dave does* that, yet he&rsquo;s there to give me little tips.&rdquo;Meanwhile, the Wings returned from a western road swing in which they won one and lost three and beat the Los Angeles Kings 8-6 at Joe Louis Arena with John Orgodnick netting his 52nd goal of the season to tie Mickey Redmond&rsquo;s club record. The big left winger added a pair of assists to run his point total to 98. Only Marcel Dionne and Gordie Howe have scored more in Wing history.WING WIRE&mdash;Lane Lambert, the good sophomore, underwent surgery on his left knee and is finished for the season unless the Wing make it to the second round of the playoffs&hellip;Colin Campbell is out three to four weeks after athroscopic knee surgery, but Greg Smith is back after a six-game absence with knee problems. &#9632;

f0020-01

Stefan’s Play Can Make Or Break Wings

<div class="byline">BY RANDY SMTIH</div><h2>HARTFORD WHALERS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-03400/5503771-1-eng-US/f0020-032.jpg" title="f0020-03" width="123" height="114"></div>HARTFORD&mdash;The primary reason that Ulf Samuelsson likes big cities and big airports is not because they remind him of home which, in his case, is Leksand. Sweden. It&rsquo;s because he can buy his favorite newspaper, Expression, there.Naturally, it&rsquo;s Swedish.&ldquo;I like to keep up with what&rsquo;s going on at home,&rdquo; he said.Samuelsson, in his first pro season, has ridden the elevator between success and disappointment. He began in Hartford, was shipped to Binghamton of the American League, and was recalled on Feb. 5 by the parent club. He&rsquo;s not unlike other Hartford rookies, 10 of them in all this year, but while the stars surrounding Mark Fusco and Sylvain Cote are currently dim, Samuelsson&rsquo;s are rising.&ldquo;I feel good,&rdquo; said the 20-year-old defenseman said. &ldquo;I like it here. Canada is very much like Sweden, but the United States is different&mdash;especially New York. There&rsquo;s nothing like that back home.&rdquo;Samuelsson&rsquo;s first National Hockey League game was played at Madison Square Garden.&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t scared or nervous or anything like that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I thought it was great.&rdquo;The Whalers have thought the same thing about Samuelsson ever since his recall.&ldquo;Ulfie&rsquo;s been our best guy on defense lately,&rdquo; said coach Jack Evans. &ldquo;Him and Joel (Quenneville). I think he&rsquo;s proving that he can play at this level.&rdquo;Samuelsson and veteran Marty Howe were called up as a tandem from Binghamton. In a stretch of maybe a dozen games, they anchored the Whalers&rsquo; blue line, playing every other shift in many of them.&ldquo;We only played about five games together in Bingo,&rdquo; Samelsson said. &ldquo;But Marty is a good player. He knows what to do out there. Hey, things are going good for me right now. I can&rsquo;t complain.&rdquo;Samuelsson, 6-foot-1, 195 pounds, was the Whalers&rsquo; fourth-round pick, 67th overall, in the 1982 draft. He first came to North America in 1981 as a member of the Swedish National junior team. He played in the world Junior tournament in Winnipeg and Minneapolis.&ldquo;I like it here then and I like it here now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I just hope I can stay awhile.&rdquo;Last March, Samuelsson crossed the Atlantic again, this time with his father, who had never before been to North America.&ldquo;We watched the Whalers play their last five games,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My father thought it was great over here. He said, &lsquo;Go on over, no problem.&rsquo;&rdquo;Among Samuelsson&rsquo;s friends in Sweden are the Abrahamsson brothers, Christer and Thommy, who once played with the World Hockey Association Whalers. Christer was a goaltender, while Thommy was a defenseman.&ldquo;I played with Christer for Leksand, in the Swedish Elite League,&rsquo;&rsquo; Samuelsson said. &ldquo;It was my first year and his last.&rdquo;Christer and Samuelsson have something in common. Both own horses.&ldquo;We go to the track maybe 20 times each summer,&rdquo; Samuelsson said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a lot of fun.&rdquo;Samuelsson&rsquo;s horse is a trotter and he works with the animal during the summer.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve made some money with him,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ll buy another one. It&rsquo;s hard to make money.&rdquo; &#9632;</div>

f0020-03

Whalers Swede On Samuelsson

<div class="byline">BY AL MORGANTI</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0021-02" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0021-02357/5503833-1-eng-US/f0021-022.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Philly general manager Bob Clarke has plenty of reason to smile as his club is flying high.</figcaption></div><h2>PHILADELPHIA FLYERS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0021-01641/5503840-1-eng-US/f0021-012.jpg" title="f0021-01" width="148" height="105"></div>PHILADELPHIA&mdash;The two Philadelphia Flyer teams that won Stanley Cups never did it, nor did the 1979-80 club which streaked for a record 35 consecutive games without a loss.All of those teams reached lofty heights, but none could do what this brash, young Flyer team of 1985 has done&mdash;win 11 consecutive games, the longest winning streak in the 18-year history of the franchise.As it turns out, the winning streak is only a sidelight in the team&rsquo;s unbelievable rise toward not only the top of the Patrick Division, but the entire National Hockey League. Even as the ongoing winning streak unfolded, most of the team&rsquo;s focus was directed at finishing atop the Patrick.Appropriately, the streak began with an overtime goal by team captain Dave Poulin back on March 5 in Long Island. That goal lifted the Flyers to a 5-4 win over the Islanders, their first overtime win of the season, and served as a detonator for an explosive stretch which lifted them into a position to challenge the Edmonton Oilers for the best overall record in the NHL.After Poulin scored that overtime goal, the Flyers reeled off 10 more wins, including ones over Pittsburgh, New York Rangers, New Jersey Devils and Montreal Canadiens in the period between March 19-24.The win over the Canadiens, which broke the old record of 10 consecutive wins first set during the 1982-83 season, was highly emotional. It wasn&rsquo;t nailed down until Ilkka Sinisalo scored with just 38 seconds remaining in the third period to win it 4-3. And when Sinisalo scored the goal, the sellout Spectrum crowd of 17,191 broke into a lengthy standing ovation&mdash;more in appreciation for the whole season than the single goal and victory.With the win, the Flyers remained eight points ahead of Washington in the Patrick with just eight games remaining and, at least temporarily, lifted them past the Oilers in total points, 103-102, with Edmonton holding a game in hand.Remarkably, the 11-game winning streak capped off a seven-week stretch in which the Flyers picked up 20 points on the Oilers, a team they trailed by 19 points as late as Feb. 9.During the 11 games, the Flyers won nine games in the Patrick and outscored their opponents 67-35. Overall, the Flyers now have an impressive 21-8-2 record within the division for a .733 percentage.Also, the offense was spread out during the 11 games with 18 of the 20 players on the roster scoring goals. That point was especially important when the club&rsquo;s leading scorer, Tim Kerr, was out for four games with a sprained knee. In response to that, Ryer coach Mike Keenan watched as 13 different players scored goals to help pick up the slack left by Kerr&rsquo;s injury.As expected, Poulin was one of the guys who took up the most slack. His overtime goal against the Islanders, which kicked off the whole streak, simply serves as an example of what the Flyers&rsquo; first-year captain has meant to the club.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll give him the ultimate compliment,&rdquo; said Keenan. &ldquo;They used to have a player out here, number 16, who was the heart and soul of the Flyers. Now, our captain is starting to become that to our team.&rdquo;Number 16 was&mdash;and is&mdash;of course, Bobby Clarke, the archangel of the Spectrum who retired last summer and is now Bob Clarke, the team&rsquo;s general manager.Clarke, who will undoubtedly earn consideration for the honor of general manager of the year in his rookie season at the helm, has enjoyed watching his time stride toward the top, but not without a few regrets: He wished he could be out there with them.&ldquo;I enjoy watching them,&rdquo; Clarke said, &ldquo;but I&rsquo;d give anything to be one of them now. I&rsquo;m envious of them now; I&rsquo;m envious of what they&rsquo;re going through. They know that they have an opportunity to do something big.&ldquo;They&rsquo;re on a roll now, but what&rsquo;s really impressed me throughout the season has been their consistency. There&rsquo;s been a consistent flow to their play. I&rsquo;ve never sensed any panic.&ldquo;Last September, there was absolutely no indication that this was going to be this kind of hockey club. We thought Mike Keenan was going to be a helluva coach, but we didn&rsquo;t know. He&rsquo;d never coached in the National Hockey League.&rdquo;</div><div style="clear: both;"></div>As it turned out, Keenan, with assistants E.J. McGuire and Ted Sator, proved to be a perfect match and master for the team with its middle-veteran nucleus and rookies Peter Zezel, Derrick Smith and Rick Tocchet.With Clarke gone, the last link had been lost from the Broad Street Bullies and the Stanley Cup, but even Clarke thinks the change was for the better.&ldquo;What we have now is a whole slew of guys who look really smart on the ice,&rdquo; said Clarke. &ldquo;The fans were ready for something new and, with those kids, they&rsquo;ve found it.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0021-02

Flyers Set Record For Consecutive Wins

<div class="byline">BY BOB FACHET</div><h2>WASHINGTON CAPITALS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-01745/5503871-1-eng-US/f0022-012.jpg" title="f0022-01" width="164" height="91"></div>LANDOVER&mdash;When Maurice (Rocket) Richard of the Montreal Canadiens became the first National Hockey League player to score 50 goals in a season, he accomplished the feat in Boston Garden on March 18, 1945.So perhaps it was fitting that when Bob Carpenter, a product of the Boston suburbs, became the first American to reach the 50-goal plateau 40 years and three days later, he did it in the Montreal Forum.There was no last-minute letdown in Carpenter&rsquo;s drive to the charmed figure. His second-period goal in a 3-2 loss to the Canadiens marked the fourth consecutive game in which he had produced a goal.&ldquo;At least I didn&rsquo;t have to wait very long,&rdquo; Carpenter said after he had grabbed a rebound of Scott Stevens&rsquo; shot and lifted the puck over Montreal goalie Steve Penney. &ldquo;When I got to 46, there was a little break, but this was four in a row and it made it easy.&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t really worried about getting it. There were nine games left and I knew it would come sooner or later. But a couple of people asked me to project an interview how I&rsquo;d feel when I got it and I said, &lsquo;No way.&rsquo; You can always get hurt or get in a slump. There&rsquo;s no point in tempting fate.&ldquo;I broke the American record in Canada, too, so I might as well get 50 there. It&rsquo;s special reaching 50 against this team.&rdquo;The previous high for an American player was 41 goals, posted last season by Joey Mullen of the St. Louis Blues. Carpenter netted his 42nd in Winnipeg on Feb. 13. Coincidentally, the Caps were beaten that night, too.Carpenter liberally passed out credit to those who had helped him become the 42nd NHL player to score 50 goals in a season.&ldquo;I have to thank all the guys on this team,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They were great. They kidded me all the time and made jokes to keep me loose. You try not to think about it, but it&rsquo;s always in the back of your mind and you&rsquo;re always a little nervous and maybe not playing a normal game. But the guys&mdash;all the guys&mdash;helped me make the best of it.&ldquo;And I want to thank management for being so great to me. We had meetings before the season and we talked about what I needed to make a big jump ahead. They gave me plenty of ice time, put me on the power play, did all the things I figured would help me.&rdquo;One thing Carpenter did not get was a fat contract. Instead, the offer from general manager David Poile was so low that Carpenter chose to play out his option. Now, as a 50-goal scorer with a solid plus 20 rating and a linemate with 45 goals (Mike Gartner), Carpenter figures to break the Capitals&rsquo; bank.&ldquo;I discussed it with David, 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.&rdquo;Early in the season, Carpenter said, &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 (Poile).&rdquo;Dollarwise, there is no doubt about it.As for the possible impact of his breakthrough, after seasons with 32,32 and 28 goals, Carpenter said, &ldquo;I just hope this gives a boost to the kids in the States and gives them some incentive to stay in hockey longer.&rdquo;Although downcast following the Capitals&rsquo; ninth loss in 16 games, coach Bryan Murray brightened when asked about Carpenter and said, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a real achievement for him and I hope now that the hurdle&rsquo;s over. If it was a hurdle, he&rsquo;ll get 10 or 12 more and have a good playoff.&rdquo;CAPPING IT OFF&mdash;In Montreal, Cap defenseman Scott Stevens learned the fine line that separates heroes from goats. With the score tied in the third period, he rattled a shot behind screened Hab netminder, Steve Penney. Not long after, he tried to cut off a goalmouth pass by Guy Carbonneau and tipped the puck into his own net for the game loser&hellip;In failing to win the sixth successive start, Cap goalie Pat Riggin gained credit for foiling a penalty shot by Montreal&rsquo;s Mats Naslund. Actually, Naslund lost control as he moved the puck from backhand to forehand and never got a shot off&hellip;Cap goalie Al Jensen beat New Jersey 4-1 and yielded only two goals in three starts since returning from knee surgery. &#9632;

f0022-01

Carpenter Makes History With 50th Goal

<div class="byline">BY DICK BAKER</div>Louisville Hockey&reg;Louisville Hockey&reg;BALTIMORE&mdash;The Baltimore Skipjacks didn&rsquo;t simply break the 41-year American Hockey League record, they crushed it.The Jacks juiced up their consecutive victory streak to 14 games by downing the Rochester Amerks 4-1, March 20. The road triumph also lifted the Jacks into a second-place tie with the Amerks.The previous AHL record for most consecutive wins was 11, set by the Cleveland Barons in 1943-44 and matched at the start of the current campaign by the Amerks.The Skipjacks picked up the 12th consecutive victory at Hershey, downing the Bears 5-2 with the help of 23 saves by Michel Dion.The next night, the Jacks came back from a two-goal deficit to defeat the Springfield Indians 6-4. It marked Baltimore&rsquo;s fifth win in six days.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re keeping the goals down like we have been all year, but now we&rsquo;re putting the puck in the net,&rdquo; said Baltimore coach Gene Ubriaco.During the 14-game stretch, the Jacks were just as effective on the road as they were at home, winning seven each way. The seven straight home triumphs tied an all-time Skipjack mark while the seven road wins set a new club record.In the 14 games, the Skipjacks outscored the opposition 76-33, winning by an average of three goals per game&mdash;5.4 to 2.4.Tim Tookey paced the point-scoring during the stretch with 10 goals and 15 assists. Andy Brickley was 10-11-21 while Tom Roulston and Tom O&rsquo;Regan had 20 points apiece.But with all the additional scoring, the key to the successful string may have been the penalty killing. Over a 15-game span (two games prior to the streak and the first 13 games of it), Baltimore killed off 64 of 72 opposition power plays, an 89 per cent success ratio.&ldquo;Our penalty-killing has given us a lift throughout the streak,&rdquo; added Ubriaco.Some of the key performers during the shorthanded situations were Steve Carlson, Rob Geale and O&rsquo;Regan.Goaltender Jon Casey, who shared the most-victories-of-the-season honors with Sam St. Laurent of Maine, won his 10th straight in the win at Rochester to boost his season record to 27-9-4. Dion also partcipated in the winning ways, putting together four triumphs in a row.The only Baltimore team to put together any streak such as the Skipjacks was the old Baltimore Clippers&rsquo; team of 1967-68(nine wins, fourties). However, that club finished under .500 for the campaign (28-34-10) and ended up in fourth place in the Eastern Division.Eddie Shore&rsquo;s death March 16 marked the end of an era in Springfield hockey history.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s been the biggest influence in my life,&rdquo; said former Indian great Jimmy Anderson, who coached Springfield twice in addition to guiding the Washington Capitals for one year. &ldquo;A day doesn&rsquo;t pass by without someone mentioning his name to me. The job I do now, scouting for the Los Angeles Kings, I couldn&rsquo;t do if it weren&rsquo;t for him. I wouldn&rsquo;t know what to look for.&rdquo;Anderson was a 39-goal scorer as rookie for the 1954-55 Indians. From 1959-62, his powerful shot from the left side helped guide the Tribe to three consecutive Calder Cups.&ldquo;Eddie Shore was 25 years ahead of his time,&rdquo; said Anderson. &ldquo;People used to laugh at him then and we (the players) did too. But when you look at what happened to those players, 90 per cent are still in hockey today&mdash;Ken Schinkel, Brian Kilrea, Floyd Smith&mdash;you can go on and on.&rdquo;Shore&rsquo;s coach during the Indians&rsquo; glory years was Pat Egan.&ldquo;He was a great hockey man and a great guy,&rdquo; said Egan. &ldquo;I remember when he put five defenseman on the ice at the same time. We called it the muscle line. Everyone in the NHL thought he was crazy. The next year they were all doing it.&rdquo;Shore was the Indians&rsquo; owner and president for 36 years.Sam Pompei, the retired sports editor for the Springfield Daily News, covered the Shore years in Springfield. The newspaper asked him to write a special column on his memories. He wrote: &ldquo;The longer I knew Eddie Shore, the harder it became for me to describe him.&ldquo;Eddie, who died Saturday (March 16), was the most complex personality I had ever met, inside or outside of sports.&ldquo;The only thing that I ever expected of him was the unexpected. He boggled my mind.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-01670/5503902-1-eng-US/f0023-012.jpg" title="f0023-01" width="540" height="696"><figcaption class="caption-body">Tim Tookey paced the Skipjacks&rsquo; in their win streak with 10 goals and 15 assists.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;Looking back on my days as a sportswriter, I could never come up with a clear assessment of the man. He was a hero and a villain just moments apart. I saw him as a genius, and sometimes I detected him crossing that thin line.&ldquo;I saw him as a warm human being at times, and just as often I saw him at the other extreme and at varying degrees in between.&ldquo;But for some strange reason, which I never could never really explain, Eddie Shore was a man I always will respect.&rdquo;DOWN SOUTH&mdash;Binghamton&rsquo;s Dean Evason notched his eighth game-winnning goal of the season when the Whalers downed Adirondack 2-0. The next night, teammate Mike Siltala got his eighth game-winner in a 7-3 win at Hershey. The Whalers tied a league record for most wins on the road in one season with the victory over Adirondack. It was Binghamton&rsquo;s 22nd road victory of the season. Nova Scotia (1976-77) and New Brunswick (1979-80) were the last two teams to hit 22. Steve Thomas, the rookie sharpshooter from St. Catharines, had 42 goals in his first 54 games&hellip;Springfield lost four consecutive games, but fifth-place New Haven was unable to gain any ground in the race for the last playoff spot. The Nighthawks dropped five in a row (two by one goal) and stayed six points back. They had only six games remaining while Springfield had nine. &#9632;

f0023-01

The Minors

Skipjacks Shatter Win Streak Mark

<div class="byline">BY MIKE KANE</div>GLENS FALLS&mdash;At the very least, the Fredericton Express and Sherbrooke Canadiens can be credited with very good timing.Nearly identical surges in the middle of March by both the Express and the Canadiens strengthened both teams&rsquo; chances for landing a playoff berth in the wild Northern Division and presented the opportunity to finish as high as second in the six-team division.Sherbrooke jumped into third place with four consecutive victories&mdash;including a 6-2 triumph at Fredericton on March 21&mdash;to pull to within three points of the second-place Adirondack Red Wings. The loss to the Canadiens quieted, briefly, Fredericton&rsquo;s comeback from the worst collapse of the season, a two-month tumble that had taken the team from first to fourth place.Following a tough 6-3 loss at Adirondack&mdash;that was closer than the score indicated&mdash;the Canadiens ripped off consecutive wins over the Red Wings, Maine and Rochester, all quality teams, in three days. They followed that weekend&rsquo;s work with the victory at Fredericton, which put heat on the Wings, Express and the other two playoff contenders, Nova Scota and Moncton.&ldquo;We played really well, even in the game we lost in Glens Falls,&rdquo; said Sherbrooke coach Pierre Creamer. &ldquo;And we played well on the weekend even though we were tired, which is normal.&ldquo;We have to continue; we need that consistency for the rest of the season.&rdquo;Creamer lost a couple of key players, center Brian Skrudland and defenseman Michel Therrien, just before the streak started and may have to play without both for awhile. Skrudland is suspected of having mononucleosis and Therrien hyperextended his elbow.Fredericton limped home from an unsuccessful road trip&mdash;that extended the team&rsquo;s winless streak on the road to 0-15-2&mdash;and turned it around at home with a 1-1 tie against division-leading Maine Mariners, two wins over New Haven and one over St. Catharines.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re starting to get some players back to stabilize things,&rdquo; said Express coach Earl Jessiman. &ldquo;Jimmy Mann is back (from the injured list), Gord Donnelly is back and Blake Wesley is back (both from Quebec) and those are three pretty tough guys and that really stabilizes the lineup.&rdquo;Plus, the addition of center Kelly Glowa, who signed with the team after completing his season in Europe, and the return to form of Mike Eagles, who missed most of the season with a knee injury, has pumped some life into the team&rsquo;s offense.The bottom fell out on the Express early in January and Jessiman spent the next two months trying to figure out a way to turn his team around before it dropped completely out of the playoff picture.Similar to the Canadiens, the Express feel second place is within reach. Maine has the title safely locked up, but with just 10 points separating second and sixth place, there figures to be some scrambling for position in the final two weeks of the season.AROUND THE DIVISION&mdash;Adirondack dropped three consecutive weekend games, including its first shutout at home in three years, but finally snapped out of it by beating Maine 5-2&hellip;AHL president Jack Butterfield handed Adirondack center Andre St. Laurent a two-game suspension and winger Pierre Aubry a one-game suspension for separate incidents in which they received match penalties&hellip; Adirondack assigned goalie Mark LaForest to the Mohawk Valley Stars of the Atlantic Coast League&hellip;Maine is moving in on its first Northern Division title since 1980-81 when goalie Pelle Lindbergh led the march to the crown. Goaltender Sam St. Laurent and Glenn Merkosky have been the keys defensively and offensively, respectively. Merkosky, with 38 goals, is in a position to become the first Mariner to score 40 goals since Gordie Clark did it with his 50-goal season in 1981-82. The Mariners continue to lead the league in power-play and penaltykilling work&hellip;Nova Scotia opened a pivotal, seven-game road trip with a win at New Haven. The Oilers added right winger Paul Houck to their roster after he completed his college career at the University of Wisconsin&hellip;The Express have confirmed that they will return to Fredericton next season and have an option on the Aitken Centre through the 1987-88 season. &#9632;

Express, Canadiens Peaking Late

<div class="byline">BY BILL PICKETT</div>Louisville Hockey&reg;Louisville Hockey&reg;FLINT&mdash;The Flint Generals, defending Turner Cup champions in the International Hockey League, are loading up for the stretch drive and coach Dennis Desrosiers thinks his team is in a good position.Actually, the Generals were in second place in the IHL East Division as of March 17, but they trailed the Muskegon Lumberjacks by only two points. The Lumberjacks had a game in hand, though, with 15 games to play.The most positive factor concerning the Generals&rsquo; remaining games&mdash;seven at home, seven away&mdash;is that they don&rsquo;t have to face Muskegon again in the regular season.Flint owns winning records against all but three teams in the league, but they have time to alter that situation against two of those teams. The Generals are 4-5-0 against Peoria and 3-4-0 against Fort Wayne.Against the Lumberjacks, however, they have managed only two victories in 10 outings.&ldquo;But we&rsquo;ve remedied that problem,&rdquo; Desrosiers said. &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t play them again in the regular season.&rdquo;In addition, the Generals&rsquo; lineup is similar to the one which led the East Division for most of the season. Gilles Thibaudeau has been returned from Sherbrooke of the American League, as has goaltender Rick Knickle. And goalie Rick Wilson has been recalled from Salt Lake City, where he had been on loan.&ldquo;That gets us back in pretty good shape as far as goaltening is concerned,&rdquo; Desrosiers said.In 25 games for the Generals, Knickle was 13-9-1 with a 3.41 goals-against average; Wilson was 15-6-0 and 3.96 in 24 games.Up front, Desrosiers had to be impressed with the performance of Thibaudeau, Tom St. James and Dave Nicholls in that line&rsquo;s first outing since Thibaudeau&rsquo;s return. The line accounted for 15 points in a 10-5 victory over Salt Lake, March 15.St. James led the fireworks with six goals, tying an IHL record. Nicholls had a goal and five assists and Thibaudeau contributed three assists.&ldquo;Now we have three strong lines again,&rdquo; Desrosiers said. &ldquo;Salt Lake was playing pretty well when we stopped them, they had beaten us a couple of times in a row. And we didn&rsquo;t play that badly in our loss (5-2) at Muskegon, then we came home and beat Peoria (3-1 on March 17).&rdquo;Desrosiers also expects left winger Mel Hewitt, who&rsquo;s missed almost two months with a bad knee, back for the playoffs. Hewitt had 34 points, including 18 goals, in 43 games for the Generals before his accident.Desrosiers said he was fairly comfortable heading into the final 14 games of the regular season. Half his games will be at home, where the Generals were 21-121.&ldquo;And nobody scares us on the road,&rdquo; he added.Flint leads the league in road wins (15), and their 32 points on the road is also best in the IHL.So Desrosiers feels his team is in a good position to make a run at finishing first in the East. How important would that be?&ldquo;It&rsquo;s important for everybody,&rdquo; he noted. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s good for the mental attitude of the players, it gives some confidence. It&rsquo;s obviously good for the playoffs, what with the home ice advantage which is very instrumental in winning, and in getting the gate, of course.&ldquo;But business stuff aside, we&rsquo;re not a bad road team. We were hot on the road until we started losing players, now we can go back to winning again on the road.&rdquo;NOTES&mdash;Tom St. James of Flint with his six goals in one game, isn&rsquo;t the only player to tie an IHL record so far this season. Winger Brent Sapergia of Salt Lake came up with his league-leading ninth unassisted goal and that ties an IHL mark&hellip;The week ending March 17 was a pretty good one for scorers. Garth MacGuigan picked up four goals, tying an Indianapolis team record, in a 10-5 victory over Salt Lake. Scott MacLeod of the Golden Eagles, the league&rsquo;s leading scorer, had a hat trick in the same game to up his point total to 119, including 4.U goals, and Louis Begin of Milwaukee also had a hat trick&hellip;The Admirals, incidentally, went 3-0-0 for the week, the first time this season they&rsquo;ve put together three wins in a row&hellip;Dave Michayluk of Kalamazoo is two goals shy of 60, he leads the league in that department: MacLeod leads in assists with 76&hellip;Toledo rookies Scot Birnie and Bill Fordy each scored agoal in their pro debut with the Goaldiggers, a 5-3 victory over Salt Lake on March 16 &#9632;

Generals On The March For Division Title

<div class="byline">BY PAT LYON</div>UTICA&mdash;Comedian Henny Youngman would have loved it.The man who made famous the line, &ldquo;I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out,&rdquo; would have been right at home in an Atlantic Coast Hockey League game March 15, featuring the Erie Golden Blades and Mohawk Valley Stars.It&rsquo;s a hockey situation so unique nobody has ever heard of it happening before. For the record, the Blades defeated the Stars 3-1, but it was a contest that was never completed.After two bench-clearing brawls, a total of 16 players were ejected and referee Bob Albano had no choice but to end the game with 14:19 remaining in the third period. There just weren&rsquo;t enough players to finish the game.After conferring with commissioner Ray Miron, the game was awarded to the Blades since the Stars would make no more trips to Erie during the regular season. The game had also no effect on the final standings, otherwise Miron would have had the two teams convene at a later date to finish it.The Stars began the game with only 13 players, and the eight game misconducts pushed their dwindling numbers down to five. Of those remaining five, two were injured and couldn&rsquo;t perform, so there was no choice but to end the titanic struggle.Miron revealed that he had talked to several people and none of them could remember any game comparable to this one.&ldquo;I talked to people in the NHL, AHL and IHL, and nobody can recall a similar situation,&rdquo; explained Miron. &ldquo;Our season started off with fewer problems than last year, but in the past months the problems have really been escalating.&rdquo;The Blades were also involved in a bench-clearing incident recently with the Carolina Thunderbirds in Winston-Salem.Miron feels more bench-clearing affairs could hurt the league.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not against aggressive hockey, but I don&rsquo;t like these bench-clearing brawls one bit,&rdquo; said Miron. &ldquo;Some people in this league think things like this sells tickets, but in the long run it doesn&rsquo;t help.&rdquo;When the game was finally called, Albano had issued 317 minutes in penalties. Both Erie coach Ron Hansis and Star bench boss Rich Suwek were fined $150 each for not controlling their players in the bench-clearing incidents. All players that were issued game misconducts were also fined $40.Mohawk Valley&rsquo;s fifth-place finish meant that they would miss the playoffs for the first time in four seasons. Defenseman Kurt Rugenius established the new team mark for assists with 50.Larry Power recorded five goals in a 13-11 loss to Virginia on March 17, Rich Pettit added a hat trick and Dan Lane totalled five points, including four assists.AROUND THE LEAGUE&mdash;Pine Bridge finished the regular season in third place, a dramatic improvement over their last-place finish a year ago. Rookie Scott Robins was just one of two rookies to eclipse 100 points for the season. Todd Bjorkstrand was named player of the week. In just 36 games, he had 75 points&hellip;The Golden Blades swept a two-game weekend road series against Pine Bridge to wrap up second place and the home-ice advantage for the first round of the playoffs. The line of Paul Mancini, Dave Herbst ad Don Shaw all eclipsed the 100-point plateau, with Mancini setting a new team record with 69 goals. The Blades added veterans Wayne Van Dorp and Sylvain Cote to the roster. Van Dorp had consecutive hat nicks in a pair of Erie wins. Player-coach Ron Hansis collected nine points, including seven assists, in Erie&rsquo;s 13-7 of Virginia on March 19&hellip;Carolina Thunderbirds were resting their injured playters for the coming playoffs after they cruised to their third straight regular-season title. The T-Birds scored 20 more goals than their nearest competitor, yet had no players in the top 20 in scoring. Goaltenders Pierre Hamel and Dan Olson were winding up outstanding seasons in the nets. Hamel was 25-2 with a 3.54 goals-against average, while Olson&rsquo;s record was 24-8 with a 3.31 GAA&hellip;The Virginia Lancers were busy making player movements in an effort to bolster the team in the playoffs. They added Doug Baron who was perfoming in the Montreal Senior League, former Buck Scott Lauder and ex-Thunderbird Steve Sydlowski. &#9632;

Blades, Stars Fight To Bad Finish

<div class="byline">BY TOM BOGGIE</div>TROY&mdash;Even without the usual steady say of sophomore goalie Daren Puppa and without the explosiveness of Adam Oates&rsquo; line, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is a lethal team.Using a quick-strike offense to score goals in clusters, RPI advanced to the National Collegiate Athletic Association&rsquo;s Division One final four by turning back Lake Superior in their two-game, total-goals quarter-final series at Houston Field House.The Engineers put the series out of reach in the first game, when they rupted for three goals in the final 12 minutes to defeat the Lakers 7-3. That win gave Puppa a four-goal cushion and, because he had never lost a college game by more than one goal, the handwriting was on the wall.Lake Superior salvaged some pride by battling the Engineers to a 3-3 tie in game two, snapping the longest winning streak in Eastern College Athletic Conference history at 30 games.RPI coach Mike Adessa actually sacrificed the streak in game two, as he played conservative, defense-oriented game to ensure Lake Superior didn&rsquo;t come back to win the series.&ldquo;The win streak wasn&rsquo;t important,&rdquo; said Addesa. &ldquo;Maybe that&rsquo;s why it went on for so long.&rdquo;RPI&rsquo;s balanced attack proved to be just too much for Lake Superior, which finished its best season ever with a 27-17 record and proved it could play with the best teams in the nation.The Oates&rsquo; line wasn&rsquo;t dazzling, but it didn&rsquo;t have to be. With RPI clinging to a 2-2 tie early in the second period of the first game, freshman Maurice Mansi scored just his fourth goal of the season to give the Engineers the lead for good. Mansi, a native of Montreal, was only in the lineup in the first game because sophomore Bob DiPronio had to be scratched at the last minute with a stomach virus.Then came one of RPI&rsquo;s patented third-period charges, which have been a trademark of the team this season. John Carter, the junior left winger on Oates&rsquo; line, banged in his 41st goal of the year early in the third period. Kim Mclvor pulled the Lakers to within one at 5:27 when he bounced a shot off Puppa&rsquo;s arm, but junior George Servinis gave the Engineers the lift they needed with back-to-back goals at 8:57 and 11:07, the first coming on a crucial power play.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think we letdown,&rdquo; said Lakers&rsquo; coach Frank Anzalone. &ldquo;The referee made a tough call when it was 4-3. There was a hook on the hands and he called the hook and Servinis made a very nice goal. That shot was the turning point, in my mind.&rdquo;The Lakers were forced to play the second game without their top right winger, Paul Jerrard, who received a game disqualification for spearing Oates in game one, but the Lakers were by no means at a disadavantage. With leading scorer Allan Butler continually stationed at the opposing blue line, the Lakers were a constant thorn in RPI&rsquo;s side.The Lakers jumped on top early, when Mark Vicorek pulled the trigger on Puppa from close in at 5:19 of the first period. But the Engineers, now 33-2-1, scored two consecutive power-play goals midway through the second period to turn the game around. Senior Mike Sadeghpour put a slapshot between the legs of Lake Superior goalie Randy Exelby at 13:06, when RPI was skating five-on three. Twenty-six later, Oates gave RPI the lead when he scored on Exelby from the doorstep for his 31 st goal of the season.Sophomore Terry Butryn then ripped a shot past Exelby&rsquo;s glove at 16:12 to give the Engineers a 3-1 lead and all but decided the series.But the Lakers showed a lot of character by refusing to roll over and die.Craig Hewson beat Puppa with just 16 seconds left in the period to cut RPI&rsquo;s lead to one and Butler cashed in on one of his hanging breakaways with less than 10 minutes to play to allow the Lakers to come out of the second game with the tie.&ldquo;I thought we had a chance of winning tonight,&rdquo; said Anzalone. &ldquo;When we got the first one, I hoped to get a couple of more and put RPI near to death. But we literally did not stay with our game plan. RPI was very much ready.&rdquo;&ldquo;Our game plan was to play a more defensive style tonight,&rdquo; said Addesa. &ldquo;We felt going in that this was the continuation of what was to be a six-period game and our goal at the end of six periods was to be ahead by one goal.&rdquo;&ldquo;By no means were we counting ourselves out,&rdquo; said Laker captain Chris Dahlquist, who helped spearhead the defensive effort in the second game. &ldquo;We still had a few tricks up our sleeves and threw in a few more surprises.&rdquo;But it wasn&rsquo;t enough to keep RPI out of Detroit for the NCAA final four. &#9632;

The Colleges

RPI Strikes Quickly To Stop Lake Superior

<h2>NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS</h2>Quarter-FinalsFri. Mar. 22Minnesota 7 at Boston College 5Sat. Mar. 23Minnesota 1 at Boston College 4(Boston College wins two-game series 9-8)Fr. Mar. 22Harvard 2 at Min-Duluth 4Sat. Mar. 23Harvard 2 at Min-Duluth 4(Min.-Duluth wins two-game series 8-4)Fri. Mar. 22Lake Superior 3 at RPI 7Sat. Mar. 23Lake Superior 3 at RPI 3(RPI wins two-game series 10-6)Sat. Mar. 23Providence 2 at Michigan State 3Sun. Mar. 24Providence 4 at Michigan State 2(Providence wins two-game series 6-5)Semi-FinalsThu. Mar. 28Boston College at ProvidenceFri. Mar. 29Min.-Duluth at RPI(Sudden-death games)Sat. Mar. 30Consolation & championship(Sudden-death games)(All games at Joe Louis Arena<h2>HOCKEY EAST CONFERENCE</h2>PLAYOFFSQuarter-FinalsFri. Mar. 8Lowell 7, New Hampshire 6Sat. Mar. 9New Hampshire 8, Lowell 4Lowell 1, New Hampshire 0 (mini game)(Lowell wins two-game series)Sat. Mar. 9Boston University 7, Maine 4Sun. Mar. 10Boston University 4, Maine 2(Boston Univ, wins two-game series)Sun. Mar. 10Providence 3, Northeastern 2(Providence leads two-game series 1-0)Semi-FinalsProvidence 6, Boston Univ. 2Boston College 6, Lowell 5(Sudden-death games)ConsolationBoston Univ. 6, Lowell 4ChampionshipProvidence 2, Boston College 1(Providence wins title)<h2>ECAC CONFERENCE</h2>Quarter-FinalsFri. Sat Mar. 8-9RPI 7, Princeton 2RPI 11, Princeton 4(RPI wins two-game series)Harvard 4, Colgate 2Harvard 10, Colgate 2(Harvard wins two-game series)Clarkson 6, St. Lawrence 2Clarkson 4, St. Lawrence 4(Clarkson wins two-game series)Cornell 9, Yale 2Cornell 4, Yale 2(Cornell wins two-game series)Semi-FinalsRPI 5, Cornell 1Harvard 2, Clarkson 1(Sudden-death games)ConsolationCornell 5, Clarkson 3ChampionshipRPI 3, Harvard 1(RPI wins title)<h2>CCHA CONFERENCE</h2>Quarter-FinalsFri. Mar. 1Miami 3 at Michigan State 4Sat. Mar. 2Miami 1 at Michigan State 7(Michigan State wins two-game series 11-4)Fri. Mar. 1Michigan 1 at Lake Superior 3Sat. Mar. 2Michigan 6 at Lake Superior 7(Lake Superior wins two-game series 10-7)Fri. Mar. 1Ohio State 4 at W. Michigan 2Sat. Mar. 2Ohio State 4 at W. Michigan 5(Ohio State wins two-game series 8-7)Fri. Mar. 1Ill-Chicago 5 at Bowling Green 7Sat. Mar. 2Ill-Chicago 2 at Bowling Green 7(Bowling Green wins two-game series 14-7)Semi-FinalsFri. Mar.8Lake Superior 4, Bowling Green 1Mich. State 8, Ohio State 0ConsolationSat. Mar. 9Ohio State 7, Bowling Green 4ChampionshipSun. Mar. 10Mich. State 5, Lake Superior 1(Mich. State wins CCHA championship)<h2>WCHA CONFERENCE</h2>PLAYOFFSQuarter-FinalsFri. Mar. 1Mich Tech 2 at Min-Duluth 3Sat. Mar 2Mich Tech 2 at Min-Duluth 5(Min-Duluth wins two-game series 8-4)Fri Mar 1Denver 1 at North Dakota 7Sat. Mar. 2Denver 4 at North Dakota 8(North Dakota wins two-game series 15-5)Sat. Mar. 2N. Michigan 4 at Minnesota 3Sun. Mar. 3N. Michigan 4 at Minnesota 6(Minnesota wins two-game series 9-8)Semi-FinalsFri. Mar. 8No. Dakota 4 at Min-Duluth 4Sat. Mar.9No. Dakota 4 at Min-Duluth 6(Min-Duluth wins two-game series 10-8)Sat. Mar. 9Wisconsin 0 at Minnesota 6Sun. Mar. 10Wisconsin 7 at Minnesota 8(Minnesota wins two-game series 14-7)FinalsMinnesota 6, Min-Duluth 4Min-Duluth 6, Minnesota 2(Min-Duluth wins two-game series 10-8)<h2>CCHA CONFERENCE</h2>(Final Standings)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-01640/5504067-1-eng-US/f0025-012.jpg" title="f0025-01" width="548" height="302"></div><h2>WCHA CONFERENCE</h2>(Final Standings)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-02422/5504060-1-eng-US/f0025-022.jpg" title="f0025-02" width="538" height="269"></div><h2>HOCKEY EAST CONFERENCE</h2>(Final Standings)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-03273/5504053-1-eng-US/f0025-032.jpg" title="f0025-03" width="538" height="239"></div> &#9632;

f0025-01

COLLEGE SCOREBOARD

<div class="byline">BY TOM BURKE</div>BOSTON&mdash;Boston College coach Len Ceglarski had to resort to drastic measures in the second game of his team&rsquo;s two-game, total-goals series with Minne sota.BC, which had not beaten the Gophers in seven tries, was down 7-5 after one game and in danger of failing to advance past the National Collegiate Athletic Association quarter-finals.That&rsquo;s when Ceglarski went to work.He rearranged his forward lines and used his home-ice privilege to his advantage and the Hockey East regular-season champions scored a nearly-flawless 4-1 victory in the second game and a berth in the NCAA Final Four for the first time since 1978.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to take anything away from Minnesota because they&rsquo;re a great hockey team,&rdquo; Ceglarski said after the series win, &ldquo;but we just didn&rsquo;t make the mistakes tonight that we did on Friday.&ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t give them any really great scoring chances either. We just deserved to win this one.&rdquo;As they had done in the first game, BC scored in the second minute of play in the second game when Neil Shea blasted through a defenseman to beat John Blue from in close. But Rick Erdall got that one back at 9:44 of the period when he stuffed home a shot from the left post when both teams were shorthanded.Within the span of 1:18, BC potted two more goals and tied the series later in the period. Junior Doug Brown tipped home a John McNamara drive through a screen, and Michael Gervasi, a freshman left winger who&rsquo;d only scored only once all season, put home a rebound by Tim Mitchell, who was moved to the fourth unit along with fellow senior Dave Livingston.Then the two teams played classic defensive-type playoff hockey, with junior Bob Sweeney producing the only goal.BC goalie Scott Gordon, who made only 25 saves to 32 for Blue, said that he played much better in game two, staying on his feet more and not allowing the clever Gopher forwards such as Corey Millen and Rick Erdall to beat him high.&ldquo;They also had a lot more shots from the slot on Friday,&rdquo; said Gordon. &ldquo;Our center was playing too close to the blue line in the first game, so we corrected that. There was one time tonight when Millen had the puck right in front of me. and he kept holding and holding waiting for me to go down. I finally gave him a little fake as if to go down, but he didn&rsquo;t go for it. He saw it and passed off.&rdquo;Only Millen seemed to carry and shoot the puck with authority for the Gophers in the second contest. The BC forechecking, tentative in the first match, kept two men on the puck carrier most of the game and the speedier Gopher forwards never got a chance to wheel around the ice surface that is considerably smaller than the huge one at Williams Arena.Brown, whose two goals in the series tied him with St. Louis Blues&rsquo; Joe Mullen for the single season BC record of 34, explained the penalty killing strategy.&ldquo;You try to pressure one area of the box and last night we went for the boards,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Their forwards are too smart for that, though. They know just when to release when we charged at them, so tonight we just let them have the puck in the comers and put pressure on the middle.&ldquo;We&rsquo;d go after the center point man when they passed to him.&rdquo;Ceglarski believed that BC&rsquo;s final goal in game one, a power-play tally by Scott Harlow, was a key score. The two-goal deficit was not too tall an order, while a three-goal bulge would have been extremely imposing.&ldquo;We have played better on the second night of series all season,&rdquo; Ceglarski said. &ldquo;I just thought that we had to forecheck better and avoid the penalty box. If we went hard at them for 30-second shifts tonight, I knew we&rsquo;d do all right.&rdquo;Two five-on-three situations in game one helped UM to its victory. Up 4-2 in the second frame, the Gophers had a two-man edge for 1:25 and couldn&rsquo;t score, but managed a goal by Tom Rothstein after one BC player vacated the box. In the third period, Wally Chapman and Tony Kellin both connected after successive penalties to Mitchell and Jim Herlihy, widening the Gophers&rsquo; 5-4 lead to 7-4. Harlow&rsquo;s goal rounded out the scoring and put BC within hailing distance when the rubber match loomed. &#9632;

Drastic Moves Work For Ceglarski

<div class="byline">BY MIKE PRISUTA</div>EAST LANSING&mdash;No one seriously expected the Providence Friars to come into Michigan State and knock off the Spartans.No one, except Friar goaltender Chris Terreri and his teammates.But Providence, a mere six games over .500 heading into the National Collegiate Athletic Association finals, upended the 37-5 Spartans 6-5 in the two-game, total-goals series to advance to the semi-finals in the Final Four against Boston College, which the Friars defeated 2-1 in double overtime in the Hockey East title game.The Friars, who became just the fifth road team to advance to the semis since the NCAA adopted the two-games, two-goal quarter-finals series in 1980-81, were led by the 5-foot-9, 160-pound Terreri, the Most Valuable Player in the Hockey East playoff tournament and the league&rsquo;s player of the year. Terreri made an amazing 83 saves in the series, including 50 in the second game.Providence, 22-16-5, advanced to the final four for the second time in three years (it finished third in 1983) with the series victory. Michigan State, which set an NCAA record for most wins in a season and held down the No. 1 ranking for much of the season, finished 38-6. The Spartans had been considered favorites to go all the way because of their 16-game winning streak at Detroit&rsquo;s Joe Louis Arena, the site of the NCAA Final Four tournament.&ldquo;Hockey is a crazy game, I don&rsquo;t know what the hell happened,&rdquo; said MSU tri-captain Kelly Miller. &ldquo;I thought we had the team to do it. I still think we could have won the national championship (with the final in Detroit).&rdquo;Michigan State won the opening game 3-2 on defenseman Brad Beck&rsquo;s goal with 2:48 to play.&ldquo;That&rsquo;s okay,&rsquo;&rsquo; Terreri said after the game, &ldquo;we&rsquo;re not out of this by any means. State&rsquo;s good, but they&rsquo;re not the Edmonton Oilers. I think we can still win this series.&rdquo;In the second game, led by Terreri&rsquo;s acrobatics in goal and three goals in a span of 3:04 before the game was six minutes old, Providence gained the edge. The Friars jumped to a 3-0 lead, taking a two-goal lead in the series, then relied on their defensive-oriented style and Terreri to make it stick.&ldquo;I still can&rsquo;t believe we gave up three goals that quickly,&rdquo; said Michigan State senior defenseman Gary Haight. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think anyone could do that against us.&rdquo;Providence led 3-1 after one period and 4-1 after two. Michigan State managed to close the series gap to 6-5 with 9:53 to play, but Terreri simply refused to be beaten again. He made 19 of his 50 saves in the third period.&ldquo;I see him in practice every day and I think he&rsquo;s the best goalie in the country,&rdquo; said Providence coach Steve Stirling, who played for Boston University&rsquo;s national team in 1971.&ldquo;In the third period we were sitting on it, but we&rsquo;ve had a lot of games like that where we were hanging on at the end. It helps when you know you have a great goaltender.&rdquo;The Friars&rsquo; joy was tempered by tragedy after John Sullivan, the father of Providence forwards Tim and Terry Sullivan, suffered a heart attack mid way through the third period of the second game. He was rushed to a Lansing hospital, where he died during the night.MSU coach Ron Mason was noticeably disappointed after his team had its successful season come to a sudden halt.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether the pressure got to us or not, but we were awfully tight,&rdquo; said Mason. &ldquo;I guess it just wasn&rsquo;t meant to be. It&rsquo;s a real tough one for us, but we&rsquo;ve had problems with defensive-oriented teams all year long.&rdquo;To indicate which team controlled possession of the puck, Michigan State, bettered Providence 94-35 in attempted shots in the second game and 153-80 on the series. The total shots on goal were 88-40. But the Spartan power play, which led the CCHA with a 29 per cent efficiency, failed in six opportunities in the second game and 10 overall for the series.&ldquo;The power play let us down, but we still played as well as we&rsquo;re capable,&rdquo; said Michigan State right winger Tom Anastos after the second game. &ldquo;We had 52 shots tonight, hit three posts and had a goal disallowed. You can&rsquo;t do much more than that. It just wasn&rsquo;t meant to be.&rdquo;Another MSU problem was goaltending. Sophomore Norm Foster surrendered four goals in 20 shots in game two.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how to explain what happened,&rdquo; said Foster, who entered the game with a 22-3 record and a 2.57 goals-against average. &ldquo;The way I saw it, the difference was that he (Terreri) made the key saves and I didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;NOTES&mdash;Michigan State senior center Gord Flegel set an NCAA record by playing in his 172nd Division One game. &#9632;

Terreri Terminates MSU’s Dream Season

<div class="byline">BY VIRG FOSS</div>DULUTH&mdash;All season long, Minnesota-Duluth hockey coach Mike Sertich never mentioned that Detroit was the site of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Final Four tournament.Instead, at the bottom of his lineup sheet each week he wrote, &ldquo;Where do you want to go?&rdquo;Well, Detroit is where the Bulldogs are bound after beating Harvard 4-2 twice in the NCAA quarter-finals to win the two-games, total-goals series 8-4 and earn a second consecutive trip to the Final Four.&ldquo;The first time we heard the word &lsquo;Detroit&rsquo; was last week, the second game against Minnesota in the WCHA playoff finals,&rdquo; said Duluth co-captain Tom Herzig. &ldquo;We knew we had to win that game to get home ice.&rdquo;Duluth beat Minnesota and then Harvard to go back to the nationals, where they lost in four overtimes in the championship game a year ago to Bowling Green.The Bulldogs, the regular-season champions and the playoff champions in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, will have to carry the banner of the West alone in the nationals this year as the rest of the field is filled with Eastern schools Providence, Boston College and RPLFast-skating Harvard gave Duluth plenty of problems but the Bulldogs got solid goaltending from Rick Kosti and some offense from unexpected sources to put an end to Harvard&rsquo;s season.In the opening game, defensemen Norm Maclver and Jim Johnson scored power-play goals to snap a 2-2 tie and give Duluth the victory.&ldquo;It could have gone either way,&rdquo; Sertich said. &ldquo;I thought we played well defensively, especially in the third period, and our power play came through.&rdquo;Bill Watson, the WCHA&rsquo;s scoring champion, helped out with a goal and an assist to run his season point total to 102. Watson had two other apparent goals disallowed, one for batting the puck in with a high stick, the other when the referee blew the play dead when he lost sight of the puck.And for awhile in the rematch the next night, it seemed those two goals that didn&rsquo;t count would come back to haunt Duluth.Just 30 seconds into the game. Harvard&rsquo;s Tim Smith collected his 31 st goal of the season to trim Duluth&rsquo;s overall margin to a single goal and create some anxious moments in the Duluth Arena, where the Bulldogs have lost just twice all season.But Herzig and Maclver came back with goals for the Bulldogs and, after Harvard&rsquo;s Peter Chiarelli tied it at 2-2, Herzig and Darin Illikainen scored third-period goals to wrap it up for the Bulldogs.It was the first goal of the year for Illikainen and was a nice finishing touch to the eighth consecutive playoff-series victory at home over the past two seasons.&ldquo;For most of the year, everyone was low key,&rdquo; said Duluth forward Mark Odnokon. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve gone out, gotten the job done and haven&rsquo;t really said too much. But last year, after that last game (the loss to Bowling Green in the title game), that still lingers in everybody&rsquo;s thoughts. We wanted to get back, and now that we have, I think we&rsquo;ll play our best hockey.&rdquo;&ldquo;We showed a lot of pride and character,&rdquo; Sertich said. &ldquo;We knew where we wanted to go (Detroit) and we had to play good hockey and beat a good hockey team (Harvard) to get there.&rdquo;Duluth will be a solid representative from the WCHA in the nationals, especially since it is the only team in the final four that was in the tourney a year ago. That experience should help.Duluth, which goes into the nationals in search of its first NCAA championship, is a hot team. It has a 35-8-3 record and has lost just once in its last 17 games.Harvard ended its season at 21-9-2. &#9632;

Duluth Aims To Avenge ‘84 Loss

<div class="byline">BY MORRIS DALLA COSTA</div>Louisville HockeyLouisville HockeyBELLEVILLE&mdash;Don&rsquo;t try and convince Belleville Bulls&rsquo; Dave MacLean or Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds&rsquo; Wayne Groulx and his teammates that fairy tales don&rsquo;t come true.MacLean completed a fairy-tale season by winning the Ontario Hockey League scoring title and, along with teammate Steve Linseman, leading the Bulls to a second-place finish in the Leyden Division.Groulx almost broke an OHL career scoring record, but he and his teammates set a record which will never be broken, unless the OHL goes to a longer schedule.MacLean, a third-round pick of the Hartford Whalers, was traded to the Bulls three seasons ago for a second-round pick from the Oshawa Generals. MacLean had all sorts of injury problems as a minor midget and as the first-round selection of the Generals. MacLean, despite a high-scoring season in 1983-84, still found problems gaining acceptance from the usually adoring throng in Belleville.But things have changed.&ldquo;Dave is more of a complete hockey player,&rdquo; said his coach Larry Mavety. &ldquo;He realized it was the only way to make the National Hockey League. He has matured as a hockey player. He&rsquo;s become a leader for our hockey team.&rdquo;Everything really came together for MacLean and the Bulls when Mavety brought in Steve Linseman from the Hamilton Steelhawks. Linseman and MacLean found immediate happiness and the Bulls found bliss in the form of a dominant line.&ldquo;I think when a lot of traded players wind up on one team they want to especially perform well to prove the other team was wrong in trading them,&rdquo; said Mavety. &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s no question we are definitely surprised at how well we&rsquo;ve done. We set no goals at the start of the season. We just wanted to improve. We wanted top finish first but second isn&rsquo;t bad.&rdquo;MacLean finished first in the scoring race with 154 points on 64 goals and 90 assists, followed by Groulx with 59-85140, Linseman, 57-83-140 and Groulx&rsquo;s linemate Graeme Bonar, 66-71-137.Only two other players wound up with 60-goal seasons. Dave Lowry of the London Knights had 60 goals and Mike Millar of the Steelhawks had 66.In any other OHL season, the Bulls would have been the fairy-tale heros. But they picked a season when the Greyhounds went undefeated at home in 33 games. That, too, is stuff you ready in fantasy books.The Greyhounds set a Canadian Major Junior Hockey League record with the 33 consecutive home wins. They also set an OHL record for most points in a season, 109, breaking last season&rsquo;s record of 106, set by the Kitchener Rangers.The Greyhounds established their undefeated mark in dramatic fashion against arch-rival London. In the final home game of the season, the Greyhounds took on the Knights. Not only was the perfect home record at stake, but Groulx was chasing the OHL career-point mark of 477 set five years ago by Dale McCourt of the St. Catharines-Hamilton Fincups.Going into the game, Groulx had 474 points on 187 goals and 287 assists in four years. He earned two assists during regulation time of what amounted to one of the biggest OHL games of the season. But with the game tied 5-5, it went into overtime. As befitted any fairy tale, it was happily ended for Grbulx and the Greyhounds when Chris Brant scored in overtime to give the Soo their undefeated home season and Groulx, who earned an assist on the play, an OHL-tying career point mark of 477. He is the OHL all-time assist leader.&ldquo;The feeling is something you just can&rsquo;t describe,&rdquo; said Groulx. &ldquo;I was happy because I tied the record, but I was happier because we won the game. That&rsquo;s more important because it was a team record.&ldquo;I never thought this would ever happen.&rdquo;Groulx is in his final season of junior hockey but the record may still not be out of reach.&ldquo;This sets the stage for a Wayne Groulx overage day,&rdquo; said Greyhound general manager Sam McMaster. &ldquo;Why wouldn&rsquo;t we bring him back to set the record. It took McCourt five years to set it and Wayne has only had four years to do it.&rdquo;AROUND THE OHL&mdash;The first-round best-of-seven playoff matchups have been established with the Greyhounds taking on the Kitchener Rangers; the Knights versus Windsor Spitfires and the Steelhawks against the North Bay Centennials.In the Leyden Division, the Peterborough Petes play the Ottawa 67s, the Bulls take on the Oshawa Generals and the Toronto Marlies face the Cornwall Royals.Two teams won their first games on the road with the Steelhawks beating the Centennials 6-2 and the Royals beating the Toronto Marlies 4-3. Peterborough easily handled the 67s 7-2 and the Knights defeated Windsor 6-1.There was a pre-game fracas between the Knights and Spitfires in the first game of that series and it began with the age-old problem starter&mdash;a player chasing a loose puck over the center-ice during the warmup. League rules prohibit a player, from doing that but Pete Bakovic of the Spitfires did just that and Knight backup netminder Paul Kenny lowered the boom on him. Then they paired off.&ldquo;I was in the dressing room when the thing started,&rdquo; said Knight coach Don Boyd. &ldquo;When I heard the noise I thought it was the shootout (a contest held between periods when fans can win prizes), but then I realized it was only the pregame skate.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know why Bakovic went over the line for the puck. If he needed a puck that badly he should have come to our dressing room. We would have given him one. We have a whole fridge full.&rdquo;NO GO FOR LAFORGE&mdash;Hamilton Steelhawk general manager-coach Bill LaForge, who was suspended from coaching for the rest of the season by league commissioner Dave Branch, appealed the decision before the OHL board of governors and lost. But that may not be the end of it. LaForge has engaged the services of Oshawa lawyer Terry Kelly to see if something can be done to reinstate his client behind the bench for at least some of the playoffs.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-01629/5504146-1-eng-US/f0027-012.jpg" title="f0027-01" width="526" height="564"><figcaption class="caption-body">Belleville&rsquo;s Dave MacLean won the regular-season scoring title with 154 points.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re reviewing remedies available in the courts right now,&rdquo; Kelly was quoted as saying, adding that he may go to the Supreme Court to have the matter resolved.OTHER CATEGORY WINNERS&mdash;The top-scoring defenseman was Peterborough defenseman Shawn Evans with 16 goals and 83 assists. The top rookie scorer was the Soo&rsquo;s Derek King with 35 goals and 38 assists, but the leading scorer in the 17-year-old age group was Keith Gretzky with 31 goals and 62 assists. The leader in penalty minutes was Pete Bakovic of Windsor with 259, while London led in minutes-per-game average with 26. &#9632;

f0027-01

The Juniors

OHL Finish Reads Like Fairy Tale

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-02414/5504191-1-eng-US/f0027-022.jpg" title="f0027-02" width="536" height="566"><figcaption class="caption-body">WAYNE GROULXS.S. Marie</figcaption></div><h2>ONTARIO LEAGUE</h2>The Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds finished as the No. 1 team in the Ontario Hockey League this season and much of the credit belongs to the team&rsquo;s overwhelming offense sparked by the likes of Wayne Groulx.The Hounds&rsquo; explosive center, a 1983 draft pick of the Quebec Nordiques, ended the year with 144 scoring points, including 11 in his last two games, to win the nod as OHL Player of the Week.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-03266/5504184-1-eng-US/f0027-032.jpg" title="f0027-03" width="536" height="562"><figcaption class="caption-body">DAN HODGSONPrince Albert</figcaption></div><h2>WESTERN LEAGUE</h2>Dan Hodgson is winding down his illustrious junior hockey career with the Prince Albert Raiders in a blaze of records and near misses.The 1983 draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs picked up 14 scoring points in three games for the Raiders to capture WHL Player of the Week honors. Hodgson&rsquo;s 119 assists set a new WHL record and his career total of 493 points left him just 18 short of the all-time point mark of 511 set by Brian Propp.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-04180/5504177-1-eng-US/f0027-042.jpg" title="f0027-04" width="545" height="915"><figcaption class="caption-body">GUY BENOITDrummondville</figcaption></div><h2>QUEBEC LEAGUE</h2>Guy Benoit of the Drummondville Voltigeurs has his sights set on the NHL next season with the Los Angeles Kings and his chances of making it are improving.Drafted by the Kings in 1983, Benoit had a poor season in 1983-84, but he&rsquo;s endeared himself to the NHL team this campaign with 56 goals and 134 scoring points.Benoit was selected as the QHL Player of the Week after he collected 11 scoring points in three games.At the end of the current season. THE HOCKEY NEWS will select a Micron Junior Player of the Year. &#9632;

f0027-02

JUNIOR PLAYERS OF THE WEEK

<div class="byline">BY BEN KUZMA</div>Louisville HockeyLouisville HockeyREGINA&mdash;The Rat is back.Like a pesky rodent searching to satisfy an appetite for fine dining, diminutive Dale Derkatch has returned in time to prey once more on Western Hockey League opposition.Derkatch, Regina&rsquo;s outstanding center who played professionally in Italy this season before returning as an overage to the Western League on March 15, has some unfinished business to attend to at the junior level.The Pats were 12 seconds away from earning a berth in the 1984 Memorial Cup but were emotionally crushed by the Kamloops Oilers, who rallied to force overtime and then triumphed in game six of last season&rsquo;s WHL final series. Kamloops also prevailed in game seven of the suspense-filled showdown.&ldquo;I want to win,&rdquo; said the 20-year-old Derkatch. &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t mind a Memorial Cup ring, it&rsquo;s been in the back of my mind for a long time. I&rsquo;ve played in this league for three years and a bit and I still don&rsquo;t have one.&rdquo;Derkatch didn&rsquo;t take long to get reacquainted with the WHL. In his first outing, he potted two goals and set up two more as the Pats bombed the Brandon Wheat Kings 12-1 to stretch their winning streak to seven games.&ldquo;I want to come back, and see if I can still score goals,&rdquo; joked the 5-foot-6, 140-pounder who amassed 218 goals in 200 regular-season games. &lsquo;&lsquo;Who knows, I might have lost it.&rdquo;Derkatch, who finished third in WHL scoring last season with 159 points in 62 games, didn&rsquo;t lose it while in Europe. He had a stellar season in the Italian First Division league.The seventh-round pick of the Edmonton Oilers led Bolzano to the league championship. Derkatch had four goals and three assists in the deciding game of the best-of-three series with Allegehe. Bolzano won 14-3.&ldquo;The ice over there is a lot bigger and being on such a good team it was easy for me,&rdquo; said the Preeceville, Sask., native.&ldquo;Playoffs were tough, though. I found the league better than major junior but not as good as the American League,&rdquo;Derkatch, who has a new two-year contract with Bolzano, coached by former WHL star Ron Chipperfield, also ran away with the scoring title. He had 40 goals and 60 assists in 26 games.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a confident young man,&rdquo; said Regina general manager-coach Bob Strumm. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s back for one reason. He missed something last year and he&rsquo;s back for it.&ldquo;He makes his linemates and other people better with his presence. He has a lot of spunk and it&rsquo;s not a chore to have him back.&rdquo;And what do others think he will provide?&ldquo;He adds depth at center ice and knows all the aspects of the game,&rdquo; said Prince Albert Raiders&rsquo; coach Terry Simpson. &ldquo;The thing he has is that experience, and that&rsquo;s something you can&rsquo;t replace in the playoffs.&rdquo;Strumm added that preparing for Derkatch&rsquo;s return was vital.&ldquo;We learned from the Brandon situation last year when they brought Kelly Glowa back,&rdquo; Strumm said. &ldquo;It helped us prepare for Dale&rsquo;s return.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not putting anyone in the stands. We didn&rsquo;t want to juggle our lines and we didn&rsquo;t want to stack them up. This way, we don&rsquo;t think other clubs will be able to zero in on any unit in the playoffs.&rdquo;Derkatch plays on the right side with Tim lanoone and Kevin Clemens. The former WHL rookie of the year said he&rsquo;s back to contribute in anyway he can.&ldquo;I noticed they (Pats) aren&rsquo;t having any trouble scoring goals,&rdquo; said Derkatch. &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;ll help them settle down because I see a lot of 17 year olds are doing the scoring. When I was 17,1 had older players like Dave Michayluk and Jock Callander on the team. They drew at lot of attention and I was able to get a lot of skating room.&rdquo;The Pats have been lurking in the Eastern Division shadows this season. Frontrunning Prince Albert and Medicine Hat have garnered most of the attention, leaving the Pats in a new post-season role.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m happy for the guys,&rdquo; Strumm said. &ldquo;They had to go through more flak this year and they weathered it well. We&rsquo;re playing more good, sound hockey and that&rsquo;s the exciting thing. We&rsquo;re getting great leadership now and Jamie, Reeve is back to where it&rsquo;s like putting a piece of plexiglass in front of the net. And our blue line is starting to communicate&mdash;we&rsquo;re doing the little things well and that&rsquo;s what wins in playoffs.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s value in getting kicked off the top of the mountain and having to scratch your way back to the top again. You do it as a team.&ldquo;It (playoffs) is going to be a tough run but we&rsquo;re on top of our game and being an underdog is motivating the team.&rdquo;WHL WEEK&mdash;Cliff Ronning od New Westminster continued to lead the league in scoring with 189 points, including a league-high 86 goals.In goaltending, Troy Gamble of Medicine Hat continued to lead the way with a 2.75 goals-against average. &#9632;

Derkatch Comes Back To Cop Elusive Cup

<div class="byline">BY RICK MA YOH</div>QUEBEC CITY&mdash;The wheels keep spinning in the search for a home for the Memorial Cup.Dr. Guy Morissette, president of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, announced that an agreement had been reached to hold the first two games of the national major junior championship May 11-18 in Shawinigan with the rest of the games going to Drummondville.Morissette said the agreement was conditional on the approval of The Sports Network (TSN).Not so, said Ed Chynoweth, president of the Canadian Major Junior Hockey League and Western League, and Ontario League commissioner David Branch.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m surprised Dr. Morissette would say that,&rdquo; said Branch. &ldquo;Neither Ed nor I agreed to that, We said we would consider it and consider it only.&ldquo;A motion was passed at the last CMJHL meeting March 3 that no Memorial Cup game would be played in any center that was not conducive to broadcast by television. We were going to investigate with TSN whether or not they could do games out of Shawinigan.&rdquo;CTV will televise the championship game and Chynoweth said the CMJHL has an agreement-in-principle with TSN to broadcast the remaining games.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re not prepared to finalize any plans until we know where it&rsquo;s going to be,&rdquo; said TSN vice-president Michael Lansbury. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re just waiting to hear from all of the players.&rdquo;Lansbury said TSN agreed with a CTV study of the Shawinigan arena that found it unsuitable for broadcast because of support beams.Chynoweth sent a telex to the QMJHL office, saying: &ldquo;I was totally dismayed and utterly surprised to hear&hellip;that the 1985 Memorial Cup would be held in Shawinigan and Drummondville.&ldquo;As the result of a conference call with Dr. Morissette, Dave Branch and myself, it was unanimously agreed that I would pursue the television situation with TSN and Harry Littler (the owner of a firm that helps organize the Cup, including television production of the championship game) to try to get TSN to televise the first two games in Shawinigan and the remaining games in Drummondville.&ldquo;It was also unanimously agreed that Dr. Morissette would say nothing more than the fact the QMJHL had presented a proposal to the CMJHL for their acceptance. It was further agreed that Dave and Ed would get back to Dr. Morissette as soon as possible.&ldquo;Under no circumstances has the CMJHL agreed to, nor ratified the QMJHL proposal&hellip;The story with all the quotes attributed to Dr. Morissette is not fact, and until the CMJHL ratifies such a proposal the Memorial Cup site will not be confirmed.&ldquo;Needless to say, I am upset and disappointed in both Dr. Morissette and the QMJHL for making this premature announcement.&rdquo;Chynoweth said the WHL and OHL are not against what the Quebec League is proposing.&ldquo;We have a few areas to clear up, providing they can be worked out. The onus is on the three leagues, not TSN.&rdquo;When asked if Shawinigan was a possible site given the CMJHL&rsquo;s March 3 motion, Chynoweth said: &ldquo;Very doubtful, unless the television problems can be worked out.&rdquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m so surprised at Ed&rsquo;s reaction, I can&rsquo;t understand it,&rdquo; Dr. Morissette said. &ldquo;It is untrue that I agreed not to say anything. I told them we were on the precipice of criticism, that we had to say something and we were going to.&ldquo;I still stand by what I said. I think he (Chynoweth) has overreacted. They cannot stop me from speaking.&rdquo;Shawinigan Cataracte president Dr. Andre Lemire and Drummondville Voltigeur general manager-coach Michel Parizeau both said they were surpised to hear the site had not been settled. Organizers have begun working on the tournament in both centers.&ldquo;From what I was told by Morissette, I thought it was very clear,&rdquo; said Lemire. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s getting more than ridiculous.&rdquo;Dr. Morissette said the QMJHL proposal likely meant the first two games in Shawinigan would not be televised.&ldquo;Our position is that we are only bound by contract to CTV for the final game,&rdquo; Morissette said. &ldquo;That means we should be able to negotiate on the rest of the games.&rdquo;On Jan. 27, the QMJHL backed Shawinigan as the site of the round-robin tournament, based on a September resolution that the regular-season champion would play host to the competition. After CTV found the city&rsquo;s 2,700-seat Municipal Auditorium unsuitable, Shawinigan still had the right to choose an alternate site and the QMJHL investigated Drummondville, Chicoutimi and Montreal as possibilities.The Marcel Dionne Centre in Drummondville, a city of 45,000 which is about an hour&rsquo;s drive east of Montreal, has a seating capacity of 3,200 and can house 5,100 with standing room. It is not expected to pose problems for television.Morissette said there are 500 available hotel rooms in the area. &#9632;

Morissette Cup Statement Upsets CMJHL Colleagues

<h2>Mon. Mar. 18</h2>QUEBEC 8, BOSTON 4<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-01560/5504620-1-eng-US/f0029-012.jpg" title="f0029-01" width="554" height="1120"></div>ST. LOUIS 3, TORONTO 4<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-02389/5504613-1-eng-US/f0029-022.jpg" title="f0029-02" width="552" height="700"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-03255/5504606-1-eng-US/f0029-032.jpg" title="f0029-03" width="537" height="149"></div>CALGARY 4, MINNESOTA 4<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-04178/5504599-1-eng-US/f0029-042.jpg" title="f0029-04" width="552" height="968"></div><h2>Tue. Mar. 19</h2>LOS ANGELES 2, ISLANDERS 3<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-05152/5504592-1-eng-US/f0029-052.jpg" title="f0029-05" width="552" height="732"></div>NEW JERSEY 1, WASH. 4<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-06121/5504585-1-eng-US/f0029-062.jpg" title="f0029-06" width="568" height="826"></div>PHILAD. 5, PITTSBURGH 3<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-07101/5504578-1-eng-US/f0029-072.jpg" title="f0029-07" width="554" height="758"></div><h2>Wed. Mar. 20</h2>ST. LOUIS 2, HARTFORD 3<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-0887/5504571-1-eng-US/f0029-082.jpg" title="f0029-08" width="558" height="676"></div>VANCOUVER 5, BUFFALO 4<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-0981/5504564-1-eng-US/f0029-092.jpg" title="f0029-09" width="572" height="860"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-1073/5504557-1-eng-US/f0029-102.jpg" title="f0029-10" width="544" height="94"></div>TORONTO 4, CALGARY 7<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-1168/5504550-1-eng-US/f0029-112.jpg" title="f0029-11" width="552" height="882"></div>LOS ANGELES 6, DETROIT 8<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-1261/5504543-1-eng-US/f0029-122.jpg" title="f0029-12" width="544" height="560"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-01621/5504536-1-eng-US/f0032-012.jpg" title="f0032-01" width="554" height="653"></div>CHICAGO 4, EDMONTON 6<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-02453/5504529-1-eng-US/f0032-022.jpg" title="f0032-02" width="569" height="915"></div>MINNESOTA 2, WINNIPEG 5<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-03303/5504522-1-eng-US/f0032-032.jpg" title="f0032-03" width="539" height="242"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-04189/5504515-1-eng-US/f0032-042.jpg" title="f0032-04" width="548" height="537"></div><h2>Thu. Mar. 21</h2>ST. LOUIS 1, BOSTON 1<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-05129/5504508-1-eng-US/f0032-052.jpg" title="f0032-05" width="566" height="657"></div>WASHINGTON 2, MONTREAL 3<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-0699/5504501-1-eng-US/f0032-062.jpg" title="f0032-06" width="539" height="149"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-0783/5504494-1-eng-US/f0032-072.jpg" title="f0032-07" width="549" height="476"></div>QUEBEC 5. ISLANDERS 1<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-0871/5504487-1-eng-US/f0032-082.jpg" title="f0032-08" width="554" height="713"></div>RANGERS 4, PHILADELPHIA 8<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-0961/5504480-1-eng-US/f0032-092.jpg" title="f0032-09" width="557" height="1035"></div>VANCOUVER 3, N. JERSEY 2<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1056/5504473-1-eng-US/f0032-102.jpg" title="f0032-10" width="543" height="471"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1149/5504466-1-eng-US/f0032-112.jpg" title="f0032-11" width="550" height="181"></div><h2>Fri. Mar. 22</h2>PITTSBURGH 1, BUFFALO 3<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1248/5504459-1-eng-US/f0032-122.jpg" title="f0032-12" width="556" height="650"></div>MONTREAL 1, WASH. 3<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1344/5504452-1-eng-US/f0032-132.jpg" title="f0032-13" width="569" height="942"></div>RANGERS 3, DETROIT 5<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1441/5504445-1-eng-US/f0032-142.jpg" title="f0032-14" width="584" height="760"></div>TORONTO 3, EDMONTON 3<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1536/5504438-1-eng-US/f0032-152.jpg" title="f0032-15" width="538" height="597"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1635/5504431-1-eng-US/f0032-162.jpg" title="f0032-16" width="538" height="144"></div>CHICAGO 3, CALGARY 1<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1730/5504424-1-eng-US/f0032-172.jpg" title="f0032-17" width="535" height="90"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-01555/5504417-1-eng-US/f0033-012.jpg" title="f0033-01" width="535" height="351"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-02397/5504410-1-eng-US/f0033-022.jpg" title="f0033-02" width="552" height="147"></div><h2>Sat. Mar. 23</h2>BOSTON 2, HARTFORD 5<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-03290/5504403-1-eng-US/f0033-032.jpg" title="f0033-03" width="533" height="157"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-04230/5504396-1-eng-US/f0033-042.jpg" title="f0033-04" width="534" height="381"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-05189/5504389-1-eng-US/f0033-052.jpg" title="f0033-05" width="540" height="247"></div>PHILAD. 5, NEW JERSEY 3<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-06157/5504382-1-eng-US/f0033-062.jpg" title="f0033-06" width="537" height="103"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-07140/5504375-1-eng-US/f0033-072.jpg" title="f0033-07" width="541" height="334"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-01600/5504368-1-eng-US/f0035-012.jpg" title="f0035-01" width="550" height="502"></div>MINNESOTA 2, ST. LOUIS 4<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-02469/5504361-1-eng-US/f0035-022.jpg" title="f0035-02" width="558" height="772"></div>VANCOUVER 4, WINNIPEG 6<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-03374/5504354-1-eng-US/f0035-032.jpg" title="f0035-03" width="562" height="1140"></div>CALGARY 4, LOS ANGELES 3<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-04306/5504347-1-eng-US/f0035-042.jpg" title="f0035-04" width="528" height="88"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-05253/5504340-1-eng-US/f0035-052.jpg" title="f0035-05" width="566" height="824"></div><h2>Sun. Mar. 24</h2>BOSTON 4, BUFFALO 3<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-06228/5504333-1-eng-US/f0035-062.jpg" title="f0035-06" width="545" height="796"></div>QUEBEC 1, HARTFORD 2<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-07213/5504326-1-eng-US/f0035-072.jpg" title="f0035-07" width="547" height="646"></div>MONTREAL 3, PHILAD. 4<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-08190/5504319-1-eng-US/f0035-082.jpg" title="f0035-08" width="552" height="764"></div>ISLANDERS 5, RANGERS 2<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-09178/5504312-1-eng-US/f0035-092.jpg" title="f0035-09" width="548" height="765"></div>PITTSBURGH 3, WASH. 7<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-10156/5504305-1-eng-US/f0035-102.jpg" title="f0035-10" width="538" height="700"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-11141/5504298-1-eng-US/f0035-112.jpg" title="f0035-11" width="544" height="207"></div>TORONTO 5, DETROIT 3<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-12125/5504291-1-eng-US/f0035-122.jpg" title="f0035-12" width="539" height="273"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-13111/5504284-1-eng-US/f0035-132.jpg" title="f0035-13" width="537" height="527"></div><h2>National League Rookie Leaders</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-2117/5504277-1-eng-US/f0032-212.jpg" title="f0032-21" width="565" height="310"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-2216/5504270-1-eng-US/f0032-222.jpg" title="f0032-22" width="582" height="318"></div> &#9632;

f0029-01

NATIONAL LEAGUE SUMMARIES

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-02466/5505001-1-eng-US/f0030-022.jpg" title="f0030-02" width="586" height="639"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-01642/5505008-1-eng-US/f0030-012.jpg" title="f0030-01" width="119" height="123"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>BOSTON BRUINS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-03319/5504994-1-eng-US/f0030-032.jpg" title="f0030-03" width="113" height="112"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>BUFFALO SABRES</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-04218/5504987-1-eng-US/f0030-042.jpg" title="f0030-04" width="584" height="654"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-05148/5504980-1-eng-US/f0030-052.jpg" title="f0030-05" width="129" height="112"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>CALGARY FLAMES</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-06114/5504973-1-eng-US/f0030-062.jpg" title="f0030-06" width="581" height="735"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-0790/5504966-1-eng-US/f0030-072.jpg" title="f0030-07" width="115" height="110"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>CHICAGO BLACK HAWKS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-0880/5504959-1-eng-US/f0030-082.jpg" title="f0030-08" width="582" height="608"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-0971/5504952-1-eng-US/f0030-092.jpg" title="f0030-09" width="142" height="98"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>DETROIT RED WINGS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-1062/5504945-1-eng-US/f0030-102.jpg" title="f0030-10" width="578" height="228"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-1156/5504938-1-eng-US/f0030-112.jpg" title="f0030-11" width="588" height="432"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-1252/5504931-1-eng-US/f0030-122.jpg" title="f0030-12" width="119" height="120"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>EDMONTON OILERS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-1349/5504924-1-eng-US/f0030-132.jpg" title="f0030-13" width="588" height="629"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-1445/5504917-1-eng-US/f0030-142.jpg" title="f0030-14" width="126" height="114"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>HARTFORD WHALERS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-1545/5504910-1-eng-US/f0030-152.jpg" title="f0030-15" width="598" height="632"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-1637/5504903-1-eng-US/f0030-162.jpg" title="f0030-16" width="174" height="112"></div><h2>LOS ANGELES KINGS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-1736/5504896-1-eng-US/f0030-172.jpg" title="f0030-17" width="597" height="627"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-1831/5504889-1-eng-US/f0030-182.jpg" title="f0030-18" width="134" height="115"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>MINNESOTA NORTH STARS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-1925/5504882-1-eng-US/f0030-192.jpg" title="f0030-19" width="594" height="586"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-2021/5504875-1-eng-US/f0030-202.jpg" title="f0030-20" width="596" height="138"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-2115/5504868-1-eng-US/f0030-212.jpg" title="f0030-21" width="132" height="98"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>MONTREAL CANADIENS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-2213/5504861-1-eng-US/f0030-222.jpg" title="f0030-22" width="590" height="579"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-2311/5504854-1-eng-US/f0030-232.jpg" title="f0030-23" width="96" height="87"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>NEW JERSEY DEVILS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-249/5504847-1-eng-US/f0030-242.jpg" title="f0030-24" width="596" height="677"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-258/5504840-1-eng-US/f0030-252.jpg" title="f0030-25" width="131" height="123"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>NEW YORK ISLANDERS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-267/5504833-1-eng-US/f0030-262.jpg" title="f0030-26" width="589" height="746"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-277/5504826-1-eng-US/f0030-272.jpg" title="f0030-27" width="120" height="121"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>NEW YORK RANGERS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-286/5504819-1-eng-US/f0030-282.jpg" title="f0030-28" width="587" height="103"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-296/5504812-1-eng-US/f0030-292.jpg" title="f0030-29" width="596" height="646"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-305/5504805-1-eng-US/f0030-302.jpg" title="f0030-30" width="140" height="104"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>PHILADELPHIA FLYERS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-315/5504798-1-eng-US/f0030-312.jpg" title="f0030-31" width="588" height="638"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-325/5504791-1-eng-US/f0030-322.jpg" title="f0030-32" width="130" height="123"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>PITTSBURGH PENGUINS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-335/5504784-1-eng-US/f0030-332.jpg" title="f0030-33" width="584" height="712"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-345/5504777-1-eng-US/f0030-342.jpg" title="f0030-34" width="123" height="120"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>QUEBEC NORDIQUES</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-354/5504770-1-eng-US/f0030-352.jpg" title="f0030-35" width="588" height="603"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-363/5504763-1-eng-US/f0030-362.jpg" title="f0030-36" width="118" height="115"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>ST. LOUIS BLUES</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-373/5504756-1-eng-US/f0030-372.jpg" title="f0030-37" width="584" height="354"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-383/5504749-1-eng-US/f0030-382.jpg" title="f0030-38" width="577" height="310"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-393/5504742-1-eng-US/f0030-392.jpg" title="f0030-39" width="142" height="140"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-403/5504735-1-eng-US/f0030-402.jpg" title="f0030-40" width="576" height="707"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-413/5504728-1-eng-US/f0030-412.jpg" title="f0030-41" width="101" height="97"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>VANCOUVER CANUCKS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-423/5504721-1-eng-US/f0030-422.jpg" title="f0030-42" width="578" height="674"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-433/5504714-1-eng-US/f0030-432.jpg" title="f0030-43" width="156" height="87"></div><h2>WASHINGTON CAPITALS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-443/5504707-1-eng-US/f0030-442.jpg" title="f0030-44" width="576" height="682"></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-453/5504700-1-eng-US/f0030-452.jpg" title="f0030-45" width="115" height="117"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div><h2>WINNIPEG JETS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-463/5504693-1-eng-US/f0030-462.jpg" title="f0030-46" width="580" height="553"></div><h2>TOP SCORERS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-472/5504686-1-eng-US/f0030-472.jpg" title="f0030-47" width="563" height="630"></div><h2>GOALTENDING STATISTICS</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0031-01589/5504679-1-eng-US/f0031-012.jpg" title="f0031-01" width="562" height="2734"></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/f0031-02410/5504672-1-eng-US/f0031-022.jpg" title="f0031-02" width="554" height="173"></div><h3>MOST WINS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0031-03300/5504665-1-eng-US/f0031-032.jpg" title="f0031-03" width="556" height="202"></div><h3>SAVE PERCENTAGE</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0031-04223/5504658-1-eng-US/f0031-042.jpg" title="f0031-04" width="560" height="152"></div><h3>MOST SHUTOUTS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0031-05176/5504651-1-eng-US/f0031-052.jpg" title="f0031-05" width="572" height="184"></div> &#9632;

f0030-02

NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE SCORING

<h2>BOSTON</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>31 &mdash; KEANS, Doug1 &mdash; PEETERS, Pete<h3>Defensemen</h3>33 &mdash; BLUM, John7 &mdash; BOURQUE, Ray34 &mdash; CURRAN, Brian26 &mdash; MILBURY, Mike20 &mdash; O&rsquo;CONNELL, Mike21 &mdash; SIMONETI, Frank27 &mdash; THELIN, Mats<h3>Centers</h3>28 &mdash; FERGUS, Tom22 &mdash; GORING, Butch11 &mdash; KASPER, Steve13 &mdash; LINSEMAN, Ken<h3>R. Wings</h3>18 &mdash; CROWDER, Keith16 &mdash; MIDDLETON, Rick24 &mdash; O&rsquo;REILLY, Terry - Cpt.25 &mdash; SLEIGHER, Louis<h3>L. Wings</h3>32 &mdash; COURTNALL, Geoff29 &mdash; DONNELLY, Dave12 &mdash; LUKOWICH, Morris36 &mdash; REID, Dave23 &mdash; SIMMER, Charlie<h2>BUFFALO</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>30 &mdash; BARRASSO, Tom28 &mdash; SAUVE, Bob<h3>Defensemen</h3>31 &mdash; FENYVES, Dave24 &mdash; HAJT, Bill4 &mdash; KORAB, Jerry26 &mdash; MALONEY, Dave27 &mdash; PLAYFAIR, Larry5 &mdash; RAMSEY, Mike13 &mdash; SCHOENFELD, Jim3 &mdash; VIRTA, Hannu<h3>Centers</h3>6 &mdash; HOUSLEY, Phil8 &mdash; MONGRAIN, Bob11 &mdash; PERREAULT, Gil - Cpt.20 &mdash; PETERSON, Brent7 &mdash; TUCKER, John<h3>R. Wings</h3>25 &mdash; ANDREYCHUK, Dave29 &mdash; DAVIS, Mai17 &mdash; FOLIGNO, Mike12 &mdash; McKENNA, Sean16 &mdash; SEILINQ, Ric<h3>L. Wings</h3>18 &mdash; CYR, Paul9 &mdash; HAMEL, Gilles10 &mdash; RAMSAY, Craig<h2>CALGARY</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>1 &mdash; EDWARDS, Don31 &mdash; LEMELIN, Rejean<h3>Defensemen</h3>4 &mdash; BAXTER, Paul28 &mdash; BOURGEOIS, Chas.20 &mdash; ELORANTA, Kari3 &mdash; KONROYD, Steve2 &mdash; MacINNIS, Allan34 &mdash; MACOUN, Jamie23 &mdash; REINHART, Paul5 &mdash; SHEEHY, Neil<h3>Centers</h3>21 &mdash; BEREZAN, Perry7 &mdash; EAVES, Mike29 &mdash; OTTO, Joel8 &mdash; RISEBROUGH, D.10 &mdash; QUINN, Dan33 &mdash; WILSON, Carey<h3>R. Wings</h3>19 &mdash; HUNTER, Tim9 &mdash; McDONALD, L14 &mdash; NILSSON, Kent11 &mdash; PATTERSON, Colin<h3>L. Wings</h3>27 &mdash; BEERS, Ed26 &mdash; BOZEK, Steve6 &mdash; CAVALLINI, Gino22 &mdash; KROMM, Richard12 &mdash; LOOB, Hakan24 &mdash; PEPLINSKI, Jim-Cpt.<h2>CHICAGO</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>30 &mdash; BANNERMAN, M.1 &mdash; SKORODENSKI, W.<h3>Defensemen</h3>2 &mdash; BERGEVIN, Marc4 &mdash; BROWN, Keith25 &mdash; DUPONT, Jerome6 &mdash; MURRAY, Bob5 &mdash; O&rsquo;CALLAHAN, Jack23 &mdash; WILSON, Behn24 &mdash; WILSON, Doug<h3>Centers</h3>14-GARDNER, Bill12 &mdash; LYSIAK, Tom19 &mdash; MURRAY, Troy26 &mdash; PATERSON, Rick18 &mdash; SAVARD, Denis<h3>R. Wings</h3>28 &mdash; LARMER, Steve11 &mdash; MacMILLAN, Bob16 &mdash; OLCZYK, Ed15 &mdash; YAREMCHUK, Ken<h3>L. Wings</h3>8 &mdash; FRASER, Curt31 &mdash; FRAWLEY, Dan29 &mdash; LUDZIK, Steve<h2>DETROIT</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>1 &mdash; MICALEF, Corrado30 &mdash; STEFAN, Greg<h3>Defensemen</h3>3 &mdash; BARRETT, John4 &mdash; CAMPBELL, Colin29 &mdash; LADOUCEUR, Randy28 &mdash; LARSON, Reed22 &mdash; PARK, Brad5 &mdash; SMITH, Greg2 &mdash; TRADER, Larry<h3>Centers</h3>20 &mdash; FOSTER, Dwight16 &mdash; KISIO, Kelly15 &mdash; LOISELLE, Claude27 &mdash; SITTLER, Darryl19 &mdash; YZERMAN, Steve<h3>R. Wings</h3>21 &mdash; CERNIK, Frank10 &mdash; DUGUAY, Ron18 &mdash; GARE, Danny-Cpt.26 &mdash; KOCUR, Joe<h3>L. Wings</h3>12 &mdash; BOLDIREV, Ivan17 &mdash; GALLANT, Gerrard23 &mdash; MANNO, Bob25 &mdash; OGRODNICK, John<h2>EDMONTON</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>31 &mdash; FUHR, Grant35 &mdash; MOOG, Andy30 &mdash; ZANIER, Mike<h3>Defensemen</h3>7 &mdash; COFFEY, Paul2 &mdash; FOGOLIN, Lee21 &mdash; GREGG, Randy22 &mdash; HUDDY, Charlie29 &mdash; JACKSON, Don4 &mdash; LOWE, Kevin<h3>Centers</h3>20 &mdash; CARROLL, Bill99 &mdash; GRETZKY, W.-Cpt.26 &mdash; KRUSHELNYSKI, M.24 &mdash; MCCLELLAND, Kevin11 &mdash; MESSIER, Mark<h3>R. Wings</h3>9 &mdash; ANDERSON, Glenn16 &mdash; HUGHES, Pat17 &mdash; KURRI, Jari8 &mdash; LUMLEY, Dave18 &mdash; NAPIER, Mark<h3>L. Wings</h3>12 &mdash; HUNTER, Dave19 &mdash; LINDSTROM, Willy10 &mdash; POUZAR, Jaroslav27 &mdash; SEMENKO, Dave<h2>HARTFORD</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>1 &mdash; LIUT, Mike31 &mdash; WEEKS, Steve<h3>Defensemen</h3>34 &mdash; BROWNSCHIDLE, J.21 &mdash; COTE, Sylvain33 &mdash; FUSCO, Mark35 &mdash; KLEINENDORST, S.24 &mdash; KOTSOPOULOS, C.3 &mdash; QUENNEVILLE, Joel5 &mdash; SAMUELSSON, Ulf8 &mdash; SILTANEN, Risto<h3>Centers</h3>26 &mdash; FERRARO, Ray10 &mdash; FRANCIS, Ron - Cpt29 &mdash; MacDERMID, Paul14 &mdash; MALONE, Greg20 &mdash; ZUKE, Mike<h3>R. Wings</h3>25 &mdash; CRAWFORD, Bob18 &mdash; CROMBEEN, Mike29 &mdash; DINEEN, Kevin17 &mdash; NEUFELD, Ray<h3>L. Wings</h3>11 &mdash; FENTON, Paul32 &mdash; ROBERTSON, T.15 &mdash; TIPPETT, Dave16 &mdash; TURGEON, Sylvain<h2>LOS ANGELES</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>35 &mdash; EUOT, Darren1 &mdash; JANECYK, Bob<h3>Defensemen</h3>4 &mdash; ANDERSON, Russ5 &mdash; ENGBLOM, Brian3 &mdash; GALLEY, Garry20 &mdash; HARDY, Mark28 &mdash; LAPOINTE, Rick2 &mdash; REDMOND, Craig24 &mdash; WELLS, Jay<h3>Centers</h3>16 &mdash; DIONNE, Marcel14 &mdash; MILLER, Bob9 &mdash; NICHOLLS, Bernie8 &mdash; RUSKOWSKI, T.-Cpt.23 &mdash; SMITH, Doug<h3>R. Wings</h3>19 &mdash; FOX, Jim21 &mdash; HAKANSSON, Anders17 &mdash; KELLY, John-Paul18 &mdash; TAYLOR, Dave<h3>L. Wings</h3>27 &mdash; MacLELLAN, Brian12 &mdash; MOKOSAK, Carl11 &mdash; SHUTT, Steve7 &mdash; SYKES, Phil22 &mdash; WILLIAMS, Dave<h2>MINNESOTA</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>33 &mdash; BEAUPRE, Don1 &mdash; MELANSON, Roland27 &mdash; MELOCHE, Gilles<h3>Defensemen</h3>2 &mdash; GILES, Curt - Cpt.32 &mdash; MANDICH, Dan10 &mdash; ROBERTS, Gord3 &mdash; ROUSE, Bob5 &mdash; RICHTER, Dave28 &mdash; SNEPSTS, Harold6 &mdash; VELISCHEK, Randy34 &mdash; WILSON, Ron<h3>Centers</h3>12 &mdash; ACTON, Keith14 &mdash; BJUGSTAD, Scott7 &mdash; BROTEN, Neal9 &mdash; MARUK, Dennis<h3>R. Wings</h3>&mdash; ARCHIBALD, Jim23 &mdash; BELLOWS, Brian17 &mdash; BERGLUND, Bo20 &mdash; CICCARELU, Dino21 &mdash; GRAHAM, Dirk26 &mdash; SHERVEN, Gord<h3>L. Wings</h3>29 &mdash; COULIS, Tim16 &mdash; MARTIN, Terry44 &mdash; PAYNE, Steve13 &mdash; TRIMPER, Tim<h2>MONTREAL</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>37 &mdash; PENNEY, Steve1 &mdash; SOETAERT, Doug<h3>Defensemen</h3>24 &mdash; CHELIOS, Chris5 &mdash; GREEN, Rick18 &mdash; KURVERS, Tom17 &mdash; LUDWIG, Craig19 &mdash; ROBINSON, Larry25 &mdash; SVOBODA, Peter<h3>Centers</h3>21 &mdash; CARBONNEAU, Guy29 &mdash; FLOCKHART, Ron6 &mdash; MONDOU, Pierre15 &mdash; SMITH, Bobby8 &mdash; TURCOTTE, Alfie<h3>R. Wings</h3>27 &mdash; DeBLOIS, Lucien20 &mdash; HUNTER, Mark30 &mdash; NILAN, Chris14 &mdash; TREMBLAY, Mario<h3>L. Wings</h3>23 &mdash; GAINEY, Bob - Cpt.35 &mdash; McPHEE, Mike26 &mdash; NASLUND, Mats11 &mdash; WALTER, Ryan<h2>NEW JERSEY</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>33 &mdash; KAMPPURI, Hannu30 &mdash; LOW, Ron1 &mdash; RESCH, Chico Defense2 &mdash; CIRELLA, Joe23 &mdash; DRIVER, Bruce21 &mdash; HOFFMEYER, Bob28 &mdash; HIEMER, Uli25 &mdash; LEWIS, Dave4 &mdash; LORIMER, Bob&mdash; PALMER, Rob8 &mdash; PICHETTE, Dave5 &mdash; RUSSELL, Phil<h3>Centers</h3>24 &mdash; ADAMS, Greg10 &mdash; BROTEN, Aaron16 &mdash; MEAGHER, Rick27 &mdash; MULLER, Kirk12 &mdash; VERBEEK, Pat<h3>R. Wings</h3>20 &mdash; HIGGINS, Tim29 &mdash; LUDVIG, Jan15 &mdash; MacLEAN, John11 &mdash; McADAM, Gary19 &mdash; PRESTON, Rich<h3>L. Wings</h3>18 &mdash; BRIDGMAN, Mel-Cpt.17 &mdash; GAGNE, Paul9 &mdash; LEVER, Don22 &mdash; SULLIMAN, Doug<h2>NY ISLANDERS</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>30 &mdash; HRUDEY, Kelly31 &mdash; SMITH, Billy<h3>Defensemen</h3>4 &mdash; BOUTILIER, Paul29 &mdash; DIDUCK, Gerald2 &mdash; DINEEN, Gord3 &mdash; JONSSON, Tomas24 &mdash; LANE, Gord26 &mdash; LANGEVIN, Dave6 &mdash; MORROW, Ken7 &mdash; PERSSON, Stefan5 &mdash; POTVIN, D. - Cpt.<h3>Centers</h3>11 &mdash; KORTKO, Roger16 &mdash; LAFONTAINE, Pat21 &mdash; SUTTER, Brent19 &mdash; TROTTIER, Bryan<h3>R. Wings</h3>22 &mdash; BOSSY, Mike8 &mdash; FLATLEY, Patrick9 &mdash; GILLIES, Clark23 &mdash; NYSTROM, Bob12 &mdash; SUTTER, Duane<h3>L. Wings</h3>14 &mdash; BOURNE, Bob17 &mdash; GILBERT, Greg20 &mdash; HALLIN, Mats32 &mdash; HENRY, Dale28 &mdash; KALLUR, Anders33 &mdash; KERR, Alan27 &mdash; TONELLI, John<h2>NY RANGERS</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>1 &mdash; HANLON, Glen34 &mdash; VANBIESBROUCK, J.<h3>Defensemen</h3>5 &mdash; BECK, Barry - Cpt.13 &mdash; BROOKE, Bob4 &mdash; GRESCHNER, Ron27 &mdash; HUBER, Willie2 &mdash; LAIDLAW, Tom30 &mdash; LEDYARD, Grant3 &mdash; PATRICK, James41 &mdash; RICHMOND, Steve29 &mdash; RUOTSALAINEN, R.24 &mdash; WIEMER, Jim<h3>Centers</h3>8 &mdash; FTOREK, Robbie10 &mdash; LAROUCHE, Pierre16 &mdash; PAVELICH, Mark17 &mdash; ROGERS, Mike<h3>R. Wings</h3>15 &mdash; HEDBERG, Anders37 &mdash; McPHEE, George11 &mdash; PATRICK, Steve28 &mdash; SANDSTROM, T.25 &mdash; SUNDSTROM, Peter<h3>L. Wings</h3>20 &mdash; ERIXON, Jan22 &mdash; FOTIU, Nick12 &mdash; MALONEY, Don19 &mdash; OSBORNE, Mark<h2>PHILADELPHIA</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>35 &mdash; FROESE, Bob33 &mdash; HEXTALL, Ron31 &mdash; LINDBERGH, Pelle<h3>Defensemen</h3>3 &mdash; CROSSMAN, Doug9 &mdash; DVORAK, Miro27 &mdash; ERIKSSON, Tom17 &mdash; HOSPODAR, Ed2 &mdash; HOWE, Mark10 &mdash; McCRIMMON, Brad8 &mdash; MARSH, Brad<h3>Centers</h3>42 &mdash; BERGEN, Todd11 &mdash; HACHBORN, Len20 &mdash; POULIN, Dave - Cpt.14 &mdash; SUTTER, Ron25 &mdash; ZEZEL, Peter<h3>R. Wings</h3>12 &mdash; KERR, Tim15 &mdash; SUTTER, Rich22 &mdash; TOCCHET, Rick<h3>L. Wings</h3>21 &mdash; BROWN, Dave18-CARSON, Lindsay32 &mdash; CRAVEN, Murray26 &mdash; PROPP, Brian23 &mdash; SINISALO, Ilka24 &mdash; SMITH, Derrick<h2>PITTSBURGH</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>31 &mdash; FORD, Brian1 &mdash; HERRON, Denis30 &mdash; ROMANO, Roberto<h3>Defensemen</h3>33 &mdash; BODGER, Doug7 &mdash; BUSKAS, Rod2 &mdash; FOX, Greg27 &mdash; CHARLESW&rsquo;TH, T.20 &mdash; MANTHA, Moe25 &mdash; MCCARTHY, Kevin2 &mdash; MCDONNELL, Joe<h3>Centers</h3>22 &mdash; BULLARD, M. - Cpt.9 &mdash; CHABOT, John32 &mdash; HANNAN, Dave12 &mdash; LAMOUREUX, Mitel66 &mdash; LEMIEUX, Mario16 &mdash; McGEOUGH, Jim<h3>R. Wings</h3>26 &mdash; BABYCH, Wayne19 &mdash; JAVANAINEN, A.14 &mdash; SHEDDEN, Doug15 &mdash; RISSLING, Gary<h3>L. Wings</h3>11 &mdash; LONEY, Troy23 &mdash; WEIR, Wally35 &mdash; YOUNG, Warren<h2>QUEBEC</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>35 &mdash; BOUCHARD, Dan33 &mdash; GOSSELIN, Mario1 &mdash; SEVIGNY, Rich<h3>Defensemen</h3>6 &mdash; BELL, Bruce22 &mdash; MAROIS, M. - Cpt.4 &mdash; MAXWELL, Brad21 &mdash; MOLLER, Randy7 &mdash; PRICE, Pat5 &mdash; ROCHEFORT, N.<h3>Centers</h3>23 &mdash; GILLIS, Paul32 &mdash; HUNTER, Dale14 &mdash; LEMIEUX, Alain11 &mdash; SAVARD, Andre26 &mdash; STASTNY, Peter15 &mdash; SAUVE, J.F.<h3>R. Wings</h3>17 &mdash; KUMPEL, Mark27 &mdash; PAIEMENT, Wilf18 &mdash; STASTNY, Marian<h3>L. Wings</h3>9 &mdash; ASHTON, Brent19 &mdash; COTE, Alain16 &mdash; GOULET, Michel20 &mdash; STASTNY, Anton<h2>ST. LOUIS</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>29 &mdash; MILLEN, Greg30 &mdash; WAMSLEY, Rick<h3>Defensemen</h3>25 &mdash; BOTHWELL, Tim27 &mdash; DELORME, Gilbert26 &mdash; JOHNSON, Terry2 &mdash; LEVIE, Craig35 &mdash; PAVESE, Jim5 &mdash; RAMAGE, Rob4 &mdash; WILSON, Rik<h3>Centers</h3>17 &mdash; CHOUINARD, Guy24 &mdash; FEDERKO, Bernie9 &mdash; GILMOUR, Doug10 &mdash; JOHNSON, Mark<h3>R. Wings</h3>6 &mdash; BARR, Dave61 &mdash; HICKEY, Pat7 &mdash; MULLEN, Joe28 &mdash; PASLAWSKI, Greg<h3>L. Wings</h3>12 &mdash; ANDERSON, Perry&mdash; CYR, Denis23 &mdash; DUFOUR, Luc22 &mdash; PETTERSSON, J.15 &mdash; REEDS, Mark21 &mdash; SCHOFIELD, Dwight11 &mdash; SUTTER, Brian - Cpt.<h2>TORONTO</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>1 &mdash; BERNHARDT, Tim30 &mdash; WREGGET, Ken<h3>Defensemen</h3>3 &mdash; BENNING, Jim33 &mdash; IAFRATE, Al26 &mdash; KITCHEN, Bill15 &mdash; McGILL, Bob26 &mdash; MUNI, Craig2 &mdash; NYLUND, Gary34 &mdash; ROOT, Bill21 &mdash; SALMING, Borje17 &mdash; STEWART, Bill<h3>Centers</h3>24 &mdash; DAOUST, Dan19 &mdash; DERLAGO, Bill18 &mdash; IHNACAK, Peter32 &mdash; JARVIS, Wes25 &mdash; YAREMCHUK, Gary<h3>R. Wings</h3>9 &mdash; GAVIN, Stewart12 &mdash; THOMAS, Steve22 &mdash; VAIVE, Rick - Cpt.<h3>L. Wings</h3>10 &mdash; ANDERSON, John23 &mdash; BRUBAKER, Jeff26 &mdash; LANDON, Larry7 &mdash; TERRION, Greg<h2>VANCOUVER</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>35 &mdash; BRODEUR, Richard30 &mdash; CAPRICE, Frank31 &mdash; GARRETT, John<h3>Defensemen</h3>29 &mdash; BUBLA, Jiri5 &mdash; BUTCHER, Garth&mdash; COCHRANE, Glen15 &mdash; DAIGNEAULT, J.J.2 &mdash; HALWARD, Doug4 &mdash; LANZ, Rick *3 &mdash; LIDSTER, Doug24 &mdash; PETIT, Michel<h3>Centers</h3>23 &mdash; GRADIN, Thomas16 &mdash; KIRTON, Mark7 &mdash; LUPUL, Gary8 &mdash; McNAB, Peter17 &mdash; SUNDSTROM, Pat.<h3>R. Wings</h3>28 &mdash; LANTHIER, J.M.21 &mdash; NEELY, Cam12 &mdash; SMYL, Stan-Cpt.9 &mdash; TANTI, Tony<h3>L. Wings</h3>10 &mdash; GILLIS, Jere14 &mdash; LEMAY, Moe25 &mdash; MacADAM, Al26 &mdash; SKRIKO, Petri<h2>WASHINGTON</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>35 &mdash; JENSEN, Al1 &mdash; RIGGIN, Pat<h3>Defensemen</h3>19 &mdash; ANDERSSON, Peter17 &mdash; BLOMQVIST, Timo5 &mdash; LANGWAY, R.-Cpt.2 &mdash; McEWEN, Mike8 &mdash; MURPHY, Larry26 &mdash; SHAND, Dave3 &mdash; STEVENS, Scott6 &mdash; VEITCH, Darren<h3>Centers</h3>10 &mdash; CARPENTER, Bobby27 &mdash; CHRISTIAN, Dave25 &mdash; JARVIS, Doug28 &mdash; TAYLOR, Mark<h3>R. Wings</h3>11 &mdash; GARTNER, Mike23 &mdash; GOULD, Bobby15 &mdash; HAWORTH, Alan18 &mdash; LAUGHLIN, Craig<h3>L. Wings</h3>22 &mdash; ADAMS, Greg14 &mdash; DUCHESNE, Gaetan32 &mdash; FRANCESCHETTI, L.16 &mdash; GUSTAFSSON, B.20 &mdash; SAMPSON, Gary<h2>WINNIPEG</h2><h3>Goaltenders</h3>29 &mdash; BEHREND, Marc1 &mdash; HAYWARD, Brian<h3>Defensemen</h3>44 &mdash; BABYCH, Dave4 &mdash; CAMPBELL, Wade8 &mdash; CARLYLE, Randy2 &mdash; ELLETT, Dave6 &mdash; KYTE, Jim3 &mdash; PICARD, Robert7 &mdash; WATTERS, Tim<h3>Centers</h3>16 &mdash; BOSCHMAN, Laurie10 &mdash; HAWERCHUK, D.-Cpt.35 &mdash; STEEN, Thomas<h3>R. Wings</h3>22 &mdash; LUNDHOLM, Bengt15 &mdash; MacLEAN, Paul20 &mdash; McBAIN, Andrew17 &mdash; NILL, Jim<h3>L. Wings</h3>11 &mdash; ARNIEL, Scott12 &mdash; LUKOWICH, Morris19 &mdash; MULLEN, Brian9 &mdash; SMAIL, Doug27 &mdash; TURNBULL, Perry24 &mdash; WILSON, RonINJURED PLAYERS &mdash; Mike Gillis, Gord Kluzak, Barry Pederson (Bosl, Dave Andreychuk, Bill Haft (Buf), Dave Hindmarch, Allan Maclnnis, Lanny McDonald, Colin Patterson (Cal), Bob MacMillan, (Chi), Colin Campbell, Lane Lambert (Det), Andy Moog (Edm), Bobby Crawford, Chris Kotsopoulos (Har), Tim Coulis, Craig Hartsburg, Tim Hirsch, Tom McCarthy, Tony McKegney, Willi Plett (Min), Pierre Mondou (Mtl), Bruce Driver, Bob Lorimer (NJ), Bob Bourne, Greg Gilbert, Clark Gillies, Mats Hallin, Brent Sutter (NYI), Mike Allison, Simo Saarinen (NYR), Dave Brown, Bob Froese (Pha), Rick Kehoe, Troy Loney (Pit), Andre Savard (Que), Kevin LaVallee, Doug Wickenheiser (StL), Russ Courtnail, Miroslav Frycer, Bill Kitchen, Jim Korn, Gary Leeman, Walt Poddubny, Bill Root, Bill Stewart (Tor), Ron Delorme, Taylor Hall, Gary Lupul (Van). &#9632;

NHL TEAM ROSTERS

<h2>MARCH</h2>Tue. 26 Boston at MontrealBuffalo at QuebecEdmonton at NY IslandersPittsburgh at NY RangersMinnesota at DetroitWed. 27 Hartford at WashingtonNew Jersey at PittsburghPhiladelphia at ChicagoSt. Louis at TorontoWinnipeg at VancouverCalgary at Los AngelesNY Rangers at BuffaloThu. 28 Edmonton at BostonSt. Louis at MontrealNY Islanders at QuebecWashington at New JerseyDetroit at PhiladelphiaFri. 29 Edmonton at HartfordChicago at WinnipegLos Angeles at CalgarySat. 30 Montreal at Boston*Buffalo at HartfordSt. Louis at QuebecNY Islanders at WashingtonNY Rangers at Philadelphia*Pittsburgh at New Jersey*Detroit at TorontoMinnesota at Los AngelesSun. 31 Quebec at BuffaloMontreal at PittsburghToronto at NY RangersEdmonton at Chicago*Minnesota at VancouverCalgary at Winnipeg*<h2>APRIL</h2>Tue. 2 Boston at QuebecHartford at BuffaloPittsburgh at NY IslandersPhiladelphia at NY RangersNew Jersey at St. LouisEdmonton at Los AngelesWed. 3 New Jersey at ChicagoDetroit at PittsburghToronto at MinnesotaVancouver at CalgaryThu. 4 Buffalo at BostonWashington at HartfordQuebec at MontrealNY Islanders at PhiladelphiaNY Rangers at St. LouisFri. 5 Calgary at EdmontonLos Angeles at Vancouver &#9632;

NHL GAMES TO COME

BOSTON&mdash;Kasper 14, Simmer 32, 33, 34, Bourque 16, Goring 14, Middleton 25, 26, Sleigher 10, Fergus 28, Reid 12. Winning goals-Reid.BUFFALO&mdash;Cyr 21, 22, Ruff 9, Perreault 26, 27,28, Hamel 17, Tucker 18,19, Ramsey 8. Winning goals-Perreault.CALGARY&mdash;Loob 31, 32,33, 34, Cavallini 3,4, Beers 26, 27, Nilsson 33, 34, Otto 3, Wilson 22, Berezan 1, 2, Bozek 11. Winning goals-Loob, Bozek.CHICAGO&mdash;Savard 37, Larmer43, Olczyk 18, Lysiak 15, Ludzik 10, T. Murray 24, Paterson 7. Winning goals-T. Murray.DETROIT&mdash;Foster 14, 15, Ogrodnick 52, Duguay 34, 35, Kisio 18, Loiselle 7, 8, Manno 8, Ladouceur 3, Yzerman 25, Sittler 10, Gallant 4, Gare 24, 25, Trader 3. Winning goals-Ladouceur, Gallant.EDMONTON&mdash;Anderson 39, 40, 41, Coffey 28, Kurri 68, Huddy 6, Krushelnyski 39, Hunter 14, Gretzky 66. Winning goals-Kurri.HARTFORD&mdash;Robertson 10, 11, Neufeld 25, Fenton 6, 7, Dineen 22, Malone 21, Ferraro 4, 5, 6. Winning goals-Ferraro, Robertson.LOS ANGELES&mdash;Williams 5, 6, Nicholls 45, Anderson 1, Shutt 18, Smith 21, Hakansson 11, Dionne 44. Winning goals-none.MINNESOTA&mdash;Giles 5, Maruk 17, Graham 8, 9,10, Roberts 6, Archibald 1, Acton 19. Winning goals-none.MONTREAL&mdash;Gainey 19, Turcotte 6, Carbonneau 20, Walter 17, Hunter 19, Flockhart 8, Naslund 38. Winning goals-Carbonneau.NEW JERSEY&mdash;Gagne 21, 22, Adams 9, 10, Pichette 17, MacLean 11. Winning goals-none.NY ISLANDERS&mdash;Flatley 18,19, Tonelli 39, D. Sutter 15,16,17, Kallur 9,10, Bossy 55. Winning goals-D. Sutter, Bossy.NY RANGERS&mdash;Ruotsalainen 25, 26, 27, Greschner 15, Osborne 2, J. Patrick 8, Larouche 23, 24, Sandstrom 26. Winning goals-none.PHILADELPHIA&mdash;Ron Sutter 13, 14, 15, 16, Hospodar 3, Sinisalo 33, 34, 35, Kerr 52, 53, Propp 39, Poulin 26, 27, 28, 29, Zezel 15, Craven 25, Rich Sutter 5, Carson 20, Marsh 2. Winning goals-Ron Sutter 2, Sinisalo, Poulin, 1 each.PITTSBURGH&mdash;McCarthy 9, Lemieux 36, Javanainen 4, Young 35,36, Bullard 30, Hillier 2. Winning goals-none.QUEBEC&mdash;Paiement 17,18,19, A. Stastny 38, Goulet 46, 47, 48, 49, P. Stastny 31, Ashton 29, Hunter 19, Maxwell 9, Gillis 14, Lemieux 14. Winning goals-Paiement 2.ST. LOUIS&mdash;Paslawski 20, Mullen 34, 35, Gilmour 18, 19, 20, Ramage 7, M. Johnson 22, Pettersson 22, Barr 14. Winning goals-Gilmour.TORONTO&mdash;Anderson 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, Vaive 31, 32, 33, Daoust 16, Benning 9, Derlago 23, 24, 25, Yaremchuk 1. Winning goals-Anderson 2.VANCOUVER&mdash;Sundstrom 25, Skriko 20, Gradin 22, Smyl 24, 25, 26, Petit 5, Lanthier 4, Lemay 19, 20, Kirton 16, Tanti 36. Winning goals-Petit, Lemay.WASHINGTON&mdash;Gustafsson 9, 10, 11, Gartner 44, 45, Murphy 12, Carpenter 49, 50, Taylor 8, Langway 4, Franceschetti 4. Winning goals-Gartner, Langway.WINNIPEG&mdash;Babych 11, 12, MacLean 38, Smail 29, 30, Wilson 8, Turnbull 21, Nill 8, Campbell 1, Hawerchuk 47, 48. Winning goals-Smail, Hawerchuk.Hat tricks&mdash;Goulet (Que), G. Anderson (Edm), Ferraro (Har), J. Anderson (Tor), 1 each.Overtime winners&mdash;J. Anderson (Tor), Dave Reid (Bos), 1 each. &#9632;

NHL SCORERS THIS WEEK

(Standings on Mon. March 25)<h2>CAMPBELL CONFERENCE</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1824/5505125-1-eng-US/f0032-182.jpg" title="f0032-18" width="544" height="417"></div><h2>WALES CONFERENCE</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-1920/5505118-1-eng-US/f0032-192.jpg" title="f0032-19" width="549" height="444"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Mon. Mar. 18Quebec 8 at Boston 4St. Louis 3 at Toronto 4 (OT)Calgary 4 at Minnesota 4 (OT)Tue. Mar. 19Los Angeles 2 at NY Islanders 3New Jersey 1 at Washington 4Philadelphia 5 at Pittsburgh 3Wed. Mar. 20St. Louis 2 at Hartford 3Vancouver 5 at Buffalo 4Toronto 4 at Calgary 7Los Angeles 6 at Detroit 8Chicago 4 at Edmonton 6Minnesota 2 at Winnipeg 5Thu. Mar. 21St. Louis 1 at Boston 1 (OT)Washington 2 at Montreal 3Quebec 5 at NY Islanders 1NY Rangers 4 at Philadelphia 8Vancouver 3 at New Jersey 2Fri. Mar 22Pittsburgh 1 at Buffalo 3Montreal 2 at Washington 3NY Rangers 3 at Detroit 5Toronto 3 at Edmonton 3 (OT)Chicago 3 at Calgary 1Sat. Mar. 23Boston 2 at Hartford 5Philadelphia 5 at New Jersey 3Minnesota 2 at St. Louis 4Vancouver 4 at Winnipeg 6Calgary 4 at Los Angeles 3Sun. Mar. 24Boston 4 at Buffalo 3 (OT)Quebec 1 at Hartford 2Montreal 3 at Philadelphia 4NY Islanders 5 at NY Rangers 2Pittsburgh 3 at Washington 7Toronto 5 at Detroit 3<h2>POINTS RACE</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-2019/5505111-1-eng-US/f0032-202.jpg" title="f0032-20" width="547" height="656"></div>(*-Clinched Dlavoff berth) &#9632;

f0032-18

THE NHL SCOREBOARD

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-08117/5505156-1-eng-US/f0033-082.jpg" title="f0033-08" width="524" height="1347"></div>When the National Hockey League season began, not too many people expected the Philadelphia Flyers to be the No. 1 team in the league. And even less expected that a rookie named Derrick Smith would be on the team.But as the season winds down, the surprising Flyers sit atop the NHL&rsquo;s overall standings and Smith, a 20-year-old left winger from Scarborough, Ont., is seeing regular duty.The graduate of the Peterborough Petes, taken 44th overall in the third round of the 1983 entry draft (the same one that produced other Flyer rookies Peter Zezel and Rick Tocchet), had 16 goals, including three game-winners, and 30 assists for 36 points in 71 games.He&rsquo;s been more than a pleasant surprise for the Flyers, who have performed beyond even their own expectations this season.Now, they expect the 6-foot-1, 185-pounder to develop into a front-line player and the team&rsquo;s rebuilding program is years ahead of schedule. &#9632;

f0033-08

Chrysler Rookie Spotlight

<h2>AMERICAN LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Wed. Mar. 27)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-01633/5505369-1-eng-US/f0034-012.jpg" title="f0034-01" width="544" height="501"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Wed. Mar. 20Maine 2 at Adirondack 5Springfield 4 at Hershey 5Nova Scotia 7 at New Haven 4Baltimore 4 at Rochester 1Thu. Mar. 21Sherbrooke 6 at Fredericton 2Baltimore 5 at St. Catharines 2Fri. Mar. 22Springfield 4 at Binghamton 8Nova Scotia 3 at New Haven 1Fredericton 1 at Rochester 7Sat. Mar. 23Baltimore 3 at Binghamton 2Adirondack 5 at Hershey 7Sherbrooke 3 at Moncton 5Nova Scotia 9 at St. Catharines 0Sun. Mar. 24Baltimore 3 at Hershey 5Sherbrooke 4 at Moncton 4Adirondack 4 at New Haven 7Nova Scotia 3 at Rochester 5Fredericton 7 at St. Catharines 2<h3>LEADING SCORERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-02485/5505362-1-eng-US/f0034-022.jpg" title="f0034-02" width="547" height="333"></div><h2>ATLANTIC COAST LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Mon. Mar. 25)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-03376/5505355-1-eng-US/f0034-032.jpg" title="f0034-03" width="555" height="178"></div>(Teams get point for overtime loss)<h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Tue. Mar. 19Erie 13 at Virginia 7Carolina 4 at Pine Bridge 6Thu. Mar. 21Erie 6 at Mohawk Valley 1Carolina 6 at Virginia 3Fri. Mar 22Mohawk Valley 2 at Pine Bridge 12Sat. Mar. 23Virginia 4 at Erie 12Mohawk Valley 1 at Carolina 11Sun. Mar. 24Carolina 9 at Pine Bridge 4Mohawk Valley 8 at Viginia 6<h3>GAMES TO COME</h3>Mon. Mar. 25Mohawk Valley at Carolina(End of schedule)<h3>LEADING SCORERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-04276/5505348-1-eng-US/f0034-042.jpg" title="f0034-04" width="554" height="320"></div><h3>PLAYOFFS</h3>Semi-FinalsCAROLINA vs VIRGINIA(Best-of-seven series)Wed. Mar. 27Carolina at VirginiaFri. Mar. 29Virginia at CarolinaSat. Mar. 30Virginia at CarolinaSun. Mar. 31Virginia at Carolina(Rest of games undetermined)ERIE vs PINE BRIDGE(Best-of-seven series)Wed. Mar. 27Pine Bridge at ErieFri. Mar. 29Pine Bridge at ErieSat. Mar. 30Pine Bridge at ErieTue. Apr. 2Erie at Pine BridgeThu. Apr. 4Erie at Pine BridgeFri. Apr. 5Erie at Pine BridgeSat. Apr. 6Erie at Pine Bridge<h2>INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE</h2>(Standings on Tue. Mar. 26)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-05215/5505341-1-eng-US/f0034-052.jpg" title="f0034-05" width="574" height="396"></div>(Teams get point for overtime loss)<h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Tue. Mar. 19Muskegon 2 at Toledo 5Wed. Mar. 20Flint 2 at Kalamazoo 6Fort Wayne 4 at Salt Lake 2Indianapolis 2 at Peoria 6Fri. Mar. 22Toledo 5 at Muskegon 6Kalamazoo 6 at Milwaukee 4Peoria 3 at Indianapolis 0Fort Wayne 1 at Salt Lake 6Sat. Mar. 23Milwaukee 8 at Muskegon 5Toledo 3 at Flint 7Peoria 3 at Indianapolis 2Fort Wayne 3 at Salt Lake 5Sun. Mar. 24Fort Wayne 8 at Kalamazoo 9Flint 5 at Milwaukee 7Indianapolis 2 at Muskegon 7<h3>LEADING SCORERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-06185/5505334-1-eng-US/f0034-062.jpg" title="f0034-06" width="580" height="340"></div><h2>ONTARIO LEAGUE</h2><h3>PLAYOFFS</h3>Quarter-FinalsLEYDEN DIVISION<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-07170/5505327-1-eng-US/f0034-072.jpg" title="f0034-07" width="552" height="92"></div>(Peterborough leads eight-point series 7-1)<h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Tue. Mar. 19Ottawa 1 at Peterborough 7Thu. Mar. 21Ottawa 2 at Peterborough 5Fri. Mar. 22Peterborough 4 at Ottawa 4Sun. Mar. 24Peterborough 4 at Ottawa 3GAMES TO COMEMon. Mar. 25Ottawa at PeterboroughTue. Mar. 26<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-08159/5505320-1-eng-US/f0034-082.jpg" title="f0034-08" width="545" height="93"></div>Peterborough at OttawaThu. Mar. 28Ottawa at PeterboroughFri. Mar. 29Peterborough at Ottawa(Belleville leads eight-point series 6-2)<h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Wed. Mar. 20Oshawa 6 at Belleville 4Thu. Mar 21Belleville 2 at Oshawa 0Sat. Mar. 24Oshawa 1 at Belleville 6Sun. Mar. 25Belleville 5 at Oshawa 4<h3>GAMES TO COME</h3>Wed. Mar. 27Oshawa at BellevilleThu Mar 28Belleville at OshawaSat. Mar. 30Oshawa at BellevilleSun. Mar. 31Belleville at Oshawa<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-09145/5505313-1-eng-US/f0034-092.jpg" title="f0034-09" width="543" height="90"></div>(Cornwall leads eight-point series 4-2)<h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Tue. Mar. 19Cornwall 4 at Toronto 3Thu. Mar. 21Toronto 5 at Cornwall 2Sun. Mar. 24Cornwall 6 at Toronto 5<h3>GAMES TO COME</h3>Tue. Mar. 26Toronto at Cornwall(Rest of games undetermined)<h3>EMMS DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-10140/5505306-1-eng-US/f0034-102.jpg" title="f0034-10" width="545" height="91"></div>(S.S. Marie leads eight-point sens 6-0)<h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Wed. Mar. 20Kitchener 1 at S.S. Marie 6Fri. Mar. 22Kitchener 2 at S.S. Marie 10Sun. Mar. 24S.S. Marie 11 at Kitchener 1GAMES TO COMETue. Mar. 26S.S. Marie at KitchenerThu. Mar. 28Kitchener at S.S. MarieFri. Mar. 29S.S. Marie at KitchenerSat. Mar. 30Kitchener at S.S. MarieMon. Apr 1S.S. Marie at Kitchener<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-11130/5505299-1-eng-US/f0034-112.jpg" title="f0034-11" width="540" height="92"></div>(London wins eight-point series 8-0)<h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Tue. Mar 19Windsor 1 at London 6Thu. Mar 21London 3 at Windsor 2Fri. Mar 22Windsor 0 at London 8Sun. Mar. 24London 8 at Windsor 1<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-12126/5505292-1-eng-US/f0034-122.jpg" title="f0034-12" width="564" height="102"></div>(Hamilton leads eight-point series 5-1)<h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Tue. Mar. 19Hamilton 6 at North Bay 2Thu. Mar. 21North Bay 4 at Hamilton 5Sun. Mar. 24Hamilton 8 at North Bay 8GAMES TO COMETue. Mar. 26North Bay at HamiltonThu. Mar. 28Hamilton at North BayFri. Mar. 29North Bay at HamiltonSun. Mar. 31Hamilton at North BayMon. Apr. 1North Bay at Hamilton<h2>WESTERN LEAGUE</h2>(Final Standings)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-13116/5505285-1-eng-US/f0034-132.jpg" title="f0034-13" width="549" height="262"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-14112/5505278-1-eng-US/f0034-142.jpg" title="f0034-14" width="540" height="206"></div><h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Tue. Mar. 19Regina 7 at Moose Jaw 8Prince Albert 6 at Saskatoon 1Portland 5 at Victoria 3Seattle 5 at New Westminster 7Lethbridge 5 at Calgary 9Wed. Mar. 20Brandon 2 at Lethbridge 10Moose Jaw 3 at Prince Albert 5Kamloops 5 at Seattle 5Fri. Mar. 22Calgary 3 at Lethbridge 5Saskatoon 9 at Brandon 3Kamloops 4 at Portland 8Kelowna 4 at Seattle 3Victoria 4 at New Westminster 5Sat. Mar. 23Regina 3 at Medicine Hat 9Prince Albert 6 at Calgary 4Kamloops at Victoria (ppd)Seattle 3 at Kelowna 6Saskatoon 6 at Brandon 4Sun. Mar. 24Medicine Hat 2 at Regina 7Calgary 3 at Lethbridge 9Moose Jaw 5 at Saskatoon 6Victoria 8 at Portland 4Kamloops 6 at New Westminster 4(End of schedule)<h3>FINAL SCORING LEADERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-15107/5505271-1-eng-US/f0034-152.jpg" title="f0034-15" width="551" height="292"></div><h3>PLAYOFFS</h3>EASTERN DIVISIONQuarter-FinalsSASKATOON vs REGINA(Best-of-five series)Tue. Mar. 26Saskatoon at ReginaThu. Mar 28Saskatoon at ReginaFri. Mar. 29Regina at SaskatoonSun. Mar. 31Regina at SaskatoonMon. Apr. 1Saskatoon at ReginaLETHBRIDGE vs CALGARY(Best-of-five series)Wed. Mar. 27Lethbridge at CalgaryFri. Mar.29Calgary at LethbridgeSat. Mar. 30Lethbridge at CalgarySun. Mar. 31Calgary at LethbridgeMon. Apr. 1Lethbridge at CalgaryWESTERN DIVISIONSemi-FinalsPORTLAND vs KAMLOOPS(Best-of-nine series)Thu. Mar. 28Portland at KamloopsFri. Mar. 29Portland at KamloopsMon. Apr. 1Kamloops at PortlandWed. Apr 3Kamloops at PortlandFri. Apr. 5Portland at KamloopsSat. Apr 6Kamloops at PortlandSun. Apr. 7Portland at KamloopsWed. Apr 10Kamloops at PortlandThu. Apr. 11Portland at KamloopsKELOWNA vs NEW WEST(Best-of nine series)Thu. Mar. 28Kelowna at New WestminsterFri. Mar 29Kelowna at New WestminsterSun. Mar. 31New Westminster at KelownaMon. Apr. 1New Westminster at KelownaThu. Apr. 4Kelowna at New WestminsterFri. Apr. 5New Westminster at KelownaSun. Apr. 7Kelowna at New WestminsterMon. Apr 8New Westminster at KelownaWed. Apr. 10Kelowna at New Westminster<h2>QUEBEC LEAGUE</h2>(Final Standings)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-16105/5505264-1-eng-US/f0034-162.jpg" title="f0034-16" width="550" height="439"></div>(Tearns get point for overtime loss)<h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Mon. Mar. 18Shawinigan 6 at Chicoutimi 5Longueuil 4 at Laval 5Tue. Mar. 19Drummondville 12 at Longueuil 7Wed. Mar. 20St. Jean 6 at Granby 6Laval 4 at Hull 5Verdun 4 at T-Rivieres 2Thu. Mar. 21Hull 2 at Longueuil 5Fri. Mar. 22Shawinigan 6 at Drummondville 4Laval 6 at Granby 9Verdun 1 at Quebec 4Chicoutimi 4 at St. Jean 3(End of scheduled)<h3>FINAL SCORING LEADERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-1796/5505257-1-eng-US/f0034-172.jpg" title="f0034-17" width="552" height="325"></div><h3>PLAYOFFS</h3>Quart er-Finals<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-1891/5505250-1-eng-US/f0034-182.jpg" title="f0034-18" width="544" height="93"></div>(Shawinigan leads best-of-seven series 1-0)<h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Sun. Mar. 24Quebec 3 at Shawinigan 5GAMES TO COMEMon. Mar. 25Shawinigan at QuebecFri. Mar 29Quebec at ShawiniganSun-Mon. Mar. 31-Apr. 1Shawinigan at QuebecWed. Apr. 3Quebec at ShawiniganFri. Apr. 5Shawinigan at QuebecSun. Apr. 7Quebec at ShawiniganCHICOUTIMI vs ST. JEAN(Best-of-seven series)Mon. Mar. 25St Jean at ChicoutimiFri. Mar. 29Chicoutimi at St JeanSun. Mar. 31St. Jean at ChicoutimiWed. Apr. 3Chicoutimi at St JeanFri. Apr. 5St Jean at ChicoutimiSun. Mar. 7Chicoutimi at St JeanMon. Mar. 8St Jean at Chicoutimi<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-1985/5505243-1-eng-US/f0034-192.jpg" title="f0034-19" width="539" height="91"></div>(T-Rivieres leads best-of-seven series 1-0)<h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Sun. Mar. 24T-Rivieres 7 at Drummondville 5<h3>GAMES TO COME</h3>Wed. Mar. 27Drummondville at T-RivieresFri. Mar. 29T-Rivieres at DrummondvilleSun. Mar. 31Drummondville at T-RivieresWed. Apr 3T-Rivieres at DrummondvilleSat. Apr. 6Drummondville at T-RivieresSun. Apr. 7T-Rivieres at Drummondville<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-2075/5505236-1-eng-US/f0034-202.jpg" title="f0034-20" width="548" height="90"></div>(Verdun leads best-of-seven series 1-0)<h3>GAMES COMPLETED</h3>Sun. Mar. 24Hull 2 at Verdun 9<h3>GAMES TO COME</h3>Wed. Mar. 27Verdun at HuiFri. Mar 29Hui at VerdunSun Mar 31Verdun at HuiMon. Apr. 1Hull at VerdunWed. Apr. 3Verdun at HullSun. Apr. 7Hull at Verdun<h2>ALBERTA JUNIOR LEAUE</h2>(Final Standings)<h3>FINAL SCORING LEADERS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-2165/5505229-1-eng-US/f0034-212.jpg" title="f0034-21" width="549" height="393"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-2258/5505222-1-eng-US/f0034-222.jpg" title="f0034-22" width="549" height="177"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1493/5505215-1-eng-US/f0035-142.jpg" title="f0035-14" width="558" height="154"></div><h3>PLAYOFFS</h3>Quarter-Finals<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1583/5505208-1-eng-US/f0035-152.jpg" title="f0035-15" width="552" height="90"></div>(Red Deer wins best-of-seven series 4-0)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1677/5505201-1-eng-US/f0035-162.jpg" title="f0035-16" width="549" height="91"></div>(Best-of-seven series tied 2-2)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1761/5505194-1-eng-US/f0035-172.jpg" title="f0035-17" width="543" height="91"></div>(Sherwood Park wins best-of-seven series 40)<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-1854/5505187-1-eng-US/f0035-182.jpg" title="f0035-18" width="537" height="90"></div>(Fort Saskwn. leads best-of-seven series 3-2) &#9632;

f0034-01

MINOR SCOREBOARD

BUFFALO&mdash;Dave Andreychuk, RW, sidelined for three weeks with fractured collarbone.CHICAGO&mdash;Warren Skorodenski, G, back from injury list.DETROIT&mdash;Rick Zombo, D, assigned to Adirondack of AHL. Colin Campbell, D, sidelined with knee injury. Lane Lambert, RW, out for rest of season after knee surgery. Greg Smith, D, back from injury list.HARTFORD&mdash;Dean Evason, C, assigned to Binghamton of AHL.MINNESOTA&mdash;Paul Holmgren, RW, back from injury list.MONTREAL&mdash;Patrick Roy, G, recalled from Granby of QMJHL and reassigned to Sherbrooke of AHL.NEW JERSEY&mdash;Greg Adams, C, back from injury list.NY ISLANDERS&mdash;Mark Hamway, RW, and Alan Kerr, LW, recalled from Springfield of AHL. Hamway later returned.NY RANGERS&mdash;Jim Wiemer, D, recalled from New Haven of AHL. Barry Beck, D, out after reinjuring his shoulder. Robbie Ftorek, C, sidelined for rest of season with knee injury. Willie Huber, D, out after undergoing knee surgery.PHILADELPHIA&mdash;Tim Kerr, RW, back from injury list.PITTSBURGH&mdash;Randy Hillier, D, back from injury list.QUEBEC&mdash;Gord Donnelly, D, returned to Fredericton of AHL.ST. LOUIS&mdash;Denis Cyr, LW, recalled from Peoria of IHL.TORONTO&mdash;Russ Courtnail, C, for season with injured wrist. Bill Root, D, sidelined with broken finger. Craig Muni, D, Greg Britz, RW, and Wes Jarvis, C, recalled from St. Catharines of AHL. Britz returned to St. Catharines along with Cam Plante, D. Todd Gill, D, sent back to Windsor of OHL. Greg Terrion, C, back from injury list.VANCOUVER&mdash;Jiri Bubla, D, back from injury list.WASHINGTON&mdash;Bryan Erickson, LW, assigned to Binghamton of AHL.WINNIPEG&mdash;Bobby Dollas, D, Tom Martin, LW, and Murray Eaves, C, assigned to Sherbrooke of AHL.<h2>AMERICAN LEAGUE</h2>ADIRONDACK&mdash;Mark LaForest, G, sent to Mohawk Valley of ACHL. Carmine Vani, LW, recalled from Kalamazoo of IHL.NEW HAVEN&mdash;Mark Lofthouse, RW, signed as free agent from European hockey league. Mario Proulx, G, assigned to Toledo of IHL.NOVA SCOTIA&mdash;Paul Houck, RW, signed to pro contract from Wisconsin University.SHERBROOKE&mdash;Gilles Thibaudeau, C, and Rick Knickle, G, returned to Flint of IHL.SPRINGFIELD&mdash;Jim Koudys, D, sent back to Indianapolis of IHL. Glenn Hicks, D, signed as free agent.<h2>INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE</h2>FLINT&mdash;Rick Wilson, G, recalled from loan to Salt Lake of IHL.TOLEDO&mdash;Tim Harrer, RW, announced retirement. Paul Kobylarz, RW, and Mark Chiamp, G, signed to five-game tryout. &#9632;

PLAYER TRANSACTIONS

<div class="byline">BY JOHN GILBERT</div><h2>MINNESOTA NORTH STARS</h2><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-01575/5505424-1-eng-US/f0036-012.jpg" title="f0036-01" width="136" height="113"></div>BLOOMINGTON&mdash;The third- and fourth-place finishers in the Norris Division could go down to the wire, but Minnesota North Star coach Glen Sonmor isn&rsquo;t putting a premium on either position.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re not that concerned about it,&rdquo; said Sonmor. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d always like to finish as high as possible. But we&rsquo;re going to have to beat St. Louis and Chicago if we&rsquo;re going to get out of the division anyway, and it really doesn&rsquo;t matter who we play first.&rdquo;Sonmor is not one to rationalize. But he has been making moves to guarantee everybody is ready for the playoffs. That includes giving players such as Dino Ciccarelli, Dennis Maruk, Curt Giles and Randy Velischek time off. And he gave the whole team a day off before facing Vancouver and Detroit on successive nights.&ldquo;This team is an awful puzzle,&rdquo; Sonmor sighed. &ldquo;We have big wins against St. Louis and Chicago, them lost in Quebec. A lot of people lose in Quebec, but we lost 8-0. Then we came right back and played really good in Montreal.&ldquo;So we come home against Calgary and, after one period. I thought, &lsquo;My God. what&rsquo;s going to happen?&rsquo; This one had embarrassment written all over it.&rdquo;But the North Stars came back from a 4-1 deficit to register a 4-4 tie.&ldquo;We roared back with a spirited performance that turned it into a delightful game,&rdquo; said Sonmor.Ron Wilson has been a big help. Signed on a short-term, termination contract after starring in Davos. Switzerland. Wilson has generated considerable offense from the point. Against Calgary.he was on for all four Minnesota goals and only one against.But the whole team showed signs of of coming out of their season-long dormancy.&ldquo;It took us the whole season to set ourselves up as underdogs,&rdquo; joked Sonmor.Added defenseman Gordie Roberts: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not like we&rsquo;re a young team having an off year. We&rsquo;re a good team, with a lot of talented players. The confidence level is so important, and that hasn&rsquo;t been good most of the year.&ldquo;But we&rsquo;ve seen the down side, and winning 20 games in the playoffs won&rsquo;t make us forget the regular season. A lot of people are paying a lot of good money to watch us in the regular season.&rdquo;Don Beaupre played in the spirited 4-4 tie, then Roland Melanson rotated into the nets when the Stars lost 5-2 to highflying Winnipeg. And Gilles Meloche got a turn when the Stars lost 4-2 in St. Louis.Sonmor said the rotation will continue until a hot hand is detected for the playoffs.Meanwhile, Paul Holmgren&rsquo;s return from shoulder surgery could signal the start of several players coming back to the lineup.&ldquo;We should be getting Tony McKegney back, too,&rdquo; Sonmor said. &ldquo;And Willi Plett, Steve Payne and Tim Coulis are ready. It&rsquo;s nice to get those guys back for a few game before playoffs. If Craig Hartsburg can get back, fine, we&rsquo;ll take him, even if he gets back just in time for the playoffs.&rdquo;STAR DUST&mdash;One incredible statistic has been maintained all season. Despite woes of a season that stood 23-3912 after 74 games, the Stars had given up 296 goals. That is bad, but only about in the middle of the overall NHL stats. And it is 20 goals fewer than the division-winning Stars yielded last year. The big dropoff has been in scoring, where the Stars have scored 78 fewer goals than a year ago at the same time. The Stars had a 15-7-6 record in games where they scored the first goal, but with that big a drop in goal production, they haven&rsquo;t scored the first goal often enough. &#9632;</div>

Search for your favorite player or team

April 5, 1985

Saluting Hockey’s Hall Of Shame

Lefty Sets Record Straight

Roll Call Of Ruffians

Frustrated Pens’ Captain Trying To Finish Strongly