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.

September 28, 1990

The Hockey News September 28, 1990

<div class="byline">BY HERB ZURKOWSKY</div>Like a cat with nine lives, defenseman Pascal Dufault keeps landing on his feet in Trois-Rivieres.The 20-year-old wasn&rsquo;t expecting to play in the Quebec League this season&mdash;at least not with the Draveurs&mdash;after being told over the summer by Dany Dube that his services were no longer required.But a funny thing happened to Dufault on his way back to the real world; Dube resigned as Draveurs&rsquo; coach to accept a similar position with the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivieres. He was replaced by Gaston Drapeau.Dufault contacted Drapeau and was invited to training camp. Drapeau told Dufault that whatever happened between the defenseman and Dube was in the past.The 6-foot, 200-pound Dufault has had a roller coaster career in Trois-Rivieres.He quit the team late in the 1988-89 season to contemplate his future, returning in time for the playoffs.Last year he was two weeks late reporting to camp. Upon his arrival, Dufault was grossly overweight and had a bad attitude. His lack of condition resulted in a string of minor injuries. At one point, Dube benched him until he lost weight.All told, Dufault played only 46 games, scoring six goals and 23 assists.While Dufault is back in the Draveurs&rsquo; fold, fellow defenseman Chris Bartolone (14-66-80 in 60 games) and right winger Marco Pietroniro (25-47-72 in 58 games) are not.The two 20-year-olds both accepted offers, believed to be worth $40,000 per season, to play for Bressanone, an Italian Second Division team.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-01603/5745154-1-eng-US/f0033-012.jpg" title="f0033-01" width="710" height="958"><figcaption class="caption-body">Defenseman Pascal Dufault is starting the season with a clean slate.</figcaption></div><h2>HAMEL NOT HAPPY</h2>It might be only training camp, but new coach and general manager Jean Hamel didn&rsquo;t take long to prove he wouldn&rsquo;t be Mr. Congeniality in Drummondville.Hamel, the former coach of the American League&rsquo;s Sherbrooke Canadiens, suspended Dave Paquet for a week and fined him $50 after the 18-year-old left winger missed a midnight curfew by 30 minutes.&ldquo;I have rules and everybody has to go by them,&rdquo; said Hamel, who replaced the fired Gervais Rioux. &ldquo;I told (Paquet) before camp that I had my eye on him. He had a bad reputation to start with, missing curfew and stuff like that, and I told him I&rsquo;m not going to tolerate anything.&rdquo;<h2>YOUTH MOVEMENT</h2>St-Jean coach Richard Liboiron obviously isn&rsquo;t afraid to spit into the wind.Although his Lynx finished out of the playoffs in ninth place last season (30-36-4) and are expected to once again struggle this year, Liboiron nonetheless released three 19-year-old veterans.Cut were center Martin Venne (5-17-22 in 44 games), left winger Steve Armstrong (4-8-12 in 57 games) and right winger Pascal Vincent (4-7-11 in 70 games).&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve decided to play with younger players,&rdquo; said Liboiron, listing draft picks such as Stephane St-Amour and Dave Belliveau, both right wingers, selected in the first and third rounds last May. Both are 16.&ldquo;The philosophy is that if you draft a young player you should play him,&rdquo; said Liboiron, who can afford to gamble after signing a new two-year contract over the summer.<h2>A DIFFERENT GUY</h2>Guy Charron (no relation to the Calgary Flames&rsquo; assistant coach) has returned to the Hull Olympiques as an assistant coach. Charron, an assistant under head coach Alain Vigneault with the Olympiques two seasons ago, will be joined by Michel Charron (no relation). The duo replace Guy Lamontagne, Vigneault&rsquo;s assistant last year who left to accept a similar position with the expansion Beauport Harfangs under head coach Alain Chainey&hellip;The Olympiques also lost head scout Rene Young to the Harfangs, where he became GM. He&rsquo;s been replaced in Hull by Paul Gagnon who had been the Olympiques&rsquo; Montreal-area scout&hellip;New Chicoutimi coach Joe Canale has completed his staff. Assisting him are Guy Brassard and Richard Martel, a former Shawinigan Cataracte&hellip;Michel Therrien, a former Longueuil Chevalier, will assist new Laval coach Jean-Maurice Cool.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0033-02428/5745147-1-eng-US/f0033-022.jpg" title="f0033-02" width="712" height="944"><figcaption class="caption-body">Jean Hamel issued a $50 fine for a 30minute curfew violation.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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IN THIS ISSUE

DUFAULT GETS ANOTHER CHANCE, SANS DUBE

<div class="byline">BY CHRIS STEVENSON</div>They packed up 350 cases of bottled water, some powdered milk, spaghetti sauce and ketchup.Peanut butter, dried fruit, cereals, nuts and chocolate.And a few cases of whine.The Montreal Canadiens left Sept. 4 for a 16-day training camp in Sweden and the Soviet Union.Head coach Pat Burns was preoccupied with who was going to play where.Defenseman Petr Svoboda said he knew where he was going to play&mdash;and it wouldn&rsquo;t be in Montreal, not next year, anyway.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-011066/5744400-1-eng-US/f0017-012.jpg" title="f0017-01" width="558" height="640"><figcaption class="caption-body">Guy Carbonneau wants double what the team is offering.</figcaption></div>Managing director Serge Savard was pondering the triple-option play thrown at him by Svoboda, captain Guy Carbonneau and goaltender Patrick Roy.The defensive stars all filed papers Sept. 10, notifying Savard they&rsquo;ll play out their options this season.Svoboda is by far the most bitter of the discontented Habs.&ldquo;No matter what, I&rsquo;m out of here at the end of the season. I don&rsquo;t have any respect left for them. I can&rsquo;t stay here,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If they don&rsquo;t trade me before next year, I&rsquo;ll sign as a free agent (with another NHL team) or I&rsquo;ll go play in Europe.&rdquo;When asked if he preferred to be traded to an American club&mdash;Svoboda likes the idea of being paid in American dollars&mdash;he shook his head.&ldquo;American, Canadian, it doesn&rsquo;t matter anymore,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Anywhere but here.&rdquo;Svoboda, at the tender age of 24, became the Habs&rsquo; blueline leader after the trade of veterans Chris Chelios and Craig Ludwig. He wants to double his salary to about $700,000.Roy, the two-time winner of the Vezina Trophy, opened negotiations by asking for $1.8 million a year. He&rsquo;s since come down to $1.5 million. Savard is offering a million.Carbonneau, two-time winner of the Selke Trophy as the league&rsquo;s top defensive forward, likes the sound of a million, too. Savard is thinking more like half of that.Both Svoboda and Carbonneau contemplated boycotting the European vacation to protest the lagging contract talks.&lsquo;&lsquo;The final offer Savard made to my agent can&rsquo;t be serious,&rdquo; said Svoboda. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a big gap between the team&rsquo;s offer and our demand.&ldquo;It gives me the impression the Canadiens aren&rsquo;t interested in my services. My agent has told Savard if we can&rsquo;t make a deal, a trade would be welcome. It&rsquo;d be better if I was traded because it looks like I&rsquo;m never going to get the salary I want in Montreal. I&rsquo;m not asking for the moon.&rdquo;Like every other guy who plays hockey for a living, he&rsquo;s got his yardstick pointed in the direction of the $l-million-plus-per-year deal Scott Stevens signed with St. Louis.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re at the limit of what we can otter, said Savard. And I&rsquo;m not going to start trading players who aren&rsquo;t satisfied with their salaries.&rdquo;Captain Carbonneau wants to be paid like the other leaders on the team.Savard signed center Denis Savard to a three-year contract that starts just over $1-million a year Aug. 31 and said the speedy center acquired in the Chelios deal will be the highest par player on the team.That&rsquo;s bad news for Carbonneau who&rsquo;s apparently been offered about $140,000 raise over the $360,000 hearned last season.All negotiations were on hold uni the team returned from Europe Sept 19. &#9632;

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THE NHL

SVOBODA VOWS TO LEAVE AT SEASON’S END

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0021-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0021-01681/5744538-1-eng-US/f0021-012.jpg"></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0021-02375/5744531-1-eng-US/f0021-022.jpg" title="f0021-02" width="1469" height="1074"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0024-01773/5744524-1-eng-US/f0024-012.jpg" title="f0024-01" width="1502" height="3446"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0024-02537/5744517-1-eng-US/f0024-022.jpg" title="f0024-02" width="1511" height="3365"></div> &#9632;

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STICK PRODUCT ANALYSIS

&ldquo;At dinner time, he&rsquo;ll have what I order. At lunch yesterday, I had to oink like a pig for him to understand ham and cheese&hellip;This morning, we had toast and eggs and sausage and he looks at it and says, &lsquo;Ah. Russian food.&rsquo; And I said, &lsquo;What, the Russians invent hens?&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;Detroit&rsquo;s Shawn Burr on dining with Soviet Sergei Federov. Page 41. &#9632;

QUOTABLE

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0002-011279/5743653-1-eng-US/f0002-012.jpg" title="f0002-01" width="546" height="635"><figcaption class="caption-body">Wayne Gretzky</figcaption></div>And now for something dramatically different.Next week&rsquo;s edition of The Hockey News is a big 84-page double-issue special. It&rsquo;s our all-new NHL Preview and as the name suggests, it focuses exclusively on the coming 1990-91 NHL season.The theme is questions and answers.Who will be the MVP? We tell you. Who&rsquo;s the smartest man in hockey? We&rsquo;ve got the answer. Is Wayne Gretzky on the downside of his career? We analyze it. What does Badger Bob Johnson write in that notebook anyway? We know.A total of eight in-depth feature stories on some of the game&rsquo;s most intriguing personalities.In addition to all that. there are full page, team-by-team features where, again, we ask and answer a question crucial to the success or failure of the club this season.Don&rsquo;t miss all that and more in next week&rsquo;s special issue.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0002-021044/5743646-1-eng-US/f0002-022.jpg" title="f0002-02" width="554" height="581"><figcaption class="caption-body">Bob Johnson</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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NEXT ISSUE

What do you call a player who has stayed with the same team for 11 years, has captained that same team and turned a Lunch Pail Brigade into Stanley Cup contenders?Disloyal? Hardly!Ray Bourque, who Boston Herald columnist Joe Fitzgerald called disloyal for wanting to renegotiate his contract, is a three-time Norris Trophy winner and a perennial all-star. But more importantly, Ray Bourque is the Boston Bruins.If Bourque was disloyal, he could&lsquo;ve asked for more money or to be traded to a different team long ago. He has had star status for some time now. Instead, he decided to stay with the Bruins while they were rebuilding.As any sports fan knows contract renegotiations are inevitable, and after Bourque&rsquo;s season last year he deserved more&mdash;much more.So, before anyone else calls Bourque disloyal, think about what he&rsquo;s done for the Bruins and what they&rsquo;ve done for him. You might just realize it&rsquo;s the Bruins being disloyal to Bourque.Jennifer Bates Seattle, Wash.<h2>I THOUGHT SO</h2>In Wayne Gretzky&rsquo;s book, Gretzky: An Autobiography, the Great One tells us Stan Fischler once admitted his columns are written merely to &ldquo;rile people up.&rdquo; That statement confirms a long-held suspicion of mine.Mr. Fischler writes for a variety of hockey publications and it&rsquo;s common for many of his articles to contradict one another&mdash;sometimes even in the same month.Stan Fischler is considered an expert on hockey, but I contend that only the casual fan would accept that as truth. Mr. Fischler&rsquo;s articles are the stuff tabloids are made of and really have no place in a publication dedicated to the serious fan such as The Hockey News.I have great respect for your magazine and faithully purchase a copy each week and I will continue reading it whether or not Mr. Fischler&rsquo;s stories appear. I do, however, believe his fabrications at times undermine the integrity of The Hockey News.Curt Senka Winnipeg, Man.<h2>POOR RULE</h2>The NHL should take a page out of the Major Indoor Soccer League and give an award for &lsquo;newcomer of the year.&rsquo; This would cover all the foreign players who are not really rookies.The new rule of being 26 years old or younger&mdash;known as the Sergei Makarov rule&mdash;is not sufficient. There could be a 25-year-old Russian player with five years of professional experience in the Soviet Union and he could win the Calder Trophy.He should only be eligible for the &lsquo;newcomer of the year&rsquo; award.Jason Yellin Stony Brook, N. Y.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-011432/5743684-1-eng-US/f0003-012.jpg" title="f0003-01" width="555" height="547"><figcaption class="caption-body">Sergei Makarov should have won &ldquo;newcomer of the year&rdquo;.</figcaption></div><h2>TOO MUCH</h2>Although I usually don&rsquo;t agree with much that Stan &ldquo;Patrick Division&rdquo; Fischler has to say, his recent column (THN, Aug. 14) was excellent.One of the points he makes in it, is that blue-collar fans have made the NHL what it is today. Nowadays, however, a family of four cannot go to an NHL game for less than $125 American (including ticket prices, parking, concessions, etc.)If NHL owners continue to cater to the corporate big shots and the high rollers, pretty soon the average person on the street&mdash;and ex-season-tickets holders like myself&mdash;won&rsquo;t be attending games at all.Greg Secon Newington, Conn.<h2>CAN THE GOONS</h2>Hockey is a wonderful game when played cleanly and skillfully. But all too often, this is not the case.Changes in the game&mdash;like a two-referee system, protection of goalies in their creases, the use of replays, elimination of the center redline, larger ice surfaces, etc.&mdash;are not being instituted quickly enough.Jeers to the NHL hierarchy who don&rsquo;t seem to care about the many fans lost in the United States because they cannot receive telecasts in their home.Until some of these changes are instituted, I find it difficult to function as a hockey fan.Christopher R. Wait Sacramento, Calif.<h2>WE OBJECT</h2>In response to Brian McWhirter&rsquo;s letter (THN, Sept. 14):Yes, there are people outside of Edmonton, and northern Alberta (California to be exact), who do care and who did want to see the Oilers win the Stanley Cup. We were ecstatic.Sorry, Brian, the Oilers are for real and they aren&rsquo;t going to fade away. We look forward to their continued success.Lorel & Company Los Angeles. Calif.Make your feelings known. Send your comments to:&nbsp;Letters, The Hockey News, 85 Scarsdale Rd., Suite 100, Don Mills, Ont., M3B 2R2&nbsp;or fax us at&nbsp;(416) 445-0753. Include home and business phone numbers. THN reserves the right to edit submissions. &#9632;

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DEPARTMENTS

BOURQUE’S LOYALTY HARDLY AN ISSUE

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-021158/5743715-1-eng-US/f0003-022.jpg" title="f0003-02" width="526" height="618"><figcaption class="caption-body">BOB McKENZIE</figcaption></div>Everybody is writing a hockey book these days. I&rsquo;m not convinced they&rsquo;ve all got 300 pages worth of relevant information to impart, but then you&rsquo;re looking at a guy who once considered chronicling his life story, too.In a pamphlet.I was gung-ho until the pamphlet publisher told me my writing wasn&rsquo;t quite up to snuff.Good thing I didn&rsquo;t quit my day job.Books, books, books. Gretzky, Lariono-v&hellip;on and on it goes. The review copies keep coming across my desk. At this rate, I&rsquo;ll have all my Christmas shopping finished in October.But as many new hockey books as there are, more are on the way. Here, for the first time, is a list of the titles no self-respecting fan should be without.Honest.The Great Gadsby: The riveting account of a 20-year NHL veteran who never won anything.Lord of the Flyers: Ed Snider&rsquo;s amazing true story of the innate savagery of a group of young boys left to fend for themselves after being abandoned at the Philadelphia intersection of Broad and Pattison in the 1950s. Twenty years later, the wild ruffians emerged from hiding, taking refuge in Snider&rsquo;s home for wayward boys, The Spectrum. The rest, as they say, is history.What They Don&rsquo;t Teach You at the Harvard Business School: Better known by its subtitle, What Happened On My Summer Vacation, by Washington Capital Neil Sheehy.The Communist Manifesto: Soviet Central Red Army head coach Viktor Tikhonov&rsquo;s hand-book for establishing hockey superiority in the NHL. An excerpt: &ldquo;You take all best players from league and put on one team. Send to work camp in Brandon, Man. Give one night on town in Winnipeg and drive them into ground. I could win Stanley Cup with Colorado Rockies.&rdquo;The Hunt For &lsquo;Red&rsquo; Oktober: A spy thriller brought to you by the publishers and author of The Communist Manifesto. Set in New York City, it&rsquo;s the story of the strange but true disappearance of Soviet ace defenseman Leonid (Red) Oktober. An excerpt: &ldquo;Red out training on 42nd Street when big women&mdash;I think it woman&mdash;invite him into cinema for performing arts. No find him again, until we skate out at Garden to play capitalist Rangers.&rdquo;Hockey&rsquo;s 100,000: The most prolific author of our time, Stan Fischler, rates all the greats. Discover how it is that Leonid (Red) Oktober is rated 63,458 spots ahead of Bobby Orr.Catcher in the Rye: Not to be confused with the true confession baseball book about an alco-holic backstop, this recounts a day in the life of netminder Bob Froese as he gets shot on at the Rangers&rsquo; practice facility.Clear and Present Danger: A tell-all tome from the Quebec Nordiques&rsquo; goaltenders.In Cold Blood: Graphic details of how New York Islanders Ken Baumgartner and Mick Vukota terrorized a spring-time outing of the New York Rangers.Moby Dick: The life story of Hartford owner Richard Gordon.Catch-22: Dave (Tiger) Williams&rsquo; how&ndash;to manual on obliterating the artistry of Mike Bossy.The Odyssey: The life and times of Brent (Don&rsquo;t call me Homer) Ashton.Black and White and Never Right: The confidential NHL report on its broadcasting policy for the 1990s. An excerpt: &ldquo;Wepledgeto have a Marconi in the home of every hockey fan in at least nine or 10 of the 50 U.S. states.&rdquo;The Cat in the Hat: Emile Francis&rsquo; favorite hangouts in Medicine Hat, Alta.Green Eggs and Ham: The Minnesota North Stars and Montreal Canadiens get together to share with us their favorite recipes from their recent tour of the Soviet Union.The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test: The designer of the Vancouver Canucks first Halloween-style uniforms comes clean after all these years.The Adventures of Huck Finn: Thirty years later, the true story can be told&hellip;Fran Huck was bom in Helsinki. &#9632;

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COLUMNISTS

BOOKS I WOULD WANT IN MY LIBRARY

&#9632; The Nordiques and the Swedish Ice Hockey Federation. The Mats Sundin affair had the makings of a longterm, ugly squabble. Instead, to the credit of both parties, a relatively quick and amicable agreement was arranged allowing NHL fans the opportunity to watch an up-and-coming star.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-03751/5743753-1-eng-US/f0003-032.jpg" title="f0003-03" width="377" height="376"></div>&#9632; The Denis Savard-Stephane Richer-Shayne Corson line. Hab fan or not, it&rsquo;s good to see the return&mdash;or at least a reasonable facsimile of&mdash;the Flying Frenchmen in Montreal. From all reports, the newly formed line was firing on all cylinders in the pre-season. The defensive years may have been effective, but they were hardly appropriate in the home of fire wagon hockey.&#9632; Vladimir Krutov. Knowing full well his job was on the line, the Tank reported to Vancouver&rsquo;s training camp in the same portly condition he was in at last season&rsquo;s end. Carrying extra baggage is one thing, but when you&rsquo;re earning the kind of money Krutov is, you owe it to the fans to be in top physical torm.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-04417/5743746-1-eng-US/f0003-042.jpg" title="f0003-04" width="376" height="379"></div>&#9632; Chris Simon. The Philadelphia Flyers&rsquo; rookie left winger, who has a history of shoulder problems, was warned by doctors not to fight. His first day out on the ice he gets into a scrap with left winger Jeff Harding, reinjures his shoulder and needs arthroscopic surgery. Word is he could be out for as much as three months. Smart move. &#9632;

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CHEERS JEERS

<div class="byline">BY THN STAFF</div>The Quebec Nordiques posted their biggest victory of the preseason when they worked a deal to have Swedish phenom Mats Sundin play for them this year.&ldquo;Mats will be able to join the team right away and we&rsquo;re very confident that he will make excellent progress,&rdquo; Nordiques&rsquo; general manager Pierre Page said Sept. 17.Page said Sundin, the first pick overall in the 1989 entry draft, signed a long-term contract and has no further contractual obligations to Djurgar-den, his Swedish Elite league team.Earlier this summer it appeared as though Sundin would not be available to the Nords until at least 1991-92. Djurgarden and the Swedish Ice Hockey Federation maintained the 6-foot-3, 185-pound right winger was entering the second year of a four-year contract which allowed him to leave only after the second year.But, after the 19-year-old unexpectedly fled his native country early in September with the intention of joining the Nords, the two sides got together to work out a deal. Included in the agreement is the provision that Sundin must be loaned to the Swedish national team if he&rsquo;s selected.For his part. Sundin was elated with the news.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a dream come true for me to play in the NHL,&rdquo; Sundin said.<h2>OILERS IN CLINIC</h2>In the fallout from the Grant Fuhr substance abuse affair, former Edmonton superstar Wayne Gretzky revealed two Oilers were sent to the Betty Ford Clinic by Oiler general manager Glen Sather to cure addiction problems.In defending his former coach and GM, Gretzky told the Toronto Star Sather did in fact act upon knowledge that some of his players had substance abuse problems. Earlier reports criticized Sather for not helping Fuhr, who Sather allegedly suspected of having a cocaine addiction.Fuhr admitted recently to long-time substance abuse.&ldquo;I know for a fact (Sather) put a couple of players into rehab,&rdquo; said Gretzky.&ldquo;Substance rehab, whatever, you know, whatever you want to call it&hellip;I don&rsquo;t know, to say what it was. I just know he sent two players to the Betty Ford Clinic. So, whatever you take that as. He called them in personally and he had them helped.&ldquo;One was a long time ago and one was just recently. So to say he didn&rsquo;t care, that&rsquo;s unfair.&rdquo;Sather confirmed Gretzky&rsquo;s revelation, saying both players had alcohol problems and are retired. Neither would divulge the players&rsquo; names.<h2>OBITUARY</h2>An NHL referee for 11 seasons, Vern Buffey died after suffering a heart attack in Toronto Sept. 11. He was 61.&ldquo;Vern served the league with distinction for more than a decade and had the respect of players and fellow officials alike,&rdquo; said NHL president John Ziegler.Buffey, whose NHL career began in 1959, officiated in 487 regularseason games and 44 playoff games. The Toronto native most recently was co-head coach of the Ontario Universities Athletic Association&rsquo;s Ryerson Rams.<h2>NEW CHIEF</h2>Bruce Crowder, who played in 243 NHL games with the Boston Bruins and Pittsburgh Penguins and has spent the past four seasons as an assistant coach at the University of Maine, was named the associate head coach-head coach designee at the University of Lowell.Crowder, 33, will work with Chiefs&rsquo; head coach Bill Riley, who will step down following the 1990-91 season to take a faculty position at the school.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m looking forward to the challenge,&rdquo; said Crowder. &#9632;

SUNDIN A NORDIQUE SOONER THAN EXPECTED

<div class="byline">BY STAN FISCHLER</div>Jacques Demers&rsquo; future as an NHL coach is dim, says one well-informed GM. The GM says Demers will evolve as a Frenchspeaking version of Don Cherry, who became a full-time broadcaster after being bounced by the Colorado Rockies. Demers reportedly told one confidante an NHL GM said he would have fired his coach last spring and hired Jacques had he known Demers was going to be released by the Red Wings. Speculation is the opening would have been in L.A&hellip;.Although Miami doesn&rsquo;t even have an NHL franchise, a group of potential seasonticket holders promises a 3,000-member fan club will be in place by the end of November. Miami franchise-bidders believe they have an edge on competitors from Tampa and St. Petersburg because they already have an NHL-size arena in place.<h2>FIGHTIN&rsquo; FERN</h2>Old-timers recall new Hall-of-Fame inductee Fem Flaman as one of the NHL&rsquo;s best fighters. Boston University All-American (1950-51) Jack Garrity remembers Flaman as a 16-year-old Eastern Leaguer taking on Blackhawks&rsquo; captain John Mariucci, who was considered the best fighter in the NHL. &ldquo;Ferny had this poker face,&rdquo; says Garrity. &ldquo;Quiet but hardnosed. Mariucci started jabbing Ferny in front of the nets. Femy was just a kid but he wouldn&rsquo;t back down from anyone and he went at it with Mariucci. You know what they say about still waters running deep? That was Flaman.&rdquo;&hellip;Alexander Mogilny completed a fear-of-flying course that has a success rate of 100 per cent, says Don Meehan, the Soviet&rsquo;s agent. &ldquo;Alex is completely Americanized,&rdquo; says Meehan. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s got an answering machine, a condo and a Porsche.&rdquo; Meehan denies reports Mogilny told friends he&rsquo;d rather play in Sweden than Buffalo. &ldquo;It was a very difficult transition for him,&rdquo; adds Meehan, &ldquo;but he&rsquo;s very happy to be in Buffalo.&rdquo; Insiders say otherwise.<h2>LEMONBALL</h2>Retired Canuck Larry Melnyk says one of the funniest episodes he ever witnessed was a prank on Russian teammate Igor Larionov. &ldquo;We got Igor into a slo-pitch softball game against the RCMP,&rdquo; says Melnyk. &ldquo;Instead of throwing him a baseball, the pitcher tossed a big lemon. What did Igor know? He took a real good cut, connected and sprayed lemon juice all over the place.&rdquo;&hellip;One member of the NHL&rsquo;s expansion committee says owners do not want new Canadian cities and are against putting an expansion club in existing hockey territory such as Milwaukee. &ldquo;They want to go into new TV markets,&rdquo; the source says, &ldquo;which is why Seattle, Florida and San Diego are favored.&rdquo;<h2>SWEDISH MEATBALL</h2>Ulf Samuelsson already has become a living legend in Hartford more for his antics than ability. He once raised eyebrows when he phoned Sweden from the North Stars&rsquo; press box. A favorite Ulfie routine is doing the Bill Murray drill scene from the movie Stripes.&nbsp;Ron Francis&rsquo; favorite Samuelsson story: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re playing the Flyers and losing big when Ulfie shoots, the puck hits the goalie&rsquo;s pads and bounces in the air. Ulfie catches the puck in his hand, skates toward the goalie, dekes him a couple of times and throws the puck underneath the crossbar. The light goes on, the Whalers&rsquo; song starts and he throws his arms in the air and starts celebrating. The rest of us just start skating away for the face-off. Ulfie&rsquo;s arguing with the referee who waved it off.&rdquo; Explains Ulf, &ldquo;I like to have a good time.&rdquo;<h2>WHAT A CLAUDE</h2>New Devils&rsquo; acquisition Claude Lemieux kiddingly blames slower-skating ex-teammate Brian Skrudland for his past abdominal muscle problems. &ldquo;I got them,&rdquo; laughs Lemieux, &ldquo;because of all the times I had to stop quickly at the blue line so I wouldn&rsquo;t go offside when Brian was carrying the puck.&rdquo;&hellip;Sabre coach Rick Dudley compares Pierre Turgeon with new Hall of Famer Gil Perreault, the legendary Buffalo ace. &ldquo;Gilbert was able to accomplish a great number of things for a great many years,&rdquo; says Dudley. &ldquo;Pierre has the potential to be the same kind of athlete as Gilbert. Perreault, when he was on his game, was the greatest crowd-pleaser I ever saw. Once we beat Toronto, 11-3. Gil could have had 25 points instead of only five.&rdquo;&hellip;The word from Georgia is ex-Flame Curt Bennett is considering a regional southern league that would embrace Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas and at least one Florida city nixed by the NHL.<h2>BAY WARS</h2>While the Bay Area prepares for a return of the NHL next fall with the expansion Sharks, bickering between San Francisco and San Jose continues over which city most deserves a team. Last year San Jose surpassed Frisco as the region&rsquo;s most populous city. To which SF Assemblyman John Burton shot back, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to rap San Jose, but it can&rsquo;t carry San Francisco&rsquo;s jock!&rdquo; To that San Jose radio station KWSS launched a &ldquo;Jocks for Jerks&rdquo; campaign&hellip;Jets&rsquo; coach Bob Murdoch is a devoted outdoorsman and gets inspiration in adversity by moving away from civilization. After he was sacked by the Blackhawks in 1988, he went backpacking on Baffin Island and has plans for a trip to the Bolivian mountains and the fjords of Iceland. &ldquo;I love the solitude of the back woods. After eight months of travelling to different cities and hanging around airports, I&rsquo;m ready for peace and quiet.&rdquo; &#9632;

DEMERS’ COACHING FUTURE LOOKS DIM

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0005-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-011337/5743832-1-eng-US/f0005-012.jpg"></div> &#9632;

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ELSTON

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-02973/5743863-1-eng-US/f0005-022.jpg" title="f0005-02" width="558" height="1194"></div><h2>TIM CHEVELDAE</h2>Born: Feb. 15, 1968, Melville, Sask. Height: 5-foot-10. Weight: 180-pounds. Team: Detroit Red Wings. Position: Goal. Acquired: Drafted fourth round (64th overall), 1986.Career highlight: &ldquo;Being called up from the minors last season, then having a 10-game unbeaten streak.&rdquo;Career disappointment: &ldquo;Not making the playoffs last year after making our run and coming so close.&rdquo;Boyhood heroes: Bernie Parent and Grant Fuhr. &ldquo;I was a big fan of all the Philadelphia teams; I liked Parent when he was with the Flyers. The thing I liked about Fuhr was his reflexes. He could make saves nobody else in the league could make.&rdquo;Most respected opponent: Wayne Gretzky. &ldquo;What he does for the game on and off the ice is impressive.&rdquo;In a movie about his life he&rsquo;d be played by: Michael J. Fox. &ldquo;I think we have the same boyish looks, he seems real easy going, everything&rsquo;s tongue-in-cheek.&rdquo;Most embarrassing moment: &ldquo;When I was first called up last year, on our first road trip, I thought I&rsquo;d lost my plane ticket. I was frantically searching for it for 20 minutes. I sweated bullets; I must have lost 10-pounds. I finally found it in one of my bags.&rdquo;What he&rsquo;d like to do after his career ends: &ldquo;Be a high school teacher, probably ancient history.&rdquo;Nickname: Chevy. &ldquo;Now that Alain Chevrier is here, the joke going around is that Detroit has two Chevys and neither one will start.&rdquo; &#9632;

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PRO FILE

<div class="byline">BY JIM KELLEY</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0006-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-011519/5743894-1-eng-US/f0006-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Dale Hawerchuk is one player management is leaning on to help shake Buffalo&rsquo;s losing image. The Sabres haven&rsquo;t won a second-round playoff series since 1980.</figcaption></div>Few tears were shed when the Philadelphia Flyers paraded the Stanley Cup across Memorial Auditorium ice after defeating the Buffalo Sabres in the spring of 1975.That ever-popular losers&rsquo; refrain, &ldquo;Wait &lsquo;til next year,&rdquo; seemed to fit the Sabres&rsquo; situation. It was only a matter of time before greatness was realized in the Queen City.But next year for the Sabres turned into an eternity.&ldquo;We were a good young team,&rdquo; says then Sabres forward Craig Ramsay, now the team&rsquo;s assistant general manager. &ldquo;We thought we would be back for years to come.&rdquo;Not only did the Sabres of the mid-70&rsquo;s not get back to the finals, they never even got close. A team that in many ways was the forerunner of the offensive age in hockey, a team that had Gilbert Perreault. Rick Martin and Rene Robert, the famed French Connection line, fell well short of its goal. A team that once had five 30-plus goal scorers, a defense that had Jim Schoenfeld, Jerry Korab and Larry Carriere never went anywhere.But it didn&rsquo;t stop there.The underachieving tradition carried into the &rsquo;80s: The team that Punch Imlach built and Scott Bowman rebuilt went nowhere in a hurry.Buffalo? A good team on the rise? It seems that way every year until&hellip;until the dreaded playoffs. Buffalo just doesn&rsquo;t win in the playoffs.The record is painful to examine.After making it to the finals in &rsquo;75, the Sabres of &rsquo;76 lost in the second round to the New York Islanders, four games to two. In &rsquo;77 the Islanders beat them four games to none, again in the second round. In &rsquo;78, the Flyers did it in the second round and in &rsquo;79 an aging Buffalo team lost in the preliminary round to the Pittsburgh Penguins, two games to one. In &rsquo;80, a last-gasp team went down in the third round, losing to the Islanders again, four games to two.Then came the really barren years. Buffalo hasn&rsquo;t won a seven-game series since &rsquo;80. Minnesota knocked the Sabres out in round two of &rsquo;81. Boston did it in the first round in &rsquo;82 and in the second round in &rsquo;83. In &rsquo;84 and &rsquo;85 it was Quebec (twice in the first round). In &rsquo;86 and &rsquo;87 the team didn&rsquo;t even qualify. In &rsquo;88, &rsquo;89 and &rsquo;90 it was Boston, Boston and Montreal. Each did it in the first round.The agonizing part for Sabres&rsquo; fans, is that the teams have possessed the talent.From &rsquo;75 through &rsquo;78 the Sabres never failed to top the 100 point mark in the regular season. In 1978-79 they had 110 points and from 1980-81 through 1984-85 they finished with 99, 93, 89, 103 and 90 points respectively. Last season, after a prolonged period of rebuilding, the team finished third overall with 98 points and again went out in the first round.Sabres&rsquo; GM Gerry Meehan took the 90 loss hard. In just his third full season at the top, Meehan, a former Sabres&rsquo; captain, saw his team rise from last place overall to within three points of first. Taking an optimistic approach, Meehan refuses to accept the notion there is a Sabre jinx.&ldquo;First of all I can only speak for the time I&rsquo;ve been here,&rdquo; Meehan says of a tenure that dates back to December 22, &rsquo;86. &ldquo;As far as I&rsquo;m concerned the Sabres&rsquo; history began four years ago. I think if you take it from that perspective, if you look at where we were, we&rsquo;ve made great progress.&ldquo;Last year we lost to a good team (Montreal) that finished just a few points behind us (five). It was a tough loss to take, but if we learn from it we&rsquo;ll be better for it.&rdquo;But can it really be that simple? And if so why hasn&rsquo;t anyone learned from past defeats. The reasons are varied and sometimes complex. Certainly there were times when injuries hurt and there were just bad breaks, but the basic theory is that Buffalo never learned how to win. Not on the ice, not off the ice, not in the front office.&ldquo;Somewhere along the line you just have to do it,&rdquo; Meehan says. &ldquo;Team&rsquo;s change, the people on them change. Eventually, you have to just do it. You have to learn what it takes and do it.&rdquo;&ldquo;In 1975 we wanted to win it,&rdquo; says Ramsay. &ldquo;We were a good team and we wanted to beat teams. We wanted to beat them bad. We wanted to win big. We were a confident team that was always on the attack, but if you look back, it&rsquo;s fair to say we never learned to pay the ultimate price. We never took that final step.&rdquo;That team did try and when it lost to the Flyers, it was generally agreed Buffalo lost to a well-balanced team that had exceptional goaltending in Bernie Parent. Buffalo in those years attacked, it never shied away from the net, but after losing, nothing changed and the team didn&rsquo;t grow.In succeeding years the game changed and the Sabres didn&rsquo;t. Buffalo stuck with its players and they never grew. Leaders didn&rsquo;t develop, changes weren&rsquo;t made. The team got old and eventually failed.A three-prong mistake&mdash;lack of growth by the players, lack of change by Imlach and lack of perception by ownership&mdash;would hurt the team in the future. Imlach eventually was dismissed in what amounted to a player revolt, but by then the Cup was out of reach and Bowman was brought in to retool the club.At first the reworking was a success, Buffalo was looked upon as a good team with young talent on the rise, but as the old talent got old, the young players couldn&rsquo;t fill their roles.Those were strange times for Buffalo. Bowman had made moves that brought in six first-round draft picks in two seasons. Sure, names like Schoenfeld, Danny Gare, Martin and Robert were gone, but new stars were coming. Tom Barrasso and Phil Housley made the jump right from U.S. high schools into the NHL. Dave Andreychuk would be a center for the &rsquo;80s and beyond and Paul Cyr would be the replacement for Martin.But those proved to be the painful years. Years when the kids played well in the regular season, but didn&rsquo;t perform in the playoffs. As the veterans got older (their swan song was a seventh-game overtime loss to the Bruins in Boston in &rsquo;83) the youngsters didn&rsquo;t measure up. The old players couldn&rsquo;t win and the young ones didn&rsquo;t know how.&ldquo;We learned the lessons that the whole league learned,&rdquo; says Ramsay. &ldquo;A kid at 18 is not the player that a kid at 20 is. Even if he&rsquo;s a first-round pick, there&rsquo;s a huge difference. Everyone thought that eventually they would learn how to play and learn how to win, but it didn&rsquo;t happen. Not at this level. I think every team&rsquo;s learned that.&rdquo;In the Bowman years, Buffalo never did well developing first rounders. Of Housley, Cyr, Andreychuk, Adam Creighton, Norm Lacombe and Barrasso&mdash;Bowman&rsquo;s six first-rounders in &rsquo;82 and &rsquo;83&mdash;only Andreychuk remains. Mikael Andersson, the first pick (18th overall) in &rsquo;84 didn&rsquo;t make it until Hartford picked him up in the waiver draft last year. Calle Johansson (first in &rsquo;85) did well before being traded to Washington for goalie Clint Malarchuk, but Shawn Anderson, the fifth player taken overall in &rsquo;86 still is struggling in the minors.So how do the Sabres shake their losing legacy?With young Stars such as Pierre Turgeon, Daren Puppa and Alexander Mogilny it seems as though they&rsquo;re on the right track. And getting Dale Hawerchuk from Winnipeg by trading away Housley, Jeff Parker and Scott Amiel&mdash;a bold move by Meehan&mdash;shouldn&rsquo;t hurt, either.But the key is to mould a team hungry to win. Management hopes it now has the right ingredients.&ldquo;For a lot of years we had teams that were afraid to win,&rdquo; says Ramsay. &ldquo;In my mind, fear is the biggest thing. No player wants to look bad and no player wants to make a mistake, but when a player overcomes that fear, when he takes a chance because that&rsquo;s what he needs to do to win, then you have growth as a player and a team.&ldquo;You look at the great players. I once saw Ray Bourque make the same bad pass twice and he came right back and tried it again and it worked and his team scored a goal. Afterward he knew he made mistakes and he says so, but he also says he made the plays he had to make. That&rsquo;s what he does.&ldquo;As a team we&rsquo;re looking to eliminate the fear of making a mistake. That&rsquo;s 90 per cent of it for most players.&rdquo;And for most organizations as well. &#9632;

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THE BLUNDER YEARS

<div class="byline">BY JIM KELLEY</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0007-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0007-011362/5743925-1-eng-US/f0007-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Gilbert Perreault remains a favorite son of Buffalo despite never possessing the charisma of a hero. Now involved with Victoriaville of the Quebec League, he was the expansion Sabres&rsquo; first pick in 1970.</figcaption></div>In Buffalo, he is simply a legend.Gilbert Perreault, the powerful skater with the brilliant moves and the deft passing touch. Gilbert Perreault, the Sabres&rsquo; first pick ever&mdash;and first overall&mdash;in the 1970 draft. Gilbert Perreault, the centerpiece of the famed French Connection line, who set team records&mdash;512 goals, 814 assists and 1,326 points&mdash;that may never be broken.Gilbert Perreault, the franchise.No one in this city on the eastern shore of Lake Erie would have it any other way. To them Perreault was, and still is, their ultimate sports hero.Towards the end of his 17-year career, Buffalo sports fans voted Perreault the best athlete in the city&rsquo;s history, by-passing such nationally recognized greats as football&rsquo;s O.J. Simpson and basketball&rsquo;s Bob MacAdoo.He was their all-time hero even if he was, at times, a reluctant one.It&rsquo;s fair to say Perreault never embraced this city&mdash;nor the NHL for that matter&mdash;in the same way that it embraced him. He was not a man given to giving of himself, at least not in public. Shy and unsure of the language when he entered the league in 1970, Perreault seldom revealed his personal thoughts.Perreault was in the spotlight from the beginning, being the first pick overall by the expansion Sabres. Any doubts of his talent were quickly laid to rest when he captured the Calder Trophy as the league&rsquo;s best rookie in the 1970-71 season. But he didn&rsquo;t exactly warm to the subsequent fame.Later in his career, when he was more accomplished both as a player and a public figure, he still chose to keep to himself. He shunned the billing, &ldquo;Gilbert Perreault and the Buffalo Sabres.&rdquo; He shunned the public adulation that comes with superstar status. His critics even charged he even shunned his responsibilities on the ice.That&rsquo;s where Perreault draws the line.&ldquo;When you don&rsquo;t win it&rsquo;s natural to blame the team&rsquo;s big scorer,&rdquo; says Perreault. &ldquo;I understand that, but it does take everyone to win. Sometimes the most important goal is scored by the guy who plays the least. I wanted to win, I tried to win. I think everyone gave their best. For whatever reason, we just didn&rsquo;t get it done.&rdquo;Perreault did try. After the Sabres lost in the finals to the Philadelphia Flyers in 1975, he came back with a career high 113 points the following season and earned second-team allstar honors. The team faltered in the playoffs that year and for years to come, but Perreault&rsquo;s numbers were always good. In 90 playoff games he averaged better than a point a game (110) in an era when a point a game was a respectable achievement.Still, the criticism lingered.As late as last spring, former Sabres&rsquo; general manager and coach Scott Bowman singled out Perreault as having a hand in the team&rsquo;s chronic underachievement. Quoted in the sports daily, The National, Bowman says Perreault wasn&rsquo;t the leader type and that he didn&rsquo;t have a lot of team results. Of course, Bowman is also quoted as saying Perreault went pointless in a sevengame playoff series against Boston in 1983. Had he checked the score sheets, Bowman would have found Perreault had six assists in the series which Buffalo lost in overtime in the seventh game at Boston.Yet the leadership question always haunted Perreault. Off the ice, Perreault was not an impassioned man given to speeches in the locker room. He enjoyed being &ldquo;one of the boys,&rdquo; but those closest to him insist he did his best.&ldquo;He never said much but that was his way,&rdquo; says Mike Foligno, a longtime teammate and a very close friend. &ldquo;To say he didn&rsquo;t want to win though was wrong. He was a very intense man. He had a lot of pride and always wanted to do well. He never showed that side to people, not in public, but it was there.&rdquo;Foligno maintains that no one was more hurt than Perreault whenever the Sabres made their annual early playoff exit and that he chose to keep silent when criticized for losses that weren&rsquo;t necessarily his fault.&ldquo;Because he didn&rsquo;t say much he gave the impression he didn&rsquo;t care but that wasn&rsquo;t the case,&rdquo; says Foligno. &ldquo;He knew that in every city we went to, people came to see him play and he tried to live up to that every night. He had great pride and desire. It&rsquo;s just that he kept a lot of things inside.&rdquo;Craig Ramsay, a longtime teammate of Perreault and now the Sabres&rsquo; assistant GM, has heard the criticism and feels both the detractors and supporters have valid points.&ldquo;Bert was a player who maybe didn&rsquo;t always want to be the greatest, but there was a time when he was the best,&rdquo; Ramsay says. &ldquo;You have to want to be the greatest. The best players have the ability to do things that are spectacular without always challenging themselves.&ldquo;In &rsquo;75 he was so good he made us all better players. He made me a better player just by watching him play. He scared people so much we were always able to attack with him. We attacked all the time but we didn&rsquo;t win and you can&rsquo;t just blame Bert for that. We lost. Us, not him. In 1975 I felt we were the very best team in hockey, but when we lost we didn&rsquo;t particularly accept the challenge to be the best. We as a team didn&rsquo;t do that. We weren&rsquo;t able to accept the fact that to win there is a final price to pay.&rdquo;In hindsight, Perreault, who left the NHL after the 1986-87 season having played just for Buffalo, feels it might have been better had he spent time in another city.&ldquo;In 1978 or so I asked to be traded,&rdquo; Perreault says. &ldquo;I played 17 years there but as I look back I think that every player should be traded at least once. It helps you grow.&rdquo;Perreault says he expects Denis Savard will be a renewed player having moved from Chicago to Montreal. He says the same of Dale Hawerchuk and former teammate Phil Housley. &ldquo;Sometimes a new team means a new life and a new attitude,&rdquo; he says.Perreault feels had he been traded during that time things might have been different for both himself and the Sabres.&ldquo;That&rsquo;s in the past now though,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I was happy being a Sabre, those were great years and I enjoyed them. It&rsquo;s just that you see things differently when you get older.&rdquo;The older Perreault&mdash;he&rsquo;s now a distinguished 39&mdash;is back in hockey. He&rsquo;s part owner, coach and GM of Victoriaville, a junior team in the Quebec town where he has always made his home.Even his posting there has brought some criticism&mdash;he quit as the Tigres&rsquo; head coach after one season only to return a year later&mdash;but Perreault maintains it&rsquo;s all part of life.&ldquo;They asked me (to lend a hand) that first year and I said I would try to help,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It was a learning experience for me and for them. There were frustrations that bothered me, but I&rsquo;m learning to deal with that.&rdquo;Perreault quit after that first year, angry over having two goals taken away from his team in the league&rsquo;s championship game. Now that he&rsquo;s back, he plans to continue in hockey.&ldquo;The first years (away from the NHL) I knew would be tough,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Hockey had been my life and I allowed time for adjustment. I&rsquo;m comfortable now. I want to help this team and I believe I can help.&rdquo;Assuming the critics give him a chance. &#9632;

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THE FALL GUY

<div class="byline">BY JASON KAY</div>As players, Fem Flaman and Bill Barber had relatively little in common.On the one hand, Flaman, who broke in with the Boston Bruins during the hey-day of the six-team NHL, was your classic stay-at-home defenseman, known for delivering devastating body checks.Barber, conversely, made his mark as a topflight scorer with the expansion Philadelphia Flyers and was on the receiving end of more hits than he was the donor.But as Hall-of-Fame inductees, the two share one invaluable trait: The love of the game.&ldquo;When I talk to the kids we draft,&rdquo; says Barber, director of pro scouting for the Flyers, &ldquo;I tell them they have to love the game.&ldquo;For me, that was the most important thing. You have to play hurt, make sacrifices, etc., and you can&rsquo;t look at it as a business.&rdquo;Flaman, 63, has exhibited a similar passion, having devoted his entire adult life to hockey. He retired at the end of the 1988-89 season after 19 years as head coach at Northeastern University, but recently returned to a rink career on a part-time basis as a scout for the New Jersey Devils.All of Flaman&rsquo;s years in cold arenas haven&rsquo;t numbed his enthusiasm for what has become his life&rsquo;s work. And being elected to the Hall in the veteran&rsquo;s category, says Flaman, is satisfying recognition.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s something you always dream about as a kid,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;For it to finally happen&hellip;it really hasn&rsquo;t sunk in yet. I guess it won&rsquo;t until the day of the ceremony.&ldquo;And it was a nice surprise. Christ, it&rsquo;s been 30 years (since he retired). You think they&rsquo;ve forgotten about you.&rdquo;Aside from their mutual love of hockey, Flaman and Barber&mdash;who will be inducted into the Hall along with Gil Perreault, Bud Poile (builder), and journalists Jiggs McDonald and Bertrand Raymond&mdash;have one other thing in common as inductees: Both heard the good news at, or on their way to, the golf course.&ldquo;I was at this charity golf thing on Cape Cod when they called me,&rdquo; says Flaman. &ldquo;A lot of the Bruins&rsquo; alumni was there in one room&mdash;Doug Mohns, Don McKenney, Milt Schmidt, Eddie Sandford and their wives&mdash;just talking.&ldquo;Then, when my wife (Jeanne) and I went back to our room, my son called and told me the news.&ldquo;The next morning all the players, I guess they read it in the papers, they came over and congratulated me.&rdquo;Barber, meanwhile, left the June entry draft in Vancouver early to attend a charity golf event in New Jersey when he got the word.&ldquo;When I got to the Hyatt in Cherry Hill (N.J.), my wife (Jenny) picked me up,&rdquo; says Barber. &ldquo;I knew something was up by the way she was acting. When she told me we were both very happy.&rdquo;The happiest moment for both during their playing days was being part of Stanley Cup winning teams. Flaman, who began his career for the Bruins in 1944-45, was dealt to Toronto in November of 1950 just in time to play for the Maple Leafs&rsquo; championship team at the end of that season.Barber, 38, was fortunate enough to get two Stanley Cup rings, which came in his second and third pro seasons.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0008-011449/5743956-1-eng-US/f0008-012.jpg" title="f0008-01" width="712" height="764"><figcaption class="caption-body">Bill Barber denies ever having taken a dive to draw a penalty.</figcaption></div>It happened at such a young age tor me, says Barber who was 21 when the Flyers won their first Cup in 1974. &ldquo;All my life&hellip;I started playing at a very young age, and things just kept falling into place.&rdquo;A native of Callandar, Ont., who now makes his home in Cherry Hill, Barber continued to enjoy personal success throughout the &rsquo;70s and early &rsquo;80s, though there would be no more late-spring celebrations. He was named to postseason all-star teams on three occasions (first team 1976, second team 1979 and 1981), and put up his best offensive numbers&mdash;50-62-112&mdash;during the 1975-76 season.The Flyers&rsquo; first pick, seventh overall, in the 1972 draft, Barber sustained a serious knee injury and underwent surgery in April, 1984. After a long and unsuccessful season of rehabilitation in 1984-85, Barber decided to retire as a player. He finished with 420-463-883 totals in 903 career games.The solid left winger, who gained a reputation as a proficient diver&mdash;&rsquo; &lsquo;I definitely never took a dive, that was just a thing the media liked to write about,&rdquo; he says&mdash;jumped head-first into a coaching career, leading the Flyers&rsquo; affiliate in Hershey (AHL) for part of the 1985-86 season. He then spent time as a Flyers&rsquo; assistant in &rsquo;86-87, before joining the team&rsquo;s scouting staff.Poile, to be inducted into the builders&rsquo; category, has been involved in hockey in nearly every capacity. He had a solid seven-year NHL career as a center for five of the original six teams&mdash;Montreal was the only team he missed&mdash;from 1942 to 1950. He went on to coach and or manage for the next 33 years, until becoming vice-president of the World Hockey Association in 1973. Poile, 66, most recently was the president of the International League from 1983 to 1989 when he retired.McDonald, a hockey broadcaster since 1967, has been the &ldquo;voice of the New York Islanders&rdquo; since 1981 and also does play-by-play for Sport-sChannel America. Raymond, who now works as a columnist for Le Journal de Montreal and does color commentary on the Quebec network TV A, also began his hockey reporting career in 1967.The six inductees will be officially honored Sept. 24 in Toronto. &#9632;

f0008-01

LOVE OF THE GAME BINDS HALL INDUCTEES

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0009-011399/5743987-1-eng-US/f0009-012.jpg" title="f0009-01" width="482" height="623"><figcaption class="caption-body">STAN FISCHLER</figcaption></div>If I was running the Washington Capitals, I would be sweating hockey pucks.I suspect owner Abe Pollin and general manager David Poile are more than a trifle concerned since the team&rsquo;s image and bankroll are at stake.Will enough fans show up this season to keep the Caps&rsquo; bottom line on top?That question relates directly to the springtime &ldquo;sexpose&rdquo; in which Dino Ciccarelli, Geoff Courtnail, Scott Stevens and Neil Sheehy were named in a complaint by a 17-year-old who said she was raped and sodomized in a limousine outside a Georgetown bar.The players denied the allegations and a D.C. Superior Court grand jury decided not to indict. By mid-summer Stevens and Courtnall had become St. Louis Blues while Ciccarelli wound up all alone by the telephone.Even if the Caps wanted to trade Dino, they didn&rsquo;t&mdash;or couldn&rsquo;t&mdash;and that left them with a public relations problem the size of Australia.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no question we&rsquo;ve had a number of cancellations directly related to this incident,&rdquo; says Poile, &ldquo;but we won&rsquo;t have a complete handle on the (ticket-buying) situation until we&rsquo;re closer to the season. Still, this has hurt us.&rdquo;It especially hurt Ciccarelli who has been immersed in office hot water before. During his North Star years, Dino pleaded guilty in Minnesota to a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure.This time Ciccarelli is doing something unprecedented in terms of hockey promotion; when a Caps&rsquo; fan calls to beef about the episode, Dino asks for the phone number and then calls the fan to explain his side.&ldquo;It was an unfortunate situation that should have never happened,&rdquo; Ciccarelli admits, &ldquo;but there was no wrong-doing from a legal standpoint.&rdquo;Dino&rsquo;s dialogue with fans is, in a social sort of way, as daring as throwing your body in front of a slapshot, or starting a fight with Bob Probert.&ldquo;The people who wrote and who I called were upset,&rdquo; says Ciccarelli, &ldquo;and I apologized.&ldquo;They believed everything that was said in the media. I&rsquo;m not condoning what I did. I&rsquo;m married and I shouldn&rsquo;t have been there but they (the media) made us out as real bad people, like we killed somebody or something.&ldquo;I point out to the fans the media reports were not correct and the truth came out with the people in the grand jury.&rdquo;Washington Post columnist Tom Boswell was impressed with Ciccarelli&rsquo;s candor.&ldquo;You can run from a problem and hope it doesn&rsquo;t catch you from behind,&rdquo; says Boswell, &ldquo;or you can face it head on. Neither method is necessarily better although the latter has the advantage of sounding noble while the former probably has a better won-lost record. Ciccarelli has decided to stay and try to restore his reputation.&rdquo;How much Dino succeeds in this regard will depend on his deportment in 1990-91. He knows for sure trips around the league will hardly be a joyride.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to leave Washington,&rdquo; says Ciccarelli. &ldquo;I like it here and I&rsquo;m involved with the community.&ldquo;Right now I can&rsquo;t be concerned about everybody&rsquo;s idea of what happened. I know the truth and my wife knows.&rdquo;The Capitals&rsquo; save-the-fans campaign has been masterminded by club marketing director Lew Sturdier.&ldquo;One woman absolutely did not want to talk with him,&rdquo; says Sturdier, &ldquo;butthen she thought about it and finally changed her mind. After hearing him out, she decided to buy tickets. A lot of people were surprised that he&rsquo;d spend an hour on the phone with them.&rdquo;Talking to Dino, I&rsquo;m convinced he is both penitent and determined to take the straight and narrow path.Others are not so sure. I asked Rick Greenberg, a reporter for Washington&rsquo;s prestigious Regardie&rsquo;s magazine, a monthly on business and politics, about it. Greenberg is writing a piece on the Caps&rsquo; damage control efforts. Does he believe in Dino&rsquo;s phone-a-thon?&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a combination of being pragmatic; trying to save his job and at the same time being heartfelt-genuine,&rdquo; says Greenberg. &ldquo;But who knows for sure? I&rsquo;ll never know.&rdquo;The Caps will know soon enough when the starting gate lifts on the new season. Poile hopes the fans focus on players such as playoff hero John Druce and the fabulous run through the Patrick Division.&ldquo;Everybody makes mistakes,&rdquo; Ciccarelli says, &ldquo;but as pro athletes we&rsquo;re different. People look up to us and when we do wrong the incident becomes highly-publicized.&ldquo;As far as I&rsquo;m concerned, it&rsquo;s all behind me.&rdquo; &#9632;

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CICCARELLI PUTS IMAGE ON THE (PHONE) LINE

Oct. 1, 1953: New York Rangers&rsquo; right winger Wally Hergesnetmer set an All-Star record for the fastest two goals from the start of the game, scoring twice within 5:25 of the opening face-off as the NHL All-Stars defeated the defending Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens 3-1. Detroit Red Wings&rsquo; goalie Terry Sawchuk got the win for the NHL stars.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0009-021001/5744018-1-eng-US/f0009-022.jpg" title="f0009-02" width="625" height="412"><figcaption class="caption-body">Wally Hergesheimer</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0009-02

FLASHBACK

<h2>ISLANDERS</h2>Defenseman Richard Pilon, whose career was placed in doubt last season due to an eye injury, has been given the go-ahead to resume playing. Dr. Mark J. Kupersmith, a New York-based neuro-opthalmologist, cited improvement in Pilon&rsquo;s right eye, which was severely damaged when he was struck by a shot from Detroit&rsquo;s Brent Fedyk last Nov. 4. The doctor also said Pilon has recovered full peripheral vision. Pilon, who spent the summer doing exercises and agility drills to strengthen his depth perception, will wear protective goggles. Meanwhile, he made a good impression on management early in training camp. &ldquo;He played just like I expected, like he couldn&rsquo;t wait to come out of the chute,&rdquo; GM Bill Torrey said.. Right winger Brad Dalgamo, attempting a comeback after having retired at the end of training camp last year, lost two teeth and suffered a swollen lip when he was crunched by a high stick from defenseman Dean Chynoweth on the first day of camp. Dalgamo believed it was deliberate&mdash;though Chynoweth profusely apologized at the team&rsquo;s hotel that night&mdash;but did not think it was an effort to test his mettle. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t doubt that in the future, guys will be testing me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m more than capable of handling that this year.&rdquo;<h2>FLYERS</h2>Second-round draft pick (25th overall) Chris Simon was scheduled to undergo arthroscopic surgery on his left shoulder to have damage to his rotator cuff repaired. The left winger was expected to miss at least one month&hellip;Another second-round pick, Terran Sandwith (42nd overall), was held out of contact drills due to a blood disorder involving his platelet count. Doctors ruled out anything serious&hellip;Ken Wregget decided not to play out his option. Wregget&rsquo;s agent, Rick Curran, said the goaltender might go to arbitration. Wregget receives a $250,000-per-year salary. Three other Flyers&mdash;-Craig Berube, Terry Carkner and Jeff Harding, filed their option-year papers.<h2>CAPITALS</h2>Mike Richard, the leading scorer for the Caps&rsquo; farm team in Baltimore (AHL) last season, has decided to play in Switzerland this season. A free agent with compensation, Richard has been a scorer at the AHL level, but didn&rsquo;t feel he fit into the team&rsquo;s plan-s&hellip;Right winger Peter Bondra, who came over from Kosice of the Czechoslovakian Elite League, was impressive early in training camp, but GM David Poile said the NHL office had rejected Bondra&rsquo;s contract with the Capitals. Like many of the Czechoslovakian players coming to the NHL, Bondra is still under contract at home. The Capitals remain optimistic that a deal can be worked at some point this year and that Bondra will be allowed to play.<h2>RANGERS</h2>Left winger John Ogrodnick, who had been involved in a bitter contract dispute with management, agreed to terms on a new contract Sept. 13. Terms were not announced&hellip;Coach Roger Neilson called left winger Ric Bennett &ldquo;the biggest unknown&rdquo; in camp. &ldquo;Bennett was hurt when he came to us last March and he just hasn&rsquo;t had a chance to show what he can do,&rdquo; said Neilson. &ldquo;His knee has responded well and, at 6-3, 215, he could be a big plus if he can find a role to fill.&rdquo;&hellip;Neilson admitted the Rangers&rsquo; have some interest in Edmonton tough guy Dave Brown, who has asked the Oilers to trade him to an east coast team. &ldquo;I definitely can find a place for him on my team if that&rsquo;s the case,&rdquo; the Ranger coach said&hellip;GM Neil Smith said James Patrick, Jan Erixon, Mark Hardy, Mike Richter and Darren Turcotte all requested their option papers by the Sept. 10 deadline but believed only Hardy and Erixon will actually play out their options.<h2>PENGUINS</h2>All of the Penguins reported for the opening of training camp but defenseman Paul Coffey, who is seeking a contract similar to those signed by St. Louis&rsquo; Scott Stevens and Boston&rsquo;s Ray Bourque, alluded to the possibility of walking out if talks did not progress, but planned to play in the team&rsquo;s first exhibition games. &ldquo;The pay scale is right there,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not as if we&rsquo;re asking for something completely off the wall.&rdquo; Coffey reportedly turned down an offer worth $5.4 million over five years&hellip;Center Mario Lemieux, who had back surgery in July, did not participate in the three-day tournament at the start of camp, but said he hopes to play in at least a few exhibition games and be ready for the regular-season opener Oct. 5 in Washington.<h2>DEVILS</h2>Center Laurie Boschman, unhappy in Winnipeg, was acquired by the Devils thanks to Bob Brooke&rsquo;s bitter contract dispute with GM Lou Lamoriello. Brooke rejected a two-year contract offer (he wanted a three-year deal) and threatened to skip training camp, so Lamoriello sent him to Winnipeg in a straight one-for-one swap. If Brooke retires without reporting, as he&rsquo;s indicated he will, the Jets will receive one draft choice from the Devils in place of Brooke. That pick (fifth or sixth round in 1991) would be determined by Boschman&rsquo;s performance this season&hellip;Slovak rookie left winger Zdeno Ciger, speaking through interpreter Peter Stastny, about his first NHL training camp: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s been a combination of pressure and excitement. I just have to continue working hard, collecting experience so I can read the play and style here. At home I knew what was needed to make the team and be successful. Here it&rsquo;s completely new.&rdquo; &#9632;

PILON GIVEN GREEN LIGHT

<div class="byline">BY WALT MacPEEK</div>Rob Zamuner has made a career out of proving people wrong.A junior hockey walk-on who was passed over in the NHL&rsquo;s 1988 entry draft&mdash;the first year he was eligible&mdash;Zamuner scored 44 goals for the New York Rangers&rsquo; affiliate in Flint (1HL) last season, but the Rangers didn&rsquo;t call him up for the playoffs.&ldquo;I was a little disappointed that I didn&rsquo;t come up at the end of the season,&rdquo; said Zamuner, the Rangers&rsquo; third-round pick (45th overall) in 1989. &ldquo;So I&rsquo;m trying to show them that maybe I should have been called up.&rdquo;In his first four scrimmage games at training camp in Glens Falls, N.Y., all Zamuner did to make his case was collect 10 goals and five assists.&ldquo;For our first week, Zamuner has been the surprise of camp,&rdquo; said coach Roger Neilson. &ldquo;Although I guess we shouldn&rsquo;t really call him that because he played for one of our coaches (Ron Smith) for a year in junior hockey at Guelph (OHL), he played well in camp last year and had an oustanding first pro season.&rdquo;Considered a clever player with good hands but not enough speed, Zamuner demonstrated a marked improvement in skating acceleration early in camp.&ldquo;Some players just stop improving at 18 or 19,&rdquo; said Neilson. &ldquo;Zamuner appears to be one of those who just keeps getting better and better.&rdquo;With four holdovers&mdash;Bernie Nicholls, Kelly Kisio, Darren Turcotte and Mark Janssens&mdash;at center, however, the 6-foot-1, 205-pound native of Oakville, Ont., may be in the wrong place at the wrong time.&ldquo;I think Examiner (Zamuner&rsquo;s new nickname) is a center,&rdquo; said Neilson. &ldquo;It is true the one, biggest worry I have about our team is that we don&rsquo;t have enough goal scoring from our wings and, at some point, if Rob continues to do well, you have to sort of make a place for him.&ldquo;Maybe, if he keeps going and other things don&rsquo;t work out, we&rsquo;d consider (shifting him to left wing), but I like our depth at center with the top four, plus Kevin Miller, Zamuner and Brian McReynolds.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-011484/5744073-1-eng-US/f0010-012.jpg" title="f0010-01" width="556" height="652"><figcaption class="caption-body">Roger Neilson is trying to find room for Rob Zamuner.</figcaption></div>Although it was not through any pre-planning, Zamuner&rsquo;s first pro season provided ample preparation if Neilson does decide to look at him on the wing during the pre-season schedule.According to Zamuner, center was his third position last year at Flint under coach Paul Theriault.&ldquo;In the IHL, each team only dressed ten forwards,&rdquo; Zamuner said, &ldquo;and so we had three lines and an extra player. Coach Theriault always made me the extra player. It seemed a little strange to me but I was a rookie and so I just did what I was told.&ldquo;After I started to score some goals, I got a little frustrated about moving from left wing to right wing to center ana not playing on a regular line and so I finally asked him about it. He just said he liked me as an extra player&hellip;and that was it.&rdquo;In June of 1988, Zamuner and his family went to the Montreal Forum to watch the NHL entry draft. It turned out to be a major disappointment for the player rated 28th by the NHL&rsquo;s Central Scouting Bureau, as his name wasn&rsquo;t called.&ldquo;That was frustrating and embarrassing,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t the greatest day in my life but, when I need a little extra boost sometimes, I think back about that and it gets me going, makes me more determined.&rdquo;Ranger assistant Smith isn&rsquo;t sure why so many people overlooked Zamuner as a teenager.&ldquo;He wasn&rsquo;t even drafted by any OHL teams; he was a walk-on at Guelph,&rdquo; said Smith.&ldquo;I think part of it was his skating style, which he has refined a lot over the last two years. Rob had a wide track and looked a little awkward. His shoulders would move in a kind of herky-jerky way and, even though he wasn&rsquo;t a bad skater, maybe he looked like one.&rdquo;Zamuner was always aware that his skating speed was questioned.&ldquo;During the summer, I went to a power skating school and I kept working on it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;In the process, my legs began to feel a lot stronger.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0010-01

‘EXAMINER’ GETTING GOOD, LONG LOOK

<div class="byline">BY WAYNE FISH</div>Few Philadelphia hockey fans thought they would live to see the day when their Flyers would pay someone a million dollars a season.Then came Friday, Sept. 14, when not one but two players hit the sevenfigure jackpot.Ron Hextali and Rick Tocchet became the Flyers&rsquo; first millionaires on the same afternoon, although they reached the top of the financial summit by entirely different routes.Hextail, agoalie, needed more than a year to convince the Flyers he was worth as much as any front-five player makes, a contention weakened by his dismal showing last year. Plagued by an assortment of injuries he played in just eight games, posting a 4-2-1 record and a 4.15 goals-against average.Tocchet, on the other hand, didn&rsquo;t have to say much after two excellent seasons, topped off by last year&rsquo;s 96-point effort, a career high. The Flyers say they&rsquo;re the ones who initiated proceedings on a renegotiated contract.Talks between the players&rsquo; agent, Steve Mountain, and Flyers&rsquo; general manager Russ Farwell dragged on right up until hours before the team&rsquo;s pre-season opener against the New Jersey Devils.Formal announcement of the deals actually came after the first period of the game at the Spectrum.Hextail, who was in the middle of an eight-year contract that paid him $500,000 per year, received a new five-year deal, according to a source in the Flyers&rsquo; organization.The base salary is in the $700,000 range but also includes a number of incentive clauses that could bring in well over a million per year.The incentives include the number of games Hextall wins, post-season awards and how far the Flyers advance in the playoffs.Tocchet&rsquo;s deal is not so complex. The right winger goes from the $250,000 contract on which had one year plus an option remaining, to a five-year pact that starts at about $750,000 base pay and winds up at $1.1 million in the final year.&ldquo;Both players are among the best in the NHL at their positions and their new contracts reflect that,&rdquo; Farwell said. &ldquo;They are two of the leaders on this team and they will be a big part of our effort to re-establish the Flyers among the elite teams in the National Hockey League.&rdquo;Hextail, 26, who averaged 64 games-played in his first three seasons before last year&rsquo;s injury woes, fired the first shot in his contract feud last year when he claimed his old pact was invalid.This time he said there will be no repeat performance.&ldquo;I have a contract, I understand the terms of it and I&rsquo;m going to play by it.&rdquo;Tocchet, also 26, established himself as one of the league&rsquo;s premier right wingers last year. The Flyers apparently wanted to get his name on the dotted line before the current bigmoney epidemic around the league got any worse.In turn, Tocchet said he will continue to do the things for the Flyers that he does best.&ldquo;I think everybody knows what kind of player Rick Tocchet is. I&rsquo;m not going to be going end-to-end every night. I&rsquo;ve always said I&rsquo;m like a (Cam) Neely type of player.&ldquo;This is a great opportunity for me.&rdquo;Team president Jay Snider said he wasn&rsquo;t worried about any negative fallout toward other members of the team over the two lucrative contracts. He doesn&rsquo;t anticipate a stampede of players looking to renegotiate.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve always had an open door to listen to a player, an agent,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We would never slam the door on them at any time. If there were a reason we should redo a player, it would have to be a very compelling reason.&rdquo; &#9632;

TWO FRANCHISE PLAYERS SIGN ON DOTTED LINE

<div class="byline">BY MARK HERRMANN</div>Kevin Cheveldayoff has proven he&rsquo;s great with numbers having attained grades of 96 and 92 per cent in two math classes at the University of Saskatchewan this summer. Now, if he can solve the New York Islanders&rsquo; equation and somehow earn a spot on the roster, he may be afforded genius status.The 20-year-old defenseman entered training camp with at least 12 rearguards ahead of him on the team&rsquo;s depth chart. Adding to his obstacles, is the fact he&rsquo;s coming off a devastating knee injury sustained just six months after the Isles made him the 16th overall pick in the 1989 entry draft.Yet, it be would premature to count Cheveldayoff out. The Saskatoon native has a way with overcoming the odds.&ldquo;People said I&rsquo;d have trouble walking again,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They said I&rsquo;d probably have to use a cane.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0011-011346/5744128-1-eng-US/f0011-012.jpg" title="f0011-01" width="558" height="664"><figcaption class="caption-body">Kevin Cheveldayoff is a longshot to crack the lineup.</figcaption></div>Not only can he now walk unimpeded&mdash;following surgery, arduous rehabilitation and a half-season in the juniors and minors&mdash;he believes he is capable of taking a run at a job in the NHL. And nothing that happened during the first few days of the Isles&rsquo; camp dispelled that notion as his knee held up during a four-day scrimmage tournament.&ldquo;It feels so good, I can&rsquo;t describe it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s like having a new life.&ldquo;I know there are going to be a lot of people looking at me, wondering about my knee. But once I put my brace on, I feel just like a regular player.&rdquo;For some time it appeared he might spend the rest of his life as a former player after a collision along the boards Jan. 1, 1989. Then a standout for the Brandon Wheat Kings of the Western League, he and a Spokane Chiefs&rsquo; player were reaching for the puck when Cheveldayoff&rsquo;s knee buckled and twisted. The first diagnosis, tom anterior cruciate ligament, was bad enough. But a further examination revealed all four of his knee ligmaments were torn.Despite the severity of his injury, the Islanders and their doctors were supportive, Cheveldayoff said, adding he had personal motivation as well.&ldquo;My father had passed away and I had gone through some tough times then,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I had made a promise to him and a promise to myself that I was going to play pro hockey.&rdquo;Although his knee became swollen when he tried out for the Canadian national junior team last December, he considered it a triumph that he was able to return to the Brandon lineup on New Year&rsquo;s Eve&mdash;against Spokane. He collected five goals and 12 assists in 33 games for the Wheat Kings, then played four scoreless games for Springfield in the American League.Now, he and the Islanders are looking forward to the day when he can display the forceful body checking that once put a $700 dent in a supposedly impenetrable truck. A promotion-minded Brandon Chevrolet dealer had enlisted Cheveldayoff to demonstrate the truck&rsquo;s &ldquo;toughness&rdquo;by ramming into it. After one uneventful attempt, the director of the commercial suggested they try it again from a different angle. This time, the Chevy that plays defense proved tougher.&ldquo;They decided to use the first take,&rdquo; he said. &#9632;

f0011-01

DENTED ‘CHEVY’ TRYING TO OVERCOME ODDS

<div class="byline">BY RICH CHERE</div>Paul Ysebaert was ready to pack his bags and head for Europe. The contract offers were certainly lucrative enough.But money wasn&rsquo;t Ysebaert&rsquo;s priority. The American League&rsquo;s Most Valuable Player and leading scorer last season simply wanted a shot at playing in the NHL.Less than one week before the opening of training camp, the New Jersey Devils convinced Ysebaert he would finally get his opportunity.With a new multi-year contract worth just less than $170,000 per season, the 24-year-old forward began the difficult task of earning a spot on the Devils&rsquo; veteran roster.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s taken a long time and I guess that&rsquo;s the way business works,&rdquo; said Ysebaert, who played out his option and became a free agent after scoring 53 goals and 105 points tor Utica (AHL) last season. &ldquo;From the word &lsquo;go&rsquo; I was ready to go elsewhere if I didn&rsquo;t get the contract that felt good to me. At the end of last year I was very unhappy. I was ready to sit out or go play in San Diego (for an independent team in the International League). I turned down contracts in Europe because I wanted to play in the NHL and we finally worked out a deal that was agreeable to both sides.&rdquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad it&rsquo;s settled,&rdquo; said Devils&rsquo; general manager Lou Lamoriel-lo. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s something that lingered on.&rdquo;Ysebaert was ready to sign with another NHL club, but no one was willing to pay the price. Since the Devils offered him between $145,000 and $170,000, the compensation for signing Ysebaert was a second and third-round draft choice.&ldquo;I thought maybe free agency would work to my advantage, but it certainly doesn&rsquo;t. I think that&rsquo;s a rule that has to be looked at as far as the players are concerned,&rdquo; Ysebaert said.&ldquo;I have the same compensation as a player like Bryan Trottier, who played (1,123) games in the NHL.&rdquo;Compensation is determined on the basis of what NHL salary is offered to a player by the club.&ldquo;No team wanted to take a chance on it, for one reason or another. The better thing to do would be to trade for me, but after my conversations with Lou, he didn&rsquo;t want to do that.&rdquo;Lamoriello, who rebuffed trade requests from Jon Morris a year ago, refused to give up a young talent like Ysebaert. Knowing that other teams would balk at signing the 6-foot-1, 190-pound native of Sarnia, Ont., Lamoriello simply waited.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-011447/5744159-1-eng-US/f0012-012.jpg" title="f0012-01" width="572" height="1024"><figcaption class="caption-body">Paul Ysebaert was last season&rsquo;s American League MVP.</figcaption></div>It was Lamoriello who questioned Ysebaert&rsquo;s commitment to playing defense last season, although the GM knew the former Bowling Green star had the ability. Despite Ysebaert&rsquo;s strong season at Utica, he received only a brief, five-game call-up from the minors while Morris played 20 games for the Devils.Lamoriello now feels Ysebaert may be ready to play in the NHL.&ldquo;Paul finished strong last year,&rdquo; Lamoriello said. &ldquo;His defensive game improved.&rdquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m confident as a hockey player in my abilities,&rdquo; Ysebaert said. &ldquo;I think I proved it on the ice last year.&rdquo;Not long ago Ysebaert felt some bitterness toward the Devils, but his feelings have changed.&ldquo;I think they changed for the better,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you had asked me at the end of last year I&rsquo;d have said a few different things. Now it&rsquo;s changed for the better. I&rsquo;ve talked to Lou one-on-one more this year than I had in three years.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a good feeling to come back and know I&rsquo;m going to have a legitimate shot this year.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0012-01

PERSEVERANCE PAYING OFF FOR YSEBAERT

<div class="byline">BY DAVE MOLINARI</div>Training-camp tryouts are, for the most part, hopeless souls chasing a dream. Oh, sure, teams turn up an occasional free-agent nugget now and then, but most players who go to camp without a contract leave the same way a short time later.Of course, most of those players don&rsquo;t have 119 games in the NHL, the way this guy does. And most lack his soft hands and sharp mind. And even fewer can claim to have one of hockey&rsquo;s most gifted players for a little brother.Alain Lemieux, Mario&rsquo;s older brother, can. His surname might even have played a role in getting him a tryout with the Penguins this fall; surely, it didn&rsquo;t hurt. But once camp began, it was up to Alain Lemieux to earn the pro contract he so badly wants.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0013-011359/5744190-1-eng-US/f0013-012.jpg" title="f0013-01" width="548" height="656"><figcaption class="caption-body">Mario Lemieux thinks his brother can help Pittsburgh.</figcaption></div>Lemieux, St. Louis&rsquo; fifth-round draft choice in 1980, played for the Blues, Quebec Nordiques and Pittsburgh before heading to Finland during the 1988-89 season. The center has been out of the game for over a year and so, at age 29, faces the dual challenge of re-honing his skills while trying to impress Pittsburgh&rsquo;s management.Still, all concerned believe that sitting out the 1989-90 season won&rsquo;t necessarily be that much of an impediment to his comeback.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not tough if you&rsquo;re determined to make it back into professional hockey,&rdquo; Pittsburgh general manager Craig Patrick said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not tough if you&rsquo;ve got the determination and have spent some time preparing for it.&rdquo;Lemieux thinks that he is prepared. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been working real hard this summer and I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s that much pressure on me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll just come down and see what happens.&rdquo;Lemieux said he was talked into trying a comeback by Gilles Meloche, the Penguins&rsquo; Quebec scout and goaltending consultant.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s been working out for the last two or three months,&rdquo; Mario Lemieux said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s in great shape. He&rsquo;s in the best shape he&rsquo;s ever been in.&rdquo;Alain Lemieux&rsquo;s greatest assets are his hands. He used them to produce 142points in 72 games with Chicoutimi in 1979-80, 166 in 69 games for Trois-Rivieres the next season.His most productive season as a professional was 1986-87, when he had 41 goals and 56 assists in 72 games with the Baltimore Skipjacks of the American League.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s got a lot of talent with the puck,&rdquo; Mario Lemieux said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a good player with the puck and if he can play good defense, I think he&rsquo;s got a good chance.&rdquo;The Penguins&rsquo; depth chart at center is crowded, however, even with just one Lemieux on it. John Cullen, Barry Pederson, Bryan Trottier and Randy Gilhen also report for work there, and new coach Bob Johnson was tinkering with the idea of having right wingers such as Rob Brown and Mark Recchi move to the middle.Alain Lemieux has no delusions about moving into a prominent role&mdash;or even the NHL&mdash;immediately. He made it clear he would accept an assignment to Pittsburgh&rsquo;s Muskegon farm team, would go anywhere just to get back into pro hockey.His little brother, however, has a more lofty objective. He likes to think it&rsquo;s possible he and Alain will again be teammates sometime in the near future.&ldquo;I think he can still play in this league,&rdquo; Mario Lemieux said. &ldquo;I think he can help this team.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0013-01

BIG BROTHER’S WATCHING: AND WANTS TO PLAY

<div class="byline">BY DAVE SELL</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0014-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-011434/5744221-1-eng-US/f0014-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Kevin Hatcher is coming off an all-star season and is expected to be a leader on the Caps&rsquo; defense. Now he wants to be paid accordingly.</figcaption></div>The Washington Capitals began training camp at the Olympic Centre in Lake Placid, N.Y., Sept. 8, but not everything was as calm and smooth as the town&rsquo;s name suggests.Two key players&mdash;goalie Don Beaupre and defenseman Kevin Hatcher&mdash;were AWOL because of contract problems. Beaupre was an unsigned free-agent, while Hatcher was holding out demanding his contract be renegotiated.Of the two, the Hatcher situation had a sharper edge and a somewhat ironic twist.When Scott Stevens left the Caps and signed his mega-deal (four years, $5.1 million) with the St. Louis Blues, many of the league&rsquo;s top defensemen, including Hatcher, began re-evaluating their contract situations. And now that Stevens is gone, the Caps need Hatcher&rsquo;s valuable services more than ever.But, as of mid-September, his status with the team was very much in doubt as general manager David Poile and Hatcher&rsquo;s new agent, Ron Salcer, weren&rsquo;t even talking.&ldquo;No one is talking to anyone,&rdquo; Hatcher said. &ldquo;I want to play hockey, and if they don&rsquo;t want to start paying me, then they should give me a chance to go somewhere else.&rdquo;Hatcher, who turned 24 Sept. 9, has two years plus an option year left on his contract, which paid him $185,000 (U.S.) last season and would pay him $200,000 (U.S.) this year.The Detroit native feels he deserves a raise after coming off his best NHL season. In his fifth year in the big leagues in 1989-90, he had 54 points in 80 games and was rock solid on defense. He emerged as the team&rsquo;s top rearguard when captain Rod Langway and Stevens went down with injuries last December. And his being named to the Wales Conference All-Star team served to reinforce his new status as one of the top defensemen in the game.Now he wants to be paid accordingly.&ldquo;Kevin is grossly underpaid,&rdquo; said Salcer. &ldquo;The whole team is notoriously underpaid.&rdquo;Poile said Hatcher can make more than $200,000 with bonuses this season, and noted Hatcher&rsquo;s current deal has already been renegotiated twice. The Caps&rsquo; GM said he&rsquo;s willing to discuss giving Hatcher a raise, but only when the blueliner leaves his parents home in Detroit and shows up in Lake Placid.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not going to negotiate with Ron Salcer until Kevin is in training camp,&rdquo; Poile said. &ldquo;This is very disappointing, to say the least. Kevin has a great opportunity this season to step out of the shadow of players like Rod Langway and Scott Stevens.&rdquo;As the team was departing for Lake Placid, Poile had not yet taken the situation to owner Abe Pollin, but Pollin clearly expressed his support for the position taken by his GM.&ldquo;Contracts should be considered an obligation,&rdquo; Pollin said. &ldquo;If a player feels strongly that he is underpaid, then the way to get us the message is certainly not by saying: &lsquo;I&rsquo;m not going to come to camp.&rsquo; If he is not going to come to camp, then I guarantee I won&rsquo;t talk to him.&rdquo;Poile and Beaupre&rsquo;s agent, Ron Simon, are talking but had a difference of opinion of almost $100,000 when camp started. Beaupre, who was biding his time in Minneapolis, carried the goaltending load for most of last year, before the Capitals acquired Mike Liut in March.Beaupre finished the season with a 23-18-5 record and a 3.22 goals-against average, then went 4-3 in the playoffs with a 2.69 GAA. For his effort, he received a base salary of $225,000.Simon was waiting to see what some other goalies in the league signed for as they go into their option years before advising his client to come to terms. Simon said Liut&rsquo;s salary of $455,000 is a &ldquo;major factor,&rdquo; and wants a bonus clause based on games played that would bring Beaupre&rsquo;s income close to that of Liut if Beaupre plays more games during the season.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to get locked into a contract under the old pay structure,&rdquo; Beaupre said. &#9632;

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TRAINING CAMP RIPPLE FAST BECOMING A WAVE

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0015-011329/5744252-1-eng-US/f0015-012.jpg" title="f0015-01" width="507" height="625"><figcaption class="caption-body">STEVE DRYDEN</figcaption></div>The Toronto Maple Leafs are a better organization for Harold Ballard&rsquo;s death, but the full impact of his passing will not immediately be felt on the ice.His influence on the Leafs&rsquo; fortunes was always greater in terms of public perception than actual performance.Certainly, he had an effect at the playing level&mdash;most prominently in choosing coaches and captains, his two obsessions. But for the most part, obstacles he instinctively erected for his general managers&mdash;such as Gerry McNamara and Gord Stellick&mdash;could be overcome with some creative stickhandling.His death, then, does not so much lift a cloud from over the Gardens as remove an iron curtain (Ballard, an avowed anti-communist, would love this choice of words) that people had to plow through periodically.&ldquo;It used to be (we would say), &lsquo;This is what we think is best for the team,&rsquo;&rdquo; Bob Stellick recalls. &ldquo;&lsquo;How can we present it to Mr. Ballard in such a manner that he will think it&rsquo;s best for the team.&rsquo;&rdquo;Stellick is the Leafs&rsquo; director of business operations and communications. He worked five years for Ballard and remembers the bombastic owner with ambivalence. He admired his spirit but not the spite with which he treated people&mdash;among them Gord Stellick, Bob&rsquo;s brother. Gord felt compelled to resign as GM (with dignity intact) in 1989 because Ballard made life so miserable for him.It&rsquo;s difficult enough running an NHL team without being hamstrung by a meddlesome owner.Current GM Floyd Smith faces no such hurdles. He has chairman of the board Don Giffin&rsquo;s clearance to bring the Leafs into the 1990s. The modernization of the Maple Leafs is under way.There is widespread evidence of a new era unfolding. It began before Ballard&rsquo;s death with the ordering of championship banners. Their absence had come to symbolize what people viewed as Ballard&rsquo;s disregard for the Maple Leafs&rsquo; celebrated past. That sentiment was not entirely accurate. The Leafs may not have had a room set aside for retired players, but they did have room on the payroll&mdash;witness the hiring of scouts Johnny Bower, Dick Duff, George Arm-strong and Smith, himself.All of the changes so far have been off the ice. (A matter of consternation for those who believe Smith should have been more active in sprucing up his team during the summer.)The most visible are renovations at the Gardens. The team dressing room has been enlarged and improved with blue-grey carpeting emblazoned with two Maple Leafs. An upgraded weight room has been added in the basement of the Hot Stove Lounge. Player access is through a tunnel from the dressing room.In the past, the only place Toronto tunneled was to the NHL basement.Where the Leafs have improved most importantly is in the quality of office personnel. Tom Watt, NHL coach of the year in 1982, has replaced Garry Lariviere as head coach Doug Carpenter&rsquo;s top assistant. Pierre Dorion, onetime head of the Central Scouting Bureau, has come on board as chief Leaf scout&mdash;freeing Smith up from doing double duty.Frank Anzalone, a controversial college coach, takes over from ex-NHLer Paul Gardner as head coach of the Newmarket Saints. Bill Purcell will act as his assistant, the first time Toronto has hired a fulltimer in that role at the minor-league level.Strange as it may seem, the addition of trainer-therapist Chris Broadhurst is also viewed as a tremendous step forward by the Leafs. That&rsquo;s because he replaced Guy Kinnear, whose principle qualification for the head trainer&rsquo;s job was his close relationship with Ballard. Insiders often joked he was the No. 2 man in the organization.The facelift is largely complete, the cosmetic surgery all but done. Now the Leafs must go out and prove they don&rsquo;t need heart surgery.Talent is not the problem. There seems an abundance except, of course, in goal. That should be expected. No team has had more success than Toronto with its top picks. Excluding the 1989 and 1990 entry drafts, not since 1969 has the Leafs&rsquo; first pick (the never-heard-from Doug Brindley) not made the NHL. That&rsquo;s 19 straight years.Yet, a winning formula has eluded Toronto. So much so that a .500 record last year was considered a triumph. In 1989-90, the Leafs overwhelmed teams through sheer volume of goals. And were overwhelmed themselves through sheer volume of goals. Toronto scored the third-highest total of goals (337) in the league and gave up the third-highest (358).It made for an interesting balance, but the Leafs would be well-served to strike a better balance in 1990-91, their first in nearly 20 years without Harold Ballard at the helm. &#9632;

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HERE’S HOW DEATH OF BALLARD HAS HELPED TEAM

A defenseman for the Rangers, St. Louis Blues and Quebec Nordiques between 1978-79 and &rsquo;84-85, Andre Dore. 32, is an investment broker working in New York and living in Stamford, Ct. The team he remembers the most was the 1981-82 Rangers. &ldquo;We had a very good team and wound up losing to the New York Islanders in the playoffs. But it was just a very fun season.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0015-02937/5744283-1-eng-US/f0015-022.jpg" title="f0015-02" width="584" height="401"><figcaption class="caption-body">Andre Dore</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0015-02

THEN & NOW

<h2>BRUINS</h2>Trying to make it back after 11 left knee operations, defenseman Gord Kluzak skated lightly every other day in camp. He said he&rsquo;ll retire if he isn&rsquo;t able to play by the end of October, but is cautiously optimistic he&rsquo;ll play again&hellip;Defenseman Michael Thelven, coming back from right knee surgery, was also taking a cautious approach and expressing optimism he&rsquo;ll be okay&hellip;Veteran right winger Dave Christian is being tried on the left side of the Craig Janney and Cam Neely line&hellip;The Bruins, with six goalies under contract, will give rookie Norm Foster a long look in camp&hellip;The longshot surprises early in camp were Wisconsin-Stevens Point two-time NCAA Div. III scoring champ, center Ralph Barahona, and University of New Hampshire grad, left winger Jeff Lazaro&hellip;Invited to try out, ex-Montreal Canadien Kent Carlson was a noshow&hellip;Defenseman Glen Wesley is playing out his option, while agents for Andy Moog and Janney were talking to GM Harry Sinden about renegotiated contracts.<h2>CANADIENS</h2>The line of Denis Savard, Stephane Richer and Shayne Corson clicked immediately in a 7-1 win over the out-classed AIK club in Stockholm Sept. 10 and a 5-3 victory over a merged squad of two Soviet first-division teams in Leningrad Sept. 12. Richer had a pair of goals in the opener and a single in the second; Savard had two goals and two assists in the second game&hellip;The Habs almost wound up wearing those forgettable orange, black and white league sweaters&mdash;the one used at the All Star-Game&mdash;on their European swing. But after dozens of calls from angry protestors, the league relented and allowed the team to wear its classic red, white and blue jerseys&hellip;Gerald Diduck, acquired by Montreal for Craig Ludwig Sept. 4, was happy to become a Hab. He wasn&rsquo;t happy with the way it happened. Diduck and agent Bob Thornton had been negotiating with the New York Islanders most of the summer. They finalized the deal Sept. 4 and an hour later, Diduck found out he was traded&hellip;You will need a program to know who&rsquo;s who on the Habs this season. Denis Savard was given No. 18 by sophomore defenseman Mathieu Schneider. Schneider will wear No. 8 this season, left vacant when Steve Martinson was released. Three youngsters hoping to win regular spots with the Habs have grabbed the numbers of departed veterans. Martin Desjardins has taken Mats Naslund&rsquo;s No. 26 and center Andrew Cassels has been wearing Bobby Smith&rsquo;s old No. 15. Lyle Odelein has inherited Chris Chelios&rsquo; No. 24. It&rsquo;s expected Diduck will wear No. 5, left vacant since Rick Green left to play in Italy two years ago.<h2>SABRES</h2>Center Pierre Turgeon chose not to play out his option and instead agreed to a multi-year deal with the Sabres Sept. 11. Terms were not disclosed, but it&rsquo;s been reported Turgeon signed for about $2.5 million over four years. There are also said to be some innovative bonus situations for Turgeon that extend over the life of the agreement. Sabres&rsquo; GM Gerry Meehan acknowledged there was a time when Turgeon was contemplating playing out his option but that the two parties then spent three days in intense negotiations to come to a basis for an agreement&hellip;Wingers Rick Vaive and Dave Andreychuk also came to terms as training camp began. It&rsquo;s believed both men signed for a year plus an option. Vaive, 31, could have been a free agent without compensation had he played out his option this season. Andreychuk said he never seriously considered playing out his option-&hellip;Vaive injured his knee on the day his agreement was announced and may miss all of training camp. The injury&mdash;believed to be a pinched cartilage&mdash;likely will not require surgery.<h2>WHALERS</h2>Although GM Ed Johnston continued to work feverishly on contracts, he had no fewer than a dozen Whalers and another handful of minor-leaguers signing intentions to play out their options by the Sept. 10 deadline. Dave Babych, at $300,000, Ray Ferraro, at $205,000, Brad Shaw, voted best defenseman last season and at $ 140,000, were part of a long list headed by Ron Francis-&hellip;The Whalers released Andre Lacroix as their radio analyst. The club wanted Lacroix, not afraid to give his opinion, to be part of a three-man rotation. He refused. Garry Swain and Tom Rowe will split the job. Lacroix wasn&rsquo;t pleased: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not like I&rsquo;m senile. I&rsquo;m not an old man.&rdquo;<h2>NORDIQUES</h2>Right winger Tony McKegney and center Tony Hrkac were the two most impressive players early in camp. The Nords began training Sept. 7 at Laval University in Ste-Foy&hellip;Right winger Guy Lafleur couldn&rsquo;t get over the demanding three-hour sessions the players had to go through during the first phase of training camp. &ldquo;For a few moments, I thought about quitting,&rdquo; joked Lafleur. &ldquo;But after a little while, I got my wind back and then it was back to business.&rdquo;&hellip;Defenseman Stephane Guerard, who split last season between Halifax of the American League and Quebec, signed a three-year deal Sept. 11. Terms were not announced&hellip;Daniel Bouchard, who underwent brain surgery last march to remove a tumor, is reportedly interested in working with the Nords as a goaltending coach. &#9632;

KLUZAK SETS DEADLINE FOR KNEE

<div class="byline">BY JEFF JACOBS</div>First came Iron Man.Now comes Rust Man.Doug Jarvis played an NHL record 962 consecutive games over 12 years before retiring as a Hartford Whaler in 1987.Now, along comes free-agent tryout Paul Cyr, resurfacing at the Whalers&rsquo; training camp for perhaps his last shot at the NHL.Cyr, who has undergone two major knee operations since 1988, has missed 159 successive games. The NHL doesn&rsquo;t keep tabs on such records, but one would be hard pressed to find an active player missing in action any longer.Cyr hasn&rsquo;t played since opening night in 1988. He was wearing New York Rangers&rsquo; blue and killing a penalty when he lined Steve Thomas up for a bodycheck.Thomas, instead, ended up coming over the top of Cyr. And Cyr? He landed flat on his back. He found his right foot under his armpit. Unless you&rsquo;re a circus contortionist, that&rsquo;s not a healthy thing.Cyr&rsquo;s leg was a mess. So, too, was his NHL career. He underwent surgery to repair serious ligament damage and battled 10 long months of rehabilitation. When he began to skate again, he found he could go straight and cut left.&ldquo;But there was so much rotation in my leg, I couldn&rsquo;t go right,&rdquo; Cyr said. &ldquo;They had to do another operation where they re-routed three muscles from behind my knee to the front. There went another eight months of rehab.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-011212/5744338-1-eng-US/f0016-012.jpg" title="f0016-01" width="568" height="664"><figcaption class="caption-body">Paul Cyr was a first-round draft pick by Buffalo in 1982.</figcaption></div>Cyr is lett with a 10-inch vertical scar running down his leg. Doctors removed part of his kneecap and inserted two screws and a pin. But he says his knee is stable, 100 percent improved now. No worries, Cyr maintains.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s been a tough road,&rdquo; Cyr, 26, said. &ldquo;The Rangers wrote me off. Not only didn&rsquo;t they offer me another contract, they told me they were releasing me way back in February. If I was a GM, I wouldn&rsquo;t be jumping to give me a contract yet, either.&rdquo;Bill Watters is Cyr&rsquo;s agent. He&rsquo;s Whalers&rsquo; general manager Eddie Johnston&rsquo;s consultant, too. A few other tryout offers came, but a trip to Hartford was arranged. &ldquo;Bill told me Eddie will give me a fair shot,&rdquo; Cyr said.The doctors say he&rsquo;s healthy. And if he gets into playing condition, he won&rsquo;t be a long shot. He&rsquo;s got the ability. And the toughness.But there are no fewer than 10 players vying for four or five left wing spots. One needn&rsquo;t be a mathematician to figure out Cyr is facing a tough road.&ldquo;I told him not to worry about making the team in one or two days,&rdquo; coach Rick Ley said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll get a fair shot. When you&rsquo;re off as long as he was, you&rsquo;re going to be rusty and you&rsquo;re going to have some apprehensions. I went through the same thing as a player, so I think I&rsquo;ve got a grasp of the situation and what&rsquo;s going through his mind.&rdquo;Said Cyr: &ldquo;Rick told me he rushed back and that knee injury eventually was the end of his career. I really appreciate him giving me a little time. But I only know one way to play&mdash;all out.Cyr, sent to the Rangers Dec. 31, 1987 in a deal that brought a fifthround pick to Buffalo who turned out to be Alexander Mogilny, is better remembered for two other things. He was one of the six celebrated first-round picks (ninth overall in 1982) Scotty Bowman amassed as Sabres&rsquo; GM in 1982 and 1983. Cyr got as high as 22 goals in 1984-85 before settling into a checking role. He also was shot in the stomach in the Dominican Republic by bandits during a vacation with his wife Cheryl.&ldquo;I wish I was remembered for being a 50-goal scorer rather than getting shot by a guy yelling Spanish and demanding pesos,&rdquo; Cyr said. &#9632;

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RUST MAN COMETH IN SEARCH OF ROSTER SPOT

<div class="byline">BY KEVIN JOHNSTON</div>Pierre Page promised changes were in store when he was named general manager of the Quebec Nordiques during the offseason.He proved those weren&rsquo;t empty words by signing a handful of young players to &ldquo;new-concept&rdquo; contracts as training camp began.Page&rsquo;s new philosophy, which stresses team goals over personal goals, discourages selfish play by cutting back on personal bonus clauses. While it&rsquo;s hardly a revolutionary notion, implementing it on a team-wide basis&mdash;as is Page&rsquo;s intention&mdash;would be a bold step.Page said he was swayed in that direction after reviewing the team&rsquo;s existing deals.&ldquo;I just can&rsquo;t get over the personal bonuses handed out last season,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It baffles me that a team that finished so low had to dish out so much money for personal feats. It&rsquo;s not logical.&ldquo;Now that I&rsquo;m a general manager, I can finally do things my way.&rdquo;As head coach of the Minnesota North Stars last season, Page employed a similar system from behind the bench, but he didn&rsquo;t have free reign to put it into full use. Now he does.&ldquo;So I&rsquo;m going to work team-oriented clauses into all the contracts I negotiate,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The team comes first and that&rsquo;s the way things should be structured. It&rsquo;s the logical way.&rdquo;Page got his first positive sign when Hobey Baker Award winner Kip Miller finally came to terms Sept. 9, two days after camp opened. Considering Miller&rsquo;s agent is new NHLPA boss Bob Goodenow, a notoriously tough negotiator, Page&rsquo;s new management philosophy must have its merits.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been trying to get my way for 10 years, now, and I&rsquo;ve finally succeeded,&rdquo; said Page. &ldquo;This is the beginning of a new era in contract negotiations. Bob Goodenow is a tough man to negotiate with, but he&rsquo;s also fair and knows what&rsquo;s best for the game of hockey.&ldquo;Just look at the New York Yankees and the Detroit Red Wings. They&rsquo;ve dished out big bucks for individuals, but they&rsquo;ve never really gotten anywhere. The team concept is the thing. The only thing.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-02963/5744369-1-eng-US/f0016-022.jpg" title="f0016-02" width="562" height="628"><figcaption class="caption-body">Kip Miller is in favor of the Nords&rsquo; contract philosophy.</figcaption></div>Goodenow, in Quebec to finalize the deal, seemed as pleased as Page was, talking about a unique contract, one that reflects the drive of the new Nordique braintrust.&ldquo;With so many talented youngsters, the team can only go up from now on,&rdquo; Goodenow said.For his part, Miller was relieved to have the deal signed&mdash;three years, terms not announced&mdash;because it meant he could finally start camp. He felt without a deal, it was too risky to start training.&ldquo;It was tough to stay off the ice and watch the guys I&rsquo;m fighting with for a job get the first shot,&rdquo; said Miller. &ldquo;But now, all that is in the past.&rdquo;As for the contract&rsquo;s new concept, Miller is one of its biggest supporters.&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t win if the team doesn&rsquo;t playasawhole,&rdquo; Miller said. &ldquo;But if the whole team has group-oriented bonuses, everyone goes out there and gives his all. The more you perform as a unit, the more money you make.&rdquo;Miller isn&rsquo;t the only player to sign under the &ldquo;new wave.&rdquo; Trevor Stien-burg, Darin Kimble and Stephane Guerard all came to terms with Page in the days leading up to camp. &#9632;

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PAGE EMPLOYS HIS ‘NEW DEAL’

<div class="byline">BY STEPHEN HARRIS</div>As last season wore on, it was apparent the days of the &ldquo;Big Bad Bruins&rdquo; were a thing of the past.En route to an unexpected berth in te Stanley Cup final, the Bruins play-d a remarkably disciplined style, consistently avoiding unnecessary, retaliatory penalties.Yet, even the man who orchestrated the change&mdash;coach Mike Mil-bury&mdash;isn&rsquo;t entirely convinced last year&rsquo;s way was the right way.&ldquo;We could have done things a little differently,&rdquo; said Milbury. &ldquo;There were a couple of times I wish somebody would have stepped up and whacked someone.&ldquo;We could have been tougher. But, on the other hand, discipline was a big part of our success. If I sound confusing on the issue, it&rsquo;s because I am confused.&ldquo;I guess what I hope to see this season, is us being judiciously tough. I certainly don&rsquo;t want to see a perception spreading around the league that it&rsquo;s okay to go around and run Bruins&rsquo; players, because they won&rsquo;t do anything.&rdquo;That did seem to be the common wisdom among opposition teams, as many physical liberties were taken with Bruins&rsquo; players, notably goalies Andy Moog and Reggie Lemehn and center Craig Janney&mdash;the latter courtesy of Washington&rsquo;s Dale Hunter in the conference finals.&ldquo;The focus was on people running the goalies, but it&rsquo;s the overall game that needs improvement in that department,&rdquo; said Lemelin. &ldquo;As a team, we have to show a little more confidence on the ice. I don&rsquo;t think we were intimidated&mdash;but we didn&rsquo;t intimidate anybody, either.&ldquo;We did a good job all season avoiding unnecessary penalties. But it&rsquo;s important to let people know enough is enough. There&rsquo;s a line there. If they cross it, they have to deal with the consequence.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-011110/5744431-1-eng-US/f0018-012.jpg" title="f0018-01" width="558" height="1071"><figcaption class="caption-body">Cam Neely is expected to provide more toughness.</figcaption></div>At times when that line was crossed, Bruins&rsquo; players hestitated, unsure whether to accept the challenge and fight, or back off.&ldquo;For years, no thought was involved, you just relied on pure instinct,&rdquo; said Andy Brickley. &ldquo;It was such a drastic change, it caused a lot of hesitation. It was most evident in protecting the goaltenders.&rdquo;One man Milbury hopes to see being a bit more of an on-ice policeman is right winger Cam Neely, whose penalty-minute total fell from 190 in 1988-89 to 117 last season.&ldquo;As much as we want him to stay out of the box, it&rsquo;s very important to the team that Cam play tough,&rdquo; said Milbury. &ldquo;He can set the tone of things with his body-checking. He&rsquo;s our biggest, strongest, toughest winger and we need him playing that way.&rdquo;And then there&rsquo;s newcomer Chris Nilan, who promises to play like, well, Chris Nilan.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to play the way I&rsquo;ve always played. It&rsquo;s brought me success, and it&rsquo;s brought my teams success,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;As far as the fighting and all that, it&rsquo;s my nature to be that way. I&rsquo;ll respond to things the way I always have.&rdquo;Which may be just what the Bruins need. &#9632;

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MILBURY SETTLES ON ‘JUDICIAL TOUGHNESS’

<div class="byline">BY JIM KELLEY</div>Doug Bodger knows there are a lot of new kids in the Buffalo Sabres&rsquo; training camp.He also knows it is up to him, not the kids, to fill the void left vacant by Phil Housley.He knew it way back in June when Housley, Scott Amiel and Jeff Parker were traded to Winnipeg for Dale Hawerchuk and a swap of first-round picks. He suspected it way back last season when the Sabres separated himself and Housley as defense partners.&ldquo;I took it as a way for them to get me more involved in the offense,&rdquo; Bodger said of the separation. &ldquo;I think they wanted me to handle the puck more.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-011030/5744462-1-eng-US/f0019-012.jpg" title="f0019-01" width="550" height="646"><figcaption class="caption-body">Doug Bodger is looking forward to a challenging season.</figcaption></div>Bodger got plenty of opportunities to do that in the last weeks of the regular season and in the playoffs. He made such an impression&mdash;especially in the playoffs when his six points tied him with Pierre Turgeon and Rick Vaive and left him one point behind Dave Andreychuk for the team lead&mdash;that the concept of trading Housley became much more digestible.When the June draft came and the Sabres moved the offensive-minded Housley, Bodger was not surprised.&ldquo;It bothered me for a little while because Phil was my friend,&rdquo; said Bodger. &ldquo;I knew how he felt because I had been traded (as part of the Tom Barrasso to Pittsburgh deal). At first you&rsquo;re shocked, but you adjust to it. You know it&rsquo;s part of the game and if you want to get a player like Dale Hawerchuk you have to give up something in return. Unfortunately that was Phil.&rdquo;Still, it did open up some opportunities for Bodger.&ldquo;My role is going to change,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to have to be more of an offensive defenseman and I&rsquo;m happy about that. This is definitely the way I used to play and I&rsquo;m looking forward to doing it again.&rdquo;An offensive-minded defenseman when the Pittsburgh Penguins drafted him ninth overall from Kamloops of the Western League in 1984, Bodger has suppressed much of his offensive game. In Pittsburgh, he was still feeling his way through the NHL when the Penguins went out and acquired Paul Coffey, the most offensivedefenseman in the league. With Coffey carrying the puck on the rush and playing offensive quarterback on the first power-play unit, Bodger was relegated to a more defensive role.He played a similar role in Buffalo behind Housley, but the idea of taking the puck for a rush was never far from his mind.&ldquo;When you played with Phil you had to know when to go and when to stay back,&rdquo; Bodgersaid. &ldquo;l also felt I had that ability, but that was Phil&rsquo;s role not mine. I think I know this is my opportunity and I&rsquo;m going to prove I can do it.&ldquo;I know I can excel in that role. It&rsquo;s just a matter of having confidence in myself and in my play.&rdquo;Bodger, 24 and with six years of NHL experience, is certain he&rsquo;s ready. Last season, he had 12 goals and finished in a fifth-place tie with Vaive in team scoring with 48 points.&ldquo;Passing and shooting were the strengths of my game when I was in junior,&rdquo; Bodger said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m approaching camp with the idea of getting back to that. I think I can score goals in this league.&rdquo;Bodger said he&rsquo;s discussed the role with coach Rick Dudley and they are in agreement regarding Bodger taking up the challenge.&ldquo;He knows what we want him to do,&rdquo; said Dudley. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve talked about it at length.&rdquo; &#9632;

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BODGER PREPARED FOR INCREASED PRESSURE

Bright colors in neon shades are on everything now. The in things to have are hot pink T-shirts, electric blue shorts and lime green hockey sticks.Lime green hockey sticks?Hockey sticks are the latest product to get into fluorescent colors. And the early results for the sticks are as hot as the pink color some of them come in.&ldquo;We did a test in 1989,&rdquo; says Denis Drolet, the vice president and general manager of Sherwood Drolet. &ldquo;The response was unbelievable. So we decided to go (into fluorescent colors) full blast.&ldquo;We decided to try it because it was very successful for other products,&rdquo; says Drolet, who designed Sherwood&rsquo;s line of fluorescent sticks. Drolet says one distributor almost doubled his sales in three months with the new sticks.Sherwood offers sticks in five different neon colors&mdash;yellow, orange, blue, pink and lime. Most other stick manufacturers offer fluorescent colors used to some degree. The Sherwood sticks have the whole shaft painted in the neon color.The Sherwood sticks are offered in the five colors because they are the only new colors of paint that were available for the purpose of stick coloring.And surprisingly one of the most popular colors is pink&mdash;especially in the U.S. &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t know why (pink) is popular,&rdquo; Drolet says. &ldquo;Maybe the players just want to be different.&ldquo;Today, people like to see bright colors. And the sticks are fun,&rdquo; he says.Drolet says the sticks are popular with players from the ages of 10 to 15 probably because children that age love the bright colors.But you won&rsquo;t see fluorescent sticks in the NHL. The league doesn&rsquo;t allow neon colors.Drolet estimates that Sherwood will sell about 30,000 or 40,000 fluorescent sticks in 1990. That number is only about 20 per cent of the total number of sticks sold.The glow-in-the-dark sticks are out of the ordinary when it comes to production as well.The sticks are painted white and then double dipped in the floures-cent color. &ldquo;It definitely costs more,&rdquo; Drolet says, but they are sold at the same price as regular sticks.&ldquo;They are a good marketing tool for us,&rdquo; Drolet says. Once someone is attracted by the neon color, he says, they will like the Sherwood stick and continue to use them as they grow older.&ldquo;Other stick manufacturers have fluorescent colors,&rdquo; Drolet says, &ldquo;but none have gone into them to the same degree.&rdquo;Karhu, the makers of Titan, Koho and Canadien sticks, have also climbed onboard the electric colors train. But their emphasis is on introducing new colors.We wanted to redesign the graphics and add new colors that hadn&rsquo;t been seen before in hockey,&rdquo; says David Smallwood, Karhu&rsquo;s director of the hockey division for North America.&ldquo;We wanted to use new colors to accent the sticks rather than paint the sticks in hot colors,&rdquo; Smallwood says. In addition to neon shades, teal, cobalt and magenta are used on the new sticks.The new colors are used in stripes or in the name on the stick for highlighting.The whole line of Titan sticks feature the new colors and selected models of Koho and Canadien sticks have the redesigned hues.&ldquo;We felt it would be more appealing to consumers,&rdquo; Smallwood says. &ldquo;The response has been very good.&ldquo;It is more expensive for us to produce sticks in the new colors but we don&rsquo;t pass on that cost to the consumer,&rdquo; Smallwood says.With Karhu&rsquo;s emphasis on using the colors as accents and Sherwood&rsquo;s line of fully colored sticks, it&rsquo;s easy to see that the future will be more colorful for recreational and minor hockey players. And if the sticks continue to be popular maybe we&rsquo;ll see hot pink goalie pads or lime green helmets. &#9632;

NEW STICKS CAN GLOW IN THE DARK

In the small northern Minnesota town of Warroad, the sound of machines working overtime is a familiar one these days as business continues to grow significantly.With over 25 years of experience, Christian continues to become a larger player in the hockey stick industry. This holds particularly true in the very competitive Canadian marketplace, where Christian is distributed exclusively by Jelinek Sports Inc.&ldquo;Christian has increased its market share in Canada&mdash;especially over the past two years,&rdquo; says Tim McClure, product/sales manager of Jelenik Sports. &ldquo;As players try the sticks, they find they like them enough that they don&rsquo;t want to use anything else. Word of mouth spreads very quickly and things snowball from there.&ldquo;Right now, we are having trouble keeping the store shelves stocked. The retailers can&rsquo;t get stock of them fast enough.&rdquo;Aside from the NHL players who are currently using its products, Christian is also associated with other levels of the sport.&ldquo;We have established ourselves very well so far in Canada,&rdquo; says Bill Christian, vice president of Christian Bros. USA. &ldquo;We are currently working at the pro, junior and college levels, including major junior. The Peterborough Petes hockey club has used Christian over the past tew seasons ana it is a pleasure to be working with such a class organization again this season.&rdquo;Christian is also involved much more with oldtimers&rsquo; hockey, as well as with the Ontario Ball Hockey Association. Ball hockey is a sport that is growing tremendously year by year.Christian Bros, is getting some excellent feedback from its involvement in the anti-drug campaigns in the U.S. and Canada. The company endorses and supports the efforts of those attempting to fight the war on drugs by adding brief messages on the shafts of each stick that leaves the factory: &ldquo;Just Say NO to Drugs&rdquo; or &ldquo;The Choice For Me&mdash;Drug Free&rdquo; have been accepted by coaches, parents, players, fans and the NHL professionals who are using Christian products.&ldquo;We really weren&rsquo;t sure how well this would go over, particularly with the peer pressure kids face in their teen years,&rdquo; McClure says. &ldquo;But it has gone the opposite&mdash;it has been players in this age bracket who have fully endorsed the prog-ram which is a very positive thing to see.&ldquo;We have a stick that is ideally suited for virtually every type of player&mdash;from the new Power Tech Aircraft Aluminum shaft, to the original Black Magic and traditional ash handled Pro 1000.&rdquo;More and more pro players have taken notice of Christian Bros. reputation for quality, craftsmanship and service. It is for these reasons that some of today&rsquo;s top names are using Christian products. Some long-time Christian customers are: Brett Hull, Scott Stevens, Don Beaupre, Neal Broten and Jon Casey.&ldquo;There is no substitute for craftsmanship and feel in the stick. A stick is really an extension of the player himself. I know that Christian can provide these tools,&rdquo; McClure says.As Dave Christian of the Boston Bruins says, &ldquo;the Christians are still playing the game and still making hockey sticks so the motto continues to live on&mdash;Hockey Sticks Made By Hockey Players.&rsquo;&rdquo; &#9632;

CHRISTIAN STICKS MADE BY AND FOR PLAYERS

If the National Hockey League were to hand out an award for the goaltender who is most adept at handling the puck, Ron Hextall of the Philadelphia Flyers would likely be the perennial winner.Sean Burke of the New Jersey Devils, Tom Barrasso of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Kirk McLean of the Vancouver Canucks are also very good when it comes to being that third defenseman on the ice.While it often seems that Hextall is busy laying the lumber on the shins and ankles of opposing forwards, the truth of the matter is he can control the puck on his cumbersome goalie stick better than some defensemen in the league.In fact, Hextall is the first goalie in the history of the league to actually shoot a puck the length of the ice and score into an empty net&mdash;and he did it twice!Does Hextall load his sticks with steroids, or what?&ldquo;He asks for his sticks a little longer in length and with a longer paddle,&rdquo; says Jim Evers, equipment manager of the Flyers. &ldquo;But really, he&rsquo;s just a good puckhandling goalie who makes sure his sticks are suited to him.&rdquo;Hextall receives his lie-15 sticks pre-curved from the factory. Before he goes on the ice with them, however, he uses a blow-torch to add even more curve. This gives him the ability to put English on the puck.The curved goaltender stick is a recent innovation.&ldquo;Dan Bouchard was one of the first guys to try it 10 or 12 years ago,&rdquo; says Bobby Stewart, equipment manager of the Calgary Flames. &ldquo;He could curve them all right, but he had a tough time making sure they were legal.&rdquo;Bouchard played with the Atlanta Flames, Calgary Flames, Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets during his 14-year NHL career, which started in 1972. By the time he got to Winnipeg, he developed the curved stick one step further.&ldquo;He had a notch cut out of his stick so it would operate more like a handle,&rdquo; explains Pat O&rsquo;Neill, the equipment manager of the Jets for eight seasons before moving over to the Canucks three years ago.&ldquo;When he had to handle the puck, he would slip his finger into the notch and it would give him better control.&rdquo;While the Bouchard feature has gone by the wayside, Barrasso says pretty well every goalie in the NHL today has some sort of curve on his blade.&ldquo;Goalies handling the puck is mandatory now. In my eight years in the league, I&rsquo;ve watched the progression. It used to be a goalie just had to stop the puck. Now it&rsquo;s a prerequisite that he be able to move it, too,&rdquo; Barrasso says.Burke may be the best puckhandling goalie in New Jersey, but his partner, Chris Terreri, is reputed to have the biggest hook in the league.Steve Latin, equipment manager of the Penguins, calls Terreri&rsquo;s stick &lsquo;a boomerang.&rsquo;&ldquo;Sean just takes his stick the way it comes from the factory, tapes it and goes on the ice&mdash;no fooling around,&rdquo; says Jeff Croop, equipment manager of the Devils. &ldquo;Chris makes sure he has a big hook. It&rsquo;s probably the biggest I&rsquo;ve seen.&rdquo;McLean doesn&rsquo;t doctor his stick much. Like Burke, he accepts the factory pre-curve.&ldquo;The only thing Kirk asks for is a higher paddle so he can stand up straighter,&rdquo; O&rsquo;Neill says. &ldquo;It also makes it easier for him to shoot.&rdquo;Barrasso is another of the tape-and-play goalies.&ldquo;As long as the stick has a curve and a high lie, the rest is up to the goalie,&rdquo; Barrasso says. &ldquo;Moving the puck involves a lot of wrist action and getting the puck moving at the heel of the blade so there&rsquo;s some snap on it.&rdquo;In theory, shorter goalies, like Darren Pang and Allan Bester, prefer a lower-lie stick (14 or less), while taller goalies, like Hextall, Burke or Barrasso, prefer a 15 or greater lie. &#9632;

NHL GOALIES HOOKED ON CURVED STICK

Having played for six different teams in his 11 NHL seasons, change is something to which Brent Ashton has become accustomed.So it comes as no surprise that the Winnipeg Jets&rsquo; left winger/cen-ter is among the leaders when it comes to changing stick designs.&ldquo;In the last four or five years, Ashton&rsquo;s changed his (stick) pattern 14 times,&rdquo; says Steve Brassard of Karhu, the makers of Titan, Koho and Canadien sticks. &ldquo;Sometimes he&rsquo;ll change the lie, sometimes the curve, sometimes the length of the shaft.&ldquo;Some guys are very particular about their sticks.&rdquo;So particular, in fact, that many can tell when their sticks aren&rsquo;t made to specification. Calgary goalie Mike Vernon, for one, knows when his stick just isn&rsquo;t right.&ldquo;Vernon, who uses a Koho, prefers a really light stick; not more than 950 grams,&rdquo; says Brassard. &ldquo;He can take a stick and can tell a 10-gram difference just by picking it up, and he&rsquo;s right 90 per cent of the time.&rdquo;As far as what the pros feel is a good stick, Brassard says there&rsquo;s really no rhyme or reason; it&rsquo;s what each individual player feels comfortable with, and in many cases, similar-type players have very different sticks.Witness the NHL&rsquo;s two greatest stars, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.&ldquo;Wayne Gretzky uses a really strange pattern,&rdquo; says Brassard. &ldquo;He has almost no curve on his stick, just a little hook right at the end of the blade.&ldquo;He uses the smallest lie, (the angle made where the shaft and blade meet), lie 4, so he has to skate close to the ice. And the shaft is very stiff, very inflexible.&ldquo;Mario, on the other hand, uses a very large, whippy stick&hellip;it&rsquo;s very flexible and has a big lie. His skating style is more straight than Wayne, (Mario&rsquo;s) more upright.What do some of the game&rsquo;s other top shooters prefer?&#9632; Brett Hull of St. Louis, the NHL&rsquo;s leading sniper with 72 goals last season, likes a very stiff stick, similar to Gretzky.&#9632; Al Maclnnis of Calgary, whose slapshot is among the most deadly in the NHL, opts for a stick with an enormous curve.&#9632; Ray Bourque of Boston, who also possesses a strong point shot, uses a stick with a relatively small curve.In many ways the stick design reflects the personality of its user. Ashton is one example, changing his design more than he changes uniforms. Al lafrate of the Toronto Maple Leafs is another.Known as a somewhat off-beat character, lafrate employs an offbeat stick design.&ldquo;Iafrate uses a really weird stick,&rdquo; confirms Brassard. &ldquo;He uses a lie 7, the largest lie made, and the curve on his blade starts at the heel and goes to the tip. It&rsquo;s very different.&rdquo;At least it was very different. Now it seems more and more players are requesting such a curve, which has come to be known in the hockey stick business as the &ldquo;Tanti Curve.&rdquo;The curve, of course, is named for the Pittsburgh Penguins&rsquo; winger, Tony Tanti, as he was the one who made it fashionable. As described, the curve runs the length of the blade and is open, meaning the blade is on an angle facing up, towards the shooter.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting guys calling me up now, saying, &lsquo;Give me a Tanti Curve,&rsquo;&rdquo; says Brassard. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t really know why it&rsquo;s becoming popular.&rdquo;But as long as it works for the player, Brassard doesn&rsquo;t question the logic. He just makes the sticks to specification&mdash;then supplies them en masse. &#9632;

PROS FIND IT HARD TO STICK TO ONE DESIGN

The Russians are coming. The Russians are coming. Actually the Russians have landed.Dinamo Sports Inc., the North American importer of Russian hockey sticks, would like to announce a Soviet&mdash;Canadian joint venture. Dinamo Sports Inc. are importing unfinished raw hockey sticks and finishing the sticks in Canada.Dinamo&rsquo;s theme is based on quality and durability&mdash;this is achieved by combining top Western technology and superb northern white Russian birch. Dinamo hockey sticks are admittedly slightly heavier than most North American sticks, but due to the benefits of durability, longevity and superior constitution, Dinamo feels they have a winning combination.Dinamo Sports Inc. is also passing on the low cost of labor in the Soviet Union&mdash;hockey sticks are very labor intensive to produce, each stick takes many man hours. All this adds up to Dinamo Hockey Sticks being the most advanced and lowest priced sticks on the market in each of their four adult and two junior categories. &#9632;

DINAMO SPORTS

Kitchener Hockey Stick is a company whose growth in the past three years has astounded even Ben Pastway&mdash;the owner and founder of the 25-year-old company.Realizing that mass production was not the company&rsquo;s forte, Pastway has taken the route of designing new equipment, developing new techniques and exploring new materials to consistantly make a substantially better product.After pioneering the exclusive utilization of Spectra fabric in 1988 to make stronger and stiffer blades, Kitchener has this year developed a new concept in moulded fibreglass handle protection. By utilizing a hot moulded pressure concept, Kitchener now has the ability to vary the stiffness of their handles from medium to extra stiff while still maintaining the critical weight and balance that is so important to today&rsquo;s player.As Kitchener&rsquo;s acceptance in the marketplace would seem to attest, quality and attention to peformance details are fast becoming the standards by which today&rsquo;s hockey players are evaluating their buying decisions. As Pastway indicated, the investment in research and development to build a better stick has been justified.Kitchener offers a full range of products in attractive new cosmetics, tailored to the specific needs of minor to professional levels. &#9632;

KITCHENER CONTINUES GROWTH

There are two types of hockey sticks on the market today&mdash;gaudy and unfinished. Bending Branches has come up with a third choice. A design that blends the natural beauty of the wood with the sleek line of the stick. Each stick has a tough, durable protective finish&mdash;a classic look usually reserved for fine furniture.All Bending Branches sticks meet high standards of excellence. The models all feature Ash blades wrapped with reinforced fibreglass so they can deliver more power per shot. The high quality finish seals in stability, stabilizes the flex and preserves essential stiffness. Each stick is individually electronically tested to determine its flex and stiffness, and given the Flex-tron Rating Number that insures consistant shaft flex. You won&rsquo;t have to flex ten or fifteen sticks to find one you like&mdash;you can select a stick based on its rating and be confident it wll give you consistant high performance.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-01684/5744689-1-eng-US/f0025-012.jpg" title="f0025-01" width="347" height="249"></div> &#9632;

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SPORTING GOODS DEALERS CHOICE: BEST QUALITY

<div class="byline">BY DICK CHUBEY</div>The long lost son finally returned home.After the Edmonton Oilers&rsquo; workout in Innsbruck, Austria Sept. 12, Czechoslovakian defector Petr Klima hopped a plane and returned to his native land for the first time since gaining his freedom in 1985. He flew to Prague, where he was met by family members for the one-hour drive to Kadan.It was the second positive happening for the controversial left winger, who had an otherwise troubled summer. The other bright spot for him this summer was his marriage, though he hadn&rsquo;t seen his wife, Irina, since she returned to Czechoslovakia in midAugust.On the down side, Klima spent a night in jail, was ordered to pay $3,600 in fines and was placed on three-years probation&mdash;all the result of alcohol-related driving offenses in a Detroit suburb in May of 1989.When did he decide to make the trip?&ldquo;When we landed in Dusseldorf (Sept. 2), I had this feeling in my stomach,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;When you&rsquo;re 11 hours away in Edmonton, you feel nothing. But when it&rsquo;s only a couple of hours&hellip;&ldquo;I talked to John (coach Muckier) and he said, Fine. I&rsquo;m excited. Five years is a long time.It was about this time of year in 1985 that Klima bolted the Czechoslovakian national team while in Rosenhein, West Germany. He was met at a hotel by Detroit vicepresident Jim Lites and assistant general manager Nick Polano.He climbed into a waiting car and they sped away to Frankfurt, where Klima and Polano spent five weeks changing hotels under assumed names.&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t have anything&mdash;not even a passport,&rdquo; recalled Klima. &ldquo;When we travelled by bus from Czechoslovakia, the coach would keep all the passports in a bag and show them to the border guards.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0026-01728/5744720-1-eng-US/f0026-012.jpg" title="f0026-01" width="554" height="628"><figcaption class="caption-body">Petr Klima feels he ruined his brother&rsquo;s career by defecting.</figcaption></div>Klima&rsquo;s defection hurt at least one member of his family. Brother Joseph, five years his senior, was a solid left winger in the First Division. But, when Petr defected, Joseph was banished to the Second Division where he remains today.&ldquo;He was a pretty good player, but he never got called up. I ruined his career,&rdquo; said Klima.But his brother isn&rsquo;t bitter.&ldquo;He came to visit me a couple of years ago in Detroit and he felt what I had done was the best thing for me and my family,&rdquo; said Klima.The Red Wings had made Klima their fifth pick in the 1983 draft (88th overall) and were persistent in his pursuit.&ldquo;I was 20 years old; I didn&rsquo;t know the language or anything about where I was going,&rdquo; said the 6-foot, 190-pounder, who has worn jersey No. 85 ever since in honor of his defection that year. &ldquo;But, I thought about it every day for a year and a half.&rdquo;Before making the trip home, Klima was visibly excited. He was looking forward to being reunited with his parents, Joseph and Kveta, brother Joseph Jr. and his sister, Iva. The family lives in a tiny two-bedroom apartment that is owned by the Czechoslovakian government.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be back sleeping in my old room,&rdquo; smiled Klima.Was he looking forward to seeing any mementos or personal belongings?&ldquo;No, I just want to see my family and friends,&rdquo; he said.Klima has relatives scattered throughout the country but hasn&rsquo;t spoken to any of them since he left. &#9632;

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KLIMA MAKES SPONTANEOUS VISIT HOME

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-01677/5744751-1-eng-US/f0027-012.jpg" title="f0027-01" width="536" height="621"><figcaption class="caption-body">ERIC DUHATSCHEK</figcaption></div>He arrived in town only days after Keith Gretzky departed for Scotland, meaning that in an otherwise undistinguished season, the Phoenix Roadrunners had at least one claim to fame: They replaced Wayne Gretzky&rsquo;s kid brother with Wendel Clark&rsquo;s kid brother, Kerry.Physically, the Clark boys from Kelvington, Sask., look a lot alike, two chisel-faced, rocksolid farmhands, with Kerry coming in just a shade blonder than Wendel. The major difference is one that you cannot pick up until they&rsquo;re on the ice: The hands.One has them. The other doesn&rsquo;t.One is in the NHL. The other is desperately trying to land a job.In junior and minor pro, every time Kerry Clark would score a goal, he celebrated with a moonwalk on skates, followed by a briskly executed Three Amigos salute.Unfortunately, Clark was only able to moonwalk four times last year, a season split between Springfield of the American League and Phoenix of the International League.The more pertinent numbers on Clark were not goals or assists, but penalty minutes&mdash;335 in all. Clark signed as a free agent with the Calgary Flames in the off-season and there&rsquo;s actually room on the roster for a player in his category. Apart from Tim Hunter, there isn&rsquo;t anyone around just to keep the peace.In some ways, it&rsquo;s a sad commentary on the state of the game that Clark has an outside chance, but another kid in camp, Andrew McKim, does not.Last season, McKim was one of three finalists for Canadian junior player of the year. The eventual winner, Mike Ricci, went fourth overall, in last summer&rsquo;s entry draft.McKim? He didn&rsquo;t go at all. In fact, he&rsquo;s been passed over in three consecutive years. Despite a 130-point season in Hull (QMJHL), the pertinent numbers on McKim are height&mdash;he&rsquo;s between 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-9 depending on who you believe&mdash;and weight&mdash;somewhere between 150 and 170-pounds.&ldquo;I believe there should be fighting,&rdquo; said McKim, &ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t believe there should be players just to fight. When I was growing up, I always thought skill came first. If you&rsquo;re a professional writer, do they look at how big you are or how skilled you are? That&rsquo;s the system. The idea is to break the system. Hopefully, I&rsquo;ll be another one breaking through.&rdquo;McKim is in camp on a tryout and therefore must earn a contract from the Flames. One way or another, Clark will be in the organization, either in Calgary or in Salt Lake (IHL).&ldquo;Ever since I&rsquo;ve been 15, I&rsquo;ve been put in a fightingrole,&rdquo; saidClark. &ldquo;In junior and in pro. I&rsquo;ve never played a lot. I just got moved to forward. In junior, I played defense. I&rsquo;ve always been kind of a fourth-line player, an aggressive player up and down the wing kind of a guy who looks out for the other players.&ldquo;I think I can play well. I&rsquo;ve just got to prove it to the Flames&rsquo; organization.&rdquo;Which is something he couldn&rsquo;t do to members of the New York Islanders&rsquo; organization. The Islanders released him after last season.&ldquo;They told me I&rsquo;d never play, no matter what I did,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The coach down in Springfield, Jimmy Roberts, didn&rsquo;t like my style. You can&rsquo;t take that from a coach. He likes the players he wants to play. I just wasn&rsquo;t in their plans. It seems that no matter what I did, they were never going to give me a chance. So I asked to be moved. I sat for seven weeks in Springfield before I even got anywhere.&ldquo;I went to Phoenix in December and I hoped to help them out a little. I did my job there. I don&rsquo;t know what my stats were, but I got a lot of penalty minutes. They didn&rsquo;t have anyone to do that. I took it upon myself. If someone on the ice was getting roughed up, that&rsquo;s my job to stop it. If something needs to be done to get our team going, then I&rsquo;ll do it. I&rsquo;m not going to go out and score 50 goals. I&rsquo;m going to do what my specialty is. A big hit. Maybe a fight. That&rsquo;s what I do best. I want to prove that I can do it for them.&rdquo;Even if it means starting in Salt Lake? Clark hesitated.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been in the minors two years. My main goal is to make the Calgary Flames, not the Salt Lake City Golden Eagles. Right now, I think I have a good shot at making the Calgary Flames. I hope I do. I hope they give me a shot. Maybe they won&rsquo;t. I don&rsquo;t know. My job is make the Calgary Flames and beat out everybody that&rsquo;s my style of player.&rdquo;And if making the Flames means giving up the moonwalk, then Clark says he&rsquo;s prepared to do that too. This is training camp and everybody goes around mouthing the same phrase: Whatever it takes.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s up to the brass. If the players think it&rsquo;s okay or the brass does, I&rsquo;ll do it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The first thing is to make the team. Right now, that&rsquo;s the last thing on my mind doing the moonwalk and the Three Amigos. If it means not to do it to make the team, then I won&rsquo;t do it.&rdquo; &#9632;

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MOONWALKER FIGHTING FOR BIG-LEAGUE SPACE

Recently retired Vancouver Canuck Paul Reinhart was one of the last of a dying breed&mdash;former Atlanta Flames. Reinhart, who retired after 11 seasons with Atlanta, Calgary and Vancouver, leaves Toronto&rsquo;s Brad Marsh and Boston&rsquo;s Reggie Lemelin as the keepers of the Flames. Marsh spent two seasons in Atlanta and Lemelin was there for parts of those seasons.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0027-02436/5744782-1-eng-US/f0027-022.jpg" title="f0027-02" width="710" height="427"><figcaption class="caption-body">Paul Reinhart</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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NUMBERS

<h2>CANUCKS</h2>Left winger Vladimir Krutov has been told to shape up or ship out. GM Pat Quinn was extremely upset that Krutov reported to training camp in Victoria, B.C., in the same doughy shape as he left Vancouver in April. &lsquo;&lsquo;He wasn&rsquo;t even close to the (physical conditioning) guidelines we&rsquo;d set for him,&rdquo; Quinn said. &ldquo;His weight was way beyond what was acceptable.&rdquo; The stocky Soviet weighed in at 210-pounds, though he&rsquo;d been told to report at between 190-195. Quinn, however, said the Canucks aren&rsquo;t going through with their threat to suspend Krutov and will wait until the start of the regular season Oct. 4 to make their next move&hellip;Defenseman Doug Lidster is playing out the option year of his contract, but two other players vital to the success of the Canucks would do so reluctantly. No. I goalie Kirk McLean and center Dan Quinn, the team&rsquo;s leading scorer last season, were expected to agree to new terms if the Canucks come up with the right numbers&hellip;Captain Stan Smyl was informed the Canucks wouldn&rsquo;t be extending his contract beyond the 1990-91 season. He is finishing up the fifth year of a contract that pays him $350,000 (Cdn) per season.<h2>JETS</h2>Rookie center Stu Barnes played his socks off on the first day of the Jets&rsquo; training camp and by the conclusion of the opening weekend, he may have been the best player in camp. In the big picture, however, that may not mean much because insiders insist Barnes will be assigned to Moncton of the American League to start the season. Jets&rsquo; management apparently feels that is in everyone&rsquo;s best interests. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the first I&rsquo;ve ever heard of that,&rdquo; said Barnes, Winnipeg&rsquo;s 1989 first-round draft choice, fourth overall. &ldquo;They haven&rsquo;t really said that much to me.&rdquo;&hellip;Soviet right winger Sergei Kharin has been one of Winnipeg&rsquo;s most impressive players in training camp. The little winger has shown fabulous speed and great skills. &ldquo;When we played with him in Winnipeg, I thought he was good,&rdquo; said goalie Bob Essensa. &ldquo;But here, he&rsquo;s turned it up a gear.&rdquo; Kharin, 27, is a 10-year veteran of the Soviet Wings who was drafted in the 12th round in 1989. He has not signed a contract. &ldquo;He can fly, can&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; said Murdoch&hellip;Steen, Essensa and newly acquired left winger Scott Arniel have all elected to play out the option year of their contracts.<h2>FLAMES</h2>In a flurry of activity completed by the first weekend of training camp, GM Cliff Fletcher signed all eight players entering their option years: Defensemen Al MacInnis, Gary Suter and Dana Murzyn; forwards Theo Fleury, Paul Ranheim, Brian MacLellan, Jiri Hrdina and Tim Hunter. After MacInnis (four years, $4 million), Suter received the most lucrative pact, a four-year deal worth around $2 million (U.S.)&hellip;Fletcher paid in excess of $8/2 million to get four of his young guns&mdash;Fleury, Ranheim, Suter and Maclnnis&mdash;under contract and sounded a warning for Canadian-based teams in smaller markets. Said MacInnis: &ldquo;Players could leave Canadian teams to go to American teams because of the higher-valued dollar and more favorable income tax structure. That&rsquo;s going to be a reality of the business and we&rsquo;re going to have to cope with that situation as are all the other teams in Canada.&rdquo;&hellip;For the first time in their history, the Flames invited two Finnish prospects&mdash;Veli Pekka Kautonen and Vesa Vitakoski&mdash;to training camp. Kautonen was a third-round choice in 1989; Vitakoski, a second-rounder in 1990. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re both good prospects,&rdquo; said Fletcher. &ldquo;We felt giving them a little idea of what the NHL is all about will be invaluable to them when they go back&rdquo;<h2>KINGS</h2>Center Wayne Gretzky said he felt &ldquo;absolutely no pain&rdquo; in his back following the first several days of scrimmages at camp in Hull, Que. Including playoffs, Gretzky missed eight games last year with a hyperextended back. &ldquo;I feel I can take some hits. It&rsquo;s a little tired, but I expected that.&rdquo; Gretzky said rest and a lot of sit-ups helped strengthen his back muscles in the off-season&hellip;Defenseman Marty McSoriey reported to camp Sept. 7, one day late, and was fined an undisclosed amount by GM Rogie Vachon, who said, &ldquo;He did not have a good enough reason to justify coming in late.&rdquo; McSoriey said, &ldquo;I had to look at some personal things. The guys knew I&rsquo;d be here as soon as I could. They know that there are things away from hockey that have to be looked at.&rdquo;&hellip;Left winger Craig Duncanson. a No. 1 draft pick (ninth overall) in 1985 who never developed as hoped, was traded to Minnesota Sept. 6 in exchange for goaltender Daniel Berthiaume. Berthiaume figured to battle Mario Gosselin and Ron Scott for the backup job behind Kelly Hrudey.<h2>OILERS</h2>Esa Tikkanen&rsquo;s left knee hadn&rsquo;t healed sufficiently from arthroscopic surgery he had in Sweden, three weeks prior to the Oilers&rsquo; European training camp. The spunky Finn was examined by Dr. Gordon Cameron in Dusseldorf, West Germany, and was ordered to return to Edmonton. He was expected to be ready for the beginning of the regular season&hellip;Young forwards Kelly Buch-berger and Martin Gelinas, who both underwent shoulder surgery shortly after the Oilers captured the Stanley Cup, were also give the once over by doctors and neither participated in any of the exhibition games in Europe, but they were allowed to practise. &#9632;

HEFTY KRUTOV TRYING QUINN’S PATIENCE

<div class="byline">BY MIKE BEAMISH</div>Robert Kron&rsquo;s first experience with the Vancouver Canucks was like something out of a spy thriller.Four years ago, the Czechoslovakian speedster was contacted in his hotel room at the World Junior Championships in Hamilton, Ont., where a clandestine meeting was arranged with a couple of Canuck operatives.Kron, picked by Vancouver in the fifth round of the 1985 NHL draft, can&rsquo;t remember the names of the Canuck officials he secretly met with back then. But his description provides a good insight into the identities behind the dark glasses and trench coats.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know who they were for sure,&rdquo; Kron said at the Canucks&rsquo; training camp in Victoria, B.C. &ldquo;There was a little man with light hair and glasses and another man with a bald head, a little fat man.&rdquo;The little man would be Arthur Griffiths, the Canucks&rsquo; assistant to the chairman, and the chubby guy was Jack Gordon, the team&rsquo;s general manager at the time.Their mission? To get Kron to come over to the NHL.&ldquo;They offered me a contract and asked me if I wanted to defect,&rdquo; Kron said. &ldquo;I was only married a few months and we had just had a child, so I was worried about what might happen to my family. We were still under the communist system, and I didn&rsquo;t know if they would send my family to be with me.&rdquo;The Canucks, now under new management, tried again a couple of years later, but by that time Kron was serving his compulsory two-year stint in the military and the prospect of defecting seemed even more perilous than before. Army deserters can be shot.&ldquo;Maybe I might have considered it if I had been single,&rdquo; Kron said. &ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t sure about it. I thought it would be better to go the legal way.&rdquo;The dramatic political changes that swept through eastern Europe last year opened doors where once Kron had seen only barbed wire. When his contract with his club team, Zetor Brno, ended last season, Kron was free to go. The Canucks signed the 23-year-old forward in May after his second appearance for Czechoslovakia in the World Championships.Kron&rsquo;s talent makes him a serious contender for a job with the Canucks. He can really dangle with the puck. If you would wish anything of him, it would be that he had a chunk of Vladimir Krutov&rsquo;s extra suet. At 5-foot-10, 175-pounds, Kron is constructed along the lines ot Brian Bradley and Petri Skriko, and that could hurt his chances of sticking.&ldquo;He might get caught in the numbers game, considering that the Canucks are looking to add size,&rdquo; said Mike Murphy, coach of the Canucks&rsquo; International League team in Milwaukee.Kron plays all three forward positions, but the Canucks have him playing left wing on a line with fellow Czechoslovakian Petr Nedved and pugilistic right winger Ronnie Stem.Nedved and Kron have the same mental circuitry in anticipating each other&rsquo;s moves, and some of their continental flair is rubbing off on Stem.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re both Europeans, so we play the same style,&rdquo; Nedved said. &ldquo;If I stay in Vancouver, I&rsquo;d be happy if I could play with at least one European player.&rdquo;Kron also comes equipped with another useful skill&mdash;he is multilingual on a team that is starting to resemble the United Nations on ice. Kron speaks or understands Czech, Slovak, English (he acts as rookie Jiri Slegr&rsquo;s interpreter), Russian, German and French.He won&rsquo;t be insulted if you refer to him as a Czech, but Kron&rsquo;s national heritage is actually Moravian.What would really warm his heart is to be called a Canuck. &#9632;

KRON HOPES TO FINISH TALE HAPPY EVER AFTER

<div class="byline">BY RICK SADOWSKI</div>Kelly Hrudey huffed and puffed for two weeks in the Rocky Mountains ski resort area of Banff, Alta., with his brother Ken this summer.Sure, the Los Angeles Kings&rsquo; goaltender enjoyed the scenery, but he was more interested in testing his stamina.Plagued by an adult form of mononucleosis for most of the 1989-90 season, Hrudey at times was barely able to put on his equipment, let alone lug it around in his crease.Hrudey still managed to appear in 52 games and post a 22-21-6 record, but during one late-season stretch he was so weak he missed 14 of 16 games. He finished with a 4.07 goals-against average, the worst of his seven-year NHL career.So the off-season trip to the Rockies, which has become an annual affair, took on new meaning this time.&ldquo;We did a lot of hard biking and hiking. It reinforced to me that my illness is behind me,&rdquo; said Hrudey. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not concerned about it at all now. It&rsquo;s definitely in my past.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-01703/5744861-1-eng-US/f0028-012.jpg" title="f0028-01" width="554" height="607"><figcaption class="caption-body">Kelly Hrudey feels strong heading into the 1990-91 season.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;I mean, I&rsquo;ve always prided myself in being a guy who the team can count on every night, and that wasn&rsquo;t the case last year. I expect the team to do much better and that starts from the guy in the net. I&rsquo;m looking for us to have a big year.&rdquo;Hrudey&rsquo;s problems last year, he said, were as much mental as physical. The illness sapped his strength during and after games, turning him into a frustrated man.&ldquo;I wondered how long I could go, if I&rsquo;d be able to play a full game. Mentally, it was very taxing. It played on my mind,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was tired all the time. It was the first time I had ever gone through a situation like that, but it&rsquo;s over now.&rdquo;Hrudey regained most of his strength in time for the playoffs and he played extremely well when the Kings upset the Calgary Flames in the division semifinals. But he hurt his ribs in that series, an injury that was aggravated in the second game against the Edmonton Oilers in the division finals, and caused him to miss Game 3.&ldquo;They&rsquo;re fine now,&rdquo; he said of ribs, &ldquo;but it took about three weeks before they healed. I&rsquo;d like to forget about that, too.&rdquo;He&rsquo;d also like to forget about the Kings&rsquo; 34-39-7 record and 16-point nose-dive from the previous season.&ldquo;We had extremely high expectations and we didn&rsquo;t meet those standards,&rdquo; Hrudey said. &ldquo;Maybe because we have so much experience we thought it&rsquo;d be easy last season, but it certainly wasn&rsquo;t easy. Maybe that&rsquo;s why so many of us put in extra time this summer getting ready for camp.&rdquo;Hrudey said the difference between the tempo in the first few days of training camp and what took place a year ago at this time was a big one.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s been a lot more intense. There are a lot of guys here (84), so the competition for jobs is tremendous,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve noticed there&rsquo;ve been a lot more hits and the pace is higher. I think that&rsquo;s definitely a good sign. Guys came here prepared to work and we are.&rdquo;Coach Tom Webster has been stressing team defense&mdash;the Kings permitted 337 goals last year and he wants to cut that total by at least 50&mdash;a concept that should make Hrudey&rsquo;s job a little easier. &#9632;

f0028-01

RECOVERED HRUDEY IN PEAK CONDITION

<div class="byline">BY ERIC DUHATSCHEK</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0029-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-01608/5744892-1-eng-US/f0029-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Defenseman Al Maclnnis became the highest paid player in Flames&rsquo; history when he signed a four-year deal worth $4-million.</figcaption></div>The money&rsquo;s in the bank&mdash;or it will be by the start of the season&mdash;so now Al Maclnnis can concern himself with other, more visible matters.MacInnis reached his first goal of the season only four days into training camp, becoming the highest-paid player in Calgary Flames&rsquo; history by signing a four-year deal that will guarantee him $4 million (Cdn).His next goal?To help the Flames recapture the Stanley Cup that slipped through their grasp last year. Just about everybody in camp agrees: The Flames need more enthusiasm, more leadership, more effort, more everything from their players for the team to return to championship form.&ldquo;I look at our hockey team,&rdquo; said the Flames&rsquo; defenseman. &ldquo;We have a good nucleus of young players. I don&rsquo;t think we&rsquo;re going to slide. If you look at Joe Nieuwendyk, Gary Roberts, Theoren Fleury, Paul Ranheim, Gary Suter, even myself. I&rsquo;m only 27. Throw in Doug Gilmour. With these types of players, I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s anywhere to go but up.&rdquo;On paper, it is not clear where the improvement will come from. Two pretty good players, Joey Mullen and Brad McCrimmon, are gone and halt-a-dozen others, MacInnis included, had career years last season. It is hard to imagine MacInnis duplicating the 28 goals and 90 points he registered last season, both career highs.The year MacInnis was drafted (1981), not a single NHL player earned $1 million a year. In the last decade, the game has become more of a business.&ldquo;Sure, when you&rsquo;re trying to negotiate a contract, it is a business for the organization and for the player,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We have to make a living as well. I don&rsquo;t think we&rsquo;re any different from basketball or baseball or football players. We&rsquo;re in the same category.&ldquo;I think any player would say the same thing: When you go on the field or the rink, sure it&rsquo;s your job, but it&rsquo;s also fun. I enjoy doing it. I can&rsquo;t be thankful enough to come to the rink every day to a job I really enjoy.&rdquo;Being Calgary&rsquo;s first million-dollar man, MacInnis is sure to be under pressure this season. Playing in a city the size of Calgary (population 690,000) is different than playing in New York or Los Angeles, where fans have become numbed to seven-figure salaries. MacInnis was the highest-paid Flames&rsquo; player last year at $475,000.&ldquo;There are some defenseman in the NHL who are going to be paid a lot more than I am,&rdquo; said MacInnis. &ldquo;Scott Stevens. Paul Coffey turned down $5 million. Ray Bourque. So if you look at it that way, why should there be more pressure?&ldquo;There&rsquo;s always pressure on you in Calgary, whether you&rsquo;re making $100,000 or $1 million and I don&rsquo;t think that&rsquo;s going to change.&rdquo;Oddly enough, Stevens&mdash;the player that set in motion the latest round of increases by signing as a free agent with the St. Louis Blues&mdash;is a pretty good friend of MacInnis&rsquo;. The two played together as juniors for Kitchener of the Ontario League.MacInnis said he planned to have a big handshake for his former partner when Calgary and St. Louis met in the pre-season.&ldquo;Sure, the Stevens deal had a lot to do with it, but it was only a matter of time before the NHL players started getting million-dollar contracts,&rdquo; said MacInnis. &ldquo;Right now, maybe the true market value of players is starting to come out.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0029-01

MILLION-DOLLAR MAN ON STANLEY CUP MISSION

<div class="byline">BY GRANT McGINNIS</div>One player got his wish, the other didn&rsquo;t.Doug Smail, 33, and Laurie Boschman, 30; longtime teammates, best of friends. Both have spent most of the 1980s playing hockey on behalf of the Winnipeg Jets. Both would rather play elsewhere.On Sept. 6, the day before the Jets opened training camp at Saskatchewan Place in Saskatoon, Boschman got his wish.The center, who had been in Winnipeg since 1983, was sent to the New Jersey Devils for 29-year-old center Bob Brooke.Three days later, realizing the Jets weren&rsquo;t about to deal him, Smail settled for a renegotiated option year of his contract. It&rsquo;s an arrangement that will pay him more this season ($250,000 Cdn) and will allow him to be a free agent next year.&ldquo;I think my role changed significantly on the hockey club. That&rsquo;s why I asked to be traded when Dan Maloney was the coach,&rdquo; Boschman said, explaining why he requested new scenery. &ldquo;He made me into strictly a defensive player. I don&rsquo;t mind playing a defensive role but I felt I was sort of chastised by Dan Maloney at the time.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0029-02415/5744923-1-eng-US/f0029-022.jpg" title="f0029-02" width="556" height="908"><figcaption class="caption-body">Doug Smail signed a new deal but would still like a trade.</figcaption></div>Last year I was in a defensive role as well,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was still categorized as strictly a defensive player and I&rsquo;ve proven in past years I could score as well as play good defense.&rdquo;The Boschman trade was the culmination of nearly two years of begging and pleading. Boschman&rsquo;s unhappiness with being part of the Jets&rsquo; renaissance was the worst kept secret in town.&ldquo;I wish it had happened a year ago but it didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Boschman said, before reporting to the Devils&rsquo; training camp at West Orange, N.J. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad it happened now.&rdquo;Smail is still asking to be dealt.&ldquo;I would still much prefer to play for a U.S.-based hockey club,&rdquo; Smail said. &ldquo;But I think that we&rsquo;ve reached a reasonably equitable position on both parties and it looks like I&rsquo;ll be here another year.&rdquo;The deal is an unusual one.&ldquo;We have designed a very substantial customized contract for Doug Smail totally within the context of the current collective bargaining agreement for one year only,&rdquo; said Smail&rsquo;s agent, Art Breeze of Calgary. Breeze said that Smail will then be a Category III free agent.The catch is, by the time next year rolls around, a new collective bargaining agreement will be in place. And that means Smail could leave and the Jets may not get anything in return.Jets&rsquo; general manager Mike Smith made light of Smail&rsquo;s plight, the third straight summer he&rsquo;s been through difficult negotiations because he wants out.&ldquo;I know in the summertime some people play golf, some people go to the cottage, some people play tennis,&rdquo; Smith said. &ldquo;I work on Doug Smail&rsquo;s contract.&rdquo;Smail, meanwhile, continues to be one of Winnipeg&rsquo;s best players in training camp.&ldquo;Next year I won&rsquo;t have an option year to deal with and I think I&rsquo;ll be in a little bit better position,&rdquo; Smail said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s purely economic. Don&rsquo;t get me wrong, I&rsquo;m going to play here like I&rsquo;ve played in the past. I&rsquo;m not going to roll over and play dead just because they won&rsquo;t move me&rdquo; &#9632;

f0029-02

NEW DEAL DOESN’T END TRADE DEMANDS

Larry Patey spent most of his NHL career in St. Louis and is best known as a Blue. So, it&rsquo;s not surprising to find Patey now lives in St. Louis and skates with the Blues&rsquo; alumni team.Patey was also a California Golden Seal and a New York Ranger but spent nine seasons as a St. Louis Blue.Patey, 37, and his wife, Lesley, both got their real estate licenses in his last year playing with the Blues and he now works for one of the top real estate companies in the U.S. After he was traded to the Rangers in the 1983-84 season, Patey played one more season and then chose real estate over trying to prolong his career.Since Patey had established close ties in St. Louis that&rsquo;s where they went back to when he retired in 1985.Patey had a chance to try to extend his hockey career but decided against it.&ldquo;Instead of trying out for one of five teams I decided to pack it in,&rdquo; says Patey, who also suffered a back injury which caused him to miss most of the 1983-84. &ldquo;As much as I would have liked to play on&mdash;I think I could&rsquo;ve played another year or two&mdash;I thought better of it.&rdquo;Now, Patey is the assistant manager for Gundaker Realtors in St. Louis. He, Lesley and daughter Ashley, 9, live in nearby Chesterfield, Mo.Patey, though, is still involved in hockey, playing in the oldtimers&rsquo; games with other Blues&rsquo; alumni. In fact, later this month he will be going to a charity event in Atlanta, Ga., with the team. He enjoys playing again as well as being able to help raise money for good causes.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0030-01694/5744954-1-eng-US/f0030-012.jpg" title="f0030-01" width="554" height="870"><figcaption class="caption-body">Larry Patey scored 316 points in his 12-year NHL career.</figcaption></div>Some of his favorite memories of his 12-year NHL career were with the Golden Seals.Patey, who was a 10th round pick in 1973, made a big splash in his rookie season in 1974-75. He set what would be a career high in goals with 25 after scoring 40 goals and 43 assists the previous year with the farm team in Salt Lake. For his 83 points that year he was named the Western League&rsquo;s rookie of the year.In the 1975-76 season the center was traded to St. Louis where he started a long and rewarding career with the Blues.Some players on the Blues in Patey&rsquo;s first years there were Red Berenson, Derek Sanderson and Garry Unger. Patey was strongly influenced by the scoring capabilities of Berenson and Sanderson and the work ethic and defensive play of Unger.&ldquo;Red helped me a lot,&rdquo; says Patey. &ldquo;You learn a lot from that calibre of player.&rdquo;In St. Louis, Patey, who had been a scorer with the Seals was given a defensive role. &ldquo;I got to play against the big lines, (Phil) Esposito, (Gil) Perreault, (Wayne) Gretzky and those types of players,&rdquo; says Patey. &ldquo;(Guy) Lafleur was always tough to play&mdash;especially in Montreal.&rdquo;&ldquo;Every player is different, though,&rdquo; Patey says. &ldquo;You have to be aware of their capabilities because all of the top players are slippery. You just can&rsquo;t have an off night because they&rsquo;ll hurt you.&rdquo;In his prime years with the Blues, Patey was good for 15 to 20 goals a season while still playing strong defense.Patey, who grew up in Mississauga, Ont., was a Ranger fan as a kid and it was a dream come true to become one late in his career. &ldquo;It was quite an experience being traded to the Rangers,&rdquo; Patey says. &ldquo;I got to see how the other half lived. I went to a old established team with a lot of history and tradition.&rdquo;The season he was traded was the year of his back injury. The next season he bounced between the Rangers and their farm team in New Haven and then made his decision to retire. &#9632;

f0030-01

CENTER LARRY PATEY WAS BEST KNOWN AS A BLUE

There&rsquo;s nothing technical or structured in the Kids&rsquo; Fun Hockey program. It&rsquo;s hockey at the grassroots level.George Manning, a design-shop owner in Saskatoon, Sask., started the program last spring out of necessity. His five-year-old son wanted to start playing, but was too small and too inexperienced to go up against his eight-year-old brother.So dad, who never played past the first-grade level, created a summer camp that focuses more on recreational stimulation than structural learning.In essence, the Kids&rsquo; Fun Hockey program is to a training camp what a paint-by-numbers kit is to lessons by Picasso.&ldquo;The idea is to give kids wanting to start hockey a chance to skate around in an atmosphere with no peer pressure,&rdquo; Manning says. &ldquo;Even a poor player gets a chance to touch the puck and try things he normally wouldn&rsquo;t do with coaches shouting at him and his friends making fun of him.&rdquo;Kids&rsquo; Fun Hockey uses more than pucks, sticks and nets to get the stimulation across. Support facilities like the puck hog and the tunnel and window keep the children active and prevent any chance of boredom.Other program training aids include shooting stars, raiser&rsquo;s edge, maze, three-puck shinny, hockey golf, ice water fountains, rink dividers and a shoot night.Manning says the program isn&rsquo;t an alternative to hockey schools or power-skating sessions. Rather it&rsquo;s a starter&rsquo;s kit for the young enthusiast who wants to check the game out.&ldquo;Some people might say that it&rsquo;s not structured enough or that it&rsquo;s too namby-pamby, but that&rsquo;s not our objective,&rdquo; Manning says. &ldquo;The response from the kids has been great. I haven&rsquo;t talked to anyone who doesn&rsquo;t want to come back.&rdquo;The once-a-week sessions end in September, but Manning says a church group in Saskatoon is looking to borrow his idea for a winter edition. Whether or not a second program continues next year depends on the interests of Manning&rsquo;s kids.&ldquo;I did this whole thing for their sake,&rdquo; Manning says. &ldquo;I have no problem people copying my idea to start their own program. I have patent papers on the puck hog, but this is a concept I&rsquo;d like to see expand.&rdquo;The puck hog is one of his most interesting ideas. Skating down the ice, the young player is encouraged to pass the puck between the legs of a plywood-constructed hog. The concept not only gets a player used to dishing the puck off, but it improves his passing.Manning admits the idea of a kids&rsquo; tun hockey camp isn&rsquo;t completely original. His support facilities, however, seem to have pushed the right button.&ldquo;The angle I push in my toy designs is to try to adapt the adult world to the physical capabilities of children,&rdquo; Manning states. &ldquo;Children love to copy adult activity and when they do, they can use their minds more.&rdquo; &#9632;

KIDS’ HOCKEY PROGRAM IS FUN

<div class="byline">BY PAUL ABRAMOWITZ</div>An intriguing problem will come up when the Springfield Indians open their season on Oct. 5 against the Maine Mariners. Because&mdash;barring a trade&mdash;there won&rsquo;t be a player from last season&rsquo;s Calder Cup champs on the ice.Then you have to wonder: Should the Indians be honored as Calder Cup champions?It is an interesting question since this season&rsquo;s Indians will have little resemblance to last season&rsquo;s team.Springfield lost its affiliation with the New York Islanders in the off-season and inherited the Hartford Whalers. Coach Jim Roberts will be the only returnee from last season&rsquo;s team.The Indians will be honored though&mdash;with the emphasis on AHL coach-of-the-year Roberts. &ldquo;We are the defending Calder Cup champs,&rdquo; said Indians&rsquo; owner Peter Cooney. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s Springfield that is inscribed on the Cup.&ldquo;If the Islanders did stay here, but replaced everyone on the team, wouldn&rsquo;t we still be the defending Calder Cup champs? Of course,&rdquo; he said.It was suggested that it would be appropriate for Springfield to open the season against the Capital District Islanders&mdash;New York&rsquo;s new farm team based in Troy, N.Y. That way, some of the players responsible for last season&rsquo;s postseason success would be on hand.&ldquo;We have a new set of Springfield Indians here,&rdquo; Cooney responded. &ldquo;They deserve all the attention, not the opposition.&rdquo;But some sort of recognition of the players from last season is being considered when the Islanders first play in Springfield Dec. 8.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0031-01640/5745009-1-eng-US/f0031-012.jpg" title="f0031-01" width="706" height="1060"><figcaption class="caption-body">Jim Roberts is the only returnee from last year&rsquo;s Cup champion Indians.</figcaption></div>Other changes this season will be that the Indians&rsquo; uniforms will be Hartford green, but the logo will remain the same.Another change Cooney and the Springfield fans hope for is that Hartford makes a stronger commitment to its minor league team than last season when it watched Binghamton set league records for futility.Cooney is not worried. He&rsquo;s confident Hartford will make a strong effort because of the closeness of the two cities&mdash;they are about 20 miles apart.&ldquo;They have a tremendous amount to gain from having a good club in Springfield on a consistent basis,&rdquo; Cooney said.<h2>BAD MEMORIES</h2>The Binghamton Rangers could have run a promotion to have fans guess when the team would win its 12th game of the season&mdash;one more than the team won last year. But, Tom Mitchell, co-owner of the team, didn&rsquo;t want to bring up any bad memories.Mitchell&rsquo;s Binghamton team won a mere 11 games last season as the top affiliate of the Hartford Whalers.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want anybody to think about all that losing,&rdquo; said Mitchell, who watched his team lose a league-record 60 games last season. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if I&rsquo;d want that as a promotion. It may be too negative.&rdquo;Fact is, everything is different around the Broome County Arena these days. Mitchell and co-owners Bob Carr and Jim McCoy don&rsquo;t want any of their fans remembering anything about last year.The building has been repainted in New York Ranger red, white and blue colors, a new scoreboard is in place and the home dressing room and weight room have been renovated.&ldquo;There will be no speck of (Hartford Whaler) green in this building this year,&rdquo; Mitchell said.The most significant difference, though, is that Mitchell and his partners expect to have a team contending for the Southern Division title.&ldquo;I know an effort has been made from the Rangers to put a competitive team in here,&rdquo; Mitchell said. New York signed coach John Paddock and added goalies Sam St. Laurent and Mark Laforest, left winger Ross Fitzpatrick and right winger Chris Cichocki this summer.&ldquo;We feel very good about that,&rdquo; Mitchell said. &ldquo;They have shown a whole lot of interest in what is happening here.&rdquo;The fans in Broome County have taken note, too. New season ticket sales are up 102 per cent from last year, Mitchell said. Mitchell projected the team will have 2,000 season tickets sold by opening night, an increase of about 600 from their previous best season. He also said advertising has increased about 15 per cent from their best year.&ldquo;We hung in there and we are glad,&rdquo; said Mitchell, who said he and his partners lost money last season. &ldquo;It has been a tough two years, but everything looks like it&rsquo;s going in the right direction.&rdquo;<h2>RADIO DAYS</h2>The Fredericton Canadiens signed a three-year radio deal with CKHJ-FM. Andy Wilson will broadcast 40 road games&hellip;The Maine Mariners will play their Dec. 8 home game against Fredericton at Boston Garden&hellip;Archie Henderson, who spent most of his pro career in the American League with Hershey, Binghamton, Maine and Nova Scotia, will be coaching a team in Edinburgh, Scotland, this year. Hender-son coached Nashville of the East Coast League last season and Indianapolis of the IHL the year before&hellip;The Moncton Hawks hope they&rsquo;ll gain some toughness after the parent Winnipeg Jets signed left wingers Steve Martinson and Daryl Stanley as free agents during the summer. &#9632;

f0031-01

STRANGERS WILL CELEBRATE CALDER CUP PARTY

<div class="byline">BY RAND SIMON AND BILL PICKETT</div>The way Bob Plager is accumulating job titles, he&rsquo;s going to need one very long business card.Plager, who was named a vice-president with the St. Louis Blues last September to go along with his role as director of player development, has also added the title of coach for the Blues&rsquo; farm team in Peoria.Plager, named coach Aug. 23, returns to the minors after an absence of 13 years. He was last down on the farm as a player/coach with the Salt Lake Golden Eagles in 1977-78 when they were the Blues&rsquo; minor pro affiliate.But don&rsquo;t expect Plager, 47, to hang around in Peoria too long. While he is officially the head coach, his appointment is strictly short-term. When St. Louis assistant coach Joe Micheletti returned to his former job as a stockbroker, Peoria coach Wayne Thomas was named his replacement. The Blues wanted a coach who knew the players well so Plager took the job.&ldquo;Right now I&rsquo;m a little bit nervous,&rdquo; Plager said, &ldquo;but I&rsquo;m really looking forward to it. It would&rsquo;ve been tough to find a coach this late. I was behind the bench a little bit last year and helped run the practices when Wayne was up working with our goalies. It was the fair thing for the kids and it was the obvious thing to do. I&rsquo;m looking forward to see how I do but really it could just be for one year.&rdquo;The Rivermen stumbled to a 31-38-13 record and a fourth-place finish in the West Division last season. Frequent player callups and injuries were a factor but generally the team underachieved.The team figures to be much stronger this season with Goodwill Games hero Guy Hebert, International League most valuable player Michel Mongeau and Hobey Baker finalist Nelson Emerson leading the way.Plager is more concerned about developing players for the Blues than he is winning in Peoria. He said the fans there understand the main purpose of a minor pro team is to develop players.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to play the young players and give them a chance to show what they can do,&rdquo; Plager said. &ldquo;We have some older players who will have to understand this. If there are any complainers we&rsquo;ll get rid of them. We have to find out if our young kids can play with St. Louis.&rdquo;<h2>HIGH HOPES</h2>New Fort Wayne GM David Franke is optimistic the Komets will open camp Sept. 20 with one of the IHL&rsquo;s strongest independent teams.The most recent signings by the Komets are right winger Robin Bawa, center Marc Saumier and left winger Keith Miller.&ldquo;We feel we&rsquo;re in great shape,&rdquo; said club president Michael Franke. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve signed 10 players and there are three or four more coming that we can&rsquo;t announce yet.&ldquo;But of the guvs we&rsquo;ve signed, we feel we&rsquo;ve gotten off to a better start than some of the other independents.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0031-02442/5745040-1-eng-US/f0031-022.jpg" title="f0031-02" width="710" height="1070"><figcaption class="caption-body">Warren Babe is trying to make a comeback with the Kalamazoo Wings.</figcaption></div>Bawa and Miller both have played at Port Wayne before. Bawa had 189 penalty minutes for Baltimore (AHL) last season to go along with 7-18-25 totals in 61 games. He was with the Komets in 1987-88. Miller has been in Fort Wayne the last two seasons and posted 26-19-45 totals in 51 games in &rsquo;89-90.Saumier split time last season between Sherbrooke and Peoria. He was a combined 8-21-29 with 226 penalty minutes in 45 games.<h2>TWO MORE</h2>The Kansas City Blades continued to build for their first season by signing two more minor-pro veterans.Defenseman Mark Vichorek and right winger Stu Kulak were signed by the club Sept. 6. That brings to six the number of players under contract to the Blades.Vichorek had four goals and 12 assists in 60 games for Fort Wayne last season while Kulak had 14 goals and 23 assists in 36 games with Moncton.The Blades will continue to sign free agents and will also get help through secondary agreements with Hartford and Edmonton to stock the roster.<h2>BIG CAMP</h2>Training camp for the Kalamazoo Wings is a lot more crowded this season than it has been for many years.Coach John Marks welcomed 39 players to Wings Stadium on Sept. 13, including left winger Warren Babe, who sat out last season because of a head injury suffered in a pre-season exhibition game.Minnesota&rsquo;s No. 1 draft pick, Derian Hatcher, is among the North Star hopefuls training under Marks and assistant coach Kevin Constantine.This is probably the last Wings&rsquo; training camp with North Star players as the three-year contract between Minnesota and Kalamazoo expires after this season. Minnesota has already agreed to move its farm team to St. John&rsquo;s, Nfld., for the 1991-92 season. &#9632;

f0031-02

PLAGER ADDS ANOTHER TITLE

<div class="byline">BY RANDY RUSSON</div>The Owen Sound Platers are drawing dividends from last spring&rsquo;s dramatic playoff win over the Sudbury Wolves.An additional 500 season-ticket packages have been sold since the Platers recovered from a 3-1 deficit to beat Sudbury 4-3 in best-of-seven, first-round playoff action last April.The Platers have now sold 1,600 seasontickets and might have sold more had general manager Rob Holody not cut off purchases.&ldquo;We just had to keep some seats available for game nights,&rdquo; said Holody. &ldquo;We only seat 2,800 (at Bayshore Community Arena) and I wanted to ensure that walk-in fans still had a chance at good seats.&rdquo;The Platers&rsquo; success at the box office has been outstanding. Last season&mdash;their first in Owen Sound&mdash;they averaged more than 2,100 per game.During seven seasons in Guelph, the Platers never averaged more than 1,500 per game. The most season-tickets ever sold was 762&mdash;during the 1982-83 season.And during the Platers&rsquo; last season at Guelph&mdash;1988-89&mdash;fewer than 400 seasontickets were sold.Platers&rsquo; director of public relations, marketing and player personnel, Dave Lord, said the fan response in Owen Sound &ldquo;is something else after what we went through in Guelph.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m happy for Rob and his dad (Platers&rsquo; owner Joe Holody). It wasn&rsquo;t easy leaving their hometown. But you can only lose money for so long.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re all just happy to be in Owen Sound.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-01680/5745078-1-eng-US/f0032-012.jpg" title="f0032-01" width="716" height="850"><figcaption class="caption-body">Veteran coach Brian Kilrea is high on rookie Kris Draper.</figcaption></div><h2>EMMS IS GREEN</h2>When it comes to coaches, the Emms Division is the junior circuit.Heading into his fourth full season with the Kitchener Rangers, Joe McDonnell has more than double the seniority of any other Emms mentor.Next on the list is Ted Nolan of Sault Ste. Marie. Nolan, who took over the Greyhounds midway through 1988-89 season, is entering just his second full season.Also in their second seasons are Len McNamara at Owen Sound, Windsor&rsquo;s Brad Smith, Hamilton&rsquo;s Jay Johnston and George Burnett of Niagara Falls.Both Johnston and Burnett took over their posts after the 1989-90 season had already started.London&rsquo;s Gary Agnew and Detroit&rsquo;s Andy Weidenbach are in their first seasons as OHL head coaches.Meanwhile, in the Leyden Division, their are no less than four coaches with more experience than Kitchener&rsquo;s McDonnell.They are Ottawa&rsquo;s Brian Kilrea, North Bay&rsquo;s Bert Templeton, Peterborough&rsquo;s Dick Todd and Belleville&rsquo;s Larry Mavety.<h2>SCHILL JILTED</h2>Overage goalie David Schill, who posted 59 wins during three OHL seasons, will start the season playing junior B at Waterloo. Schill, whose overage rights were held by Windsor, was put on waivers by the Spitfires and went unclaimed&hellip;Ottawa coach Kilrea is already touting 19-year-old former Olympian left winger Kris Draper as the leading candidate for rookie-of-the-year&hellip;Cornwall GM Orval Tessier says rookie Finnish goalie Ilpo Kauhanen is so good &ldquo;even Woodsie (long-time Royals&rsquo; scout Gord Wood) likes him.&rdquo; Wood is often skeptical of the abilities of goalies, especially ones he hasn&rsquo;t personally scouted. The Royals&rsquo; landed Kauhanen from Finland through a contact of Peter Schneider, father of former Cornwall blueliner Mathieu Schneider&hellip;The fledgling Detroit Ambassadors were devastated to discover that veteran 20-year-old defenseman Dan Brown would not be joining the team. Brown was acquired from the Peterborough Petes and was expected to lead the young blueline. Brown will be attending university&hellip;Ambassadors&rsquo; GM Tony MacDonald is impressed with 6-foot-6, 180-pound goalie Jamie Shea, a walk-on 18-year-old from Cape Breton. He will battle veteran Kevin McDougall for the starter&rsquo;s job&hellip;Mike Bumstein replaces Mike Shuman as trainer of the Memorial Cup champion Oshawa Generals. Shuman, 23, is joining the Halifax Citadels of the American League. Burnstein, 19, has worked as an assistant the past five years with the Hamilton Dukes, Niagara Falls Thunder, 1986 national junior team and &rsquo;87 Canada Cup team.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-02490/5745071-1-eng-US/f0032-022.jpg" title="f0032-02" width="704" height="850"><figcaption class="caption-body">Goalie Kevin McDougall will face plenty of shots in Detroit.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0032-01

PLATERS FORCED TO CUT OFF TICKET SALES

<div class="byline">BY VANCE OLIVER</div>Defenseman Jason Marshall has turned down two collegiate offers to attend the University of Adversity, WHL.Marshall, selected ninth overall by the St. Louis Blues in the 1989 NHL entry draft, spumed scholarship offers from the University of Michigan and Michigan State University to play for the Tri-City Americans.&ldquo;I figured the junior route would be better for my career,&rdquo; said Marshall, 19.Marshall skated last season with the Canadian national team, collecting one goal and 12 points in 73 games for head coach Dave King.&ldquo;I learned a lot from (King), especially defensively,&rdquo; Marshall added. &ldquo;But in talking to St. Louis, they want me to learn to carry the puck more.&ldquo;I figured Tri-City would be a good chance to try it out.&rdquo;Marshall&rsquo;s WHL pre-season debut, however, was marred by a hand injury on Sept. 7 during a 4-3 loss to the Kamloops Blazers.Marshall injured his hand following a fight with Kamloops&rsquo; forward Colin Gregor, but he had recovered in time to head for the Blues&rsquo; training camp on Sept. 10.The Blues are expected to send Marshall, who has one more year of junior eligibility, back to Tri-City.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-03336/5745116-1-eng-US/f0032-032.jpg" title="f0032-03" width="714" height="1032"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-04218/5745109-1-eng-US/f0032-042.jpg" title="f0032-04" width="714" height="1034"><figcaption class="caption-body">Jason Marshall, left, turned down a couple college offers to join Tri-City, while Wes Walz finally reached contract terms with the Boston Bruins.</figcaption></div><h2>VETERANS HOPPED</h2>New Victoria Cougars&rsquo; coach Rick Hopper has cleared house in effort to revitalize the worst team in junior hockey.Hopper dumped seven veterans from last season&rsquo;s 5-65-2 Cougars, including their top two point-getters.Hopper released 20-year-old center Terry Klapstein outright, while he shipped 19-year-old left winger Mike Seaton to the Seattle Thunderbirds.Both players led the Cougars in scoring last season each with 25 goals and 64 points.&ldquo;It will hurt us in the short run,&rdquo; Hopper said. &ldquo;Both players can put the puck into the net, but they didn&rsquo;t fit into what I wanted.&ldquo;We have some younger people here that weren&rsquo;t getting to play because of the older people in front of them.&rdquo;Klapstein has hooked up with the Victoria Warriors of the British Columbia Junior Hockey League, while the Cougars obtained 17-year-old defenseman Josh Conistandinou in exchange for Seaton&rsquo;s services.Victoria has also traded 18-year-old defenseman Curtis Nykyforuk to the Medicine Hat Tigers for future considerations.&ldquo;We want to gamer the respect of the teams we play against,&rdquo; Hopperadded. &ldquo;By doing so, it will make it a little easier for us to recruit next summer.&rdquo;<h2>BEANTOWN WALZ</h2>Lethbridge Hurricanes&rsquo; center Wes Walz finally signed a four-year contract with the Boston Bruins after threatening not to report to the NHL team&rsquo;s training camp.Walz, a third-round draft pick of the Bruins in 1989, was selected Player of the Year last season in the WHL. He tallied 54 goals and 140 points in 56 games with Lethbridge.Terms of the contract were not released.Linesman Jay Sharrers has signed a contract with the NHL and will work games in the NHL, American League and International League this season.<h2>EARNING STRIPES</h2>Sharrers, 23, started officiating in the WHL at the age of 19 and was a linesman in the 1989 Memorial Cup championship game, as well as the WHL championship series all four seasons.The native of New Westminster, B.C. is the 13th WHL official to sign with the NHL in the past 12 years. Others are Bob Hall, Ian Sandercock, Ken Wheler, Wayne Forsey, Dan Marouelli, Rob Shick, Mike McGeough, Brad Lazarowich, Lance Roberts, Mike Cvik, Shane Heyer and Dennis LaRue.Kevin Muench and Brad Watson, both fulltime WHL referees, are joining the NHL&rsquo;s trainee program and will officiate games in the AHL and IHL this season. &#9632;

f0032-03

MARSHALL LAW TO RULE IN TRI-CITY

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0034-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-01687/5745192-1-eng-US/f0034-012.jpg"></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0035-01654/5745185-1-eng-US/f0035-012.jpg" title="f0035-01" width="1850" height="3673"></div> &#9632;

f0034-01

CLASSIFIED

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0036-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0036-01621/5745237-1-eng-US/f0036-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Joe Murphy, left, Adam Graves and Martin Gelinas celebrate the Oilers&rsquo; Stanley Cup win last May. Edmonton defends its title starting the 1990-91 season Oct. 6 hosting Winnipeg.</figcaption></div><h2>NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE SCHEDULE</h2><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-01536/5745230-1-eng-US/f0037-012.jpg" title="f0037-01" width="3083" height="2339"></div><h2>STARTING TIMES NHL GAMES</h2><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0037-02394/5745223-1-eng-US/f0037-022.jpg" title="f0037-02" width="3071" height="817"></div> &#9632;

f0036-01

PEPSI ON ICE

<h2>NHL</h2><h3>NHL EXHIBITIONS</h3>STANDINGS AS OF MON. SEPT. 17<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-01624/5745310-1-eng-US/f0038-012.jpg" title="f0038-01" width="578" height="579"></div><h3>EUROPEAN TOUR</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-02484/5745303-1-eng-US/f0038-022.jpg" title="f0038-02" width="576" height="136"></div><h3>EXHIBITION SCORERS</h3>THUR., SEP. 6ST. LOUIS (3)&mdash;ROD BRIND&rsquo;AMOUR, BRETT HULL. GEOFF COURTNALL. DUSSELDORF (1)&mdash;WILLMAN.FRL, SEP. 7EDMONTON (2)&mdash;MARK MESSIER, CHRIS JOSEPH. DUSSELDORF (0)&mdash;NO SCORINGSAT., SEP. 8ST. LOUIS (10)&mdash;EOFF COURTNALL (4), JEFF BROWN (2), STEVE TUTTLE (2), RICH SUTTER (2), ROD BRIND&rsquo;A-&rsquo; MOUR EDMONTON (1)&mdash;CRAIG SIMPSONMON., SEP. 10MONTREAL (7)&mdash;STEPHAN LEBEAU (2), STEPHANE RICHER (2), BRENT GILCHRIST, BENOIT BRUNET, DONALD DUFRESNE SWEDEN AIK (1)&mdash;FRANZENWED., SEP. 12MONTREAL (5)&mdash;DENIS SAVARD (3), STEPHAN LEBEAU, STEPHANE RICHER, SHAYNE CORSON. LENINGRAD (3)&mdash;SHOMSKY. ANDREYEV, TARASENKO.THUR SEP 13SPARTAK (8)&mdash;POPUGAEV (3), BARKOV, BOLDIN, UP-LGIN, TKACHUK, BUSHMELEV MINNESOTA (3)&mdash;MIKE MODANO (2), ILKKA SINISALO, GAETAN DHESNE, DON BARBER.FRL, SEP. 14CALGARY (8)&mdash;DOUG GILMOUR (2), COLIN PATTERSON (2), TIM SWEENEY (2), GARY ROBERTS, GARY SUTER. WINNIPEG (3)&mdash;JEFF PARKER, STU BARNES. THOMAS STEEN.MONTREAL (4)&mdash;SHAYNE CORSON, RUSS COURTNALL, STEPHANE RICHER, DENIS SAVARD. DYNAMO RIGA (2)&mdash;BOLDOVESHKO, ZNAROK.BOSTON (4)&mdash;WES WALZ, NEVIN MARKWART, ROB CIMETTA, DAVE POULIN NY ISLANDERS (4)&mdash;TOM FITZGERALD. DEREK KING, PAT LaFONTAINE, BILL BERG. NY RANGERS (2)&mdash;RAY SHEPPARD, LINDY RUFF. WASHINGTON (2)&mdash;MIKE RIDLEY, STEVE MALTAIS.PITTSBURGH (2)&mdash;KEVIN STEVENS. PAUL STANTON DETROIT (0)&mdash;NO SCORING.NEW JERSEY (3)&mdash;8RUCE DRIVER, JON MORRIS. TOMMY ALBELIN. PHILALDELPHIA (3)&mdash;RICK TOCCHET, MIKE RICCI, PELLE EKLUND.LOS ANGELES (6)&mdash;BOB KUDELSKI, MIKKO MAKELA, DAVE TAYLOR. ROB BLAKE. MIKE KRUSHELNYSKI. JAY MILLER. QUEBEC (3)&mdash;EVERETT SANIPASS. KIP MILLER, MARC FORTIER.EDMONTON (12)&mdash;GLENN ANDERSON (2), CRAIG SIMPSON (2). DAVE BROWN (2). ADAM GRAVES, MARK LAMB, STEVE SMITH, DAN CURRIE. VLADIMIR RUZICKA, ANATOLI SEMENOV. AC GRAZ AUSTRIA (3)&mdash;GROULX, HAVASI, SIVEC.SAT., SEP. 15LOS ANGELES (5)&mdash;WAYNE GRETZKY (2), TONY GRANA-TO (2), JAY MILLER. PITTSBURGH (4}&mdash;MARK RECCHI (2), TONY TANTI, BARRY PEDERSONSOVIET WINGS (3)&mdash;NEMCHINOV, KURACHEV, KOGEV-NIKO. MINNESOTA (2)&mdash;STEWART GAVIN, BASIL McRAE. (OT)NY RANGERS (4)&mdash;RAY SHEPPARD. TROY MALLETTE, JEFF BLOEMBERG. LOUIE deBRUSK. WASHINGTON (1)&mdash; CHRIS FELIX.CALGARY (2)&mdash;BRIAN GLYNN, JIRI HRDINA. VANCOUVER (2)&mdash;ADRIEN PLAVSIC, TREVOR LINDEN.BOSTON (5)&mdash;BOB CARPENTER (2), RAY BOURQUE (2), GLEN WESLEY. PHILADELPHIA (2)&mdash;MARTIN HOSTAK (2).SUN., SEP. 16CHICAGO (5)&mdash;STEVE THOMAS (2), CHRIS CHELIOS. ADAM CREIGHTON, TROY MURRAY BUFFALO (4)&mdash; GRANT LEDYARD, JAY WELLS. DALE HAWERCHUK, JOHN TUCKER. (OT)VANCOUVER (6)&mdash;DAN QUINN (2), JACK CAPUANO, PETER NEDVED, ROBERT NORDMARK, DAVE MACKAY. DETROIT (1)&mdash;DANIEL SHANK.BOSTON (5)&mdash;ROB CIMETTA (2). LYNDON BYERS, CAM NEELY. PETER DOURIS. PHILADELPHIA (4)&mdash;KIMBI DANIELS (2), RICK TOCCHET, GORD MURPHYMOSCOW DYNAMO (4)&mdash;SEMAK, DOROKIN, UIDIN, LEONOV MONTREAL (1)&mdash;MARK PEDERSON.CALGARY (5)&mdash;BRIAN GLYNN. THEOREN FLEURY, PAUL RANHEIM, JOEL OTTO. DOUG GILMOUR WINNIPEG (4)&mdash;PAUL McDERMID (2). DANTON COLE. SIMON WHEELDON NEW JERSEY (4)&mdash;PETER STASTNY. ZDENO CIGER, KIRK MULLER, ERIC WEINRICH. NY ISLANDERS (1)&mdash;PAT LaFONTAINEHARTFORD (4)&mdash;RAY FERRARO. PAUL CYR, JAMES BLACK. JERGUS BACA. WASHINGTON (4)&mdash;ROB MURRAY (2). MICHAL PIVONKA (2). CALLE JOHANSSON<h2>QMJHL</h2><h3>ROBERT LEBEL DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-03391/5745296-1-eng-US/f0038-032.jpg" title="f0038-03" width="580" height="188"></div><h3>FRANK DILIO DIVISION</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-04302/5745289-1-eng-US/f0038-042.jpg" title="f0038-04" width="579" height="189"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-05220/5745282-1-eng-US/f0038-052.jpg" title="f0038-05" width="537" height="345"></div>SEP. 13: VICTORIAVILLE 5 AT LAVAL 6SEP. 14: ST-HYACINTHE 8 AT CHICOUTIMI 3HULL 2 AT DRUMMONDVILLE 7GRANBY 2 AT COLLEGE FRANCAIS 4BEAUPORT 3 AT ST-JEAN 6TROIS-RIVIERES 7 AT SHAWINIGAN 1LAVAL 4 AT VICTORIAVILLE 5 (OT)SEP. 16: ST-JEAN 3 AT BEAUPORT 3 (OT)LAVAL 0 AT ST-HYACINTHE 1SHAWINIGAN 1 AT TROIS-RIVIERES 4HULL 9 AT VICTORIAVILLE 4CHICOUTIMI 5 AT DRUMMONDVILLE 6 (OT)COLLEGE FRANCAIS 8 AT GRANBY 4<h2>OHL</h2><h3>EXHIBITIONS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-06181/5745275-1-eng-US/f0038-062.jpg" title="f0038-06" width="481" height="659"></div>SEP. 10: OSHAWA 7 AT PETERBOROUGH 5 KITCHENER 5 AT WINDSOR 4SEP. 11: LONDON 4 AT DETROIT 3SUDBURY 7 AT NORTH BAY 5PETERBOROUGH 6 AT OSHAWA 5KINGSTON 1 AT OTTAWA 3SEP. 12: PETERBOROUGH 1 AT BELLEVILLE 3KITCHENER 3 AT HAMILTON 4SEP. 13: OTTAWA 5 AT CORNWALL 7OSHAWA 4 AT NIAGARA FALLS 3KINGSTON 7 AT PETERBOROUGH 2LONDON 2 AT WINDSOR 5SEP. 14: OTTAWA 3 AT KINGSTON 8HAMILTON 1 AT KITCHENER 6WINDSOR 2 AT LONDON 5CORNWALL 1 AT NORTH BAY 6SEP. 15: OTTAWA 2 AT BELLEVILLE 5OSHAWA 4 AT KINGSTON 6KITCHENER 3 AT NIAGARA FALLS 2HAMILTON 3 AT OWEN SOUND 7NORTH BAY 1 AT SUDBURY 3SEP. 16: NORTH BAY 4 AT CORNWALL 5NIAGARA FALLS 4 AT HAMILTON 6WINDSOR 5 AT KITCHENER 7S.S MARIE 4 AT SUDBURY 5<h2>WHL</h2><h3>EXHIBITIONS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-07167/5745268-1-eng-US/f0038-072.jpg" title="f0038-07" width="526" height="241"></div>SEP. 15: SWIFT CURRENT 3 AT MEDICINE HAT 7BRANDON 7 AT MOOSE JAW 6 (OT)LETHBRIDGE 7 AT PRINCE ALBERT 6 (OT)KAMLOOPS 7 AT SEATTLE 2SPOKANE 8 AT TRI-CITIES 6PORTLAND 4 AT VICTORIA 2SEP. 16: REGINA 4 AT BRANDON 2TRI-CITIES 4 AT SPOKANE 2PORTLAND 4 AT VICTORIA 2 &#9632;

f0038-01

SCOREBOARD

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0038-08" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-08144/5745341-1-eng-US/f0038-082.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Mats Sundin, the first pick overall for Quebec in 1989, signed a long-term contract with the Nordiques Sept. 17.</figcaption></div><h2>BOSTON</h2>Sept 13: Chris Harvey, G, assigned to Johnstown (ECHL). Ted Mizkolczki, RW, Mark Woolf, RW, Eric LeMarque, RW, Richard Little, C, Vince Guidotti, D, and Alan Perry, G, released.<h2>BUFFALO</h2>Sept. 7: Kevin Kerr, RW, assigned to Fort Wayne (IHL). Dwaine Hutton, LW, released. Sept. 9: Rick Vaive, RW, signed contract. Sept. 11: Dave Andreychuk, LW, signed contract Sept. 12: Pierre Turgeon, C, signed multi-year contract. Sept. 14: Mike Hartman, LW, signed contract.<h2>CALGARY</h2>Sept. 6: Paul Ranheim, LW, Brian Mac-Lellan, LW, and Jiri Hrdina, RW, signed contracts. Sept. 7: Gary Suter, D, and Theoren Fleury, C/RW, signed contracts. Sept. 10: Al Maclnnis, D, and Tim Hunter, RW, signed contracts. Sept. 12: Veli-Pekka Kautonen, D, returned to IFK (Finland). Vesa Vitakoski, LW, returned to Saipa (Finland). Sept. 13: Dana Murzyn, D, signed contract.<h2>CHICAGO</h2>Sept. 5: Wayne Presley, RW, signed two-year contract. Sept. 6: Vladislav Tretiak named goaltending instructor and scout. Sept. 16: Bill Thomas, RW, Eric Klutke, C, and Keith Miller, LW, released.<h2>DETROIT</h2>Sept. 12: Jason York, D, assigned to Kitchener (OHL). Claude Barthe, D, assigned to Victoriaville (QMJHL). Jason Glickman, G, Darren Colbourne, RW, John East, D, Mike Natyshak, RW, and Tom Nick-olau, C, released.<h2>EDMONTON</h2>Sept. 13: Joel Blain, LW, returned to Hull (QMJHL). Milan Dragicevic, D, returned to Acadia (AUAA). Mike Tinkham, C, and David Aiken, LW, released. Sept. 14: Scott Allison, C, returned to Prince Albert (WHL).<h2>HARTFORD</h2>Sept. 11: Randy Ladocueur, D, signed two-year contract. Sept. 14: Mike Lenarduz-zi, G, returned to Sault Ste. Marie (OHL). Geoff Sanderson, C, returned to Swift Current (WHL). Denis Chalifoux, C, returned to Laval (QMJHL).<h2>LOS ANGELES</h2>Sept. 6: Craig Duncanson, LW, traded to Minnesota for Daniel Berthiaume, G. Sept. 14: Mike Allison, assigned to Phoenix (IHL).<h2>MINNESOTA</h2>Sept. 6: Daniel Berthiaume, G, traded to Los Angeles for Craig Duncanson, LW. Duncanson traded to Winnipeg for Brian Hunt, C.<h2>MONTREAL</h2>None.<h2>NEW JERSEY</h2>Sept. 5: Bryan LaFort, G, returned to Swift Current (WHL). John Reid, G, released. Sept. 6: Bob Brooke, C, traded to Winnipeg for Laurie Boschman, C.<h2>NY ISLANDERS</h2>Sept. 10: Ken Baumgartner, D, signed multi-year contract. Sept. 16: Chris Taylor, C, returned to London (OHL). Sylvain Fleury, LW, returned to College Francais (QMJHL). Guy Rouleau, C, released.<h2>NY RANGERS</h2>Sept. 13: John Vary, D, returned to North Bay (OHL). Greg Leahy, LW, returned to Portland (WHL). Jason Prosofsky, RW, returned to Medicine Hat (WHL). Scot Johnson, LW, released. Sept. 14: John Ogrod-nick, LW, signed contract.<h2>PHILADELPHIA</h2>Sept. 14: Ron Hextall, G, and Rick Toc-chet, RW, signed multi-year contracts.<h2>PITTSBURGH</h2>Sept. 13: Daniel Gauthier, LW, Christian Lalonde, LW, Paul Laus, D, Troy Miqjc, LW, Todd Nelson, D, and Andrew Wolf, D, assigned to Muskegon (IHL). Jeff Waver, D, assigned to Albany (IHL). Shawn Lillie, LW, assigned to Fort Wayne (IHL). Kelly Che-towetz, D, returned to Regina (WHL). Dave Shute, C, returned to Medicine Hat (WHL). Peter Berthelson, D, Andre Brassard, D, Jeff Fife, G, Sylvain Lajaunesse, RW, Bob McGrath, LW, Kenton Rein, G, and Marc Rousseau, D, released.<h2>QUEBEC</h2>Sept. 11: Stephane Guerard, D, signed three-year contract. Sept. 15: Mario Doyon, D, Gerald Bzdel, D, Tony Hrkac, C, Mike Hough, LW, David Latta, LW, Everett Sanipass, LW, Darin Kimble, RW, Dan Vincelette, LW, Lucien Deblois, C, and lira Jarvi, LW, signed contracts. Sept. 17: Mats Sundin, RW, signed multi-year contract.<h2>ST. LOUIS</h2>Sept. 16: Mike Mudd, G, John Klemm, D, Drew Sawtell, LW, and Butch Kaebel, LW, released. Dan Fowler, D, assigned to McGill&rsquo; (OUAA), John Vaio, D, assigned to Nashville (ECHL), Joe Hawley, RW, returned to Peterborough (OHL), Derek Frenette, LW, assigned to Hull (QMJHL).<h2>TORONTO</h2>Sept. 8: Robert Horyna, G, signed two-year contract. Sept. 9: Todd Gill, D, Dave Hannan, C, Mark Osborne, LW, signed contracts.<h2>VANCOUVER</h2>Sept. 6: Bob Mason, G, Bob Dollas, D, signed tree-agent tryout contracts Sept. 15: Grant Delcourt, C, Scott Driscoll, D, Todd Fanning, G, Brian King, D, Peter Liptrott, D, Michael Maurice, LW, and Matt Merten, G, released. Darin Bader, LW, returned to Saskatoon (WHL). Mark Cipriano, RW, re-turned to Victoria (WHL). Tyler Erter, C, returned to Windsor (OHL). Shannon Travis, D, retired.<h2>WASHINGTON</h2>Sept. 9: Bill Houlder, D, Bob Rouse, D, Peter Zezel, C, and Tim Bergland, RW, signed contracts.<h2>WINNIPEG</h2>Sept. 4: Lee Davidson, C, and Peter Hankinson, LW, signed multi-year contracts. Sept. 6: Laurie Boschman, C, traded to New Jersey for Bob Brooke, C. Brian Hunt, C, traded to Minnesota for Craig Duncanson, LW. Sept. 10: Doug Smail, LW, signed contract. &#9632;

f0038-08

TRAINING CAMP TRANSACTIONS

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0038-09" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-09131/5745372-1-eng-US/f0038-092.jpg"></div> &#9632;

f0038-09

NATIONAL LEAGUE PRE-SEASON SCHEDULE

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-01589/5745403-1-eng-US/f0039-012.jpg" title="f0039-01" width="552" height="616"><figcaption class="caption-body">KEVIN DUPONT</figcaption></div>If you had ever seen my father skate, his stride so graceful and steady, you might have thought that he had played in the National Hockey League. He switched effortlessly to skate backwards and threaded his way flawlessly through packs of stumbling children. He moved with overwhelming serenity, and with such style and innate anticipation.Most of us learn to skate, at least most of us attempt to learn. My sense is that my father just knew. I don&rsquo;t believe Wayne Gretzky learned to skate. The same for Bobby Orr. There are men, undoubtedly women, too, who pull on skates and instantly hear some mellifluent skating rhythm in their heads, feel it in their feet.Maybe it is calypso music, or some sweet Brazilian tune. I don&rsquo;t know. I&rsquo;ve never heard it, and I&rsquo;m sure I never will.While the rest of us stumble, and live lives explaining small scars on our chins and knees, the Gretzkys, the Orrs and the Melvin Duponts of the world go guided on ice by their music.&ldquo;Bend your knees,&rdquo; they say to us. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry about falling. Straighten up those ankles. And remember, if you do fall, get right up and try it again.&rdquo;Fine for them to say, but did they ever fall? No. Never. Not once.This is not genetic. I am living, stumbling and double-runner proof that it is not. Heredity is one thing, and Mendel another, but knowing how to skate from birth can&rsquo;t be explained in chromosomes and bloodlines. It is a lyrical gift that some of us get, and most of us don&rsquo;t. For those so blessed, practice helps, but it really isn&rsquo;t necessary.Another hockey season is upon us, a new beginning, a rebirth of what so many Americans, Canadians and enlightened Eurohockey people so enjoy. In part, it is the advent of another 80-game schedule that makes me think about skating, and especially my father&rsquo;s skating, right about now.I went to my first NHL game with my father, and only remember that the Red Wings and the Bruins played to a 3-3 tie at Boston Garden. Gordie Howe, John Bucyk and &ldquo;Terrible&rdquo; Teddy Green all played. The first time I wore skates, my father laced them, and I spent the afternoon wondering when the skates would start their skating.My father died last summer, just a year ago, and it wasn&rsquo;t until the last couple of weeks that my mother and I went about cleaning out the cellar. The basement of our house was my dad&rsquo;s domain, his central point of puttering, the place where he would go to operate his HAM radio and endlessly tinker with what he called &ldquo;the dollar-hungry %!&%! furnace.&rdquo;After skating, he would head to the cellar with a cup of coffee and tilt his CCM Tacks against the boiler for drying. He took pride in his skating, and in his skates.There has been much to deal with since my father&rsquo;s passing, none of it, I suspect, particul-ary unique. Pension and insurance, selling a car and fixing up a house. Months later, the emptiness doesn&rsquo;t disappear. It is only slightly muted.In the midst of cleaning out the cellar, my mother handed me my father&rsquo;s skates. They were for me, she said if I wanted them, and the two of us fell into one of those prolonged and awkward silences that can&rsquo;t be explained or understood unless you&rsquo;ve lost a parent or a spouse.&ldquo;And here, you should have these, too,&rdquo; she said, breaking the silence and handing me a pair of woolen skating socks, each sock stretched to its fullest. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure, but I think dad must have worn these as a kid, or&hellip;&rdquo;As I peeled back the first gray sock, what I saw gave me goosebumps. The socks were acting as covers for my grandfather&rsquo;s skates. I had only seen them once before, more than 25 years ago, the day I helped my father close up another house, clean a different cellar, when his father died. I was stunned to see them once more and I knew they had been left for me.There isn&rsquo;t much about Emery Dupont&rsquo;s skates that resembles today&rsquo;s models. There is no boot, per se, just a flat piece of wood with a blade of about 14 inches running underneath. The wood sole, painted red, has three holes drilled through its sides to accommodate leather straps.I&rsquo;m not sure where I will keep the Dupont family skates. With a little polish, the antique pair should look good over my fireplace. My father&rsquo;s skates, shiny and bright, look a lot like my own. They are not for me to wear, though, because his foot was a size 10 and I am a size 12.And besides, my father&rsquo;s skates played a whole different tune. One that I will never forget. &#9632;

f0039-01

DAD’S TUNE OH, SO SWEET

&hellip;Hartford Whaler center Carey Wilson is the son of Dr. Gerry Wilson, who helped pioneer the influx of Scandinavian players to North America. In 1974, Dr. Wilson signed six players&mdash;among them Ulf Nilsson and Anders Hedberg&mdash;from Sweden and Finland for the World Association&rsquo;s Winnipeg Jets.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-02414/5745434-1-eng-US/f0039-022.jpg" title="f0039-02" width="970" height="530"><figcaption class="caption-body">Anders Hedberg</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0039-02

DID YOU KNOW…

<h2>BLACKHAWKS</h2>Darren Pang&rsquo;s career is in jeopardy after the goaltender failed his training camp physical because of an ailing left knee. Pang underwent surgery a year ago to repair the anterior cruciate ligament in the knee. &ldquo;This was a bad injury he had and the question of whether he can play again has not yet been answered,&rdquo; said Dr. Louis Kolb, the Blackhawks&rsquo; team physician. &ldquo;Obviously, I&rsquo;m. very concerned,&rdquo; Pang said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a disheartening thing. Right now it&rsquo;s going to take a lot of rehab. My main concern is &lsquo;can I play hockey?&rsquo; Right now the answer is &lsquo;no&rsquo; because there&rsquo;s too much pain and too much swelling.&rdquo; Pang is trying not to think about the possibility he might have to retire at the age of 26. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s got to be dictated by the knee,&rdquo; he said&hellip;Captain Dirk Graham skated but did not participate in contact drills the first few days of training camp as he recovers from off-season surgery to repair a cracked left kneecap. Graham is expected to be ready for the start of the regular season&hellip;Defenseman Bruce Cassidy will play this season in Italy after working out a deal to leave the Hawks. Cassidy was Chicago&rsquo;s No. 1 draft pick (18th overall) in 1983.<h2>NORTH STARS</h2>Derian Hatcher, the North Stars&rsquo; first pick in the June entry draft (eighth overall), has agreed to a multiyear contract. &ldquo;We have an agreement but we haven&rsquo;t received a signed copy,&rdquo; GM Bob Clarke said. Terms were not announced except that the length of the contract would depend on when Hatcher first plays in the NHL. Derian is the brother of Washington Capitals&rsquo; defenseman Kevin Hatcher&hellip;The Stars shipped more than 6,000-pounds of food to the Soviet Union ahead of their departure Sept. 10. Juice, milk and pasta made up the bulk of the supplies&hellip;Goalie Jarmo Myllys, who spent his summer in Finland, had trouble with travel documents and was late reporting to training camp. Two days after his first practice, he flew back over Europe en route to the Soviet Union.<h2>RED WINGS</h2>After crunching some numbers after physicals and conditioning test scores, coach/GM Bryan Murray concluded his team could be in better shape. He said players generally needed to flex more and skate harder in camp to increase cardiovascular and leg strength before coaches can begin in earnest to implement systems and strategies&hellip;Center Jimmy Carson led all scorers in the training camp tournament. He had seven goals and two assists&hellip;A crowd of nearly 1,300 paid to watch the Wings&rsquo; first scrim-mage at Flint&rsquo;s IMA Arena&hellip;Conspicuous by his absence in the first week of camp was Jimmy Devella-no, who in his eight years as GM, drafted 44 of the 67 players who showed up. Devellano, of course, remains on the team payroll as a highly-paid amateur scout with the title of senior vice-president. &ldquo;He just felt that, to be fair to me, it would be best to just stay out,&rdquo; Murray said. &ldquo;That way, we let the guys know that it&rsquo;s a new time here, a new regime so to speak.&rdquo;<h2>BLUES</h2>The Blues suffered only one minor casualty on their pre-season trip to Dusseldorf, West Germany, but it happened to a major figure. Right winger Brett Hull suffered a pulled right groin late in the first period of the Blues&rsquo; game against the Edmonton Oilers Sept. 7. Hull didn&rsquo;t play in the second and third periods, but the Blues still won 10-1. Coach Brian Sutter held Hull out of the Blues&rsquo; last practice in Germany, but seemed unconcerned about the situation. &ldquo;Hullie had sore groins all through training camp last year, too,&rdquo; Sutter said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll just baby it along. He&rsquo;ll be all right.&rdquo;&hellip;Hull took exception to the way he was introduced before the first game of the tournament. Hull was introduced as &ldquo;der superstar.&rdquo; &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t like it at all,&rdquo; he said. Why not? &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve been over that,&rdquo; said Hull, who finds such talk somewhat embarrassing.. Right winger Herb Raglan played against Edmonton in the Epson Cup Sept. 7, his first on-ice appearance since breaking his right wrist Nov. 4, 1989. He had two assists in the Blues&rsquo; win. &ldquo;It looked like he never missed a shift,&rdquo; said Rod Brind&rsquo;Amour, who centered a productive line with Raglan and Geoff Courtnall &ldquo;It&rsquo;s pretty easy with those two guys,&rdquo; said Raglan. &ldquo;Wait until the games start counting for two points.&rdquo;&hellip;Goalie Curtis Joseph also tested his surgically repaired shoulder in that game and allowed one goal on 27 shots.<h2>MAPLE LEAFS</h2>Leaf tough guys John Kordic and Kevin Maguire disappointed camp watchers who might have anticipated a classic confrontation between the two heavyweight right wingers. &ldquo;John and I talked before camp and decided there was no point in beating the crap out of each other,&rdquo; said Maguire. GM Floyd Smith discounts the popular theory that Maguire&rsquo;s arrival spells the end of the line for Kordic. &ldquo;You always have to consider injuries and having extra people will be useful,&rdquo; said Smith&hellip;Although it has been universally assumed defenseman Drake Bere-howsky would be returned to Kingston of the Ontario League for another year or two of seasoning, coach Doug Carpenter said nothing is etched in stone. &ldquo;Nothing has been predetermined,&rdquo; said Carpenter. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s one of those youngsters that we have who we have to evaluate closely and decide what&rsquo;s best for his future. We have to decide if he&rsquo;s better off in junior or if he&rsquo;ll learn more by being in the AHL or with us&rdquo;. &#9632;

INJURY COULD SPELL RETIREMENT FOR PANG

<div class="byline">BY TIM SASSONE</div>At the press conference introducing him as the Chicago Blackhawks&rsquo; new goaltending instructor, Vladislav Tretiak had barely started to speak when Mike Keenan interrupted.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to have to pull Vladislav out of here right now,&rdquo; Keenan said, taking Tretiak by the elbow. &ldquo;Being part of the organization now he&rsquo;s going to have to get used to being pulled like the rest of our goalies.&rdquo;Captain Hook was kidding, of course. But the Hawk GM-coach&rsquo;s hiring of the legendary Soviet to tutor the goalies was hardly a joke.(Tretiak&rsquo;s) record speaks for itself,&rdquo; said Keenan. &ldquo;His knowledge of the game is second to none as far as the goaltending position is concerned. Hopefully we&rsquo;ll pick up some information very few of us have knowledge of.&rdquo;The 38-year-old Tretiak began working with the goalies the first day of training camp. He was expected to remain in Chicago for 10 days, then make several return visits to Chicago from his home in Moscow during the course of the season.&ldquo;I hope my experience and skills will be very useful to the team,&rdquo; Tretiak said through an interpreter. &ldquo;I will make sure I do my best to live up to your expectations.&rdquo;Tretiak speaks little English but didn&rsquo;t expect that to be a problem.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be on the ice at all times and do every single drill and exercise with them,&rdquo; Tretiak said. &ldquo;I like to show how to do something. I&rsquo;ve always thought it&rsquo;s better to see it than to hear about it.&rdquo;Tretiak was careful to point out he was not brought in to change any styles of the Hawks&rsquo; goaltenders.&ldquo;My goal is not to retrain them,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;All I can do is advise, help out and share my experience. I&rsquo;m just a person who has played hockey for a few years and hopefully I can share what I learned. I don&rsquo;t think they should be intimidated by me.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-01306/5745489-1-eng-US/f0040-012.jpg" title="f0040-01" width="560" height="660"><figcaption class="caption-body">Mike Keenan played Captain Hook at Tretiak conference.</figcaption></div>Tretiak remains in great shape and looks like he still could play today. He admits to being envious of the Soviet players who are getting the chance to play in the NHL, something he never was allowed to do by his country.&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s not a bad kind of envy,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I thought in 1984 after the Olympics I&rsquo;d be allowed to play for the Montreal Canadiens, but it never happened.&ldquo;I always wondered what it would have been like because most of the best games I ever played were against the NHL. But being elected to the Hall of Fame (1989) somehow shows I&rsquo;m related to the NHL in some way.&rdquo;Tretiak said even in those years he was being prevented from playing in the NHL, never did he contemplate defecting like Buffalo&rsquo;s Alexander Mogilny or secretly applying for a work visa like Detroit&rsquo;s Sergei Fedorov.&ldquo;They are very good players, but they should have done it differently. There are ways to do it without the unpleasantness,&rdquo; Tretiak said.Tretiak nearly got the chance to play in the NHL last season when Detroit offered him a contract only to have the league step in and say the deal couldn&rsquo;t be done because Tretiak wasn&rsquo;t Red Wing property. The Canadiens, who picked the Soviet netminder 138th overall in the 1983 draft, are still in control of Tretiak&rsquo;s NHL rights.&ldquo;It was an interesting offer,&rdquo; Tretiak said. &ldquo;But I had not played for six years and six years of not preparing might have been too much. The last thing I would have wanted to do was play badly.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0040-01

EX-SOVIET SUPER SAVER LENDS HIS EXPERTISE

<div class="byline">BY KEITH GAVE</div>The North Americanization of Sergei Fedorov is under way, and progressing quite nicely.The Russian center fit in well with Detroit Red Wing teammates right from the beginning of training camp. With five stitches over one eye and a mouse over the other, he certainly looked like he belonged.Fedorov was a willing participant in the first fight in camp, dropping the gloves to exchange punches in the comer with Al Conroy, a feisty 5-foot-8, 175-pound center who logged 147 penalty minutes in 77 games with Adirondack last season. Conroy provoked the confrontation by bringing hisstick up under Fedorov&rsquo;s chin, and the 20-year-old Soviet didn&rsquo;t care for it. Fedorov was following the advice of his training camp roommate, Shawn Burr, who told him not to put up with any cheap stuff.Fedorov, 6-foot-1, 191-pounds, announced his offensive presence with a goal and an assist in the game to go with his five-minute major. The day before, he met team medics who sewed up a gash over his left eye. Fedorov was injured in his second shift of his first intra-squad scrimmage, courtesy of an accidental high-stick by defenseman Rob Schena.&ldquo;No problem.&rdquo; Fedorov said in his ever-increasing command of English.In neither English nor Russian, however, was he able to explain how it is that he enjoys the physical aspect of the game so much more than most other European players. He may not be a frequent fighter, but he&rsquo;s always willing to come to the defense of a teammate with a glove in an opponent&rsquo;s face.&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the way I was taught to play the game,&rdquo; he said with a shrug of the shoulders. &ldquo;I have always played that way.&rdquo;Though Fedorov&rsquo;s English was improving with each day (he came to camp without an interpreter) he was not without his problems communicating. So Burr bought him a big dictionary with a picture of each item it defines. It helped Fedorov solve an equipment problem.&ldquo;What is this?&rdquo; Fedorov asked, pointing to his wrist. &ldquo;Glove,&rdquo; Burr explained, showing Fedorov the picture.&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Fedorov said, smacking himself in the forehead. Seems he went to Wings&rsquo; trainers imploring, &ldquo;I need love.&rdquo; No wonder they looked at him a little funny.&ldquo;This is English 101,&rdquo; said professor Burr, who was followed closely by Fedorov. When an acquaintance greeted him in Russian, Fedorov responded in English. He is intent on learning the new language and he is less than satisfied with his progress since he left his Soviet teammates before the Goodwill Games in July.&ldquo;He can read a newspaper and pronounce all the words right,&rdquo; Burr said. &ldquo;He just doesn&rsquo;t know what it means. But he&rsquo;s learning. Last night, the TV in our room wasn&rsquo;t working and he got out his book and learned, &lsquo;My television is out of service.&rsquo;&ldquo;At dinner time, he&rsquo;ll have what I order. At lunch yesterday, I had to oink like a pig for him to understand ham and cheese.&rdquo;Fedorov was the target of some good-natured clubhouse pranks, and responded accordingly.&ldquo;When the guys were skating together (in the weeks before training camp), I taped his skates together,&rdquo; right winger Joe Kocur said. &ldquo;The next day, I came in and my bag was all taped up. I like to see that. He&rsquo;s fitting in real well.&rdquo;Fedorov begins his first NHL season with little pressure on him to pro-, duce goals in abundance. Coach Bryan Murray, though impressed by Fedorov, still has Steve Yzennan and Jimmy Carson to anchor the top two scoring lines. Fedorov likely will center a third line and play the wing on occasion.&ldquo;We have to be careful what we expect of this young man, Murray said. &ldquo;If he can eventually give us 25-35 goals a season, we&rsquo;ll be very happy.&rdquo;Federov produced 19 goals and 10 assists for 29 points in 48 games last season for Red Army. He was a fourth-round draft pick in the 1989 entry draft. &#9632;

FIGHTIN’ FEDOROV GOES TO CAMP AND SCHOOL

<div class="byline">BY GARY OLSON</div>The new Minnesota North Stars&rsquo; management got an early look at its players. Real early.The first three days of practice started at 8 a.m., 6 a.m. and 5 a.m. Pucks before pancakes. On Sept. 10, the day before leaving for the Soviet Union, the Stars were off the ice, done with practice, in time to get involved in the morning rush-hour traffic.The early, earlier and earliest practices were scheduled to help minimize the effects of jet lag during the Friendship Tour &rsquo;90 to the Soviet Union.&ldquo;We thought about asking the players to go to bed earlier and get up earlier each day in preparation for the trip, then decided we&rsquo;d force the issue,&rdquo; said rookie coach Bob Gainey. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re supposed to arrive in Moscow at 10:30 in the morning; that&rsquo;s 1:30 a.m. in Minnesota. We play our first (exhibition) game the day after we arrive.&rdquo;The opening-day 8 a.m. skate had no effect on the players but the 6 a.m. start on Day 2&mdash;a Sunday morning following a Saturday night&mdash;featured some curious stumbling and bumbling. By Day 3, co-ordination had been restored.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0042-01265/5745544-1-eng-US/f0042-012.jpg" title="f0042-01" width="564" height="673"><figcaption class="caption-body">Link Gaetz is an unfamiliar face to the Stars&rsquo; brass.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve spent these first few days familarizing myself with some of our young players, players like Mark Tinordi, Neil Wilkinson, Link Gaetz and Dean Kolstad,&rdquo; Gainey said. &ldquo;These are the players I don&rsquo;t know much about because they weren&rsquo;t playing when I was still playing.&ldquo;From what I&rsquo;ve seen, I think they&rsquo;re exciting. They have the potential to be good, solid players for several years. Don Barber is another player I need to get to know. He skated well the first few days and has some real skills.&ldquo;The only goal of training camp is to prepare the team for the start of the regular season. Because we&rsquo;re going to the Soviet Union doesn&rsquo;t mean we can lose track of our objectives. Our trip will be a good experience, but we want it to be a hockey experience. If we have to choose between things to do, hockey will be our priority.&rdquo;Only 27 players&mdash;the players who are on the Friendship Tour&mdash;were invited to the North Stars&rsquo; training camp. Because the Stars have to share their talent pool with former owners George and Gordon Gund and their California expansion team next spring, these players&mdash;but not all of them&mdash;are the only ones with much chance for a future in Minnesota.&ldquo;Our trip gives us an opportunity to spend some time together, a chance to get to know each other,&rdquo; said new general manager Bob Clarke. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s more to putting a team together than just what happens on the ice. Our trip won&rsquo;t be easy but that doesn&rsquo;t mean it won&rsquo;t be fun.&rdquo;The remainder of the North Stars reported to training camp Sept. 13 in Kalamazoo, Mich., home of the Stars&rsquo; International League team. Some shuttling of players back and forth was expected after the Stars return home Sept. 20. &#9632;

f0042-01

PLAYERS FAST BECOMING ‘EARLY MORNING PEOPLE’

<div class="byline">BY DAVE LUECKING</div>It&rsquo;s not the Stanley Cup, not even close, but the Epson Cup, won by&rsquo; the Blues in a pre-season exhibition tournament in West Germany, is a step in the right direction.&ldquo;This is a stepping stone,&rdquo; right winger Rich Sutter said. &ldquo;We want to. build something big. We came here to work hard and&hellip;we accomplished what we wanted to do.&rdquo;&ldquo;We wouldn&rsquo;t have been happy going home with even one loss. We came over to win.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0042-02192/5745582-1-eng-US/f0042-022.jpg" title="f0042-02" width="557" height="1079"><figcaption class="caption-body">Rod Brind&rsquo; Amour had six points in Eoson Cun win.</figcaption></div>The Blues won twice, beating the host Dusseldorf Hockey Club 3-1 and then pounding the defending Stanley Cup champion Edmonton Oilers 101.So thorough was the Blues&rsquo; victory over Edmonton that the Dusseldorf fans, firmly on the Oilers&rsquo; side at the start of the game, turned on them during the game.Of course, they did not understand that these were not the same Oilers who won the Cup in May, not even close. Right winger Jari Kurri bolted as a free agent during the summer, goalie Grant Fuhr and left winger Esa Tikkanen didn&rsquo;t make the trip, and center Ken Linseman and left wingers Martin Gelinas and Kelly Buchberger weren&rsquo;t in the lineup.The Blues, of course, were very aware of this, but still, Blues coach Brian Sutter said the victory was a big deal.&ldquo;Anytime you beat the Stanley Cup champions it means something,&rdquo; he said.Even if it&rsquo;s for the Epson Cup.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think we gave a hoot about the Epson Cup, but we were playing the Oilers, and they had the best team last year,&rdquo; Rod Brind&rsquo;Amour said. &ldquo;I know it&rsquo;s pre-season, and it&rsquo;s their first game, and it&rsquo;s no big deal, but we wanted to show them we can play, too.&rdquo;Former Oiler left winger Geoff Courtnall led the way for the Blues against Edmonton with four goals and an assist&mdash;on a goal by his center Brind&rsquo;Amour. In two games in Germany, Courtnall had five goals and an assist and was named to the tournament All-Star team. Fellow newcomer defenseman Scott Stevens, Brin-d&rsquo;Amour and right winger Brett Hull also made the All-Star team.Courtnall said he was pleased with his start.&ldquo;Coming to a new team, you don&rsquo;t know what to expect,&rdquo; Courtnall said. &ldquo;Getting off to a good start gets your confidence back&hellip;Things are going really well.&rdquo;Not only for Courtnall, but for others as well.Brind&rsquo;Amour had two goals and four assists in the tournament. His line, which had Paul MacLean on right wing on Thursday and Herb Raglan on Friday, had 16 points&mdash;seven goals and nine assists.Center Adam Oates had three assists, only one to linemate Hull, who didn &lsquo;t play most of the Edmonton game because of a bad groin. Checking right wingers Steve Tuttle and Rich Sutter had two goals apiece, and MacLean, Raglan and center Cliff Ronning had two assists each.Among the defenseman, Jeff Brown had a goal and an assist, and Paul Cavallini had two assists. Cavallini, the NHL plus-minus leader last season with plus-38, was plus-5.Goalies Curtis Joseph, Vincent Riendeau and Guy Hebert also played well, surrendering just two goals on 48 shots in two games.To a man, the players tried not to get too excited about the Epson Cup. It was only exhibition and the games didn&rsquo;t count, but as part of the building process, the trip here was very important.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0042-03148/5745575-1-eng-US/f0042-032.jpg" title="f0042-03" width="566" height="1075"><figcaption class="caption-body">Geoff Courtnall scored four goals in a win over the Oilers.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0042-02

WINNING A CUP ON ROAD TO THE CUP

<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-01272/5745613-1-eng-US/f0043-012.jpg" title="f0043-01" width="282" height="477"><figcaption class="caption-body">TONY GALLAGHER</figcaption></div>When Shawn Antoski was given a conditional discharge after being found guilty of assault Sept. 4 and put on three years probation, he was concerned about his image.&ldquo;The only thing that&rsquo;s going to hurt is in the eyes of the public,&rdquo; he said.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want people to think I&rsquo;m some crazy looney. I was a respected person in North Bay. This is the first black spot on my name.&rdquo;The fact he faces a second assault charge for an on-ice incident is not helping form the desired image. Neither are the remarks he&rsquo;s made which have created the impression around NHL circles the Vancouver Canucks&rsquo; second first round-pick last June has a &lsquo;hit list&rsquo; of tough guys.Even coach Bob McCammon is wondering whether such a list existed.When you are 6-foot-4 and 235-pounds, and you get into trouble off the ice as well as on, you&rsquo;re reputation spreads quickly. It&rsquo;s apparently reached Calgary, where Wendel Clark&rsquo;s brother Kerry has been invited to camp as a deterrent to what the Flames see as something of a potential threat.When asked about Clark&rsquo;s presence, assistant Flames&rsquo; general manager Al MacNeil referred to Vancouver as having &ldquo;two guys who can&rsquo;t walk through a door.&rdquo;The second fellow alleged to have trouble passing from room to room is Gino Odjick, another monstrous left winger from Laval (QMJHL) who piled up 280 penalty minutes last season.While the team that drafted the late George Pelawa sees Antoski as a reason to act differently, the man himself is busy trying to stop this momentum he helped get underway.Having hecklers come to the Canucks&rsquo; Victoria training camp and scream at him to do something impolite on the ice has convinced him.If he&rsquo;s going to get to play in the league, the reputation needs to be toned down.&ldquo;Everyone keeps talking about it,&rdquo; said the 20-year-old whom the Canucks would love to make the team because of their chronic lack of size.&ldquo;Nobody fights all the time. Fights don&rsquo;t win hockey games. Everyone has this big picture of me as just a fighter. I want to contribute in every category.&rdquo;Antoski knows what happens when you are branded a goon by the fans, media, or worse, the referees. You simply can&rsquo;t play. They won&rsquo;t let you. Take a deep breath and you&rsquo;re in the penalty box.&ldquo;If all they thought I could do was fight, I don&rsquo;t think I would have gone in the first round,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll fight if I have to. But I&rsquo;m mainly interested in making sure I get in there for guys like Igor (Larionov) and any of our other small guys and get them out. I&rsquo;ll take a number and look for a hit. You can usually hurt a guy more with a hit than in a fight anyway.&rdquo;At the outset of camp, Antoski was making this whole situation somewhat moot as far as the NHL was concerned anyway. He was having dizzy spells, perhaps due to an iron deficiency, and the Canucks brass was disappointed with his intensity level. But he&rsquo;s expected to pick it up and if he does, it&rsquo;s going to make for some interesting confrontations.For he doesn&rsquo;t plan to be like Winnipeg&rsquo;s Shawn Cronin or Edmonton&rsquo;s Dave Brown. He wants to play regularly, every shift.&ldquo;Guys like Brown and Cronin are in a different class,&rdquo; he said, likely stoking the fires he&rsquo;s trying to cool.&ldquo;You&rsquo;d have to be sick in the head to want to fight those guys for the sake of fighting. Nobody likes to fight, just for the sake of it.&rdquo;Try as he might to mend his reputation, it won&rsquo;t be easy. Rookie fast guns are fair game. And backing down isn&rsquo;t why the Canucks are so keen on him.Hockey&rsquo;s police work has never been so fraught with pitfalls. Tony Gallagher is a columnist with the Vancouver Province and a sports talk show host on the Satellite Radio Network. &#9632;

f0043-01

ROOKIE COP TRYING TO TONE DOWN HIS IMAGE

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0043-02" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-02203/5745644-1-eng-US/f0043-022.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Nicknames like &lsquo;Pipers&rsquo; and &lsquo;Squires&rsquo; can&rsquo;t compare to the &lsquo;Flyers&rsquo; when talking of Philadelphia&rsquo;s NHL franchise. A name-the-team contest in 1967 also considered monikers such as the Knights, Spartans, Kings, Sabers and Mohawks before deciding on the now familiar Flyers.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0043-02

WAY WE WERE

The St. Louis Blues didn&rsquo;t get very far in the NHL playoffs last spring, but they sure must be glad they&rsquo;re in the Norris Division.The difference between the Blues&rsquo; inter-division record compared to their out-of-division record is the greatest in the league. The Blues had a .572 winning percentage in the Norris, but just .446 out of it&mdash;a difference of .126.On the other hand, the Boston Bruins had a winning percentage of just .482 in the Adams Division, yet were .621 against other divisions&mdash;a difference of .139.Having the best inter-division record doesn&rsquo;t always guarantee a division championship, however.The team with the best record against division opponents has won the division nine times in the last five years. The team with the best record outside of the division has won 14 times.The following charts list the teams of each division&rsquo;s record within the division, the team&rsquo;s record against the other divisions and the difference between those records.The last chart lists the number of division winners of the last five years which had the best record within the division and the number of winners which had the best out-of-division record. It also lists the second, third and fourth-place finishers.<h2>INTER-DIVISIONAL PLAY</h2><h3>NORRIS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-03172/5745703-1-eng-US/f0043-032.jpg" title="f0043-03" width="840" height="300"></div><h3>SMYTHE</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-04121/5745696-1-eng-US/f0043-042.jpg" title="f0043-04" width="844" height="296"></div><h3>ADAMS</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-05108/5745689-1-eng-US/f0043-052.jpg" title="f0043-05" width="836" height="298"></div><h3>PATRICK</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-0688/5745682-1-eng-US/f0043-062.jpg" title="f0043-06" width="839" height="337"></div><h3>INTRA-DIVISIONAL PLAY</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-0779/5745675-1-eng-US/f0043-072.jpg" title="f0043-07" width="832" height="302"></div> &#9632;

f0043-03

NHL’S DIVISIONS OF LABOR

<div class="byline">BY MARK HARDING</div>Gary Leeman may soon be chasing Darryl Sittler&rsquo;s records for a Leaf center rather than Rick Vaive&rsquo;s milestones as a right winger.In an unexpected move that caught even Leeman off-guard, the Leaf hierarchy decided training camp was as good a time as any to experiment with Leeman at center.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not treating it as a joke,&rdquo; said Leeman, who came within three goals of tying Vaive&rsquo;s Leaf single-season mark of 54 goals by a right winger. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an experiment, so we 11 just have to see how it works out.&rdquo;It may seem ludicrous to some that the Leaf coaches and GM Floyd Smith would even consider breaking up the Leeman-Ed Olczyk-Mark Osborne trio, but it bears out the fact that the Leafs are thin offensively down the middle.&ldquo;I think if you look at our centers last year we ranked something like 17th in number of goals produced,&rdquo; said Leeman, alluding to the 76 goals Toronto got from its centers last season. &ldquo;The other thing is that we don&rsquo;t have any right-handed centers.&rdquo;In Olczyk, Tom Fergus, Dave Hannan, John McIntyre, Gilles Thibaudeau and top prospect Scott Thornton, the Leafs have a bevy of southpaw centers. They also have an army of right wingers in camp, making Leeman available for duty at center.&ldquo;We just feel he&rsquo;s got certain skills and does certain things that make us want to look at how best to use him,&rdquo; said coach Doug Carpenter of the move. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s such a skilled player, we feel we have to try to get him as much open ice as possible.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/c0004-01224/5745734-1-eng-US/c0004-012.jpg" title="C0004-01" width="554" height="682"><figcaption class="caption-body">Gary Leeman looked sharp in scrimmages as a center.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;The other thing it does is get him way from some people (checkers). It night also give him three or four additional minutes a game and any time you can do that it&rsquo;s a definite plus for us.&ldquo;I entertained the thought of doing something with him last year but things were going so well for him on he right side I didn&rsquo;t want to mess with him.&rdquo;Leeman said he was first approached by the Leafs to make the shift shortly after last season.&ldquo;They talked to me back then and hen again more recently, but I wasn&rsquo;t sure when they wanted to try it or how serious they were about it,&rdquo; said Leeman. &ldquo;Obviously it means we&rsquo;ve got a lot of people capable of playing for us on the right side.&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s fine with me. Whatever they want to do is fine.&rdquo;During the first few days of training camp. Leeman looked extremely comfortable with his new surroundings. Playing on a line with left winger Wendel Clark and right winger Greg Johnston, Leeman seemed adept at feeding either winger.&ldquo;The hardest part is adjusting to playing in your own end.&rdquo; said Leeman. &ldquo;As a winger, I&rsquo;ve been used to looking for just one defenseman and what he&rsquo;s going to do with the puck.&ldquo;As a center, you&rsquo;ve got to be aware of both defensemen.&rdquo;Olczyk, who enjoyed a fairly successful campaign&mdash;32 goals and 56 assists&mdash;with Leeman and left winger Mark Osborne last season, said the move is fine with him.&ldquo;Obviously they think they can make us a better team with Gary playing center and that&rsquo;s all that matters,&rdquo; said Olczyk. &ldquo;Who knows? Maybe Gary can teach me a few things.&rdquo; &#9632;

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September 28, 1990

DUFAULT GETS ANOTHER CHANCE, SANS DUBE

SVOBODA VOWS TO LEAVE AT SEASON’S END

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