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

November 4, 1994

The Hockey News November 4, 1994

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0044-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0044-01300/6738753-1-eng-US/f0044-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Photo by Dan Hamilton)</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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IN THIS ISSUE

WESTERN LEAGUE

<div class="byline">By Dave Eminian</div>The owners and players have settled! The owners and players have settled! Extra, extra, read all about it!Sorry, readers. It&rsquo;s not the NHL, it&rsquo;s the International League. Labor talks were close to reaching the bottom line in mid-October. An official announcement of an agreement in principle on a two-year contract was probable by the end of the month.Professional Hockey Players&rsquo; Association executive director Larry Landon was touring IHL teams at mid-month to present them with the offer that likely will be accepted. Owners met Oct. 17 in Chicago, where the labor issue was part of a general topics agenda.The deal on the table is best summarized as a soft salary cap-that&rsquo;s what the players are calling it. The owners prefer to call it a revenuesharing partnership.The league&rsquo;s 17 team payrolls will be combined to reach an average, which is essentially the cap level. Each team must stay within 15 per-cent above or below the cap. Anything beyond that and the given team pays a matching fine which is split between the league and the players&rsquo; union.An outlaw team could of course thumb its nose at the cap and opt to pay huge fines.NHL contracted players sent down to IHL affiliates on assignment would count toward the farm team&rsquo;s cap at face value of their contracts in cases where the player is on a standard twoway deal (has a minor-league pay rate).One-way contracted players assigned to IHL teams would be assigned the IHL&rsquo;s average player salary to count toward the cap. The league&rsquo;s average salary, according to player union sources, is $63,000.At present, league sources say the IHL&rsquo;s average payroll is $1.5 million, with the Detroit Vipers ($2.2 million) and Milwaukee Admirals ($2.1 million) at the high end and Fort Wayne Komets ($1.2 million) and Minnesota Moose ($1.02 million) at the low end.The pending agreement includes sharing of licensed merchandise sales and television contracts. The league has 40 per cent of its games on TV this season and is getting $75,000 per telecast from ESPN2.The players have won an increase in meal per diem; the owners have capped rosters at 23, with a final roster deadline set for early November.Another potentially profitable venture for the players is corporate sponsorship and promotions in the marketing-wise IHL.Teams would reportedly be able to designate revenue from one sponsor or promotional event as exempt, with all other such revenue being split 50-50 with the players&rsquo; union.The union has also upgraded its severance trust retirement plan to fully vest any player who has 724 days of IHL service as a dues-paying union member.TALK NET: Peoria Rivermen defensemanleft winger and player representative Rene Chapdelaine doesn&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s right for locked out NHL players to invade IHL turf.&ldquo;The NHL players all but begged us not to cross their picket lines when they had then-strike (in 1992),&rdquo; the former Los Angeles Kings&rsquo; farmhand said. &ldquo;We commend them as a union and support their stand in their current effort.&ldquo;But we have a fight in the IHL, too. And now there are NHL players who want to come down here and play. How are we supposed to feel about that when we have guys all over this league, in places like Houston and Minnesota, who are fighting for a job while playing on 25-game tryout contracts?&ldquo;And there are IHL owners waiting to see if those NHL players become available.&rdquo;I-OPENERS: Detroit had drawn at least 10,000 spectators to each of its six games at The Palace at Auburn Hills through Oct. 17&hellip;The Kansas City Blades signed 34-year-old ex-NHL left winger Stewart Gavin to a 25-game tryout contract Oct. 11. He was a late cut of the Toronto Maple Leafs after spending last season as a pro scout for the Dallas Stars.Fort Wayne&rsquo;s 0-6-0 start was its worst in franchise history. Said team captain Colin Chin: &ldquo;The fans start doubting you, the coach starts doubting you, the owners start doubting you and the last thing that happens is when the players start doubting themselves. That&rsquo;s when you&rsquo;ve lost it.&rdquo;Kansas City Blades&rsquo; left winger David Bruce was player of the week for the period ending Oct. 16. The 30-year-old had 10 points in three games. &#9632;

‘Soft cap’ cornerstone of pending CBA settlement

<div class="byline">By Dave Sell</div>When Peter Bondra tied a team record with five goals in a game last February, the Washington Capitals were hopeful he had finally turned things around.Instead, the 26-year-old right winger went into an extended slump and did not even dress for two of the club&rsquo;s 11 playoff games.Bondra finished the season with 24 goals and 43 points, his worst totals since becoming a full-time player in 1991-92. Those five markers in a 6-3 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning represented 21 per cent of Bondra&rsquo;s goal output.&ldquo;There were times when he did it-he was absolutely sensational against Tampa Bay-and we don&rsquo;t expect him to score five goals every game, but it shows you how effective his speed can be in this league,&rdquo; said coach Jim Schoenfeld.The Capitals counted on Bondra to produce 40-plus goals last year after scoring 37 the previous season. Yet nobody is giving up.&ldquo;The talent is there,&rdquo; said general manager David Poile. &ldquo;The great skating ability he has gives him as many scoring chances as probably anybody in the league. What he&rsquo;s striving for and what we&rsquo;re predicting is that he will reach a consistency level so that he is able to convert a greater percentage of those opportunities. He certainly has the potential to score 40 or more goals.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0059-01102/6739358-1-eng-US/f0059-012.jpg" title="f0059-01" width="566" height="702"><figcaption class="caption-body">Peter Bondra is coming off the worst season of his career.</figcaption></div>Bondra was bom in the Ukraine, but moved to the Slovakian portion of the former Czechoslovakia when he was three. He now holds Slovakian citizenship and played for the national team last year in the Olympic qualifying tournament.&ldquo;Peter has great natural ability and is a tremendously fast skater,&rdquo; Schoenfeld said. &ldquo;We would just like to see him use that speed all the time. use it outside to take the defense wide and drive to the net. For him not to utilize that speed every shift is a waste of his greatest talent.&rdquo;Bondra had four goals and six points in six pre-season games this fall rarely playing on the same line in consecutive games.&ldquo;This year in camp he seemed to use his speed more and hopefully that trend will continue,&rdquo; the coach said. &ldquo;We just think he&rsquo;s a pretty tough guy to stop when he has a full head of steam.&rdquo;HOLDING THE FORT: Caps&rsquo; owner Abe Pollin believes the players could thrive under a salary cap.Pollin, who also owns the National Basketball Association&rsquo;s Washington Bullets, was instrumental in the implementation of the NBA salary cap in 1983. &ldquo;Ask the NBA players, who went from $250,000 to $1.6 million in average salary,&rdquo; Pollin said.&ldquo;When you talk about a salary cap, it sounds like such a dirty word. I say it&rsquo;s a partnership. I don&rsquo;t see anything dirty about a salary cap. Once we have a system that is fair the players will do well, the owners will do well. And the fans will see hockey.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Center Jason Allison was returned to the London Knights of the Ontario League Oct. 15 for the duration of the lockout&hellip;The Caps will have to do some roster shuffling when the season starts. Of the 22 players on the roster, just five are defensemen. &#9632;

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Bondra looks to rebound

Although the NHL&rsquo;s season has yet to start, NHL licensed merchandise has been on the move.NHL Enterprises, the league&rsquo;s marketing wing, has extended its offerings. Even if arenas are quiet, the action at retail outlets promises to be brisk because the selection of holiday hockey gifts is greater than ever.&ldquo;With NHL (licensed) merchandise, you could just about furnish a home,&rdquo; said Judy Salsberg, NHL Enterprises&rsquo; director of non-apparel products.Salsberg isn&rsquo;t kidding. If not an entire house, certainly a sports den or child&rsquo;s room could be outfitted from floor to ceiling.The NHL&rsquo;s line includes, for instance, folding chairs and card tables that carry team logos, barstools, steel-framed leisure sports chairs, beanbag chairs, sports rocker chairs and folding tailgate tables, full cutlery sets with knives forks and spoons, bath towels and bed linens.Among household-related items, Salsberg calls out the following as new and unusual:&#9633; Bed linens, including, sheets, pillow shams and comforters.&#9633; Executive brass desk accessories from Tag Express.&#9633; Christmas ornaments. The lines also include votive candle holders and ball-style earring.&#9633; Watches are available from four manufacturers: Michael Anthony, Fossil, Bulova and Three Dimensional Sports. The Three Dimensional Line has holographic NHL logo faces.&#9633; Pet accessories: Would you believe sets of dog tags and leashes with NHL colors and logos from Hunter Manufacturing?Also fresh for the 1994 holiday season are NHL twists sporting goods items. For instance, bike helmets with NHL logos are available from both CCM/Sport Maska and Riddell. There also are new lines of sports bags, backpacks and even dart boards.And old-fashioned table hockey games have reached new heights with SLM&rsquo;s Official Wayne Gretzky Overtime. The set, which used the traditional rod controls, features add-on sets of players from all 26 NHL teams.For today&rsquo;s fans who require greater realism, a variety of electronic games from manufacturers such as Electronic Arts, Nintendo and Sega are available. The latest electronic game, ESPN hockey night, permits players to be traded.For those who fancy collectibles as gifts, some new items include bronze renditions of O-Pee-Chee trading cards, a variety of medallions (a hot growth area for the NHL), a special re-make of a Parkhurst &ldquo;tall-boy&rdquo; trading card set from the 1964-65 season and framed drawings of NHL players that also include inserted biographical information and a trading card.The NHL&rsquo;s apparel line has some new wrinkles.&lsquo;We&rsquo;ve challenged licensees such as CCM and Starter to come up with new fabrications,&rdquo; said Brian Jennings, NHL Enterprises&rsquo; director of apparel and sporting goods. &lsquo;They&rsquo;re taking the silhouette and look of a hockey jersey and incorporating more cotton pique and other treatments.&rdquo;The result is a garment that looks somewhat like a game jersey, but is a little dressier and more suitable as street clothing.Besides game and traditional sweaters, jackets, t-shirts, caps, warm-up suits and work-out wear, the NHL&rsquo;s apparel line also includes underclothing and loungewear such as boxer shorts, pajamas and ladies sleepwear. &#9632;

From chairs to linens, NHL Enterprises has it

TROTTIER&rsquo;S TROUBLES&hellip;P. 5JOHNNY ON SPOT&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;P. 7HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE&hellip;&hellip;P. 17FINNS BACK HOME&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;P. 31OUR CBA SUGGESTION&hellip;&hellip;P. 32<h2>QUOTABLE</h2>&ldquo;No goaltending. Same old story.&rdquo;-Detroit Red Wings&rsquo; captain Steve Yzerman jokes about a 2-on-2 scrimmage with teammates in which no goalies participated.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0002-011486/6737439-1-eng-US/f0002-012.jpg" title="f0002-01" width="576" height="694"><figcaption class="caption-body">Jeremy Roenick says union is strong as ever. Page 28</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0002-021226/6737432-1-eng-US/f0002-022.jpg" title="f0002-02" width="576" height="692"><figcaption class="caption-body">Corey Hirsch&rsquo;s fate was sealed before NHL lockout. Page 59</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0002-03909/6737425-1-eng-US/f0002-032.jpg" title="f0002-03" width="574" height="688"><figcaption class="caption-body">Doug Wickenheiser is coping with bone cancer. Page 62</figcaption></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0002-04680/6737418-1-eng-US/f0002-042.jpg" title="f0002-04" width="1162" height="2316"><figcaption class="caption-body">Esa Tikkanen and Jari Kurri renew rivalry in Finland. Page 31.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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ON THE COVER

<div class="byline">By Steve Dryden</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0002-05495/6737477-1-eng-US/f0002-052.jpg" title="f0002-05" width="373" height="515"></div>Doug Gilmour has been taken prisoner and there is no hope of early parole.The NHL lockout continues long after Gilmour visited the lockup in his hometown of Kingston, Ont. Gilmour recently had a tour of the men&rsquo;s and women&rsquo;s penitentiaries where several members of his family worked.He had the option of leaving.As an NHL prisoner of labor war, Gilmour has no such choice; he awaits the outcome of non-talks between the league and its Players&rsquo; Association. To pass the time since training camps shut down in late September, Gilmour has done promotional work, visited family and stewed over the situation.By now, more than 10 games into the Toronto Maple Leafs&rsquo; scheduled regular season, Gilmour and his team were expected to be near the top of their worlds. The Hockey News said Gilmour entered the 1994-95 season as the league&rsquo;s best player and Toronto was projected as a Western Conference playoff finalist.&ldquo;Twenty-five days into the season and I don&rsquo;t have a point yet,&rdquo; Gilmour said wryly over his car phone Oct. 21. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not doing too well.&rdquo;He hesitated a moment and came clean: &ldquo;I lied. I got one today. I got a goal.&rdquo;The Maple Leafs&rsquo; captain was returning from his first workout on skates in more than two weeks. Next stop was to have an examination of his feet. His insteps were shaved during the summer and they continued to ache during training camp.He said it&rsquo;s pain with which he can live-more so than that inflicted by the work stoppage.The 31-year-old center is at the height of his powers. He is a gifted playmaker and latter-day Bobby Clarke, the three-time league MVP during the 1970s. Gilmour will be a strong candidate for that honor this season if it gets under way. Last year&rsquo;s winner, Detroit Red Wings&rsquo; center Serge Fedorov, will/would be strong competition.Fedorov is the more talented of the two, but Gilmour is the better package. Heroic playoff performances the past two seasons have set Gilmour apart from all others. The Maple Leafs are the only team reach the final four both years and he has led all post-season scorers over the past two seasons combined.&ldquo;In pure excitement,&rdquo; said Florida Panthers&rsquo; general manager Bryan Murray, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s anybody better than Sergei. But Doug hooks onto everybody else and brings them along. As a result, he has that ingredient Sergei hasn&rsquo;t been able to get across at this point. Who would you want in a playoff game? I guess Doug has proven he&rsquo;s the guy who gets things done.&rdquo;Murray was fired as Red Wings&rsquo; GM after Detroit was upset by the San Jose Sharks last spring. The previous year, they were eliminated by Toronto.Gilmour, like other players, is battling to keep faint hopes alive this shutdown won&rsquo;t be a long one. Motivation to skate is already being tested. &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t know when we&rsquo;re going to be back.&rdquo; Gilmour said. &ldquo;Why go out and skate every day if you&rsquo;re not going to be back the rest of the year?&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0002-06377/6737470-1-eng-US/f0002-062.jpg" title="f0002-06" width="500" height="880"><figcaption class="caption-body">Doug Gilmour</figcaption></div>Gilmour said he&rsquo;s 100 per-cent behind the union, but is concerned about the impact a lengthy stoppage will have on his career. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m worried about my skills,&rdquo; Gilmour said. &ldquo;The older I get, the better I want to get and, obviously, sitting out a full season isn&rsquo;t going to help.&rdquo;How does he feel about being kept from the game at this stage of his career? &ldquo;It pisses me off,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It pisses me right off.&rdquo;He said money isn&rsquo;t the issue, but if the season is called off, he will seek employment. A friend called the Detroit Vipers in early October, setting off rumors Gilmour offered his services to the International League team. Gilmour said it was an information gathering call, not a request for work.&ldquo;I just want to play,&rdquo; Gilmour said. &ldquo;Within a month from now, if they decide, &lsquo;Okay, the season is over, forget it.&rsquo; don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m not going to go look for a job. I will go play hockey. I don&rsquo;t know where it will be.&rdquo;Teams all over the world would welcome him. His first choice is the Maple Leafs. He&rsquo;s theirs, too. &#9632;

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Gilmour will not sit still all year if no season

<div class="byline">By Mike Brophy</div>Some NHL officials are saying their yet-to-be-ratified collective bargaining agreement with the NHL could come back to haunt commissioner Gary Bettman. &ldquo;How will it affect Bettman&rsquo;s credibility in his current negotiations with players when he hasn&rsquo;t even our deal done yet?&rdquo; said one official. The NHL Officials&rsquo; Association was told members will receive three more paychecks following their second payment of the year Oct. 15 if a new CBA between the NHL and NHL Players&rsquo; Association isn&rsquo;t reached and games continue to be postponed or cancelled. A section of the officials&rsquo; deal, agreed to in principle last December, states officials are to be paid for 45 days from Sept. 30 or the date of a work stoppage-whichever comes later-in the event of a strike. It mentions nothing about a league-enforced lockout. &ldquo;The NHL is still calling it a work stoppage and there is no clause in our agreement that deals with that,&rdquo; said new NHLOA president Kevin Collins. &ldquo;Because of that the NHL would like to term it a strike and stop paying us. It&rsquo;s an option they are trying and that is their prerogative. Obviously we won&rsquo;t go for it, though.&rdquo; Officials don&rsquo;t want to fan the flames because they are being paid, but if they miss a single paycheck because NHL games are not being played, it will become a major issue. The NHLOA said a halfdozen minor points in the agreement have to be finalized and they are anxious to meet with the league to get the contract completed. Arthur Pincus, the NHL&rsquo;s vice-president, communications, said the league will not comment on whether officials will continue to be paid in the event of a long-term lockout, but added, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not trying to term it a strike.&rdquo;&hellip;The Ontario Lottery Corporation is considering adding minor-pro hockey and European soccer to its Pro-Line wagering game. Don Pister, spokesman for the government-run gambling game, said wagering on hockey has represented about 60 per cent of ticket sales since Pro-Line began operating two years ago. But so far the lack of NHL games has not led to a significant decrease in money taken in by the OLC. Pister added, &ldquo;The longer there are no NHL games, the more likely we are to feel the pinch.&rdquo; Pister said the fact minor-league games are getting added exposure during the NHL lockout might make them more attractive to Pro-Line players&hellip;Baseball is handing out individual awards for its season that wasn&rsquo;t. We thought we&rsquo;d do the same. The Hart Trophy for most valuable player goes to Mario Lemieux of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who recently carded three birdies and four pars on a back nine. The Adams Award for top coach goes to George Burnett, the Edmonton Oilers&rsquo; rookie coach. We like his hair. The Calder Trophy for rookie of the year goes to Brett Lindros of the New York Islanders. Following the lead of baseball&rsquo;s American League, hockey&rsquo;s top freshman is also a designated hitter. The Norris Trophy as best defenseman goes to Sylvain Lefebvre of the Quebec Nordiques. Chalk it up to our continued effort to give defensive defensemen greater recognition. The Selke Trophy for best defensive forward goes to Theoren Fleury. It is generally awarded to the best offensive player who doesn&rsquo;t win another award, isn&rsquo;t it? The Vezina Trophy for top goalie goes to Mike Vernon of the Detroit Red Nathan LaFayette Wings. We told you he was the answer to the Red Wings&rsquo; goaltending woes. The Conn Smythe Trophy for playoff MVP goes to Craig Billington of the Ottawa Senators-all right, enough is enough&hellip;For the record: The name is Nathan LaFayette; not La Fayette as it was spelled in The Hockey News last issue. The Vancouver Canucks&rsquo; center-playing with Syracuse of the American League during the NHL lockout-has had his name massacred over the years. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen it with a capital F and small f; with a space and without a space,&rdquo; LaFayette said. Of course, this really only matters if he makes it back to the NHL and plays as well as he did for the Canucks in last season&rsquo;s Stanley Cup final. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll make it matter,&rdquo; LaFayette assured. He had no points in his first four AHL games&hellip;East Coast League commissioner Pat Kelly said the experiment to alter hockey&rsquo;s touch-up offside rule in his league was a rousing success during preseason games. The rule, instituted in 1986-87, was designed to cut down the number of stoppages in play. It allowed attacking players to shoot the puck into the opposing zone with teammates trapped. The offside was waved off when the trapped players clear the zone. Critics argue it took away from creative play in the neutral zone. The ECHL, in co-operation with the NHL, altered the rule so at least two attacking players must touch the puck in the neutral zone after it has been cleared before it can be shot back in with the delayed offside taking effect. If the puck is shot back in without two attacking players touching, an intentional offside is called and the ensuing faceoff moves into the attacking team&rsquo;s end. &ldquo;I saw four pre-season games and I would say there were only about four times per game where defensemen deliberately shot the puck in without trying to avoid the offside call,&rdquo; Kelly said. &ldquo;You could see defenseman trying to spot a teammate to relay the puck to. I think you&rsquo;ll see a lot of creative play in the neutral zone and a lot of breakaways or two-on-ones when defenseman who get too creative get stripped of the puck. Where it will really come into effect is late in the game with a team leading by a goal. It won&rsquo;t want to have an intentional offside called against it forcing the faceoff in its zone.&rdquo;&hellip;The dude looks like a lady: Zigmund Palffy of the New York Islanders&hellip;It turns out Wayne Gretzky has been taking in rookies during training camp for years. With three young children of his own, The Great One took a few years off from playing den mother and the responsibility was picked up by teammate Marty McSorley&hellip;Elections for a new NHLOA executive were held in September. Collins, a linesman, replaces referee Terry Gregson as president. Rounding out the executive are referee Dan Marouelli, executive vice-president; referee Andy Van Hellemond, vice-president, finance; linesman Brian Murphy, vice-president and referee Steve Walkom, executive secretary. Members of the executive serve a one-year term. Gregson and outgoing executive vice-president Kerry Fraser, both major players in last year&rsquo;s CBA talks with the NHL, were each nominated for several positions, but declined them all&hellip;A surprise 25th wedding anniversary party for Van Hellemond and his wife, Cheryl, had to be postponed Oct. 4 when he underwent an emergency gall bladder operation that same day. He went to the hospital with a sore stomach and had the operation within hours. Doctors told Van Hellemond they were surprised he was able to attend the officials&rsquo; training camp in that delicate condition.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-011640/6737529-1-eng-US/f0003-012.jpg" title="f0003-01" width="360" height="370"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-021309/6737522-1-eng-US/f0003-022.jpg" title="f0003-02" width="376" height="569"><figcaption class="caption-body">Nathan LaFayette</figcaption></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-03859/6737515-1-eng-US/f0003-032.jpg" title="f0003-03" width="1173" height="1942"><figcaption class="caption-body">Maybe we went too far naming Craig Billington the playoff MVP.</figcaption></div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-04473/6737508-1-eng-US/f0003-042.jpg" title="f0003-04" width="375" height="571"><figcaption class="caption-body">Brett Lindros</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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Lockout has refs nervous

<div class="byline">By Mike Brophy</div>Ed Jovanovski went from being player of the weak to player of the week upon his return to major junior hockey.The Florida Panthers&rsquo; No. 1 overall draft choice played poorly in his first few games with the Windsor Spitfires before returning to form in a pair of Ontario League games, including a two goal, seven-point effort Oct. 16. Panthers&rsquo; general manager Bryan Murray witnessed the turnaround.&ldquo;He was trying to do everybody else&rsquo;s job,&rdquo; Murray said. &ldquo;A week later it was like he had been there forever; like he was the best player in the league.&rdquo;The 6-foot-2, 205-pound defenseman has yet to sign an NHL contract and is expected to remain with Windsor this season, regardless of whether there is an NHL season.Negotiations between the Panthers and Jovanovski&rsquo;s agent, Anton Thun, ended Oct. 15 when the NHL put a freeze on all contract talks. They are believed to be close to an agreement.A league source said Jovanovski and other members of the 1994 draft class would likely be exempt should an entry-level salary system be adopted as part of a new collective bargaining agreement between the players and owners. &#9632;

Panther pick hits stride with Windsor juniors

<div class="byline">By Mark Brender</div>The logic behind the full hockey visor is irrefutable. If the visor or cage is safety approved and worn properly, serious eye injury is next to impossible.Equally well known, and once again illustrated in its most gruesome form, is players shunning full protection in favor of better on-ice vision risk losing their vision altogether.That&rsquo;s what happened to San Jose Sharks&rsquo; prospect David-Alexandre Beauregard of the Quebec League&rsquo;s St-Hyacinthe Laser, who lost his left eye after a stick accidentally found its way underneath his three-quarters visor in a QMJHL game Oct. 16. (For more on Beauregard, see page 51.)Despite Beauregard&rsquo;s misfortune, QMJHL president Gilles Courteau said the league is not about to go with full facemasks.&ldquo;As soon as a player has made up his mind we have to respect that,&rdquo; Courteau said. &ldquo;In hockey and in all sports when we have contact, you have to admit the risk is there.&rdquo;The Beauregard incident likely wouldn&rsquo;t have happened in the QMJHL before 1993-94. That&rsquo;s when the league received an exemption from the Quebec sports safety board that requires all players in the province to wear full visors. Players voted unanimously in a survey to make the switch and the league responded by allowing its players the choice of wearing three-quarters visors. No players wear full visors in the QMJHL.Even hockey safety guru Dr. Tom Pashby of Toronto said there is a time when full protection might not be the most appropriate.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-011587/6737608-1-eng-US/f0005-012.jpg" title="f0005-01" width="570" height="796"><figcaption class="caption-body">David-Alexandre Beauregard&rsquo;s lost his eye due to a high stick.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;If they want to make hockey a career and if they feel the full visor is interfering with their performance, then you&rsquo;ve got to look at that,&rdquo; he said. But he quickly added, &ldquo;I think they&rsquo;d be smart to wear the full, don&rsquo;t get me wrong.&rdquo;But eye safety is not the only issue at stake. The full visor has brought high sticks and blindside hits to university and college hockey, with unwanted consequences for both the quality of the game and the danger of other serious injuries.University coaches in Canada and the United States are convinced full facial protection causes more problems than it solves.Boston University coach Jack Parker said the full visor takes away a player&rsquo;s peripheral vision and leaves him vulnerable to a legal blindside hit.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to protect the eyes and ruin the backs and shoulders and necks instead,&rdquo; Parker said. &ldquo;In 1984 (National Collegiate Athletic Association) coaches voted 108-0 to get rid of (the full cage). Unanimous.&rdquo;Why didn&rsquo;t it go though? &ldquo;Attorneys. They&rsquo;re scared of a lawsuit. The day is going to come when a guy gets wheeled down the aisle in a wheelchair because of this, and when it does there&rsquo;ll be 108 witnesses there saying we told you so.&rdquo;Players in the Ontario-Quebec division of the Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union wear full visors; those in the Western and Atlantic leagues do not. Coaches across the country say stickwork among Ontario and Quebec teams is unparalleled.Smaller players with cages know no fear, said University of Western Ontario coach Barry Martinelli. &ldquo;Without fighting and with the cages it&rsquo;s open warfare,&rdquo; he said.International Ice Hockey Federation rules mandate the full visor for players up to 19 and at least a half visor for players 20 and older.Statistics show the half and three-quarters visors are nearly as successful as the full in preventing eye injuries. There have been 283 lost eyes from hockey injuries since 1972, only three involving partial visors, including Beauregard&rsquo;s.Canadian Hockey League rules call for a 10-minute misconduct for players who tilt up their facemasks. Game films do not conclusively show whether Beauregard was wearing his shield &#9632;

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Beauregard eye loss prompts visor debate

<div class="byline">By Barry Meisel</div>Bryan Trottier learned as a six-time Stanley Cup-champion with the New York Islanders and Pittsburgh Penguins how to cope with the pressures of great athletic expectations.It wasn&rsquo;t until he faced financial ruin and thoughts of suicide last summer he realized he had to learn how to cope with real-life pressures.On Sept. 5, the Penguins&rsquo; 38-year-old assistant coach checked into a Pittsburgh-area hospital for physical, mental and emotional tests. During his two-week stay he told a therapist he contemplated killing himself so his wife could collect on a life insurance policy and help the family dig out from under a huge pile of debts.Then on Oct. 11, Trottier filed for Chapter 7 protection under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in a Pittsburgh federal court. Under Chapter 7 law, a filer&rsquo;s assets are sold by the court to pay off his creditors.On Oct. 19, in an interview with the New York Daily News, the future Hall of Famer disclosed his thoughts of suicide and he discussed how his current weekly therapy sessions are helping him learn how to productively deal with stress.&ldquo;I never thought I was suicidal, but apparently I was,&rdquo; Trottier said. &ldquo;There were days when I thought, &lsquo;If I could just run (my car) into a brick wall.&rsquo;&ldquo;There was no way I was ever going to do anything. I knew my insurance policy. There is something that says if you commit suicide, you don&rsquo;t get your death benefit. But I was trying to think of ways it wouldn&rsquo;t screw up the life insurance. I couldn&rsquo;t think of the way, so it was completely out of the picture.&rdquo;According to court documents, Trottier claimed assets of $141,629 and debts of nearly $9.5 million. The debts stem from a series of lawsuits that are the products of two major investments gone bad: The Bryan Trottier Skating Academy in Port Washington, N.Y., and a two-story office building in Manhasset, N.Y.Included in the tangled web of nearly a dozen court cases is a suit by Trottier against his former agent and business manager, Bob Thornton, whom Trottier claimed in court documents mismanaged his affairs.Trottier said he couldn&rsquo;t comment on his legal and financial affairs.Trottier and his wife of 18 years, Nickie, have struggled financially since 1990, when a deal with four partners of an office building began unraveling. His four partners are suing him for $8 million, but the bankruptcy filing put it on hold.Trottier&rsquo;s financial problems were compounded July 1, 1990, when the Islanders bought him out of the final two years of his contract. Instead of earning $1.9 million, the Islanders were obliged to pay him only two-thirds of the remaining salary, $1.3 million, at a rate of $50,000 per year over the next 26 years. Trottier instead invoked his right to take the present-day value-$480,000.The ice rink Thornton managed for Trottier until their split in 1991 was foreclosed in 1993. That led to more lawsuits.It wasn&rsquo;t until Sept. 3 Trottier hit bottom. He hadn&rsquo;t been shaving much, had found himself going days without changing clothes. He felt listless. He thought he had the flu. When he found himself subconsciously thumbing through a list of psychologists in the Yellow Pages, he agreed to check into a hospital for what he called &ldquo;a total self-examination.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0005-021140/6737639-1-eng-US/f0005-022.jpg" title="f0005-02" width="562" height="1050"><figcaption class="caption-body">Bryan Trottier&rsquo;s debts are in the $9.5-million range.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;They gave me an evaluation sheet,&rdquo; Trottier recalled. &ldquo;It said, &lsquo;Here&rsquo;s what you were like when you first came in. It said, &lsquo;Low self-esteem.&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;I have high self-esteem.&rsquo; They said, &lsquo;No, you don&rsquo;t.&rsquo;&rdquo;When Trottier told Nickie about his suicidal thoughts, she grew &ldquo;angry, sad, very concerned,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It was like, &lsquo;How could you ever think about that and leave me with three kids to take care of?&rsquo;&ldquo;He said, &lsquo;Well, you get the insurance policy.&rsquo; But what&rsquo;s that? That&rsquo;s not life. That&rsquo;s not your best friend, your lover, your husband.&rdquo;Trottier still sees a therapist once a week. He&rsquo;s protected from creditors while the bankruptcy proceedings take their course. That will take at least six months. And since he&rsquo;s in the second year of a five-year, $1.5million deal with the Penguins, the family can still live comfortably. &#9632;

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Bankrupt Trottier pondered suicide

<div class="byline">Complled by THN staff</div>Canada&rsquo;s national team will not become a repository for out-of-work NHLers for the time being, said coach Tom RenneyRenney said the team will maintain its traditional role as a developmental step for players looking to improve their skills and breathe new life into their NHL hopes. &ldquo;The one thing we really want to avoid is the bastardization of our program,&rdquo; he said.A number of NHL players have expressed an interest in playing for the team, but Renney did not name them.It&rsquo;s not that the Canadian team couldn&rsquo;t use NHLers. It recently lost three of five games to France on a western Canada road swing that ended Oct. 19. Former Edmonton Oiler and New York Ranger Glen Anderson played in four of the games.Renney was unsure who, if any NHLers. would be allowed to join the touring club if the NHL lockout extends into 1995, although he said former national team players will receive consideration.BOOM BOOM IN HALL: Former Montreal Canadiens&rsquo; great Bernie (Boom Boom) Geoffrion will be inducted into Canada&rsquo;s Sports Hall of Fame Oct. 27 in Toronto.Geoffrion played 14 seasons for the Canadiens (1950-64) helping them win six Stanley Cups. He played two seasons with the New York Rangers and finished his career with 393 goals and 822 points in 883 games.Meanwhile, former NHL greats Frank Mahovlich and Serge Savard received the Order of Canada Oct. 19.LEGAL ACTION: New York area season-ticket holders are threatening to sue the NHL if they don&rsquo;t receive a refund for the entire season, not just cancelled games.The group, represented by New York-based law Firm Snow, Becker, Krauss, is also demanding refunds for pre-season games and the right to repurchase its seats if and when the season resumes.A Thornhill, Ont., man. meanwhile, has filed a suit against the league and the NHL Players&rsquo; Association in provincial court. Alvin Singer is not seeking damages, but wants the two sides to submit to binding arbitration. &#9632;

No work on Canadian team for locked out big leaguers

Here&rsquo;s my five-point plan to settle the lockout.1. Players no longer receive a set salary. They are paid on commission based on revenue, not profit.2. The cap would be set at a percentage of total revenue, say 50. This makes the players stockholders. This would give each player an average of two per cent of total revenues based on a roster of 25 players. For a team with $30 million in revenues, the average salary would be $600,000 and the cap would be $15 million.3. Revenue from television and radio contracts and merchandise would be distributed among the teams inverse to stadium capacity and average ticket price.4. Rookies would not be eligible for more than the team average during the first two years of their careers.5. An artificial basement could be set at the current league minimum, but no ceiling would be set other than the percentage of team revenues.I believe this would give the players an incentive to perform their best and give owners an equal incentive to be successful. I also believe this will help save hockey in the league&rsquo;s smaller markets.Stephen Lyman, &nbsp;Tampa, Fla.<h2>Where&rsquo;s Fergie</h2>In the Oct. 14 issue of The Hockey News, I noticed in the statistics which listed Pavel Bure for the Fredericton Canadiens of the American League instead of his younger brother Valeri.With that in mind, I was wondering if you could list John Ferguson instead of Craig Ferguson. That way the Montreal Canadiens could get the muscle and offense they need with a simple call-up from the farm.Jeff Dickson, &nbsp;Sarasota, Fla.<h2>No Average Joes</h2>Some people make it too easy. Of course Billy Joe McInnis was missing something in his Oct. 14 letter-a clue.In his letter, he expresses his disgust at the difference in salaries between a hockey player and Joe Average.First, let me say that I too am a student who has paid dearly for his education. I will not find employment that will pay me anything close to what an NHL player makes, but I don&rsquo;t expect to.When I or the Billy Joe McInnis&rsquo;s of the world graduate, we are only one among millions competing for positions in a very limited occupational marketplace. Employers don&rsquo;t have to pay us unreasonable sums because there are so many from whom to choose.When a hockey player graduates to the big leagues, he is one of a select few who have the the attributes needed to fill a select few positions.The fact is the Joe Averages of the NHL are still part of an elite group of players.If he wants to vent his frustrations, he should do so toward the owners. They are the ones who have created the problem hockey finds itself in today.Larry Dafoe, &nbsp;Saskatoon, Sask.<h2>It&rsquo;s our cash</h2>What is forgotten in the current labor dispute is that it is a three, not two-sided issue.When the Toronto Maple Leafs renegotiated the contracts of Dave Andreychuk, Doug Gilmour, Mats Sundin, Felix Potvin and Grant Fuhr, ticket-price hikes followed.Thus, the owners are wielding our wallets, not theirs, when they dish out these lucrative deals.Mike Lawrence, &nbsp;Amherst, N.S.<h2>Good work, Bob</h2>I would like to congratulate the Philadelphia Flyers on making the deal to get Ron Hextall back.Hextall took the Flyers to the Stanley Cup final in 1987 and won the Conn Smythe Trophy.I&rsquo;m very glad Flyers&rsquo; general manager Bob Clarke is thinking of the present instead of the future and I also think the Flyers are going to make an enormous impact in the NHL this season.Daryl Smith, &nbsp;Listowel. Ont.<h2>I&rsquo;ve had enough</h2>Over the past 20 years, I have spent much money on hockey. I have invested hard-earned cash on everything from tickets to merchandise.I will no more.I will not allow myself to be suckered in anymore. I feel my money can go to better use than to pro sports. I could use it for food, clothing or helping others less fortunate than I am.Please cancel my THN subscription. I am not asking for my money back, but please send the remainder to a sick children&rsquo;s hospital or a charity of your choice.George Smith, &nbsp;Toronto, Ont.Make your feelings known. Fax us your comments at&nbsp;(416) 445-2501&nbsp;or write to&nbsp;Letters, The Hockey News, 85 Scarsdale Rd., Suite 100, Don Mills, Ont, M3B 2R2&nbsp;in Canada. In the U.S., write to&nbsp;Letters, The Hockey News, P.O. Box 904, Buffalo, N.Y., 14240-9947. Include home and business phone numbers. THN reserves the right to edit submissions. &#9632;

Five easy ways to settle NHL lockout

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0006-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-011762/6737718-1-eng-US/f0006-012.jpg"></div> &#9632;

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ELSTON

<div class="byline">By Mike Brophy</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-021202/6737749-1-eng-US/f0006-022.jpg" title="f0006-02" width="568" height="756"><figcaption class="caption-body">Nick Vitucci</figcaption></div><h2>Deal no sweat for minor loop</h2>1. See, it can be done International League comes to CBA agreement with players.2. You be Goofy Disney considers re-assignment of Mighty Duck employees rather than layoffs.3. Alexandre Daigle Millionaire NHLer accepts temporary return to junior with enthusiasm.4. Hitting high notes Anthem singer Wayne Messmer makes successful return from gun shot wound.5. Player of week East Coast League goalie Nick Vitucci of Toledo Storm scores on 185-footer.<h2>All messed up, no place to go</h2>1. Bored NHLers Quit whining about nothing to do. Read a book, do charity work-get a life!2. Jason Doig Laval Titan defenseman pummels semi-conscious opponent during fight.3. Too much Bull Belleville&rsquo;s Richard Park faces long suspension for abusing Ontario League official.4. Hawk blades silent Chicago players only hurting themselves by not skating.5. No talks NHL-NHL Players&rsquo; Association don&rsquo;t meet once between publishing dates at THN. &#9632;

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PLUS MINUS

<div class="byline">By Michael Ulmer</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0007-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0007-011602/6737780-1-eng-US/f0007-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">The NHL lockout has John Vanbiesbrouck on the outside looking in.(Action photo by Jim Leary/BBS Mask photo by Dan Hamilton)</figcaption></div>If you don&rsquo;t believe goaltending is the most perverse position in sports, consider this fact:Florida Panthers&rsquo; goaltender John Vanbiesbrouck has been beaten for 1,603 goals in his NHL career. For an 11-year-veteran, 1,603 instances of scathing disappointment is an admirably low total.Goaltending, by nature, is about keeping faith in the face of public failure. Every goalie who sticks does so because no matter how jagged the humiliation, redemption is only a spectacular save, game or winning streak away.That is precisely what makes the NHL lockout such an inhuman exercise for players in general and for goaltenders in particular.For Vanbiesbrouck, the lockout means no next game, no immediate chance to set things right.&ldquo;The feeling is kind of like letting in the goal with a couple of minutes to go and realizing you let a bad one in,&rdquo; Vanbiesbrouck said. &ldquo;You ride home all the way in the car feeling empty, feeling like you&rsquo;re not contributing.&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what it feels like again. Our emotions, our competitive emotions, they go on how much you contribute.&rdquo;In the minds of the voters for the Hart Trophy, Sergei Fedorov of the Detroit Red Wings and Dominik Hasek of the Buffalo Sabres were the only players who contributed more to their teams than the 31-year-old John Vanbiesbrouck last season.In a survey of his peers, conducted by The Hockey News towards the end of the 1993-94 season, Vanbiesbrouck was named most valuable player to his team and the NHL&rsquo;s top goaltender.On the stats page, only Hasek, at 930, boasted a better save percentage than Vanbiesbrouck&rsquo;s 924. Vanbiesbrouck&rsquo;s 2.53 goals-against average was bettered only by Hasek, Martin Brodeur and Patrick Roy. Vanbiesbrouck was a second-team all-star in the minds of voters and a first-string messiah in the eyes of Panthers fans&rsquo; and media. He was a three-star pick in 30 of his 57 games.All this while playing on a first-year team.The 1993-94 campaign was a return to grace for Vanbiesbrouck. The New York Rangers, for whom he won a Vezina Trophy in 1986, dispatched Vanbiesbrouck to the Vancouver Canucks in order to keep Mike Richter in the expansion draft. The Canucks sacrificed Vanbiesbrouck so they could retain starter Kirk McLean and back-up Kay Whitmore.But no matter the number of post-season accolades, there is still the matter of the late season to rectify. Vanbiesbrouck was on his way to challenge for the Hart when Rick Tocchet stepped on his hand Feb. 1 and administered a deep cut in his right (blocker) hand.Vanbiesbrouck missed seven games and was never able to rekindle the magic of his first four months. He finished with a 21-25-11 record, but went 5-12-3 (.325) after the injury. His GAA, 2.31 before the injury, was 2.98 after and between those figures lies a gap between superb and good and perhaps the two points that would have vaulted the Panthers past the New York Islanders and into the playoffs.Vanbiesbrouck was chased out of the net for the only time in the Panthers&rsquo; second last game of the season, a 5-2 loss to the Quebec Nordiques, and the club missed the playoffs by two points.&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t expect a guy to win you the game every night,&rdquo; said Panthers&rsquo; coach Roger Neilson, &ldquo;but undoubtedly his rhythm and the roll he was on was stopped a little by the injury.&rdquo;&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t happy we didn&rsquo;t make the playoffs,&rdquo; Vanbiesbrouck said, &ldquo;and I wasn&rsquo;t happy I wasn&rsquo;t as successful as I would have liked to have been down the stretch. But I did have some successful games.&rdquo;Mark Fitzpatrick, meanwhile, delivered sensational late-season performances. That, along with an tough stretch-drive schedule, prompted Neilson to hedge his bets. Vanbiesbrouck played six out of the final 10 games.The decision still rankles Vanbiesbrouck.&ldquo;There were a certain number of decisions taken down the stretch I didn&rsquo;t agree with,&rdquo; Vanbiesbrouck said. &ldquo;There were some games I wanted to be in.&rdquo;&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think it was a problem,&rdquo; Neilson said. &ldquo;Beezer was No. 1. We had some wicked scheduling so we used Fitzy when we could.&rdquo;Vanbiesbrouck, a willing ambassador for the club last season, is spending this fall as a parttime driver in his son&rsquo;s car pool and a full-time player rep and media voice. It is a role to which Vanbiesbrouck, a candid and intelligent athlete, is well suited, but it has exacted a toll.&ldquo;Beezer has taken his duties with the association very seriously, but looking at him the other day, he looks like he&rsquo;s getting worn down,&rdquo; Neilson said. &ldquo;We may suggest he take a week off after this gets resolved. He&rsquo;s a key part of our team and we need him at the top of his game.&rdquo;Vanbiesbrouck is in the option year of a contract that will pay him $950,000 this season. That&rsquo;s less than half the going rate for a goalie of his ilk and contract talks between Vanbiesbrouck, his agent Lloyd Friedland and the Panthers have been scuttled by the work stoppage.The lockout and stalled contract talks have made it a lead-lined limbo for Vanbiesbrouck. Typically, he still sees a light.&ldquo;There will be players who have hard feelings after this is over, but for me, absolutely not,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I feel through this I&rsquo;m gaining more knowledge.&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t mean I&rsquo;m happy about it, but through this, we are gaining a certain amount of toughness that we will need, not just in hockey, but in life.&rdquo; &#9632;

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BEEZER’S BURDEN

<div class="byline">By MENNEN</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0008-011655/6737811-1-eng-US/f0008-012.jpg" title="f0008-01" width="444" height="553"></div><h2>QUESTIONS&hellip;</h2>1. Mike Gartner of the Toronto Maple Leafs is president of the NHL Players&rsquo; Association. Which current NHL general manager was the NHLPA&rsquo;s first president when the union formed back in 1967?2. Prior to this season&rsquo;s lockout, when was the last time a work stoppage halted NHL games?3. NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow played both U.S. college and minor pro hockey. Name the Ivy League school and International League team he played for.4. Who was the first New York City native to play for the Rangers?5. Name the former NHL 50-goal scorer now playing in the International League after a four-year retirement.6. Todd Bergen was 21 when he scored 11 goals in 14 regular-season games for Mike Keenan&rsquo;s Philadelphia Flyers in 1984-85. He then added 13 points in 17 playoff games. What did he do as an encore?7. Which Hall-of-Fame defenseman was runner-up to the Norris Trophy six times without winning it?8. Which non-goalie had the longest NHL career without scoring a goal?9. Seven of the International League&rsquo;s 17 cities have or had NHL teams. Which ones?10. Name the NHL owner who, in 1982, was abducted at gunpoint and held hostage for 12 hours?11. Where were the New Jersey Devils before they arrived at the Meadowlands Arena in 1982?12. How is it that hockey personality Don Cherry can say he played in the NHL, yet statistics show he never played a regular-season game? Bonus: Name the former Boston Bruins&rsquo; right winger nicknamed Topper (shown above), who hails from Copper Cliff, Ont.<h2>ANSWERS&hellip;</h2>1:Bob Pulford.2:Players went on strike prior to the 1992 playoffs. The stoppage lasted 10 days, but all games were made up.3:Harvard Crimson and Flint Generals.4:Nick Fotiu in 1976.5:Al Secord of the Chicago Wolves.6:He retired to pursue a career as a golf pro in Saskatchewan.7:Brad Park.8:Lou Marcon played 70 games for the Detroit Red Wings (1958-63) without scoring.9:Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Denver, Kansas City and Minnesota.10:Peter Pocklington of the Edmonton Oilers. The drama ended when a police bullet not only shattered the arm of the terrorist, but also wounded Pocklington.11:Denver (Colorado Rockies) and prior to that Kansas City (Scouts).12:Cherry played one playoff game for the Boston Bruins in 1955. Bonus: Jerry Toppazzini. &#9632;

f0008-01

TRIVIA SPEED STICK*

<div class="byline">By Dave Molinari</div>A few weeks into the NHL&rsquo;s lockout, lots of players were looking for jobs and a few were actually finding them.But it&rsquo;s unlikely anyone was having more luck turning up work than Pittsburgh Penguins&rsquo; defenseman Ulf Samuelsson.In addition to an apparent handful of offers from European teams to play hockey, Samuelsson had a position with an advertising group based in the Pittsburgh suburb of Carnegie.&ldquo;I want a career in a field as vicious as hockey,&rdquo; Samuelsson said. &ldquo;Advertising seems to be the natural choice.&rdquo;Samuelsson, who is scheduled to earn at least $800,000 from Pittsburgh this season, will be paid on commission by the ad agency. Indications are those earnings won&rsquo;t push him into a higher tax bracket.&ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t need what we&rsquo;ll be able to pay him,&rdquo; said Candice Smith, spokeswoman for the ad agency. &ldquo;He wanted a situation where he&rsquo;d learn and be taken seriously.&rdquo;Samuelsson&rsquo;s job will be to serve as an account service person, the liason between the firm&rsquo;s creative staff and clients. Opponents who have had run-ins with him around the crease might not agree, but the ad agency believes Samuelsson&rsquo;s inter-personal skills are a major plus.&ldquo;He has a lot of contacts out there,&rdquo; said Jack Carroll, president of the company. &ldquo;Not just locally, but nationally and internationally.&rdquo;Samuelsson might be renewing some of those international acquaintances in coming days. He has been weighing several proposals to play in Europe until the lockout is over.&ldquo;Tons of people have called me,&rdquo; Samuelsson said. &ldquo;Not that I&rsquo;m Wayne Gretzky over there, but there are a lot of possibilities.&rdquo;Even if Samuelsson does head across the Atlantic, it won&rsquo;t necessarily have a negative impact on his advertising career. His employers are aware he could be going to Europe and don&rsquo;t seem upset by the idea.&ldquo;If he leaves town for a while, we&rsquo;ll just have to communicate longdistance for a while,&rdquo; Carroll said.BARRASSO WINS: Goalie Tom Barrasso was one of the few players to record a victory in early autumn, but he posted a significant one.A judge dismissed a harassment charge that had been filed against Barrasso in the wake of a fracas in a Pittsburgh bar April 29.Barrasso had been convicted May 11- and fined $371-for harassing David Ninness of suburban Bethel Park after Ninness claimed to have been roughed up by defenseman Peter Taglianetti and conditioning coach John Welday of the Penguins.Ninness testified he told Barrasso he would &ldquo;own the Pens or the bar&rdquo; because of the incident, and Barrasso responded, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be pretty hard going around in life with two broken legs.&rdquo;The judge who presided over Barrasso&rsquo;s appeal, Richard G. Zeleznik, threw out the charge without hearing Barrasso&rsquo;s side of the story.Barrasso declined to comment on the ruling and his attorney, Samuel Reich, said, &ldquo;much too much attention has been paid to this incident.&rdquo;In a brief submitted when the appeal hearing began, Reich said Barrasso&rsquo;s action were, at worst, &ldquo;bizarre or offensive or distasteful, or a breach of proper etiquette which does not rise to the level of criminal conduct.&rdquo;Taglianetti and Welday are expected to face trial on assault charges stemming from the incident.NOTEBOOK: Howard Baldwin, the Penguins&rsquo; chairman of the board, said season-ticket sales are off by about 1,500 compared to last season. He called the declined &ldquo;a significant fall-off.&rdquo;&hellip;Eleven players showed up at the first informal practice.As Week 4 of the lockout began, the Penguins weren&rsquo;t planning to lay off staff members. &ldquo;I hope it never comes to that,&rdquo; Baldwin said&hellip;Mario Lemieux, whose career is on hold for health reasons, was a surprise addition to the guest list for a dinner Baldwin hosted for a panel of players in mid-October. Players said Lemieux did not get involved in the discussions about the CBA negotiations. &#9632;

Samuelsson hoping to ‘ad’ to off-ice qualities

<div class="byline">By Mike Loftus</div>It wasn&rsquo;t a paycheck, but there was something special for the Boston Bruins in their mailboxes as the NHL postponement approached official lockout status.In the envelope were highlights of the collective bargaining proposal made to players by NHL management, along with a covering letter from Bruin president-general manager Harry Sinden.&ldquo;It had just become obvious to me, from hearing players&rsquo; comments, that they didn&rsquo;t understand everything being offered,&rdquo; Sinden said. &ldquo;Some things I heard and read were just not true.&rdquo;Sinden, who said at an Oct. 12 media gathering he was hesitant to discuss the labor situation with his players, said his letter wasn&rsquo;t an attempt to force his opinions on them.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to discuss the issues; I don&rsquo;t want to get into a debate,&rdquo; Sinden said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think that&rsquo;s productive at this point. What I did was, without expressing my own viewpoint, was send them the proposal and said &lsquo;Here&rsquo;s the NHL&rsquo;s position.&rsquo;&rdquo;Sinden, who has been outspoken on behalf of the owners in negotiations, didn&rsquo;t get any feedback from his mailing, nor did he expect to.&ldquo;I think there are probably players throughout the league who are reluctant to speak, for fear of what others in the Players&rsquo; Association might think of them,&rdquo; Sinden said. &ldquo;I understand that.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want them to speak out, anyway. What I want them to do is to go to their union leader and get an explanation of the facts and find out why there hasn&rsquo;t been any negotiation. If I&rsquo;m a player, I&rsquo;d want that explained to me.&rdquo;Ted Donato, the Bruins&rsquo; assistant player representative, echoed the feelings of his teammates after receiving Sinden&rsquo;s package in the mail.&ldquo;We certainly don&rsquo;t resent it at all,&rdquo; Donato said. &ldquo;I guess it&rsquo;s just part of a situation like this, part of the business of negotiating. Harry wanted to let us know their side of the issue and there&rsquo;s nothing wrong with that.&rdquo;The players&rsquo; reaction to the facts and figures provided?&ldquo;There are some things in there that look good,&rdquo; Donato said, &ldquo;but there are also some big problems.&rdquo;LACE &lsquo;EM UP: Several Bruins, along with former teammates and other New England-based NHLers, were taking part in informal on-ice workouts.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve skated twice,&rdquo; Ted Donato said Oct. 19, &ldquo;and it feels good. We all miss it a lot.&rdquo;Donato and several Boston-based teammates were expected to be joined by former Bruin Glen Wesley, now a member of the Hartford Whalers, Pittsburgh Penguin Shawn McEachern, Winnipeg Jet Keith Tkachuk and Calgary Flame Mike Sullivan, among others.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think we&rsquo;ll do anything too organized,&rdquo; said Donato, &ldquo;but the good thing is that around here, there are plenty of bodies. The guys want to skate.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Center Jozef Stumpel found employment with Germany&rsquo;s Cologne Sharks on Oct. 19&hellip;Mikko Makela and Mariusz Czerkawski were about to hook up with teams in the Swedish Elite League, according to Harry Sinden&hellip;Boston hadn&rsquo;t laid off office staff, but cut costs by recalling Darren Stolk. Dennis Holland and Scott Lindsay from the Providence Bruins of the American League. All three spent last season in the minors and were among the first cuts in training camp.Rookie goalie Evgeny Ryabchikov was also called up to Boston after spending two weeks in Providence&hellip;Most Bruins who remained in the Boston area were working out at a health club owned by right winger Steve Leach. &#9632;

Sinden drops line to players on NHL’s proposal

<div class="byline">By Chris Stevenson</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0010-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0010-011632/6737890-1-eng-US/f0010-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Alexandre Daigle will return to Ottawa once the NHL season starts. (Mask photo by Canadian Press)</figcaption></div>After five days in limbo, Alexandre Daigle was better prepared to have Siskel and Ebert as his wingers rather than any member of the Victoriaville Tigres.The Ottawa Senators&rsquo; sophomore center, who wanted to return to his former major junior club during the NHL lockout, had his path blocked by NHL and Canadian Hockey League authorities.After five days of punting the political football back and forth, CHL officials decided Daigle could return to the Quebec League team.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s great news. I&rsquo;m getting kind of bored watching movies. I have rented so many videos that I might as well own the store,&rdquo; said Daigle, who was passing the time at his parents&rsquo; home in suburban Montreal.Daigle&rsquo;s move was blocked because his name did not appear on a list of players eligible to return to junior clubs during the lockout and be exempt from the NHL&rsquo;s recall rules.Under normal conditions, players returned to junior cannot be recalled that season except under emergency conditions.&ldquo;The amendment will allow an NHL club to return a junior-aged player to their previous CHL club during the (duration) of the current NHL work stoppage,&rdquo; said the CHL&rsquo;s news release. &ldquo;Any such player is subject to immediate recall by his NHL club upon completion of the NHL work stoppage and the CHL has agreed not to prevent such players from immediately returning to their NHL teams.&rdquo;Daigle practised for the first time with his old team Oct. 20 and hoped to play his first game Oct. 23 in Victoriaville when the Tigres were to host the Val d&rsquo;Or Foreurs.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the right move. He should be playing,&rdquo; said Senators&rsquo; coach Rick Bowness.Ontario League commissioner David Branch said there wasn&rsquo;t much opposition to amendment.&ldquo;In fairness to the Quebec League and the interest and support that province has towards its hockey idols, it was an easy decision to make,&rdquo; Branch said.Naturally, Daigle&rsquo;s return was big news in Victoriaville.&ldquo;This whole situation is happy for everybody,&rdquo; said Tigres&rsquo; general manager Michel Cormier. &ldquo;Not only for us, but the whole league.&rdquo;YASH LOOKS FOR CASH: Center Alexei Yashin was the Senators&rsquo; player closest to signing with another team during the lockout.Yashin&rsquo;s agent, Mark Gandler, was negotiating with the Las Vegas Thunder of the International League.The only thing standing in Yashin&rsquo;s way, apparently, was the final approval from the Thunder&rsquo;s management on a deal.One of the things being considered by Thunder management was whether or not it wanted to be the first 1HL team to sign an NHLer and risk opening the floodgates, as well as alienating some of their players.Las Vegas coach-GM Bob Strumm was confident the slick Yashin would be worth the investment.&ldquo;Maybe he&rsquo;s not a ticket sales-man-until after his first shift,&rdquo; Strumm said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s one of those players when he&rsquo;s on the ice, you can&rsquo;t take your eyes off of him. You don&rsquo;t have to know anything about hockey to know that he&rsquo;s special.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: The remarks by Boston Bruins&rsquo; star center Adam Oates about the owners&rsquo; latest offer were not well-received by Senators&rsquo; player representative Brad Shaw. &ldquo;I really should not comment, but it sounds pretty good,&rdquo; Oates said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s right. He shouldn&rsquo;t comment,&rdquo; Shaw said. &ldquo;I think he&rsquo;s a little misinformed and not up to date with what&rsquo;s going on. This is not the time to be jumping at offers without considering the consequences.&rdquo;&hellip;The Senators announced a ticket refund policy that offered fans credits or refunds (with interest) for the value of tickets they held for cancelled games.The Senators started skating again Oct. 17, chipping in $6 a man to pay for the ice at their suburban practice facility. &#9632;

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Daigle thrilled to be back in junior ranks

<div class="byline">By Viv Bernstein</div>The curious and the angry showed up when the Hartford Whalers invited season ticket holders and corporate supporters to a fan forum at the Civic Center Oct. 18 to discuss the lockout.Owner Peter Karmanos Jr., and coowner/general manager Jim Rutherford got an earful crowd of about 350.&ldquo;I feel strongly that both the baseball fans and hockey fans are suckers if they don&rsquo;t strike when this is over,&rdquo; one fan said. &ldquo;Because you as owners and players as players have shown little respect and little faith in the fans and the people that pay the money.&rdquo;Said another: &ldquo;I wish the players were here because I&rsquo;m angry. I&rsquo;m angry at the players because I think they&rsquo;re greedy. I&rsquo;m also not too sure I should believe the owners.&rdquo;The Whalers were prepared for the venom with charts and graphs from the league explaining their financial straits. The Whalers&rsquo; chart showed salaries had increased from $5.4 million in 1990-91 to a projected $16.8 million this season. Karmanos said his team will lose $10.5 million if the season is lost and about $9 million if games are played.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe the players believe the owners are serious,&rdquo; Karmanos said. &ldquo;They hope we&rsquo;ll fold. I would be happy to return a quarter of the season-ticket money, with interest, and maybe the players will start to believe we&rsquo;re serious about it.&rdquo;One woman, who said she had purchased Whalers&rsquo; season tickets for the first time this year, asked why franchise values were rising if the teams were losing so much money.&ldquo;The move on the value of franchises has started the other way,&rdquo; said Karmanos, who pointed out he paid $47.5 million for the Whalers in June after expansion franchises sold for $50 million in previous years.As part of the purchase, the Whalers are required to stay in Hartford at least four years. One fan suggested the four-year time period begin when the season begins and not now. Rutherford agreed.Another fan pointed out the players&rsquo; plan for revenue sharing would provide the Whalers-according to The Hockey News-with as much as $7 million.&ldquo;I was surprised the NHL was even talking about revenue sharing,&rdquo; said Karmanos, who thought it was closer to $4.5 million. &ldquo;In either case, we would have gotten some money.&rdquo;EUROPE BOUND?: Agents for winger Robert Kron and defenseman Frantisek Kucera informed the Whalers via fax the players are considering offers to play in Europe.Kucera has offers from two teams in the Czech Republic.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m thinking I&rsquo;ll go,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I want to stay in shape and play.&rdquo;Kron is less certain, although he is looking at teams in the Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland and Finland.&ldquo;That&rsquo;s out of my control,&rdquo; Jim Rutherford said. &ldquo;I can look at that a few different ways. They&rsquo;re playing and keeping their conditioning. On the negative side, if one comes back injured and wants his contract&hellip;that would have to be addressed.&rdquo;Captain and player representative Pat Verbeek, goalie Sean Burke and left winger Geoff Sanderson also said they are looking into playing in Europe.NOTEBOOK: The Whalers had a face-to-face meeting with former coach Pierre McGuire-and legal counsel-Oct. 18. It was the first time they met since McGuire testified on behalf of the Edmonton Oilers in an August arbitration hearing to decide compensation for signing free agent winger Steven Rice. The Whalers, who lost defenseman Bryan Marchment, haven&rsquo;t paid McGuire since the hearing. McGuire had about $190,000 remaining on his contract. No settlement was reached in the meeting. &#9632;

Karmanos tells fans NHL owners won’t buckle

<div class="byline">By Jim Kelley</div>Unlike his teammate Alexander Mogilny, Denis Tsygurov didn&rsquo;t have to defect from Russia to join the Buffalo Sabres.Maybe he figured he was missing out on something.Tsygurov, a Russian-born defenseman and a second-round pick of the Sabres in the 1993 entry draft, executed a reverse defection of sorts, bolting western New York to join up with his old team, Lada Togliatti, while it was on tour in the United States.Details of Tsygurov&rsquo;s &ldquo;defection&rdquo; are sketchy, but he apparently signed up with his old mates during their recent tour of Colonial League cities.Tsygurov did not seek, nor did the Sabres grant, permission for him to sign with the team.The issue of permission is somewhat vague. Sabres&rsquo; executive vicepresident Gerry Meehan did give permission for defenseman Richard Smehlik to sign with Vitkovice of the Czech Elite League, but with provisions.Meehan said he had been advised by the NHL that he could not deny permission, but said he made it clear to Smehlik&rsquo;s agent, Rich Winter, that the Sabres would accept none of the risks should Smehlik sustain an injury. He also said the Sabres would not be liable for Smehlik&rsquo;s salary should the NHL season resume and he were unable to play.There were reports Vezina Trophy winner Dominik Hasek had approached the Detroit Vipers regarding playing with the International League team.But Hasek recently signed a multimillion dollar contract with the Sabres and is rethinking the consequences of putting that at risk.&ldquo;We had been told during negotiations that that was an option, but we haven&rsquo;t been approached since,&rdquo; Meehan said. &ldquo;For now we just take things one day at a time.&rdquo;AT A CROSSROADS: Construction of Crossroads Arena could start in late October now that the city of Buffalo has agreed to the last of its $10-million share for the $122.5-million project.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to start construction right away,&rdquo; said Larry Quinn, the Sabres&rsquo; point-man on the project. City council members voted 13-0 Oct. 18 to approve a $2.7-million payment.The Sabres must still seek permission from the league to fulfill a condition of funding.The team must agree to stay in town 30 years.&ldquo;We have put ourselves in the position so we won&rsquo;t be Al Davised,&rdquo; said common council member Gene Fahey, referring to the Raiders&rsquo; owner who moved his National Football League team from Oakland to Los Angeles.&ldquo;We won&rsquo;t be like Oakland, having a sports team move out on us after we have made a substantial commitment.&rdquo;Quinn said he does not expect the league to object to the relocation agreement.The next step is for the city to negotiate a lease with the Sabres&rsquo; organization.The city is contributing a total of $10 million for the new arena, to go with $20 million from the county, $25 million from the state and $67.5 million in private funding.The Sabres set an Oct. 15 deadline so digging could begin before the ground freezes.Several deadlines have already been pushed back-including the scheduled opening, from Dec. 31, 1995, to opening night of the 1996-97 season.NOTEBOOK: As of mid-October, the Sabres had no plans for laying off members of their front-office staff. The organization is involved in several joint partnerships with an indoor lacrosse team, an indoor soccer team and a sales venture with a regional sports television network. &#9632;

‘Reverse defection’ sends Tsygurov back to Russia

<div class="byline">By Kevin Johnston</div>Reggie Savage has not made an impact in the NHL in five seasons, but it hasn&rsquo;t been from a lack, of effort.And even though his level of success hasn&rsquo;t come close to equaling his intensity level, Savage soldiers on in his quest for regular NHL employment.He is convinced he can play in the league and was depressed and furious when the Nordiques dispatched him to the Cornwall Aces of the American League just before the NHL season was put on hold.In fact. Savage refused to report to Cornwall for several days. After discussing matters with his family, he decided to have a chat with Aces&rsquo; coach Bob Hartley.&ldquo;I had a good relationship with Bob last season when I was sent here for a while and that got me to come back,&rdquo; Savage said. &ldquo;He knows what makes me tick.&rdquo;Savage has been ticking well since the start of the AHL season. After six games, he was third in team scoring with three goals and four points.This season&rsquo;s was Savage&rsquo;s seventh professional training camp. Drafted in the first round by the Washington Capitals in 1988, he played two more seasons with the Victoriaville Tigres of the Quebec League before making it to the pros.In three seasons in the Capitals&rsquo; organization, he played just NHL 17 games before being traded to the Nordiques. He played 17 games with Quebec in an injury-plagued 1993-94 season.Savage has had success at the minor-pro level. He had seasons of 32, 42 and 37 goals with the AHL&rsquo;s Baltimore Skipjacks and had 21 goals and 34 points in 33 games with Cornwall last season.&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t give up because I know I can play in the NHL,&rdquo; Savage said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got too much talent and I&rsquo;m only 24 years old. So why give it all up? I&rsquo;ve dominated in the AHL and I can do it again. I&rsquo;ve gotten over the disappointment. My time will come, I know it.&rdquo;Savage would have been paid $250,000 if he had stuck with the Nordiques and is making $75,000 with Cornwall.&ldquo;We know Reggie is upset,&rdquo; Hartley said, &ldquo;but it hasn&rsquo;t shown over here. He has been the real professional that I know he is. He knows that the only way he will move up is by working his tail off. And that&rsquo;s what he has been doing for us.&rdquo;FISET IN NICOLET: Nordiques&rsquo; goalie Stephane Fiset wants to play and doesn&rsquo;t care where he has to go to do it.Fiset joined Nicolet Nova of the Mauricie Region Sr. League and will play for expense money. Nicolet is a small town about an hour southwest of Quebec. He was due to play his first game Oct. 21.&ldquo;I want to keep in shape, I want to play hockey,&rdquo; Fiset said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not doing this because Jocelyn Thibault and Garth Snow are themselves playing. I&rsquo;m doing it for myself.&rdquo;The Nova team plays one game week, so Fiset is practising daily with the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivieres Patriotes, who are coached by former Canadian national team assistant Danny Dube.NOTEBOOK: While in Europe for an international tournament, general manager Pierre Lacroix and coach Marc Crawford stopped in Ornskoldsvik, Swe., on Oct. 17, to tell Peter Forsberg they approve of him playing for MoDo in the Swedish Elite League&hellip;Nine Nordique players were working out with the Beauport Harfangs of the QMJHL.Claude Lapointe was also considering playing in the Mauricie Sr. League. He wanted to play with Stephane Fiset, but each team can only dress one pro. So he was looking at the team from Pont-Rouge. &#9632;

Savage works hard in minors for shot at majors

<div class="byline">By Herb Zurkowsky</div>The multi-talented Gerry Fleming could soon be changing his tune.The Montreal Canadiens&rsquo; rookie left winger already is part sociologist, psychologist and NHL enforcer. And now he&rsquo;s thinking of becoming part musician.Tired of hanging around Montreal with nothing to do during the labor dispute, Fleming has returned to Prince Edward Island, where he&rsquo;s working out with his former university team. And if the dispute isn&rsquo;t settled by Christmas, Fleming said he&rsquo;ll re-enroll in school to study music.&ldquo;I want to work on my guitar skills,&rdquo; said the 6-foot-5, 230-pound Fleming. He majored in sociology with a minor in psychology while playing for his university team. Had he not been signed to an American League contract with the Fredericton Canadiens, Fleming considered becoming a nurse. Fleming, 27, is going through mixed emotions these days.It took him almost five vears to make it to the NHL, only to have his big-league debut delayed by the work stoppage. Heming scored six goals and 22 points with 188 penalty minutes in Fredericton last season.On the other hand, he&rsquo;s firmly behind the union. Heming was Fredericton&rsquo;s player representative for two years.Fleming wouldn&rsquo;t be against returning to Fredericton and being allowed to play. But first, he would have to clear waivers, which is unlikely. So he sits and waits.&ldquo;You can never regret being called up, promoted,&rdquo; Heming said. &ldquo;Life is full of peaks and valleys. It&rsquo;s unfortunate it just happened that way.&ldquo;I&rsquo;d love to go to Fredericton and play. I&rsquo;m bored and I don&rsquo;t know what to do. My whole day revolved around hockey. I had a schedule and made the proper adjustments, depending on whether I was playing or not.GOOD WORK HAB-ITS: A group of Canadiens&rsquo; players has started working out informally at a suburban Montreal arena three times per week. The sessions have proved therapeutic.&ldquo;It was good to be on the ice,&rdquo; said defenseman Jean-Jacques Daigneault, the Canadiens&rsquo; player representative. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s better to be skating than riding the bike, running or playing tennis. The players want to keep in shape and the best way to do that is through practice. You could see the guys were having fun.&rdquo;Not everyone was, however. Defenseman Peter Popovic struggled his first time back on skates.&ldquo;The only thing I can say is after two weeks off. it didn&rsquo;t feel so good,&rdquo; Popovic said. &ldquo;But it was good to be doing something. It has been boring, mentally tough. You work out in the summer, skate for a month at training camp and suddenly there&rsquo;s nothing. It&rsquo;s like you&rsquo;ve done it all for nothing.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Canadiens&rsquo; management sent checks to each of its players recently. Although the players had to pay their way to training camp and received no per diem as part of league rollbacks, the players&rsquo; $2,500 salary for three weeks of training camp wasn&rsquo;t included in commissioner Gary Bettman&rsquo;s unilateral cutbacks&hellip; Canadiens&rsquo; defenseman Mathieu Schneider has apologized to Bettman and Canadiens&rsquo; general manager Serge Savard for an inappropriate stunt during training camp. During one workout, Schneider stuck a piece of tape across the front of his helmet with the words &ldquo;Bettman sucks&rdquo; on it.Savard was presented with the Or der of Canada at a ceremony in wa on Oct. 19. He was recognized for his work in the community as well as his hockey achievements, including 10 Stanley Cups-eight as a player and two as a GM. &#9632;

Enforcer Fleming may spend lockout tuning up

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0017-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-011222/6738017-1-eng-US/f0017-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Guy Hebert</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE

The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim had a popgun offense on the ice in their first NHL season, but in terms of licensed merchandise sales, Disney&rsquo;s expansion team mounted an impressive attack.Mighty Ducks&rsquo; items-including apparel and novelties-topped all 26 NHL teams in overall sales during a fiscal year that ran from July 1, 1993 through June 30, 1994, the NHL reports.Not only did Anaheim&rsquo;s merchandise sales lead all NHL clubs in North America, but also individually in the U.S. and the supposedly &ldquo;more traditional&rdquo; Canadian market.Although the NHL doesn&rsquo;t have exact figures yet, it is also believed that Mighty Ducks merchandise was among the best selling for any North American sports franchise during that span.When the numbers are finally counted, the Anaheim team, which was buoyed by the Disney marketing machine, may end up No. 1 among NHL, Major League Baseball, National Football League and National Basketball Association clubs.Among NHL teams in North American sales, the Ducks were followed (in order) by the Florida Panthers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Chicago Blackhawks, Pittsburgh Penguins, San Jose Sharks, Montreal Canadiens, Detroit Red Wings, Boston Bruins and Los Angeles Kings.In the U.S., the NHL sales leaders were: Anaheim, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Florida, San Jose, Detroit, New York Rangers, Boston, Los Angeles and Tampa Bay. In Canada, Anaheim was followed by Toronto, Montreal, Florida, Vancouver, Chicago, San Jose, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Ottawa.Given the close of the NHL fiscal year on June 30, however, the Rangers&rsquo; Stanley Cup win didn&rsquo;t impact on the league&rsquo;s 199394 data.When it comes to specific items, apparel remains the most popular category. Although new designs can be essential to stimulate sales, fans still want t-shirt, caps, jackets and, of course, game jerseys.&ldquo;Our biggest single success story is the game jersey,&rdquo; said Brian Jennings, NHL Enterprises director of apparel and sporting goods. &ldquo;Because of the silhouette, it&rsquo;s a hot fashion statement. It&rsquo;s big, oversized, rough and rugged.&rdquo;Although wild colors and patterns were popular in shirts, jackets and other apparel items a few years ago, Jennings says fans are switching back to &ldquo;more traditional&rdquo; designs.&lsquo;The pendulum has swung back toward a more athletic look,&rdquo; he said.A popular hat design today is the old-style &ldquo;slouch&rdquo; style baseball cap that has no riser or crown in front. Pro baseball players wore that type of cap decades ago.Athletic style pullover sweaters/sweat-shirts and knit head wear also are in vogue, Jennings said.In additional to apparel items for all seasons and age groups, the NHL&rsquo;s growing licensed merchandise line includes collectibles, gifts and novelties, toys and games, house and home items and sporting goods.According to other members of the NHL Enterprises&rsquo; staff, some of the best selling items include:&bull; Trading cards: Although the collecting craze may not be as hot as it was a few years ago, it&rsquo;s still a healthy business, says llene Kent, the NHL&rsquo;s collectibles licensing and marketing director. High-end cards with new designs, gold standing and heavy UV coating add new wrinkles to the hobby. Also popular among collectibles are coins and medallions.&bull; Video Games: Available in all popular formats, NHL-related games have become increasing sophisticated over the past few years. Many games include all NHL teams and current players.&#9633; Household Items: The hottest item in this group is the goalie mask telephone says Judy Salsberg, NHL Enterprises&rsquo; director of non-apparel products. The handset is removed from the back of the fiberglass/wire mask which is painted in team colors. Other popular household items include glass-and barware, bed linens, towels, Christmas ornaments and desk accessories.&bull; Gifts and novelties: Watches with NHL logos are in style. So is costume jewelry and Wilson golf balls.<h2>ADVERTISER&rsquo;S INDEX</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0018-011255/6738048-1-eng-US/f0018-012.jpg" title="f0018-01" width="726" height="1483"></div> &#9632;

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NHL merchandsing sales just ducky

Several hockey people have expressed a feeling of boredom during the NHL lockout. With no hockey in their lives, they just don&rsquo;t know what to do with themselves.That hasn&rsquo;t been a problem for Ron Asselstine. The 48-year-old linesman has spent more time with his family, taken long bike rides and enjoyed a beautiful autumn in southern Ontario.And, more important to his community, he has been able to devote more time to the charitable organization he runs, the Guelph Wish Fund for Children.&ldquo;As the season drags on without hockey, you start feeling sorry for yourself,&rdquo; Asselstine says. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s when I get my scrapbook, look at some of the kids we&rsquo;ve helped, and wonder what am I worrying about?&rdquo;Asselstine and his associates have been granting wishes to terminally ill children and those in life-threatening situations since 1984. He says more than 80 children have been granted wishes in the past 10 years.During the lockout, he has spent time each day writing letters, talking to committee members and planning fundraising events. Most recently, he participated in a large-scale garage sale.The Toronto native got the idea for starting the charity while watching the late-night news during a road trip.&ldquo;There was this young child in Minnesota doing the weather,&rdquo; Asselstine recalls. &ldquo;He had brain cancer and was on TV through Minnesota&rsquo;s Make-A-Wish foundation.&ldquo;I wanted to get more involved in my community. I think as athletes we owe that because the community gives so much to us. That&rsquo;s why we&rsquo;re at this level.&rdquo;Asselstine has called on his entertainment-world ties to aid the cause. He says over the years such hockey stars as Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Doug Gilmour have donated time; likewise singer Dolly Parton and actor Kirk Cameron, of Growing Pains fame.While some children request meetings with heroes, others wish for vacations abroad or merchandise. That has meant trips to places such as London, England and Budapest, Hungary; purchases such as canoes and hydraulic lifts for vans.Asselstine says the work is extremely rewarding, though gutwrenching at times. Three years ago, when the Minnesota North Stars were in the Stanley Cup finals against the Pittsburgh Penguins, a young boy asked to meet goalie Jon Casey.The child, who was flown to Pittsburgh and granted his wish, was a kidney transplant recipient.&ldquo;And he was getting better,&rdquo; Asselstine says. &ldquo;It looked like he was going to be okay, then the poor little guy caught pneumonia in the middle of winter and died.&rdquo;Asselstine has since learned to distance himself from the children, but says it hasn&rsquo;t made his work any less satisfying.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve learned to become more objective,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;A couple of the cases where the children died really got to me.&ldquo;But conversely, a lot of them get better; a lot beat cancer. I&rsquo;ve learned a lot about character.&rdquo;Anyone wishing to give to Asselstine&rsquo;s charity can send their donations to: Guelph Wish Fund for Children, 107 Glen Bumie Drive, Guelph, Ont., N1E-4C9 or call 519-823-9474.Donations can also be made to local chapters throughout North America. &#9632;

Helping less fortunate organization’s goal

Imagine waking up on a Saturday morning next year and finding your little son or daughter glued to the television set watching the Albany River Rat skulk through adventure land.That&rsquo;s the dream of Mark DeCola, director of merchandising for the American League&rsquo;s Albany River Rats.The team&rsquo;s logo/mascot, a funloving hockey-playing rat named Rowdy, was both the rookie of the year and the MVP in minor-pro merchandising.Among many accolades given to Rowdy was The Hockey News recognizing the River Rat as the best logo in minor pro hockey. It sold more than $500,000 in merchandising with a toll-free Rat line needed to handle requests. Now DeCola wants to take it one step further.&ldquo;We&rsquo;d like to someday soon be marketing River Rat shower curtains, rugs, lunchboxes, denim shirts, hampers, silk boxer shorts, you name it,&rdquo; DeCola said. &ldquo;Right now we&rsquo;re in the process of giving Rowdy a bottom half so that soon we&rsquo;ll be able to develop a cartoon figure and sell the idea to Warner Bros.&rdquo;The Albany River Rat is one example of how marketing and merchandising has taken off in minor-pro hockey.It used to be a logo was something you had to have simply to emblazon on the team jersey. Now the logo has to be bright, imaginative, original and above all else economically viable.Just ask the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim or the San Jose Sharks, merchandising leaders at the NHL level.&ldquo;Regardless of how a team is doing on ice, if you&rsquo;ve got a good logo, it&rsquo;s going to sell,&rdquo; said the American League&rsquo;s Maria D&rsquo;Agostino. &ldquo;A lot of work goes into something that is pleasing to look at or wear.&rdquo;The AHL&rsquo;s new merchandising agreement has individual teams taking care of licensing &ldquo;soft&rdquo; items such as T-shirts, hats, assorted sundries. The league itself will handle the &ldquo;hard&rdquo; items such as pucks, mugs, mini-sticks, etc.Sales from International League merchandise has doubled each of the past three years from $1.5 million in the first year of its exclusive licensing agreement to just over $3 million in 1992-93 to $7 million last season.IHL vice-president/marketing Greg Elliott is projecting sales to double again, up to $15 million this season.&ldquo;That tells you how much it has taken off,&rdquo; Elliott said. &ldquo;For example, at the Detroit Vipers&rsquo; home opener, their merchandise sales were the third most ever at the Palace in Auburn Hills, topped only by sales at two Detroit Piston basketball games.&rdquo;The East Coast League is starting to get more involved in merchandising its memorabilia. League vice-president, business, Richard Adams said a league-wide marketing operation is underway.&ldquo;We&rsquo;d love to see South Carolina Stingray merchandise selling in New York City,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re putting the program in motion.&rdquo;The IHL Cincinnati Cyclones proved last season that even the doormats can win at the marketing game. Capturing the dubious honor of The Hockey News&rsquo; worst logo in the minors, the Cyclones used that to their advantage.Cyclones&rsquo; merchandising manager Robert Burnham cleverly initiated a &ldquo;be the first to wear the worst&rsquo; campaign.&lsquo;We got more response from that campaign than anything else the Cyclones have done,&rdquo; Bumham said. &ldquo;People loved it.&rdquo; &#9632;

Rowdy leading parade in minor merchandising

If members of the World Junior Championships organizing committee were cruel, they would consider adopting the Gordon Lightfoot tune Alberta Bound as their theme song.You know, the one that goes, &ldquo;Alberta bound, Alberta bound, I wish I was Alberta bound.&rdquo;That&rsquo;s the direction fans in Toronto, New York, Los Angeles and North America&rsquo;s other major markets will want to be headed around Christmas time if the NHL&rsquo;s labor talks are still going nowhere.While the league and its players argue, among other things, the fate of small markets, some of this season&rsquo;s best hockey will be played in miniscule markets.The 1995 WJC-global in scope, provincial in nature-will take place in 13 Alberta communities Dec. 26-Jan. 4.Red Deer, population 59,000, is the main venue. It will play host to 11 of the tournament&rsquo;s 28 games, including the match between No. 1 and 2 seeds Canada and Sweden Jan. 4.The Calgary Saddledome and Edmonton&rsquo;s Northlands Coliseum will each host three games. For the remaining 11 games, the world&rsquo;s premier junior players will vie for global supremacy in places such as Wetaskiwin, Ponoka and Spruce Grove.Other sites include Rocky Mountain, Innisfail, Olds, Camrose, Leduc, Sherwood Park and Stettler.WJC organizer Ray Bennett says the small-town theme allows the tournament to be true to its roots.&ldquo;(The WJC) has a minor hockey legacy,&rdquo; Bennett says. &ldquo;Some of the money raised goes back to the local memberships. That means things such as registration fees (for youth hockey) could be reduced.&rdquo;With three-game ticket packages ranging from $20-$50, Bennett projects the WJC could bring in as much as $100,000 for minor hockey associations in Calgary and Edmonton.WJC organizers are also counting on star appeal to attract customers. Calgary has Joe Nieuwendyk and Theoren Fleury among its WJC alumni; Edmonton Shayne Corson and Tyler Wright.Flames and Oilers fans may not be able to watch their NHL heroes anytime soon, but they can see part of the path they took to the show.Bennett says WJC organizers won&rsquo;t try to sell their tournament as an NHL replacement, but believes the media will pick up on the fact it&rsquo;s the only game in town.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re not happy about the lockout,&rdquo; Bennett says, &ldquo;but we&rsquo;re counting on the fact people will have more disposable income to spend on (the WJC).&rdquo;And perhaps, more on WJC merchandise. Retail booths will be set up at each venue and, if history repeats, Bennett expects Team Canada jackets to be the hot item.&ldquo;The $15 T-shirts will do their business,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;but we learned in Saskatoon (1991), that it&rsquo;s the higher-end $250 items that do really well. The Canadian leather-melton jacket did extremely well in Saskatoon.&rdquo;Souvenirs of the tournament&rsquo;s other teams-Sweden, Russia, Finland, Czech Republic, United States, Germany and Ukraine&mdash;will also be available.Fans in Canada, meanwhile, can take some solace in the fact all seven of its country&rsquo;s games will be aired on The Sports Network. It&rsquo;ll be the next best thing to being Alberta bound. &#9632;

World Jr. tournament small-market triumph

Santa Claus North Pole, The Arctic HO HO HODear Santa;My name is Wyatt and I am nine years old and I&rsquo;m in Grade 3 and I love hockey and I&rsquo;ve been a very good boy this year.I wanted to thank you for all the really cool presents you brought me last year. My sister and I really liked the table hockey game and Dad and I had a great time at the All-Star Game with the tickets you sent us. You&rsquo;re the best.I also wanted to tell you that I&rsquo;ve been an even better boy this year and I&rsquo;ve kept my room clean and helped shovel the walk and helped Mom make peanut-butter cookies.I know Christmas is still a lot of days away, but I wanted to make sure that I haven&rsquo;t forgotten about you. To make things easier for you I wanted to draw up a list of things you might want to think about for me. I promise to keep being good.&bull; Even though I live in Swift Current, Sask., I&rsquo;ve always been a Chicago Blackhawks&rsquo; fan. I&rsquo;d love a Blackhawks&rsquo; warm-up suit with an authentic game jersey if possible. My favorite player is No. 29, Darin Kimble because he used to be from here.&bull; Please get my Mom an authentic knit sweater with any team on it except the Ottawa Senators. She says the Senators are a bunch of overpaid appointed slackers who don&rsquo;t have to work hard and just pass the bucks&hellip;or was that pass the bills.* For me again, I&rsquo;d love a neat knapsack or travel bag that I could take to school. If you can&rsquo;t get me a Blackhawk one, I love the new Minnesota Moose logo in the International League. He looks like Bullwinkle&rsquo;s brother and plays hockey out in the wild outdoors like me.* My sister Juniper would like something from the Pucksters collection, which I&rsquo;m told is an exciting line of apparel for toddlers. She&rsquo;s only four so she qualifies. She would probably love a Mighty Ducks of Anaheim night shirt to use as pyjamas.* For me again, I&rsquo;d love a watch with a Chicago Wolves&rsquo; logo on it. I know they&rsquo;re in the International League, but they&rsquo;re still Chicago and they have Al Secord on their team. A watch would help me do my chores on time, too.* My older brother Geraldo would probably like something a little sophisticated. I think he&rsquo;s starting to like girls and I think he would look good in a golf shirt or fleece top. For some reason he likes the Hartford Whalers&hellip;something about them being an endangered species or whatever.* For me again, I&rsquo;d love to start collecting some more souvenirs. I hear they make things like keychains, shoelaces, playing cards, bumper stickers, pens, tooth brushes, water bottles, mugs, pennants, forest trolls, scarfs, gloves, hats, books, videos, pencils, magnets, lighters, binders, decals, spoons, pins, pucks, sticks and jewelry&hellip; whatever you can muster up. I don&rsquo;t want to sound like I&rsquo;m hogging all the gifts, but I really have had a good year and I promise I&rsquo;ll share them.* For my Dad, I&rsquo;d love to send him to the Stanley Cup Finals. He would love the excitement and action, not to mention the air travel in business class, the wonderful accommodations, the all expenses paid, the transportation to and from the arena, and any other extras you could throw in.Oh yeah, Mr. Santa, that would be great if you could make it a trip for two. You&rsquo;re the bestLove, Wyatt &#9632;

Wyatt’s Christmas list has all bases covered

<div class="byline">By Stan Fischler</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0025-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0025-01818/6738199-1-eng-US/f0025-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Will Tie Domi leave Winnipeg? Will Rowdy (inset) hit the big time? (TIM PARKER)</figcaption></div>Rowdy the Rat may be going Hollywood. Albany River Rats&rsquo; merchandising director Mark DeCola told Bluelines plans are underway to make Rowdy a cartoon character. The logo for the American League team was rated the best in the minor pros by The Hockey News last season. &ldquo;What we&rsquo;re doing now is having a bottom half of Rowdy&rsquo;s body drawn up so that he&rsquo;ll be a complete cartoon-like character,&rdquo; DeCola said. &ldquo;Right now you only see Rowdy down to his waist on our jerseys and logos. In the meantime, we&rsquo;re checking out the possibilities of putting him on film and expect word in a few months.&rdquo; In the space of one season, the River Rats have become the minor league merchandising equivalent of the NHL&rsquo;s San Jose Sharks and Mighty Ducks of Anaheim&hellip; Motivational guru Anthony Robbins, who was front and center with the Los Angeles Kings during their Stanley Cup run in 1993, is being sued for fraud by the company (Guthy-Renker) that makes his infomercials. Robbins also is settling a slew of lawsuits from people who paid him to franchise his &ldquo;teaching&rdquo; techniques.<h2>Domi will Jet off</h2>Prediction: Tie Domi will be out of Winnipeg less than two months after the season starts&hellip;The St. Louis Blues&rsquo; least-mentioned offseason move-obtaining Adam Creighton for Tom Tilley-will be its best. Only one coach in captivity has been able to motivate Creighton and that was Mike Keenan when the two were with the Chicago Blackhawks. Pencil Creighton in for 25 goals and 250 bodychecks&hellip;Nick Kypreos of the New York Rangers is regarded as the unofficial restaurant food critic among NHL players. The reason: his father is a Markham, Ont., restaurateur specializing in gourmet cooking and Kypreos spent his childhood and teen years working in high-class Toronto eateries. &ldquo;Whenever we arrive in a new city,&rdquo; Kypreos said, &ldquo;the guys are always asking me about the best places to eat.&rdquo; Not surprisingly, the Greek-Canadian&rsquo;s favorite dish is Mediterranean Shrimp&hellip;Once the season begins, expect a deal between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Quebec Nordiques. Penguins&rsquo; scout Gilles Meloche was following the Nordiques throughout the pre-season.<h2>Viva, Las Vegas</h2>The biggest hockey boom town in North America is now Las Vegas. Not only is the Las Vegas Thunder of the International League a hot item, but now a new junior team is being formed in North America&rsquo;s gambling capital. Next, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas is expected to launch a collegiate hockey program. The new junior club, the Aces, will be a member of a league embracing Phoenix, San Jose, Ventura, Calif., and Salt Lake City&hellip;The Dorna Corporation will introduce a flip-sign billboard system for use along the boards at NHL rinks sometime next season. It&rsquo;s now standard at National Basketball Association games.<h2>Natural Resource</h2>New York Islanders&rsquo; coach Lorne Henning claims his hometown of Resource, Sask., is the smallest in Canada ever to produce an NHL coach. &ldquo;There were 50 people there,&rdquo; Henning said, &ldquo;but the population fluctuated, depending on whether the current grain elevator agent had a family or not.&rdquo;&hellip;When is Kevin Hatcher going to get the message-he isn&rsquo;t missed all that much by Washington Capitals&rsquo; fans&hellip;Boston Bruins&rsquo; rookie goalie Blaine Lacher said he doubts that anyone will match his five straight shutouts with Lake Superior State last year, which spanned a National Collegiate Athletic Association record 377 minutes and one second. &ldquo;You have to have the team in front of you,&rdquo; said the promising goalie, &ldquo;and Lake State had the best defense in the country. Plus, I got hot.&rdquo;<h2>Cap it all off</h2>Larry Brooks of the New York Post has exposed some interesting hypocrisy on the part of the NHL Players&rsquo; Association anti-salary cap philosophy. Brooks reports that when the union starts certifying agents this year, it &ldquo;will place a limit on the hourly and percentage rate fees these representatives can charge their clients.&rdquo; Furthermore, Bob Goodenow is &ldquo;seeking a limit on the amount a player can lose in salary during a suspension.&rdquo; Translation: A cap is all right for the NHLPA, but not for the NHL. &#9632;

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Albany’s River Rat awaits big break in showbiz

<div class="byline">By Keith Gave</div>Detroit Red Wings&rsquo; right winger Dino Ciccarelli got a feel for the other side of hockey&rsquo;s labor-management dilemma by firing his coach.No, Scotty Bowman is still employed in Detroit.Ciccarelli, with brothers, Rob and Larry, and Wings&rsquo; teammate Shawn Burr own the Sarnia Sting of the Ontario League. And after a 2-6-0 start, they decided the team wasn&rsquo;t responding to coach Don Boyd, so they fired him and replaced him, on an interim basis, with assistant Rich Brown.&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t easy,&rdquo; Dino Ciccarelli said, &ldquo;but it&rsquo;s something that goes back to last year.&rdquo;Added Burr, &ldquo;We only won 11 of our last 75 games. It was time to do something.&rdquo;Both men feel the same way about the labor impasse that has left them unemployed.&ldquo;You get frustrated and you basically lose interest,&rdquo; Ciccarelli said.Burr is fighting to avoid that feeling. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to accept it,&rdquo; Burr said. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the hardest part. I don&rsquo;t want to accept not playing. We all live to play in the NHL.&rdquo;Burr spoke after the Wings&rsquo; first informal skate, a gathering that attracted just four forwards, including Ciccarelli, captain Steve Yzerman and Keith Primeau.&ldquo;No goaltending,&rdquo; Yzerman joked. &ldquo;Same old story.&rdquo;&ldquo;Playing two-on-two for the Stanley Cup isn&rsquo;t my idea of a lot of fun,&rdquo; Burr said. &ldquo;But actually, it was kind of fun. I scored a lot more than I usually do.&rdquo;Ciccarelli and Burr have skated regularly with the Sting since the players were locked out by the owners Sept. 30. Primeau skated a few times with his brother Wayne&rsquo;s junior team, the Owen Sound Platers of the OHL.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0026-01897/6738230-1-eng-US/f0026-012.jpg" title="f0026-01" width="570" height="940"><figcaption class="caption-body">Shawn Burr is scoring more often playing pick-up hockey.</figcaption></div>Yzerman, fully recovered from offseason back surgery to repair a herniated disc, still goes to rehabilitation sessions four days a week. The foursome&rsquo;s skate Oct. 21 was the first time he had been on skates since five days before the lockout.&ldquo;We still don&rsquo;t expect to be playing for quite awhile,&rdquo; Yzerman said. &ldquo;This is more just to be able to stay somewhat comfortable on skates at least.&ldquo;The negotiations are going nowhere. It&rsquo;s pretty much a foregone conclusion we may not be playing until January. So there&rsquo;s no sense getting mad or frustrated. Just wait it out and see what happens.&rdquo;GOING HOME: Defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom was scheduled to leave Oct. 22 for his native Sweden, where he was exploring the possibility of playing with his former club, Vasteras.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s frustrating not to be able to play,&rdquo; Lidstrom said, adding if he can get insurance protecting him against financial loss due to injury, he probably will play. First, however, Lidstrom said he will seek approval from management.The Wings, as a group, remain faithful to owner Mike Ilitch.&ldquo;A lot of us feel we owe Mr. Ditch a lot because he has done so much for us,&rdquo; Keith Primeau said.Meantime, Lidstrom used the time off to become a college football fan. In the absence of hockey, Lidstrom attended a couple of University of Michigan games and fell in love with the atmosphere-especially the huge crowds in Ann Arbor, Mich.&ldquo;I like it more and more,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Just to be around there with 106,000 people in the stands. It&rsquo;s unbelievable.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Wings&rsquo; senior vicepresident Jimmy Devellano said the team is making Joe Louis Arena ice and workout facilities available to Wings&rsquo; players for their informal workouts, but players are declining the offer. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re all under the impression that we&rsquo;re locked out.&rdquo; Yzerman said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re told (by the union) not to use the facilities&hellip;Defenseman Jason York, who was on Detroit&rsquo;s roster at the scheduled start of the regular season, inquired about the possibility of earning a paycheck with the Adirondack Red Wings of the American League, his club the last three seasons. &ldquo;We told him we couldn&rsquo;t send him down because he&rsquo;d have to clear waivers and we&rsquo;d surely lose him,&rdquo; Devellano said.Keith Primeau said he has explored playing opportunities in leagues that do not include the International League, but acknowledged it would take something drastic for him to actually follow through. Meantime, he is staying busy with a new construction company in which he has invested. He planned to spend the weekend of Oct. 22 shingling a roof and siding a garage. &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want to spend all our money on labor,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And this will prepare me for when I&rsquo;m done playing hockey.&rdquo; &#9632;

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Owners Ciccarelli, Burr fire OHL team’s skipper

<div class="byline">By Mike Heike</div>The paperwork to send Todd Harvey back to junior hockey has been in place since Sept. 30.But instead of returning Harvey immediately to the Detroit Jr. Red Wings of the Ontario League for the duration of the lockout, Dallas Stars&rsquo; management decided to keep the ninth overall pick of the 1993 entry draft in Dallas for physical conditioning.It&rsquo;s a move that could pay dividends for both Harvey and the Stars in the long run.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s something that we feel will make him a better player and also should give us a player more ready to play in the NHL,&rdquo; said Stars&rsquo; head coach and general manager Bob Gainey. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s really coming along.&rdquo;The 5-foot-10, 190-pound Harvey reported to camp a little soft and a little slow. While he eventually adapted to the heat and gained greater endurance by the completion of training camp, he still wasn&rsquo;t in the condition Gainey said was required to compete in the NHL.When NHL commissioner Gary Bettman postponed the start of the season Oct. 1, Gainey intended to send Harvey back to Detroit knowing league rules during the lockout would let him recall the prospect. Instead, the coaching staff saw an opening to do something more constructive with Harvey.&ldquo;We think one of the problems he had in Detroit was, because of his age and his performance, he had a lot of freedom to do what he wanted,&rdquo; Gainey said. &ldquo;And because he was able to play at a level that was successful down there, he didn&rsquo;t really see the need to push harder. We&rsquo;re working to give him more discipline so that when he returns there, the responsibility will be shifted to him.&rdquo;Harvey hasn&rsquo;t been skating, but instead has been undergoing daily weightroom sessions with Stars&rsquo; strength coach Norm Temnograd. The 19-year-old center has already lost 10 pounds and said he feels the difference.&ldquo;This has been good for me, I feel great,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;This is a chance for me, something I need to do if I want to play in this league. Now if they do send me down, I&rsquo;ll be better prepared to dominate down there and come back ready for next year.&rdquo;Or for that matter, later in the 1994-95 season.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll probably decide soon if he&rsquo;s getting to an area where we send him back,&rdquo; Gainey said Oct. 15. &ldquo;After that, it will all be tied to the work stoppage. We&rsquo;ll probably have seven days from when they start up again to recall players from juniors and we&rsquo;ll have to decide our next step then.&rdquo;NEEDHAM BOUGHT OUT: If you want an indication of how long the NHL lockout might be, consider a decision made by Stars&rsquo; right winger Mike Needham.Needham had a one-way contract that would pay him $250,000 when and if the NHL season resumed. But in need of ice time and given a guarantee of International League money, Needham took a $50,000 buyout on his Stars&rsquo; contract, according to sources, and signed a $75,000 contract with the Kalamazoo Wings.He also became a free agent in the process.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a bit of a risk on both sides,&rdquo; Bob Gainey said. &ldquo;A lot of it depends on the length of the lockout. If the lockout is long, he can be on the ice and be getting paid. If it ends tomorrow, it&rsquo;s a gamble for him.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: The Stars loaned right winger Jarkko Varvio to HPK of the Finnish League during the lockout. Varvio, 22, played for HPK for two seasons, scoring 54 goals in 81 games&hellip;Left winger Mike McPhee&rsquo;s recovery from arthroscopic knee surgery in the off-season has been slower than anticipated. He said after two weeks he still felt pain in the knee. &#9632;

Harvey not locked out of weight room during layoff

<div class="byline">By Tim Sassone</div>Despite rumblings to the contrary, Jeremy Roenick insists the Chicago Blackhawks remain solidly behind the NHL Players&rsquo; Association in the labor standoff with the owners.&ldquo;There are no problems here,&rdquo; said Roenick, the Hawks&rsquo; player representative. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re very solid and united as a group. I&rsquo;ll sit out two years if I have to. Personally, I don&rsquo;t want to see the little guy (commissioner Gary Bettman) win.&rdquo;Rumors suggesting there might be problems among the Hawks began circulating after NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow flew to Chicago Oct. 13 to meet with the players.A source close to the Hawks said Goodenow came to the Windy City after several players indicated they needed to be better informed.&ldquo;Some guys had concerns,&rdquo; said defenseman Cam Russell, &ldquo;but there wasn&rsquo;t anybody on our team (at the meeting with Goodenow) who expressed any desire to turn against the union. Everyone is unified.&rdquo;Russell also denied several players asked to be better informed.&ldquo;Everybody&rsquo;s aware of everything that has been offered,&rdquo; Russell said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had a million papers thrown at us. If anyone doesn&rsquo;t know, it&rsquo;s their own fault for not reading.&rdquo;Like all clubs, the Blackhawks have several players such as Chris Chelios, Steve Smith, Gary Suter, Bemie Nicholls, Ed Belfour and Roenick who stand to lose big money during the lockout. It&rsquo;s money they never will be able to recoup.But what separates the Blackhawks from most teams, according to coach Darryl Sutter, is the number of veterans who don&rsquo;t have many years left to earn top dollars.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m disappointed for them by I what&rsquo;s happening,&rdquo; Sutter said.&ldquo;Some guys have nothing to gain by this and they&rsquo;re losing big money.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0028-01898/6738285-1-eng-US/f0028-012.jpg" title="f0028-01" width="573" height="943"><figcaption class="caption-body">There&rsquo;s no guarantee Bob Probert will play this season.</figcaption></div>Sutter cited Smith, Chelios, Suter, Brent Sutter and Graham as the players he feels for most.&ldquo;I feel badly for them because these are the guys who have won Stanley Cups and Canada Cups,&rdquo; Sutter said. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve earned the right to make big money and now they can&rsquo;t get it.&ldquo;I just hope the young guys understand what the older guys are doing for them. I just hope they remember five years down the road.&rdquo;The Hawks were not skating or working out as a group even though the union said they could. In fact, only about eight players by Roenick&rsquo;s estimation were still in town. The others returned to their off-season homes to wait out the duration of the dispute.Christian Ruuttu was the only Hawks&rsquo; regular attempting to play in another league. Ruuttu returned to his home in Finland in hopes of hooking on with club team IFK.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m disappointed they&rsquo;re not skating,&rdquo; Darryl Sutter said. &ldquo;I know for a fact guys on other teams are, but there&rsquo;s nothing you can say to them.&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t make sense. Anyone who is being negative and saying they&rsquo;re not going to skate doesn&rsquo;t want to play anyway.&rdquo;NOT SO FAST: Contrary to what the Hawks have led everyone to believe, there&rsquo;s no guarantee Bob Probert will play at all for Chicago this season.&ldquo;There has been no determination made to the effect that provided (Probert) complies with this in-patient treatment, that at that point he is cleared to play,&rdquo; said league vicepresident Brian Burke. &ldquo;There has been no assurances made to the Blackhawks or Bob Probert.&rdquo;Probert is in rehab at the ASAP Family Treatment Center in Van Nuys, Calif.&ldquo;His suspension was indefinite in term,&rdquo; Burke said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a lot to consider in Bob Probert&rsquo;s case. The first and most serious priority is we&rsquo;re concerned about this young man&rsquo;s life and not his hockey career.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Wayne Messmer sang the national anthem for the first time since being shot in the throat April 9 prior to the Chicago Wolves&rsquo; International League home opener Oct. 14. Messmer is the Wolves&rsquo; executive vice-president. &ldquo;I think I can finally say thank God my voice is back.&rdquo; Messmer will continue to sing prior to Hawks&rsquo; games&hellip;Cam Russell, part owner of the Quebec League&rsquo;s Halifax Mooseheads, was practising with his employees during the lockout.A bar owner from suburban Chicago paid $15,500 for the Hawks&rsquo; 1961 Stanley Cup banner that hung from the rafters of the Stadium. At an auction for Stadium memorabilia, an ordinary red and black painted garbage can sold for $500, the door to the Hawks&rsquo; dressing room for $1,100 and seats for $250. The Stadium will be tom down in November. &#9632;

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Militant Roenick: ‘I’ll sit out two years if I have to’

<div class="byline">By Damien Cox</div>The tug of home was just too much for Kenny Jonsson.After initially deciding to play with the St. John&rsquo;s Maple Leafs of the American League during the NHL lockout, Jonsson suddenly bolted for home after NHL commissioner Gary Bettman&rsquo;s Oct. 15 deadline came and went.Jonsson was expected to rejoin his former club, Rogle of the Swedish Elite League, in a move Rogle officials hope will boost their fortunes on the ice and at the gate. The club&rsquo;s attendance has dropped to about 2,300 a game from 3,400 after the team got off to an 0-7-1 start.Jonsson only played a handful of games with Baby Leafs before deciding to rejoin several Swedish NHLers in returning home.&ldquo;We wanted him to stay,&rdquo; said Maple Leaf assistant general manager Bill Watters. &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t want to force a kid to stay when you really don&rsquo;t know what the prevailing influences are.&rdquo;The 20-year-old defenseman would have started the season on the Leaf roster after a strong training camp. When the lockout began, the Leafs had to redo his contract to send him to St. John&rsquo;s because the original deal only had provisions for Jonsson to play in the NHL or Sweden, but not in any North American minor leagues.Part of Jonsson&rsquo;s decision to head home was simple homesickness.&ldquo;This was the first time I was away from home this long,&rdquo; he said.Leaf forward Mats Sundin, who was also expected to compete in the Swedish league during the lockout with his former team in Djurgarden, apparently changed his mind. He told a Toronto newspaper he didn&rsquo;t feel it was right for NHLers to play in Sweden.Winger Nikolai Borschevsky, meanwhile, left for home Oct. 20 when he flew to Moscow to rejoin his former club team, Moscow Spartak.Borschevsky, who was to earn $390,000 in this his option season with the season, was expected to earn $300 a month with the Russian team and had to purchase his own injury insurance.GM Cliff Fletcher said that while he&rsquo;s concerned with the possibility of injury, having players compete during the NHL work stoppage may work to advantage of the Leafs.&ldquo;When we do get back playing eventually, the team with the players in the best shape are going to get off to the best start because we&rsquo;ll only have a few days of training,&rdquo; he said.THUNDER ROLL: Leaf defenseman Dave Ellett said he may spend a few days helping close friend Doug Shedden coach the Wichita Thunder of the Central League.But the 30-year-old rearguard said he has no plans to play for the minorleague team.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m very bored,&rdquo; said Ellett, who by the third week of the lockout had retreated to his Florida home. &ldquo;It will give me something to do.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: The Maple Leafs have deferred a decision on whether to lay off employees during the NHL lockout. Cliff Fletcher presented a report to the board of directors Oct. 18, but no decision was reached. &ldquo;Maybe we&rsquo;re just postponing the inevitable,&rdquo; Fletcher said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re hoping negotiations (between NHL owners and players) will resume soon in a meaningful way&hellip;The Leafs had no plans to practise as a team during the lockout.The Maple Leafs have reiterated their contention they have no interest in Washington Capitals&rsquo; defenseman Kevin Hatcher. The Capitals were reportedly interested in several Leaf prospects, including goalie prospect Eric Fichaud.Damien Cox is a hockey writer for the Toronto Star. &#9632;

Homesick Jonsson bolts Rock for Sweden

<div class="byline">By Dave Luecking</div>As the NHL&rsquo;s lockout dragged on without a realistic end in sight. St. Louis Blues&rsquo; coach-general manager Mike Keenan proposed a solution.&ldquo;Give everybody free agency,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Make &lsquo;em all free agents. Tell Bob Goodenow.&rdquo;Would the executive director of the NHL Players&rsquo; Association reasonably buy it?&ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; Keenan said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s beyond the realm of possibility.&rdquo;But with a lot of free time on his hands and a hyperkinetic personality, Keenan has been thinking about it. His conclusion: It&rsquo;s a grand idea. He&rsquo;d like to see sports go back to the days where players earned their contracts a year at a time.&ldquo;That would be the ultimate,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d love to have everyone show up every year without a contract and start from scratch. That&rsquo;s free enterprise.&ldquo;If the players are that damn competitive and that good, then show up.We&rsquo;ll see who makes the club. And you know what, we&rsquo;d have a competitive team.&rdquo;With the potential to earn a lot of money.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll say, &lsquo;OK, you guys want some more money, then win,&rsquo;&rdquo;Keenan said. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s say that this year, we&rsquo;re paying a guy $6 million, but if we get beat in the first round or win 20 games, maybe next year, we&rsquo;ll give him $1 million.&ldquo;But if we win 84 games and 16 playoff games, maybe we&rsquo;ll give him $10 million.&rdquo;Keenan chastised the players for their stand against the owners.&ldquo;They should step back and ask, &lsquo;What the hell are we doing?&rsquo;&rdquo;Keenan said. &ldquo;The lowest guy who comes up for a cup of coffee makes $250,000, plus expenses, plus insurance, plus medical, plus pension.&ldquo;When I first got to Chicago (six seasons ago), the top paid guy was Denis Savard at $350,000. How much money do you need?&rdquo;Keenan, by the way, will earn $9.2 million on the five-year deal he signed in July to be the Blues&rsquo; coach and GM.REALITY (PAY)CHECK: Blues&rsquo; left winger Basil McRae, 33, and a father of four, said that missing those weekly paychecks might give the players a dose of reality.&ldquo;Financially, it&rsquo;s a good wake-up call,&rdquo; McRae said. &ldquo;Guys will have to learn how to budget and pull in the horns and maybe become versatile about creating income.&ldquo;The majority of the players will be back earning big salaries, but for some guys, the income lost might not be retrieved.&rdquo;McRae said some players have returned home for &ldquo;free room and board with their families.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: To fill the hockey void in St. Louis, the Blues&rsquo; International League farm team, the Peoria Rivermen, will play the Cincinnati Cyclones Oct. 30 at the Kiel Center. The match will be the first hockey game in the Blues&rsquo; new home.Blues&rsquo; center Esa Tikkanen and left winger Vitali Prokhorov returned to play in Europe, Tikkanen for IFK in Finland, and Prokhorov for Russia&rsquo;s Moscow Spartak. Veteran Peter Stastny, meanwhile, is considering an offer to play for the Slovakian national team in the Deutschland Cup tournament in Germany in early November.A majority of the Blues&rsquo; players remained in St. Louis during the lockout. Among them, Rick Zombo, Doug Lidster, Al Maclnnis. Philippe Bozon. Guy Carbonneau. Jon Casey, Craig Janney, Curtis Joseph. Kevin Miller, Basil McRae, Vitali Karamnov, Igor Korolev, Brendan Shanahan. Peter Stastny and Tony Twist. Brett Hull and Kelly Chase, meanwhile, have shuffled in and out of town. &#9632;

Iron Mike’s proposal: Make ‘em all free agents

<div class="byline">By Tim Campbell</div>After the hassle and the hype over hockey in Helsinki, the Finnish Flash wasn&rsquo;t much of a factor.The return of Teemu Selanne to his hometown and former team Jokerit was huge news, but the Winnipeg Jets&rsquo; right winger fired only blanks in his first game Oct. 20.Selanne and Los Angeles Kings&rsquo; forward Jari Kurri were held pointless in a 3-2 loss to HIFK, which employed Chicago Blackhawk Christian Ruuttu and St. Louis Blue Esa Tikkanen. The game at Jaahalli was played before a sellout crowd of 8,586 and scalpers had a field day, charging as much as $150 (Cdn.), at least five times the normal price, for a top seat.It was Selanne&rsquo;s first regular-season game since his Achilles tendon was sliced last Jan. 26 against the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. That lengthy interval was one of the reasons the Jets gave Selanne their blessing to return to Finland to play.&ldquo;It was terrible to lose this game, but HIFK was better,&rdquo; Selanne said. &ldquo;I hope I&rsquo;ll have the chance to take them on again. The spirits were high, but I still need a few games to get back on the right track.&rdquo;Selanne found that wasn&rsquo;t so easy in his return, mainly because the super-pest Tikkanen was at his agitating best. Tikkanen recorded two assists in his team&rsquo;s victory, and spent most of the night harassing Selanne and others.&ldquo;Hey, that&rsquo;s the way Tiki always plays,&rdquo; Selanne said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m already used to that.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0031-01824/6738364-1-eng-US/f0031-012.jpg" title="f0031-01" width="724" height="904"><figcaption class="caption-body">Finns paid as much as $150 to watch Teemu Selanne&rsquo;s first game with Jokerit.</figcaption></div>Selanne&rsquo;s regular linemates were Kurri at center and Juha Lind at left wing. Jokerit had won nine of its first 12 games this season, with its only two losses against HIFK.The Oct. 20 game was a more aggressive and spirited affair than Finnish fans are used to and with sticks and bodies flying during the first period, Ruuttu lost three teeth and was cut for 15 stitches by the stick of Jokerit&rsquo;s Sami Wahlsten.Selanne is being paid what he calls &ldquo;pocket money&rdquo; for playing with Jokerit and said before he left Winnipeg he would donate some of it to charity. The insurance bill for Selanne is reportedly about $25,000.The clearance for the four NHL stars to play in the Finnish league was not a smooth process. International Ice Hockey Federation president Rene Fasel said the IIHF didn&rsquo;t want NHLers in Europe and said Oct. 13 he&rsquo;d block their move. That stance was reversed Oct. 17, after heated debates with several European federations.TKACHUK PASSES: Jets&rsquo; captain Keith Tkachuk was all set to play in Europe, but a potential deal with Zug of the Swiss national league fell through Oct. 18. Prohibitive insurance costs were the main reason.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s too bad,&rdquo; Tkachuk said. &ldquo;I was looking forward to playing so I could keep in game shape. I have to be skating. I&rsquo;m not happy sitting here doing nothing. I should be playing hockey right now.&rdquo;The insurance coverage he was looking at would have taken care of his $2-million NHL salary were he unable to play because of injury when the NHL season finally got underway. The cost would have been at least $30,000.But it did not include a 30-day waiting period for the coverage to kick in, nor did it include any long-term disability insurance. If you projected a multi-year, $15-million deal as Tkachuk&rsquo;s next contract-not unreasonable considering the offer he received from the Jets-that could have added another $90,000.Regardless of what happened, Tkachuk said he would not be worried about what his teammates might say about his finding work.&ldquo;I think most guys are looking for jobs right now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Guys want to play hockey. In my case, I just got a phone call from a guy wanting me to play for his team. I didn&rsquo;t contact anybody.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Defenseman Teppo Numminen, who hasn&rsquo;t played an NHL game since early February, was interested in returning to Finnish hockey. But because of the cost of insurance on his new four-year contract, it was all but ruled out. Numminen signed in the spring for a total of $4.875 million (U.S.)&hellip;Winnipeg-born Darren Boyko, a veteran with IFK Helsinki, said the Oct. 20 victory over Jokerit was huge. &ldquo;This was as big as it gets in this town,&rdquo; Boyko said. &ldquo;The games against Jokerit are always tense, but I&rsquo;ll remember this one the rest of my life.&rdquo;Luxury suites and club seating for a proposed new $110-million downtown Winnipeg arena went on sale Oct. 24. In trying to move the project forward, Manitoba Entertainment Complex, the group with the option to purchase the majority shares of the Jets before next May, was offering the luxury boxes at between $55,000 and $85,000 per year. The premium for club seats was between $800 and $ 1,000 per year, plus ticket costs. MEC says it needs commitments for 1,500 club seats and 40 luxury suites by the end of the November to keep the project on course for a construction start of next summer. The group received the go-ahead from city council Oct. 14 to access $1.5 million from a private capital fund to proceed with its marketing plan. &#9632;

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Selanne comes up empty in Finnish debut

<div class="byline">By Mike Brophy</div>The New York Rangers are expecting big things from Alexei Kovalev this season.The 21-year-old Russian delivered Oct. 21, exploding for four goals and two assists in a 12-1 victory. Too bad it wasn&rsquo;t for the Rangers.Kovalev&rsquo;s outburst came for Lada Togliatti and at the expense of the Central League&rsquo;s Wichita Thunder. He was one of two NHLers-Buffalo Sabre Denis Tsygurov also played-who dressed for Togliatti in the first of a three-game CHL exhibition series.Kovalev was the best player in the game, but he was not treated with respect. When Togliatti took a 10-0 lead in the game and continued to double shift the left winger. Thunder players took runs at him. Kovalev fought Thunder hopeful Jason McQuat at 15:39 of the third period.Togliatti players appealed to the Wichita bench to tone down the hitting to which the Thunder replied: &ldquo;Quit running the score up on us.&rdquo;Players who would have started the season in the NHL, but now playing elsewhere include:Boston Jozef Stumpel, Cologne (Germany). Buffalo Denis Tsygurov, Lada Togliatti (Russia); Richard Smehlik, Vitkovice (Czech). Dallas Jarkko Varvio, HPK (Finland). Los Angeles Jari Kurri, Jokerit (Finland); Matt Johnson, Peterborough (OHL); Jamie Storr, Owen Sound (OHL). Islanders Brett Lindros, Kingston (OHL). Rangers Alexei Kovalev, Lada Togliatti (Russia); Alexander Karpovtsev, Moscow Dynamo (Russia). Ottawa Alexandre Daigle, Victoriaville (QMJHL). Quebec Adam Deadmarsh, Portland (WHL); Jocelyn Thibault, Sherbrooke (QMJHL); Stephane Fiset, Nicolet Nova (Mauricie Region Sr.); Peter Forsberg, MoDo (Sweden). St Louis Esa Tikkanen, IFK (Finland); Vitali Prokhorov, Moscow Spartak (Russia). San Jose Jeff Friesen, Regina (WHL). Tampa Bay Jason Wiemer, Portland (WHL). Toronto Nikolai Borschevsky, Moscow Spartak (Russia). Washington Jason Allison, London (OHL). Winnipeg Teemu Selanne, Jokerit (Finland). &#9632;

Europe and Junior leagues benefit from NHL lockout

<div class="byline">By Steve Dryden Editor-in-Chief</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0032-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0032-01885/6738395-1-eng-US/f0032-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Mike Ricci, and other NHLers may have to agree to an entry-level cap. (Photo by John Giamundo/BBS)</figcaption></div>The NHL has an economist. The NHL Players&rsquo; Association has an economist. The Hockey News doesn&rsquo;t.So, we&rsquo;re going to leave the tax problem that stopped collective bargaining talks to deeper thinkers-perhaps those at the IRS and Revenue Canada.THN thinks it&rsquo;s time four crucial non-tax issues were addressed.Many on both sides of the dispute believe progress on those issues will lead to bargaining momentum that could roll into forward movement on the hotly-debated tax system. Admittedly, negotiations on entry-level compensation, arbitration, free agency and contract language are all meaningless without agreement on a tax system.But what&rsquo;s to lose at this point? Time? Doesn&rsquo;t matter. That&rsquo;s the only thing both sides have in abundance.Besides, agreement on these four primary issues could produce a collective drag on salary escalation that would provide a different starting point for tax talks. There are a host of stumbling blocks to agreement-including international hockey, roster size and discipline policy-but the ones closest to the hearts and wallets of negotiators are the tax issue and the big four.We discuss each of them in broad terms. Each is addressed in brief fashion: Previously bargained positions are outlined (not positions unilaterally imposed by the NHL); the general thoughts of owners and players are addressed; and areas of potential compromise are identified.Our remarks don&rsquo;t represent endpoints, but are substantive talking points.There is no debating we need the debate to resume. Commissioner Gary Bettman called NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow Oct. 20, the first such attempt either side made in nine days. Meaningful dialogue is the only way to avoid the onset of a nuclear winter in the NHL.By Oct. 27, the league will have missed 150 games of the 1994-95 regular season schedule. We will hit the 230 mark Nov. 11. That&rsquo;s Remembrance Day in Canada. Do you remember what it&rsquo;s like to watch an NHL game?<h2>ENTRY LEVEL SALARY</h2>Current No restrictions exist and high first-round picks are averaging more than $1 million a year-about twice the average salary of all NHLers. The bonus babies are small in number, but have huge impact.Owners To hear management tell it, high entry-level salaries are a killer. If so, they are an instrument of suicide. Teams have continued to undermine the league&rsquo;s bargaining position by signing unproven players to enormous contracts.Owners want a rookie pool to act as a budget/cap on entry-level salaries for players in their first three years. Annual increases would be scheduled, two-way contracts mandatory and meaningful performance bonuses negotiable.Players It&rsquo;s inarguable rookies receive a disproportionate amount of revenues, but it is an important leak in the system with trickle-up effect. Players fear introduction of a rookie salary cap will give teams the option to cut higher-priced veterans for cheap rookies.Don&rsquo;t forget rookies have rights, too. At least two agents have sent letters to Goodenow asking he remain firm in opposition to an entry-level system. Goodenow needs no such encouragement.THN says An entry-level system is second only to a tax system on the owners&rsquo; wish list. That&rsquo;s because they know (or should know) arbitration is an untouchable. We have two ideas owners and players can mull over.Suggestion I-Decrease entry-level player leverage by increasing the length of time teams retain the exclusive option to sign a player without him going back into the draft. Teams could hold all drafted players&rsquo; rights for at least two years.Teams would have three years to sign 18-year-olds and two years to sign 19- and 20-year-olds. (College players would be dealt with separately.) This would reduce the bargaining position of players such as Paul Kariya, who commanded a huge contract from the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim because he was within a year of unrestricted free agency.The challenge would be to find provisions that make reaching total free agency as a 22-year-old a rare occurrence. You can&rsquo;t have players biding their time in the International League, as an example, to achieve free agency.Two-way contracts would be mandatory, saving management from paying a heavy cost on mistakes and keeping busts from harming the market. Failures on one-way contracts act as deflationary factors.Suggestion II: Players could accept an entrylevel salary cap with liberal grandfather clauses (exempting all pre-1995 picks) not because they accept the concept of entry-level restrictions, but because it&rsquo;s a deal-breaker for the owners.Teams would work under an entry-level pool system with a raised NHL minimum ($125,000). Management accepts the idea that minimal starting points for negotiations on fourth-year contracts are the aggregate of base salaries and earned bonuses in the previous contract, not base salaries.In return for accepting an entry-level system, players deserve a genuine quid pro quo, not a softening in position on other contentious issues.One option is to give players a substantial percentage of playoff revenues with a hard-floor minimum higher than the current $9 million in post-season and awards money. This links player compensation to revenues. Other revenue sources players could tap into directly are television and expansion monies.<h2>SALARY ARBITRATIION</h2>Current Veterans 30-and-under are eligible for arbitration before and after option years. Graduating major junior and college players can file for arbitration to solve contract disputes, but seldom do.Owners General managers say arbitration forces them to keep pace with unrealistically high standards set by high-spending teams. Call it the highest common denominator. That places pressure on mid-to low-revenue teams. Owners want: a) arbitration abolished; b) non-binding arbitration (for the club); or c) eligibility cut dramatically. Management says just the threat of facing arbitration puts them in a bad bargaining position.Players Arbitration is a crucial mechanism to ensure all players receive fair compensation-not just those with high-revenue teams. They say arbitration doesn&rsquo;t have a pro-player bias; players have to produce a group of comparable players-not just one or two- to substantiate salary claims.To prove arbitration shouldn&rsquo;t be feared by owners, players point to the relatively small contract ($2.25-million-a-year) awarded Raymond Bourque, the Boston Bruins&rsquo; all-time great.THN says Arbitration is inherently flawed, but essential nonetheless. Hockey doesn&rsquo;t lend itself well to statistical representation of player worth.Players propose baseball-style, high-low arbitration. It&rsquo;s too inflationary for the owners, so keep the current system in which the arbitrator chooses the player submission, club submission or anything else he decides is appropriate.Under our system, players would be eligible from age 23 to 26 (the restricted free-agent years) as long as they meet minimums for NHL games played. Some reworking of arbitration procedures and criteria is needed to satisfy concerns on both sides.Arbitration would be more important to players if an NHL-style entry-level system were adopted. It would be a key means of ratcheting salaries up to fair market value. Reconciling arbitration with a salary restraint/salary-cap system will be challenging, but it must be done.<h2>FREE AGENCY</h2>Current Players 23-and-under are restricted free agents. Clubs have no right to match if player chooses equalization rather than draft-pick compensation. Players 24 to 29 are restricted free agents. Clubs have right to match whether equalization or draft-pick compensation is applicable. Players 30 and over are restricted free agents. Clubs have right to match.Owners Management says the current system forces teams to make evaluations on young players too early in their careers and provides young players too much leverage. It wants a system weighted in favor of veterans.The league proposes a three-tier player reservation system: Entry Phase-Teams hold exclusive rights to a player for three years. Intermediate Phase-Players are restricted free agents for five years. Old clubs retain right to match and teams losing players receive draftpick compensation. Senior Phase-Players are granted unrestricted free agency no later than 27.Teams would be allowed to designate one unrestricted free agent as a franchise player and could retain him if he earns the average salary of top players at his position. Free-agent signings are limited, as are free-agent losses.Players Unrestricted free agency is presented as a huge carrot to players, but how much upside is there if a salary-restraint/salary-cap system is in effect? Players also know the laws of supply and demand. Free agents will not command the huge contracts now offered if there are more on the market.Players want to shift the best bargaining positions to those in their mid-20s. The players propose restricted free agency for players aged 22-27 and unrestricted free agency at 28 or after eight years pro hockey.THN says Blend free agent proposals offered by the owners and players.Here are three compromises worth considering: 1) Stipulate teams that match restricted free agents must keep them for at least one season. 2) Raise the qualifying offer that entities teams to draft-pick compensation and right to match. It&rsquo;s currently 115 per cent of the previous year&rsquo;s salary. Institute a graduated scale from 115 to 130 per cent; 3) Give designated franchise players-who would earn at least the average of the top four players in the league at their position-the right to true unrestricted free agency after 10 NHL seasons. Some would be free by 28.<h2>CONTRACT LANGUAGE</h2>Current Players&rsquo; contracts are fully guaranteed and have option years. Contracts can be bought out for two-thirds of their remaining value for players 26 and older; one-third for those under 26.Owners Hockey is an inexact science and mistakes are made; the system needs to recognize that and spare management the expense of hefty buyouts when players don&rsquo;t live up to salary terms. The owners say let the strong survive and the weak and elderly find refuge in two-way contracts and the waiver wire.Players Good-bye guaranteed contracts; hello capricious cost-cutting. That&rsquo;s the players&rsquo; fear. Without built-in safeguards, players say management will use non-guaranteed contracts to slice payrolls and bully players into smaller salaries.NHL contracts have been guaranteed since the late 1970s and players will have it no other way. Buyout provisions are the cost of doing (bad) business.THN says Players are entitled to a measure of protection and security. Guaranteed contracts should be maintained on fixed terms. Eliminate the option year. If the buyout provision is truly onerous and unreasonable, a compromise lies in different terms.Suggestion I: Weight the buyout provision more heavily in favor of older players. The buyout percentages could be 33 per cent for players with four and fewer NHL seasons experience; 45 for those with five to seven; 55 for eight-year veterans; 65 for nine-year veterans and 75 for those with at least 10 years experience.Suggestion II: Set floating buyout provision rates. Terms would be assessed on an annual basis. If too many players are dumped, then terms would be changed to make it more expensive for teams to exercise that option. Such a system-a cousin of the NHL&rsquo;s floating tax rate proposal-would be challenging to manage. &#9632;

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CBA NEUTRAL ZONE

<div class="byline">By Jason Kay</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-01891/6738457-1-eng-US/f0034-012.jpg" title="f0034-01" width="380" height="537"></div>Gary Bettman is Jewish. Arthur Pincus, the NHL commissioner&rsquo;s right-hand PR man, is a Semite. NHL legal counsel Jeff Pash? Jew. They decided to give a Goy a chance when they hired Brian Burke, but he&rsquo;s the next best thing to being Jewish. He&rsquo;s Irish.Team governors Barry Shenkarow, Michael Eisner, Norm Green. Jew. Jew. Jew.And dollars to delis says some of the league&rsquo;s bargaining committee members were bar miztvahed.So the theological mathematicians put Jew and Jew together and came up with racism.Stop the presses. Anti-Semitism exists in the NHL. And Moses just parted the Red Sea.Call me a naive nebbish-I&rsquo;m Jewish, 5-feet-7 and have the capacity to be annoying-but is any of this relevant?Anti-Semitism pervades all facets of society-even within the Jewish faith itself-just as alcoholism, sexism. homophobia and gambling do. Social ills know no boundaries.History has taught us that in times of crisis, hatred tends to fester and rise to the surface like a bad case of acne.That doesn&rsquo;t mean it&rsquo;s excusable. It doesn&rsquo;t mean it&rsquo;s painless. It hurt when my Grade 2 classmate told me she couldn&rsquo;t be my friend because her parents told her Jews were &ldquo;smelly.&rdquo; It hurt when a Grade 7 classmate threw pennies at me. It hurts when acquaintances say, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know you were Jewish&hellip;but that&rsquo;s okay.&rdquo;Some members of the Toronto media have been accused of making anti-Semitic references in stories. If, in fact, they are guilty it&rsquo;s despicable. However, it&rsquo;s immaterial to the NHL&rsquo;s labor impasse. And writing about it isn&rsquo;t going to make it go away.What is important for hockey fans-you know who you are-is what takes place in the boardrooms between the New York lawyer and the Michigan lawyer. And sources close to both parties assure us religion is not on the table.The spectre hanging over the collective bargaining agreement talks is not hatred, but greed. Somewhat obscured by talk of taxes, salary caps and arbitration is the fact ticket prices have reached the obscene stage.I may be a neophyte when it comes to labor issues, but the one cold, hard fact I do know is this: I&rsquo;m a university graduate with a decent job and I&rsquo;ve been priced out of the NHL ticketbuying market.I didn&rsquo;t need Trevor Linden to tell me not to take my family to games. My banker could have given me the same advice.Consider these very crude economics: The average Canadian family income, according to Statistics Canada, is about $60,000 a year. That works out to about $ 1,150 a week. Subtract about 30 per cent for taxes and you&rsquo;re left with $800.Financial institutions estimate about a quarter of family income goes towards housing, which leaves just over $500. Factor in food, clothing and various other expenses and you&rsquo;re down to, let&rsquo;s say, $300.For argument&rsquo;s sake, say it costs about $100 for two people to attend a game when you include parking and refreshments. That means the average Canadian would have to ante up about one-third of his or her family&rsquo;s disposable weekly income to go to an NHL game. How can we continue to justify this in the face of such trying economic times?<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-02627/6738450-1-eng-US/f0034-022.jpg" title="f0034-02" width="573" height="843"><figcaption class="caption-body">Gary Bettman</figcaption></div>Don&rsquo;t get me wrong, I love the game. I just happen to love my family more.Don&rsquo;t waste your time looking for white and black hats in the dispute; it&rsquo;s a fruitless endeavor. But do realize that until salaries are under control, ticket prices will continue to rise. The seats may remain full because corporations will keep purchasing tickets as tax writeoffs, which in turn places an even bigger burden on the average fan.Yes, there are big problems with North America&rsquo;s hottest sport, but don&rsquo;t point to racism as an issue or look to the heavens for an answer.It&rsquo;s time to stop passing the buck. &#9632;

f0034-01

Lockout all about greed, not racism

<div class="byline">By Mark Brender</div>The NHL lockout passed through its second phase in textbook fashion. Silence was more conspicuous in the negotiating rooms than in the arenas.The NHL and the NHL Players&rsquo; Association didn&rsquo;t talk for the better part of two weeks after ownership rejected the players&rsquo; offer Oct. 11.NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow finally talked Oct. 20. It was a long-distance conversation-appropriate given the bargaining gulf between them.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re still far apart, we&rsquo;re in the so-called cooling-off period,&rdquo; Bettman said, &ldquo;but at some point-and I think both sides know this-we&rsquo;re going to have to make a deal.&rdquo;In the meantime, the NHL prepared to announce cancellation of games, teams put ticket refund policies into effect and about 20 players joined new teams.The non-talks troubled fans and media alike, but experienced labor negotiators said it is the norm.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s very little unusual about this round of bargaining from a labor relations point of view,&rdquo; said Toronto lawyer Larry Bertuzzi, who has represented the NHL in salary arbitration cases.&ldquo;There are times in negotiation,&rdquo; agreed Marvin Miller, former head of the Major League Baseball Players&rsquo; Association, &ldquo;when you may get the feeling there is some reflecting going on. Perhaps tempers are getting heated and you need to cool off.&rdquo;Meanwhile, the first cracks in solidarity appeared on both sides.A report out of New York identified the NewYork Rangers as one of several large-market teams that would have accepted the players&rsquo; promise not to strike this season.On the labor side, the first round of verbal shots were fired from players who normally do their sniping on the ice. When Boston Bruin Adam Oates said the owners&rsquo; latest proposal sounded &ldquo;pretty good,&rdquo; former St.Louis Blues&rsquo; teammate Jeff Brown, now of the Vancouver Canucks, shot back: &ldquo;Maybe he hasn&rsquo;t saved for this and he&rsquo;s trying to take the rest of the guys down with him.&rdquo;Apparently, Goodenow did his saving-he said he wouldn&rsquo;t take his salary for the duration of the lockout. The players were planning a late-October or early-November rally in Toronto.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0034-03491/6738488-1-eng-US/f0034-032.jpg" title="f0034-03" width="962" height="2110"><figcaption class="caption-body">It&rsquo;s anyone&rsquo;s guess when crews will put ice back in NHL rinks. (Photo by Bennett Studios)</figcaption></div>Members of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks were thinking of playing an exhibition series, with proceeds going to the NHLPA lockout fund.Some may need money more than others. Don McSween of Anaheim became the first locked-out player to apply for unemployment benefits.In other developments:&#9633; The league announced a signing freeze, preventing its teams from signing any players or free agents to contracts for the duration of the lockout.&#9633; Both sides expressed opposition to outside mediation.&#9633; Former NHL president JohnZiegler refuted Goode-now&rsquo;s claim the NHLPA leader agreed in the 1992 collective bargaining agreement to consider an National Basketball Association-style salary cap as a &ldquo;face-saving&rdquo; measure for Ziegler.&#9633; It was learned Bettman hired bodyguards in the wake of threatening comments made by Chicago Blackhawks&rsquo; defenseman Chris Chelios.&#9633; Brian Burke, NHL vice-president and director of hockey operations, said a training camp of seven to 10 days would be the minimum needed before the resumption of games.It isn&rsquo;t known how long the lockout could last before the season is lost.Both the players and owners are drawing their own lines in the sand, said player agent and former labor lawyer Gregg Clifton of Boston.&ldquo;Each side has different dates in their mind,&rdquo; Clifton said, &ldquo;and as disgusting as it sounds from a fan&rsquo;s perspective, the key is who can hold out longer. It&rsquo;s almost a game of chicken, who&rsquo;s going to move first.&rdquo;Bettman and Goodenow have entered virgin territory. Goodenow was in charge of the NHLPA when the players went on strike in the spring of 1992, but owners&rsquo; fears of missing out on playoff money led to an quick settlement.Neither the league nor the two men have bargained under the threat of such an extended work stoppage.Miller, the labor veteran, said he is waiting &ldquo;to see how (Goodenow) makes out, to see how he operates under pressure. He hasn&rsquo;t had that opportunity until now.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0034-03

Long-distance feeling

<div class="byline">By Elliott Pap</div>Under contract to nobody and locked out of nowhere, free agent left winger Murray Craven has nixed the idea of pursuing a job in the International League.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not too crazy about it,&rdquo; said Craven, who played out his option with the Vancouver Canucks last season. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d have to insure yourself against injury, or the club would have to do it, and it&rsquo;s expensive. To get onice coverage for $1 million for one year costs about $14,000. If the team buys it, they will have less money to pay you.&ldquo;And besides,&rdquo; Craven said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t agree with taking someone&rsquo;s job in the IHL.&rdquo;Craven predicted few NHL players will wind up playing elsewhere, mainly due to the insurance coverage issue.Pavel Bure, who signed a multiyear, $24.5 million (U.S.) contract in the off-season, is in that boat. He has received overtures from European teams and would like to play, but his agent admits the cost will probably be too high.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re not running to go over there unless the circumstances are 100 per cent in our favor,&rdquo; said Ron Salcer, the Russian Rocket&rsquo;s representative. &ldquo;The cost of insurance is a big concern. If it becomes prohibitive, and any team that wants Pavel will have to guarantee the entire contract, then it won&rsquo;t happen.&rdquo;Defenseman Jyrki Lumme, who signed a multi-year deal for $6 million (U.S.), said he can&rsquo;t obtain enough insurance to cover his NHL contract.&ldquo;Three or four teams back home are interested and I&rsquo;d like to play,&rdquo; said Lumme, a Finn. &ldquo;But the most insurance I can get is $2 million (Cdn.) so it&rsquo;s pretty risky.&rdquo;Czech defenseman Jiri Slegr is the most likely Canuck to wind up playing in his homeland, mainly because he has just one year left on his contract at $225,000 (Cdn.). Insuring that deal isn&rsquo;t a problem; it&rsquo;s insuring the loss of future earnings if the 23-year-old sustains a career-ending injury.&ldquo;You have to ask yourself &lsquo;Am I screwing this guy?&rsquo; if something happens to him,&rdquo; said Slegr&rsquo;s agent Tony Kondel. &ldquo;You have to be very careful.&rdquo;LOST WAGES: The landlords at Pacific Coliseum, home of the Canucks, were quick to lay off employees once the lockout began.A total of 70 people were handed their notices while another 200 agreed to a 20 per-cent pay cut and have scaled back their hours to a four-day week. The Coliseum sits on fairground land that is part of the Pacific National Exhibition.Another 400 part-timers, who serve as ushers, concession-stand workers and perform various event-night duties, were also left out in the cold.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s definitely not a nice thing for these people,&rdquo; said Canuck captain and union rep Trevor Linden. &ldquo;But you&rsquo;re asking the wrong guy. We made a proposal to play and we got locked out.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Center Mike Peca, who had made the Canucks at training camp, got off to a terrible start with the team&rsquo;s American League affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch, and didn&rsquo;t record a point in his first five games.Nathan LaFayette, a full-fledged Canuck, also started poorly in Syracuse with no points and a minus-6 rating in his first four games&hellip;Canuck defenseman Gerald Diduck, who needed surgery in July for a broken foot, is the only member of the big club who will be paid during the lockout. Injured NHLers receive their paychecks until their injuries are healed.Canuck medical trainer Larry Ashley said he felt like the Maytag repairman after players stopped coming in for treatment. &#9632;

Free agent Craven won’t risk playing stint in IHL

<div class="byline">By Eric Duhatschek</div>Harley Hotchkiss is one of those NHL owners who likes to stay in the background.You didn&rsquo;t see him on the podium flanking NHL commissioner Gary Bettman the day the NHL announced it would postpone the start of the new season. You rarely see him quoted in the newspapers. Instead, he directs you to general manager Doug Rise-brough or president Bill Hay.In early October, however, Hotchkiss quietly contacted a handful of his Calgary Flames&rsquo; players and asked them to review the team&rsquo;s books. Hotchkiss was upset with reports that the NHL Players&rsquo; Association did not believe teams were losing as much money as they said.Hotchkiss produced documents that showed the Flames lost $3.8 million in the 1993-94 season. That included a pension fund liability of $1.4 million. According to Hotchkiss, that was the worst year in the history of the franchise.Even the three years the Flames played in the Stampede Corral to crowds of about 7,200, they didn&rsquo;t lose that much.Hotchkiss said he made the decision to contact the players directly on his own initiative. Players refused to comment on the meeting.&ldquo;I would characterize the meeting as courteous and respectful,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They asked a lot of good questions. I came away thinking they believed what I was telling them.&rdquo;Hotchkiss estimated losses in the Corral years were about $6 million. Since 1983, he said, the team averaged $1.7 million a year in pre-tax profits, excluding expansion revenues. He put the value of expansion monies at $11 million.&ldquo;I told them there were no hidden numbers,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re audited every year and we pay taxes. We don&rsquo;t charge management fees. I told them the best year we ever had was the year we won the Stanley Cup (1988-89, a $5.5 million profit).&ldquo;I told them that as a result of moves we made to take over our building, we see a significant upside to our operation and that we could borrow a little from next year to help us out this year.&rdquo;The Flames finished last year with a payroll of just under $18 million (Cdn). For the 1994-95 season, Hotchkiss said the team budgeted for a $5 million increase. Much of that would be absorbed by new contracts for four option-year players-Theo Fleury, Robert Reichel, Joe Nieuwendyk and Joel Otto.MUSIL ON MISSION: For a time, it looked as if defenseman Frank Musil&rsquo;s dream of playing in the Czech Republic would be derailed.Musil has an offer to play for Sparta Prague, but the Czech team wanted the Flames to provide him with written permission to join them. The Flames refused, saying that while they could not stop Musil from heading overseas, they did not approve of his actions and would not endorse them.Then the International Ice Hockey Federation announced it would allow NHL players to play in European leagues and the final hurdle was overcome.&ldquo;The news from back home is we can play now,&rdquo; Musil said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m just waiting for them to call before I go and buy the plane tickets.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Robert Reichel could find employment in Germany if the NHL work stoppage drags on. His brother, Martin, plays for Rosenheim. Reichel has German ancestry and after the fall of the communist regime in the former Czechoslovakia, he applied for and received a German passport. Presumably, that would mean he does not count against a team&rsquo;s import quota. &#9632;

Players invited to look at accounts

<div class="byline">By Mike Weaver</div>If the NHL season remains on hold, San Jose Sharks&rsquo; forwards Igor Larionov and Sergei Makarov plan to be in Russia in early November to play for a touring Russian all-star team.Larionov said he believes there is a &ldquo;95 per-cent chance&rdquo; a team of Russian all-stars from the NHL will play six or seven charity games against existing Russian teams. The Russian season begins a two-week break on Nov. 1, and Larionov said plans call for the all-star team to play its first game Nov. 4 in Moscow. Money raised from the games would go to youth hockey programs in Russia.&ldquo;If it&rsquo;s going to happen, it will be the first time in five years I will play in front of a Russian crowd,&rdquo; Larionov said. &ldquo;There will be a lot of fun and excitement.&rdquo;Makarov and Larionov are legendary figures in Russia, where they enjoyed the most glorious days of their careers during the 1980s. They were joined by winger Vladimir Krutov on the KLM Line, which was the most dominating line in international hockey at the time.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0038-01783/6738567-1-eng-US/f0038-012.jpg" title="f0038-01" width="573" height="862"><figcaption class="caption-body">Igor Larionov and Co. are considering a tour of Russia.</figcaption></div>Larionov said he asked goalie Arturs Irbe to play, but Irbe and defenseman Sandis Ozolinsh, the two players who represented the San Jose in the 1993 All-Star Game, are Latvians and probably would decline to play if the touring team is identified as a Russian club.&ldquo;They would have to call it something else,&rdquo; Ozolinsh said.Because the Russian Ice Hockey Federation is involved, Larionov said, the team probably will carry a Russian label.&ldquo;Maybe the Russian Unemployed,&rdquo; he mused.Larionov also said he would change his mind about playing if the team is coached by legendary Russian coach Viktor Tikhonov, who is the father of Sharks&rsquo; assistant coach Vasily Tikhonov. The elder Tikhonov is among those being considered to coach the team, but he is not popular among his former players because of his hard-line, authoritarian style.&ldquo;If he is the coach, I think nobody will go,&rdquo; Larionov said.JACKPOT: Winger Ulf Dahlen signed a contract that will keep him with the team for five seasons.Dahlen, 27, will earn an average of about $1.3 million per season, including a $600,000 signing bonus.About half of the bonus is payable this season, which means Dahlen will collect roughly $300,000 even if the season is wiped out.Dean Lombardi, the Sharks&rsquo; director of hockey operations, said he put a high priority on signing Dahlen because it is unclear how the league&rsquo;s free-agency system might change.&ldquo;If they change the rules, we might have ended up in a position where we could lose him,&rdquo; Lombardi said. &ldquo;We think he&rsquo;s a key guy. He&rsquo;s a consistent 30-to-35 goal scorer, and we wanted to get him locked in.&rdquo;The Sharks obtained Dahlen late last season from the Dallas Stars. He scored 12 points in 13 regular season games for San Jose and the team was 7-0-2 in its first nine games with him in the lineup.NOTEBOOK: The Sharks were one of the first teams in the league to announce a refund policy for seasonticket holders. The team offered ticket holders six per cent interest on their season ticket accounts-retroactive to Oct. 1-which would be applied to either playoff tickets or tickets for next season. Cancelled games would also be applied to the same games. If fans wanted their money back for cancelled games, they would get that, but only 3.5 per-cent interest on their remaining money. Fans could also ask for all their money back, but would lose their priority for season tickets.The Sharks tried to sign Arturs Irbe and Sandis Ozolinsh before the league imposed an Oct. 16 moratorium on new contracts, but negotiations with agent Paul Theofanous, who represents both players, were fruitless. Irbe and Ozolinsh are in the option years of their current deals.Rookie winger Viktor Kozlov said he might return to Russia to play for Dynamo Moscow if the NHL season remains on hold for much longer. The Sharks had hoped to assign Kozlov to the Kansas City Blades of the International League, but he has a one-way contract and the Sharks haven&rsquo;t been able to work out a deal allowing them to send him to the minors without paying him a full NHL salary. &#9632;

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Russians eyeing tour of homeland

<div class="byline">By Rick Sadowski</div>If Marty McSorley has his way, Jari Kurri wouldn&rsquo;t be the only member of the Los Angeles Kings playing hockey during the NHL lockout.Kurri returned to his native Finland to skate for Jokerit in the Finnish League and McSorley seriously considered suiting up a little closer to home with the International League&rsquo;s Las Vegas Thunder until deciding his union activities would take up too much of his time.&ldquo;But I&rsquo;d like to see a lot of guys go (to the IHL) and play,&rdquo; McSorley said. &ldquo;It would help the &lsquo;I&rsquo; and put some pressure on the owners. They&rsquo;d see us finding employment and earning a living even though they&rsquo;ve locked the doors.&rdquo;McSorley was interested in playing for the Thunder because his brother Chris is an associate coach there. But Marty also happens to be a member of the NHL Players&rsquo; Association&rsquo;s negotiating committee and was concerned about missing practices and games.&ldquo;I could be called back to Toronto (for meetings) at any time,&rdquo; said the Kings&rsquo; defenseman, who dropped the ceremonial first puck at the Thunder&rsquo;s home opener. &ldquo;I want to play, but I have a greater responsibility to the NHLPA.&rdquo;McSorley also was worried that his signing would send the wrong message to union members making financial sacrifices. He said he would have donated his Las Vegas salary to charity.&ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t be right for me, as a member of the committee, to be getting paid when I&rsquo;m telling the rest of the guys to make sacrifices,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I played for $25 in junior.&rdquo;Presumably, Kurri will be earning considerably more than that in Finland. But he will be making a different kind of sacrifice, leaving his wife, Tiina, and twin sons Joonas and Ville in California rather than pull the fourth-graders out of school.&ldquo;I feel I need to keep playing at this stage of my career,&rdquo; said Kurri, 34, who was the Kings&rsquo; third-leading scorer last year with 31 goals and 77 points. &ldquo;I need ice time.&rdquo;Kurri was expected to center a line that included Winnipeg Jets&rsquo; star Teemu Selanne.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s funny, both of us playing for the same team,&rdquo; Kurri said. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t been there (with Jokerit) for 15 years. The whole city has gone crazy about it. (But) they know it could be for one game or two weeks.&rdquo;Kings&rsquo; general manager Sam McMaster has mixed feelings about his players participating in non-NHL games.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0039-01748/6738598-1-eng-US/f0039-012.jpg" title="f0039-01" width="566" height="720"><figcaption class="caption-body">Marty McSorley considered joining brother Chris in the &lsquo;I&rsquo;.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;I think each case has to be measured on its own merit,&rdquo; McMaster said. &ldquo;I think Jari Kurri, at age 34, needs to continue to play. I just worry about injury. Plus, if Jari gets hurt, he jeopardizes his contract, though I believe NHL players are insuring themselves.&rdquo;Kurri signed a two-year, $4.15 million contract with the Kings over the summer, a deal that includes a $750,000 signing bonus for this season.BREAKING THE ICE: The Kings didn&rsquo;t exactly make a bee-line for their Iceoplex practice facility outside Los Angeles after the NHLPA decided to permit players to resume skating on a casual basis.Six players showed up Oct. 18 and one of them, Dixon Ward, isn&rsquo;t even a King anymore. He was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Oct. 3. The others were John Druce, Charlie Huddy, Dan Quinn, Warren Rychel and Rick Tocchet. It was the first time since Sept. 29 any of the Kings skated.Tocchet said the fact that players are skating at all &ldquo;is a contradiction in the sense that we&rsquo;re doing it so we&rsquo;re in shape to play if the lockout ends, and yet we&rsquo;re fighting management.&rdquo;Rychel, whose son Kerby was bom Oct. 7, said of the stalled talks: &ldquo;The way things are going, the baby will be sleeping through the night by the time we&rsquo;re playing again.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Air McNall is no more. The Kings&rsquo; former team plane was auctioned off for $500,000 to Clay Lacy Aviation of Van Nuys, Calif., in a court-ordered sale Oct. 16. Kings&rsquo; president Bruce McNall purchased the Boeing 727 for $5 million four years ago and outfitted it with first-class seats and a trainer&rsquo;s room, but it recently was appraised for only $410,640&hellip; Underage goalie Jamie Storr was returned to the Owen Sound Platers of the Ontario League. He was the first signed junior-aged NHLer to be returned to major-junior hockey. The Kings later returned left winger Matt Johnson to the Peterborough Petes of the OHL. He&rsquo;s out until early November with a knee injury &#9632;

f0039-01

McSorley says NHLers should keep eye on ‘I’

<div class="byline">By Dan Barnes</div>It&rsquo;s not the kind of place you&rsquo;d normally go looking for the mysteries of Egypt.But there they are, in Tyler Wright&rsquo;s skates. Oh, he won&rsquo;t let you see them. You&rsquo;ll just have to take his word for it.&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t told too many people about it. People will think this guy is some sort of whacko,&rdquo; said the 21-year-old center, plying his trade with the Cape Breton Oilers of the American League during the NHL work stoppage.He admits to a certain superstition, but this is more than putting one sock on before the other, more than talking to goalposts, more than always being the last guy off the ice.This is pyramid power.For about the last four years, he has had pyramids drawn on the soles of his skates. One in each skate right in the middle of each skate boot.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just sort of been fascinated with the fact of the pyramids and just started collecting little pyramids and started reading about them,&rdquo; said Wright, who had one goal in 12 games with Edmonton in two seasons. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just something that fascinates me. It&rsquo;s something that nobody knows about and I don&rsquo;t think ever will know about.&ldquo;State of the art. You can&rsquo;t build them today with technology.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0040-01451/6738629-1-eng-US/f0040-012.jpg" title="f0040-01" width="598" height="818"><figcaption class="caption-body">Tyler Wright has played 12 NHL games the last two seasons.</figcaption></div>Fourteen years ago the same mystical qualities intrigued Toronto Maple Leafs&rsquo; coach Red Kelly.The Leafs hooked up in the quarterfinals with the heavily-favored Philadelphia Flyers. Facing an uphill battle, Kelly looked for motivation. He started extolling the virtues of pyramids. He had them placed under the Leafs&rsquo; bench at Maple Leaf Gardens and in the dressing room during their series against the Flyers.OK, so the Leafs lost. Wright doesn&rsquo;t care if it didn&rsquo;t really work for the Leafs. If he believes it works for him, that&rsquo;s enough at this point.&ldquo;If you think there&rsquo;s going to be a mental edge, then why not do it?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Skating is pretty well my whole game. They are there, there&rsquo;s the mysterious power of the pyramids. Who knows?&ldquo;It&rsquo;s sort of ironic. One of my hockey cards came out and in the background of the picture are the pyramids in Edmonton,&rdquo; he said of the Muttart Conservatory buildings.&ldquo;Just little things like that intrigue me. How many guys are thinking about pyramids and they show up on your hockey card? It&rsquo;s probably nothing, but a lot of players are superstitious and this is one weird awkward thing.&rdquo;ON THE ROAD: Nick Stajduhar and Vladimir Vujtek have left Edmonton, hoping they&rsquo;ll soon be playing hockey again.Stajduhar headed for Cape Breton Oct. 15 with a three-year. $1.45-million contract while Vujtek went home to the Czech Republic. He wants to sign a temporary deal with Vitkovice, his former club team.Stajduhar missed all of training camp with a skull fracture sustained when he was punched by an Edmonton man outside a night club Aug. 24. The man has been charged with assault causing bodily harm. In mid-October, Stajduhar was still three weeks away from being able to play and is bitter over the incident.&ldquo;Some clown cost me a lot of money,&rdquo; said Stajduhar, who believes the contract is smaller than it might have been had he not been hurt.Vujtek, meanwhile, has gone looking for work and general manager Glen Sather won&rsquo;t try to stop him.Vujtek said he has spoken to the coach-GM at Vitkovice, though he hasn&rsquo;t ironed out a salary.&ldquo;The biggest part is to get in the game,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not about money. It&rsquo;d be good to stay in shape.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Goalie Bill Ranford had to have his new $3-miIlion, one-year contract signed by Oct. 14 under an NHL-imposed deadline. It had only been agreed to in camp. Ranford said he will be paid $2.5 million in base salary and $500,000 as a signing bonus, which must be paid even if the lockout continues.Oilers&rsquo; owner Peter Pocklington isn&rsquo;t considering layoffs yet. &ldquo;It depends how long it goes. Obviously I&rsquo;m not paying people to do nothing. Let&rsquo;s look and see if it goes four, five months. Anybody who isn&rsquo;t on contract would probably have three, four months off. We&rsquo;ll work it out so everybody is happy.&rdquo;Shayne Corson is facing an assault charge laid by a private citizen, following a fracas in August. Corson, 28, pleaded not guilty in Ontario provincial court and had a trial date scheduled for Jan. 25. &#9632;

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Mystic pyramid power inspiration for Wright

<div class="byline">By Robyn Norwood</div>Mighty Ducks of Anaheim defenseman Don McSween isn&rsquo;t an NHL millionaire.He is a player whose years in the minor leagues were finally going to pay off this season, when McSween was scheduled to make $300,000.Instead, McSween has filed an unemployment claim, becoming the first NHL player to take advantage of California law that makes locked-out employees eligible for benefits.McSween. 30, made $30,000-$50,000 a year in the minors before breaking through with the Ducks last season. The team rewarded him with a two-way contract that would pay him $300,000 in the NHL this season.If his unemployment claim is approved, McSween would be eligible for the maximum benefit of $230 a week for up to 26 weeks.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not that much, but more or less it makes a statement. For a guy like me, any little bit helps,&rdquo; said the married father of two young sons who doesn&rsquo;t own a home. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve played mostly in the minors, almost entirely until last year. I really don&rsquo;t have a million dollars in the bank by any means.&rdquo;Duck officials received notice of McSween&rsquo;s claim and verified the last day of his employment, stating the reason he is not working as an &ldquo;owner&rsquo;s lockout,&rdquo; said Andy Roundtree, vice-president for finance and administration.&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t bother me,&rdquo; said Ducks&rsquo; president Tony Tavares. &ldquo;I think he&rsquo;s well within his legal rights to do it. I guess some people might be annoyed with it. But we pay in based on our payroll. He&rsquo;s within his rights.&rdquo;McSween, who once worked a summer laying asphalt to supplement his minor-league salary, won an NHL job last season while on a stint filling in for injured players in Anaheim. He played in 32 games and earned about $100,000 from the Ducks and a bit more with the San Diego Gulls of the International League. It was easily the most financially rewarding of his seven-year pro career.&ldquo;Say it goes all year, the worstcase scenario, it would hurt, and cancel most of whatever I saved last year,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d obviously have to find work. But I&rsquo;ve got an engineering degree and my wife has a teaching degree.&ldquo;It might be hard to get hired if you tell them if the season&rsquo;s ready to start, I&rsquo;ve got to quit. But we live a simple life. We don&rsquo;t spend a lot. We have no reason to go out and buy new cars. Our cars are in good shape. We&rsquo;re not used to making a lot of money. It wouldn&rsquo;t hurt us that much. We&rsquo;d do okay.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0041-01374/6738660-1-eng-US/f0041-012.jpg" title="f0041-01" width="564" height="716"><figcaption class="caption-body">Don McSween would have made $300,000 in the NHL.</figcaption></div>After filing his California claim from his home in Lansing, Mich., Oct. 2, McSween said he has tried not to dwell on finances.&ldquo;What hurts is when you think about how much you lose per day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s money I know I&rsquo;ll never make up again. I&rsquo;ll never get another chance to make this kind of money. You could stay up at night thinking about it, but we don&rsquo;t like to do that.&rdquo;COVERT CALL: Unbeknownst to NHL Players&rsquo; Association executive director Bob Goodenow, one of his media briefings by conference call was infiltrated by Ducks&rsquo; coach Ron Wilson.Wilson, an inveterate practical joker, dialed the number distributed to reporters by public relations staff hoping to listen in.When an operator asked for his media affiliation, Wilson improvised, creating a fictional suburban Los Angeles paper on the spot: &ldquo;Villa Park Times,&rdquo; he said.Asked for his name, he kept scrambling: &ldquo;Mark Sims,&rdquo; he said, combining the names of equipment manager Mark O&rsquo;Neill and assistant coach Al Sims.Wilson was put right through to the conference call, but said he resisted the temptation to blow his cover by asking a question.NOTEBOOK: Tony Tavares said layoffs aren&rsquo;t in the future, but some front-office employees might find themselves temporarily reassigned to other Walt Disney Co., jobs if the lockout continues. Someone who works in ticketing, for example, could work in ticketing at Disneyland. &ldquo;It beats the hell out of the alternative-laying people off,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I might be Captain Nemo, I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;&hellip;Minor league defenseman Anatoli Fedotov, who announced his retirement in September, has changed his mind. Since the Ducks&rsquo; were unable to assign him to San Diego because of the lockout freeze, he signed an IHL contract-officially a violation of his Duck contract, but one that will be overlooked. &#9632;

f0041-01

McSween first to file unemployment claim

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0042-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0042-01380/6738691-1-eng-US/f0042-012.jpg"></div>NHL affiliates are listed under AHL team names &#9632;

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AMERICAN LEAGUE

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0043-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0043-01400/6738722-1-eng-US/f0043-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Photo by Tim Parker)</figcaption></div>NHL affiliates are listed under IHL team names &#9632;

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INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0045-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0045-01242/6738784-1-eng-US/f0045-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Photo by Dan Hamilton)</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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ONTARIO LEAGUE

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0046-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0046-01237/6738815-1-eng-US/f0046-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Chances were coming often for nine-goal scorer Derrick Pyke of Halifax. This time he&rsquo;s stopped by Drummondville&rsquo;s Stephane Routhier. (Photo by Dan Hamilton)</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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QUEBEC LEAGUE

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0047-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0047-01269/6738846-1-eng-US/f0047-012.jpg"></div> &#9632;

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SCOREBOARD

<div class="byline">By Stan Fischiar</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0048-01185/6738884-1-eng-US/f0048-012.jpg" title="f0048-01" width="380" height="537"></div>Impertinent thoughts on pertinent topics:&#9633; Isn&rsquo;t it kind of scary when Kelly Miller, who earned $1.8 million last season and never scored more than 24 goals in a season, can be so passionate about players being mistreated by ownership? Gimme a break, Kelly.&#9633; One of the big wastes of the lockout is the volume of juicy Bernie Nicholls quotes we&rsquo;re missing. By this time Nicholls would have: dissed the United Center Ice; told the world Darryl Sutter should give him more ice time; claim he was misinterpreted; and lauded United Center as the greatest rink since Kemper Arena.&#9633; Now that he&rsquo;s filthy rich, watch Dominik Hasek&rsquo;s goals-against average climb in proportion to his new salary. Figure from 1.95 to 3.15, if he&rsquo;s lucky.&#9633; The best book about minor league hockey ever written is Forgotten Glory: The Story of Cleveland Barons Hockey. Author Gene Kiczek produces nifty insights including the fact that in 1940 American League owners had put money into a secret fund to challenge the NHL as a second major league. It would have happened had World War II not intervened.&#9633; Did you ever realize the Boston Bruins were on the winning end of the three most one-sided trades in history? 1. Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge and Fred Stanfield from Chicago for zilch. 2. Rick Middleton from the New York Rangers for a way-over-the-hill Hodge. 3. Cam Neely from the Vancouver Canucks for Barry Pederson.&#9633; Prediction: Mariusz Czerkawski will be the next Bob Kudelski.&#9633; Chris Pronger is a tall Alexandre Daigle behind the blueline.&#9633; We all know it takes guts to be a hockey player. So why did J.J. Daigneault turn the other way when Ron Corey offered to show him the Montreal Canadiens&rsquo; books?&#9633; You have to be rooting for Cincinnati Cyclones&rsquo; coach Don Jackson-a great guy who recently survived a head-on car crash. Jackson rushed right back behind the bench before you could say Blue Cross, running the team from his wheelchair. (By the way, the wheelchair is nicknamed Patriot, as in missile.)&#9633; A truly dumb rumor has Brian Burke leaving his NHL posting to become a general manager again. Burke has become one of the hockey world&rsquo;s most visible and talkative personalities. The sky is the limit for him at Bettman, Inc.&#9633; Imagine how high the NHL&rsquo;s Cleanliness Quotient will climb now that Glenn Anderson is gone. (I project a 20 per-cent jump minimum.)&#9633; Now that the hockey boom has reached Florida, California and Texas, the next Sun Belt state to go crazy over the sport will be Alabama. (Louisiana can&rsquo;t be far behind.)&#9633; If Dale Hunter was suspended 21 games for whacking Pierre Turgeon, what do you figure Chris Chelios rates for threatening the Bettman family? How about half a season, minimum. (And the other half being video judge at Madison Square Garden.)&#9633; This is the best NHL refereeing I&rsquo;ve seen in years.&#9633; Craig Janney and Mike Keenan fit like a hand in a shoe.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0048-02121/6738877-1-eng-US/f0048-022.jpg" title="f0048-02" width="572" height="848"><figcaption class="caption-body">Craig Janney</figcaption></div>&#9633; Nelson Emerson, alone, will make the Phil Housley for Emerson and Stephane Quintal deal look quite good in 1994-95. And by 1995-96, it will be an absolutely fabulous trade for the Jets.&#9633; Ron Tugnutt is my kind of goalie. But not in Montreal. The Canadiens fans will turn him into Andre Racicot faster than you can say Steve Penney.&#9633; Unfortunately, overlooked by too many was the passing of three wonderful hockey characters. Bob Casey, a splendid and loveable NHL PR director for the Hartford Whalers from 1972-79, died at the age of 62. Herb Ralby, Bruins&rsquo; press agent from the 1940s through the 1960s and a legend among the Beantown media, died in Florida. He was 81. And Don Ramsey, who once wrote the most exciting hockey stuff for the Toronto Globe and Mail, left us as the age of 42. Each was significant in his realm.All will be missed. &#9632;

f0048-01

Surely, Miller can’t be unhappy

<div class="byline">By Michael Ulmer</div>Someday, Pavol Demitra might have to work hard to recall his first NHL goal, but right now, from his room at the Queen Arms Motor Inn in Charlottetown, P.E.I., he remembers it as if it happened yesterday.Demitra had already bucked long odds to make the Ottawa Senators. A ninth-round pick in the 1993 draft, he was only one of six players chosen in the ninth round or later of I any draft to play in the NHL last season. After sitting out the opener, Demitra was inserted into the lineup in time for the club&rsquo;s second game of the year against the St. Louis Blues.&ldquo;It was a lucky goal really,&rdquo; said the 19-year-old Slovak. &ldquo;It was against Curtis Joseph and we were on the power play. I was on with (Alexei) Yashin and (Vladimir) Ruzicka. Yashin gave me the puck and I didn&rsquo;t even look at the net, I just shot.&rdquo;The second-period goal gave the Senators a shortlived 4-3 lead. Almost as fleeting was Demitra&rsquo;s tenure with the team.Five nights later, he slid into the boards skates first after a collision with Florida Panthers&rsquo; defenseman Keith Brown and broke his right ankle. Demitra, who had been among the team&rsquo;s best forwards in the first two games, missed six weeks. He played 10 more games during two stints with the Senators, but was held pointless.&ldquo;He really didn&rsquo;t excel,&rdquo; said Ottawa assistant coach E.J. McGuire. &ldquo;I mean he got a point a game (18-23-41) in the minors, but up here he didn&rsquo;t kick butt the way he showed he did before.&rdquo;Demitra&rsquo;s father, also named Pavol, was a first-division soccer player for Czechoslovakia and father and son spent much of their summer on the same five-man soccer team. He arrived in camp in excellent shape and quickly re-established himself as one of the Senators&rsquo; better forwards.He led Ottawa in scoring (six goals and 10 points eight games) and ranked sixth league-wide in pre-season scoring. The performance was enough for Demitra to win back his place on the roster when NHL owners locked out the players.Demitra, once again, must wait and it has not been easy.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m very mad because of the lockout,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how long this will go on.&rdquo;Demitra toyed with the idea of playing back home, but assurances from the organization that he would benefit from further exposure to the North American game landed him on the Island.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0048-0381/6738915-1-eng-US/f0048-032.jpg" title="f0048-03" width="966" height="1972"><figcaption class="caption-body">Pavol Demitra was among the scoring leaders in pre-season. (Photo by Steve Babineau)</figcaption></div>Demitra can play either wing. In P.E.I. he has played right wing on a line centered by 23-year-old Steve Larouche, a one-time Montreal Canadiens&rsquo; draftee. Twenty-five-year-old Michel Picard, who has appeared in 55 NHL games with the Hartford Whalers and San Jose Sharks, patrols the left side.Demitra scored three times and added six assists in five American League games and delivered a flashy and surprisingly polished professional game.Good offensive numbers have followed Demitra around. He scored four goals and eight points for the Czech and Slovak team at the 1993 World Junior Championships.Demitra is equipped with enviable offensive instincts, but while he has first-rate lateral speed, his straight ahead velocity is only fair.At five-foot-11 193 pounds, he has fair size and heft for an NHL forward and he aggressively heads into traffic in search of the puck.&ldquo;I would describe his speed as deceptive,&rdquo; said P.E.I. coach Dave Allison. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very patient with the puck and he&rsquo;s very good in close. Every game he has played, he has become more of a factor.&rdquo;None of Demitra&rsquo;s skills would rate in the top drawer, but he nonetheless is projected as a very useful, 25-35 goal NHLer.When and if the regular season resumes, Demitra will return to Ottawa. He and Yashin worked marvelously in their time together.&ldquo;I played all the time on the same line, me and Yashin; sometimes with Dave McLlwain or Pat Elynuik,&rdquo; Demitra said. &ldquo;I loved playing with Yashin, he&rsquo;s a very good player and he understands my hockey.&rdquo;Demitra said on-ice skill has little to do with a player&rsquo;s country of origin. &ldquo;McLlwain is the same. He&rsquo;s a player who understand European hockey.&ldquo;Some guys don&rsquo;t understand European hockey, they just want to skate and shoot it into the boards. (Yashin and McLllwain) like lots of shooting and passing.&rdquo;For now, Demitra is doing the same with Larouche and Picard.&ldquo;Every goal is like a highlight reel,&rdquo; Allison said. &ldquo;Not a garbage goal between them.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0048-03

The other Pavol

<div class="byline">By Kevin Oklobzija</div>When Mike Boback is at the top of his game, he&rsquo;s a true pain in the neck for American League opponents.The Portland Pirates&rsquo; center darts through openings in the slot, shows great offensive creativity behind the net and makes perfect passes to set up linemates for goal-mouth tap-ins.He does all those things when the pain in his neck isn&rsquo;t too severe and isn&rsquo;t depriving him of strength. Opponents have great difficulty stopping him. but his own body-specifically a pinched nerve between his third and fourth vertebrae-can neutralize his talents.It has been an on-going nuisance since his third year at Providence College, one that had some doctors telling him to give up the game.Boback, 24, still shudders at the memory of the first attack in 1991.&ldquo;The first time I got the muscle spasms, I thought I was having a heart attack, my chest was pumping so fast,&rdquo; said the 10th-round pick of the Washington Capitals in 1990. &ldquo;The left side of my chest deflated, I couldn&rsquo;t move my head to the left and my left arm went numb.&rdquo;Doctors figured that years of repeated blows from behind had taken their toll and caused the nerve opening to become pinched.&ldquo;I was going all over the country seeing doctors,&rdquo; Boback said. &ldquo;Two or three said I shouldn&rsquo;t play anymore. It&rsquo;s something that has carried over and every year I learn how to deal with it more and more.&rdquo;Three weeks into the season, Boback is glad he learned to cope. He was tied for the AHL lead with seven goals and 18 points in eight games.There was a time last season when the third-year AHLer gave retirement serious thought. The nerve problem flared up in January. In a six-week span he missed 12 games and he wasn&rsquo;t at full strength physically or mentally in other games.After a great playmaking rookie season (68 assists and 79 points) with the Baltimore Skipjacks in 1992-93, Boback dipped to 43 assists and 59 points last season.&ldquo;I never got it going,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I missed 12 games and when I came back I was afraid to get hit and you can&rsquo;t play the game that way.&ldquo;Guys got frustrated with me because they felt I wasn&rsquo;t giving all I could give. It was hard on me when the guys were looking at me saying, &lsquo;Hey, you gotta start pulling your weight.&rsquo; But I felt I was giving all I could. It was frustrating. I thought maybe I should give it up.&rdquo;By playoff time, no one questioned Boback. With no irritation of the nerve, he scored 10 goals and was the AHL&rsquo;s leading scorer with 27 points as the Pirates won the Calder Cup.Over the summer, he tried to find a way to prevent the nerve flare-ups. He saw Dr. Robert Watkins in Los Angeles, the back specialist who has treated Mario Lemieux.&ldquo;I intensified my weight program and will carry it over during the season,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Something I&rsquo;ve never done is lift weights once the season started. But I talked to the team doctors and they think maybe in the past I&rsquo;ve gotten weaker as the season goes on and the muscles around the nerve can&rsquo;t protect it anymore.&rdquo;The Pirates hope he has found the remedy.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a very highly skilled guy, but when you eliminate his hands and quickness, which the nerve problem does, he becomes not a good player,&rdquo; said coach Barry Trotz.IN LINE OF FIRE: The return of Martin Lapointe to the Adirondack Red Wings has helped create the AHL&rsquo;s hottest line with Andrew McKim and Mike Casselman.Lapointe, a second-year right winger chosen 10th overall by the Detroit Red Wings in 1991, joined Adirondack a week into the season because of the NHL lockout.In five games after Lapointe joined them, the trio combined for 31 points. That included eight goals and one assist for Lapointe, including four power-play goals and one shorthanded.AHL TIDBITS: Cornwall Aces&rsquo; left winger Rene Corbet, last season&rsquo;s AHL rookie of the year, missed the first three games with a shoulder injury, but scored three goals against the Springfield Falcons in his first game back.Saint John Flames&rsquo; center Todd Hlushko provided late-game heroics against the P.E.I. Senators Oct. 13, tying the game 5-5 at 17:57 of the third before scoring the game-winner with one-tenth of a second remaining while the Flames were shorthanded.Portland rookie goalie Jim Carey remained unbeaten through three weeks with a 5-0-2 record and 2.37 goals-against average. The 20-year-old former University of Wisconsin goalie was Washington&rsquo;s second draft pick in 1992. &#9632;

Boback plays through pain in neck to thrive

<div class="byline">By Randy King</div>The NHL players&rsquo; lockout has turned the key for the East Coast League&rsquo;s first ever television deal.Starting with the Oct. 19 Raleigh IceCaps-Richmond Renegades game, cable&rsquo;s Home Team Sports began a series of ECHL live telecasts that will last until the NHL goes back to work.HTS, which airs in a six-state region on the Atlantic coast, is using the ECHL to replace time slots that were initially reserved for Washington Capitals&rsquo; telecasts.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re exploring additional ECHL games,&rdquo; said HTS communications director Scott Broyles. &ldquo;We&rsquo;d like to do more, but it depends how the schedule works out.&rdquo;Broyles said future games could be telecast from Roanoke, Hampton Roads, Greensboro, Charlotte and Raleigh, which join Richmond in the HTS coverage area.DEEP THREAT: Nick Vitucci of the Toledo Storm became the first ECHL netminder to score a goal.Vitucci lifted an 185-foot shot into an empty Columbus Chill net in the waning moments of the Storm&rsquo;s 5-2 pre-season win Oct. 15.It only figures Vitucci would be the man. The veteran is the all-time ECHL goaltending leader in games (195), wins (107), losses (57) and goals-against average (3.83).SWAP SHOP: The Wheeling Thunderbirds dealt the rights of twotime all-star winger Darren Schwartz to the Tallahassee Tiger Sharks for cash and future considerations.Schwartz began the season playing in England. He is the ECHL&rsquo;s alltime penalty minutes leader (1,282) and third-leading goal-scorer (200) and is expected to join the Sharks in a player-assistant coach role.SOLID IN GOAL: The Birmingham Bulls&rsquo; net is set after the Cincinnati Cyclones of the International League re-assigned Mark Michaud.Michaud, 38-17-8 in an ironman&rsquo;s role with the Hampton Roads Admirals last season, joins Sandy Galuppo (22-4-3 last season), giving the Bulls what coach Phil Roberto calls &ldquo;the best goalie tandem&rdquo; in the ECHL.76 IN A ROW: Columbus enters its Nov. 2 home opener with a minorleague pro sports record 76 straight sellouts at the 5,700-seat Ohio State Fairgrounds Coliseum&hellip;Raleigh&rsquo;s goaltending worries have been eased by the acquisition of Brad Mullahy from Birmingham for cash. Mullahy was the winning goalie in last year&rsquo;s ECHL All-Star Game.The ECHL&rsquo;s two West Virginia entries-Wheeling (0-4-0) and Huntington Blizzard (0-4-l)-finished 0-for-the-pre-season. Huntington coach Paul Pickard saw eight regular players go down with injuries in camp.Does Hampton Roads&rsquo; coach John Brophy like his team? Just listen: &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got the toughest damn team in the league and will finish on top (of the Eastern Division) and there&rsquo;s nothing anybody can do about it.&rdquo; &#9632;

NHL lockout helps league get piece of TV action

<div class="byline">By Stuart Cowan</div>The hockey career of St-Hyacinthe Laser David-Alexandre Beauregard came to an end when his left eye was perforated by a high stick.Midway through the second period of an Oct. 16 Quebec League game, the 18-year-old left winger was being chased by Xavier Delisle of the Granby Bisons. As Beauregard was getting ready to shoot, Delisle tried to lift his stick from behind, but missed.Delisle&rsquo;s stick went under Beauregard&rsquo;s three-quarter visor and struck him in the eye. Amazingly, Beauregard still scored what sadly turned out to be the last goal of his career before falling to the ice.One of the first people to reach him was his father, Andre, who was watching in the stands.Beauregard, who was leading the Laser with 15 goals and 23 points in 12 games, was the San Jose Sharks&rsquo; 11th-round draft pick in June.While Delisle was assessed a major and misconduct by referee Rejean Levasseur, Laser coach Richard Martel said it was an accident.&ldquo;I watched the video and it was an accident,&rdquo; Martel said. &ldquo;Delisle isn&rsquo;t a dirty player&hellip;he&rsquo;s a player like David Beauregard, he&rsquo;s a good player.&rdquo;A shaken Delisle visited Beauregard in hospital.&ldquo;I told him it&rsquo;s not his fault,&rdquo; Beauregard said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an accident. Unfortunately it had to happen to me.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m feeling better,&rdquo; Beauregard added in an interview from his hospital bed. &ldquo;It was bad luck, but life continues. I&rsquo;m still alive.&rdquo;The injury came only weeks after the Quebec sports safety board extended the league&rsquo;s exemption to 1999 from rules requiring all amateur players in the province to wear a full facemask. QMJHL players have the option of wearing a full mask or three-quarter visor, but all have opted for the latter. Players must sign a waiver form declaring their responsibility for wearing the visor. (See related story on page 5.)Seven QMJHL players have sustained eye injuries since the three-quarter visors were allowed in January of 1992, but Beauregard is the first to lose an eye.&ldquo;I certainly recommend a full-face (shield) now,&rdquo; said Beauregard, who will be fitted with a glass eye. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too bad this had to happen.&rdquo;The Laser organization was shaken.&ldquo;This is very sad,&rdquo; Martel said. &ldquo;David is an extraordinary person. He had a lot of leadership. This is going to be hard on the players and team.&rdquo;Beauregard will receive $30,000 as part of the Canadian Hockey Association&rsquo;s liability insurance plan. Both the Laser and the QMJHL will pick up the cost of his education.DOIG SUSPENDED: Laval Titan defenseman Jason Doig was suspended four games by the QMJHL after pummeling Daniel Archambault of the Val d&rsquo;Or Foreurs.Doig, a top prospect for next year&rsquo;s NHL draft, sent Archambault crumbling to the ice with a series of blows Oct. 10 and then continued to punch the semi-conscious and defenseless Foreur, who was taken to hospital with a concussion.The game, which featured 337 penalty minutes, including 16 majors, was stopped with 19 seconds left in the third period. Laval won 8-2.Doig was slated to return Oct. 24.FLYING HIGH: The Beauport Harfangs&rsquo; 8-1 win over the Drummondville Voltigeurs Oct. 16 was their fifth in a row (fourth on the road), both team records. Eric Daze had 12 goals and 23 points in nine games after returning from the Chicago Blackhawks. Goalie Steve Vezina, the Winnipeg Jets&rsquo; sixth-round pick in this year&rsquo;s NHL entry draft, was 6-0-0 with a 2.27 goals-against average.Vald&rsquo;Or ended an eight-game losing streak with a 9-2 victory over the Halifax Mooseheads Oct. 15. It was the Foreurs&rsquo; second game under new coach Norman Flynn, who took over from Pierre Aubry after the team got off to a 2-13-0 start. &#9632;

Eye injury ends Beauregard’s budding career

<div class="byline">By Jim Cressman</div>Don Boyd is the first casualty of the young Ontario League season, fired as coach-general manager of the Sarnia Sting Oct. 17. The Sting were 2-6-1, but half the losses were in overtime.&ldquo;Although we did not blame Don totally for the on-ice performance, we felt change was necessary,&rdquo; said Sting president Robert Ciccarelli. &ldquo;Losing becomes contagious. We wanted the bleeding to stop right away.&rdquo;Assistant Rich Brown was named interim coach. Assistant GM Terry Doran was promoted to GM. The Sting had lost four straight games when the axe fell on Boyd.Ciccarelli said the players shared the blame.&ldquo;Obviously they have to take a look at themselves in the mirror and take part of the responsibility for this,&rdquo; he said.Boyd, who scouted for the Quebec Nordiques before returning to coaching, felt no relief.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want anybody to say &lsquo;Don Boyd felt relieved.&rsquo; I&rsquo;m disappointed. I&rsquo;m mad. But that&rsquo;s a natural feeling,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not something a couple of 50-goal scorers couldn&rsquo;t have solved. We were playing six new players in our lineup. They didn&rsquo;t sit on the bench. They played.&rdquo;BERT&rsquo;S BACK: Bert Templeton was jobhunting for some of his friends and ended up landing a position for himself.Templeton, 54, was named head coach and director of hockey operations for the expansion Barrie Colts Oct. 20. The longtime OHL coach led the North Bay Centennials to the league title last season before resigning.It had been speculated Templeton was in line for the Barrie job, but he said there were no plans to hire him until he met with Colts&rsquo; owner Jamie Massie in October to recommend people for the team&rsquo;s scouting staff.&ldquo;I met Jamie for lunch and as the conversation developed there was interest on both sides,&rdquo; Templeton said. &ldquo;I ended up staying until 7 o&rsquo;clock that night.&rdquo;Templeton will have a busy year ahead of him because the Colts will have the first pick in the draft and will be getting players from other teams in an expansion draft.&ldquo;We have the expansion draft, the European draft, the midget draft and free agents to sign,&rdquo; Templeton said. &ldquo;We also have to get a head scout in place.&rdquo;Templeton said he doesn&rsquo;t subscribe to the theory expansion teams must first go through growing pains before becoming a contender.&ldquo;I never allow myself to go into something saying I&rsquo;ll build slowly,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I want to accelerate the process as much as possible.&rdquo;PARK IN HOT WATER: Belleville Bulls&rsquo; center Richard Park faces a possible 20-game suspension for abusing an official.In the Bulls&rsquo; 5-2 win over the Kingston Frontenacs&rsquo; Oct. 14, Park was reportedly hit to the ice and his helmet came off. He then went after the player who hit him, but referee Pat Smola intervened because the linesmen were breaking up another fight.Park, the Pittsburgh Penguins&rsquo; first-round choice in 1994, reportedly pushed Smola to get at the player and then lifted his stick at Smola, but didn&rsquo;t strike him.The OHL has suspensions ranging from three to 20 games for abuse of an official. Commissioner David Branch suspended Park indefinitely and was reviewing the incident.PAYDAY: The way Jason Allison looked at it, $40 a week to play with the London Knights is better than no paycheck at all.Last season&rsquo;s OHL scoring champ and Canadian Hockey League and The Hockey News major junior player of the year, rejoined the Knights at his request Oct. 15. He&rsquo;ll return to the Washington Capitals when the NHL lockout ends.Allison signed a four-year, $2.5-million (U.S.) contract after last season, but he won&rsquo;t be paid $27,000 a week by the Caps. Instead, he&rsquo;ll earn the standard major junior $40 a week.&ldquo;I want to stay in shape,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It looks like they can use me (the Knights were 2-8-0). There&rsquo;s a chance there&rsquo;ll be no NHL season. At least I won&rsquo;t lose a year of hockey,&rdquo; &#9632;

Coach Boyd feels Sting of Sarnia’s shaky start

<div class="byline">By Rob Vanstone</div>The NHL&rsquo;s labor dispute is generally regarded as bad news.But the Regina Pats aren&rsquo;t overly distraught.The San Jose Sharks have returned star center Jeff Friesen to the Western League&rsquo;s Pats for the duration of the impasse. Friesen, 18, had made the Sharks&rsquo; roster after recording seven points in seven NHL pre-season games.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a situation where I&rsquo;ll play it day by day and keep improving,&rdquo; Friesen said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a Regina Pat now, not a San Jose Shark.&ldquo;Once the season resumes, hopefully I&rsquo;ll be back with the Sharks. Right now, my focus is with the Pats. I want to make the best of it.&rdquo;Friesen, 18, made an immediate impact, recording two goals and two assists in two wins as Regina outscored its opponents 19-3. In September, Friesen said if he was returned to the WHL, he wanted a trade to a contending team. He has since changed his tune.&ldquo;Believe it or not, I&rsquo;m excited to be here and I want to help change things,&rdquo; Friesen said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m disappointed with the lockout, but I have to turn this into a positive. I&rsquo;m coming back with an open mind and I want to have fun.&rdquo;San Jose picked Friesen 11th overall in the NHL&rsquo;s 1994 entry draft following his 51-goal, 118-point sophomore season with the Pats.Friesen has a four-year contract with the Sharks worth $3.2 million (U.S.). San Jose has an insurance policy on Friesen&rsquo;s behalf.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m one of the lucky ones,&rdquo; Friesen said. &ldquo;I get to play hockey while the lockout is on.&rdquo;NO WITTS ABOUT THEM: The Seattle Thunderbirds are Witt-less.Defenseman Brendan Witt. 19, returned home to Humboldt, Sask.-not to Seattle-in the early stages of the NHL postponement after contract negotiations with the Washington Capitals went nowhere.Washington picked Witt 11th overall in 1993.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a quality player and with the (lockout), he could help our club and himself,&rdquo; said Thunderbirds&rsquo; general manager Bob Tory.&ldquo;Brendan would be a premier player in this league. He has a long pro career ahead. But for whatever reason, he has decided to hold out.&rdquo;Witt, 19, was the WHL&rsquo;s top defenseman in 1993-94, his third season with Seattle. He could not be reached for comment.THE WAITING GAME: The Prince George Cougars finally recorded their first victory in the British Columbia city Oct. 17.Prince George lost its first 10 games before doubling the visiting Portland Winter Hawks 10-5. Steve Dowhy scored four goals.Owner Rick Brodsky moved the Cougars from Victoria to Prince George after the 199394 season. The Cougars lost nine of their last 10 games as a Victoria-based team.Despite a slow start on the ice, Prince George sold out its first six games at the 1,860-seat Coliseum. Three of those games were one-goal losses to the Kamloops Blazers.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a tough rink to play in,&rdquo; said Kamloops GM Bob Brown. &ldquo;Teams have to play hard to win up there.&rdquo;Like Prince George, Kamloops has been a success at the gate. The Blazers sold out their first five home games of 1994-95.A LONG WAIT: Swift Current Broncos&rsquo; defenseman Keith McCambridge ended a prolonged goal-scoring drought Oct. 14.McCambridge&rsquo;s dryspell had reached 190 games-counting 154 regular-season, 32 postseason and four Memorial Cup games.Regarded to be the WHL&rsquo;s finest defensive rearguard, McCambridge had not scored since recording his first WHL goal Feb. 25, 1992.Two other veterans ended significant goalscoring droughts on the same night as McCambridge, who scored in a 4-2 loss to the visiting Medicine Hat Tigers.Brandon Wheat Kings&rsquo; defenseman Jeff Staples scored his first WHL goal to snap an 88-game dryspell during a 6-5 win over Seattle.Regina right winger Jeromie Kufflick had his first and second WHL goals to end a 75-game skid. Kufflick struck twice in a 10-2 victory over the visiting Red Deer Rebels. &#9632;

Friesen happy to be a Pat, until lockout ends anyway

<div class="byline">By Matt Carlson</div>New Miami Redskins&rsquo; coach Mark Mazzoleni has no concerns about his team&rsquo;s fitness level, attitude and preparation for the season.However, Mazzoleni, who spent the past three seasons as an assistant at Minnesota, can&rsquo;t say the same about his club&rsquo;s firepower.&ldquo;My biggest concern is how we&rsquo;re going to score,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You can work your butt off, but you still have to score.&rdquo;A drop in offensive output last season contributed to the Redskins tumbling from first to fifth in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association standings. Moreover, Miami lost No. 2 and 3 scorers Shawn Penn and Enrico Blasi and No. 5 scorer and top defenseman Bobby Marshall to graduation. No. 6 scorer Matt Oates signed with the Chicago Blackhawks.Only one returning player, junior center Kevyn Adams (a 1993 first-round draft pick of the Boston Bruins who had 15 goals and 43 points in 36 games) has a proven offensive flair.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m counting on some of our experienced players to step forward,&rdquo; Mazzoleni said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m thinking of guys such as Dan Carter, Marc Boxer, Jason Mallon and Andrew Miller.The best producer of that bunch last season was Boxer, the team&rsquo;s No. 4 scorer who posted seven goals and 28 points in 36 gamesFreshman Adam Copeland, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound right winger from Burlington, Ont., was drafted in the fourth round by the Edmonton Oilers last June. However, Mazzoleni isn&rsquo;t counting on an immediate impact. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a big kid with a lot of potential,&rdquo; Mazzoleni said.What&rsquo;s worse, the Redskins start the season shorthanded on the blueline. In training camp, junior defenseman Andrew Backen broke an ankle. Dan Boyle, a promising freshman rearguard from Ottawa, sustained a broken sternum during an off-ice game of speedball.Before joining Minnesota three years ago, Mazzoleni led Wisconsin-Stevens Point to three Division III titles. He&rsquo;s not new to the CCHA, having served as an assistant at Illinois-Chicago from 1980 to 1985.CHICAGO SHUFFLE?: With the NHL season on hold, will any Blackhawk fans turn to the Illinois-Chicago Flames for hockey fixes?Maybe. The UIC Pavilion is only a mile from the United Center. Of course it would help if the Flames start the year on a winning note, something they haven&rsquo;t done since 1988-89.Since that season, UIC has stumbled out of the gate. In 1989-90 under Val Belmonte, the Flames began at 0-9-0. Current coach Larry Pedrie took over in 1990-91, but UIC lost eight straight games. In &rsquo;91-92, the Flames started at 1-6-2, In &rsquo;92-93 it was 3-10-1. Last year, they were 4-13-1 at the mid-season break.&ldquo;If we could just be 500 at the (holiday) break, we&rsquo;d be in great shape,&rdquo; Pedrie said.The Flames face a challenge in trying to jump from the gate. Three of their first four games are against the top-ranked Michigan State Spartans. &#9632;

‘Skins power shortage has Mazzoleni worried

<div class="byline">By Chris Miller</div>Wisconsin hasn&rsquo;t finished in the lower half of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association in 14 years. But the Badgers sustained massive losses from last season&rsquo;s third-place team and face a tough battle to finish in the top five.&ldquo;I think we&rsquo;ll be in the upper division,&rdquo; said Wisconsin coach Jeff Sauer. &ldquo;What people don&rsquo;t realize is that even though we lost 11 guys, we&rsquo;re only playing three freshmen.&rdquo;Five of Wisconsin&rsquo;s top seven scorers last season were seniors. Junior Kelly Fairchild, the leading scorer, turned pro. The final blow came a day after school started when junior Jim Carey, the WCHA&rsquo;s top statistical goalie for two years, signed with the Washington Capitals.&ldquo;Everyone knew Jim was going,&rdquo; said Maco Balkovec, one of five returning defensemen. &ldquo;No one expected him back.&rdquo;&ldquo;The problem,&rdquo; Sauer said, &ldquo;is timing. To happen after school begins leaves you out in the cold.&rdquo;Kirk Daubenspeck, who played in seven games as a freshman, is Wisconsin&rsquo;s only goalie.&lsquo;There&rsquo;s a lot of pressure,&rdquo; said the Madison native who graduated from Culver Military Academy and played one season in the United States Jr. League. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s not like I&rsquo;m reading and hearing things I don&rsquo;t already know.&rdquo;The Badger strength is defense, with seniors Mark Strobel. Balkovec, Brian Rafalski and Chris Tok and junior Mickey Elick.&ldquo;We have confidence in Dauber,&rdquo; said Strobel, Wisconsin&rsquo;s captain. &ldquo;Our system starts with strong defensive play.&rdquo;The top line has Max Williams and Jamie Spencer, Wisconsin&rsquo;s top returning scorers, centered by Scott Sanderson. Williams had two goals and Daubenspeck made 35 saves in a season-opening 6-5 win over Minnesota-Duluth.FROM GINO TO DEANO: When Gino Gasparini was let go as North Dakota Fighting Sioux coach in April-after 16 seasons, three national titles and a 392-248-24 record-officials around the WCHA were shocked.There was also surprise that close friend Dean Blais, Gasparini&rsquo;s assistant from 1980 to &rsquo;89, was the top candidate since the school pronounced itself ready to go another direction.But Blais, with Gasparini&rsquo;s blessing, landed the job behind a resume including the post as assistant coach of the 1992 U.S. Olympic team.&ldquo;My philosophy and Gino&rsquo;s are pretty much the same,&rdquo; Blais said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got to play good defensive hockey to win.&rdquo;The Sioux were eighth in the WCHA last season and expectations are again low.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no pressure, is there?&rdquo; joked Blais, who coached International Falls (Minn.) High School the past two seasons. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s easier when the coaches picked us (to finish) ninth and The Hockey News 10th. But I&rsquo;m not discouraged.&rdquo;Blais, 43, played at the University of Minnesota from 1969-72, was on the U.S. national team the following season and played three years in the Chicago Blackhawks&rsquo; organization. &#9632;

Remaining above water Badgers’ main objective

<div class="byline">By Tom Boggie</div>Explosive speed and excellent balance have always been Steve Martins&rsquo; biggest assets.But only the players who go one-on-one with the Harvard Crimson senior center really know how strong he is.&lsquo;There aren&rsquo;t many kids around who are stronger than he is,&rdquo; Harvard coach Ronn Tomassoni said of the 1994 Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference player of the year. &ldquo;We do a lot of (strength) testing in pre-season and we have kids who are in good shape, but Steve is right off the charts. He has a tremendous combination of strength, balance and determination.&rdquo;Martins&rsquo; strength is deceptive as he only stands 5-foot-9 and weighs 175 pounds. But he never backs down from a challenge. That feistiness made him Harvard&rsquo;s penalty minutes leader last season with 93.The native of Gatineau, Que., was plagued by injuries his first two years at Harvard, but put together his first healthy season in 1993-94.He finished the season with 25 goals and 60 points in 32 games as Harvard reached the National Collegiate Athletic Association semifinals before losing to eventual national champion Lake Superior in overtime.Despite playing on a team that featured standout defenseman Sean McCann and dangerous scorer Brian Farrell, it was Martins who earned player-of-the-year honors in the ECAC and was a first-team All-America. He was chosen fifth overall by the Hartford Whalers in the 1994 supplemental draft.&lsquo;The best way to describe him is electrifying,&rdquo; Tomassoni said. &ldquo;He takes people right out of their seats. He&rsquo;s a threat to score every time he&rsquo;s on the ice, no matter what the situation. I feel he&rsquo;s one of the best forwards in college hockey today.&rdquo;MORE ON TV: The ECAC will have an expanded television package this season.Eight regular-season games, produced by SportsPage Enterprises/Creative Video of Concord, N.H., will be aired on a tape delayed basis on Sundays by SportsChannel New England.Each team in the league will be featured at least once during the regular-season telecasts.&ldquo;As a result of this new package, accompanied by our tournament and some other new developments, ECAC Hockey will enjoy more television exposure than ever before,&rdquo; ECAC hockey executive director Joe Bertagna said.The other developments Bertagna referred to are two ECAC games to be part of Prime Network&rsquo;s College Hockey Game of the Week.Plans call for the Nov. 25 game between national champion Lake Superior and Vermont and a Feb. 24 league game between Harvard and RPI to be included in Prime&rsquo;s live schedule.For the third straight year, Empire Sports Network will air the ECAC Division I Championships from Lake Placid, N.Y. &#9632;

Crimson’s shifty Martins not just a pretty skater

<div class="byline">By Larry Mahoney</div>The Boston University Terriers are the overwhelming choice to defend their Hockey East regular-season title in a poll of league coaches.BU received eight of nine first-place votes with the New Hampshire Wildcats receiving the other first-place vote.The Terriers placed four players on the allleague pre-season team: forwards Jacques Joubert, defensemen Kaj Linna and Rich Brennan and goalie Derek Herlofsky.Other selections were forwards Greg Bullock of UMass-Lowell, Chad Quenneville of Providence and J.F. Aube of Northeastern.Linna and Brennan were selected over Chris Imes, who returned to Maine after playing with the United States Olympic team last season. Imes was drafted fourth overall by the Florida Panthers in the 1993 supplemental draft and was both a Hockey East and National Collegiate Athletic Association all-star in 1993.With players such as Imes, Brennan and Linna, the league will be star-studded.&ldquo;I think the league should be great,&rdquo; said Northeastern coach Ben Smith. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got the Olympic year out of the way and some of the teams have a lot of seniors.&rdquo;Smith&rsquo;s Huskies are one of the veteran outfits and the NU boss said his team&rsquo;s pre-season pick to finish third is a realistic goal.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re still trying to climb,&rdquo; he said.NOMADIC LIFESTYLE: New Hampshire coach Dick Umile and his Wildcats are getting used to a new existence this season.Their old home, Snively Arena, is being transformed into a recreation center and their new 6,000-seat arena is under construction this season. That has led to a gypsy lifestyle for the team.The Wildcats are practicing in Rochester, N.H., 25 minutes from their Durham campus. They will play nine home games in Manchester, N.H., and four more in Portland, Me. Manchester is 45 minutes from Durham while Portland is an hour away.&ldquo;It has been working out fine so far,&rdquo; Umile said. &ldquo;We have a bus and a van to take the kids to and from practice.&rdquo;NEW RULES: Rule alterations in Hockey East this season will change the look of special teams.There will be a return to four-on-four play when matching minor penalties are called, but if two more matching minors are assessed, teams won&rsquo;t go to three-on-three-they will remain at four-on-four.&ldquo;I like four-on-four. It opens the game up,&rdquo; said Maine coach Shawn Walsh.Northeastern coach Ben Smith doesn&rsquo;t like it, saying &ldquo;it takes kids out of the game.&rdquo;In addition, referees have been instructed to buckle down on all types of interference infractions. &#9632;

Coaches look to Terriers to breeze to league title

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0053-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0053-01147/6739193-1-eng-US/f0053-012.jpg"></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0054-01146/6739186-1-eng-US/f0054-012.jpg" title="f0054-01" width="3146" height="3537"></div> &#9632;

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CLASSIFIED

<div class="byline">By Wayne Fish</div>Mikael Renberg decided he&rsquo;d rather have no job if it meant taking a job away from a fellow countryman.The Philadelphia Flyers&rsquo; right winger chose not to play in his native Sweden as the NHL lockout dragged through October.Renberg went home for a couple weeks shortly after the first delay was announced Sept. 30.But he was back in Philadelphia by Oct. 19, getting ready to join about a dozen Flyers for informal skating workouts at a suburban New Jersey rink.Renberg, 22, wouldn&rsquo;t have minded returning to the Swedish Elite League, but didn&rsquo;t think it would be fair to displace another player.&ldquo;If everything suddenly became okay with the NHL and I only played two or three games, I would feel pretty bad about that,&rdquo; Renberg said. &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m going to wait a while and see what happens.&rdquo;Several high-profile Swedish players, such as Peter Forsberg of the Quebec Nordiques and Mats Sundin of the Toronto Maple Leafs have expressed an interest in playing in their native land.Renberg isn&rsquo;t so sure European players will greet them with open arms.&ldquo;The players in the Swedish Elite League are worried about this,&rdquo; Renberg said. &ldquo;Of the 300 players, 260 said they didn&rsquo;t want (NHLers) playing here.&ldquo;I understand that, because they signed contracts and they started to play with their teams. If we play, then someone else would have to stop.&rdquo;Renberg, who set a Flyers&rsquo; rookie scoring record last season with 82 points, is filled with uncertainty about the lockout.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s very disappointing,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know what to do. It&rsquo;s a nightmare.&rdquo;If nothing is resolved in the labor situation by the end of the October, Renberg said he would resume his school studies in Sweden.SLOW START: Several of the young Flyers sent to the Hershey Bears of the American League to get playing time during the lockout were experiencing tough times.General manager Bob Clarke said defensemen Chris Therien and Vladislav Boulin did not play well as the Bears got off to a 2-5-0 start. To make matters worse, Boulin sustained a knee injury.Jason Bowen, trying to make the adjustment back to left wing after playing defense last season, has been plagued by a sore back.Defenseman Dan Kordic, sent to Hershey on a voluntary two-week conditioning assignment when the lockout began Oct. 1, was still with the Bears three weeks later.NOTEBOOK: Winger Phil Crowe was sent to Hershey Oct. 14. Crowe did not have to clear waivers&hellip;Flyers&rsquo; majority owner Ed Snider met with office and rink personnel Oct. 14 and announced there would be no layoffs during the lockout. That was a relief to those who would have been laid off and those who might have had to do the laying off. &ldquo;Nobody wanted to do it,&rdquo; Bob Clarke said.A group of about a dozen Flyers were involved in informal workouts at a suburban New Jersey rink. The group included Mark Recchi, Kevin Dineen. Rod Brind&rsquo;Amour. Dave Brown, Patrik Juhlin and Ron Hextall. &ldquo;We have to skate,&rdquo; Recchi said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s what we do.&rdquo;&hellip;Dineen had the cast taken off his broken left thumb, an injury he sustained in a Sept. 24 pre-season game against the Washington Capitals.Eric Lindros is exercising his mind and body during the lockout He enrolled in business courses at the University of Western Ontario and was skating with the school&rsquo;s hockey team. &#9632;

Renberg won’t put fellow Swedes out of work

<div class="byline">By Rich Chere</div>Peter Sidorkiewicz never made unreasonable demands.All he wanted from the New Jersey Devils was an opportunity to show he is still an NHL-calibre goaltender worthy of at least a backup role or a trade to another organization.Instead, Sidorkiewicz continues to endure a string of events which have put his hockey career in limbo. Last season it was a shoulder injury; this year the league&rsquo;s labor dispute.Sidorkiewicz, a member of the NHL&rsquo;s all-rookie team in 1989 as a member of the Hartford Whalers, arrived at the Devils&rsquo; training camp last summer with an ailing shoulder that made it impossible for him to perform at peak level. Acquired from the Ottawa Senators along with rugged forward Mike Peluso for goalie Craig Billington, forward Troy Mallette and a fourth-round draft pick in 1993, Sidorkiewicz had injured his shoulder in Ottawa&rsquo;s final regular-season game in 1992-93 against the Boston Bruins.Even when Sidorkiewicz said he was physically capable of playing, the Devils kept him out of the picture as they awaited a ruling on a compensation dispute with the Senators. On Feb. 1, the league announced the Senators had to pay two-thirds of Sidorkiewicz&rsquo;s 1993-94 salary and give the Devils a 1994 fifth-round draft pick. That pick was eventually traded to the Calgary Flames.&ldquo;He showed some character last year,&rdquo; said New Jersey coach Jacques Lemaire. &ldquo;He knew the situation. He went down to the minors and worked hard. He became one of the best goaltenders in the International League. Another guy might have quit.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0056-01124/6739248-1-eng-US/f0056-012.jpg" title="f0056-01" width="588" height="814"><figcaption class="caption-body">Peter Sidorkiewicz has endured tough times with the Devils.</figcaption></div>In truth, quitting just one year after appearing in the NHL All-Star Game was a distinct possibility.&ldquo;I think when I was in Albany I wondered: &lsquo;Why am I doing this?&rsquo; It&rsquo;s tough to play when you&rsquo;re not having fun,&rdquo; Sidorkiewicz recalled.Sidorkiewicz played 15 games for the Albany River Rats of the American League and posted a 6-7-2 record and 3.97 goals-against average before agreeing to play with the Fort Wayne Komets of the IHL.&ldquo;It was a do-or-die situation for me,&rdquo; Sidorkiewicz said. &ldquo;If I went down there and didn&rsquo;t play well, I was done. But the team played well and I got to play. I doubted myself until that point.&rdquo;Sidorkiewicz finished 6-3-0 with a 2.74 GAA in 11 regular-season appearances. His 1,054 minutes played in the playoffs represented a league high and he recorded one post-season shutout.At the Devils&rsquo; training camp this season, Sidorkiewicz saw extensive action. Chris Terreri was unable to play because of a shoulder injury and Sidorkiewicz performed well enough to at least interest other clubs.&ldquo;It was nice to play. Last year I came in and was unable to play and compete for a job,&rdquo; Sidorkiewicz said. &ldquo;I think I can still play in the NHL. Hopefully, there will be room for me somewhere. I&rsquo;ve showed I can play.&rdquo;Then came the lockout.By mid-October, Terreri was healthy again and Sidorkiewicz was back in limbo. Sidorkiewicz would not reveal if he had asked general manager Lou Lamoriello for a trade.&ldquo;That&rsquo;s between myself, my agent and Lou,&rdquo; Sidorkiewicz said.WENDY TERRERI: Chris Terreri is resigned to the fact he will lose money if the NHL is forced to shorten its regular season schedule, but the veteran goalie has already begun working on his dream beyond hockey.At home in Rhode Island, Terreri was about to open the first in what he hoped would be a string of Wendy&rsquo;s fast food restaurants.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been busy. I&rsquo;ve been picking up bricks and hauling lumber,&rdquo; Terreri said.Clearly, the pinched nerve in Terreri&rsquo;s shoulder, which kept him on the sidelines for the entire pre-season, is no longer a problem.&ldquo;The shoulder feels great,&rdquo; Terreri said. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not even an issue now. In that regard, this (the lockout) has worked out well.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Center Alexander Semak asked the Devils if he could play for Dynamo Moscow during the lockout, but was not granted permission. The Devils&rsquo; second leading scorer two years ago, who slipped from 79 points to just 29 last season, would have to play at his own risk&hellip;Agent Gilles Lupien insisted the Devils had lost all hope of re-signing 22-year-old goalie Martin Brodeur, but the 1993-94 Rookie of the Year claimed he will still entertain offers from New Jersey until the labor dispute is settled. Brodeur is entering his option year.Tommy Albelin said he has no plans to play for Djurgarden in Sweden, but added he would leave that possibility open if his old club is interested in his services&hellip;Lou Lamoriello spent time with Brian Rolston in Albany and said the rookie center had no resentment over his recall from the minors. That move saved the Devils $250,000 on Rolston&rsquo;s one-way contract. &#9632;

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Sidorkiewicz’s career in limbo

<div class="byline">By Boy Cummings</div>Turn back the clock about 90 days and the scene would have seemed absolutely normal.On a Monday morning in mid-October, however, it seemed a little strange to see a dozen members of the Tampa Bay Lightning wearing beer-league jerseys and skating through an unsupervised workout at the tiny SunBlades arena in nearby Clearwater.But this is what the fruitless squabbling between Gary Bettman and Bob Goodenow has wrought: NHL players, some without full equipment, playing shinny in front of a handful of fans, most of whom were waiting for the start of the day&rsquo;s public skating session.&ldquo;This is pretty much what we do during the summer when we&rsquo;re getting ready for camp,&rdquo; forward John Tucker said after the players returned to the ice for the first time since packing their bags and leaving the ThunderDome two weeks ago. &ldquo;But we felt like we had to do it. We had to get back on the ice again.&ldquo;I mean, we all worked out hard for a month and we don&rsquo;t want to lose what we got from that. The wind, that&rsquo;ll come. But the hands, the skating, that&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;ve got to work to keep and that&rsquo;s why we were here.&rdquo;They certainly weren&rsquo;t there because they sense an end to the labor war is near. They wanted to make sure fans don&rsquo;t misinterpret their return to the ice as a sign they are ready to give in to the owners&rsquo; demands.&ldquo;No way,&rdquo; said Chris Gratton. &ldquo;Our union is solid and prepared to wait it out and it looks like the owners feel the same way.&rdquo;&ldquo;The only thing we&rsquo;re doing here is keeping ourselves in shape just in case something happens and this thing suddenly gets resolved. If that were to happen in the next couple weeks or so, we&rsquo;d want to be ready.&rdquo;Maintaining that state of preparedness won&rsquo;t put a severe financial strain on the players. The cost of the first informal skating session, which lasted an hour and 15 minutes, was $187.50, or about $16 per player.&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll all chip in to help pay for the ice,&rdquo; said Brian Bradley. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s no big deal. This is just something we feel we need to do for ourselves and we&rsquo;re going to keep doing it as long as there&rsquo;s enough guys around to make it worthwhile.&rdquo;Some players believe it will be more worth their while to wait out the work stoppage than playing in Europe or in one of the minor-pro leagues.&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t even really talked to anybody in Sweden yet, but I&rsquo;m hearing they don&rsquo;t want to take anybody for just a month or two,&rdquo; said Mikael Andersson. &ldquo;So I&rsquo;m not going anywhere.&rdquo;LOOKING FOR WORK: One player who could be playing elsewhere should the work stoppage drag on much longer is Chris Gratton.Gratton said he would be interested in playing for his old junior team, the Kingston Frontenacs of the Ontario League, should the NHL not begin playing by mid-November.&ldquo;These are my developmental years and for that reason I&rsquo;d have to consider it,&rdquo; Gratton said.Gratton would have to receive permission from the Lightning before retuming to his junior club and he probably would be turned down.&ldquo;At this time we can&rsquo;t see it because we don&rsquo;t think going back to junior would be productive for Chris,&rdquo; said Tony Esposito, the Lightning&rsquo;s director of hockey operations. &ldquo;Besides, he&rsquo;s part of the players&rsquo; union and he needs to stick with them.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Lightning governor David LeFevre reiterated last week he has no plans to begin laying off Lightning employees as a result of the work stoppage. &#9632;

Playing shinny helps relieve lockout boredom

<div class="byline">By Jeff Williams</div>When New York Islanders&rsquo; general manager Don Maloney acquired Troy Loney in a trade last June, he was looking for character and leadership. Well, that&rsquo;s what Maloney got, but not quite in the way he intended.Loney is the Islanders&rsquo; de facto player rep, unelected but nonetheless totally involved in the labor dispute that has delayed the season. He was the player rep and team captain of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim last season. Tom Kurvers was the player rep for the Islanders. Maloney swapped Kurvers for Loney at the entry draft.The 31-year-old Loney was the kind of guy the Islanders feel they lacked last season.&ldquo;We had a lot of time to assess what went wrong last season,&rdquo; Maloney said. &ldquo;We felt that we lacked leadership off the ice as well as on it. I had been interested in Troy for a while and last June I finally got it put together.&rdquo;The big left winger was impressive during the exhibition schedule, often playing with the top lines.&ldquo;We really liked what we saw during the exhibition season.&rdquo; Maloney said. &ldquo;He did all the little things you need to do to win.&rdquo;But he was equally impressive as a spokesman for the players&rsquo; cause in the NHL labor&rsquo; dispute and his new teammates looked to Loney for information, explanation and leadership.&ldquo;I hope this doesn&rsquo;t last too long but it wouldn&rsquo;t surprise me if it did,&rdquo; Loney said. &ldquo;It becomes a matter of principle for me, and the principle ticks me off.&ldquo;I was around when you had fun playing hockey, but from a financial perspective things weren&rsquo;t good. There were league-appointed arbitrators, no free agency. We got neutral arbitrators and things have improved financially, so now they are trying to take it all back.&rdquo;While Loney says he&rsquo;s prepared to sit out the entire season, if necessary, for his principles, he&rsquo;d rather be embarking on the playoff run with the Islanders.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0058-01122/6739303-1-eng-US/f0058-012.jpg" title="f0058-01" width="585" height="987"><figcaption class="caption-body">Dave Chyzowski won&rsquo;t be going to the minor leagues this season.</figcaption></div>&ldquo;This is a good young team,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I remember when they knocked us (Pittsburgh Penguins) out of the playoffs (in 1993).&ldquo;They impressed me and I was really looking forward to playing with them this season.&rdquo;BACK TO JUNIOR: The Islanders need Brett Lindros to be playing hockey, so Oct. 18 they sent him back to his major junior team, the Ontario League&rsquo;s Kingston Frontenacs.&ldquo;We wanted him to have the opportunity to play and skate,&rdquo; Maloney said. &ldquo;We were working under a league directive that said you had to send junior players back to their teams by Oct. 15 if you wanted to recall them. If we sent him after that date, we couldn&rsquo;t get him back this season.&rdquo;In any event, Lindros can be recalled after the lockout.The Islanders signed the 18-year-old to a five-year, $6.7 million (U.S.) contract Oct. 1. He was their No. I choice in the June draft.He won&rsquo;t be getting the big bucks playing for Kingston. &ldquo;He gets paid $40 a week,&rdquo; said his father and agent, Carl Lindros. &ldquo;After payroll deductions, that&rsquo;s about 37 something.&rdquo;Brett and his brother Eric recently posed for a People magazine pictorial at a rink near the Lindros&rsquo; family home in Toronto. The brothers also did an interview with ESPN. It was something to break up the monotony of the lockout. &ldquo;Brett has made headway in cleaning up his bedroom,&rdquo; said his father. &ldquo;I guess that&rsquo;s the only good thing to come out of this situation.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Dave Chyzowski picked a bad time to become a bigleaguer. The Islanders&rsquo; No. I pick in the 1989 draft has never caught on with the big club, spending the vast majority of his career in the minors. This summer the 23-year-old left winger signed a one-way contract. Not a very lucrative one, but big enough so when the lockout began the Islanders wouldn&rsquo;t send him down to the Denver Grizzlies of the International League, where at least he could be collecting a paycheck&hellip;The Islanders agreed to terms Oct. 17 with Bryan McCabe, the 19-year-old defenseman they took as their second choice in the 1993 draft. The 6-foot-l, 200-pound native of St. Catharines. Ont., was assigned to the Spokane Chiefs of the Western League on Sept. 27. Don Maloney said it was unclear whether McCabe could be recalled from that junior team if the NHL season resumes. While the value of the contract was not revealed, it is for three years plus an option year.Goaltender Tommy Soderstrom has returned to Sweden, where he might try to play with an Elite League team until the NHL season resumes. Soderstrom was acquired in the off-season from the Philadelphia Flyers for goaltender Ron Hex-tall&hellip;Nine members of the Islanders skated together on Oct. 17, the first time they had done so since Sept. 30. &#9632;

f0058-01

Loney supplies leadership-plus

<div class="byline">By Rick Carpiniello</div>Sometimes the truth hurts.When the New York Rangers sent their rookies to the Binghamton Rangers, where they could play and be paid American League salaries during the NHL lockout, they told goalie Corey Hirsch the truth.&ldquo;They told me, lockout or no lockout, I was going down,&rdquo; Hirsch said. &ldquo;I want to play in the NHL, but there is no NHL at this time. You can look at this two ways: I&rsquo;m getting paid, or I&rsquo;m still not in the NHL.&rdquo;&ldquo;We told him the truth, no fooling around,&rdquo; said coach Colin Campbell. &ldquo;Maybe I should have conned the guy. Players always say, &lsquo;Geez, I wish people would have told me the truth.&rsquo; Well I told Corey, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m going to be honest. If you get a shutout every (exhibition) game, you still wouldn&rsquo;t be playing here.&rsquo; &ldquo;Hirsch is third on the depth chart behind Mike Richter and Glenn Healy and unless one is traded or injured, Hirsch won&rsquo;t play for the Rangers for a while.&ldquo;I want something to happen,&rdquo; Hirsch said, adding he hasn&rsquo;t asked to be traded. &ldquo;But it isn&rsquo;t up to me. I&rsquo;m not the guy who&rsquo;s going to make that decision.&rdquo;Through seven games with Binghamton, Hirsch was undefeated on an undefeated team and that, along with a paycheck, has helped ease his frustration.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s going well,&rdquo; Hirsch said. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s most important right now is that we&rsquo;ve got a great team here. That&rsquo;s a lot better than, say, you come down and play on a team that&rsquo;s losing.&rdquo;DOUBLE-WHAMMY: Published reports suggested the Rangers were one of a handful of teams willing to accept the players&rsquo; no-strike promise and start the season Oct. 1.The team would neither confirm nor categorically deny the reports.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re in full support of the league&rsquo;s position,&rdquo; said team president-general manager Neil Smith, who is also an alternate governor. &ldquo;We voted that way when the vote was taken.&ldquo;There was a lot of open discussion about whether to accept the players&rsquo; proposal, and that&rsquo;s the way it should be. But when all was said and done, everyone was in agreement that we shouldn&rsquo;t start the season. That reflects our position.&rdquo;It was approximated, based on one of the players&rsquo; proposals, the Rangers would have to pay a tax of $3.3 million on their payroll and gate receipts. That puts Smith in an awkward position, since he can&rsquo;t oppose the tax system as an alternate governor, but he will be gready affected by it as a GM.&ldquo;If you&rsquo;re asking if we&rsquo;re going to be happy to pay a luxury tax, I can&rsquo;t say that I am,&rdquo; Smith said. &ldquo;Will we pay it? We will if we have to. We intend to stay in the league.&rdquo;NOTEBOOK: Left winger Adam Graves remained in a Los Angeles hotel while he underwent physical therapy following back surgery Oct. 11. Graves is expected to return home, but will be unable to play until mid-December.The league ordered teams to stop negotiating on contracts, which means a halt to the already stalled Mark Messier renegotiation talks. Mike Richter&rsquo;scontract could possibly be finished since the negotiating process was completed before Oct. 15. The sides agreed in principle about Sept. 29&hellip;Petr Nedved, Alexander Karpovtsev and Sergei Nemchinov were hoping to play in European leagues during the lockout. &#9632;

Hirsch was bound for minors regardless of what happened

<div class="byline">By Dave Joseph</div>Brian Skrudland doesn&rsquo;t want to hear another thing about salary caps, lockouts or taxes.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sick and tired of talking about all that crap,&rdquo; said the Florida Panthers&rsquo; captain. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got to get whoever we have to locked in a room to solve this whole thing.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care if we have to put padded walls in the room. We&rsquo;ve lost whatever edge we had in this game. We&rsquo;ve missed a great opportunity to advertise and sell this sport; especially in the southeast United States.&rdquo;Skrudland, a finalist last year for the Selke Trophy for the league&rsquo;s top defensive forward, made his remarks after Panther players held an informal workout Oct. 18.The players, refusing to use any of the team&rsquo;s facilities, practiced with their jerseys inside-out so the Panthers&rsquo; emblem wasn&rsquo;t showing and paid $300 to rent the ice for 90 minutes.&ldquo;We&rsquo;re just preparing ourselves in case something comes around,&rdquo; said defenseman Joe Cirella.Player representative John Vanbiesbrouck said 20 players were at the skate and the team would continue to rent the ice twice a week.While Skrudland, a 10-year veteran, admitted it was nice to get on the ice, it clearly isn&rsquo;t enough for him. He said he&rsquo;s frustrated and angry.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve become bored because I realize I&rsquo;m not doing what I should,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I feel so distant, too, because the meetings go on a thousand miles away. It&rsquo;s too bad. I&rsquo;ve found a job I love and I enjoy, and I get paid a great deal of money to play it. I&rsquo;m proud to play it, but I&rsquo;m not proud of what&rsquo;s happening right now. We have to get this thing settled.&ldquo;But I guess the other side is if we&rsquo;re not going to get paid, let&rsquo;s get it over and done with. I&rsquo;m losing a lot of money here. But it&rsquo;s not to say that Brian Skrudland can&rsquo;t go out, as will be the case in a couple years from now, and get a regular job like everyone else. It&rsquo;s certainly not an option I want right now, but I&rsquo;ve also got to get very real now. I&rsquo;m also a little scared. Common sense tells me that my career is not going to last that much longer.&rdquo;HOMEWARD BOUND: The only Panthers not in Florida are center Rob Niedermayer and defenseman Peter Andersson.Niedermayer, 19, returned to his home in Cranbrook, B.C., and will likely remain there until the season resumes.General manager Bryan Murray said he never considered sending Niedermayer to his old junior team as the Ottawa Senators did with Alexandre Daigle. With the Daigle ruling, it threw the doors open for any junioraged player to return to the junior ranks, but Murray said that won&rsquo;t happen.&ldquo;He played last year with the Panthers and from what I saw in training camp, he&rsquo;s an NHL-caliber player,&rdquo; Murray said.Andersson, left unprotected in the waiver draft, returned to his native Sweden. Murray said he expects Andersson, 29, to eventually play in Sweden during the lockout. Andersson is property of Malmo.NOTEBOOK: The players aren&rsquo;t playing, but some people associated with the team have kept busy during the lockout. Denis Potvin, the Panthers&rsquo; television and radio analyst, opened a sporting goods store near the Panthers&rsquo; training facility in Pompano. Assistant media relations director Kevin Dessart participated in the Ironman Triathlon Oct. 15 in Hawaii. Dessart completed the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2 mile marathon in just under 12 hours. Radio play-by-play announcer Chris Moore was preparing to participate in a media challenge race at Pompano Harness Track. &#9632;

Skrudland pleads for CBA resolution

<div class="byline">By Red Fisher</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0062-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0062-01101/6739420-1-eng-US/f0062-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Operating his nursery/ice cream business in St. Louis has kept Doug Wickenheiser busy and helped take his mind off his illness. (Photo by Tim Parker)</figcaption></div>BALLWIN, MO.-He sits there, running his fingers lightly across a two-inch scar on his left wrist, all the while rubbing the reddish palm of his hand across the roughness of his blue jeans.Back and forth&hellip;back and forth.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s tender,&rdquo; Wickenheiser explained. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s like a bad sunburn, I guess.&rdquo;Back. Forth.&ldquo;Great day, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; asked Wickenheiser, squinting skyward from his chair on the patio of his three-bedroom bungalow in this middle-class St. Louis suburb. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t get many days like this at this time of the year. Makes a guy feel good.&rdquo;The ragged, fresh-looking scar on his wrist is all that&rsquo;s left of a lump that once had been there. He first noticed it two years ago in Peoria, when he was playing out what was left of a career that once had been filled with hope and promise.&ldquo;It was funny,&rdquo; said Wickenheiser, 33. &ldquo;No more than the size of, oh&hellip;my small fingernail. Then it kind of got a little bigger and then would go back down, then bigger, then smaller.&rdquo;A cyst, the doctor in Peoria told him. Nothing to worry about.There was this back problem last season when he was playing in Fort Wayne. He showed the growth to his chiropractor.&ldquo;What do you think?&rdquo; he asked, because by now the cyst had grown bigger and stayed there, like the lump it was.&ldquo;A cyst,&rdquo; said the chiropractor, &ldquo;but those things can grow tentacles, the kind that wrap around a nerve and cause some numbness in the fingers. Better get it out before it gets that far.&rdquo;Surgery was performed Aug. 8, only four days after the twin girls, Rachel and Kaitlin, were bom. Two tiny, joyous bundles, even now waiting lustily inside the screened door only feet away. It was a time to be excited&hellip;to be happy. The babies&hellip;What&rsquo;s more, hadn&rsquo;t the doctor dismissed any fears Wickenheiser had awaiting the surgery? &ldquo;It&rsquo;s only a cyst,&rdquo; the doctor had said. Lots of people have cysts.&rdquo;Three days later, the doctor was on the telephone.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got some bad news,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I think it might be serious. It might be a form of cancer.&rdquo;Epithelioidal sarcoma. Bone cancer.Only seven days earlier, and two years to the day she and Doug were married, Dianne Wickenheiser had given birth to Rachel and Kaitlin. The pregnancy was terribly difficult. Only those mothers and fathers who live and worry through them understand these things.There was a lot of concern, and after the twins&rsquo; arrival eight weeks premature, Dianne was ordered to rest as much as possible. That&rsquo;s what she was doing when Doug was getting the bad news.&ldquo;I had the babies and he had the surgery like&hellip;only four days later,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t suspect. We weren&rsquo;t expecting anything, you know. We just thought it was going to be a kind of routine procedure. No big deal. A cyst. We just thought he&rsquo;d have to go slowly, just rest for another week. And then the doctor called him. I was still in bed because I was so ill during the pregnancy&hellip;&ldquo;Anyway, I was just kinda, like, overhearing the conversation,&rdquo; Dianne recalls, &ldquo;and I could hear Doug say, &lsquo;Oh, really?&rsquo; And he said something weird. You know, I just heard him say something like that.&rdquo;&ldquo;What was that all about?&rdquo; Dianne asked Doug minutes later.&ldquo;Uh, well, he just wants me to see a physician next week about what they found in my wrist. He just thinks there&rsquo;s something kind of weird.&rdquo;&ldquo;Well, Doug, what is it?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;You know, either it is or it isn&rsquo;t something bad. I mean, I don&rsquo;t think those things are usually marginal.&rdquo;&ldquo;Well, no, I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Doug said.&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know if he knew or if he was trying not to upset me,&rdquo; Dianne said quietly.&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m going to call the doctor,&rdquo; she told Doug.&ldquo;Whatever,&rdquo; he replied.The doctor wasn&rsquo;t in when she telephoned the next night. He didn&rsquo;t have the news she wanted to hear when he returned the call: &ldquo;It is cancer, for sure,&rdquo; the doctor said.&ldquo;I was floored, just floored,&rdquo; she wept.&ldquo;Did that doctor ever tell you for sure what it was?&rdquo; she asked Doug after the phone call.&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said.&ldquo;He told me it could be kind of serious,&rdquo; Dianne said.&ldquo;Oh really,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;Well, we&rsquo;ll just have to wait and see&hellip; wait and see.&rdquo;&ldquo;I knew it was something serious,&rdquo; she remembers. &ldquo;I knew it was a tumor-a malignant tumor.&rdquo;Normally, Dianne smiles and laughs easily and often. Now, there were tears when Doug wasn&rsquo;t there to see them. Lots of them.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s scary. It&rsquo;s really scary,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure he has his moments and I&rsquo;m sure they&rsquo;re tough moments, you know, when he&rsquo;s by himself, but he doesn&rsquo;t really show it at all. But I was really upset,&rdquo; she wept quietly.&ldquo;For some reason, he has never backed down from it. He has just never let it get to him. He has never let it unglue him. I, of course, became totally unglued.&ldquo;When I first heard it,&rdquo; she recalls, &ldquo;I did what I had to do&hellip;you know&hellip;clean the house, look after Rachel and Kaitlin. The first few days, I don&rsquo;t know what I would have done without the babies to hold on to. But I was just rattled. I cried for the whole weekend.&ldquo;I still do,&rdquo; she smiled through the tears.Once, what seems like light years away, in terms of time and importance, from the labor impasse involving NHL owners and players, Doug Wickenheiser&rsquo;s talent burst like an exploding meteor on the game. It lit up his days and especially his nights when he was the best of Canada&rsquo;s junior players.One year, he scored 37 goals and 51 assists with the Regina Pats. The next: 32 goals and 62 assists.He was only 19 when he scored 89 goals and 81 assists and by that time, nobody doubted he would be the No. I overall choice in the 1980 draft. In Montreal, where Guy Lafleur raised a season-long clamor about his need for a big center, the Canadiens knew they had their man in the 6-foot-l, 200-pound Wickenheiser. David Babych, a big, strapping defenseman who played in Portland, was No. 2. A kid named Denis Savard was taken No. 3 overall by the Chicago Blackhawks.The Canadiens&rsquo; first game in that 1980-81 season was a matchup in heaven. Savard, who had played his junior hockey in Montreal, would be wearing a Blackhawks&rsquo; sweater, Wickenheiser, the CH-until, that is, Canadiens&rsquo; management made the mind-boggling decision not to dress its No. 1 choice.&ldquo;Too much pressure on the kid,&rdquo; was the terse explanation from coach Claude Ruel.So instead of living out a dream, Wickenheiser worked out in the dressing room.&ldquo;I rode the bike,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t happy. I just wish they&rsquo;d given me a chance to go out and play. If it turned out that it was the wrong choice, at least let me have some influence on it. By not playing me, it took everything out of my hands&hellip;just sitting and waiting.&rdquo;On this, what was to have been a night to remember, Wickenheiser tried to forget everything about it by riding a bike. On the ice, meanwhile, Savard was turning Larry Robinson inside-out for a goal late in the first period of a 5-4 Chicago victory.There were no tears and whining then from Wickenheiser. There are none now, even though brave men and women have been known to cry over a lot less. There were none through 17 radiation treatments. With 16 more to follow, after a week off to ease the discomfort of the radiation&rsquo;s assault on the lower palm of his left hand. There werenlt any even when amputation was mentioned as an option to radiation.&ldquo;More than anything, it was the timing,&rdquo; he sighed. &ldquo;It was right after the birth of the girls, when you&rsquo;re supposed to be excited and happy. And all of a sudden, you get this thrown at you. It was probably harder on Dianne than on me. She was more worried and probably is more worried than I am.&ldquo;There&rsquo;s really nothing you can do about it. Whining doesn&rsquo;t change things a whole lot. Is there worry? Sure there is. The fact that the doctor said it was cancerous didn&rsquo;t really thrill me. I just feel we&rsquo;re doing everything we can do about it medically. We talked to a number of people and went through different choices as far as treatment and the one that we&rsquo;re doing we feel gives us the best chance of eliminating the cancer.&rdquo;&ldquo;We talked to different people about radiation and about amputation being one of the options,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;They just felt that at my age, with this type of cancer, amputation is a really radical solution.&ldquo;I mean&hellip;I went through all the tests they felt I need: the CAT scans, the bone scans&hellip;the lymph node biopsy. When they found that it hadn&rsquo;t spread there, they felt that radiating the area is a better way to go.&ldquo;If you could absolutely guarantee that cutting off the arm would stop it, it&rsquo;s probably worth it right?,&rdquo; he sighed. &ldquo;And we said yeah. But they said there&rsquo;s no guarantee, so what happens if they cut it off and a year later it shows up again? I mean, that was an option and still is. They say if it recurs it probably is an option.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s something that might have to be considered,&rdquo; he said quietly. Then he breathed deeply and gazed skyward. &ldquo;Sometimes,&rdquo; he grinned tightly, &ldquo;1 find myself wishing it was my right arm. I do everything with my left arm.&rdquo;Cindy Beck, who&rsquo;s in her 30s, is the wife of one of Wickenheiser&rsquo;s friends. Doug thinks about her a lot.&ldquo;A little while ago we found out she has breast cancer,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s going through chemotherapy and she&rsquo;s going to have a mastectomy and everything else. She called one day to see the babies and visit and talk&hellip;and she was really upbeat about her situation. I don&rsquo;t knowwhether I&rsquo;m right or wrong, but I&rsquo;m thinking her situation is a little more serious than mine because of the area it&rsquo;s in. Mine is sort of remote. It&rsquo;s not near any internal organs or anything.&ldquo;I just thought if she could be that upbeat and that positive in her situation, I can&rsquo;t see any reason why I should be complaining.&rdquo;He is 33, and the father of two babies who, for a little while longer, at least, must stay inside their home because the pregnancy was difficult and the twins were eight weeks premature. Once, he was the best of hockey&rsquo;s young players. With dreams of excelling at the NHL level-only to have them disappear into the mists.Now, this: these deadly cells in his wrists which threaten to steal the joy Rachel and Kaitlin and Dianne have brought him. How many times must a decent human being be tested? When do the demons finally leave him alone? Does he speak to them when he&rsquo;s alone? Does he ask them, &ldquo;Why me?&rdquo;&ldquo;I guess that at a time like this, a lot of people ask themselves that question,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I wish this whole thing wouldn&rsquo;t have come up. Maybe there isn&rsquo;t an answer why it has happened, but I can honestly say I haven&rsquo;t once asked myself, &lsquo;Why me?&rsquo;&ldquo;Maybe it&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;ve been so busy with the girls and working (he and a partner operate a nursery and ice cream business) I haven&rsquo;t had time to ask the question. Maybe when things slow down in the winter, I might wonder about it, but up to now, I really haven&rsquo;t.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0063-0194/6739413-1-eng-US/f0063-012.jpg" title="f0063-01" width="1492" height="2435"><figcaption class="caption-body">The Canadiens passed on hometown hero Denis Savard in the 1980 draft. (Photos by Bruce Bennett Studios)</figcaption></div>&ldquo;Do I think about my situation much? Not really, I really don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he insisted. &ldquo;I just feel we&rsquo;ve done everything we can do as far as taking all the right tests in making sure it hasn&rsquo;t spread. We&rsquo;ve done everything we can that&rsquo;s in our hands. If it&rsquo;s going to recur down the road after the treatments are over, well&hellip;I just don&rsquo;t think about that.&rdquo;Now, the sun is higher on this quiet street with homes mostly filled with young people who still have the time to wave at a neighbor&rsquo;s passing car. Rachel-or is it Kaitlin?&mdash;is wailing again in quick little bursts. The sound brings a special light to Wickenheiser&rsquo;s face.&ldquo;People ask me if I&rsquo;m afraid, if I&rsquo;m worried,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Really, seriously, the way I look at it is that I&rsquo;ve&hellip;we&rsquo;ve done everything possible and there&rsquo;s really nothing else that we can do. We just pray to God that everything is going to turn out all right.&rdquo;He waved his hand at the noise coming from beyond the screened door. &ldquo;There are plenty of things to live for as you can hear from the screaming going on in there now. There&rsquo;s enough to be joyful about and thankful about&hellip;nothing really to walk around moping about.&rdquo;Telling friends about the cancer was hard, of course. Telling his parents about it was heartwrenching.&ldquo;You call them up on the phone,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and you tell them: &lsquo;Oh, by the way, I&rsquo;ve got some bad news. They kind of thought something had happened with one of the girls.&ldquo;For a while, I didn&rsquo;t really talk about it to anybody, but now more of my friends know. It&rsquo;s not that I mind talking about it,&rdquo; he added quickly &ldquo;but normally, the only time you see your friends is in a social gathering and you don&rsquo;t want to go to someone&rsquo;s birthday party and walk up and say, &lsquo;Happy birthday. Oh, by the way. I&rsquo;ve got cancer.&rsquo; sort of thing.&rdquo;Soon, he&rsquo;ll undergo the first of the 16 radiation treatments remaining in the procedure. &ldquo;You hear the word radiation, and you imagine all those fancy gadgets, but it&rsquo;s really like an X-ray machine,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They tell you, &lsquo;Okay, you&rsquo;re not going to feel anything.&rsquo; You&rsquo;re sitting there and they say, &lsquo;Okay, we&rsquo;re going to start.&rsquo; You&rsquo;re sort of waiting and then you don&rsquo;t feel anything. It&rsquo;s kind of a letdown,&rdquo; he grinned.Sixteen more treatments and then, he hopes, it&rsquo;s over. Only a little more than three weeks of a machine&rsquo;s stalking of the deadly cells.What if, though?&ldquo;Nobody has to tell me they&rsquo;ll never pronounce me cured because they can&rsquo;t do that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I know they&rsquo;ll never says yes, it&rsquo;s completely gone, but once they get three to five years and there&rsquo;s no recurrence, then they say you&rsquo;re pretty-well 98 or 99 per cent sure it&rsquo;s all taken care of.&rdquo;What if?&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not overly religious,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We go to church all the time, and sure, something like this maybe brings it out a little bit more. I think it makes me feel a little bit better, just believing the Lord&hellip;it&rsquo;s sort of in his hands. I mean, you can&rsquo;t do anything and basically, if he decides it&rsquo;s your time, it&rsquo;s your time.&ldquo;I really believe there&rsquo;s a reason for everything that happens. Whether it&rsquo;s for us to know or not why something happens and why something doesn&rsquo;t happen, well, I guess it&rsquo;s something no one will ever find out.&rdquo;What if?&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure it won&rsquo;t come back, but if it does,&rdquo; he said barely above a whisper, &ldquo;I guess that&rsquo;s when the possibility of the amputation can come in.&rdquo;On the other side of the screened door, Rachel and Kaitlin cried out in their sleep.Maybe they even understood. &#9632;

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November 4, 1994

WESTERN LEAGUE

‘Soft cap’ cornerstone of pending CBA settlement

Bondra looks to rebound

From chairs to linens, NHL Enterprises has it