Search for your favorite player or team
© The Hockey News. All rights reserved. Any and all material on this website cannot be used, reproduced, or distributed without prior written permission from Roustan Media Ltd. For more information, please see our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
December 27, 1996
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.
Beyond Mad Max?
More than 3,000 people are in attendance at the Von Braun Civic Center in Huntsville, Ala., when the public address announcer turns on the microphone and lets it rip. Introducing, No. 18, Maaaaaaaad Max. Middendorf! You’ve heard of him before. He has played in three countries, seven leagues and 13 teams over the past decade. Now in the Central League with the Huntsville Channel Cats, making $300 a week, Middendorf has made a career out of promise and potential. He has always been long on talent and short on patience. The 6-foot-4, 210-pound right winger can skate, shoot and take the body. Doing it on a regular basis is another matter. And there’s the matter of all those suspensions. The Quebec Nordiques selected Middendorf from the Ontario League’s Sudbury Wolves in the third round…
The Big Hurts
You could almost say the players brought this injury bug on themselves. They created it through their summer workouts in the gym and on the bike and in the pool, through their fat-free diets and through their year-round commitment to stay in shape. As a result, they skate with incredible power and hit with unprecedented force, but the heavier, stronger, faster NHL comes with an ironic abdominal twist (and strained knee ligament and herniated cervical disc): the bigger they get, the harder they fall-and they can only hope a concussion hasn’t knocked them out before they hit the ice. It gives survival of the fittest a whole new meaning. “I think injuries are much more serious than they were in the past,” said Philadelphia Flyers’ GM Bob Clarke, whose team floundered when superstar center…
Joseph keeps skates firmly on ice after out-of-this-world performance
Curtis Joseph’s foray into hockey history didn’t exactly change his life. Oh sure, the Edmonton Oilers’ goalie had lost five pounds, about one for every 10 shots the Detroit Red Wings watched him stop in the season’s third scoreless tie Dec. 10 at Joe Louis Arena. And it’s true he didn’t have to take any time to re-think one particular play, as he always does after a game. “Usually you think about your mistakes or how you could have improved, how you could have stopped one more shot,” Joseph said. He stopped them all in Detroit, all 52 of them, but Joseph was almost non-plussed by his part in the first scoreless tie in team history. Equalling a team record of four shutouts in a season certainly won’t swell his head either. “Shutouts are few…
More trouble on home front
This season, the Boston Bruins have been easy to beat at the Fleet. So they could hardly be surprised at suggestions the head of coach Steve Kasper, those of several players, or a combination of both had to roll in the wake of yet another disastrous homestand, which knocked them to 5-10-4 in their own building. Calls for the firing of Kasper, or at least a good portion of his roster, grew loudest Dec. 12, after a 7-4 loss to the New Jersey Devils. That defeat, which prompted Kasper to call a team meeting the next day, left Boston 0-3-1 with one game left on a homestand that opened with cause for optimism: the Bruins reached 500 with a 4-3 road victory over the Montreal Canadiens Dec. 4 and were coming home for…