Knocked back: If he wants to start a fight, all any player must do is bump Wayne Gretzky in a game. But the Los Angeles Kings star has always been a vocal opponent of fighting and recently lamented the impact that the Dec. 28 pregame brawl between the Blackhawks and Minnesota had on the way the game is perceived.
”We spend time cleaning our image, then a brawl before a game sets us back two to three years,” Gretzky said. ”We have to eliminate it. I see fighting eliminated from hockey not this year but within the next five or six years.”
– Pressure cooker: Paul Holmgren is well aware of what Mike Keenan has brought to the Hawks. Now the Flyers head coach, Holmgren was a Keenan assistant in Philadelphia.
”Their whole game is pressure,” Holmgren said. ”If you`re prepared to handle the pressure they put on you, you`ll be all right. I don`t think we handled that pressure last Saturday (a 8-5 loss in Chicago). We were too offensive-minded.”
Holmgren could call upon more players this season than Keenan did in 1987-`88-his last with the club. That season, Keenan used a club-record 41 different players. So far, Holmgren has sent 36 different Flyers out on the ice.
– Facing it: Jocelyn Lemieux wore a face shield in St. Louis and Montreal, but the hard-checking winger has shed the protective device since coming to Chicago. He looked at his new teammates and realized none of the other Hawks wear face shields. He didn`t want to be the odd man out.
– Mr. Lucky: Defenseman Bob McGill should run out and buy some lottery tickets this week. He may be on a lucky streak after a no-call by the officials when his stick accidentally clipped the Rangers` Brian Mullen Wednesday night. Mullen needed seven stitches to close the cut. The officials were focused on Doug Wilson`s holding call when the incident occurred, and that`s why no automatic 5-minute penalty and a game misconduct was assessed against McGill.