Marty McSorley is back on the ice, playing for the Grand Rapids Griffins, the top team in the International Hockey League.
It remains to be seen if his play in Grand Rapids will earn the 37-year-old defenseman another shot at playing in the National Hockey League.
McSorley’s one-year suspension imposed by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman will end Feb. 21, the anniversary of his assault on Donald Brashear. The third most-penalized player in NHL history was playing for Boston when he struck Brashear in the head with his hockey stick and knocked the Vancouver enforcer unconscious late in a game that the Bruins were losing.
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McSorley was charged with assault with a weapon. British Columbia Provincial Court Judge W.J. Kitchen found him guilty on Oct. 7 and handed down an 18-month conditional discharge, the Canadian equivalent of a suspended sentence with accompanying stipulations.
Although Grand Rapids is Ottawa’s farm team, McSorley is an unrestricted free agent and can sign with any NHL team.McSorley commemorated his return in Grand Rapids’ 3-1 victory over Utah by getting a game-misconduct penalty after a third-period brawl broke out involving all 12 players on the ice.
McSorley played his second game Sunday when the Griffins defeated Houston 5-2. This time he spent four minutes in the penalty box. He was charged with high-sticking in the second period and using an illegal stick in the third.
Grand Rapids coach Bruce Cassidy likes what he has seen from McSorley thus far. “It’s only two games, but I’ve been pleased,” said the one-time Blackhawks defenseman. “He actually surprised me a little bit. He’s going to have to work on his stamina, but that’s something that will come.”
Before signing with Grand Rapids, McSorley spent two weeks working out with the London Frontenacs, an Ontario Junior Hockey League team coached by Larry Mavety, his coach when he played for Belleville of the Ontario League.
Belfour booster: Dallas’ controversial goalie Ed Belfour has had a bitter adversarial relationship with some of his backups over the years. During his years in Chicago, for example, he was outspoken in his resentment of Jeff Hackett. But when Minnesota Wild goalie Manny Fernandez looks back on his role as the understudy last season, he sites the encouragement he got from Belfour then as a factor in his success now.
“Eddie is a great guy,” said Fernandez, who is closing in on Cesare Maniago’s record of 22 victories for an expansion goalie, set with the Minnesota North Stars in 1967-68. “When you sit down and talk with him, he’s got some good points about the game.”
Fernandez came to the Wild in a trade with Dallas two weeks before the expansion draft. Last year, as Belfour’s backup, he was 11-8-3 with a 2.13 goals-against average and a .920 save percentage. This season his vital statistics are 16-11-2, 2.36 and .919.
“I couldn’t have done it without Eddie last year,” said Fernandez, who’ll turn 27 in August. “For so long I wanted to get a chance in the NHL and it came to the point where I was getting down on myself. I didn’t have enough confidence to pick myself up. It was ideal to play behind him for a year.”
Family values: Fernandez is the nephew of Jacques Lemaire, the Wild coach and a former NHL star forward with the Montreal Canadiens.
Rookie left wing Steve Gainey recently was called up from Utah of the IHL to make his NHL debut with Dallas. Steve is the son of the Stars’ general manager, Bob Gainey, another forward who was in forefront in the ’70s when Montreal was the dominant team in the NHL. Bob selected his son in the third round of the 1997 draft.
Montreal center Chad Kilger is the son of Bob Kilger, who was a referee in the NHL in the 1970s and won a Memorial Cup, emblematic of the junior championship of North America, when he coached Cornwall of the Ontario League in the early 1980s. Since 1988, Bob Kilger has been a member of the Canadian Parliament.
Economics on ice: NHL owners envy NBA owners.
Thanks to a more lucrative TV contract, reportedly the 29 NBA franchises pay 56 percent of their total revenue to players’ salaries, while the NHL’s 30 franchises shell out 72 percent of their revenue for salaries.
Unlike the NBA, the NHL doesn’t have a salary cap, and its absence has posed problems for small-market franchises and teams in Canada where the tax laws and lower valued dollar combine to create a built-in disadvantage.
At his pre-All Star Game news conference, Bettman promised these cost problems will be “fixed” after the current collective bargaining agreement with the NHL Players’ Association expires in 2004.