The NHL / Gordon Edes : It Has Become a Shot on Goalies

Even before his all-star goalie, Grant Fuhr, was run over by Winnipeg’s Andrew McBain in a game last Wednesday night and suffered a strained neck, Edmonton’s Glen Sather said he has been concerned about the growing number of collisions involving goaltenders this season.

The matter was discussed at the general managers’ meeting in Florida last week, said Sather, the coach and general manager of the Oilers.

It’s about time, said King goalie Glenn Healy, who was leveled Saturday night by Hartford’s Kevin Dineen and is rapidly tiring of the number of crease-crashers he has encountered this season.

“To me, it’s frustrating,” Healy said. “I like to play fair--I don’t swing my stick at anybody, I don’t chop at ankles, because I think that’s cheap, so I don’t think I should be constantly subjected to being bumped or worried about someone blind-siding me.”

The problem has worsened, Healy said, since Philadelphia goalie Brian Hextall was suspended for 10 games after he swung his stick at Edmonton’s Kent Nilsson in the 1987 playoffs, injuring the Oiler forward.

“Ever since then, it’s been a joke,” Healy said. “If I try to move a guy (out of the crease), the referee says something every time.

“Kevin Dineen doesn’t stop, and just runs me right over, he hits the goaltender. He figures, ‘What’s Healy going to do? He’s not going to swing his stick.’

“And they have this little built-in excuse that a defenseman carried them into you. No one was near Dineen when he ran me over.”

The worst offenders, according to Healy, are the Calgary Flames. He wouldn’t name names, but center Joel Otto has been known to drive the net. And in a game earlier this season, Tim Hunter cross-checked Healy in the back of the head, knocking off his helmet, then rubbed his face into the ice, cutting the goaltender above the eye.

The issue would seem to be covered by the National Hockey League rule book. Under Sec. 6, Rule 47 (c), a referee is instructed to call a minor or major penalty if a player charges the goaltender while he’s in the crease. Charging is defined as taking more than two steps or strides before contact is made.

It further states that either interference or charging should be called in every case an opposing player makes unnecessary contact with a goalkeeper. Even when the goalie is out of the crease, the rule states, he is not “fair game” to be hit.

The problem, Healy says, is that referees are not making the call.

“If a guy goes to the net and he’s not being legitimately pushed by a defenseman, that’s got to be interference,” Healy said. “Referees have to stop calling it a push every time.

“That excuse is a bunch of malarkey to me. If it’s 2 minutes every time they run into a goalie, guys will stop doing it.”

Calgary and the Washington Capitals have been selected as the teams to visit Moscow and Leningrad for four exhibitions each against Soviet teams next fall. Capital defenseman Larry Murphy, a former No. 1 draft choice of the Kings, played for a Canadian midget team that went to the Soviet Union.

“I was 16 and it’s still the most amazing trip I’ve ever been on,” Murphy told Robert Fachet of the Washington Post. “I took over a lot of jeans and bubble gum and I wound up with so much stuff I had to buy suitcases to bring it home.

“I had so many rubles left at the end, I went out and bought everything I could, toys and fur hats and things. We stayed in a big hotel and the waiters in the dining room were always trying to make deals for jeans.”

Add Soviets: Ex-coach Don Cherry on the recent series against Soviet teams: “Every time I turned on the TV, I saw Russians. Are there any left in Russia? We used to see them every 4 years. Now we see them every 4 days.”

Talking Turkey: Whoever said hockey players aren’t sensitive hasn’t been to Quebec lately.

Last week, the Nordiques stopped talking to reporters after one had referred to the team as turkeys. The term quickly caught on, especially since the French word for the bird is dinde , inspiring one radio station to sell “Nordinde” sweaters and to make up a song on the subject.

The flap is over, but obviously there were some ruffled feathers.

“Our actions were justified,” said Peter Stastny of the Nordiques. “We accept criticism, even though sometimes they’re cheap shots. But we can’t tolerate being made fun of and treated poorly.”

Hockey Notes

Former New York Islanders player and ex-Minnesota North Stars coach Lorne Henning is the front-runner to coach the Islanders after Al Arbour finishes this season, but another former Islander, Bobby Nystrom, said he’d like to be considered. Nystrom, a one-time Islander assistant who now does some broadcasting as well as being the team’s director of corporate affairs, said he doubts he has a chance for the job, however.

The Winnipeg Jets are retiring Bobby Hull’s No. 9 on Feb. 19, a tribute that apparently could not happen as long as John Ferguson was general manager. “He didn’t like Hull and that was that,” said Mike Smith, who replaced the fired Ferguson Oct. 30. Hull played with the Jets from 1972-79 and helped them win two World Hockey Assn. titles before the WHA merged with the NHL in 1979. “Without Bobby Hull, I don’t think there would be professional hockey in Winnipeg,” Smith said. Hull’s number was retired by the Chicago Blackhawks in 1984, 12 years after he left.

Minnesota’s Brian Bellows missed a 2:30 a.m. curfew in Chicago, after he failed to accompany the team back to its hotel and thus missed Coach Pierre Page’s announcement that there would be a bed check. As punishment, Bellows was forced to take a cab to Chicago’s O’Hare airport, pay for his own flight to St. Louis, pay for another cab to the hotel and for his room in St. Louis.

Why Kevin Dineen isn’t Hartford trainer Tom Woodcock’s favorite player: Woodcock used the uniform numbers of six Whalers in a Connecticut lottery that had a jackpot of $9.7 million. He missed by one number, Dineen’s No. 11.