THE NHL / STEVE SPRINGER : Nordiques Still Trying to Get Fire on Ice

You can turn off the lights, Quebec. Eric is not coming.

So take down the banners, cancel the parade and call off the news conference.

You would think these people would have gotten the idea long before now, considering that the Nordiques drafted Eric Lindros in June and he is in Sweden, touring with the Canadian Olympic hockey team.

Lindros, expected to be the game’s next superstar, made it clear from the beginning that he didn’t want to play for the Nordiques, the worst team in the NHL last season.

The problem wasn’t only money. Lindros didn’t like the small media market, he didn’t want to be in the middle of the French-English language controversy and he didn’t particularly care for the high taxes he would face by playing in Canada.

But the Nordiques held firm and barred the door when other teams came calling, refusing to seriously consider any of the impressive offers they received for Lindros’ rights.

There was a feeling in Quebec that Lindros surely would back down. After all, how many 18-year-olds are going to turn their backs on the NHL?

Well, here’s one.

Lindros went back to his junior team, the Oshawa Generals of the Ontario Hockey League.

He has since joined the Olympic squad.

If Quebec does not sign Lindros by the end of next season, he goes back into the draft.

In case there were any doubters, Lindros told the Associated Press in Stockholm the other day: “I will never sign with (the Nordiques).

“There have been offers to Quebec for a trade, but (the Nordiques) won’t listen. There is no special team I’d rather play for in the NHL. I have no dream team.”

And the Nordiques no longer have any illusions. Joe Sakic, their biggest star, has publicly asked his team to trade the rights to Lindros.

Is anybody listening?

Add Lindros: Although he has yet to step onto NHL ice, Lindros already has written his autobiography, “Fire on Ice.”

In it, Lindros reveals that he has pulled this disappearing act before. Drafted at the midget level by the Sault Sainte Marie Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League, Lindros refused to report, deciding instead to play for a team in Detroit, where he lived with another family.

In the book, Lindros compares himself to a bird on a wire. “People want you to do this,” he writes. “People want you to do that. . . . I’ll be on that wire for life, and it doesn’t matter how hard they pull because I’m the strongest bird and I’m not budging.”

Going the other way: In this space last week, we told the story of Pavel Bure, 20, the transplanted native of Moscow now playing right wing for the Vancouver Canucks.

Bure, held out of the Canada Cup for refusing to sign a new Soviet contract, fled the Soviet Union on a visitor’s visa and arrived in Los Angeles on the doorstep of his agent, Ron Salcer.

The Canucks had selected Bure in the sixth round of the 1989 entry draft, but several other NHL clubs objected, insisting that, according to NHL rules, an 18-year-old European must compete in at least 11 games in a first division or an elite division to be eligible for the draft. Available records showed that Bure had only played in five such games.

The dispute dragged on for nearly a year. NHL President John Ziegler was about to declare the Canucks’ pick null and void.

As a last-ditch hope, Vancouver officials asked one of their players, another Soviet, Igor Larionov, to investigate the matter when he went home.

Larionov contacted Igor Kuperman, a Soviet journalist who has since come west to take a job with the Winnipeg Jets.

Searching through records, Kuperman found that in the 1987-88 season, Bure had played four games for his country in an international tournament, five games in a national tournament and two other games in yet another Soviet tournament held while some of his countrymen were in Calgary, Canada, for the 1988 Winter Olympics.

That made 11 games in all--barely enough.

Armed with the paperwork, Larionov came back to Vancouver.

And Bure became a Canuck.

Add Bure: How good is the 5-foot-9, 170-pound forward?

One recent survey listed him as the top player outside North America.

Said Kuperman: “Maybe someday, inside North America as well.”

It’s been a long time: When Stu Barnes got a hat trick against the Kings Monday night, it was the first time in 186 games that a Jet had accomplished the feat--since Thomas Steen did it on March 18, 1989.

In the ensuing 2 1/2 years, 16 of the Jets on the team that day have left.

Quotebook: Having played on five Stanley Cup champion teams with the Edmonton Oilers, goalie Grant Fuhr is going through a period of adjustment with the Toronto Maple Leafs. What is it like playing on a squad that has started 5-13-3?

Asked about all the goals he has given up, Fuhr said: “Well, at least it’s a good way to break in equipment.”