Penney and His Thoughts : Goalie for Canadiens Works at Being Cool

Home is a 24-square-foot patch of ice where vulcanized rubber bullets slice the air at speeds that can crush a man’s skull.

In hockey parlance, it’s known as the crease--that piece of frozen turf in front of the net where goalies fling themselves at pucks clubbed 100 m.p.h. by muscular athletes swinging six-foot pieces of lumber.

Some of the best and bravest National Hockey League goalies, such as retired All-Stars Glenn Hall and Gump Worsley, were known to blanch and vomit before pressure-packed games.

So why is Canadiens’ rookie goalie Steve Penney smiling through his bird-cage mask as he faces down the big shooters in practice before playing the Boston Bruins for first place?

“I like to have fun out there,” he says. “Everyone knows hockey is pressure-packed, especially in Montreal. But players sometimes put more pressure on themselves than they have to.

“I used to like Gerry Cheevers when he played goal for the Boston Bruins. He looked cool.”

Penney, 24, looks cool as he pirouettes to block six-ounce pucks that thud into his three-foot-high leather leg pads filled with deer fur.

An impish smile creases his dark features as he skates around the rink with his teammates, occasionally slapping their ankles with his wide, red Louisville goalie stick.

While defensemen Tom Kurvers and Larry Robinson stand back-to-back and lock arms in a stretching exercise, Penney feints as if to skewer “Big Bird” Robinson in the groin. Again the wicked smile.

“He hasn’t got a nerve in his body,” forward Mario Tremblay says of their No. 1 goalie.

When coach Jacques Lemaire yanked him in a 5-2 loss to New York Islanders in the Stanley Cup semifinals last April, Penney’s reaction was one of relief that the next game was on a weekday when he could watch the soap opera “As The World Turns.”

“It’s very important to forget about the bad nights,” Penney says. “Forget about everything that happened the night before. Tomorrow is another day. The most important thing for goalies in the NHL is to be quick and to be consistent. Don’t try to reach too much for the puck. Stand up and position yourself to block it.”

Penney made his NHL debut last spring, leading the underdog Canadiens to Stanley Cup playoff victories over the favored Bruins and Quebec Nordiques. They bowed to the Islanders in the semifinals. His 2.20 goals-against-average was the best in the playoffs.

He was compared with former Canadiens’ all-star goalie Ken Dryden, who, as a rookie, led the underdog Canadiens to a 1971 Stanley Cup victory over the Bobby Orr-led Bruins.

Penney, a 6-foot, 1-inch, 190-pound, standup goaltender from St. Foy, Que.,, was described by Dryden as “a good rebound goalie.”

“Penney plays a very basic, in-the-crease kind of game,” Dryden said. “He gives himself a much better chance to fall on a rebound.”

Penney played two ordinary seasons with Flint of the International Hockey League before moving to the Canadiens’ Halifax farm club in the American Hockey League. He was the third-string goalie with the Voyaguers before being called to the injury-plagued Canadiens for the last four games of the 1983-84 season and the playoffs.

Penney, who is of mixed French- and English-Canadian heritage, had vowed to quit hockey and drive a truck if he didn’t make the AHL club in 1983-84. He made the most of his chance with the Canadiens.

“It was a personal challenge,” he says. “I always wanted to see whether I could play in the NHL.”

Penney says his greatest weakness as a goalie is “a lack of concentration sometimes.”

He is at his best “when I’m aggressive and I challenge the puck.”

He has the fourth best goals-against average in the league at 3.18. Buffalo Sabres’ goalie Tom Barrasso leads the league with a 2.70 average.

Penney plays 60 percent of the Canadiens’ games, sharing the rest with Doug Soetaert.

Unlike some of the old-time goalies, he is not superstitious. There is no fixed routine before a big game.

A swim, a walk with his Quebec City-born wife, Doris, or a light movie such as “Beverly Hills Cops” is his relaxation the night before a game.

The tranquility is shattered when he faces a sniper like Islanders’ forward Mike Bossy, whom Penney describes as “one of the toughest to stop because of his hard shot and quick release.”

Over-all, Edmonton Oilers are still the favorites to repeat as champions, he says.

But if the defensive-minded Canadiens can score “some big goals” during the playoffs and wait for their chances, Penney promises to stay cool in the nets.