The NHL : Facing Canadiens Was Special for Lafleur

It was an emotional time for Guy Lafleur Monday night when he took the ice against the Montreal Canadiens, the team he led to 5 Stanley Cup championships.

But the hall of famer is making his comeback with the New York Rangers, and he had had his eye on that Monday night Garden date with the Canadiens since the day he signed.

In the days before the game, he said: “It’s going to be special because it’s the first time playing against the red sweater. I wore it for 14 years. But I’m going out there with one thing in mind: to get the 2 points and send them back home with a loss.”

Well, he did get a goal, but the Canadiens won the game, 4-2.

Asked if he would be out for revenge after the feuding he did with General Manager Serge Savard and former coach Jacques Lemaire in the final stages of his career in Montreal, Lafleur said: “I’m not playing the second floor. I’m playing the team.”

He’ll play the team at Montreal Dec. 17. Scalpers there are already getting $400 each for those tickets.

Add Lafleur: Last week, when he was in town to play the Kings, Lafleur was asked to comment on the Wayne Gretzky trade. “He was telling me a couple of years ago that it was his wish to come to L.A. He wanted to come to L.A. to finish his career. I was very happy for him when he was traded. He did so many things for Edmonton, but you have to think about his future, too.”

Rising star: Bernie Nicholls, who leads the Kings in scoring, is becoming a star of another type. He’s in the film “Dangerous Love,” which was released last week. The film’s biggest star is Elliott Gould, but Nicholls has a strong part. He plays a security guard who throws a guy out of an office.

“I think they were surprised when they saw me,” Nicholls said. “When they heard they were getting a hockey player to play the tough guy, they probably thought they were getting one of the big guys.” Nicholls stands 6 feet and weighs 185.

Mario Lemieux update: Talks have not yet resumed between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Lemieux’s agent, Tom Reich. And Reich says, “They will make a terrible mistake if they underestimate Mario’s desire to be compensated properly.”

A couple weeks ago, when criticism of Coach Robbie Ftorek surfaced, King owner Bruce McNall said that it was nice to finally have people talking about the Kings. Controversy was better than being ignored.

But NHL columnists and former players are having a field day with the subject.

Al Morganti reports in the next issue of The Hockey News that Jay Wells, traded by the Kings after 10 seasons, said of Ftorek: “He wants guys who are puppets, that’s what it amounts to. Anybody who speaks his mind, they were the guys who got gassed. Larry Playfair was that kind of guy.”

Playfair was traded to the Buffalo Sabres.

Playfair accuses Ftorek of playing favorites. In a story in The Toronto Globe and Mail that appeared while the Kings were in Canada on their last road trip, Al Strachan wrote that Playfair was traded because he expressed the opinion that Ftorek played favorites, and that the best way to get along with Ftorek was to have played with him or under him when he was coaching at New Haven, Conn.

Last week, when Playfair returned to the Forum as a member of the Sabres, he said he still felt the same way. He finally suggested they get off the subject, saying that he didn’t want to get into “anymore hot water.”

King players are very quiet on the subject of Ftorek.

But Wells had plenty to say.

Among Wells’ other comments: “Robbie Ftorek is digging his own grave. If he doesn’t wake up soon, he’s got to be gone. Maybe Robbie Ftorek got a lot of points in the WHA, but Robbie Ftorek is no Wayne Gretzky. I don’t even think the names should be used in the same breath.”

Wells suggests that Ftorek was not as happy as everyone else when the Kings acquired Gretzky, adding: “From the stories I heard, Robbie Ftorek thought he could win the Stanley Cup without Wayne Gretzky, and I think that he started the season thinking he was going to prove it. He was hurt a little bit when Wayne came, and it’s the most stupid thing in the world. . . . Because he can’t take a back seat. He’s got to be in the limelight.”

Stan Fischler wrote in the Hockey News that Ftorek’s “indifferent and hostile attitude toward the press” was negating all the good that Gretzky is doing for the Kings’ image. He quotes an unnamed NHL representative: “Ftorek wears a sweater behind the bench just to be different. If all 20 other coaches wore sweaters, you can be sure he’d wear a suit.”

NHL Notes

New York Islanders captain Brent Sutter credits Darcy Regier, the club’s director of hockey administration, for his improved play lately. Regier went to the trouble of splicing together a highlight film of Sutter when he was playing well last year, and Sutter decided, when he saw it, that maybe he wasn’t doing all that he could this season. . . . TV commentator Don Cherry on Wayne Gretzky’s play in Los Angeles: “It’s like watching Secretariat at the state fair.” . . . While Milwaukee, a city with natural ice as well as a beautiful new hockey arena, is waiting and praying for an NHL team, a committee has been formed in the San Francisco Bay area to seek a team for San Jose. The committee “NHL Hockey-San Jose” wants a team by 1992, the year that its 16,000-seat downtown arena will be finished. . . . Islander defenseman Gerald Diduck, on how his team held Lemieux to just 5 shots and 1 assist (on a power play with 52 seconds left) Saturday night: “I didn’t let him out of my sight once. . . . Everybody was just aware of him while he was on the ice. We didn’t let him float in behind. He likes to hide a lot and come up late behind the play. We took away his passes.” . . . Paul Coffey of the Pittsburgh Penguins called the play a “legal hit” after Toronto defenseman Brad Marsh took Coffey into the boards last week, leaving Coffey with a separated shoulder. Coffey said: “He took me in fairly hard, but that’s typical of the way he plays. It was a legal hit, then the period was over, and all of a sudden we get close to the boards and I let off and he kind of picked me up and heaved me.”