In Hockey, This Ought to Be a Goal

Bad time for a defection. Just at a juncture when the Americans were becoming blood brothers with the Soviets, and just as the Soviets were sitting down to smoke a peace pipe with the Chinese, the last thing the world needed was an international incident, particularly one instigated by some guy who makes his living playing ice hockey.

Talk about your cold wars.

We could understand a breaking of diplomatic relations between two superpowers over, oh, a spy who has been selling top-secret weapon blueprints, or over another of those FBI agents who gets romanced by a Moscow Mata Hari into turning over his top-secret bureau handbook. But hey, not over some 20-year-old puck passer who can’t wait to become the next Wayne Gretzky or Mario Lemieuxsky or Bobby Orrov.

Until Alexander Mogilny bolted from a touring Soviet team in Stockholm, eventually applying for political asylum in the United States and for National Hockey League asylum in Buffalo, everybody back in Moscow seemed to be in a pretty friendly mood. They were about to invite those noted Washington capitalists the Washington Capitals to the USSR for a September exhibition series against the Calgary Flames, strictly for the Soviet public’s amusement.

Several NHL teams own the North American playing rights to several Soviet talents, and have been waiting for clearance to sign them. Everything was on the up-and-up. The players would come here with their government’s stamp of approval on their passports. One fellow already had played a couple of games for the Flames.

Mogilny said he was struck by an “inner compulsion” that convinced him to defect. He had no escape plan. He had no idea which NHL team owned his rights. He had no idea where Buffalo is, which gives him much in common with many Americans. All he knew, or at least thought he knew, is that life would be better in America, ample proof that he knew very little about Buffalo indeed.

“A lot of people are going to the West,” Mogilny said. “I thought maybe it was time for me to go as well.”

Eddie Murray and Kirk Gibson had the same thoughts, but at least neither of them caused telephones to ring in the Kremlin.

Anyhow, we can’t really be too angry with young Alexander. Anybody who has such a strong desire to live in our country should be made welcome, be he tired or poor or part of a teeming mass or part of a teeming team. If Mogilny wants to star in “Moscow on the Hudson, Part II,” let him.

However, the least we can do is make it up to our Soviet friends.

So, here’s an idea:

Let’s send them Ron Hextall.

Sure. Why not? We deport people who misbehave, don’t we? Let’s put Hextall, the goaltender of the Philadelphia Flyers, on a slow-traveling boat, possibly one in which he will have to work off his passage shoveling coal into a furnace, and give him to the Soviets as the player to be named in the Mogilny deal.

Hextall is the ghoulie of goalies. He makes Billy Smith seem like the nicest netminder who ever lived. He is scarier than those face masks the goalies used to wear. This is a guy who would beat up Lady Byng, just to steal her trophy. Hextall couldn’t win a sportsmanship contest in a league run by convicts. He belongs in a cage, not in front of one.

When an opponent scored a goal against the Flyers in a recent game and stopped to celebrate, as NHL players are wont to do, Hextall left the goal mouth and took off after the guy, charging him like a bull after a red cape. The opponent was smart enough to skate away. Hextall resembled something out of a Mad Max movie.

A few nights later, just as the Montreal Canadiens were in the process of eliminating Philadelphia from the Stanley Cup playoffs, Hextall did it again. He traveled all the way from the crease to a corner of the rink, just so he could jump all over Chris Chelios of the Canadiens, who had been standing there minding his own business.

Hextall pummeled him, pounded on him, punched him with his pads, did everything but climb to the top of the glass and fling himself down on top of the guy, Randy (Macho Man) Savage style. When Chelios was finally pulled away by other players and officials, Hextall whipped off one of his gloves and hurled it at him. Man, the cuckoo came right out of this guy’s clock.

There was motive to the goalie’s madness, theoretically. Chelios, several nights earlier, had put a hard check into little Brian Propp of the Flyers, knocking him out of the series and practically snapping him like a wishbone. The Flyers resented it, and evidently Hextall had trouble forgetting and forgiving it.

So, while the other players were getting ready to go into their conga lines for hockey’s traditional post-series handshakes, Hextall took it upon himself to bushwhack Chelios. This behavior probably was looked upon favorably by all those bully-lovers in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly thugs.

The league must take action against Hextall next season, assuming somebody can locate the man who runs the league. We suggest a 10-minute misconduct. Hextall should be permitted to play 10 minutes next season, and be ineligible the rest.

Or, better still, let’s let the Soviets have him. Mogilny is probably a nice fellow who plays the game by the rules, who skates and shoots and wastes precious little energy trying to stick his stick into somebody else’s throat.

Of course, since we are trying to improve our relationship with the Soviets, perhaps we should send them somebody a little nicer than Hextall.

Mitch (Blood) Green, maybe.