THE NHL : Lemieux’s Silence Sounds Like Gretzky’s

Mario Lemieux-Wayne Gretzky comparisons are cropping up everywhere, even when it comes to how they dealt with their coaches.

The word is that Lemieux isn’t happy with the way Pittsburgh Coach Gene Ubriaco keeps changing the Penguins’ line combinations. But Lemieux won’t come right out and say anything against his coach.

Asked how he gets along with Ubriaco, Lemieux said: “I’m not getting into that, that’s for sure.”

He’s leaving it to Don Cherry, the former NHL coach who is now a Canadian television analyst, to note: “Pittsburgh is playing like a team that’s trying to get its coach fired.”

Cherry was one of the leaders in the campaign to get rid of Robbie Ftorek as the coach of the Kings last season, while the players--the ones on the roster--followed Gretzky’s lead and said nothing on the record.

As for the former players, that’s always another story.

Rod Buskas, a defenseman traded to Vancouver last week, said, “There is no question there are some unhappy players in Pittsburgh.” Buskas was told to stay away from the team while the Penguins tried to trade him.

Some of the Penguins, protesting the way Buskas was handled, wore black armbands to a practice after he was gone.

It’s not a happy camp.

Lemieux, half as productive as he was at this point last season, says he’s hoping to turn that around “real quick.”

The sooner the better for Ubriaco, whose fate is hanging in the balance.

Tony Esposito, the Penguins’ general manager, came out with the dreaded vote of confidence Monday.

The NHL is destined for the kind of shoe polish, tape and locker-room artwork that college basketball players use when they want to wear shoes that are best for them while their coach is getting shoe company money from a contract that is best for the coach. Players and equipment managers have gotten very good at changing the identifying marks on sneakers.

The NBA doesn’t have that because the players sign their own shoe contracts and get paid to wear what they want to wear.

Somehow last summer, while NHL players were busy fighting over whether Alan Eagleson should stay or be ousted as the players’ association executive director, the league slipped a rule past them that establishes the league as the force that controls what equipment will be used and who profits from the use of brand names on the ice.

The NHL’s marketing and public relations committee came up with a plan that calls for manufacturers who want their products used in NHL games to pay $10,000 a label. That can add up for companies that manufacture sticks, gloves and so on.

The point, though, is that the league gets the money. Not the players.

Players can use equipment made by other manufacturers, but they must obliterate the name.

The “Titan” still shows on Gretzky’s sticks because the manufacturer of Titan sticks has paid the NHL.

When Gretzky was held without a shot against the Calgary Flames last week, it was the first time that happened at the Forum since he joined the Kings. But it was not the first time he was held without a shot since becoming a King. He had no shots on goal last Feb. 24 in a 4-1 loss at Edmonton, and he had no shots on goal last March 14 in Kelly Hrudey’s first shutout, a 4-0 victory at Quebec.

Before that, as an Oiler, he was held without a shot on March 5, 1988--also against Calgary. But he did have three assists in that game.

There has been a tempest in a teapot over whether experienced European (read Soviet) players should be eligible for the Calder Cup as the top rookie in the league. Montreal General Manager Serge Savard, for one, says not.

Calgary’s Sergei Makarov, 31, a 10-time Soviet all-star, is eligible to be named rookie of the year under the current rules, which say that anyone who hasn’t played in 25 NHL games the year before or in six or more over the previous two years, is a rookie. And the way he has been playing and scoring, Makarov just might win it.

Savard says he’ll bring up the rule for review at the general managers’ meeting in Chicago Nov. 13.

Eagleson calls the notion that such experienced Soviet players are rookies, a “joke.”

Rookie goalie Olaf Kolzig actually asked the Washington Capitals to send him back to junior hockey. Kolzig, 19, gave up 12 goals in his only two starts, a 4-1 loss to Hartford and an 8-4 loss to Toronto. He said he just wasn’t ready. The Capitals sent him down to Tri-City Americas of the Western Hockey League.

The brawling in a game Monday night in Toronto between the Maple Leafs and the New Jersey Devils, which resulted in 166 penalty minutes, escalated to the point that the two goalies, Sean Burke and Mark LaForest, squared off. Both were ejected. LaForest, 5-11 and 190, said that he won’t be doing it again. His bout with Burke, 6-3 and 205, “took too much out of me.” And it’s embarrassing. After practice the next day, Toronto teammate Tom Fergus asked LaForest to autograph a stick saying, “You can sign it ‘Rocky.’ ”

A fight at the end of the New York Rangers’ game at Nassau Coliseum Saturday night, which resulted in a $500 fine for Ranger center Troy Mallette, also resulted in a couple of angry exchanges between Coach Al Arbour of the New York Islanders and Ranger Coach Roger Neilson. According to Sherry Ross of Newsday, the two had to be separated as they left the ice, and nearly 40 minutes after the game, a shouting match erupted between the two outside the Islanders’ locker room as Neilson was leaving.

Arbour was upset about Mallette’s gouging the eye of Islander defenseman Dean Chynoweth, who missed two months last season after having his eye gouged by the Philadelphia Flyers’ Rick Tocchet.

Arbour shouted: “You’ve got a lot of nerve. Your guy is trying to gouge our guy’s eye out. You’re the biggest front-runner in the league. You’re always yapping when you’re on top.”

Calgary Coach Terry Crisp, after the Flames’ victory over the Kings at the Forum last week, said: “They’ve made some good acquisitions and they’ve got some good young players. (Bob) Kudelski is playing well for them out there, big Larry Robinson and (Barry) Beck will help them back there. They are going to be heard from. Wayne Gretzky is on a mission here, and, believe me, when that man gets on a mission, look out.”

Hockey Notes

A capacity crowd of 14,448 at Boston Garden combined with warm weather and no air-conditioning to make the ice a little sluggish Saturday night as Hartford “skated” to a 1-0 victory over the Bruins. Whaler center Ron Francis said: “It was the hottest I’ve ever seen it. The ice was the softest I’ve ever seen here.” And Whaler Coach Rick Ley said: “It was tough sledding out there.”

Oiler goalie Grant Fuhr made 18 saves during Edmonton’s 5-4 loss to the Montreal Canadiens Sunday in his first appearance since undergoing an appendectomy. . . . Vladamir Krutov, who went back to the Soviet Union to straighten out visa problems that were holding up the departure of his family, returned to Vancouver Friday--with his family.

Among the many people not thrilled with the NHL’s decision to switch from ESPN to SportsChannel in the United States is Bob Smith, assistant manager of the race and sports book at the Frontier Hotel and Gambling Hall in Las Vegas. Said Smith: “We wrote more hockey action when ESPN had it. Having SportsChannel did not help out here. Las Vegas doesn’t get it.”