HOCKEY NOTEBOOK : Peterson an Unlikely Choice as U.S. Coach

It’s difficult to believe that the U.S. Hockey committee could not come up with a better choice than Dave Peterson as 1992 Olympic coach.

More than difficult, it’s astonishing.

Besides coaching his team out of the medal running in 1988 at Calgary, Alberta, with the likes of Craig Janney, Brian Leetch and Scott Young, Peterson was a public relations nightmare.

Peterson -- out of his element after coaching Minnesota high schools -- going bonkers after a Swiss reporter asked him why he had the only team at the Olympics without a system would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic.

One excuse this time for not hiring Herb Brooks, the ultimate powerbroker after his 1980 gold-medal miracle, is that he demanded the job for both the 1992 and 1994 Games.

But what about Yale’s Tim Taylor? He coached the United States at the World Championships in April.

And what about bright, rising star Jeff Sauer of NCAA champion Wisconsin? He coached the United States at the Goodwill Games.

And is hiring a top-notch coach long term the way the Canadians did with Dave King such a bad idea?

Taylor, Sauer, Brooks, Bob Johnson, Larry Pleau, Jay Leach, Mike Milbury, Ted Sator, Bill Cleary, John Cunniff, Shawn Walsh. ... That’s only a start of a list of American coaches who can do the job better than Peterson. And if they aren’t available now because of National Hockey League or college commitments, they might be in six months. What’s the rush to pick a guy who led a talented team to seventh place and lost his composure in the process?

“It’s their decision -- I’ve got no comment,” Leetch said.

“I was surprised,” Young said. “I really thought they were grooming Tim Taylor or Jeff Sauer. I thought (Peterson) did a very good job leading up to the Olympics. He was a father-figure and he was a pretty calm guy. But during the Olympics, I think he felt the pressure. He got on the wrong side of the media, right off the bat. He got badgered and wouldn’t answer questions. I remember a guy asking who’d be in goal the next game and he said something like, ‘The man on the moon.’

“It would have been a lot easier on him if he accepted that the whole world was watching. He didn’t. He acted a lot different during the Olympics. You could tell he was under a lot of stress. And he got portrayed as a real jerk.”

The amateur hockey hierarchy in this country is a closed society. A few stubborn men run this society like amateur tennis was run in the early 1960s. Time is passing them by. If American public really cared about hockey, the uproar of this selection would have been heard from coast to coast.

“The good thing is I think he’s learned a lot (Peterson supposedly will take some media-relations classes),” Young said. “This is a rare second opportunity for him. I think he knows his stuff. We were in excellent condition. We could have concentrated a little more on defense. But the guys liked him during the year. He was fair.”

In truth, the PR disaster is only part of it. The supposed “Run and Gun Yanks” ended up as a disorganized fire-drill in Calgary. Defense can be coached. And even if Peterson is a good man, this guy simply lost his composure too badly the first time to be brought back.

With Grant Fuhr’s admission of a substance abuse and his NHL hearing scheduled in Toronto Sept. 26, it’s time -- once again -- to call for the NHL and the players association to get their act together and form a comprehensive drug plan for treatment and uniform discipline.

Although the Edmonton Oilers goalie told the Edmonton Journal he had a seven-year problem, he claims he has been clean for a year after spending two weeks at a Florida drug center. But Fuhr’s former wife, Corrine, who forced the issue to go public, is still worried about him and confirmed the drug is cocaine.

What does NHL President John Ziegler do about this? Fuhr wasn’t arrested with cocaine in his underwear like Bob Probert was. Is it fair to leave these young guys’ lives in the hands of one man? No. It’s not fair to Ziegler either. The NHL’s rule, “Do drugs and you’ll get suspended,” is not nearly an elaborate enough response. And Chicago Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz Friday told The National he suspects 12 unnamed NHL players use drugs. How responsible a statement is that from the chairman of the NHL Board of Governors? Where’s the proof?

At any rate, Daryl Reaugh, Fuhr’s former backup in Edmonton who now is with the Hartford Whalers, says he never saw Fuhr using cocaine: “I had no idea and I was around him every day for a while. The years he’s talking about he was the best goalie in hockey. It’s shocking to think he’d be that good while doing that stuff.

“If you know Grant, you’d realize he just doesn’t take some things other people would think were serious as serious. I remember, like, he had video tapes he just never returned. He was so happy-go-lucky it was scary. There’s been rumors and stuff like that. But I was around there a long time and never actually saw any of it.”

It isn’t easy figuring New Jersey Devil General Manager Lou Lamoriello. Last summer, he traded away his grit -- Pat Verbeek -- to acquire offensive dancers like Sylvain Turgeon and Walt Poddubny. A year later, he traded Turgeon just to get a grinder (Claude Lemieux) back from the Montreal Canadiens. “Jersey went from one extreme to the other,” Verbeek said. “We had a lot of muckers. Then, I felt, they went all offense last year. Now, they’re going back to the other way.”

Ironically, it was Devils Coach John Cunniff, the former Whalers assistant, who went to bat to get Turgeon for Verbeek last summer -- a move the Devils soon regretted. A Canadian hockey writer went so far as to describe it as the “Kennel Club trade,” because Turgeon (who could be out six weeks after a hernia operation) and Lemeiux have spent so much time in coaches’ doghouses in recent years.

“I think this is going to be good for Sly,” said Whalers defenseman Sylvain Cote. “He’s playing before his public in Montreal. He knows he’s going to have to play hard every night or the fans will be all over him.”

Canadiens General Manager Serge Savard was roasted by the Montreal media for not making any moves last year. One columnist, in fact, painted him as such a bland, indecisive type that he didn’t even put raisins or sugar on his bran cereal. The strange thing is Savard broke loose this summer with some whopping moves and looks like he made the team worse. Certainly, Craig Ludwig to the New York Islanders for Gerald Diduck makes the Whalers and the rest of the Adams Division happy. Ludwig blocks shots like a goaltender and many players were too afraid to park in front of the net with Ludwig hacking away. Ludwig did want out of Montreal but Savard should have gotten a better deal.