HOCKEY NOTEBOOK : Canadiens Not Happy With Soviet Tour

The Montreal Canadiens say they found out exactly what many hockey people had feared when the trumpeted preseason tours of the Soviet Union were instituted last year.

The games don’t mean a hill of beans.

The tour doesn’t prepare a club for the regular season. In fact, all the travel and upheaval hurts clubs.

The accommodations are lousy.

In short, Brother Ziegler’s Traveling Glasnost Show is a couple of weeks worth of total frustration.

And, then Tuesday, it turned ugly.

While the Soviets and the West foster their political relations, matters have turned violent on the ice. The Canadiens and Central Red Army tangled in a nasty brawl and 10 players, including seven Canadiens, were ejected. And, shades of the Soviets storming off the ice in Philadelphia in 1976 after a thunderous Ed Van Impe check, Montreal Coach Pat Burns took his team to the dressing room for 10 minutes after being pelted by the fans.

Vodka bottles and coins were thrown at the Canadiens’ bench.

“Don’t go. I wouldn’t advise any team to go,” Montreal General Manager Serge Savard told the Montreal media when he arrived home. “Going there didn’t do much to prepare us for the regular season. All that travel did nothing for us. It hurt us. The frustration and the accommodations left us mentally tired.

“I’m trying to think of one good reason for a team to go. I can’t.”

Burns said the Canadiens initiated some fights because of all the Soviet stick fouls. Burns, incidentally, was an assistant coach for Team Canada when it was banned from the tournament in a bench-clearing brawl against the Soviets at the 1987 world junior championships in Czechoslovakia. So it isn’t likely Burns will be nominated for the International Lady Byng Trophy.

Said Savard: “They lied to me from the start.”

The Canadiens, for instance, complained that their ticket allotment of 100 for one game was reduced to 50. Savard said he was told it was because the game was a sellout. He said the place was half empty.

Their jars of caviar were confiscated during an aggravating border search.

And the food? Don’t ask.

The list of complaints, in short, was long.

Montreal center Denis Savard’s assessment: “The 15 days were a waste of time. We didn’t learn a thing. “

The Calgary Flames and Washington Capitals, for the most part, held their tongues after last year’s trip. They both had troubles in the regular season as a result of a disrupted training camp, but they didn’t want to sound like crybabies after NHL President John Ziegler and players association boss Alan Eagleson put the exhibition tour together.

Toeing the NHL management line, Montreal President Ronald Corey, who is a big shot on the Board of Governors, said, “Not going isn’t the answer. I think these games will help the league in the long run. But it’s pretty clear we can’t continue under the current circumstances. Communication and accommodations have to be better.”

The NHL is working on a prestigious tournament in the Soviet Union with top European teams in the future. It could work well. Why continue to punish two NHL teams each year (Minnesota also went this year)? The integrity of the NHL season remains more important than a goodwill exhibition mission to the Soviet Union.

The NHL governors are meeting in Toronto this week. This situation surely will be on the agenda. Don’t be surprised if this exhibition tour, as we know it, hits the scrap heap in the next year or two.

From the medical files: Buffalo’s Alexander Mogilny, whose reported fear of flying threatened his NHL career in Buffalo last season, has been flying in the preseason and is said to be holding up.

Former Whalers tough guy Torrie Robertson, who completed his contract with the Detroit Red Wings’ organization last spring, wants to continue to play hockey. But as of Wednesday night, he was without a hockey job. With the rise in minor league franchises around the country, not even a minor league team? “Nope,” Robertson said. “And it’s two weeks into camp. And Europe isn’t exactly my style of play.” Perhaps when minor league teams without NHL affiliations come up short on players, the phone will ring.

How much difference will moving the net out one foot from the rear boards make this season? John Davidson, Rangers TV analyst and one of the game’s most shrewd observers, believes NHL scoring definitely will increase because of the new rule. The clever centers will have more room to operate, especially dishing off the goodies on the power play.

“I hadn’t really thought about it until I got down there a few times in the exhibition games,” said Hartford’s Ron Francis, who should reap some benefits. “It gives you the extra room. One area I really think you’ll see it affect is when you dump it around the boards. I think it’s a lot tougher for a goaltender to get there now. He’s got to get out there an extra foot and it’s tougher to time.

“For the forwards, I think you’ll see a lot more of the playmakers down low. I think this rule may bring Bernie Federko right out of retirement. Wayne Gretzky loves to work down there. Mario Lemieux, not quite so much. Pierre Turgeon and Craig Janney, definitely. The defense is going to have to learn to adjust. I like it. I think it’s interesting.”

And the goalies?

“One foot -- I thought it was going to be a lot,” Peter Sidorkiewicz of the Whalers said. “But after being out there, I don’t know if it’s going to mean that much. It’s going to let the puck get around the boards a few more times. But check back after Gretzky, Turgeon and Dale Hawerchuk get behind there on me. Then, I’ll know.”

The Rangers’ new enforcer, Tie Domi, doesn’t like the dreaded “G word” used when he’s around. “If somebody says goon, I won’t even talk to him. It turns me off.” Thus, this nickname from the New York tabloids: “The Albanian Aggressor.” Domi, acquired from the Maple Leafs during the off-season, is wearing a butch cut. He says it’s so nobody can grab his hair in a fight. “Now if I grow a beard, I can look really ugly,” Domi said.

When John Ogrodnick finally came out of the free-agent cold last week to sign with the Rangers, he got somewhere around $440,000 this season. His one-year, plus-option deal also has big bonuses. And it’s got a trigger that if Ogrodnick scores 35 goals this season, he’ll get another year on his contract.

When the Blues’ Brett Hull stepped onto the ice for the Epson Cup exhibition tournament in Dusseldorf, West Germany, he was introduced as “Der Superstar.”

The Blues beat Edmonton 10-1 and Dusseldorf 3-1 to win the preseason tournament. St. Louis Post-Dispatch hockey writer Dave Luecking says the crowds were singing and chanting for the Oilers. At the start, the fans were taunting the Blues. By the end of the Oilers rout they were encouraging the Blues. Sounds like a Quebec City crowd, right?

“The Epson Cup? Is that anything like Epsom salts?” Blues General Manager Ron Caron wanted to know.

The Canucks are excited about their top three draft picks -- Peter Nedved (second overall), Shawn Antoski (No. 18) and Jiri Slegr (No. 23).

Nedved, the Czech defector, is a whirling offensive dervish -- much different from the strapping Bobby Holik. Antoski looks and acts like football’s Brian Bosworth. Slegr is the son of former Canuck defenseman Jiri Bubla.

Bubla is in an Austrian jail and still has a few more years to serve for drug smuggling. He wasn’t forgotten. After the Epson Cup, the Oilers played in Munich (E.C. Hedos) and Graz, Austria, (E.C. Graz). Czech Vladimir Ruzicka visited Bubla, his countryman, in the Graz jail.

With the addition of Ken Linseman, who’s looking good these days, the Oilers are overloaded at center and are said to be looking to deal Ruzicka.

Edmonton Journal hockey writer Jim Matheson bumped into Germans who watch the NHL three or four times a week on Eurosport. “They knew a lot about the NHL,” Matheson said. “The game tape is delayed a little, but it comes over the SportsChannel feed. I wonder how hockey fans in all those places in the U.S. who can’t get SportsChannel feel about it.” They’re burning mad, Jim. That’s how they feel.

Calgary General Manager Cliff Fletcher wouldn’t reveal how much he paid, but the Flames settled their contractual dispute with the Czechs over rookie Robert Reichel by paying off his Litvinov club. Al Coates, Flames assistant to the president, met with the Czechs before training camp and paid them off with a substantial payment in Swiss francs.

It hasn’t gotten any easier for Washington Capitals GM David Poile this month. After the thrill of finally making the Wales Conference finals last spring, four Caps were accused of rape. Although charges were never filed, the stigma remained and Dino Ciccarelli -- one of the four -- spent time on the phones with season-ticket holders explaining his side of the story this summer. Then, in mid-July, defenseman Scott Stevens bolted to St. Louis as a free agent.

Through two weeks of camp, Capitals goalie Don Beaupre and All-Star defenseman Kevin Hatcher haven’t reported. Beaupre, who made $225,000 last year, remains a free agent with compensation. The sticking point is that Beaupre feels if he emerges as the No. 1 goalie, he should make Mike Liut kind of money. Liut recently added another year onto his contract at $455,000. Hatcher, meanwhile, made $185 ,000 last year and would make $200,000 this year. With Ray Bourque, Al MacInnis and Stevens signing into the millions, Poile isn’t resisting a renegotiation bid by Hatcher. In fact, he wants to add another year onto Hatcher’s contract. The sticking point is Hatcher’s major money demands. Hatcher has changed agents, retaining the militant Ron Salcer. That means Poile has a fight on his hands.