THE NHL : He Plays Matchmaker 880 Times a Season

He doesn’t score goals, smash anybody into the boards or even wear skates. But he decides every regular-season game in the NHL, all 880 of them.

Not the winners and losers. Just the opponents.

Talk about thankless jobs. Meet Phil Scheuer, whose task it is to come up with the NHL schedule.

Think of Scheuer as a juggler, if you can imagine a juggler trying to keep 22 balls in the air across two countries.

And it’s only going to get worse. Next season, there will be 24 teams in the league.

Each club has its own requirements for home dates. The Kings, for example, must share the Forum with the Lakers.

There are other problems.

“You can’t just send an East Coast team West for one game,” Scheuer said, “or a West Coast team East. It’s a matter of economics.”

But for all his care and concern, Scheuer is under attack this week.

The problem is the All-Star game Saturday at Philadelphia. Friday night at the Spectrum, the league will hold its skills competition, its version of the NBA’s slam-dunk and three-point shooting contests.

It’s a good idea. What’s not so good is the NHL schedule. Seven games will be played Thursday night. The league’s two biggest stars, Wayne Gretzky of the Kings and Brett Hull of the St. Louis Blues, will each be playing at home.

This is the league’s showcase weekend. It’s the time when NHL officials should want their biggest names on hand as much as possible for promotional purposes, and as fresh as possible to take part in the skills activities.

Instead, Gretzky wakes up Friday morning in Los Angeles and Hull in St. Louis. Both will spend much of the day on a plane, Gretzky arriving in Philadelphia late in the afternoon.

Crazy?

Unavoidable, Scheuer maintained.

“We originally thought the All-Star game was going to be on Sunday,” he said. “So, we had Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday as days off. We didn’t find out it was definitely going to be on Saturday until August.”

The change was dictated by NBC-TV, but by then it was too late to change the 1991-92 schedule. Scheuer starts working on it the previous January.

“I feel a little like I’m to blame,” he said of this week’s scheduling nightmare. “The only real problem we have is Gretzky, but that’s the biggest problem. I’m disappointed we couldn’t move it.

“The All-Star game is getting to be a big event, bigger than ever. (In the future) we’ll try to work something out. But I’m not sure what we can do.”

A good place to start might be with the television network. Insist on an early commitment for a specific day to hold the All-Star game. If none is forthcoming, then be sure that the Thursday before the All-Star game is kept open, even if it means scheduling games on the following Monday.

The NBA certainly wouldn’t delay the arrival of Michael Jordan for its All-Star weekend.

The NHL should do no less for its stars.

Best of the worst: Center Rod Brind’Amour of the Philadelphia Flyers has been selected as the lone representative of his club in the All-Star game.

Leading the team in goals, with 16, and points, with 36, Brind’Amour is certainly the logical choice.

But only, he feels, in comparison to his Philly teammates.

“I wanted to be there (only) when I felt like I truly deserved to be in an All-Star game,” Brind’Amour told the Philadelphia Daily News. “I don’t think my numbers are All-Star caliber. So it makes it a little disappointing to feel like you were maybe thrown in there because everybody on our team has just been struggling.

“I’m not saying I don’t deserve to play. . . . I’m going to put a lot of numbers up (by season’s end). But right now, there’s a lot of other players in the league that have better numbers than I do. It’s just unfortunate that because someone has to be there (from the Flyers), you’re a ‘have to be there.’ ”

Gentleman, start your rumors: It appears that 1992 will be the year of The Trade, a blockbuster deal involving Eric Lindros, rivaled only by the The Trade of 1988 that brought Wayne Gretzky to the Kings.

Having spent a season of frustration trying to sign Lindros, the No. 1 pick in the 1991 draft, the Quebec Nordiques know in their hearts it’s just not going to happen. The 18-year-old phenom, considered the game’s next superstar, has made it plain he won’t play in the French-speaking province where the prospects for big-time endorsements are as dim as the chances for a Stanley Cup.

So the question is not if, but when and where Lindros will go. Before those answers become obvious, look for the trade rumors to intensify as the season winds down, even though the Nordiques have said they won’t do anything until their season is over.

A Quebec newspaper has already made it open season on Lindros by throwing out the first rumor: Pittsburgh Penguin defenseman Paul Coffey to Philadelphia for defensemen Steve Duchesne and Jiri Latal plus some cash.

In this scenario, the Flyers would then ship Coffey, forwards Rick Tocchet and Mike Ricci plus cash to Quebec for Lindros.

Stay tuned. There’ll be more. Much more.

Rumors II: Supposedly, according to various media reports, the Nordiques have let it be known that they have officially opened the bidding for Lindros, but will accept written offers only.

Not exactly.

In reality, Quebec General Manager Pierre Page, tired of all the questions, told reporters, with tongue in cheek, that if anybody had an offer, they could, “Fax it to me.”

Was he serious? No, but in the present climate of speculation, that doesn’t seem to matter.