The Red Badge Becomes Symbol of NHL’s Fears : AIDS: Report that female victim of disease had sex with 50 players still causes concern.

Before AIDS, the brawlers of the NHL wore blood--their own and their opponents’--as a badge of courage. Now, it is a sign of a troubled age.

Before AIDS, the playboys in the league proudly spun their tales of conquest. Now, they speak in hushed tones, if at all.

No sport has been hit harder by the threat of AIDS than hockey since international AIDS Day last year. At that time, two doctors in Quebec discussed a female patient who claimed to have had sex with about 50 NHL players in the early to mid-1980s. She died from complications of the disease about two years ago.

Her story began with two lines in a French newspaper in Montreal in September. Another paper picked up the story and gave it headline coverage. From there it spread to the wire services. To every city in North America. To every hockey player who has laced on a pair of skates in the NHL since the late 1970s. And to anybody who has ever been with any hockey player since the late ‘70s, leaving fear, indignation and controversy throughout the league.

The furor started after Quebec doctors Rejean Thomas and Clement Olivier were interviewed in the Journal de Montreal as part of the coverage of international AIDS Day. In discussing their Montreal clinic, they mentioned the woman, whom they declined to identify.

But despite the fears, there has not been a documented case of AIDS in the NHL.

“We’re concerned,” said the Kings’ Luc Robitaille. “But we are also mad. Why didn’t they come up with this before? They’re saying there may be more to come in the future. They are putting the blame on the players. They should have gone to the league.”

The doctors say they simply wanted to convey the fact that AIDS is not solely a homosexual disease, that the heterosexual community is also at risk. This was two months before Magic Johnson’s announcement that he was infected with HIV.

The doctors say that they are amazed by the reaction to their announcement.

“We hadn’t realized it, but hockey is a religion in Canada,” Thomas said. “We learned it this day.”

Defenseman Larry Robinson could have told them that. A veteran of two decades in the NHL, he spent 17 of those years playing for the Montreal Canadiens before coming to the Kings.

“If (the female patient) were still alive, then it could be checked out,” Robinson said. “But now, some people think it could be that these doctors are just looking for publicity.”

Robinson says he still shudders at one Canadian paper’s reaction to the story. The paper published a picture of Montreal’s Guy Carbonneau with his young daughter. The headline read, “Daddy, do you have it?”

Carbonneau says the AIDS story has spun out of control. The number of players the woman supposedly had sex with increased to 70 on one American TV show, he said. And a tabloid paper quoted Carbonneau’s wife, although she says she never talked to anybody from that paper.

And according to one report, Coach Pat Burns of the Canadiens had a condom machine installed in the team’s dressing room.

“A condom machine?” he told the Edmonton Sun. “This has gotten so far out of proportion. There’s even been a picture of me handing out condoms.

“Look, I have a lot of single players on the team. Hockey players are macho. They don’t like to go to pharmacies where they might be recognized.

“Well, I haven’t been handing them out, and I’m not encouraging them to (have sexual relations with) everyone they can. But they are human, and I just want them to be aware. I just want them to be careful and know (condoms) are available.”

Stacey Muller, wife of Montreal wing Kirk Muller, told the Associated Press: “The Canadiens have been singled out. Canadiens’ wives have been singled out. Everybody is affected, not just athletes and their wives.”

Erika Brault, who plans to marry Montreal defenseman Matt Schneider, said wondering whether people would be faithful was bad enough before, without the fear of AIDS to contend with.

“It’s something I’m very aware of,” Brault said. “But it will just eat you up if you think about it all the time. It’s uncomfortable for everybody.”

Kelli Ewen, wife of Canadien wing Todd Ewen, said that she has seen young female fans flock around hockey players.

“But the notion that wives are horrified, that we’re freaking out, that we’re in tears, it’s just not like that,” she said.

Beth Taylor, wife of the Kings’ Dave Taylor, has been around the game for 15 years.

“There are girls who hang around and say they’ve been with this player or that player and it turns out they are talking through their hats,” she said. “They might have met the player once at (a charity event).

“Maybe this will put the fear of God into some of the guys who are single. I think they should all be tested. With the league going to 24 teams in the next few years and all the minor leagues, the odds are somebody is going to come back positive.

“Dave always jokes that we’re the ones people ought to keep an eye on. He says the players are busy traveling. The wives are the ones with all the free time at home.”

Lack of information and misinformation has been a problem. And whatever the medical evidence, the fears persist.

Says Jeannette Robinson, Larry’s wife: “We’re fortunate we’re in the married scene so we don’t have to go through what the single people do. But just being in the locker room, a player gets (a) cut, he goes in the shower and my husband uses the same shower.”

There is no medical evidence that the disease can be transmitted that way, but the fear persists.

“Everybody has something in their past,” Robitaille said, “especially if they’re single.”

The St. Louis Blues’ Brett Hull, the league’s leading scorer, is single, but says he’s not worried about the AIDS threat.

“I’ve been tested,” he said. “It might be a big deal for some, but not for me. I’m safe.”

The majority of those interviewed said they have privately been tested for the virus.

Interviewed at the All-Star game in Philadelphia last month, Hull was asked about the mystery woman and her 50 unknown partners from a decade ago.

“Now that might throw some fear into those guys over there,” he said, pointing to the room where the old-timers were dressing.

Burns doesn’t believe the woman’s story.

“But if it scares people and it scares hockey players, good,” he said. “They should be scared.”

No argument from Robinson.

“Sure, everybody’s concerned and not just because of this story about this woman,” Robinson said. “But the reason it was brought out was because nobody wants to read about Harry the postman who just died because he got AIDS from God knows who. Hundreds of people are stopped all the time for drinking and driving, but their names are never in the paper. But if one athlete or one entertainer gets stopped, everybody reads about it.”

But the publicity Thomas and Olivier have received has been largely negative in their eyes.

“That’s the mentality here,” Thomas said. “Nobody asked us whether a hockey player could have infected this girl. They’re all looking for the bad girl who slept with a lot of boys.”

They won’t find out who she is from Thomas or Olivier, who insist that the woman did not know she was carrying the virus when she was sexually active.

“Confidentiality, for us, is very important,” Thomas said. “She is dead, but her family is still living.”

But, according to Thomas, that hasn’t stopped reporters from trying to learn her identity. One tabloid, he said, called and asked for a profile of the woman.

People who make such demands, Thomas said, “don’t understand the complexity of the disease and the complexity of the care and the complexity of confidentiality.”

As an example, Thomas described a female patient who has tested positive for HIV. Since the woman revealed the results of her test to a sex partner, she has been receiving threatening calls from the man, even though his own subsequent tests for the virus have been negative.

In the months since he and Olivier went public with their NHL story, Thomas has been aware of unprecedented concern from some of his other patients concerning confidentiality in their cases.

“We have had a lot of questions,” he said, “that we never had before.”

But on the whole, Thomas said, general reaction to the story has been positive.

“Most people agreed with what we said,” he said. “Many people called us and said, ‘We were happy you said that. It may have a big impact on prevention.’ The people who were more aggressive were heterosexual men and very macho men.

“The sports journalists reacted as if we’d attacked them, too. I think they may have the same lives (as the athletes they cover).”

Beth Taylor has a question for the doctors, a question that has been echoed often since the revelation: “Why did they come out with this now and not two years ago? They possibly could have saved some lives.”

The debate is especially heated in Canada, where the controversy has broken down between the French point of view and the English. In the French-speaking province of Quebec, it is not mandatory for either AIDS patients or their doctors to track down their former sex partners and inform them of the possible risk, although tracing is recommended. In the English-speaking provinces, tracing is required.

The two doctors did not feel they needed to notify the NHL of their patient’s claims. They did contact public health authorities in Quebec, who told the doctors to urge their patient to notify as many of her former partners as possible. That they did.

One positive, according to Thomas, is a renewed debate in Quebec over the question of making the tracing of partners in AIDS cases mandatory.

That’s all well and good, according to Thomas, but he is angry that it took this particular case to open so many eyes.

“When it’s gay men or drug users,” Thomas said, “nobody cares. When it’s hockey players, well, then it’s a problem.”

And the NHL view?

“It certainly created a lot of ink,” said Brian O’Neill, NHL executive vice president. “All I can say is that, although there is no official reaction (from the league), we are certainly conscious of the story. To my knowledge, no current player or any former player has tested positive. There is nothing traceable back to what she claimed to have done 10 years ago.”

O’Neill met with the NHL Physicians Assn. at the All-Star game to discuss AIDS.

“We feel education for our players is vital,” O’Neill said. “We have asked for a recommendation on what more can be done. We have no mandatory testing and are not contemplating it. If anyone wants to be tested on their own, that is their business. But we are not ready to mandate it.”

League President John Ziegler sent out a memo to each club in which he said: “I urge and recommend to each of you to provide to your players the opportunity to be tested voluntarily and confidentially. . . . Your team physician should be available to provide explanation, guidance, counseling, etc.”

But the fear remains. Said one player, who asked to remain unidentified: “Every time I see somebody bleed (on the ice), I want to get away.”

One veteran, known more for his fighting than his skating, dismissed any such fear.

“I could just as easily die getting hit by a truck,” he said.

But, upon encountering the same reporter a few days later, the player acknowledged that the question had created fear.

“I wish you wouldn’t have asked me that,” the player said. “Now I can’t get it out of my mind. But I have to. I can’t worry about that. Because if I do worry about it, they’ll just get somebody else to do my job.

“But over the years, I’ve been in contact with tons of blood. I’ve had myself checked out for the sake of my family.”

Veteran defenseman Doug Wilson, now with the San Jose Sharks, concedes there is “a real lack of education about AIDS. With Magic Johnson playing in the Olympics, what if he gets cut? If the doctors say that is not an issue, it’s not an issue.”

Kelli Ewen says that the possibility of acquiring AIDS through fighting is an issue for her.

“We went to a doctor and he told us it was a really remote chance,” she said, “but even one in a million, that’s too much.

“I worry because Todd’s always cutting his hands open. That terrifies me. I told him, ‘If you see blood, run, run and get far away!’ ”

Marty McSorley, the Kings’ player representative, is one of the few in the league who is not an advocate of testing for HIV despite the fights he has engaged in.

“What if a guy tests positive?” McSorley said. “Can he play? What do you tell the guy? It’s like telling a kid he can’t go to school.

“It’s not that I’m burying my head in the sand. It’s not that I’m treating it as business as usual. But I don’t want to have to look at guys differently. I want to see them treated fairly by society.”

Wayne Gretzky would like to see a broader spotlight on the whole problem.

“It’s not a problem in pro sports,” he said. “It’s a problem in society. You are not going to clean it out of sports until it’s cleaned out of the world. It’s more serious than just worrying about athletes.

“Any time anyone dies of AIDS, I’m concerned. I have a daughter (Paulina, age 2) who is not an athlete, but I’m concerned about the world she’ll be living in when she’s 19 or 20. Same thing with my son (Ty, 18 months). I’m concerned as a citizen and a parent. I hope they can come up with a vaccine that will cure it. I want my kids to grow up and enjoy their life.”

Times staff writer Mary Williams Walsh contributed to this story.