At 35, Anderson Helps Gulls Rise to Top of IHL

What is only hours’ work for most professional sports franchises in this city took the Gulls 58 days. That’s how long they went before losing a game in regulation.

How did they stave off the inevitable for 25 games?

“It’s tough taking a defeat,” shrugged center John Anderson on Wednesday, well after the statute of limitations had run out on accepting guilt for Saturday’s 6-2 loss at Phoenix. “It really feels awful, you know?”

It’s fear--these guys are afraid of losing.

But it is more than paranoia that has lifted the Gulls, who play host to Milwaukee tonight, into the stratosphere of the International Hockey League with a 22-1-3 record.

Anderson has scored 17 goals--a feat that is usually rewarded with promotions to what Anderson calls to as The League, the one whose acronym begins with N, not I.

Therein lies the rub. It’s not only skill that NHL general managers seek, it’s youth. And because some of the IHL’s other top scorers possess both traits, they have given Anderson the opportunity to look their age. His 17 goals rank second in the league, he points out, because he has played in all 26 Gulls games.

“You have to remember,” Anderson said, “some of the other scoring leaders have missed five or six games during call-ups (to the NHL).”

Anderson won’t be hearing from any NHL general managers this year. He didn’t hear from any last season while scoring 41 goals and adding 54 assists in New Haven, numbers that earned him the American Hockey League’s Most Valuable Player award.

He’s 35, which brings all kinds of other fears into the equation.

“I came in here with all these 21-year-olds with washboard stomachs,” Anderson said. “And I’m just trying to keep from looking foolish against them.”

It turns out the only time he felt foolish was during the first hockey game in the Sports Arena this season. It was a September exhibition between the Kings and New York Rangers. Anderson, who left the NHL after the 1988-89 season, decided to shake hands with some old friends.

All he found were a lot of fresh faces.

“It was only four years ago,” Anderson said of his last NHL game. “But it seemed so long ago. I felt really out of place. For the first time, I felt more comfortable talking to the coaches and general managers. . . .

“It was hard.”

It had to have been. Anderson was conversing with players from the same league in which he gained notoriety only a few years earlier. Except this time he wasn’t on the same pedestal as his peers.

Although the NHL is now a memory, not a hope, for Anderson, he nonetheless prepared for his 16th professional season with renewed vigor.

“The past few years I’ve worked a lot harder than I’ve needed to in the past,” he said of his daily five-mile off-season cross-country run and his weight-training schedule.

Even though he’s doing it all for a fraction of what he earned while playing with Toronto and Hartford of the NHL, he still feels pressure to live up to what in the IHL passes for a high-dollar figure.

“In the NHL,” he explained. “All the teams expect to make money. But in the minors, teams don’t make money unless they draw like we have been lately.”

The Gulls have had three crowds in excess of 10,000 in their past six home dates.

“And I’m not sure we would be drawing like this if we weren’t winning,” Anderson continued. “I want our owners to make money. When I signed my contract, I feel I made the commitment to help them do that.”

The measurement of success for any hockey forward is points--goals and assists. And by that gauge it would appear Anderson is living up to his commitment. Besides being second in the IHL goals, Anderson is third in points with 38.

“But it’s a long season,” Anderson said, and 56 games remain.

Besides, Anderson is going for victories.

“Leading the league (in goals) is not as important as the team winning,” he said. “But being in the top 10 is (important) because it means I’m helping the team win.”

He sees a thread of irony that the team he is leading to victory gave him a two-year contract last summer--two years after ignoring his request for a tryout.

But then again two years ago, after Anderson’s NHL contract ran out, every team was turning away from him despite a resume that listed 282 goals and 631 points in 814 NHL games.

It was enough to lead Anderson to consider leaving the game entirely.

“When people keep saying you can’t do it long enough, you tend to start believing them,” he said.

Even when the Fort Wayne Komets finally called, they did so with reservations. Was he still fit? Could he still score?

No problem, Anderson told them.

“If I’m not good enough, I’ll go,” he told the Komets. “I don’t want to make you responsible for a contract if I’m not good enough.”

No need. Anderson scored 40 goals and assisted on 43 others in 63 games before his season was cut short by a thigh injury.

He was fit and he could still score--and he still can. He’s on pace to score 54 goals and 120 points this year.

“I still like playing,” he said. “And if I didn’t still like it, I wouldn’t be playing. . . . There’s just nothing like scoring a goal, it’s just a great feeling.”