FUHR IS ON. . .Solid Ground

He had hit some low points in his life, including a rehab stint for a drug problem that got him suspended for most of the 1990-91 season, but Grant Fuhr scraped bottom professionally in 1995.

Traded from Buffalo to the Kings--his fourth team in four years--he couldn’t stop a beach ball. In his first five games with the Kings, who acquired him for a package of players that included popular defenseman Alex Zhitnik, Fuhr had a 6.55 goals-against average and an .813 save percentage; simply standing upright should have brought him better numbers than that.

The Kings needed a goalie who could play regularly but couldn’t wait for Fuhr to play himself back into form and didn’t re-sign him when his contract expired. Thirty-two years old and only four years removed from the last of five Stanley Cup championships he had won with the Edmonton Oilers, Fuhr had no idea what he would do.

“I was getting ready to shut it down. I was honestly thinking of retiring,” he said.

Help came from an unexpected source.

St. Louis Blues General Manager Mike Keenan offered Fuhr a contract. It seemed like another misstep when Fuhr reported to his first St. Louis training camp overweight and was suspended for a week by Keenan, but Fuhr’s perseverance has turned his career around.

Under conditioning coach Bobby Kersee, Fuhr stretched to gain flexibility and plodded on a treadmill to lose weight. He set NHL goaltending records by starting in 76 consecutive games and appearing in 79 games in 1995-96, and he played in 152 of the Blues’ 164 games over his first two seasons. His greatest feat, though, was becoming a steadying presence on a team that walked a tightrope of taut nerves throughout Keenan’s hard-driving tenure.

“Maybe I have just as many lives as a cat,” said Fuhr, who weighs 192 pounds, three pounds more than he did as a rookie in 1981.

“I’ve been written off a few times before. They thought I was done in Buffalo, then they thought I was done in L.A., and lo and behold, I’m still here and still going.

“Mike just gave me an opportunity to prove I could play. You can’t ask for much more than that. I have nothing bad to say about him. He gave me an opportunity to prove I wasn’t dead and buried yet.”

He’s far from done--and so are the Blues, who will meet the Kings in a best-of-seven playoff series starting Thursday at the Kiel Center.

Although minor surgery on his right knee in February and a bruise on that knee April 11 limited him to 58 games, Fuhr had a 2.53 goals-against average and an .898 save percentage. However, his contributions toward helping the Blues compile a 45-29-8 record and earn the fourth playoff seeding in the Western Conference go far beyond his statistics.

“He doesn’t get the recognition he deserves,” teammate Al MacInnis said. “Even playing in Edmonton, he played behind Mark Messier, Wayne Gretzky and Paul Coffey, and now it’s [Colorado goalie Patrick] Roy and [Buffalo goalie Dominik] Hasek everyone talks about. But in the four years I’ve been here he’s provided us some of the most consistent goaltending in the league. I have as much faith in him now as I’ve ever done. I’d go to battle with him any time.”

Said St. Louis defenseman Steve Duchesne: “He’s the backbone of the team. Fuhrsie’s the wall. Everybody responds to what he does. Everybody’s excited because we know what he has done in past playoffs. Everybody is geared up because we think we have a good chance.”

This was the Blues’ first full season under Coach Joel Quenneville, who replaced Keenan as coach in January 1997. Players had to change from Keenan’s reliance on a handful of key players to Quenneville’s one-for-all-and-all-for-one defensive system, and Fuhr has been there to save their mistakes. He also has offered occasional warnings when they stopped working, reminding them they might not be lucky enough to again reach such a promising position.

“What I like about Grant the most, and naturally you look at his past and everything that goes with that, is Grant’s stability. It’s amazing to me,” said General Manager Larry Pleau, who recently gave Fuhr a two-year contract extension. “His temperament around the team in this situation was important, and that’s why we wanted to keep him here.

“It’s not so much that we expect him to play every night and be the Grant Fuhr of 10 years ago. What’s important to us was his stability and his temperament around the hockey team, in the dressing room and in games. He’s very in control of himself. Things don’t rattle him. And he’s got a lot of experience to pass on.”

In Edmonton, Fuhr was overshadowed by the Oilers’ spectacular offense. Not that he was a weak link, but with his teammates setting scoring records, he didn’t have to be perfect.

He was more than good enough. In 1987 he had a 2.46 goals-against average in leading the Oilers to their third Cup in four years, but he lost the most-valuable-player award to Philadelphia rookie goalie Ron Hextall. He won the Vezina Trophy--awarded by general managers to the NHL’s top goalie--only once, in 1988, even though his name has been etched on the Cup five times. Among goalies, only Turk Broda (five times), Ken Dryden (six) and Jacques Plante (six) did it as often or more.

When the cash-poor Oilers began selling and trading players, Fuhr was among the last to go. Sent to Toronto in a seven-player trade in September 1991, he lasted only a season and a half because the Maple Leafs decided to play youngster Felix Potvin. He landed in Buffalo, but fell into the same trap when the Sabres gave Hasek the bulk of the work.

He arrived in Los Angeles in February 1995 after playing in only three games of the lockout-shortened season. Kelly Hrudey, challenged by Fuhr’s arrival, lifted his game; Fuhr was rarely used by coach Barry Melrose, who was fired and replaced by Rogie Vachon for the last seven games. The Kings almost squeezed into the playoffs but were eliminated on the final weekend.

“It got to the point I thought maybe I’d lost it and maybe I couldn’t play,” Fuhr said. “Rogie let me play a little bit at the end, and that made me believe I could play. That was half the battle. I had gotten to the point that I was listening to everyone who said I couldn’t play. . . . Once you start to doubt yourself, you get in trouble.”

Vachon, now the Kings’ vice president for special projects, says he is happy for Fuhr even though friendships are traditionally put on hold this time of year.

“He’s playing with a lot more confidence now. That’s what he needed, to get his confidence back,” Vachon said. “To come back and play at that level, that’s incredible. He was bouncing around the last two or three years, and it was tough.

“You’ve got to give a lot of credit to Keenan, who put him back in shape and played him a lot, and to Grant. He’s a dangerous goalie when he gets hot.”

Said King defenseman Rob Blake: “His success doesn’t surprise me because he’s a great player, and great players rise to the occasion. When he was here, I don’t think he had any occasion to rise to, because we weren’t in the playoffs.”

The Blues have confidence Fuhr will come through, even though he has yet to win a playoff series for them. He injured his knee in the second game of the Blues’ first-round series against Toronto two years ago and played well in a six-game loss to eventual champion Detroit last spring. “He’s faced a lot of adversity in his career and he’s an experienced goaltender, so things that happen during the playoffs aren’t going to faze him,” MacInnis said. “He’s capable of winning games for us, and your goaltender has to be able to steal a game every so often.”

Fuhr, whose 127 playoff victories rank third in NHL history behind Roy’s 153 and Bill Smith’s 132, said he wouldn’t feel any sense of vindication if the Blues defeat the Kings.

“It’s always satisfying to beat somebody in the playoffs. Each round, each game has its own merits,” he said. “Everybody in here thinks we have a team that can go a long way. If we play well, this team has a chance to beat anybody. This team can be as good as it wants to be. We’ve got enough talent where we know we can score some goals if guys set their minds to it, and we know we can play good defense if we put our minds to it.

“We can go with pretty much any kind of flow. If a team wants to play an offensive series, we’ve got guys in here that can score. If they want to play close checking, we know we check well, which is playoff hockey. We can win 2-1 games and we can win 6-5 games.”

Fuhr joked that with his new extension, “I’m like the plague. They can’t get rid of me.” But he takes his job seriously, knowing how quickly it can be snatched away.

“I’ll be leaving on my terms, not anybody else’s terms. That’s what I wanted. That’s the best way to go,” he said. “I’ll know when I can’t play anymore. I’ll figure it out before they will. I know in my own mind I can still play. It’s a matter of trusting yourself, and you’re fine. As soon as you start doubting yourself, then strange things happen.”

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Grant Fuhr Factor

How St. Louis Blues’ goalie Grant Fuhr fared with the Kings and in the three seasons before and after the Kings:

THREE SEASONS BEFORE KINGS

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Record Win % GAA 62-69-14 , .476 3.53

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FUHR WITH KINGS (1994-95)

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Record Win % GAA 1-7-3 .227 4.00

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THREE SEASONS AFTER KINGS

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Record Win % GAA 92-76-33 .540 2.72

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