A Familiar Script Costs Hartsburg

You could see this one coming, right out of pages 1-3 of “The Hockey Coach’s Handbook” under the heading, “It’s Going to Happen to You.”

It works this way:

* The boss says it’s not your fault that the team isn’t winning.

* You say the players, even your stars, have quit on you. The players, even your stars, agree.

* Then you’re unemployed, with everyone around you expressing remorse, saying that they got you fired because they didn’t play.

There are exceptions--Mike Keenan comes to mind--but they are few.

Craig Hartsburg wasn’t one.

For some reason, an NHL coach lasts three years, from hiring to termination, and it’s a cycle repeated over and over with only a few variations, such as that of Craig Ramsay in Philadelphia, who was a victim of Flyer General Manager Bobby Clarke’s fixation on the game as it was a quarter-century ago, rather than the way it is now.

There’s a season of euphoria, a honeymoon period in which you have the distinct advantage of not being your predecessor.

Then there’s a season of heightened expectations, of demonstrating that the success of your first season wasn’t a fluke. The team has been changed to accommodate your style, even your whim. But the message is starting to wear. You can only say “Play defense!” so long before players realize that contracts are increasingly awarded for scoring.

And then there’s a season--in Hartsburg’s case, truncated--when the players stop listening because you’re not saying anything new. Coaching is repetition, and without variations on the theme, repetition tends to fall on deaf ears.

Play defense.

Finish checks.

Next coach, please.

Hartsburg merely beat the rush. In a dreary November, he forgot how to coach a team that he’d led through its best October ever.

“This was a very tough decision for me to make,” General Manager Pierre Gauthier said, only a couple of weeks after he had met with the players, challenged everything but their manhood and said that he would not fire their coach so they might as well play better.

“Craig Hartsburg did everything he could to get this team going. He’s a very hard worker and a very honest man. I really believed in everything he was trying to do, but there comes a point when things don’t work as well as they should that you must adjust.”

Disney handled the situation in its usual clumsy fashion, having Hartsburg conduct practice in the morning, then firing him in the afternoon and letting players learn about it in various ways, many of them while watching television.

His replacement, Guy Charron, is a popular veteran of the Canadian national team. He has been the beneficiary of the usual coach-replacement bounce, with the possibility of three consecutive victories if they win Wednesday night against the Atlanta Thrashers.

Then the Ducks fly out to Detroit, St. Louis and Dallas, where they will be revealed as a two-player--Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne--team with shaky goaltending, no matter who is coaching them. And now, both Kariya and Selanne are injured.

Terry Murray--in his third season with the Florida Panthers--will become the next guy in the unemployment line.

That’s if Butch Goring--OK, an exception in his third month with the New York Islanders--doesn’t beat him out the door.

GUESS WHO’S TALKING

The on-again, off-again negotiations between the Kings and defenseman-captain Rob Blake are on again, which might be progress.

And might not.

“Talking is always better than a cold war,” agent Ron Salcer said.

Blake has turned down two offers, the last of which was about $21.5 million for three seasons and was made at the beginning of training camp. It was termed the “best, final” offer by the Kings and was accompanied by the veiled threat of a trade if it wasn’t accepted.

There was no counteroffer.

“When somebody says it’s their last, best offer, why would you make a counteroffer?” Salcer asked.

With neither side talking, the rumor mill--headquartered in Toronto--decided to trade Blake, preferably to the Maple Leafs. It isn’t happening, probably won’t happen, in part because Salcer and Dave Taylor, the Kings’ senior vice president and general manager, are talking again.

Also because it would generate an insurrection among players and fans.

“I have nothing but the utmost respect for Dave Taylor,” said Salcer--once Taylor’s agent--on Monday, three months after he termed the Kings’ tactics as bullying. “And I also have a lot of respect for what [King President] Tim Leiweke has done, not only for the Kings but also for Los Angeles.”

Certainly, the freeze in negotiations and relations is thawing. Another agent, who asked not to be named, offered this possible reason:

“The Kings should sign him as quickly as they can because he’s not going to get any cheaper. If they wait until he can become an unrestricted free agent, somebody--a Toronto or Philadelphia or the New York Rangers--is going to offer him $12 million a season for five seasons. Why shouldn’t they? They won’t have to give up anything for him then.”

Salcer is realistic.

“I can’t say I feel any better about getting a contract,” he said of recent talks. “But by nature, I’m optimistic. We’re talking.”

Which beats the quiet.

NO KING-SIZED PROPOSAL YET

No, agent Pat Brisson hasn’t offered the Kings a proposal for a three-year contract for his client, Luc Robitaille, as has been reported elsewhere.

But Brisson wouldn’t mind if the Kings came up with one.

And no, he hasn’t offered the Kings a proposal for a $6-million annual salary for Robitaille. Some dot.coms have put out that fiction as fact too.

But Brisson wouldn’t mind if the Kings added that number to a three-year idea.

There have been recent meetings, but nothing has been reduced to paper. The usual conversations have taken place comparing Robitaille to Brendan Shanahan, Ron Francis, Brett Hull and others who signed major deals in their hockey dotage.

It’s plain that the sticking point is going to be length of contract, with the Kings preferring a one- or two-year deal and Robitaille taking a longer-term approach. There’s no doubt that his $3.5-million annual salary will go up.

A look at Monday’s statistics shows Robitaille as a bargain at his current $3.5 million a season, a deal that runs out on June 30, 2001. He earns at least $2 million less than any of the other top-five scorers, less than half as much as defenseman Brian Leetch, with whom he is tied at 42 points.

SLAP SHOTS

Mario Lemieux, who has been working out on his own, joins the Pittsburgh Penguins for their practice today. It will be interesting to see if, now that he’s an owner, Lemieux becomes a better practice player. He once was notorious for his lack of enthusiasm about practice.

Center Eric Lindros says he has a deal worked out to return to the ice with a team he won’t name. But both Philadelphia--which owns his rights--and Toronto, where he wants to play, say nothing is done.