Gooning, Gooning ... Gone?

You won’t find Stu Grimson’s name in the NHL record book, but his place in sports folklore is safe.

Known by the nickname “Grim Reaper,” the Kings’ left winger is in company with “Tiger,” “Bomber,” “the Rock” and other feared players who have rumbled through the league.

They are the enforcers, players whose job is to protect star teammates and intimidate opponents in the only professional team sport in which fighting, rather than getting you ejected, earns you a five-minute breather in the penalty box.

Their role is as old as the game itself, but it’s now on the verge of extinction. Hockey’s “tough guys,” or “goons,” are a dwindling breed.

Grimson, a 6-foot-5, 230-pound brawler who in his 11-season NHL career has protected such players as the Kings’ Ziggy Palffy and the Mighty Ducks’ Paul Kariya concedes that players like him are fast becoming dinosaurs.

“With the changes that we’ve seen in a fairly short period of time . . . it’s not impossible to see the fighting completely out of the game,” he said.

So it goes now in a kinder, gentler NHL, where teams can no longer afford to have a player whose sole role is mayhem.

Regulations adopted in the 1980s are now being enforced with crusade-like fervor. Fight instigators, the third man in a fight and players who come off the bench to brawl are being severely punished.

Long gone are the days of glorified hockey thuggery, when the 1977 movie “Slapshot,” about a hapless minor league team that begins winning by fighting, was considered something close to a documentary.

Scripted violence has been a big hit in professional wrestling and in-your-face aggression seems to be part of the XFL’s sales pitch. But hockey, where the fighting is very real, is headed in a dramatically different direction.

Last season, 64% of NHL games were played without a major penalty for fighting, compared to 41% in the 1987-88 season. The league average for fighting majors has dropped in each of the last 10 seasons.

“Anyone who tells that joke, ‘I went to a boxing match and a hockey game broke out,’ is someone who hasn’t been to a hockey game in a long time,” said Jack Ferreira, director of player personnel for the Atlanta Thrashers.

Mighty Duck General Manager Pierre Gauthier said, “The game is more a finesse game than it has ever been. How teams deal with intimidation and aggression has changed.”

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There will always be a place on the ice for fighters who can also score. Dave “Tiger” Williams holds the NHL record with 3,966 penalty minutes during a 14-season career that ended in 1988. He also scored 241 goals.

The same can’t be said for Kelly Chase, who had 17 goals--compared to 2,017 penalty minutes--in 10 NHL seasons.

At 33, still in his prime, Chase received few offers after the 1999-2000 season with the St. Louis Blues. He is now calling the shots--instead of giving and taking them--as a radio broadcaster for St. Louis.

Fighting, within parameters, has its place on the ice, Chase and others believe, because it allows players to blow off a little steam. Some NHL watchers believe that handcuffing enforcers might actually encourage cheap shots against star players, and lead to more violent incidents involving sticks.

They point to a troubling incident last season, when Boston enforcer Marty McSorley used his stick to slash Vancouver’s Donald Brashear from behind.

Brashear had gotten the best of a tussle with McSorley earlier in the same game, and McSorley seemed intent on forcing a rematch. But Brashear refused to engage him. So McSorley chased his tormentor down and clubbed him in the head.

Brashear suffered a concussion and McSorley was charged with criminal assault. During the trial, he testified that his role was to provide toughness, and that meant being prepared to fight.

McSorley was convicted but escaped jail time. He is prohibited from playing in any game in which Brashear is an opponent for the next 18 months. Afterward, he said he willingly took the rap for the NHL.

“I absolutely refused to put the game of hockey on trial,” he said. “I could have had coaches, general managers, Hall of Famers, testify. I could have showed hours of videos, which would have showed ugly incidents of what really happens in the NHL.”

McSorley, now out of the NHL, had 3,381 penalty minutes in 17 NHL seasons. Earlier in his career, it was no secret that he had been hired to protect Wayne Gretzky while both played for the Edmonton Oilers and then the Kings.

Meanwhile, Gretzky won the NHL’s Lady Byng Trophy--for gentlemanly play--four times.

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But does “gentlemanly play” sell tickets?

“I don’t want to see bench-clearing brawls, but a good fight can get the crowd really excited,” said Sam Kent of Marina del Rey, a King fan for 21 years.

As of earlier this month, attendance at NHL games was running ahead of the heavily marketed NBA for the first time since the late 1980s. Efforts to clean up the game over the last 20 years certainly have had some influence.

An NHL survey of more than 3,700 hockey fans two years ago found most fans enjoying a clean game. In the study, 39% said there was too much fighting, 13% said there wasn’t enough, with the rest saying there was neither too little nor too much.

“There’s too much of it still,” said Jeff Stephenson of Chino, who attends a couple of games a season with his son. “They are not being very good role models for kids. My son plays junior hockey, where fighting isn’t allowed, then sees these guys fight. What kind of message does that send?”

Some fans say the message is the correct one, that enforcers are needed to protect a team’s stars.

“You have to keep the cheap shots and stickwork down,” Kent said. “I don’t want to see someone taking a cheap shot at Ziggy Palffy.”

Theories on most hockey fights are twofold. Someone picks on your star player? Exact retribution. Team in a funk? Get a little pick-me-up from a beat-’em-up.

“I like to use the word ‘deterrent,’ ” King Coach Andy Murray said. “I think you need a deterrent on your team to make sure your players are not going to be taken advantage of. Or maybe you need an emotional lift. But I never tell Stu Grimson to go out and fight. I put him out there in certain situations and wait to see what might happen.”

But Grimson, whether he’s told or not, knows what is expected.

“People like me are able to hold people accountable,” Grimson said.

That’s how Grimson, from Kamloops, British Columbia, learned the game. Hockey in Canada is an especially physical exercise, compared to the emphasis put on skating and passing in Europe.

“We have a certain brand of hockey, with a certain set of traditions,” Grimson said. “And fighting is a part of our game.”

The decline of fighting in the NHL seems to coincide with the dwindling number of Canadian players, who accounted for 53% of the league last season, compared to 73% in 1990-91.

“The skill players dictate the flow of the game more now,” New York Ranger General Manager Glen Sather said.

Harry Sinden, who spent 28 years as general manager of the Boston Bruins, has his own take on why fighting is on the decline: Less familiarity breeds less contempt.

“Teams used to play each other 14 times, sometimes on back-to-back nights,” Sinden said. “Now, we play a team in October, and we might not see them again until March. So you don’t develop the hatred.”

Television has become another deterrent to fighting. In the 1950s and ‘60s, Gretzky would have been a marked man.

“Teams wouldn’t stand around and let him score two, three points a game,” Sinden said. “They would find a way to stop him, legal or not. But you never saw those incidents. There was no evidence. There was no television.”

And finally, it might be a matter of manpower. This season, NHL rosters were reduced by one, to 23 players. One fewer player might be considered minor downsizing, but it accelerated the demise of players whose best skills are with their fists.

“Teams would carry two, maybe three guys in my role 10-15 years ago,” said Grimson, who in his career has scored 16 goals and sat out almost 2,000 penalty minutes. “I think teams want to have one guy who can provide that physical game. But he has to be one guy who can play and not be a liability.”

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Whatever the reason, hockey has changed.

“We’re at the point where there is hardly any fighting after December and it disappears completely during the playoffs,” said Frank Brown, an NHL vice president.

A player who comes off the bench to fight gets fined and suspended for 20 games. The third player into a fight or one deemed an instigator gets fined and suspended for one game.

Some say that league officials, possibly with television audiences in mind, have tried to take an R-rated game and make it PG. And the players seem to be following suit.

Toronto’s Dave Manson used to carry the word “suspended” like a business title. An unofficial count has Manson suspended 11 times since he joined the league in 1986-87.

Yet he had only 62 penalty minutes playing for Chicago and Dallas last season. This from a guy who had 352 penalty minutes in 1988-89.

Evolution at work?

“The game has changed since I came in,” Manson, 33, said early this season. “Have I mellowed? Maybe the older you get, the smarter you get.”

Then again, he might just be a tough guy practicing a little self-preservation.