Howe 'bout those Heroes!
Slapstick and slapshots as NHL legends show off
Posted: Sunday January 24, 1999 12:52 AM
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Cammi Granato (center) and her teammates celebrate her goal during the Heroes of Hockey game AP |
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- It was a scene out of "Slapshot," only
three times the fun:
Gordie, Mark and Marty Howe skating through a rain of hockey
sticks toward goaltender Pete Peeters on the first three-player
penalty shot in hockey history.
Peeters stopped Mark and Marty, but not Gordie. And the "NHL
Heroes" came back to tie the "Sunbelt Heroes" 2-2 in a
fun-filled oldtimers game Saturday night.
The game was part of the NHL's All-Star Weekend, to be capped by
Sunday's All-Star Game at the Ice Palace, home of the Tampa Bay
Lightning.
Ken Linseman also scored for the NHL Heroes, who came back from
a 2-0 deficit. Cammi Granato, captain of the U.S. women's gold
medal-winning Olympic team, and Hall of Famer Marcel Dionne scored
for the Sunbelt Heroes.
It was all for fun right from the start, as the Sunbelt Heroes
came out for introductions all wearing sunglasses. Referee Paul
Stewart even wore a pair at one point, showing one player to the
penalty box pretending to be blind and using a hockey stick as his
cane.
Stewart, however, was able to see pretty clearly when he called
"too many Howes on the ice" to set up a penalty shot for Granato
in the first period. Then when Granato, sister of the San Jose
Sharks' Tony Granato, missed the first penalty shot, Stewart
awarded another because goaltender Darren Pang "tripped an
American hockey champion."
She missed the second, as well, before connecting from the left
side about 40 feet out with less than a minute left in the period.
Dionne gave the Sunbelt a 2-0 lead with a shot from the left
circle with just eight minutes left in the second period.
"That was his first goal of the season," the tongue-in-cheek
announcer said over the loudspeaker.
The Sunbelt's Rob Ramage later came out on the ice with a golf
bag full of hockey sticks and handed one to Terry Crisp, the former
Lightning coach who was playing one of the forward positions.
"Wrong sportsmanlike conduct," the loudspeaker announcer
thundered this time. "All three Howes will take a penalty shot."
Stewart then called for two more pucks and the Howes, who once
skated on the same line in the old World Hockey Association, skated
side by side from the neutral zone.
The Sunbelt players on the bench tossed a bunch of sticks on the
ice and the trio stickhandled their individual pucks. They all shot
at once -- and Gordie's got through.
There was then an "oxygen timeout" for the elder Howe, 70.
Linseman's slap shot from the top of the left circle with a
little over a minute to go brought a sober end to the game, which
featured two 12-minute periods and a continuously running clock.
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