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Friday, November 3
Dimunitive goalie plays big for hopeful Hurricanes

By Rob Parent
Special to ESPN.com

He seems to stand the typical two inches below his listed NHL height of 5-foot-8. Leave the shoulder pads on and you can almost believe his listed weight of 175 -- though he discusses that number lightly.

"Well, I'm listed at that, but I'm actually closer to about 190 now," Carolina's little big man Arturs Irbe said. "No, really. I'm not talking fatter here, I just bulk up a little."


	Irbe's physical conditioning makes up for his lack of size.

Not that this is a big problem. For Irbe, 33, is a self-proclaimed physical fitness junkie. What he sees in a little near-middle age weight gain is an advantage. A way to store energy, so long as it's not the kind of excess baggage the average mid-lifer has to stomach.

"I've been a fitness freak from the time I was a little kid," said Irbe. "My father always told me and my brother how important it was to take care of our bodies. Even my brother, he's not a professional athlete or anything, but he's in tremendous physical shape. That was always important for us. And me, with my size, I knew how important. I used to play soccer, and I'd lose about eight pounds every game because I'd be running so much distance. So it was important to keep my weight up and keep in shape. But now, I'm getting older and I'm a little heavier. I don't do that much anymore."

Not that he's a couch potato, either.

Irbe is coming off a week of wonder in which he won three of four decisions with a 1.75 GAA and .933 save percentage, earning NHL Player of the Week honors. They were performances of excellence which revitalized the Hurricanes' slim playoff hopes, and were topped Sunday by Irbe's 1-0 shutout gem of Philadelphia -- an energetic 60-minute waltz that was 72nd game of the season.

No wonder this guy wants to store a little fat for the spring.

"I realized a while ago that I'd be playing most of the rest of the games, if not all of them," said Irbe, who now has 73 appearances under his belt with a 32-28-9 record, 2.43 GAA and .905 save percentage. "So, I knew if I didn't steal at least a game or two along the way that our team probably wasn't going to make the playoffs. Our team's been playing well lately, but goals still aren't coming in bunches for us. We'll get one or two goals in a game, and I'll have to stand on my head or whatever I can do to help us win. That's the challenge I put on myself."

It would seem enough that Irbe always seems to find a way to show up for work these days, much less doing so on his head.

Save for one amazing season in San Jose, in which he broke a club record with 74 appearances, winning 30 games and a spot in the NHL All-Star Game along the way, Irbe's lot in life was mostly as an undersized backup skilled in the art of survival. The little guy from Latvia was still on the board in the 11th round when some sleepy-eyed executive from Minnesota chose him in the 1989 entry draft.

He was part of that odd "dispersal draft" deal which resulted in the formation of the San Jose franchise in 1991. He was a lightly regarded backup there for two years until that breakout season of 1993-94, only to have the Sharks lose interest in him when his numbers went south two seasons later.

Irbe found himself signing on as a backup in Dallas in 1996 and went 17-12-3 in 35 games to resurrect his career. After another free-agent season in Vancouver, he came to Carolina for a starting job, and has seemed reluctant to let it go.

Hurricanes backup goalie Mark Fitzpatrick has seen action in all of three games this season. Dearly departed Eric Fichaud played nine before he moved on to Montreal. Rumors about Irbe's on the trade market at midseason went nowhere. He's still in Carolina, not planning to go anywhere but back to the crease for his next game.

"I want to be the workhorse," Irbe said. "But I know what it feels like for those other guys (backup goalies). Those guys behind you are really the unsung heroes, but it's tough on them. In San Jose, when I played 74 games and put in over 4,400 minutes, Jimmy Waite was my backup, and I knew it was really tough on him. But he stayed supportive and positive and a workhorse goalie really needs that."

The Stefan Project
When you put together an expansion team, it's almost a given that victories will be few and far between; satisfaction comes in the development of young players.

Then there's Atlanta.

Although it was obvious from the expansion draft that GM Don Waddell was populating this construction project with young workers -- the Thrashers have several rookies playing regular roles -- it's the development of top organizational prospect Patrik Stefan which might have some people worried.

The No. 1 overall pick in the 1999 draft has gone 16 straight games without a a goal and has all of one goal in his last 44 games. As to what that means for the future? Possibly nothing. With five goals and 25 points in 70 games, there's little reason to believe those won't be the numbers he ends his first season with. But the 19-year-old Stefan is trying to put on a happy face.

"This was the first time in my career I had to think about defense," said Stefan, who played parts of two seasons professionally in the IHL, which is why the Thrashers thought he'd be further along offensively than he is. "It was a tough beginning, but I feel I learned a lot."

Thrashers coach Curt Fraser indicated Stefan might have a little more to learn.

"He's hesitates a lot on the ice," Fraser said. "He wants to be good defensively, but it's taking away offensively from us. I tell him he has to be better offensively. He has to use his legs -- speed, second and third efforts. That's what he has to bring to his game.

"He's trying to do it at both ends. But right now he's stuck in the middle, and he's not doing it at either end."

Stuck in the middle and no place to go? Not quite. In fact, Stefan says he'll return to his native Czech Republic this summer and arrange skating classes with a favorite teacher by the name of Jaromir Jagr.

"I'm only 19," said Stefan, "I have lots of time."

By the way, 1998 No. 1 overall pick Vincent Lecavalier, also 19, scored his 24th goal of the season Tuesday to lift Tampa Bay to a victory over Boston.

Ready, aim ... Fore!
Is longtime Islanders broadcaster Jiggs McDonald, who now does radio play-by-play in South Florida, trying to get back into television?

People were wondering that at a recent Panthers team golf tournament, when McDonald lined up a shot, then out of the corner of his eye saw TV play-by-play guy Jeff Rimer. Suddenly, Jiggs shanked a wedge, which screamed right into Rimer's shoulder and knocked him out of his golf cart.

"It was my best shot of the day," McDonald said proudly. "(Analyst Randy) Moller kept telling me all day, 'Keep your head down! Keep your head down!' I finally kept my head down and I hit Rimer. It was a great shot."

Like a trooper afraid to be replaced, Rimer -- sporting a huge welt on his shoulder and still hurting from it -- went before the cameras at Wednesday's Panthers game. Still, Jiggs didn't feel any sympathy for him.

"His golf etiquette is not good," McDonald said of Rimer. "He's supposed to be behind me, but he's sitting on the right-hand side of the course. And I'm a lefty. So he was trying to get hit."

Said Rimer: "On the advice of my attorney, I cannot comment."

Marvelous Gardens
With Air Canada Centre, the Maple Leafs organization showed it had the right priorities in mind when it came to building a hockey building. The tradition of the Original Six club is prevalent throughout the building, and unlike newer arenas in places like Boston, Tampa and Philadelphia, the Air Canada Centre is spacious ... and its ice stays frozen, too. Now officials in Toronto have gone one step better and ensured the rescue of Maple Leaf Gardens.

The historic rink, Maple Leafs' dressing room and between 3,000 and 4,000 lower bowl seats will be incorporated into the redevelopment plans the Leafs' parent company began exploring last autumn. Three developers currently bidding on the project all incorporated the ice and seats into their respective commercial-residential-entertainment development plans.

What's more, the rink would still serve as the Maple Leafs' primary practice rink. So a few years down the road, shoppers will be able to stop for coffee at mall-side tables, and watch the Leafs practice.

The old college-level try
Since goalie Zac Bierk is apparently healthy enough to mercifully guide Tampa Bay into another early summer, hockey fans appear to be deprived of another chance to see a would-be hero in action.

They'll have to wait for another day in the ever-unpredictable dreams of young coach Steve Ludzik to see their favorite goalie, that kid called Dieter Kochan.

In case you didn't know, this 25-year-old goalie had been working in the United Hockey League -- kind of beer league softball for pro hockey -- earlier this year when the desperate, injury-ridden Lightning signed him ... and put him right into a game against the defending Stanley Cup champion Dallas Stars last Tuesday.

Uh, surprisingly, Kochan allowed three goals on his first six shots faced. He was yanked just long enough to have former starter Cloutier get hurt. When reinserted, Kochan stopped 11of the 12 shots the bored Stars bothered to take in a 4-2 win.

"This is a hell of a league to bring a goalie into," Dallas coach Ken Hitchcock said. "We never even heard of his name. We didn't know what he was."

So who is this guy? Kochan, a former fourth-round pick of the Canucks and Northern Michigan University alum, had stops over the past three years for teams like the Louisville Riverfrogs (ECHL) and B.C. Icemen (UHL), not to mention winging it through Grand Rapids (IHL), Springfield (AHL) and Orlando (IHL) before making the big time this season.

His numbers got better as he moved up in competition, but then, the NHL isn't exactly a training ground. Not even in Tampa.

"There were a number of teams interested, so we figured we had to move quickly," GM Rick Dudley said. "We would've signed him no matter what. You can never have too many goalies."

They've proven that.

Eastern shorts

Already in the midst of a late-season death spiral, newly promoted Devils coach Larry Robinson made a rather honest -- and honestly incriminating -- statement about his team the other day. Speaking to a reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger, Robinson said, "I question how good we are in shape.We had a full practice and guys are huffing and puffing. You want the guys in top shape, and I question whether we are. If you're not in shape and can't get there, that can be a factor. In situations like this, we have to get all the excuses out and look for reasons why we're not successful."

That Lightning loss to Dallas was the 50th of the season for Tampa Bay, a losing landmark the Bolts have achieved for three straight sesaons. The only other team to lose 50 games three straight seasons was the Penguins, doing so from 1982-85.

Quote of the week
"Sometimes, Stephane is like a volcano. He just erupted at the wrong time," -- Pat Brisson, agent for Rangers defenseman Stephane Quintal, after the club suspended his client for "conduct detrimental to the team" after Quintal said in an interview with French language paper La Presse that he'd like to play in Montreal next year.

Rob Parent covers the NHL for the Delaware County (Pa.) Times. His NHL East column appears every week on ESPN.com.


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