A furious comeback

Sporting News, The, Dec 23, 1996 by Larry Wigge

Candice Fuhr's voice couldn't be heard above the din of more than 15,000 fans at St. Louis' Kiel Center on November 21 as she watched her husband, Grant, speed out of his goal crease to join in a melee between the Blues and Coyotes. Her words contained both excitement and panic. Candice knew Grant wasn't coming out of the crease to cut down the angle on a shooter. No, Grant Fuhr was a man in a hurry, trying to stand up for his teammates, and his wife says she wasn't really prepared for that.

"We got to our feet when the fight started," she said later, her voice still tingling with excitement. "It's second nature for me to look back at Grant I could see him inching his way out of the net I had a feeling something strange was going to happen. Jocelyn Twist (wife of Blues' enforcer Tony Twist) was sitting next to me. I told her, `Grant's going to do something, I can feel it' dust then, I turned my attention to the fight along the boards for just a second and Jocelyn said `Here he comes. Look at Grant go.'

"I said, `Oh my God! What is he doing?' My thoughts immediately went back to the Toronto game in the playoffs last spring when Grant was hurt My hands became clenched. It wasn't until he skated away pain-free that I let out a sigh of relief. After it was all over, Jocelyn said, `Grant was great Tony must have taught him all of those moves.' Relieved that everything was OK, I said, `Tony had better watch out or Grant will take over as the tough guy.'"

Candice Fuhr was shaken enough by the incident to scold her husband in their car on the drive home. "Don't ever do that again'" she lectured. "I was a nervous wreck."

A goaltender's wife doesn't wear a mask when watching a game, though she might like one if her husband gives up a few soft goals. Candice says she still didn't understand what Grant was doing that evening until he explained that the linesmen had escorted Twist to the penalty box, leaving defenseman Igor Kravchuk to fend for himself against two Coyotes.

"The explanation helped a bit," she says, "but I was still furious with him."

And why shouldn't she be worried? After all, most people didn't expect Grant Fuhr, at 34, to be anywhere near an NHL goal crease this season. Not after having a torn anterior cruciate ligament and torn medial collateral ligament removed from the same knee just seven months earlier. Most athletes who tear both ligaments in a knee as Fuhr did in April after a goal-mouth collision with Toronto's Nick Kypreos in the playoffs--would be starting a new career.

But not Fuhr. He's back, and as strange as it may seem, he may be better than he was when he helped the Edmonton Oilers win five Stanley Cups from 1983-84 through 1989-90. His 2.87 goals against average last season was more than one goal better than his average in '83-84, and this year his GAA is a career-low 2.82 (through last Thursday). The Blues are so convinced that he is the answer, they are about to sign him to a two-year contract extension that will pay him $4 million, plus incentives.

"You've got to shake your head in amazement," says Blues coach Mike Keenan, who salvaged Fuhr from the NHL scrapheap a year and a half ago. "No one knew if he would be back at all, and he comes back and is even better than he was last season."

It's no fluke, either, says Dallas goaltender Andy Moog, a teammate of Fuhr's in Edmonton in the early 1980s.

"I watched him last year and thought he had gotten heavier lost some of his quickness and had changed his game a little, used his experience to play better fundamentally," Moog says.

"I thought he was done after having surgery. But I think this year he's gotten his quickness back and he's better than he was in Edmonton."

Moog can't believe the guy he couldn't beat out in Edmonton is still stoning shooters more than a decade later.

Fuhr is more comfortable facing 100-mph shots from NHL sharpshooters than he is talking about his 15-plus-year career. "I don't know how you can interview him," Candice Fuhr says. "All I ever get out of him is `Yep' and `Nope.' Sometimes I have to really interrogate him to find out what's going on because I want details."

Fuhr, however, is more than a shrug and one-word answers. He has learned how to control a life that once seemed on a roller coaster from hell.

In his first season with the Oilers, 1981-82 Fuhr criticized Edmonton fans for booing him, creating a stir. They expected a lot from a 19-year-old who had been taken by their team with the eighth pick in the draft after being the top goalie in the Western Hockey League the previous season. And Fuhr didn't deliver, struggling in the playoffs after helping the Oilers win a division title in the regular season.

Fuhr didn't exactly use the ensuing off-season to hone his skins, either. He showed up at Oilers training camp in 1982 looking more like the Pillsbury Doughboy than an NHL goaltender, and the Oilers, flustered, sent him to the minors to get his body in shape.

But Fuhr's life off the ice was a mess. He would rent a VCR and forget to return it--for a year. He once leased a car, then sold it, not realizing it would become a problem. Fuhr was winning Stanley Cups on the ice and losing control of his life off of it. The Oilers became so concerned they eventually took over his finances to protect Fuhr from himself.