Tuesday, October 24 Filling Fuhr's skates will be tough for new Blue Turek By George Johnson Special to ESPN.com

Sure, he's no kid at 29.

Yeah, yeah, he's enjoyed success in limited (read: 55 starts) NHL duty.

	The Blues are asking Roman Turek to play as many games this season as he has in the past three.

But as his predecessor, Grant Fuhr, notes: "He has good references. But it'll be different for him. He's never been the No. 1 man, playing 60-65 games, carrying a team.

"It's a big job."

No, Rome wasn't built in a day.

And neither will Roman.

The rise (fall?) of the Roman Empire, Missouri chapter, has now begun its formative phase.

And he'll have to play to his nickname -- Large -- to justify their faith, and the trading of Fuhr.

"Is it a gamble? Sure," admits Norris Trophy-winning defenseman Al MacInnis. "It's not putting yourself out on a limb, exactly, but from Day One, Larry (general manager Pleau) and Joel have said Turek has the potential to be a great No.1 goalie and this is his chance to prove it.

"Sometimes in this game, you've got to take gambles.

"Everybody in the hockey world you talk to feels Turek has big things in him. I talked to Nieuwy (Joe Nieuwendyk) and Hullie (Brett Hull) about him and they love him. He's big, mobile and can handle the puck. We have Brent Johnson and this guy from the Western League, Cody Rudkowsky, who was absolutely fabulous in camp. And they're both 20 or 21. Grant's 37. There was just too big a gap there.

"Turek's 29. Most starting goalies in this league now are 28 or 29."

The Blues thought Fuhr was too old, too brittle and too expensive ($3 million U.S. in the final season of his contract) to keep around. When they saw the chance at nabbing a mature, if largely NHL-untested goaltender as a replacement, they leaped at the bait. So Fuhr, rather than suffer the humiliation of being thrown like riffraff onto the waiver wire, agreed to forego the no-trade clause in his contract and set off for Calgary, a city he had left in a jabbering, wailing mess all too often during his days as an Oiler, in hopes of resurrecting his career.

There are those in St. Louis, however, who wonder if Pleau didn't sweep the old fella outta town a bit too quickly.

Hope?!

"Only time," adds Quenneville, "will tell."

Time, while something Turek has more of than Fuhr, is a commodity in shorter and shorter supply in the modern-day NHL.

"People don't want to wait for anything anymore," says MacInnis. "They don't want to hear about teams 'rebuilding.' They just say 'Come back to me and we'll talk about season tickets when you're built.' "

Fuhr's detractors kept harping on the Blues' team save percentage of .888 being the lowest in the league last season -- yes, more odious even than the Dolts from Tampa Bay. And that as the No. 1 man, be he a five-time Stanley Cup champion or not, No. 31 had to accept most of the blame. Fuhr's defenders pointed out his GAA and save percentage have never knocked anyone's eyeballs out but when crucial game-saving or tide-turning stops simply had to be made, there was no one better; they turned to the Blues' won-lost record with Fuhr in net, 16-11-8.

Just win, baby, has always been the man's motto.

"Quite frankly," says Flames captain Steve Smith, an old teammate of Fuhr's during those halcyon days in Edmonton, "I'm surprised St. Louis would let him go." It's left to Roman Turek to prove the Blues right.

Turek, of course, is a big hard-rock fan who named his son Eddie, after a certain band's mascot, a skeleton with glowing eyes. Well, it's one thing to rock to Iron Maiden. It's quite another to be the rock; the Iron Curtain.

Grant Fuhr, future Hall of Famer, has been steeled in such pressure.

"When he came back healthy and ready from that knee injury last year, it's no coincidence we only lost three of our last 18 games," says MacInnis. "Grant Fuhr isn't going to the Hall of Fame for nothing. When we bounced back from 3-1 down to win the Phoenix series, he said 'If we can take this to seven, I'll shut 'em out.' Sure enough, we won that game 1-0.

"There's still a fire in him. He can still play at a high, high level."

High enough, certainly, to make the Blues squirm more than just a little this winter.

"I'm not out of the woods yet, by any means," says Suter, who underwent three surgeries, the final one being a reconstruction, in the springtime. "But so far, it's held up as well as I could've hoped for.

"The doctors told me it'd be 12 to 18 months from the time of the last surgery before it's as strong as it can be. But I've also been told that right now, my right elbow is at no greater risk than my left."

Literally, the man's career has been stitched back together. Finally, specialists decided to gamble on attaching a foreign tendon to replace the one that had been 90 percent eaten away by a staph infection, then clipped and stretched, rubber-band style, during the first two operations.

The last procedure involved cleaning out what remained of the existing tendon, drilling holes in the elbow bone, transplanting the "borrowed" Achilles tendon, then looping it through the holes in the bone. And crossing fingers that it would hold up.

"There's a company in Atlanta that specializes in this kind of thing," Suter says. "They get tendons from cadavers, freeze them right away, then when someone needs one, it's still live tissue. So, yeah, I'm a Frankenstein."

And while we're on the subject of monsters ...
Are these guys a new set of Monsters of the Midway?

Man, this eye of the tiger thing the Chicago Blackhawks have going now makes Mike Singletary look like a bookworm with cataracts. But are they as big and bad as that preseason penalty-minute total would have everyone believe?

The latest foray into mayhem occurred Monday night in San Jose, concluding with a melee that had goaltenders Steve Shields and Steve Passmore fighting in front of the Hawks' bench, from whence Dave Manson and Bob Probert, respectively, took a punch and a spear at Shields.

On Wednesday, Probert was suspended for four games and Manson suspended for three games by the league.

Those close to the team insist the 'Hawks are not a goon show, but in fact are blessed with more talent on their first three lines than at any time in recent memory. But with one job available on the fourth line during camp, the knuckles came unwrapped pretty easily in the fight for NHL employment.

Take a check: Nathan Perrott, 72 PIM in five preseason games; Reid Simpson, 48 in four; Brad Brown 40 in five; and Ryan Vandenbussche 40 in three.

A regular rogue's gallery.

Hence, an image was fostered. One that the 'Hawks are at the moment attempting to tone down.

"We don't need this right now," sighed GM Bob Murray. "Our team better regain its composure. Our focus right now is not good. It's time to get back on course."

Coach Lorne Molleken, he of the nasty shiner (courtesy Caps' GM George McPhee), couldn't agree more. Sort of ... "Obviously," said Molleken, "we need to reinforce the discipline aspect ... but we're not going to take away their emotion. That's part of who we are."

So ring the bell, set the traps ... let's get reaaaaaady to ruuuuuumble!

Quote of the week
"Where did he make the prediction? In an opium den?"

-- Sharks coach Darryl Sutter, responding to ESPN's Al Morganti picking San Jose to win the Stanley Cup.