Grant Fuhr—Just Win, Baby
Grant Fuhr is one of the
best clutch goaltenders in the history of the game.
However,
any modern fan who looks at Fuhr's career numbers may
wonder about his ability: a career 3.38 goal
against average and 25 career shutouts over 19 seasons
do not seem like such great goaltending numbers.
Fuhr’s glory years came at the
height of what some pundits called the "Air Hockey
Years" of the 1980s. The Oilers’ run-and-gun style, which
saw them score over 400 goals a season, created an
offensive revolution in the game. In 1983-84, the Oilers’
first championship season, 13 of the NHL’s 21 teams
scored more than 300 goals in the regular season. In the
21st century, none of the NHL’s 30 teams even got close
to the 300-goal mark.
Because of the rise of end-to-end
hockey, goalies were constantly under duress. Shutouts were rare, and a goalie could be
outstanding and still allow four goals in a night. The
real measure of Fuhr’s importance to the Oilers comes by
simply looking at his career win totals, which include 403
regular-season triumphs and an amazing 92 career playoff
wins. Most of
the
career victories came by
playing for the team he cheered for as a boy growing up
in Spruce Grove, Alberta. His recognition as a great
goaltender also includes five Stanley Cup rings,
three-time representative of Canada Cup tournaments, and
goaltender for the NHL in the famous ’87 Rendezvous tournament,
which pitted the League’s all-stars against the Soviets.
As a teenager, Fuhr impressed scouts
with two standout seasons. He was the top player on the
Western Hockey League’s Victoria Cougars in both 1979-80
and 1980-81, winning 72 games over that span while only
losing 20 times. Fuhr’s ability to pile up wins
impressed the Oilers, who selected Fuhr in the first
round of the 1981 entry draft. Fuhr still considers that
draft day to be the biggest hockey moment of his life.
"I would have to say the best moment
was getting drafted into the NHL by the Oilers," he
said. "Yes, the Stanley Cups and Canada Cups were great,
but there was something special about getting picked by
the team that I followed since day one. I knew that I
was going to get the chance to play at home. Playing in
front of family and friends, it made things easier for
me, I didn’t have to go to a city where I had to deal
with strange places and people. Everything was familiar
to me."
When he arrived in Oilers’ camp in
the fall of 1981, Fuhr was thrown into a goaltending
troika with veteran Ron Low (his roommate on the road)
and Andy Moog, who had led the Oilers to their shock
first-round playoff
upset over the Montréal
Canadiens
the previous spring. Still, Fuhr impressed Oilers’
general manager and coach Glen Sather enough that he got
the lion’s share of the games that season, playing in 48
of the team’s 80 games. The next season saw Fuhr
struggle, and Moog wrested the starting job from him.
Fuhr played in just 32 games that season and even spent
time in the minors to work on his game. The next season
saw Moog and Fuhr work together as a unit, and the
pair’s play was a major reason the Oilers’ could
sip from the Stanley Cup. Fuhr shut out the defending
champion New York Islanders in Game 1 of the 1984 final,
and Moog finished off the Isles with a Game 5 win at
home.
The
Edmonton Oilers, as far as the regular season was
concerned, used the platoon plan until 1987, when the
Oilers traded Moog to Boston. However, as far as the
playoffs were concerned, Fuhr was the Oilers’ number-one
goalie
from 1985 on. When the Oilers’ defended their Cup title
in 1985, Fuhr dazzled, out-dueling Philadelphia star
goalie Pelle Lindbergh and becoming the first net minder
in history to stop two penalty shots in one Stanley Cup
final series.
Fuhr would lead the Oilers’ to two
more Cups in 1987 and 1988—later,
Wayne Gretzky would tell
the media that if there was a game that his team needed
to win, his first-choice goaltender would be Fuhr. The
1987-88 season was Fuhr’s finest; he won 40 games and
played more minutes than any other goaltender. He won
his only Vezina Trophy as the League’s top net minder and
was nominated for the Hart Trophy as the League’s MVP,
but finished behind Gretzky in the voting.
Due
to an injury, Furh could not play in the 1990 Stanley
Cup final against former-Oiler Bill
Ranford and his Boston Bruins. After the Cup win,
the Oilers sent Fuhr to the Toronto Maple Leafs, and he began a 10-year odyssey
that would
also see him suit up for the Buffalo Sabres, Los Angeles
Kings, St. Louis Blues and Calgary Flames. In
1995-96, as a member of the Blues, Fuhr set a new
standard for endurance when he set the NHL record for
net minders by playing in 79 games that season.
Playing in St. Louis in the modern
era of tight defence, Fuhr put up microscopic goals
against averages, but he admitted that he would trade it in
for 7-4 shootouts if it would have made the Blues a
contender.
"I think I would have had better
stats (starting my career in the 1990s), but then we
maybe wouldn’t have won as much," said Fuhr. "The style
of hockey we played, it was a lot of fun. A 7-4 or 7-3
game is a lot of fun to play in and it’s exciting for
the fans. When I got to St. Louis, the game had already
changed and I was putting up much better stats, but we
weren’t as successful as a team as we should have been.
I would much rather have the team success."
Fittingly, Fuhr played his last NHL
game in the final regular-season match of the 1999-2000 in
the Battle of Alberta. His Flames lost to the Oilers
that night, but the thousands of Oilers fans who had
travelled south to the Saddledome to see the game
continually chanted Fuhr’s name throughout the evening
and gave him a series of standing ovations to salute a
special career.
In 2003, Fuhr was selected to the
Hockey Hall of Fame.
[back]
[top]
|