by Grant Fuhr
So dominant was Grant that head coach Jack Shupe had this to say to reporters in December of 1980: “Maybe at times Grant shouldn’t play so well. It would make the rest of the team work harder. They depend on him so much and take him so much for granted that it may be hurting us.”
On occasion, Grant would challenge his whole team after practice. The players would have a competition where Grant would throw away his stick, each challenger would line up 10 pucks, and they’d play for a dollar a shot to beat him. At this time, Victoria had Brad Palmer, with an amazing shot, along with Barry Pederson, Courtnall and others. Even when Grant was playing without his stick, they still couldn’t beat him. He’d just use his blocker and his catching hand and his feet. “He was incredible,” says Courtnall. “He’d make money if they didn’t score, so he did pretty well. Later, when we were in St. Louis, we’d do the same thing. But it was a little bit more expensive.”
With the best overall record by far in the regular season, it was assumed that the Cougars would roll through the WHL playoffs toward the Presidents Cup and a berth in the Memorial Cup Tournament. But it almost didn’t happen, as the Cougars found themselves down 3–1 in the WHL final to the Calgary Wranglers and future “Battle of Alberta” nemesis Mike Vernon. Behind Grant’s clutch goaltending, however, the Cougars rallied. In a foreshadowing of the “money goalie” reputation that was to come in his NHL days, Fuhr bested Vernon in the remaining three games of the series. Following Grant’s 30-save performance in the Game 6 win by Victoria, Shupe proclaimed, “Our goaltender came up big again. He’s by far the best goaltender in junior hockey and he’s showing it now.”
Once at the Memorial Cup (a three-team tournament, held that year in Windsor, Ontario) things didn’t go as well for the Cougars. After opening with a 7–4 win over OHL champs Kitchener, the Cougars dropped a 3–1 decision to the eventual winners of the tournament, the Dale Hawerchuk-led Cornwall Royals of the QMJHL. Then came a 4–2 defeat in the rematch with Kitchener. A semi-final return match with Cornwall went even worse as Victoria lost 8–4, finishing a disappointing third place.
The tough ending notwithstanding, Grant had turned the heads of scouts with his body of work in 1980–81. With the Memorial Cup over, the 18-year-old headed home to Spruce Grove to prepare himself for the rigours of the NHL entry draft process.
Grant:
Leading up to the draft, I didn’t change anything. It was baseball season; hockey was over, so I started worrying about baseball. That was just my way of finding something to be competitive at. I caught, which was probably not the greatest thing. My dad found me a left-handed catcher’s mitt, so I caught left-handed. If I wasn’t catching, I’d play third base, where you’re always kind of in the middle of everything. I could run pretty well then, too.
The interest in Grant, however, was decidedly from the hockey world. Grant had seen the scouts and agents hovering on the periphery, eager for a look at the hottest goalie prospect to grace the WHL in years. He was said to have the fastest hands—especially on the blocker side—and he handled the puck like a third defenceman. His save percentage was (for the times) an unworldly .903, while his peers were well below the .900 mark. It was the equivalent of being .940 in today’s game. Scouts don’t miss a thing like that.
Grant:
The scouts don’t really talk to you afterward, but you know they’re there. Not many people wear suits to junior games, so you know when the scouts are watching. If there are agents in town, there are scouts in town. But you weren’t really worried—you just played. And we had a good team.
Grant eventually chose Frank Milne to represent him at the 1981 entry draft in Montreal. While Grant was widely projected as the top prospect in net (The Hockey News ranked him first at his position, 10th overall), no one was quite sure who’d jump first on the goaltending phenom. Goalies are notoriously fickle characters, and many organizations are gun-shy about using a top pick on a position that takes so long to mature. For every high first rounder who makes it, like John Davidson or Patrick Roy, there is a Jamie Storr or Brian Finley who disappears without a trace. Half of the goalies taken in the first round do not rise above backup status. Those who succeed often do so with a second or third team rather than the drafting club. The other problem (as blogger Kent Wilson points out) is that your goalie is either your most valuable player—on the ice at all times—or on the bench with a baseball hat on his head, doing nothing. No wonder that as the 1981 draft started, just 18 goalies had been taken in the top 10 in the previous dozen years.
Grant therefore faced some historical skepticism from the talent evaluators as the league convened in Montreal, much of it not of his own creation. Hawerchuk, whom he’d faced in the Memorial Cup, was the consensus No. 1 pick; after that, the draft order was a jumble, with Grant being mentioned alongside Bobby Carpenter, Ron Francis and Mark Hunter. But if you’d listened closely to Edmonton head scout Barry Fraser, you’d have gotten a hint about whom the Oilers had in mind with the No. 8 slot. “It’s the worst draft year in the West in about 10 years,” Fraser told Jim Matheson of the Edmonton Journal. However, Grant was going to be “the best goalie to come out of the draft since John Davidson.” (At that point, Davidson was the star goalie for the New York Rangers.)
Fraser’s boss, Oilers GM Glen Sather, was less sure. The four times Sather had seen Fuhr play he had been underwhelmed. “Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?” he asked Fraser.
His head scout replied, “He’s going to be in the Hall of Fame some day.”
The draft, then held annually at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, was something less than the showbiz event it has now become. TV cameras were virtually non-existent, there were few if any fans in attendance, and the riches for being a top pick paled in comparison to the contracts handed out today. Furthermore, the techniques used to evaluate players were crude by today’s standards of psychological profiling and aerobic testing at the combine. General managers depended on their trusted scouts (often pals from their playing days) and the NHL’s Central Scouting assessments. Top overall selections often busted (Greg Joly, Doug Wickenheiser, Alexandre Daigle, Patrik Stefan), and excellent prospects could often be found in very late rounds or as free agents. Where might Grant fit in that lottery?
Grant:
I took only three days off to go down for the draft. They didn’t choose the players [who attended] at that time the way they do now. You just went to the draft. Frank Milne just said, “You should probably come down.” So I did. You went to the hotel ballroom, and all the guys were kind of sitting together. The guys I knew—Randy Moller, Marty Ruff, a bunch of the Alberta contingent—had all flown out on the same plane.
After Winnipeg took Hawerchuk, the Kings quickly followed with Doug Smith. Bobby Carpenter (Washington) and Ron Francis (Hartford) came next. When the Oilers’ turn finally came at number eight, they had promising options: James Patrick, Tony Tanti, Al MacInnis, Steve Smith and Normand Leveille. Despite their enthusiasm for Grant, the Oilers brain trust understandably double-clutched at the draft table when Patrick, an impressive defensive prospect, fell to them. In 1981 the draft was a more rapid event, with picks going in without fanfare, and any delay was visible to onlookers. A hush fell over the ballroom: What would the Oilers do? But when the name went in, Sather opted for the acrobatic Fuhr from Spruce Grove by way of Victoria. While Oilers fans had heard the Fuhr rumours, no one quite believed that the run-and-gun Oilers were going to stockpile another goalie after Moog’s breakout performance in the 1981 playoffs. Patrick and MacInnis were a significant defencemen. Tanti promised goals by the bucket. There were other ways to go. The scuttlebutt had had Grant going to a number of cities.
Grant:
It was New York for the longest time: New York picked right after Edmonton. It was possibly Toronto, who picked right in front. Edmonton had never even been mentioned. It was a little bit of a surprise. Especially with Edmonton just finishing beating Montreal in the playoffs, and Andy havin
g played so well. Edmonton wasn’t even on the radar. Toronto or New York: I never really thought how my career might have been if I’d gone to those places. I did a fine job of getting in enough trouble here. I couldn’t imagine. It might have been less trouble [in Toronto or New York], further from my comfort zone.
Al MacInnis was my roommate at the draft, because we both had signed with the same agent. I didn’t know it back then, but I was going to be seeing and feeling his big slapshot for a long time. He played against me in Calgary and with me in St. Louis. I have the marks to prove it. There was also a group of us that had gone out from Alberta, like Randy Moller [drafted by Quebec] and Marty Ruff, who got drafted by St. Louis, I remember. We got to have a couple of drinks on the plane home afterwards with the Oilers announcer Rod Phillips, who had done the draft on radio. (If Roddy hadn’t lied so much about me later I don’t think I’d have made the Hall of Fame!) Then at training camp for the World Junior that summer my roommate was Kevin McClelland, who, even though we wouldn’t have predicted it, was going to be my roommate for seven years with the Oilers.
Back home in Spruce Grove, Grant relaxed as always, playing baseball, golf and hanging out with his childhood buddies. It was a perfect summer to be the hottest goaltending prospect in the sport. Friends and family doted on the happy-go-lucky young man while the Edmonton media primed the pump for a rivalry with Moog. The next logical step for Grant seemed to be camp with Edmonton, then another year in Victoria with the Cougars. There was also the prospect of starting for Canada in the 1982 World Junior Championship, a tournament jointly hosted that year by the United States and Canada. With Scott Arniel, Marc Habscheid, Mike Moller and Gord Kluzak in their lineup, Team Canada was favoured for the gold medal. They did go on to win the tournament with a 6–0–1 record, but with Grant in Edmonton, Mike Moffat got the call in net instead, allowing just 14 goals. Grant would have to wait till 1984 to represent his country, then at the Canada Cup.
For many young players, missing a chance at gold in the WJC would be a disappointment, but for Grant, greater things lay ahead—even if he didn’t know it as he headed to Oilers camp.
Grant agreed to his first contract in September 1981. It was a far cry from the million-dollar earnings he’d enjoy years later, but the three-year deal (plus an option year) at $45,000 per season and a $50,000 signing bonus must have seemed like a king’s ransom to the humble youngster.
Grant:
I approached it as a junior player who was just happy to be in an NHL training camp. If they give me a contract, I’m as happy as can be. Slats always had his desk a little elevated above the chair you sat in. Talking to him, he’s, “Oh. I’ve got a deal for you. It’ll be great! This is what you get. If you don’t like it, this is the extra you can get if you’re good. There are no expectations. We don’t know if you’ll stay. We don’t know where you fit. We don’t know if we’ll see you again. Enjoy your home town!” At that time, he’s the general manager of a National Hockey League team. I’m, “Okay!” It was like winning the lottery. “At least I get a contract!”
That September, Grant discovered what it was like to be a professional in an NHL camp. There were details to take care of, big and small. Because his number of choice, 31, was occupied at the time by Eddie Mio, Grant needed a new number. After experimenting with 35 and 32, the Oilers gave Fuhr the more traditional goalie number of 1 (Grant would get 31 the following season, after Mio was traded to the Rangers). With that piece of business taken care of, it was then time to get to know his teammates. Grant had played with some of the guys growing up, and he had watched a lot of them on TV. But being on a team with Wayne Gretzky, Grant recalls, was about as good as it gets for a rookie.
Joining a team headed by the 20-year-old who would be the greatest offensive player in league history was like hitting a grand slam. The fire-wagon skill of the Oilers offence had been very much on display when Edmonton shocked the Canadiens in the opening-round sweep the spring before. “It was amazing to see them practise,” says Mike Barnett, who would become the player agent for many of them, including Grant and Wayne Gretzky. “The speed and the way they threw the puck around was amazing. No one had seen anything like it before then.”
Despite the out-of-nowhere performance from 21-year-old Andy Moog that post-season, Sather and his scouting personnel determined it was best to select a goalie who could hang with the lightning-quick style of the Oilers, which was to go up and down, attack, skate fast, but not really give a second glance to backchecking, defensive schemes or pinching defencemen. “If you compare our numbers with other teams it doesn’t work,” says Marty McSorley, “because we were scoring at such a high rate but also giving up goals at a high rate. We had a risk factor that is unheard of in today’s NHL.”
Upon entering the NHL, Edmonton was a scoring machine primed by Gretzky, but one that lacked big-game defencemen—relying instead on pluggers and retreads such as Lee Fogolin, Al Hamilton, Doug Hicks and Colin Campbell. Paul Coffey, drafted in 1980, would provide the catalyst on the blue line, moving the team from static to electric on the attack. The Oilers had shuffled goalies in and out like mad in their post-WHA phase, trying out Low, Dave Dryden, Jim Corsi, Eddie Mio and Gary Edwards. Until Moog’s emergence, Mio had appeared to be the consensus “go- to guy.” Now, here came the left-handed phenom from the Victoria Cougars, about to play in the NHL while conveniently living in his boyhood home.
Grant:
Slats made life easier. He said, “You’re from here so you don’t have to worry about getting a place.” It’s a lot easier transition where you’re living at home. I had an easier time turning pro than playing junior, because junior I had to live out at a billet’s place to go play. To turn pro I got to live at home. It wasn’t so bad. I lived with Mom. I got home-cooked meals. Dad was in the city; Mom was in Spruce Grove still. I stayed out there for the first little while and then got a place in the city, but I still got to see everybody all the time. My uncles still had season tickets to the Oilers, so you’d see them every game. Everybody was always around, so it was normal. Except I was playing in the NHL.
My mom didn’t say a word about me coming home late. “No, you’re a big boy now. You’ve been away from home before so you can make your own decisions.” That’s how I teach my own kids. Life’s learned by trial and error. If you’re told you can do this and you can’t do that, you’re going to go see if you can do that or not. I found that out over the years. Somebody tells you it hurts if you grab a cactus, you’re going to grab a cactus to make sure.
Though he was treated like an adult, being at home probably helped shield the young player from some of the pressures he might otherwise have faced alone. With so much going on around him, Grant stuck to the job of playing hockey, shutting out external noise as best as possible. That included the media reviews of how well he was performing in the Edmonton net.
Grant:
I played okay. I mean, it’s hard to remember the games from training camp. Right up until the day they told me I was going to stick, I never really thought I would stick, because of all the guys there that had experience and how good Andy had been. But they must have seen something, because they kept me and let me start against Winnipeg in the fourth game of the season.
While the story of Grant’s groundbreaking debut would likely be front-page news today, there is scarce evidence that his shattering of the racial barrier in net made headlines that night in Edmonton or anyplace else. Oilers fans were seemingly more concerned with how their team broke from the gate after the playoff success of the previous year. Besides, the advancement of racial minorities in hockey had seemingly never been high on anyone’s list of priorities. Willie O’Ree broke the colour barrier as a forward when he played on January 18, 1958, for the Boston Bruins against the Montreal Canadiens. After two games that season in Boston he returned to the Bruins in 1961, scoring four goals with ten assists. “Racist remarks were much worse in the US cities than in Toronto and Montreal,” O’Ree said aft
erwards. “Fans would yell, ‘Go back to the South’ and ‘How come you’re not picking cotton.’ Things like that. It didn’t bother me. I just wanted to be a hockey player, and if they couldn’t accept that fact, that was their problem, not mine.”
Racial progress was minimal in the sport. Despite the examples set by teams in other leagues, hockey organizations felt they could not employ players of colour. Toronto Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe is reported to have said of another black player, Herb Carnegie, “I’ll give any man $10,000 who can make Carnegie white.” Legends such as Carnegie, who never got a shot in the NHL, were only hearsay to those who had never seen travelling negro hockey teams touring the country. Leafs Hall of Fame goalie Johnny Bower later alluded to the fact that, under owner Harold Ballard, drafting players of colour was not considered.
It wasn’t until 1974 that Mike Marson became the second black player in the NHL when he skated with the Washington Capitals. He was followed in the 1970s by Tony McKegney, Bill Riley and Alton White. Those moments were significant for a black community that had been looking for role models. McKegney later talked about the challenge of not having a role model for his progress. “Sometimes I would wonder why I was trying to be a pro player when there were none to look up to. I’m proud of the fact that I was the first black to establish myself in the NHL. Now there are a few. I hope that helps youngsters who need someone to emulate.”
