THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603310209
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: TOM ROBINSON
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
There are more productive ways to spend time than doting on the past. Particularly if you're inclined to recall the impressive unit the Hampton Roads Admirals were earlier this season. Because then you're bound to recognize the outmanned outfit they became.
For those at the center of the Admirals' continuing spiral from ECHL master to mediocrity, for those with a rooting stake, it is particularly unsettling.
They know this was a title contender a couple months ago. This was a team with solid veterans and a promising working agreement with the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals, who were to provide a larger supply of talented youngsters than ever before.
It was a franchise clearly dedicated to erasing its first-round playoff washouts the last two seasons, of recapturing the spirit and chemistry that produced back-to-back league championships in 1991 and 1992.
So instead, somebody spilled coffee on the blueprints, which were finally shredded Saturday when the Richmond Renegades laid another first-round ouster on the Admirals with a 6-5 overtime victory that completed their three-game sweep.
Would anybody have predicted this Jan. 19? That date brought a rousing 5-4 victory over South Carolina, before a sellout crowd of 8,990, that lifted the Admirals' record to 24-9-10.
Would anybody have predicted what followed? Fourteen losses in the next 15 games, including nine in a row? The seemingly relentless shower of injuries, promotions and ridiculous behavior that snuffed the season's potential?
Not likely. Not Admirals owner Blake Cullen. For a time, he watched coach John Brophy send out three stacked lines featuring the talented likes of Trevor Halverson, possibly the league's best player, Rich Kowalsky, Dominic Maltais and Rod Taylor. A defense with the sturdy Ron Pascucci and Chris Phelps.
Taylor steamed on, though an eight-game suspension was thrown in, but the others dropped away, gone to higher leagues or to a flood of debilitating ailments. Everybody knows Brophy chucked a hacksaw at a fan and got suspended. He got suspended again after the Admirals' brains went kabooey in a farcical, penalty-bloated third period of the regular-season finale in Richmond.
The unraveling was hard to watch. Still, Cullen stared at reality before Saturday's game and saw a team that still had a chance to reach Round 2.
``I thought we had a good playoff team,'' Cullen said. ``Even when we're losing, we're losing 5-4, 4-3 games. That's our style of play, a tight-checking game. Playoff hockey.''
It didn't work out. The same can be said for the double NHL working agreement, which sounded good in theory. But unlike in baseball, in which parent clubs usually replace those they promote, the bigger clubs left the Admirals on their own when they plucked a player.
That happens to others, too. But though Cullen didn't stray beyond hints, he is known to marvel at the way some ECHL clubs maneuver around the league's salary cap to procure players.
Off-the-books payments are part of the ECHL's lore, though nobody's ever accused Cullen of indulging in that game. Hampton Roads, he said, is being crossed off the list of many player agents who know that Cullen won't play ball under the table and thus don't steer clients his way. That could explain, in part, why the Admirals were left with 13 rookies at playoff time.
Cullen has long railed against the league's claim of being a developmental league, supposedly intent on sending players onward and upward, on a budget. He'd rather see every man for himself, out in the open, pure capitalism. Find your own players, pay your own players, may the most enterprising organization prevail.
It looks as though that won't happen soon, though. And so Saturday night, ECHL business as usual returned to Scope, where they blared ``Anchors Aweigh'' over the PA system one final time.
And where, despite the most honorable of efforts, the Admirals were unable to find a way to play on. by CNB