GM denies dogging ref in rout

Tim Graham

Wednesday, Oct. 30, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

The Las Vegas Thunder decimated the Kansas City Blades, but it was an off-ice incident that led to the hot-dogging.

The Thunder put together a complete performance Tuesday night, trouncing the Blades 5-0 at the Thomas & Mack Center, as goaltender Parris Duffus notched his second shutout of the season.

Las Vegas needed the effort to overshadow an off-ice confrontation between general manager Bob Strumm and referee Blaine Angus, after which Strumm allegedly delivered 15 hot dogs to the referees' locker room.

The victory avenged a loss to the Blades by the same score Oct. 16 in Kansas City and raised the Thunder's IHL mark to 8-5-1. The Blades fell to 2-6-3, failing to win for the sixth straight time.

Duffus survived eight power plays, a pair of 5-on-3 advantages and three instances when Blades goalie Philippe DeRouville was pulled in the third period. All told, Duffus stopped 32 shots and raised his record to 8-3-1.

"It's always a team thing," Duffus said. "Our penalty killers did a great job. I don't even know how many they killed, but seemed like more than 10. Penalty killing is a hard job to do and these guys put in a great effort."

None more so than Chris Dahlquist, who nearly single-handedly stopped the Blades from scoring on a second-period power play that lasted 5:02, including a stretch of 58 seconds with a 5-on-3 advantage.

"He might be the best defenseman I've seen in this league," Thunder head coach Chris McSorley said. "He plays with the heart of an 18-year-old. He literally changes the tempo of a game with his ability to lay the big hit."

Offensively, the Thunder was explosive.

Segei Zholtok scored his sixth goal of the season on a power play at 14:32 of the first period. Less than four minutes later, Patrice Lefebvre scored his sixth as well. Ken Quinney notched his fifth of the season in the second.

In the third period, Martin Gendron tallied an empty-net goal for his team-leading seventh before Egor Bashkatov added an unassisted goal to round out the scoring.

Lefebvre and Zholtok finished with three points each on one goal and two assists.

"It was absolutely enjoyable to watch," McSorley said. "Tonight we played in-your-face hockey."

However, during the second intermission, Strumm waited for Angus in the runway leading to the Thunder and officials' locker rooms.

"The GM was waiting for myself and wanted to talk to me about a penalty I called," said Angus, a five-year National Hockey League official who rarely calls International Hockey League contests. "He started to talk to me politely and I just told him he had no reason to be down here. He told me he knew who I was and I said, 'I don't want to talk to you.'

"That put his back against the wall in trying to argue whatever call he was trying to argue, so he called me a hot dog for not wanting to talk to him."

According to T&M personnel, Strumm decided to add a little mustard by delivering 15 hot dogs to the officials' locker room, which were waiting when the game ended.

That led an infuriated Angus to interrupt McSorley's post-game media meeting, dumping the dogs on a table.

"I've got thick skin, but when you lower yourself to calling the catering company to deliver hot dogs as an insult, it just shows a great lack of class for a GM to do something like that," said Angus, who plans to file a report with the league office today.

When asked about the delivery, Strumm denied any knowledge.

"Some nights the refs get lasagna, some nights they might get hot dogs," he said. "I guess they weren't hungry."

But according to linesmen Jon Constantine and Richard Frederick, frequent officials at the T&M, there never is food in the dressing areas.

"They should be embarrassed," Angus said. "You'd never see anything like that at the NHL level."