Ice forward questions past

      Dave Chyzowski is the answer to a trivia question that he desperately wishes did not exist.
      He is the only player chosen in the first round of the 1989 NHL Entry Draft to play on a semi-regular basis in the NHL that season. Chyzowski, taken second overall by the New York Islanders, played in 34 games as an 18-year-old.
      And Chyzowski insists that's the reason he has spent the better part of the last five years playing minor-league hockey.
      "One more year in junior would have changed my entire career," said Chyzowski, a key performer for the Indianapolis Ice. "If I went back to junior, I'm assuming I would have had a good year, and I would have been so much more ready.
      "Mike Modano did that instead of going right to Minnesota, and I'm in no way comparing myself to Mike Modano, but he dominated junior and was a lot more ready for what it took to be in the NHL when he finally got there."
      The 25-year-old Chyzowski began to show the promise scouts saw when he was drafted last year from the Detroit organization. He scored 44 goals for Adirondack of the American Hockey League and convincing coach Newell Brown he was close to being ready for another crack at the NHL.
      When Brown became an assistant with the Chicago Blackhawks this year, he recom- mended signing Chyzowski. They did, and Chyzowski has been one of the IHL's top power forwards, scoring a team-high 34 goals and 74 points in 72 games with 234 penalty minutes.
      "I saw a guy who needed to play and who spent his formative years sitting and watching," Brown said. "He spent the lockout year in the NHL on recall and really didn't play a lot of hockey for a lot of years in a row.
      "He needed to learn the finer points of the game, how to get the puck out along the boards, how to position himself defensively, how to play well away from the puck. He always had a great shot, but he never learned to skate off the puck and to hit holes and make himself available. Those are the things he's learning to do now."
      Brown said Chyzowski is also a capable fighter and remained very much in Chicago's plans.
      -- MONTREAL EXPANSION -- Tony Acurso, a Montreal businessman, is studying plans for a 10,000-seat area in the suburb of Laval that could result in an expansion franchise in the city.
      Nobody from the Laval group has officially applied with the league, but IHL officials know of Acurso's interest. The league clearly wants to put a franchise in Montreal.
      Larry Gordon, the chairman of the IHL's board of governors, said he believed a franchise would thrive despite the presence of the NHL's Montreal Canadiens.
      "There are only a few places we could do that," Gordon said of putting an IHL franchise in the same city as an NHL franchise. "We've had tremendous success in Chicago and Detroit, and I think the same thing could happen in Toronto and Montreal."
      -- LONG GAME, NO GOALS -- The Indianapolis Ice needed 15 rounds in the shootout to defeat the Grand Rapids Griffins 1-0 recently, making it the second game in the league this season that went to a shootout scoreless.
      There have been a league-record 70 shutouts in the IHL this season, surpassing last year's record 44.
      Quebec and Cleveland played a 1-0 shootout game on Nov. 23, which the Rafales won.
      -- PICK THE PLAYOFFS -- The IHL will conduct a pick-the-playoffs contest for its fans with a trip to the 1998 All-Star Game in Orlando, Fla., as its prize.
      When the playoff pairings are set, the league will post the brackets on its Internet site (http://www.theihl.com) and have fans select the winner of each series. Results will be posted after each round.