Luckily For Blues, Fuhr’s Not Golfing

The odds of Grant Fuhr making it back as the St. Louis Blues’ starting goaltender at the beginning of this season were … well, a lot higher than the odds of Ottawa winning the Stanley Cup, which is 200-1.

But Friday night at the Kiel Center, facing the Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche, there was Fuhr, earning No. 1 star of the game honors with 35 saves in the Blues’ 4-2 victory, and he’ll probably be between the pipes again tonight when the Blues play host to the Blackhawks.

The unlikely journey back from reconstructive right knee surgery April 27 was complete.

“He told me he’d either make it back for the first game or golf the rest of his life,” said Bob Kersee, best known as a track and field coach and husband of Jackie Joyner-Kersee and now the Blues’ strength and conditioning coach. “He didn’t feel like playing golf for the rest of his life yet.”

Instead, Fuhr set out on a torturous summer vacation with tunnel vision of returning for the season opener. Six days a week, he would punish his body 6-8 hours a day rehabbing his knee, either with Peter Friesen, now the strength and conditioning coach for the Hartford Whalers, or Kersee after the Olympics were over.

“Most people would work 2 to 3 hours,” said Kersee, who helped get Fuhr in shape for his amazing run of playing in 76 games in a row, 79 overall, last season. “We were pushing the hell out of him.”

Fuhr’s case was even more unique because he was 34 years old and coming back from a torn anterior cruciate ligament and torn medial collateral ligament, suffered in the second game of the playoffs when Toronto’s Nick Kypreos fell on him.

“Nothing short of a miracle,” said Kersee.

Whether it was working in the water, on a ski machine, doing agility drills, riding a bike or lifting weights, Fuhr was up to the task. “He’s a fantastic individual to be around,” Kersee said.

There were a couple of scary moments along the way. The first time Fuhr went down hard on his knee working out in the gym, “I thought someone had shot him,” Kersee said. The next test came the first day of practice on the ice.

“Hockey players are cool guys to be around,” Kersee said, “but that first day, they really challenged Grant. The first couple shots, you could see the pain in his face.”

But he never backed down from his belief of making it back.

He still has to work another hour and a half after practice to stretch the knee out in preparation for the next day. But it apparently beats golfing all day.

“To be a skater is one thing,” Kersee said of Fuhr’s comeback, “but to be a goalie who has to stay in the game three periods with no rest, up-and-down, side-to-side movement … “

Amazing.