SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 1983, SPORTS
Copyright 1983/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY
JIM MURRAY
A Name Is Only a Name
In the National Football League as in the American West, there have always been names to strike fear in the hearts of men. What names like Cochise or Cody or Crazy Horse meant to the early settlers, Butkus of Bubba (as in “Kill, Bubba, kill!”), Karras or Marchetti meant to football players.
Youngblood is such a name. It denotes the left end of the Rams, a guy who paws the 
ground before he charges like a corrida bull or a wounded moose, a guy who shakes quarterbacks upside-down till they cough up the football. It’s a name that would turn the wagon trains around on the plains or send a chill over a frontier saloon or empty a main street at high noon.
Youngblood was a name to keep young quarterbacks awake the night before the big game or make offensive tackles wish they had gone into sales.
You would think its owner would be this big, scowling, antisocial hulk, a churlish cretin who was a cross between a guy who collects bad debts for the Mafia and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Youngblood would really mean Badblood.
But the real Jack Youngblood would be a big disappointment to the Dalton Gang or the warriors of Cochise. He doesn’t seem mean enough to be Jack Youngblood. He smiles a lot. He has these dimples. He hardly ever gets mad. He looks like a collar ad, a cross between Robert Redford and John Wayne. He always looks as if he’s enjoying himself, as if it was fun peeling all these blocking backs off and throwing them over the sidelines. He laughs when he swallows up the quarterback. You’d think it was ballroom dancing instead of modified murder. Most defensive ends look as if their feet hurt or their pants were too tight. Jack Youngblood looks as if he just heard a good joke or is learning the tango.
He’s the Rams’ Good Humor Man. He goes through life as if he is passing out popsicles. His mayhem has a kind of impersonal quality to it, like a surgeon who is not hurting you on purpose.
He’s as durable as a diamond, as indestructible as an ingot. He has the center of gravity of a kewpie. You might knock him off the line of scrimmage but never off his feet. He has played in 171 consecutive games, two of them on a broken leg.
He is the last of the Super Rams, the last link with the gaudy era of the Fearsome Foursome, the Secretary of Defense, the annual best team-in-the-league — on paper — Rams. When they were the Rams, not the Goats.
“When I first came up, they had players like Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen, Diron Talbert, Coy Bacon, Fred Dryer, Hacksaw Reynolds, Larry Brooks and Jack Pardee. You were lucky to get a suit,” Youngblood was recalling the other day.
The signature of the Rams was always the pass rush. It was the best west of Pittsburgh and south of Lombardi’s Green Bay. And Youngblood kept that tradition alive through four head coaches and almost twice as many line coaches. “(Head Coach) Tommy Prothro was aloof, cerebral. He almost never had personal contact with us, Chuck Knox was macho. He wanted a show of hands of guys ready to play. He thought defense won games and offense just tried to keep from losing them. Ray Malavasi was an astute tactician who trusted people to give 100%. Naturally, they took advantage of him.”
As to changes in the game, Youngblood remembers principally that they took the left hook and the right cross out of it. It wasn’t football, it was pugilism. The all-purpose head slap. “You practiced it in the gym on the heavy bag and the light one. You came through the line of scrimmage like Rocky Marciano. You hit everything that got in your way right in the helmet. The advantage of the head slap was, it made the guy either turn his head or close his eyes or both.”
Youngblood recalls that when Deacon Jones got through an afternoon of knocks to the head, his opponent had a permanent ringing in his ears, as if he had spent the day in the Liberty Bell.
When they outlawed that, the line of scrimmage resembled less Dempsey-Tunney than Veloz-Yolanda. Now the Rams are going to the three-man front or the volleyball defense. Will it neutralize the vaunted Rams pass rush, will the coaches opt for a newer, more stylish attacker? Will Jack Youngblood stop laughing?
Jack Youngblood smiles. “I can play for them (the Rams), all right. The question is can I play for me?”
In other words, Jack Youngblood has to meet Jack Youngblood’s standards, not the league’s.
It’s not likely the syllables will come to mean Jack Oldblood, then. It’s likely they will still have the same effect on the league as smoke signals to a wagon train. A man who can play a Super Bowl on one leg can probably play a three-man front on crutches and the consonants in the name Y-o-u-n-g-b-l-o-o-d will still cause offensive tackles to blink their eyes or young quarterbacks to run for their lives event if he’s only got two other renegades instead of three.
Reprinted with the permission of the Los Angeles Times
Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 60753, Pasadena, CA 91116
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THE LOS ANGELES RAMS: HOME AGAIN
A History of LA’s Team from the Voice of the City
Los Angeles Times Sports Columnist Jim Murray columns 1961-1995
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ISBN: 9780182212095
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The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, established in 1999 to perpetuate the Jim Murray legacy, and his love for and dedication to his extraordinary career in journalism. Since 1999, JMMF has granted 104 $5,000 scholarships to outstanding journalism students. Success of the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation’s efforts depends heavily on the contributions from generous individuals, organizations, corporations, and volunteers who align themselves with the mission and values of the JMMF.
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Thursday, and that the Tigers sent him home on Friday.
Sunday, the DoD issued three suspensions resulting from incidents in Saturday night games. . . . F Ryley Appelt of the Kamloops Blazers was given a two-game suspension after taking a charging major and game misconduct during a 7-2 loss to the Silvertips in Everett. Originally, Appelt was penalized for a headshot, but was changed to charging. . . . D Josh Brook of the Moose Jaw Warriors got one game after being hit with a checking-from-behind major and game misconduct during a 4-3 victory over the visiting Spokane Chiefs. . . . F Mike MacLean of the Prince George Cougars also got one game, this one for a boarding major and game misconduct during a 6-5 shootout victory over the host Lethbridge Hurricanes. MacLean sat out the Cougars’ 2-1 OT victory over the host Kootenay Ice on Sunday.
season, beating them, 3-2. . . . The Royals (7-1-0) had beaten the visiting Giants, 3-2 in OT, on Saturday night. . . . The Royals now are 5-1-0 at home. All eight of their games to this point have been against B.C. Division opponents. . . . At 7-0-0, the Royals had tied the franchise record for best start to a season. Last season, they also opened with seven straight victories. . . . The Brandon Wheat Kings now are the only one of the WHL’s 22 teams not to have lost in regulation time. The Wheat Kings (5-0-2) are scheduled to entertain the Spokane Chiefs on Tuesday. . . . Vancouver has points in seven straight (6-0-1). . . . The Giants were playing their third game in fewer than 48 hours, having beaten the Kamloops Blazers, 4-3 in a shootout, in Langley, B.C., on Friday night. . . . F Milos Roman (5) scored twice for Vancouver; he’s got goals in four straight games. . . . F Brayden Watts (3) got the winner when he broke a 2-2 tie at 16:21 of the second period. . . . The Giants held a 40-20 edge in shots. . . . Vancouver G David Tendeck stopped 18 shots in his third straight start. . . . Trent Miner, Vancouver’s other goaltender, missed all three games as he travelled home to Brandon after the deaths of both of his grandfathers. . . . According to the online scoresheets, the Giants didn’t dress a backup goaltender for any of the three weekend games.
Saskatoon. . . . The Raiders (10-1-0) are the first WHL team to 10 victories this season. They have won three in a row and now led the overall standings by three points over the Vancouver Giants. . . . The Blades (7-3-0) had won four in a row. . . . F Brett Leason (9) led the Raiders with two goals and an assist. He’s got at least a point in each of the Raiders’ 11 games. . . . Leason broke a 2-2 tie at 17:12 of the second period. . . . D Brayden Pachal (1) added a goal and two assists for Prince Albert. . . . Leason now is tied for the lead in the WHL’s points race. He and F Joachim Blichfeld of the Portland Winterhawks have 22 points apiece. . . . Leason leads the WHL in goals with nine.
Portland. . . . The Silvertips (6-3-0) were playing their third game in fewer than 48 hours, having beaten the visiting Edmonton Oil Kings, 5-3, on Friday, and the Kamloops Blazers, 7-2, on Saturday. . . . The Winterhawks (5-3-1), who had been 5-0-1 in their previous six games, hadn’t played since Wednesday. . . . Everett got 30 saves from Dustin Wolf, who is the only goaltender the Silvertips have used to this point in the season. Wolf is 6-3-0, 1.90, .922. . . . The Winterhawks were 0-10 on the PP. . . . F Connor Dewar had two assists for Everett, giving him 14 points, including seven helpers, in nine games.
victory over the Kootenay Ice in Cranbrook, B.C. . . . The Ice held a 46-27 edge in shots, including 21-5 in the third period. . . . Each team was playing its third game in fewer than 48 hours. . . . The Cougars lost 4-1 to the Tigers in Medicine Hat on Friday, then beat the host Lethbridge Hurricanes, 6-5 in a shootout, on Saturday. . . . The Ice lost 3-2 to the visiting Regina Pats on Friday night, then dropped a 4-3 shootout decision to the Tigers in Medicine Hat on Saturday. . . . On Sunday, F Jackson Leppard (1) gave the Cougars a 1-0 lead at 13:32 of the second period. . . . The Ice pulled even at 3:39 of the third on a goal by F Peyton Krebs (3). . . . F Ilijah Colina (3) won it 33 seconds into extra time. . . . The Ice (3-4-1) has lost three in a row (0-1-2). . . . The Cougars improved to 4-5-1. . . . Prince George was without F Josh Maser and F Mike MacLean, both of whom were serving WHL-issued suspensions.
the Calgary Hitmen. . . . D Aaron Hyman (3) had pulled the Pats (3-6-0) into a 3-3 tie, on a PP, at 11:06 of the third period. . . . Henry, who also had two assists, won it with his second goal of the season. . . . The Hitmen slipped to 1-5-2. . . . F Jake Leschyshyn (4) had a goal and two assists for Regina. . . . F Cole Dubinsky, who won’t turn 16 until Dec. 4, scored his first goal for the Pats. From Ardrossan, Alta., he was a fourth-round pick in the 2017 bantam draft. . . . F Tristen Nielsen was back in Calgary’s lineup after serving a three-game suspension.
Cougars on Friday, Ryan McCracken of the Medicine Hat Tigers tweeted: “Tigers not commenting on the status of Gary Haden, who was scratched from tonight’s game.” . . . Prior to Saturday’s game, in which Medicine Hat beat the visiting Kootenay Ice, 4-3 in a shootout, McCracken reported that “Haden is no longer on the (Tigers’) roster.” . . . After the game, Shaun Clouston, the Tigers’ general manager and head coach, told McCracken that Haden’s absence will be addressed on Monday. . . . Haden, 19, is from Airdrie, Alta., who was a ninth-round selection by the Regina Pats in the 2014 WHL bantam draft. . . . This season, he had one goal and two assists in nine games. Last season, he had 17 goals and 25 assists in 70 games. . . . In 115 career regular-season games, he has 25 goals and 28 assists.
victory over the Vancouver Giants. . . . The Royals are 7-0-0 overall, including 5-0-0 at home. All seven victories have come against B.C. Division opponents. . . . The Giants (7-1-1) have points in six straight (5-0-1). . . . Oliver (6) finished with two goals and an assist. . . . F Brandon Cutler (3) gave Victoria a 2-1 lead at 13:08 of the second period. . . . F Milos Roman (3) scored on a PP at 3:36 of the third period to tie it 2-2. . . . The same teams will play in Victoria again today, 3:05 p.m.
for the first time this season, beating the host Brandon Wheat Kings, 3-2 in a shootout. . . . The Broncos got shootout goals from F Alec Zawatsky and F Max Patterson. . . . Swift Current improved to 1-7-0. . . . The Wheat Kings (5-0-2) have yet to lose in regulation time. . . . F Stelio Mattheos (7) had both Brandon goals. . . . D Garrett Sambrook, acquired from Brandon earlier in the week, was in the Broncos’ lineup. . . . After the game, the Broncos boarded their bus and headed west. They next are scheduled to play on Tuesday in Langley, B.C., against the Vancouver Giants. . . . The Broncos will play all five B.C. Division teams on the trip, covering it in eight days. Interestingly, they will go Kamloops-Prince George-Kelowna, playing the last three games of the swing in five nights. Most teams on a B.C. Division trek play in Kelowna and Kamloops on back-to-back nights, then finish in Prince George two nights later.
victory over the Spokane Chiefs. . . . The Chiefs had points in their previous six games (4-0-2). They are 1-1-0 on their East Division trip. . . . The Warriors have points in six straight (4-0-2). . . . Hunt, 16, is from Brandon. He was a first-round pick in the 2017 WHL bantam draft. . . . Hunt’s first WHL goal gave the Warriors a 3-2 lead, on a PP, at 4:17 of the third period. His second goal broke a 3-3 tie at 11:49. . . . D Ty Smith scored twice for Spokane, his first goals this season. . . . The Warriors lost D Josh Brook to a checking-from-behind major and game misconduct for a hit on Spokane F Ethan McIndoe at 6:02 of the third period.
Ap
Lethbridge. . . . D Cole Moberg (2) of the Cougars forced OT with a goal at 15:26 of the third period. . . . Prince George then outscored the hosts 3-2 in the shootout to snap a four-game losing skid. . . .
Kelowna. . . . F Riley Sawchuk (4) tied the game, 4-4, with his second goal of the game, at 14:35 of the third period, and F Isaac Johnson (5) snapped the tie, on a PP, just 27 seconds later. Johnson finished with two goals and an assist. . . . The Rockets (2-9-0) are 0-6-0 on home ice. . . . Kelowna had beaten the Americans, 3-2, in Kennewick, Wash., on Friday. . . . G Talyn Boyko stopped 24 shots in his first WHL start for the Americans. The 6-foot-6 Boyko, who is from Drumheller, Alta., will turn 16 on Nov. 16. Tri-City selected him in the third round of the 2017 bantam draft. . . . F Michael Farren, acquired on Thursday from the Saskatoon Blades, was pointless in his debut with the Rockets.
Firebirds. A post on the team’s website reads that Oulahen has left “due to personal and family reasons. He will be leaving the position effective immediately.” . . . Greg Stefan, the team’s goaltending coach, worked as the head coach on Friday night, with associate coach Darcy Findlay and assistant coach Garrett Rutledge staying in their roles. . . . The Firebirds were 0-7-0 going into Friday’s games, leaving them last in the 10-team Western Conference. Last night, they fell to 0-8-0 with a 5-3 loss to the visiting North Bay Battalion. . . . Oulahen, 33, was in his third season as Flint’s head coach. . . . Brendan Savage of 
Kamloops Blazers, 4-3, in Langley, B.C. . . . The Giants ran their winning streak to five games. . . . The Blazers have lost six in a row (5-0-1). . . . F Luc Smith’s second goal of the game, at 15:33 of the third period, gave Kamloops a 3-1 lead. . . . F Davis Koch got the Giants to within one at 17:33 and F Milos Roman tied it with 10.7 seconds left in the period. . . . The Giants won the shootout, 2-1, getting their other goal from D Bowen Byram in the third round, after F Connor Zary had scored for Kamloops to end the second round. . . . A pregame note from Steve Ewen of Postmedia: “Also of note with Friday’s game is the coaching matchup. Michael Dyck signed on as bench boss with the Giants in June, but not before talking to the Blazers about their open post, if you believe the rumour mill. The Blazers announced Serge Lajoie as their new coach three days ahead of the Dyck addition in Vancouver, but Lajoie had spoken to the Giants, according to scuttlebutt.”
selection in the 2020 WHL bantam draft.
Royals. . . . The Chiefs acquired Gulka from the Royals on Nov. 22, 2017, giving up, according to the WHL website, a sixth-round selection in the 2018 WHL bantam draft. According to a Chiefs’ news release, Gulka’s rights have been returned to the Royals “as per the conditions of the trade agreement.” . . . Gulka, from Langley, B.C., had one assist in four games with the Chiefs last this. This season, he had played in four games, recording one assist. . . . The Royals selected him in the ninth round of the WHL’s 2015 bantam draft.
Gally to the Kelowna Rockets for a 10th-round selection in the 2020 bantam draft.
being F Ryan Bowen, D Braydyn Chizen and F Lane Zablocki.
Brandon following the deaths of two grandfathers.
Regina Pats. . . . Kolle, who was acquired last week from the Portland Winterhawks, has two goals this season. . . . Lethbridge is 1-2-1 at home. . . . The Pats (1-6-0) are 0-4-0 on the road. . . . Regina was without F Sergei Alkhimov and and F Jake Leschyshyn, both of whom served one-game suspensions. . . . Regina also was without D Liam Schioler (leg) for a second game in a row. . . . The Pats did get back G Max Paddock after he sat out two games with an undisclosed injury.
to lead the Seattle Thunderbirds to a 9-6 victory over the host Kelowna Rockets. . . . The Thunderbirds, who scored four PP goals in five opportunities, took control with five first-period goals, three of them from Philp, who got his first four goals of the season. His fourth goal came in the second period. . . . Philp went into Kelowna with 28 goals in 208 career regular-season games. . . . Seattle F Dillon Hamaliuk had his five-game goal-scoring streak end, but he drew three assists, as did D Jake Lee. . . . Seattle got a goal and two assists from each of F Zack Andrusiak and F Andrej Kukuca. . . . F Leif Mattson scored two goals
added two assists to lead the Winterhawks to an 8-2 victory over the visiting Edmonton Oil Kings. . . . F Joachim Blichfeld, the WHL’s leading scorer, had five assists. He has 22 points in eight games. . . . Glass has 17 points in six games. . . . F Reece Newkirk, the third member of that line, helped out with a goal and two assists. . . . Portland scored four times on the PP. . . . The Winterhawks have won five in a row. . . . Edmonton is 0-3-1 on a road trip that stops in Everett and Kent, Wash., on Friday and Saturday nights.
this season, after playing him on the injured list. He is returning home to work at recovering from an injury. Josh Horton, who covers the Silvertips for the Everett Herald, tweeted on Tuesday that Melcher “is still experiencing concussion symptoms and is also dealing with a neck injury.” . . . Horton added that Melcher is “listed as week-to-week but it’s possible he will miss a substantial (amount) of time.” . . . The Silvertips selected Melcher in the first round of the CHL’s 2018 import draft. He had yet to get into a game with Everett after going pointless in two exhibition games. . . . 
he was given a major penalty and game misconduct for slew-footing in a 3-2 loss to the visiting Vancouver Giants on Saturday night. F Justin Sourdif of the Giants wasn’t injured on the play in question. . . . This was the third suspension of four or more games handed out by Kevin Acheson, who handles the WHL’s discipline, after weekend games. . . . F Sean Richards of the Everett Silvertips drew a five-game sentence for a headshot major and game misconduct during a 2-1 OT loss to the visiting Seattle Thunderbirds on Friday. Seattle D Reece Harsch, who absorbed that hit, is listed as day-to-day on the WHL roster report that was released on Tuesday. . . . F Jermaine Loewen, who was named captain of the Kamloops Blazers on Tuesday, was suspended for four games after he took a headshot major and game misconduct against the visiting Portland Winterhawks on Friday. D Matthew Quigley of the Winterhawks is listed as week-to-week.
Kyle Olson as they skated to a 6-4 victory over the Edmonton Oil Kings. . . . Olson broke a 4-4 tie at 2:47 of the third period. The primary assist went to D Dom Schmiemann, who was making his Tri-City debut after being acquired from the Calgary Hitmen on Saturday. . . . F Isaac Johnson, who missed a weekend game in order to attend a sister’s wedding in Minnesota, helped the winners with a goal and two assists. . . . The Oil Kings got three assists from F Carter Souch. . . . The Americans are 3-2-0 on a six-game season-opening homestand that wraps up Friday against the Kelowna Rockets. . . . Edmonton is 0-2-1 on a four-game road trip that concludes tonight (Wednesday) in Portland against the Winterhawks.
“The 2018-2019 campaign will go down as the worst start to the season in Kelowna Rockets franchise history. A 4-1 loss in Seattle (Saturday) night dropped the team’s record to 1-7-0-0 after 8 games. That mark is worse than the 2006-2007 start, when the team had a win and a shootout loss (1-6-0-1) in their opening eight games. That season the team missed the playoffs for the only time in franchise history.” . . . If you are so inclined, the whole sad story is 
Kamloops Blazers on Friday, I’m thinking the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights may want to cut a deal to get F Joachim Blichfeld from the San Jose Sharks. There’s no doubting that Blichfeld and F Cody Glass, taken sixth overall by Vegas in the NHL’s 2017 draft, have some chemistry. Blichfeld, 20, has signed with the Sharks, who returned him to Portland rather than have him play in the AHL with the San Jose Barracuda.
TAKING NOTE 