SPANO DEAL HARD TO DIGEST.

Byline: JARRE FEES

For Sale: One hockey team, slightly used.

Price: $195 million or best offer. Contact: John Pickett, c/o New York Islanders. Better yet, contact NHL commissioner Gary Bettman - if he's done with his meal.

Bettman sat down to eat in April and just got up from the biggest dinner of crow in NHL history - a seven-month course of fraud, forgery, bounced checks and big-time indigestion.

Potential buyers, take note: If you want to own an NHL team, the league will subject you to a thorough background check. Like the one they did on Dallas song-and-dance man John Spano.

Spano waltzed into the NHL, filling his dance card along the way with the likes of Dallas Stars owner Norm Green and Florida Panthers owner Wayne Huizenga. A couple of tangos, maybe a cha-cha . . . and somewhere during a slow tune, Spano whispered he'd like to own a hockey team.

``Well,'' said the franchise owners, ``step right over here and meet Gary Bettman.''

``Mr. Bettman,'' said Spano, presumably, ``would you like to dance?''

Dance they did - and while Spano plied the charm, Bettman played the willing conquest and overlooked the obvious. Spano dished up fake references and financial statements; the NHL supplied the gullibility factor.

And after one of the league's thorough background checks - during which someone forgot to notice that the $250 million net worth Spano claimed was actually only $1.2 million - Bettman personally recommended Spano to Islanders owner Pickett.

Which made it all the more embarrassing when Spano, who by this time had spent $400,000 of the team's money, bounced a check for the second payment of $16.8 million and the spit hit the fan.

The result? After the blushing stopped, a decision: the NHL will now run a better thorough background check on all potential buyers. Really.

Bill Daly, NHL vice president of legal affairs, told the New York Daily News the new background check is ``a much more rigorous process that we hope will prevent any repetition of the events that happened this summer, and we are fully confident it will.''

The new process is comprised of a background scrutiny of character and fitness, along with an investigation of financial and legal due diligence.

At least part of that scrutiny will be handled by an outside investigative firm, probably Kroll & Associates, with the outgoing NHL owner footing the bill.

Spano has accepted a plea bargain and will be sentenced this fall. Ownership of the Islanders has reverted to Pickett.

And what about Steven Gluckstern, who plans to sell his interest in the Phoenix Coyotes and purchase the Islanders along with Howard Milstein?

``We're very comfortable with Steve Gluckstern,'' Daly said, ``but we will use the same due diligence.''

Transfer of the Islanders to Gluckstern and Milstein will come within a week of NHL approval, which looks to be around the end of the year.

After a couple of those really thorough background checks.

News and notes: The Islanders, who play the Kings tonight at the Forum, weren't the only ones who got burned. Former Pittsburgh superstar Mario Lemieux invested upwards of $1 million in another of Spano's bogus ventures. . . .

Hockey players have made appearances in movies, especially when there's skating involved - witness Luc Robitaille in ``Sudden Death'' - but Ottawa center Alexandre Daigle might be taking films more seriously. The Senators' 1993 first-round draft choice, Daigle, 23, plans to spend the summer in Los Angeles studying acting. . . .

Note to Paul Kariya: The only place Disney spends real money is on its top executives. A company that balks at forking over $5 million for an A-list movie director isn't going to spend $8.5 million a year for a hockey player - so unless you can get another team to offer you that kind of money, be prepared for a long, dry winter.

ONCE WE WERE KINGS

Gary Shuchuk, who scored the double-overtime goal in Game 5 of the second-round playoff series against Vancouver in 1993 - the year the Kings advanced to the finals - played last year for the International Hockey League's Houston Aeros. He now plays for Schlittschuh Club Herisau in Switzerland, an hour from Zurich.

Shuchuk, 29, was acquired from Detroit along with Jimmy Carson and Marc Potvin in January, 1993, in exchange for Paul Coffey, Jim Hiller and Sylvain Couturier. He played 136 games for the Kings before becoming a free agent.

The Swiss league plays only a 40-game schedule, so Shuchuk, his wife and their three children spend non-game days exploring Europe. He plans to play in the IHL again next season.

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

Photo: Tom Chorske (14) and his New York Islanders teammates are waiting for a new owner.

Associated Press

Box: ONCE WE WERE KINGS (see text)