The Hockey News has been providing the most comprehensive coverage of the world of hockey since 1947. In each issue, you'll find news, features and opinions about the NHL and leagues across North America and the world.

MVP Premiere Issue

The Hockey News MVP Premiere Issue

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0003-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0003-012246/10122333-1-eng-US/f0003-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Glenn James)</figcaption></div>Home And Cooled Out &#9632;

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IN THIS ISSUE

Mike Modano

<div class="byline">by herbZURKOWSKY</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0066-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0066-01200/10122944-1-eng-US/f0066-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Jim Mclssac/BBS)</figcaption></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0068-01150/10122937-1-eng-US/f0068-012.jpg" title="f0068-01" width="5082" height="3124"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Andre Pichete/BBS)</figcaption></div>It has become a common sight on Montreal Canadiens&rsquo; charter flights&mdash;millionaire athletes crowding around those select few who travel with laptop computers equipped with DVD players so they can watch movies.When you&rsquo;re on the road 41 times a season, you&rsquo;ve got to do something to pass the time.Defenseman Karl Dykhuis owns one, as do forwards Sergei Zholtok and Patrick Poulin. But it&rsquo;s Dainius Zubrus, more than any other Canadien, who remains the focal point. Or maybe it&rsquo;s his IBM laptop with the 14-inch screen. Whatever, the two are inseparable.We are in the computer age, and the Lithuanian-born Zubrus has embraced it with unbridled passion.&rsquo;The way I understand the future, it&rsquo;s going to involve computers more and more,&rdquo; says the 22-year-old. &ldquo;We might as well know enough (about Premiere Issue 2000 them) to get by. It certainly makes all the flights seem shorter.&rdquo;Zubrus, who came to Canada in 1995 at 17 to play for Pembroke of the Central Ontario Junior Hockey League, purchased his first computer two years later. He was a computer neophyte, barely capable of turning on the machine. But he proved to be a quick study.&ldquo;I had no idea how a computer worked, but I liked them and figured I would give it a try,&rdquo; he remembers. &ldquo;I bought my first laptop and PCs for Dummies and Windows 95. I never read that much, but I read those closely.&ldquo;I had no lessons from anybody. I just fooled around and played with it. I wasn&rsquo;t afraid of making mistakes and sometimes I made a lot of them. If I had problems, I would call on the support people. I might be put on hold for half an hour, but I was patient.&rdquo;In time, Zubrus became computer literate. In an average week, he spends seven hours on his laptop, using it for everything from checking his investments and paying his bills to storing telephone numbers. He has spent thousands of dollars on equipment, constantly upgrading components as they become obsolete.&ldquo;I like my gadgets, I really do,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s so much software, it&rsquo;s unbelievable. You can have pictures of your family, or get restaurant guides for any city. There&rsquo;s always something to learn.&ldquo;I find it relaxing. I usually take my laptop on the road-especially if it&rsquo;s a longer trip. If I&rsquo;m spending time in the hotel and I&rsquo;m bored and by myself, I&rsquo;ll fool around on the Internet.&rdquo;As much as he surfs the net, the Canadiens would probably like to see the 6-foot-4, 224-pounder crash it more frequently on the ice.Zubrus knows where the net is and he&rsquo;s physically capable of getting there. It&rsquo;s just that there are times when he doesn&rsquo;t. Rather, He&rsquo;ll fade to the outside or stickhandle when he should shoot more.&ldquo;I have the size, I can&rsquo;t argue with that,&rdquo; he acknowledges. &ldquo;And, if I have the opportunity, I should be doing that. I&rsquo;ve been working this summer on my shot, but my feeling remains that if I have the chance to move the puck and others are in better opportunity to score, I should do that.&rdquo;Still, Zubrus has a tremendous upside. He has already spent four seasons in the NHL and is coming off career highs of 14 goals and 42 points in 73 games. He was second on the Canadiens in points. Zubrus started last season on a line with Saku Koivu and Brian Savage before being teamed with Zholtok and Oleg Petrov. It was with the latter duo that Zubrus enjoyed his best success although, given his size and skating ability, he believes his talents would better be utilized at center, where Zholtok plays.Zubrus, who earned $660,000 (US) last year, hopes to improve upon his statistics, but keeps his personal goals private.&ldquo;For sure I&rsquo;d like to increase my totals. I&rsquo;m a year older. Why shouldn&rsquo;t they be better?" asks Zubrus, acquired from Philadelphia along with two draft picks in a March, 1999, trade for Mark Recchi. &ldquo;I had a better chance last year than I ever did with the Flyers. I played every night, sometimes 17 minutes a game. I can&rsquo;t ask for more.&rdquo;Zubrus is feeling comfortable in hockey-crazed Montreal, though his name was mentioned in a pre-season trade rumor involving Washington&rsquo;s Peter Bondra. Still, the city of Philadelphia will forever hold a special place in Zubrus&rsquo; heart. Not only did the Flyers select him 15th overall in the 1996 NHL entry draft, he purchased a three-bedroom townhouse in the city for his parents, older brother Audrius and younger sister Gintare. Audrius Zubrus, 24, is a sports management major at Temple University, and his education is being paid for by his hockey-playing brother.There&rsquo;s also a philanthropic side to Zubrus. Although he was born in Lithuania, he moved to Ukraine at 12 to pursue his hockey dream. He spent the next five seasons playing for coach Ivan Pravilov. It was at Pravilov&rsquo;s insistence that Zubrus ventured to Canada as a teenager, realizing the exposure was paramount.Zubrus hasn&rsquo;t forgotten his roots. To this day, he continues sponsoring Pravilov&rsquo;s four club teams, supplying them with equipment, paying their way to American tournaments, along with a portion of his old coach&rsquo;s salary. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very quiet about it,&rdquo; says Dmitri Goryachkin, Zubrus&rsquo; agent. &ldquo;He does it on his own, for nobody to know.&rdquo;Zubrus merely shrugs, saying he wouldn&rsquo;t be in the NHL today were it not for Pravilov. &ldquo;There are kids back there who have the same dream I did,&rdquo; Zubrus says. &ldquo;If ever they get to the highest level, I&rsquo;ll know I had something to do with it. That'll be a good feeling". &#9632;

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THIRD PERIOD

CRASHING the ‘NET

<div class="byline">by pavelBARTA</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0085-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0085-0181/10123209-1-eng-US/f0085-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Jiri Kolis)</figcaption></div><div class="container"><div class="figure-block image-float"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0086-0189/10123216-1-eng-US/f0086-012.jpg" title="f0086-01" width="147" height="97"></div>Much has changed in the 10 years since Jaromir Jagr Left Czechoslovakia to join the NHL. Jagr&rsquo;s home country split peacefully into two nations in 1993, becoming the Republic of Czech and Slovakia. Meanwhile, Jagr went from being the fifth overall draft pick in 1990 to being the world&rsquo;s best player in 2000.One thing hasn&rsquo;t changed, though. Jagr always goes home.</div><div style="clear: both;"></div>He returns to Kladno each summer after the NHL season and plans to return there full-time after retirement. The 28-year-old Pittsburgh Penguins&rsquo; superstar could play another decade and still remain faithful to plans of raising a family in Czech.&ldquo;If I&rsquo;m going to have children,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;It might be in four years. If everything is going well, I&rsquo;d like to retire at 38. My children would be five or six years old, so they shouldn&rsquo;t have a problem going back. But life can change and the decision isn&rsquo;t only being made by me.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0086-0243/10123202-1-eng-US/f0086-022.jpg" title="f0086-02" width="2442" height="1455"><figcaption class="caption-body">Jaromir Jagr and girlfriend Andrea Veresova go for a summer ride in Czech. (Jiri Kolis)</figcaption></div>It will, of course, be a shared decision with his wife. Who might that be?Only time will reveal the answer to that question, but Jagr is living with 19-year-old model Andrea Veresova. She was named Miss Slovakia in 1999.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m very happy now,&rdquo; says Jagr who met Veresova at a tennis tournament. &ldquo;She gave me new motivation in my life and in hockey. She&rsquo;s perfect. I never had such a feeling like the one I get by her side.&rdquo;By the time Jagr leaves the NHL, it&rsquo;s possible he will stand second in all-time points. Gordie Howe&rsquo;s 1,850 points are now runner-up to Wayne Gretzky&rsquo;s gaudy 2,857 points. If Jagr were to average 100 points per season for the next 10 years, he would finish with 1,958 career points.While it may seem a stretch to project such things, it has proven imprudent to bet against Jagr. He has won three straight scoring championships, including last season&rsquo;s crown, when the man known as 'Mario Jr.&rsquo; became just the second player to win the Art Ross Trophy while playing less than 80 per cent of his team&rsquo;s games. Jagr recorded a two-point victory (96-94) over Florida Panthers&rsquo; sensation Pavel Bure, who played 11 more games (74-63).Jagris scoring championship was the first such triumph since Mario Lemieux savaged the competition in 1992-93 despite playing only 60 games.How dominant has Jagr been? He has scored 47 more points (325 to 278) over the past three seasons than Mighty Ducks of Anaheim sniper Teemu Selanne, the second-highest scorer during that period.Jagr is already the highest-scoring Czech ever in the NHL and on pace to surpass retired Slovakian sensation Peter Stastny (1,239 points) within three seasons. Jagr&rsquo;s dominance has mirrored the extraordinary hockey success the Czech Republic has enjoyed over the past five years. It won the 1996 and 1999 World Championships, the 1998 Olympics and 2000 World Junior Championship.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0087-0177/10123195-1-eng-US/f0087-012.jpg" title="f0087-01" width="2582" height="3474"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Jiri Kolis)</figcaption></div>Buffalo Sabres&rsquo; goalie Dominik Hasek and Jagr have been the Czech Republic&rsquo;s standardbearers in both international and NHL competition. Hasek became the first and only goalie in NHL history to win back-to-back Hart trophies when he was named league MVP in 1997 and 1998. Jagr earned the honor in 1999 to make it three in a row for the Czechs.Jagr has a deep appreciation for the history of his country. He chose to wear No. 68 with the Penguins as a reminder of "Prague Spring,&rdquo; a brief wind of freedom in communist-ruled Czechoslovakia, before Soviet tanks crushed the movement in 1968. As a teenager with Kladno, Jagr wore the letters "DA" on his helmet, the reversed initials of Alexander Dubcek, the prime minister who introduced democratic reforms at the time.Born in 1972, Jagr wasn&rsquo;t alive to witness the events that would shape his country for the next two decades. He learned of them from his parents, Anna and Jaromir, and his grandmother, Jarmila. Their stories told of lives fraught with hardship: Jagr&rsquo;s maternal grandfather spent several years in jail for being a private farmer in the 1950s. The authorities confiscated the possessions of his other grandfather. Neither of Jagr&rsquo;s parents were allowed to study at the state university or college because of their family roots.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0088-0194/10123188-1-eng-US/f0088-012.jpg" title="f0088-01" width="1284" height="1796"><figcaption class="caption-body">Jagr contributed five points in six games when Czech won the 1998 Olympic gold. (Bruce Benett/BBS)</figcaption></div>Once, when asked if Wayne Gretzky&rsquo;s skills were the main factor in opening the door for Europeans to the NHL, Jagr pointed, instead, to the achievements of former Russian prime minister Mikhail Gorbachev, who espoused openness and democratic reform.&ldquo;The possibility of free travel of people from our country was made after the change of the political system in Russia,&rdquo; Jagr said. &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t Wayne Gretzky, but Gorbachev who made them.&rdquo;Jagr is a regular at hockey and tennis exhibitions during the summer, headlining Team Jagr at charity events. He also appears at an annual game organized by Robert Reichel that pits hockey stars against the Elite League team from Litvinov.Jagr has a summer hockey school in SLany, near Prague. Jagr doesn&rsquo;t run the day-to-day operations; a wellknown Czech youth coach, Marian Jelinek, takes care of that. Jagr occupies the rest of his off-season doing TV commercials, promoting everything from bicycles to chewing gum to milk.Jagr says he loves Living and earning a living in the U.S., but remains firmly attached to his homeland.&ldquo;The people are pretty close,&rdquo; he says of friends in the Czech Republic. &ldquo;They love to have fun, they love to be together all the time and laugh and laugh and laugh and that&rsquo;s what makes the life interesting.&ldquo;They don&rsquo;t think of their jobs all the time. They don&rsquo;t think money all the time. they&rsquo;re just enjoying the Life and that&rsquo;s what I love about it.&ldquo;I just feel more comfortable because it&rsquo;s my own language and people I know.&rdquo; &#9632;

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home is Where the HEART is

<div class="byline">by kevinALLEN</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0102-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0102-0176/10123500-1-eng-US/f0102-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">Marcel Dionne is the third-highest NHL scorer ever,&nbsp;but was never named league MVPPark played the blueline with sublime skill,&nbsp;but was never named top defenseman (Bruce Benett/BBS)</figcaption></div><h2>morce/DIONNE</h2>One indisputable truth about Hall of Fame center Marcel Dionne is this: he spent much of his career as a legend in his own time zone.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0103-0169/10123493-1-eng-US/f0103-012.jpg" title="f0103-01" width="2210" height="1564"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Bruce Bennett/BBS)</figcaption></div>Having played 12 of 18 years for the Los Angeles Kings in a pre-Internet and pre-24-hour sports channel world where West Coast results were but a rumor, Dionne&rsquo;s notoriety never matched his level of accomplishment. He was a sixtime 50-goal scorer and an eight-time 100-point producer, yet some in the hockey world can hardly remember seeing him play. There was no ESPN or Hockey Night in Canada giving us the second game of a doubleheader in Dionne&rsquo;s heyday. Undeniably, that hurt him in voting for awards and contributed to his status as the best player never to win the Hart Trophy.&ldquo;If you say who is the third leading scorer in NHL history? No one is coming up with Marcel Dionne,&rdquo; says Charlie Simmer, who played with Dionne and Dave Taylor on the Triple Crown Line.&rsquo; As surprising as it may seem that Dionne never won the Hart Trophy, consider that the fourtime first or second team all star was only runner-up once. Dionne&rsquo;s only second-place finish in the voting came in 1980 when he won the Art Ross Trophy as the league&rsquo;s top scorer. Both he and Gretzky finished with 137 points, but Dionne earned the Ross on the basis of wo more goals. Writers evened the score by giving Gretzky the Hart.&ldquo;He never got the respect he should have,&rdquo; says former Kings goalie Rogie Vachon. &ldquo;He put a lot of numbers on the board, he was very durable, rarely got hurt and he had a lot of guts.&rdquo;Almost as impressive as his 731 goals and 1,771 points is the fact that he played 70 or more games in 14 of his first 15 seasons. He missed only 23 games in his first 12 seasons, which is remarkable considering opponents targeted Dionne for vicious defensive pursuit. This was also in an era when the Kings flew only commercial airlines and took eastern road trips that would last eight or nine games. Dionne spent most of his career as a weary warrior.&ldquo;He always showed up,&rdquo; Simmer recalls. &ldquo;He wasn&rsquo;t afraid to go against anyone.&rdquo;Dionne had a fire hydrant build-190 pounds packed solidly onto a 5-foot-9 frame. He wasn&rsquo;t dazzling like Guy Lafleur or as prickly as Bryan Trottier or Bobby Clarke, but he was as dangerous as any player of his era. Dionne liked to shoot like a hound dog likes to hunt.&ldquo;I knew where he would shoot-low, far side,&rdquo; Taylor says. &ldquo;I knew if I got there a big, fat rebound would be waiting for me. You were guaranteed that he would hit the net.&rdquo;The &lsquo;Triple Crown Line&rsquo; of Dionne, Taylor and Simmer was destined to play together. Simmer was the force in front of the net-the finisher. Taylor worked along the boards to gain possession of the puck and Dionne freelanced.Players marveled at Dionne&rsquo;s ability to shoot the puck from all angles and regularly off the wrong foot. &ldquo;He would catch goaltenders going the wrong way,&rdquo; Vachon remembers. In terms of Dionne&rsquo;s scoring ability, Vachon considered him a "mini Gordie Howe" because of his balance and exceptionally quick release.&ldquo;He could pull the trigger going to his left or right,&rdquo; says former NHL great Brad Park. &ldquo;He had a great release. He did so many things well.&rdquo;Dionne&rsquo;s lack of playoff exposure probably has as much to do with his publicity deprivation as where he played. His career included only 49 post-season games and his lack of a Stanley Cup is often remembered more than the fact that only Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe put the puck in the net more often than Dionne did.Dionne is often compared to Lafleur because they are both French Canadians and were drafted No. 1 and 2 in the 1971 NHL draft. Simmer argues that Dionne would have equalled Lafleur&rsquo;s star power in Montreal.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s scary to think of what he could have done if he played on that Montreal team that won four Stanley Cups in a row,&rdquo; Simmer says. &ldquo;He loved playing in Montreal. It was fun to go with him to Montreal and Quebec City because he would hold court. He would say, &rsquo;This is what we are going to do in a game, and sure enough it would come out just like his script.&rdquo;Dionne&rsquo;s competitiveness was molten, which didn&rsquo;t always make him the most popular guy in the locker room. &ldquo;He was very outspoken,'' Vachon says. &ldquo;He was playing hard every night and he expected everyone else to do the same. He was vocal. Some accepted that and some didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo; Like Vachon, Simmer admired Dionne&rsquo;s intensity. &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t always see that from a superstar,&rdquo; Simmer says.Players often talked about how Dionne wasn&rsquo;t receiving his fair share of the spotlight. But Dionne, now 49 and a businessman in Clarence, N.Y., never complained. &ldquo;He loved the anonymity of playing in LA.,&rdquo; Taylor says.&rdquo;Park has become Dionne&rsquo;s friend and they have discussed missing out on the Stanley Cup and major awards. &ldquo;We have talked about how there are a lot of guys who have Stanley Cup rings who were just in the right place at the right time,&rdquo; Park says. &ldquo;Sometimes you don&rsquo;t have good timing.&rdquo;Dionne says he was never bothered to miss out on the NHL&rsquo;s finest hardware. &ldquo;I am very secure in myself,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very independent. I&rsquo;ve never looked for a job in my life. What if I would have switched teams and won four or five Cups, so what. Some guys have won Cups and sat on the bench. My priority in my life was to do what I was born to do. And make my own decisions. Unfortunately I couldn&rsquo;t always make my own decisions and I worked for some people who weren&rsquo;t successful.&rdquo;<h3>careerCAPSULE</h3><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0103-0325/10123486-1-eng-US/f0103-032.jpg" title="f0103-03" width="725" height="1011"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0105-0171/10123479-1-eng-US/f0105-012.jpg" title="f0105-01" width="346" height="548"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Bruce Bennett Studios)</figcaption></div><h3>rossRUNNER-UP</h3>Marcel Dionne may have finished as an Art Ross runner-up three times, but he won once, escaping the fate of fellow French Canadian and the all-time leading Ross runner-up, Rocket Richard. Rocket finished second in NHL scoring five times and never won.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0105-0413/10123472-1-eng-US/f0105-042.jpg" title="f0105-04" width="651" height="331"></div><h2>broc/PARK</h2>To find an apt comparison for Hall of Fame defenseman Brad Park, it&rsquo;s necessary to trade hockey sticks for golf clubs.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s hockey&rsquo;s Ernie Els,&rdquo; says Park&rsquo;s former Boston Bruins&rsquo; teammate Peter McNab.Els is a superb PGA performer, a multiple majors winner and a forgotten act in a world enthralled by Tiger Woods&rsquo; magnificence. Park is among the best to ever play on the blue line; he was a seven-time first or second team all-star and could single-handedly change the course of a game.But his star power was swallowed whole by the enormity of Bobby Orr early in his career. Later on, Park was forced to sit second chair to Denis Potvin.Park is clearly the best defenseman never to win a Norris Trophy; he was runner-up six times.&ldquo;Brad Park is one of the greatest defenseman of alltime,&rdquo; says Boston Bruins&rsquo; general manager Harry Sinden. &ldquo;He was sensational.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0104-0181/10123465-1-eng-US/f0104-012.jpg" title="f0104-01" width="2473" height="1946"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Bruce Benett/BBS)</figcaption></div>Park finished second to Bobby Orr four times in the Norris race and twice to Denis Potvin. The only others who are in Park&rsquo;s neighborhood in terms of Norris frustration are Mark Howe and Bill Gadsby, who placed second three times apiece.&ldquo;Park got screwed out of Park&rsquo;s three 20-goal seasons. Park had 22 goals and 79 points in 80 games for the Bruins and was a career-high plus-68.That was in 1977-78, the third of Park&rsquo;s three 20-goal seasons. Park had 22 goals and 79 points in 80 games for the Bruins and was a career-high plus-68.The Bruins won the Adams Division with 113 points, two more than the Patrick Division-winning New York Islanders, who had a superstar-studded lineup. Leading the way was Potvin with 30 goals, 94 points and a plus-57.Now a 51-year-old businessman in Lynnfield, Mass., Park is more philosophical than sorrowful about missing out on a prize that may have been his had he played in another era.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not how you perform, but how everyone votes,&rdquo; Park says. &ldquo;Potvin&rsquo;s team was in New York and I was in Boston and we were winning our division. But it always comes down to how the writers vote.&rdquo;That&rsquo;s not to say he wasn&rsquo;t disappointed. &ldquo;I would have loved to win,&rdquo; Park says. &ldquo;I thought that one year I deserved it. But it just made me say: 'OK, go back and put your team in a position to win a Stanley Cup.&rsquo;&rdquo;He wasn&rsquo;t rewarded in that area either; Park never did win a Stanley Cup. &ldquo;The vay I look at that is, where you are and who you&rsquo;re with is crucial to whether you win a Stanley Cup,&rdquo; he says.Park&rsquo;s numbers (896 points in 1,113 games) might have been higher had he not made his game more defensive after being dealt by the New York Rangers to the Continued on 105 Boston Bruins in 1975-76. &ldquo;Don Cherry said, &lsquo;you&rsquo;re going to play 40 minutes a game,&rsquo; " Park recalls. &ldquo;He said, &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t need you going up ice, putting up numbers. I want you controlling our half of center ice.&rsquo;&rdquo;Teammates were always disappointed that Park didn&rsquo;t receive more recognition-maybe more than he was. &ldquo;Players would end up with more points than Parkie, but his defensive play bordered on brilliant,&rdquo; McNab says.Sinden says he never had a defenseman better at dealing with 2-on-l&rsquo;s better than Park- and Sinden&rsquo;s frame of reference includes both Orr and Ray Bourque. &ldquo;On a 2-on-1 situation, eight times out of 10, the puck-carrier would end up passing the puck to him,&rdquo; Sinden says. &ldquo;He would lure him into that.&rdquo;The Bruins called Park 'Bandit' because he would hang out at the blue line and snare opponents&rsquo; passes like an old bear plucking salmon out of a stream. &ldquo;When we would do 2-on-l drills, he would pick off every pass,&rdquo; McNab says.What everyone remembers about Park is that he could one-time the puck as well as anyone ever has. No matter how off-balance Park was, he could crank a shot on net. &ldquo;He could shoot a rolling puck like it was flat,&rdquo; Sinden says. &ldquo;Usually, it flutters when you catch a rolling puck. Not when Park shot it.&rdquo;Sinden says what he liked about Park was that he was a man of common athleticism who played at uncommon levels.&ldquo;I identified with Park because he didn&rsquo;t skate all that well and I didn&rsquo;t either when I played,&rdquo; Sinden says. &ldquo;I had more fun watching him play than anyone. I couldn&rsquo;t identify with Orr because I couldn&rsquo;t play the way he could play.&rdquo;One consolation for Park is that people do remember that it was Orr who hogged most of the defensive spotlight in his era. It was almost an honor to be in his shadow.&ldquo;Usually I joke at banquets about how I was runner-up to Bobby Orr for so many years,&rdquo; Park says, laughing. &ldquo;Then I say, Tn my mind, Bobby Orr is the greatest who ever played. So if I was always the runner-up, I must be the second-greatest.&rsquo;&rdquo;<h2>careerCAPSULE</h2><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0104-0326/10123458-1-eng-US/f0104-032.jpg" title="f0104-03" width="713" height="1080"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0105-0241/10123451-1-eng-US/f0105-022.jpg" title="f0105-02" width="347" height="548"></div><h3>norrisRUNNERS-UP</h3>Three players have finished second in voting for the NHL&rsquo;s best defenseman three times and never won the top honor.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0105-0328/10123444-1-eng-US/f0105-032.jpg" title="f0105-03" width="637" height="546"></div> &#9632;

f0102-01

GREATNESS Unrewarded

<div class="byline">steveDRYDEN </div><div class="byline">EDITOR-IN-CHIEF</div><div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-012308/10122371-1-eng-US/f0004-012.jpg" title="f0004-01" width="293" height="422"></div>There are those who believe NHL arenas should be expanded to conform with international standards.The Hockey News MVP agrees.However, our definition of international standards extends far beyond 200 by 100 feet and, in fact, spans the hockey world.The Hockey News MVP takes you places you have seldom been before. It takes you into the corners on the ice and to all four corners of the hockey world off the ice.We take you to Mike Modano&rsquo;s Dallas-area residence; to Jaromir Jagr&rsquo;s home and native land, the Czech Republic; to the wrestling ring where Chris Irvine rules the WWF as Chris Jericho; to Brad Stuart&rsquo;s private world of rock & roll; to cyberspace with Dainius Zubrus; and to the heart of a debate over Curtis Joseph&rsquo;s standing in the goaltending community.In this, our premiere issue, we tell you what you need to know about the very best inside the NHL (we select the top three in 25 categories) and the very best outside the NHL (we present 11 top teenage players worldwide and the top three women&rsquo;s players in 12 categories).Keeping up with NHL expansion may seem an impossible task, but The Hockey News is expanding our horizons with the launch of MVP.We hope you think the world of it.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0004-021957/10122364-1-eng-US/f0004-022.jpg" title="f0004-02" width="2256" height="1166"><figcaption class="caption-body">The new season promises to be Wild times with the arrival of Minnesota&hellip;and MVP.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0004-01

Welcome To Our New World

<div class="byline">by mikeHEIKA</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0006-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0006-012543/10122440-1-eng-US/f0006-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">(James Glenn)</figcaption></div>Sex symbols are for tennis. That&rsquo;s right, let Pete Sampras pose in GQ. Let Andre Agassi hawk cameras and date movie stars.Let them have the big teeth and moussed hair and Armani suits.A sex symbol in hockey shouldn&rsquo;t have teeth at all. He should have the straggly hair of Mike Ricci and wear something from Roots. Now, that&rsquo;s what hockey fans value-unshaven sexy, broken nose sexy, tough sexy.And therein lies the problem with Mike Modano. He&rsquo;s tennis sexy, he&rsquo;s auto racing sexy, he&rsquo;s pretty boy sexy. And that doesn&rsquo;t make it in the world of hockey.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s something that, at times, has been brutal to deal with,&rdquo; says the Dallas Stars&rsquo; poster boy center.And yet Modano has made the most of his good looks. He&rsquo;s kept his teeth, he&rsquo;s kept his wild mane, he&rsquo;s remained about as pretty as a boy can be. And, somewhere in there, he hasn&rsquo;t lost the respect of his peers.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s grown up and become the type of player that everyone wants to be,&rdquo; says Stars coach Ken Hitchcock. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a competitor and a leader and a winner, and that&rsquo;s what people see now. The rest is just window dressing.&rdquo;But when that dressing comes in a 6-foot-3, 205-pound package draped in $2,000 suits, it&rsquo;s hard not to notice. Modano has been featured in pictorials in Cosmopolitan and Mademoiselle. He was recently listed by People as one of the 100 top bachelors in the United States. He dated actress Kristy Swanson "a couple of times" in the spring.Those things will bring on plenty of hell in an NHL dressing room. Mike Keane is famous for his digs. Former Stars&rsquo; defenseman Craig Ludwig was relentless. He even had his two young twin boys address Modano as "Pretty Boy" any time they saw him.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0008-012429/10122433-1-eng-US/f0008-012.jpg" title="f0008-01" width="1389" height="1959"><figcaption class="caption-body">Mike Modano faces off against the other face of sexy in the NHL, shaggy Mike Ricci. (Rocky Widner)</figcaption></div>&ldquo;He deserved it,&rdquo; Ludwig says with a smirk. &ldquo;C&rsquo;mon, no one should be that good looking, have that much money and attract that many women. There&rsquo;s a price to pay for that.&rdquo;But while Ludwig says the goodnatured jabbing was mostly in fun during his eight years as Modano&rsquo;s teammate, he allows that there was some purpose behind the digs. Modano was&rsquo;nt just a pretty boy off the ice during the early part of his career, he was quite the figure skater on the ice as well. Too many times, he backed down from confrontations, too many times he was intimidated by rough play, too many times he found himself slowly pushing himself up off the ice while play went the other way. That was a stigma that was hard to shed.&ldquo;I think there was a time when people had some doubts that Mo could be the leader that he is now,&rdquo; Ludwig says. &ldquo;I think that&rsquo;s fair to say. And he took a lot of crap for it. I think, in a lot of ways, that crap was good for him. I think he needed to hear that, I think he needed to know what was expected of him. And I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s any doubt in the world that hes a different player now.&rdquo;And therein lies the promise of Mike Modano. Sure, he wants to keep his teeth, but that doesn&rsquo;t mean he won&rsquo;t whack you in the back of the leg now when you slash him. Yes, he loves to skate in open ice, but that doesn&rsquo;t mean he won&rsquo;t go into the tough areas. You can bet he loves the big-money, fast-car spotlight life of an NHL star, but that doesn&rsquo;t mean he won&rsquo;t work just as hard as the average plumber to make the Stars a Stanley Cup contender.Karen Modano remembers the scene well when her young son reluctantly trudged off to the rink for his first crack at hockey. He was seven, and a natural athlete in the suburbs of Detroit. But hockey was different than baseball and football, at which he excelled.&ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t like the skating. I remember he really struggled with that early,&rdquo; Karen says. &ldquo;But as soon as he got in the locker room and got on the uniform, he loved it. I remember he would get home from school on game nights and put his uniform on and watch TV and wait for Mike Sr. to get home from work. Then, they&rsquo;d drive up to the rink two hours before the game and get there before everybody else. And, after the game, it always seemed like we were the last ones in the parking lot.&rdquo;Mike Modano, rink rat. Who would have thought it?Certainly not those who watched him with a struggling Dallas Stars team in 1995 and 1996. Somewhere between his high-flying junior days with the Prince Albert Raiders, his contract troubles with the Minnesota North Stars and the financial stumblings of the Dallas Stars, Modano lost his zeal for the game. Somewhere, the rink rat turned into a little bit of a coaster-a guy who really preferred a round of golf to a playoff game. At that time, it was easy for teams to pull out the &ldquo;Pretty Boy" taunts.&ldquo;It was hard to be around then, when the team was struggling and nobody wanted to be here,&rdquo; Modano says. &ldquo;We all hated coming to the rink and we all wanted to leave early.&rdquo;But when Tom Hicks came in as owner and Ken Hitchcock took over as coach, the Stars started to turn things around. First in line for the transition was Modano.&ldquo;I just saw in Mike a very talented player who had the skills to play both ends of the ice,&rdquo; Hitchcock says. &ldquo;So we talked about his role, I told him my ideas and he seemed to like that role. So we went from there.&rdquo;Hitchcock&rsquo;s plan for Modano was to turn him into a two-way player who would square off against the opponent&rsquo;s best center every game. The job wouldn&rsquo;t be easy, but it had two benefits. First, it allowed Modano to expand his ice time significantly. Second, it allowed him to be out on the ice against a player who likely wasn&rsquo;t an accomplished defensive player. In short, it turned Modano from the hunted to the hunter-exactly the transition he needed.&ldquo;I just think my whole philosophy changed,&rdquo; Modano says. &ldquo;It was good for me.&rdquo;Modano became the player who was relied upon in tough situations instead of protected. He became the player who took key faceoffs and looked for matchups against Mark Messier and Eric Lindros and Peter Forsberg. He became the heart of the Stars.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you want to call toughness, but he has it,&rdquo; Hitchcock says. &ldquo;He has physical toughness, he has mental toughness. He has faced some very difficult situations and bounced right back.&rdquo;In other words, Modano has matured.Until two years ago, Modano&rsquo;s finances were handled exclusively by his agent. The cash went into an account and the agent paid the bills. If Modano needed any money, he was given what amounted to an allowance. But while that situation was convenient for a person who didn&rsquo;t want responsibility, it wasn&rsquo;t what the mature person would have done.&ldquo;I just decided it was my money and my life and I needed to take better control of it,&rdquo; Modano says.He did the same thing the next year with his relationship. After escaping serious injury on a hit from behind by Ruslan Salei of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks in October, Modano had to reassess his career and reassess his life. Modano decided the best thing he could do was throw himself entirely into hockey. He broke off his engagement with his fiancee and now says, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ll settle down until my career is over.&rdquo;Great news for all the single women out there, right? Think again. Modano said he&rsquo;s not looking for the wild bachelor life. Instead, he has thrown his off-ice efforts into a venture capital company that helps Internet start-up businesses. He has an office. He even has a desk.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s just starting to see things in a different way,&rdquo; his mom says.Modano is also being seen in a different way. Sure, he&rsquo;s still the pretty boy. His dating of Swanson was big news in Dallas, and any hookup with a celebrity is likely to draw the local paparazzi. He has that Top 100 Bachelor' thing hanging over his head, and you can be sure the Claude Lemieux&rsquo;s of the world are taking notes and preparing a little trash talk because of it.But the thing is, Modano doesn&rsquo;t care. He likes nice teeth. He bugged his mom for a year and a half so that she would get him braces at age 15. &ldquo;I told him then that they were so expensive that if he broke them, I&rsquo;d break him,&rdquo; Karen Modano says. &ldquo;But the truth is, he wanted them more than anyone and he wasn&rsquo;t about to let his teeth get hurt.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0011-011997/10122426-1-eng-US/f0011-012.jpg" title="f0011-01" width="2277" height="1842"><figcaption class="caption-body">Modano and faithful Bella and companions, Scout, at his Dallas-area home. (GLenn James)</figcaption></div>Nowadays, Modano makes no apologies for knowing more about Ralph Lauren than Elmer Lach. Does he regret the Mademoiselle layout, in which he posed with a hot young model riding him like a horse? Nope. Does he regret telling reporters about his fondness for Days of Our Lives&rsquo;Not a chance. Does he regret losing that one fight he had years ago with Rod Brind'Amour? OK, a little. But at least he learned a lesson.&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you what, I don&rsquo;t regret not fighting since then,&rdquo; Modano says. &ldquo;I got killed.&rdquo;So he&rsquo;s not as tough as Tie Domi; he can still kill you in different ways. And as for that pretty boy talk, Ludwig says even that doesn&rsquo;t get to Modano anymore.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s heard a lot worse, and it never bothers him,&rdquo; Ludwig says. &ldquo;What are you going to say to him now? That he&rsquo;s the best center in the league?&ldquo;That he&rsquo;s gone to two finals in the last two years? That women worship him? Geez, we should all have it so bad.&ldquo;And if someone does try to get him, he just turns around and flashes those Bugs Bunny teeth of his and goes out and scores a goal,&rdquo; Ludwig adds. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what he considers tough.&rdquo; &#9632;

f0006-01

FIRST PERIOD

more than just a pretty face

<div class="byline">by ericDUHATSCHEK</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0012-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0012-012345/10122492-1-eng-US/f0012-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Sturk Mike)</figcaption></div>It&rsquo;s the Last week of August and we are sitting on an outdoor patio, Brad Stuart drinking water, me with a club soda, discussing music&hellip;and the generational thing is starting to happen.Stuart is an introvert who becomes more animated as the topic of conversation turns to his musical tastes. He acknowledges a passing interest in rap, but will tell you that his CD collection focuses mainly on the alternative scene.Alternative, says 44-year-old me, as in Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson and The Clash?No, replies the 20-year-old Stuart. Alternative, as in Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam. Especially Pearl Jam. Indeed, Stuart spent the past weekend attending a Pearl Jam concert in Indianapolis, far from his off-season home in Rocky Mountain House, Alta.Presumably, one of the perks of being a budding National Hockey League star&mdash;Stuart is in his second season with the San Jose Sharks&mdash;is the means to marry your own off-season itinerary to the band&rsquo;s summer tour schedule so you can jet in to hear Eddie Vedder and the lads perform live.&ldquo;As far as the older stuff goes,&rdquo; continues Stuart, trying to let me down gently, &ldquo;I like Neil Young and that&rsquo;s about it.&rdquo;Finally, common ground. Not only is Young a Sharks&rsquo; season-ticket holder and the son of legendary hockey writer Scott Young, but he also recorded his 1995 CD Mirror Ball accompanied by, yes, Pearl Jam.Stuart&rsquo;s connection to pop music is consistent with his low-key personality. He has a solitary streak. Slipping on a set of headphones gives him the chance to disappear.&ldquo;Music takes you away from whateveris on your mind,&rdquo; Stuart says. &ldquo;Sometimes, I like to go on a drive just so I can listen to music and relax and enjoy it.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0014-012323/10122485-1-eng-US/f0014-012.jpg" title="f0014-01" width="1592" height="874"><figcaption class="caption-body">Brad Stuart finished second in 1999-2000 NHL rookie of the year voting to Scott Gomez. (Rocky Widner)</figcaption></div>Even though he&rsquo;s only 20, much is known about Stuart&rsquo;s on-ice abilities.How he made the Sharks as a 19-year-old and, paired with veteran Gary Suter, had an immediate NHL impact, a rare thing for a teenage defenseman.How Stuart, despite a sluggish middle third of the season, finished with 36 points in 82 games and played an average of 20 minutes and 24 seconds of every Sharks&rsquo; game.How Stuart made the NHL&rsquo;s all-rookie team, finishing as the runner-up to the Devils&rsquo; Scott Gomez for the Calder Trophy.Less is known about Stuart off the ice. Stuart represents something of a throwback to an earlier era; he is quiet, practically to the point of being mute. He pays attention to the coaching staff and his teammates, essentially letting his play do the talking for him.&ldquo;It takes me a while to feel comfortable in certain situations,&rdquo; Stuart says. &ldquo;I keep a Lot of things to myself. Even this past year, I didn&rsquo;t say a lot. I just tried to feel my way around, not get in anybody&rsquo;s way and just show a Lot of respect for the older guys. I think when the older guys see that, they start to give you a little respect in return.&rdquo;Even in junior, when he was one of the older players, Stuart was not a vocal leader.&ldquo;As a coach, you want your guys to be vocal on the ice, so their teammates know what they&rsquo;re doing,'' says Rich Preston, Stuart&rsquo;s junior coach with the Regina Pats and now a Sharks&rsquo; assistant. &ldquo;On the other hand, it&rsquo;s kind of nice to have a guy that&rsquo;s quiet and respectful. Part of that is because he&rsquo;s still a kid. But it&rsquo;s his personality too. He&rsquo;s just really quiet. Although, I must say, after our mini-camp in July, he&rsquo;s practically a Chatty Cathy now compared to how he was in junior. You can just imagine what he was like back then. He never said a word. All year.&rdquo;Adds Stuart: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m never going to say much in the room. That&rsquo;s just the way I am. I don&rsquo;t feel comfortable doing that. For me to be a leader, it&rsquo;s going to be by example-having guys see me on the ice doing something, working hard.&rdquo;As a player, the attraction of Stuart&rsquo;s game is that he possesses no discernible weaknesses. He can shoot the puck, skates well and plays a physical brand of hockey. When someone of Stuart&rsquo;s broad range of talent comes along, the temptation is to project him as a future Norris Trophy candidate.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to put extra pressure on him,&rdquo; Preston says, &ldquo;but yes, I do think he has a chance to win the Norris Trophy. To win the Norris, you have to be gifted offensively&mdash;and he is. Like all young blueliners, he needs to improve his defense the way (1998-99 Norris winner) Al Maclnnis did when he was starting out in Calgary. When Brad gets better in that part of his game, He&rsquo;ll be in that category with the Maclnnises and Bourques, I have no question about that.&ldquo;The other thing you need to look at is, not all defensemen can play 30 minutes if you need them to. You get to know your players and, some guys, once they hit 20 minutes, they&rsquo;re done, so you&rsquo;ve got to watch how you play them. Some guys, you can play more. Brad is a horse. He can play a lot. And if you look at all the Norris Trophy winners, they all play a lot.&rdquo;Few dispute that Stuart has a significant upside, but development-especially among defenseman-can be a slow process. One day, he may indeed dominate the game, but Stuart also knows that he has to work through a series of developmental stages before he makes it to the top.&ldquo;I feel pretty lucky,&rdquo; Stuart says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never really had to focus on one part of my game to try to become better. I heard from the coaches last year that my defense has to get better, which is something I can learn. But, as far as skills go, I feel pretty lucky. I was blessed with whatever I&rsquo;ve got. I know the things I need to work on are things you can learn- and I&rsquo;m willing to learn that.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like to think long-term or think, &lsquo;Maybe I can be as good as that guy.&rsquo; One day, hopefully, I certainly want to be one of the elite players in the league, but I know it&rsquo;s going to take time. It&rsquo;s tough for me to put any expectations on myself at this stage. I felt last year was a good learning experience for me. The only expectation I have is to be better than I was last year.&rdquo;The oldest of four children, Stuart began to attract attention as a 14-year-old, playing bantam AA in his hometown. Chosen by the Regina Pats in the third round of the 1994 Western Hockey League bantam draft, Stuart moved to Red Deer for two seasons-one year of bantam, one of midget-before joining the Pats for the 1996-97 season.In Regina, Stuart spent a season playing with Derek Morris of the Calgary Flames, another of the best young defensemen in the game. It was the Flames&rsquo; decision to keep Morris for the 1997-98 season that thrust Stuart into a more prominent role in Regina. By the time he had completed his second junior season, he had vaulted to fourth overall in the Central Scouting Service&rsquo;s ratings of draft-eligible players.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0016-012091/10122478-1-eng-US/f0016-012.jpg" title="f0016-01" width="2171" height="2552"><figcaption class="caption-body">(John Giamundo/BBS)</figcaption></div>&ldquo;When I see someone who I consider to be better than myself,&rdquo; Stuart says, want to work hard and be better than that guy. I&rsquo;m never happy if I&rsquo;m just given a nondescript role, where I go out every once in a while. I want to be the guy the other players look to when they need a big play. That&rsquo;s probably what drives me at times.&rdquo;Stuart was chosen third overall in the 1998 NHL lottery, a bountiful draft that produced Vincent Lecavalier, David Legwand, Manny Malhotra, Nik Antropov, Alex Tanguay, Martin Skoula, Robyn Regehr, Simon Gagne and Gomez.Among them, only Lecavalier is considered to have a higher upside than Stuart. In Stuart&rsquo;s wildest dreams, did he ever think he&rsquo;d get here so soon?&ldquo;Probably a couple of years ago, I would&rsquo;ve been really surprised to be in this situation,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;But as I got closer, I wanted to expect it of myself to be here. I didn&rsquo;t want to go to the minors last year. That&rsquo;s how I went into camp-knowing that I wanted to stay in San Jose and do as well as I could. It worked out pretty well.&rdquo;It was in Red Deer that Stuart had his first contact with the legendary Sutter clan. Brian Sutter was between NHL jobs-post-Boston, pre-Calgary-so he spent a year coaching both Stuart and his son Shawn in midget. Now, Stuart plays for Darryl Sutter in San Jose and was teammates with Ron Sutter in his rookie season. Morris played briefly for that same Red Deer midget team, as did Paul Manning, a Colorado College junior chosen in the third round of the 1998 draft by Calgary. Stuart remains close to Manning and, in fact, it was Manning who arranged to get the Pearl Jam tickets.&ldquo;He&rsquo;s in the fan club,&rdquo; Stuart says, &ldquo;and they send out ticket orders before anybody else gets them. That was one of the shows both of us could go to, so we picked that one.&rdquo;And how was it?&ldquo;It was awesome.&rdquo;The same label may one day be applied to Stuart as well.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0017-011786/10122471-1-eng-US/f0017-012.jpg" title="f0017-01" width="2372" height="3454"><figcaption class="caption-body">Strong and sturdy Stuart stands tall among the top young players in the game.</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0012-01

ROCK ON

<div class="byline">by damienCOX</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0019-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0019-011711/10122551-1-eng-US/f0019-012.jpg"></div>When discussions of the top goaltenders in the NHL are initiated, Curtis Joseph&rsquo;s name always pops up.A combination of flashiness and athleticism has made Joseph a fan favorite in the three NHL cities he has played. In St. Louis, Edmonton and Toronto, his current team, he has been among the most popular performers, always regarded among the most important players on the club.When the time comes for Canada to choose netminders for international play at the World Championship, World Cup and Olympics, Joseph has consistently factored into the picture.In 1996, he won silver for Canada at the World Championship. Later that year, he won silver again for his country at the inaugural World Cup of Hockey. In 1998, he was named to Canada&rsquo;s Olympic team, but did not play at the Winter Olympics in Nagano.Since signing a four-year, $24-million contract with the Maple Leafs in the summer of 1998, Joseph has also been one of the highest-paid masked men in the business.So Cujo&rsquo;s one of the game&rsquo;s best, no question about it. Right?Well, in a 30-team league, it&rsquo;s clear two-thirds of the clubs and-maybe more-would take Joseph in a heartbeat He&rsquo;s 33 years old, but he may have had his best regular season ever last year and undoubtedly has at least five more good years ahead of him.So he&rsquo;s no slouch.A more intriguing question, however, is: how close is Joseph to the very top of his profession?According to NHL general managers, not as close as many might think. Joseph was one of three finalists for the Vezina Trophy in 1999-2000, a trophy awarded on the basis of voting by the league GMs. He finished not just third behind the Washington Capitals&rsquo; Olaf Kolzig and St, Louis Blues&rsquo; puckstopper Roman Turek, but a distant third. He collected just 23 voting points, compared to 110 by Kolzig and 79 by Turek. Joseph received only two first place votes. Assuming one came from Leafs&rsquo; GM Pat Quinn, that means only one other NHL boss saw Joseph as the NHL&rsquo;s best netminder.Moreover, 19 GMs didn&rsquo;t give him a first, second or third place vote.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0020-011718/10122544-1-eng-US/f0020-012.jpg" title="f0020-01" width="2482" height="2571"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Jim Mclsaac/BBS)</figcaption></div>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know why the Vezina voting went that way because he really is considered an elite goalie,&rdquo; says Chicago Blackhawks&rsquo; GM Mike Smith. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not a high stat goalie. He&rsquo;s a goalie that wins. Maybe that&rsquo;s even better because then you don&rsquo;t have to pay all the extra bonus money.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0022-011598/10122537-1-eng-US/f0022-012.jpg" title="f0022-01" width="2417" height="1114"><figcaption class="caption-body">Curtis Joseph may be an unorthodox goalie, but he is also one of the NHL&rsquo;s very best (Steve Babineau/SA)</figcaption></div>In all-star voting by journalists across North America, Joseph finished fifth (32 voting points) behind Kolzig (197), Turek (186), New Jersey&rsquo;s Martin Brodeur (48) and Ed Belfour of Dallas (42).That he was dissed in the post-season voting was nothing new, of course, to Joseph, although he was awarded the King Clancy Memorial Trophy for his tireless off-ice work last spring.Since being voted a first team Western Collegiate Hockey Association all-star and second team NCAA all-star while finishing off his career at the University of Wisconsin in 1989, Joseph has never been voted to a pro all-star team or received any silverware for individual play.<blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not a high stat goalie. He&rsquo;s a goalie who WINS.&rdquo;</blockquote>His career goals-against average is 2.88, which is average among top NHL goalies. His mark of 2.49 last season was a career best, but 18 NHL goalies who played 20 or more games posted a superior average. His save percentage of .915 was bettered by six goalies. His 36 victories were fourth in the league.Joseph is unusual among top-rated NHL goalies in that despite his reputation as a money goaltender, he has a losing lifetime record in the playoffs, a mediocre 41-44 with three clubs. He has made it past the second round of the playoffs just once, in 1999 with the Leafs, who then lost to the Buffalo Sabres in the Eastern Conference final.So where does Joseph really stand?Is he living proof that there are lies, damn lies and statistics?Or is he simply overrated and the latest in a long string of goaltenders whose talents have been over-estimated in Toronto&rsquo;s red-hot hockey media market?Joseph admit she was stung by the Vezina voting.&ldquo;The fact I lost, well, you couldn&rsquo;t go against any of those guys,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;But to be that distant in the voting, well, that might have been disappointing. Maybe the numbers weren&rsquo;t there. I mean, Kolzig had 41 wins. But in retrospect, winning the King Clancy Trophy meant more. I won the right trophy. It meant more to more people.&rdquo;Indisputably, Joseph&rsquo;s charitable foundation, Cujo&rsquo;s Kids, has touched hundreds of families on both sides of the border and certainly pro athletes aren&rsquo;t recognized enough for their good works.But that&rsquo;s separate from the game itself. As it stands, Joseph is an elite goalie without the stats or awards or playoff victories or Stanley Cup rings to back it up.Belfour has a Calder Trophy, two Vezinas, three Jennings, two first team all-star berths and a Cup ring. Patrick Roy has three Cup rings and is closing in on some of the game&rsquo;s greatest goaltending records. Brodeur has two Cups and a Calder. Dominik Hasek has five Vezinas and two Hart Trophies.Kolzig has a Vezina and has taken a mediocre Capitals&rsquo; team to the Stanley Cup final. Chris Osgood, for goodness sakes, has two Stanley Cup rings. Mike Vernon has two rings. Mike Richter has a Stanley Cup ring and bested Joseph in the '96 World Cup.So, is Joseph overrated?&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never heard that,&rdquo; says Columbus Blue Jackets&rsquo; GM Doug MacLean. &ldquo;I would debate anybody who said that.&rdquo;Joseph says, &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m too young to figure out where I stand right now. As you get older, maybe. Somebody like Patrick Roy is closing in on a lot of records, so he&rsquo;s more aware of that stuff.&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I think it&rsquo;s like life. After a while, you decide who you are, what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are. If I&rsquo;m helping my team, if people are happy with me where I am, I shouldn&rsquo;t care what some GM in Atlanta or somewhere thinks. Let&rsquo;s face it, I get enough attention.&rdquo;Joseph has his own definition of what constitutes a premier goalie.&ldquo;Consistency and being the type of guy the other team. talks about before the game as a factor,&rdquo; he says.Clearly, or conveniently, Joseph has fit that description with the Blues, Oilers and Leafs, largely because with all three clubs, he has faced a lot of rubber and often needed to be outstanding just to keep his teams in the game.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0023-011372/10122530-1-eng-US/f0023-012.jpg" title="f0023-01" width="1323" height="2106"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Claus Andersen/BBS)</figcaption><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0024-011539/10122523-1-eng-US/f0024-012.jpg" title="f0024-01" width="1852" height="3434"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Jim Mclsaac/BBS)</figcaption></div>&ldquo;All I go by, is when I watch the Leafs play, I see how important he is to their team,&rdquo; MacLean says. &ldquo;He allows them to play the way they have to play to be successful.&rdquo;That Joseph has been so durable-only facing the surgeon&rsquo;s knife once since signing with St. Louis in 1989&mdash;is testament to his reliability and grit.&ldquo;If I had five Vezinas or three MVPs, I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;d say awards are really important. But I don&rsquo;t have those things. I try to go out and be a factor every game,&rdquo; he says.Joseph is keenly aware that Belfour, in the second half of his career, has become a better goaltender.One area in which Joseph clearly has room to improve is in the unorthodox manner in which he handles the puck, an area which is becoming increasingly important in NHL play.&ldquo;I need to take that area of my game to the next level,&rdquo; says Joseph. As a righthanded shot who catches left, he must awkwardly switch his stick from one hand to the other to play the puck, often leaving him with his back to the play. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a challenge,&rdquo; Joseph acknowledges.While he tries to shrug off the trophies and statistics, the Leaf netminder does want to match up with the best, does want to strive to see his game accepted as among the finest in the league.&ldquo;Absolutely, If you don&rsquo;t want to be the best, you won&rsquo;t be,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Why not try to be the best? If you want to be successful, it means raising the expectations of yourself and the people around you.&rdquo;<blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t want to be the BEST, you won&rsquo;t be.&rdquo;</blockquote> &#9632;

f0019-01

HOW GOOD is CUJO?

f0026-01

SECOND PERIOD

Nothing but the BEST

<div class="byline">by kenCAMPBELL</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0050-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0050-01494/10122816-1-eng-US/f0050-012.jpg"></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0052-01376/10122809-1-eng-US/f0052-012.jpg" title="f0052-01" width="2572" height="3222"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Dan Hamilton/VPS)</figcaption></div><h2>THE EXPERTS</h2><h3>SHANNON MILLER</h3>Coach, University of Minnesota-Duluth<h3>DANIELE SAUVAGEAU</h3>Coach, Canadian National Team<h3>DIGIT MURPHY</h3>Coach, Brown University<h3>KEN DUFTON</h3>Coach, Beatrice Aeros<h2>BEST PLAYER EVER</h2>1. ANGELA JAMES&nbsp;F, CANADA Gretzky of women&rsquo;s hockey2. CAMMI GRANATO&nbsp;F, USA Face of American women&rsquo;s hockey3. DANIELLE GOYETTE&nbsp;F, CANADA Smart and skilledThe stunning, dreadful reality came to Angela James just before the 1998 Olympics. The player once known as the Wayne Gretzky of women&rsquo;s hockey was told, in essence, that she had been born too soon.Like Gretzky, and almost in tandem with him, James was the biggest star in the game. The same way Gretzky singlehandedly introduced the Sun Belt to hockey, James blazed trails as a center, and was an integral force in providing the foundation for grassroots growth.But unlike Gretzky, her efforts weren&rsquo;t rewarded with a berth on the Canadian Olympic team. Just months before the Nagano Games, James was cut from the Canadian team because she couldn&rsquo;t keep up with the new generation of players she helped inspire. It may be of small comfort to James that she&rsquo;s remembered as the greatest women&rsquo;s player of all-time, but she was selected No. 1 by a panel of experts.&ldquo;The thing about AJ is she played in an era when she totally dominated the sport, but if you placed her at her peak in today&rsquo;s game, there&rsquo;s no doubt in my mind she would still be a dominant player,&rdquo; says Ken Dufton. &ldquo;And she was at her best in an era when there was bodychecking in women&rsquo;s hockey and she took so much abuse. But she also dished it out.&rdquo;The No. 2 spot belongs to center/winger Cammi Granato, Team USA&rsquo;s all-time leading scorer in international competition. Third best is left winger Danielle Goyette, Canada&rsquo;s all-time leading scorer and the smartest player in the game today. Fourth goes to current Canadian defenseman Geraldine Heaney, who is regarded as the Ray Bourque of women&rsquo;s hockey. Fifth, and gaining fast, is center/winger Hayley Wickenheiser of Canada, the best player today.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0053-01351/10122802-1-eng-US/f0053-012.jpg" title="f0053-01" width="2552" height="3414"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Dan Hamilton/VPS)</figcaption></div><h2>BEST CURRENT PLAYER</h2>1. HAYLEY WICKENHEISER&nbsp;F, CANADA Game&rsquo;s most intimidating presence2. KAREN BYE&nbsp;F, USA Low-risk, high-reward player3. JENNY SCHMIDGALL&nbsp;F, USA Very threatening offensivelyIn a perfect world, Hayley Wickenheiser would make $10 million a year playing hockey just like her male counterparts. At just 22, Wickenheiser is the game&rsquo;s dominant player and most complete package.She can score, make plays, intimidate and play with unparalleled intensity. And, get this, many believe she&rsquo;s five years from hitting her peak. &ldquo;There are a lot of great players out there,'' Digit Murphy says, &ldquo;but Wickenheiser is the kind of player you build a franchise around.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0054-01366/10122795-1-eng-US/f0054-012.jpg" title="f0054-01" width="2532" height="3424"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Dan Hamilton/VPS)</figcaption></div><h2>BEST FROM HASHMARKS IN</h2>1. NANCY DROLET&nbsp;F, CANADA Gold medal hands2. EKATERINA PASHKEVICH&nbsp;F, RUSSIA Size makes her almost unstoppable3. KAREN BYE&nbsp;F, USA Eight goals led 2000 WorldsNancy Drolet&rsquo;s stick skills around the net are superb and her instincts are without peer. Drolet&rsquo;s poise with the puck in pressure situations is the reason why she has scored two overtime game-winners over the U.S. in World Championship gold medal games. She was the hero in both 1997 and 2000.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0055-01322/10122788-1-eng-US/f0055-012.jpg" title="f0055-01" width="2522" height="3424"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Dan Hamilton/VPS)</figcaption></div><h2>MOST PHYSICAL PLAYER</h2>1. THERESE BRISSON&nbsp;D, CANADA Punishing force in front of net2. TARA MOUNSEY&nbsp;D, USA Welcomes physical challenges3. ANGELA RUGGIERO&nbsp;D, USA Always smiles, never backs downThe veteran Canadian captain is a PhD in kinesiology and is a professor at the University of New Brunswick, but she&rsquo;s principal of the school of hard knocks when she&rsquo;s on the ice. There is no body contact in women&rsquo;s hockey, but there&rsquo;s nothing to stop a little incidental contact, and nobody makes incidental contact better than Brisson. She is particularly effective in USA-Canada games when referees swallow their whistles and the games turn into free-for-alls. &ldquo;People don&rsquo;t even want to go against her in practice,&rdquo; says Daniele Sauvageau.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0056-01295/10122781-1-eng-US/f0056-012.jpg" title="f0056-01" width="5022" height="3406"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Dan Hamilton/VPS)</figcaption></div><h2>BEST LEADER</h2>1. CAMMI GRANATO&nbsp;F, USA Will do whatever it takes2. RHKANIEMENEN&nbsp;F, FINLAND Leads by example3. KARENBYE&nbsp;F, USA MVP: Most Versatile PlayerIf any women in the U.S. program need an example of perseverance, they need look no further than Granato. A year before the Nagano Games, her back problems were so serious she couldn&rsquo;t carry home a bag of groceries without being in agony. Now she&rsquo;s preparing for her second Olympics. Much of Granato&rsquo;s leadership comes from setting examples, not from kicking garbage cans around the dressing room. &ldquo;She has really grown into the leadership role,&rdquo; says Digit Murphy. &ldquo;She practises what she preaches and she always says the right things.&rdquo;<h2>BEST IN SHOOTOUT</h2>1. CAMMI GRANATO&nbsp;F, USA Consistently delivers in clutch2. JAYNA HEFFORD&nbsp;F, CANADA Best finisher in women&rsquo;s game3. KATJA RIIPI&nbsp;F, FINLAND Natural goal-scorerWhen Ben Smith took over the U.S. national program in the mid-1990s, he watched Granato practise and wondered what all the fuss was about. Then, after every game, he&rsquo;d Look at the scoresheet and she&rsquo;d have two goals and an assist. Granato is a dangerous 1-on-1 player who thrives on pressure and always seems to find a way to turn a hopeless situation into a goal.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0057-01274/10122774-1-eng-US/f0057-012.jpg" title="f0057-01" width="2512" height="3424"><figcaption class="caption-body">KAREN BYEThe Team USA standout is regarded as the second best player in women&rsquo;s hockey today. Only Canada&rsquo;s Hayley Wickenheiser is ranked higher. (Dan Hamilton/VPS)</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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BIG SHOTS

<h2>BEST STICKHANDLER</h2>1. DANIELLE GOYETTE&nbsp;F, CANADA Makes everything look easy2. KRISSY WENDELL&nbsp;F, USA Amazing poise for young gun3. VICKY SUNOHARA&nbsp;F, CANADA Fabulous hand-eye co-ordinationLiving and working in Quebec, Daniele Sauvageau has seen Goyette play hundreds of times. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve coached against her and every time she carries the puck she hurts you,&rdquo; Sauvageau says. &ldquo;You have no idea what she&rsquo;s going to do with the puck. I have seen her stickhandle through teams.&rdquo;<h2>BEST PASSER</h2>1. JENNY SCHMIDGALL&nbsp;F, USA Can score or distribute puck2. NANCY DROLET&nbsp;F, CANADA Great vision3. A.J. MLECZKO&nbsp;F, USA Makes others betterWhether it&rsquo;s a two-zone pass or a quick, one-touch dish to a teammate on the doorstep, Jenny Schmidgall can do it all. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s probably the most dangerous playmaker in the game,&rdquo; says Shannon Miller. Adds Digit Murphy: In that little triangle in front of the net, there&rsquo;s nobody better.&rdquo;<h2>SMARTEST PLAYER</h2>1. DANIELLE GOYETTE&nbsp;F, CANADA Plays on instincts2. JENNY SCHMIDGALL&nbsp;F, USA Can play all positions3. A.J. MLECZKO&nbsp;F, USA Very smart defensivelyShe thinks so far in advance, it&rsquo;s scary sometimes,&rdquo; says Daniele Sauvageau. &ldquo;Even at the world level and with the best players, she&rsquo;s really far in advance.&rdquo; Goyette led the gold medal-winning Canadian team with six goals at the 2000 World Championship.<h2>BEST SHOOTER</h2>1. HAYLEY WICKENHEISER&nbsp;F, CANADA Great from the faceoff dot snapshot2. THERESE BRISSON&nbsp;D, CANADA Cannon from the point3. KAREN BYE&nbsp;F, USA Used on the power play pointEstimates are that Hayley Wickenheiser&rsquo;s slapshot travels between 75 and 80 miles per hour. &ldquo;With Hayley, it&rsquo;s the quick release. I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s anyone quicker in the world,&rdquo; says Daniele Sauvageau. &ldquo;Its a hard, fast shot, but it&rsquo;s also a heavy shot with good accuracy.&rdquo;<h2>FASTEST SKATER</h2>1. SARI KROOKS&nbsp;F, FINLAND Frighteningly fast2. ALANA BLAHOSKI&nbsp;F, USA Water bug on frozen pond3. LAURA SCHULER&nbsp;F, CAN Acceleration and powerThere is no evidence to back this up because women&rsquo;s hockey has never had a skills competition, but the diminutive Krooks is acknowledged as the fastest woman on ice. What makes her so valuable, though, is that she can do things with the puck at high speed.<h2>BEST AGITATOR</h2>1. ANGELA RUGGIERO&nbsp;D, USA Goes mask-to-mask with anybody2. WEI WANG&nbsp;D, CHINA Will do anything to stop foes3. NATALIE DARWITZ&nbsp;F, USA Small, feisty and relentlessAngela Ruggiero would love nothing better than to stand opponents up at the blueline and do a Scott Stevens on them. But the rules prevent that, so she does it more sneakily - a facewash here, a jab in the back of the legs there, the occasional punch to the head when the referee isn&rsquo;t looking. &#9632;

BIG SHOTS II

<div class="byline">by jayGREENBERG</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0060-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0060-01246/10122906-1-eng-US/f0060-012.jpg"></div>It&rsquo;s not Like the good ol' days, when the Broad Street Bullies came to The Garden. Back then, every match was a submission match.Hound Kelly used to bounce off all four ropes, working up a head of steam to do the Lionsault on Ted Irvine, Chris Jericho&rsquo;s Dear Old Dad.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0061-01221/10122899-1-eng-US/f0061-012.jpg" title="f0061-01" width="2552" height="3424"><figcaption class="caption-body">(John Giamundo/BBS)</figcaption></div>Of course, nobody called it that back then because Chris was only five years old and hadn&rsquo;t yet patented the move. But be assured forearms to the head were already an established practice of Dave The Hammed Schultz while 'Big Bird' Saleski stood on the ring apron promising there would more of those coming for Irvine&rsquo;s boy some day in the unlikely event the punk had the guts to grow up.Indeed, the boy has-big, strong and melancholy about the loss of simpler times when the NHL and World Wrestling Federation shared one soul. Now a star of the WWF, the 29-year-old Jericho can&rsquo;t believe the depths to which the NHL has sunk to make itself presentable to the public.&ldquo;There are no real characters anymore,&rdquo; Jericho laments. &ldquo;Now, everybody wears a helmet because of concussions and the game is a corporate business. The teams are kind of nameless and faceless. There are no Nick Fotius, Jerry Korabs, Dave Schultzes. And not that they had to be goons, either. Guy Lafleur had the hair flowing, then he had no hair and then all of a sudden he had hair again. C'mon, what&rsquo;s up with that? And Bobby Clarke had no teeth.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not what we grew up with in the '70s and early '80s, when I was a huge fan. I have a subscription to The Hockey News because I like to read the results, track the stats and read the stories, but going to a game isn&rsquo;t fun anymore.&rdquo;If you haven&rsquo;t heard disillusionment like this since Tommy Salo got powerslammed by his own general manager, Mike Milbury, in an arbitration hearing, well, you have to consider the source. Jericho once challenged Perry Saturn to a match where the loser had to put on a dress and then won when the referee shamelessly tipped over Saturn as he was about to complete the victory. Not only did Jericho stand on the apron mocking his vanquished foe while Saturn dressed up, but worse, never 'fessed up to the subterfuge.Why, you had to be born dumber than the Dudley Boyz not to see what was going down, especially after Jericho and the ref left the ring laughing with their arms around each other. Not even Bruce Hood, on his worst night, was that bad.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0062-01242/10122892-1-eng-US/f0062-012.jpg" title="f0062-01" width="858" height="1466"><figcaption class="caption-body">Wrestling superstar Chris Jericho started out in rinks before moving into rings. (Courtesy Irvine Family)</figcaption></div>It made you wonder what kind of evil lurks in the heart of Jericho, or used to anyway. &ldquo;I was a bad guy then,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I started off as a good guy in the WCW (World Championship Wrestling, the WWFs rival), became a bad guy, then I came over here (to the WWF) and now I&rsquo;m a good guy again.&rdquo;We certainly were happy to hear that, just in case Ted Irvine&rsquo;s kid didn&rsquo;t like any of our questions. Dad was nobody to mess with himself, compiling 657 penalty minutes to go with 331 points in 11 NHL seasons with the Boston Bruins, Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers and St. Louis Blues, but never mastered the powerbomb.Though big Ted fought more than a few times at Madison Square Garden, never was he required to take on both Kurt Angle and Triple H at the same time in a three-way match that involved more behind-the-back attacks than there&rsquo;s been in the Toronto Maple Leafs&rsquo; front office.As always, Jericho thoroughly enjoyed returning to New York and having people pull out newspaper clippings and old programs with Dad&rsquo;s name on them for his son to sign. But at the end of the evening, he was laid out on the canvas, as motionless as Pierre Gauthier at a trading deadline.Incredibly, 15 hours later, there wasn&rsquo;t a mark on Jericho, which seemed to us to be verification that maybe they do make them like they used to. We would have argued that Jericho was a living, breathing, contradiction to his own point, but didn&rsquo;t want to risk being suplexed, which does not look like a pleasant experience.Jericho is one tough dude, no further evidence being needed than the fact that after suffering internal injuries from a cowardly attack by Chris The Crippled Benoit, the guy missed only a week of the tour. Turned out Jericho used the time to get married. Jericho&rsquo;s new bride, the former Jessica Lockhart, is nobody we will ever see on a ring apron as she begins her studies this fall to become a teacher. &ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t know who I was,&rdquo; recalls Jericho of their meeting at a Tampa Bay area sushi bar, &ldquo;and that was cool.&rdquo;Soon, love began to hurt, although not as much as a camel clutch. A mere night after Jericho was Left near death by HHH and Angle, the wrestler was avenging the fall of his partner, Eddie Guerrero, when he was jumped from behind again by Benoit, finally submitting to the dreaded cross-face hold.Jericho appeared to be in more agony than Glen Sather every time he has to sign Valeri Kamensky&rsquo;s paycheck. Good Lord, how much can one man take?&ldquo;Sure, it&rsquo;s a show but it&rsquo;s a contact sport,&rdquo; Jericho says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not like the ring is made like a trampoline and we never get hurt. We are professional, live-action stuntmen and guys get hurt all the time.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0063-01185/10122885-1-eng-US/f0063-012.jpg" title="f0063-01" width="2286" height="1050"><figcaption class="caption-body">Some of Jericho&rsquo;s best moves come during celebrity hockey games. (Jim Leary/BS)</figcaption></div>&ldquo;They aren&rsquo;t necessarily major hurts, but there&rsquo;s not one guy in our dressing room today who doesn&rsquo;t have some aches and pains. I&rsquo;ll bet a half-a-dozen of them, if they played in the NHL, would be on the disabled list right now.&rdquo;Now that&rsquo;s a challenge that would bring Stu Grimson right off the training table to grab the microphone and tell Jericho that he is the &ldquo;stinky, brutal, trash-bag, bottom-feeder" that Jericho once called Stephanie, promoter Vince McMahon&rsquo;s daughter and "wife" of Triple H.Hey, they tell it is like is in the WWF. &ldquo;Wrestling obviously is more of a oneman show,&rdquo; Jericho says. &ldquo;In hockey, you&rsquo;re part of a team and the greatest players in the game have always been humble. They don&rsquo;t even want to talk about themselves.&rdquo;How can you respect people like that? &ldquo;I was also a huge Gretzky fan, and since he retired, I haven&rsquo;t found another hero yet to take his place in entertainment value,&rdquo; Jericho says. &ldquo;I mean, Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya are pretty good, but it&rsquo;s not the same.&ldquo;Granted, I root for the Flames and the Rangers and live in Tampa and follow the Lightning, so over the last couple years, all my teams have sucked pretty much. A guy like Theo Fleury used to be awesome, but now with the Rangers he&rsquo;s not the lifeblood of a team anymore. He&rsquo;s just another guy on a huge market team.&ldquo;It&rsquo;s kind of sad to see that happen. The clutching and grabbing make it boring now. It&rsquo;s no fun to watch until the playoffs.&rdquo;Now, it&rsquo;s a Lot truer than the rumors about Stephanie and Angle that when Jericho was a kid he didn&rsquo;t like the playoffs much better than the regular season. How&rsquo;s this for the &lsquo;summerslam&rsquo; of ironies: He hated hockey because of the noise.&ldquo;I remember going to Madison Square Garden when I was five and getting mad because my Dad wouldn&rsquo;t look up off the ice at me,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;And I always thought it was too loud. I pulled this little sweatshirt over my ears because I hated the cheering. Now, it&rsquo;s silence that scares me.&ldquo;I remember all the other kids thought it was cool my Dad played for the Rangers. But for me it was just my Dad. I didn&rsquo;t understand what was going on in the game. Now, I look back on some of things he accomplished and I&rsquo;m proud.&ldquo;He was a fighter, kind of like a Cam Neely-type power forward. He was 6-foot-2, 195 pounds and in 1970 that was a big player. In his best year (1973-74), he had 26 goals and 105 penalty minutes, pretty good numbers for even this day and age, and back then, things were different. He wasn&rsquo;t a star, but a very important player, like an Adam Graves. He played for a Long time, 10 years. Today, he&rsquo;d make $4 million a year.&rdquo;Ted retired from the Blues at the end of the 1976-77 season, when Chris was seven. &ldquo;I just felt it was time,&rdquo; Irvine recalls. &ldquo;Playing in New York was the epitome of hockey and after I got traded, it just wasn&rsquo;t the same.&rdquo;&ldquo;Chris said, &lsquo;Dad, can you stay home and teach me Kung Fu?&rsquo; so I did. It was his turn.&rdquo;They went back to Winnipeg, where Dad became a financial planner and Chris&rsquo; Ten Stubby Little Fingers of Death started punching up wrestling on the tube. &ldquo;Actually, my Mom was a fan,&rdquo; Ted says. &ldquo;She always watched wrestling from Maple Leaf Gardens on TV. Chris started asking a ton of questions. I would take him to go see Hulk Hogan when he came to town.&ldquo;He and his friends really enjoyed wrestling. I just didn&rsquo;t know how much until I saw the holes in the basement ceiling. When he was 15 or 16, he started lifting weights.&ldquo;He loved to read and write his own comic books. Superman, superhero kind of things. He had his own air band, was always thinking theatrically and had tremendous people skills and imagination. He would do his own interviews and role-playing with his friends. He was a student of the wrestling business.&rdquo;In a school production of Oliver, Chris played the villain who held a bullwhip, killed a lady and beat up Oliver. Hey, you never know when your life&rsquo;s calling will arrive, but when the moment comes, it&rsquo;s a powerful experience.Perhaps to the uninitiated, wrestling seems trashy and repetitious, but on the other hand, everybody in it has big chests and wants revenge, which is more than you can say when the Predators visit the Mighty Ducks. Would you rather see grown men thrown from a ring or a faceoff circle? Besides, if everything is staged, so what? Obviously, this hasn&rsquo;t stopped Bryan Marchment from paying close attention.Young Irvine considered his alternatives: A) Being a bad hockey player; B) Being a star wrestler. &ldquo;I wanted to be a hockey player at one point,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I was a grinder, a penalty-killer, a checker, a Craig Berube, Mike Eagles kind of guy. I was okay, but wasn&rsquo;t NHL material, although now, with 30 teams, I could probably play for the Blue Jackets.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0064-01199/10122878-1-eng-US/f0064-012.jpg" title="f0064-01" width="1382" height="1294"><figcaption class="caption-body">As a wrestler, Jericho combines two of his passions: athletics and entertainment. (John Giamundo/BBS)</figcaption></div>&ldquo;I always enjoyed the athleticism of sports and the entertainment of watching a good band play or a movie. That&rsquo;s why I loved wrestling so much. It was the ultimate combination of the two.&rdquo;In 1990, he wrote to the wrestling school in Calgary run by the family of Bret Hart, packed up all his belongings and went. He wore his blond hair longer than a Thrashers&rsquo; losing streak, took the name Jericho both because it was the town on Long Island where he was born and because it had religious overtones to fit his deep faith.He took to doing parodies of his opponents, and travelled the world literally learning the ropes. Jericho kicked around tank towns, worked as a bar bouncer and mended farm fences while working matches for $25. He perfected.&rsquo;The Walls of Jericho, a hold in which the opponents get closed in faster and more resolutely than Bill Wirtz&rsquo;s mind, and went to the Far East and Germany to polish an act wrestling fans came to love. It was easier to put a finger in an opponent&rsquo;s eye than on why he was becoming so popular when so many wrestlers try and fail. But good looks help and you can&rsquo;t be a shtick in the mud. Basic principle of the business: As long as they lap it up, keep giving it to them.&ldquo;If you just think you are going to walk into this and be a big star, you don&rsquo;t have a chance,&rdquo; Jericho says. &ldquo;It takes a lot of determination, a lot of heart.&ldquo;We have quite a bit of input into our characters, then the fans take it from there. Some guys the fans aren&rsquo;t supposed to like, they end up liking. Some guys they are supposed to like, they hate. You go with the flow. If things get stagnant, you change from being a bad guy to a good guy or vice versa. That&rsquo;s what makes the business so exciting; nobody knows what&rsquo;s going to happen with the characters.&ldquo;There are some things that relate to what hockey players do because we are on the road quite a bit. But as far as the showmanship, there are probably a few characters left (in hockey) Like Tie Domi, but not many.&rdquo;Like father, like son, Ted feels the same way as Chris. Gretz is gone and the NHL is not what it used to be. &ldquo;Not that I don&rsquo;t miss going to The Spectrum, or the bus being rocked on the way out of there, or even being booed at The Garden,&rdquo; says Irvine, 55. &ldquo;But I was lucky to get in 10 years and play at the exciting time I did. It&rsquo;s lost some of its zest.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0065-01200/10122871-1-eng-US/f0065-012.jpg" title="f0065-01" width="2142" height="2116"><figcaption class="caption-body">(John Giamundo/BBS)</figcaption></div>In fact, we can&rsquo;t remember the last time anybody in the NHL grabbed his crotch, wore a shirt advocating obscenet acts, or made insinuations about an opponent&rsquo;s sexual orientation. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like some of the things that Lgo on in wrestling,&rdquo; Irvine says. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s Chris&rsquo;s profession and I don&rsquo;t judge it. It&rsquo;s the path God chose for him and I know he Bmakes up with a lot of good things that he does.&ldquo;Is there a contradiction with our religious beliefs? There&rsquo;s a contradictron with being overpaid as a professional athlete, too.&rdquo;Look, in the Bible, when after 40 years Joshua finally got a gig with that horn, he spared the mute and blew down the Walls of Jericho. The Lord&rsquo;s work was done-unlike Gary Bettman&rsquo;s- and with showmanship that must bring the saddest of smiles to Chris Jericho.Do you have any idea how many millions Tumbledown! would have brought in on pay-per-view? &#9632;

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When Worlds COLLIDE

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next WAVE

Just as Dominik Hasek and Jaromir Jagr were the faces of Czech hockey in the 1990s and Peter Stastny of Czechoslovakian hockey in the 1980s, there were faces of Czechoslovakian hockey greatness before them. MVP introduces four of them, each representing a different era: pre-World War II, the 1940s and '50s; the 1960s; and the 1970s and early '80s.<h2>JOSEF MALECEK (PRE-WORLD WAR II)</h2>Malecek was the best Czech player before the five-year global conflict. He played center with AC Sparta, LTC Prague and SK Bratislava and scored 114 goals in 107 Czech national team games. A multi-talented athlete, Malecek was also a part-time movie actor. He defected to Switzerland in 1948.<h2>VLADIMIR ZABRODSKY (1940s and '50s)</h2>The talented center for LTC Prague and Sparta Prague scored 306 goals in 260 league games and won six national titles. &rsquo;The Big Chief' scored 158 goals in 93 national team games. Zabrodsky skated for Czechoslovakia at the 1948 and 1956 Olympics and in four World Championships, winning the country&rsquo;s first gold medals for hockey in 1947 and 1949. Zabrodsky defected to Sweden in 1965.<h2>JAN SUCHY (1960s and '70s)</h2>Czechoslovakia&rsquo;s Bobby Orr intimidated opposition teams during the late 1960s and 1970s with rink-length rushes and blistering shots. His 162 goals in the Czech League remain the most by a defenseman. Suchy added 44 goals in 160 games with the national team. He was named best Czech defenseman twice and Czech Player of the Year twice during 16 seasons with Dukla Jihlava.<h2>MILAN NOVY (1970s and '80s)</h2>With 594 Czech League and national team goals, Novy is the top scorer in Czech history. He set the league record of 59 goals in 44 games in 1976-77 and scored the lone goal in Czechoslovakia&rsquo;s 1-0 victory over Canada at the 1976 Canada Cup. Novy spent most of his career with Kladno. He was the league&rsquo;s top sniper four times, top point-scorer six times and Player of the Year three times. A linemate at the time of Novy&rsquo;s retirement in 1988 was a 16-year-old named Jaromir Jagr.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0089-01_ad/10123247-1-eng-US/f0089-01_ad2.jpg" title="f0089-01_Ad" width="2322" height="1624"></div><a href="http://www.wjhl.net">www.wjhl.net</a> &#9632;

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Heroes of Hockey in Czechoslovakia

<div class="byline">by jackFALLA</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0090-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0090-0188/10123299-1-eng-US/f0090-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">(®2000 Monty Rand)</figcaption></div><div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0092-0190/10123292-1-eng-US/f0092-012.jpg" title="f0092-01" width="2563" height="1799"><figcaption class="caption-body">(&reg;2000 Monty Rand)</figcaption></div>The phone call came early last season. It was Jim Craig, the &ldquo;golden goalie" on the USA&rsquo;s 1980 Olympic gold medal team who was calling his ex-college coach, Boston University&rsquo;s Jack Parker, about a problem. The problem was with Parker&rsquo;s defense. Craig noticed that whenever BU defensemen skated back into their zone to take a puck from freshman goalie Rick Di Pietro, the defensemen were just getting in the goalie&rsquo;s way.&ldquo;Have the defensemen skate away from him&hellip;you&rsquo;ve got to treat him like a third defenseman,&rdquo; said Craig who was agog at DiPietro&rsquo;s puckhandling and passing skills.Parker took Craig&rsquo;s advice and DiPietro went on to win the team MVP Award, while BU rebounded from 14-k 20-3 in 1998-99 to 25-10-7 in 1999-2000. The freshman rang up a sparkling 18-5-5 record, a 2.45 goalsagainst average, an eye-popping .913 save percentage and set an NCAA single-game save record with 77 stops in a quadruple-overtime 3-2 quarterfinal playoff loss to St. Lawrence. When DiPietro took two weeks off to play for Team USA at the 2000 World Junior Championship, he was named the tournament&rsquo;s top goalie.But what&rsquo;s most compelling about DiPietro is that he did all this while playing with the matadorial flamboyance of a veteran, not only dishing the puck to defensemen, but often sending home run passes up to streaking wingers. There aren&rsquo;t enough Os in "smooth" to describe DiPietro&rsquo;s style.&ldquo;He gave us a different dimension with his ability to move the puck,&rdquo; says Parker, who thought he&rsquo;d have DiPietro on campus for two years, but couldn&rsquo;t have been too surprised on April 30 when Ricky D opted into the NHL&rsquo;s entry draft where the struggling New York Islanders made him the first goalie selected No. 1 overall since the modern draft began in 1969.The question now is: can DiPietro bring his slick, confident, puck-moving game into the meat grinder of the NHL? It&rsquo;s one thing for a goalie to roam from the cage and make breakout passes in a college game, but another to make that pass while an NHL-caliber power forward is cruising in on you and slobbering on himself in gleeful anticipation of stapling your rich rookie butt to the boards.One highly credible source who thinks DiPietro can and should keep his game intact for the NHL is Hall of Famer Bobby Orr, who also turned pro at 18 and who, as a partner in Bostonbased Bob Woolf & Associates, is DiPietro&rsquo;s agent. &ldquo;(Rick) got drafted where he got drafted and achieved what he achieved by playing the way he does,&rdquo; Orr says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a mistake for any player to make big changes in a style that&rsquo;s made him successful.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0092-0241/10123285-1-eng-US/f0092-022.jpg" title="f0092-02" width="1468" height="1552"><figcaption class="caption-body">Boston University enjoyed the fruits of Rick DiPietro&rsquo;s labors in 1999-2000. (&reg;2000 Monty Rand)</figcaption></div>And it&rsquo;s obvious that Islander general manager Mike Milbury thinks DiPietro should dance with what brung him. After trading goalie prospect Roberto Luongo-a kid so talented he was picked as the No. 1 NHL prospect by The Hockey News&rsquo; Future Watch in both 1999 and 2000- and drafting DiPietro, Milbury said: &ldquo;In our minds, DiPietro possesses an element (his stickhandling) that Roberto perhaps doesn&rsquo;t possess.&rdquo;Actually, Mike, Di Pietro possesses several elements that teenagers, in general, and young goalies, in particular, don&rsquo;t usually possess. Shrewdness is one of them. Asked if he can play his puckhandling game in the pros, DiPietro says-rightly, we think&mdash;that while he won&rsquo;t suddenly become a stay-at-home goalie, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to have to cut down (on leaving the cage) and pick my spots.&rdquo; Orr has already warned his young client that "(the forecheckers) will be on you a lot quicker, the shots will be harder and everything will happen faster in the NHL.&rdquo;DiPietro can handle fast. His life seems to have been on fast forward since he was a sophomore at St. Sebastian&rsquo;s School in Needham, Mass. Unhappy with his playing time at St. Seb&rsquo;s, Ricky talked his parents-Rick and Cheryl Di Pietro of Winthrop, Mass.-into letting him move to Ann Arbor, Mich., and join the U.S. National Junior Development Program where he played so well that then-coach Jeff Jackson called him "the next great American goalie.&rdquo;Leaving college after one season and opting into the NHL draft-the very act of opting in costs a player his college eligibility&mdash;was a slightly tougher parental sell. &ldquo;I sat down and told them how I felt and brought up some points I felt were important&hellip; It took a while, but they finally came around,&rdquo; DiPietro says.The key to DiPietro&rsquo;s early jump from academia was advice he received from young Bruins&rsquo; goalie John Grahame, who played three seasons at Lake Superior State before turning pro. &ldquo;(Grahame) said that it was his dream (to make the NHL) and that college was a stepping stone. If the time felt right, and it was your opportunity to make that step, then you should do it,&rdquo; Di Pietro says.DiPietro takes issue with anyone who says his decision was based solely on economics: "Money is not the issue and it hasn&rsquo;t been the issue. (The decision) was about my dream to play in the NHL.&rdquo; That said, DiPietro did sign a dreamy threeyear contract at $1,075,000 per season, half of it guaranteed.If you don&rsquo;t have dreams, you have nightmares. And one of those could be the whacking and hacking that goes on in the maelstrom that surrounds a professional goaltender. Asked if he thought the refs would protect a rookie goalie the same way they would a veteran, DiPietro says, &ldquo;I hope they would,&rdquo; the verb "hope" seeming to carry the subtextual message of unspoken doubt and rookie puzzle-ment, traits a Lot of people would not attribute to the confident DiPietro.<blockquote class="pullQuote">&ldquo;The kid will OWN New York&hellip; he&rsquo;s made for Madison Avenue&rdquo;</blockquote>A lot of people could be wrong. The heretofore widespread misconception about DiPietro is that he&rsquo;s a cocky kid, a la Tom Barrasso who broke into the NHL as an 18-year old with Buffalo in 1983. While it&rsquo;s true that DiPietro is confident and glib, he isn&rsquo;t in any sense obnoxious. He was popular with his BU teammates and with Parker, with whom he engaged in goodnatured season-Long verbal jousting. Parker jabbed DiPietro about his supposed ego ("Ricky thinks there are two great goalies in the world- and he&rsquo;s both") and DiPietro jabbed Parker about his age, 56: following BU&rsquo;s win in February&rsquo;s Beanpot Tournament, DiPietro says he asked Parker, &ldquo;Coach, at your age are you sure you can lift that trophy, you know, with the osteoporosis and all?&rdquo;But lest a distorted reputation precede him to Long Island, Orr has already advised his client to, as DiPietro says, &ldquo;Make sure you show respect to everyone in the organization and everyone in the room. Be supportive and helpful and don&rsquo;t show a cocky attitude.&rdquo; Should Di Pietro&rsquo;s team turn out to be the Lowell Lock Monsters of the American Hockey League, the Islanders top development club, the young goalie says he&rsquo;s ready to pay his dues. &ldquo;Right now it&rsquo;s about following the dream.&rdquo;It may be that he follows it in the AHL for a time; DiPietro suffered a pulled groin early in training camp, diminishing his chances of starting the season with the Islanders.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0094-0182/10123278-1-eng-US/f0094-012.jpg" title="f0094-01" width="1014" height="1708"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Bruce Bennet/BBS)</figcaption></div>But if DiPietro should make the big club and play, well, &ldquo;The kid will own New York,&rdquo; says BU Sports Information Director Ed Carpenter, who marvelled at DiPietro&rsquo;s ability to handle the media and win over a crowd. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s got great charisma. He&rsquo;s articulate. He&rsquo;s a good-Looking kid. He&rsquo;s made for Madison Avenue. And if he plays well he&rsquo;s going to benefit by being in the New York market.&rdquo;DiPietro, who looks a Lot like actor Matt Dillon, says he&rsquo;s aware of the potential advantages of playing in New York, &ldquo;but that&rsquo;s really something for my agency (to deal with).&rdquo; Goalies don&rsquo;t get paid for marketability. They get paid for stopping pucks. To that end, Di Pietro spent much of his summer working with hockey weight training guru Mike Boyle at Boyle&rsquo;s gym in Winchester, Mass. &ldquo;Ricky is as good an athlete as any forward in that draft,&rdquo; says Boyle. &ldquo;In terms of strength, endurance and quickness, this kid isn&rsquo;t just impressive for a goaltender, he&rsquo;s impressive period.&rdquo;With his general athleticism, Left-handed style and fluidity, DiPietro is reminiscent of one of his goaltending heroes, Grant Fuhr-with Liberal doses of puckhandling greats Martin Brodeur and Ron Hextall blended in.But at age 19, and with zero pro experience, DiPietro first has to establish himself as a pro. It&rsquo;s here that DiPietro&rsquo;s confidence may be his most important asset. &ldquo;Some people may not be as confident in my abilities as I am,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;but I love to prove people wrong.&rdquo;For Rick DiPietro, this season is about proving himself and the Islanders right. &#9632;

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Style on the Isle

<div class="image-hero"><img title="f0095-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0095-0177/10123330-1-eng-US/f0095-012.jpg"></div> &#9632;

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Subscribe & get more than the highlights

<div class="byline">by ericDUHATSCHEK</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0096-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0096-0194/10123382-1-eng-US/f0096-012.jpg"></div>It was half-a-century ago and an exasperated Ebbie Goodfellow had seen enough of Milt Schmidt.&ldquo;What difference does it make who plays the wings with Schmidt?" asked the Chicago Blackhawks&rsquo; coach. &ldquo;I could go out there myself and get a couple of goals playing with the greatest center in hockey.&rdquo;Goodfellow was 43, nine years removed from a Hall of Fame career, and dead on.Schmidt, the Boston Bruins&rsquo; captain and most industrious player, entered the 1950s as the most complete forward in the game and probably the best two-way forward in the game&rsquo;s history to that point.The passage of time and the emergence of other magnificent all-around physical centers-Bryan Trottier, Eric Lindros and Peter Forsberg stand out as the best-have combined to obscure the memory of Schmidt.That&rsquo;s a shame because long before the New York Islanders&rsquo; four-time Stanley Cup champion, Philadelphia Flyers&rsquo; unprecedented physical force and Colorado Avalanche&rsquo;s exploding presence, there was Milt Schmidt.He was the first to define a position.In today&rsquo;s game, if you can do little else but win a faceoff, you can play in the NHL. If you can kill a penalty or shadow a star or apply an effective facewash, you can play in the NHL. From 1936 through 1954, when Schmidt played in the NHL, players did everything short of resurfacing the ice (and if you played for Eddie Shore, you might be asked to do that, too).&ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t carry as many players as they do today,&rdquo; says Schmidt, now 82 and living in Boston. &ldquo;We were lucky if we had just the one goaltender; four, sometimes only three defensemen; plus three lines and maybe one extra forward. You wouldn&rsquo;t have any more than 14 or 15 players.&rdquo;Schmidt could do it all. He was a peerless stickhandler, possessed an excellent wrist shot and could make plays at a high speed. Gordie Howe once described him as the toughest opponent he ever faced. Referee Bill Chadwick considered Schmidt one of the most courageous players of all-time and marvelled at the &ldquo;heart and soul&rdquo; in his play.Schmidt led the NHL in scoring in 1939-40, the first time a single line-the famed 'Kraut Line' of Schmidt, Woody Dumart and Bobby Bauerfinished one-two-three in the scoring race. More than a decade later, the fourtime all-star earned MVP honors in 1950-51. Forty-five years after his retirement, Schmidt still ranks in the Bruins&rsquo; top 10 all-time in games (776) and points (575). He is the only man who has ever served the Bruins as a player, a coach (1955-66) and a general manager (1967-72).Schmidt, the most complete player of his time, was inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1961. He was a player with no appreciable weaknesses, who had both the head and the heart to make an impact every night.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0098-01106/10123375-1-eng-US/f0098-012.jpg" title="f0098-01" width="493" height="314"></div>Teammate Leo Labine said then, &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t just the speed with which he skates, it&rsquo;s the fact that he never lets up for a second when he&rsquo;s on the ice. I used to watch him when I was a junior, but watching him and skating with him are two different things.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0098-0248/10123368-1-eng-US/f0098-022.jpg" title="f0098-02" width="1084" height="1418"><figcaption class="caption-body">Milt Schmidt acted as captain of the Bruins for the final four-plus seasons of his career. (Frank Prazak/HHOF)</figcaption></div>Dumart says today, &ldquo;(Schmidt&rsquo;s) strengths were his speed and the way he could bodycheck. He just had a knack. You thought he had his head down and just as you were going to hit him, he would take a jump at you and he&rsquo;d hit you first before you hit him. He only used it when he had to.&ldquo;I remember Dit Clapper, who played defense for us, used to call Milt, &lsquo;Sea Biscuit,&rsquo; a popular race horse in those days. (Milt) could really skate and stickhandle. He could pretty well knock any body down. Just the way he did it, I&rsquo;m glad I played with him, not against himIn 1935, when Schmidt was 17 and set to play junior hockey in his hometown of Kitchener, Ont., he was invited to the Boston Bruins&rsquo; training camp in Saint John, N.B.&ldquo;All of a sudden, I found myself on the same ice surface as Tiny Thompson in the net, Eddie Shore on defense, Dit Clapper and many other greats. Oh my goodness, these were guys I had heard about on Foster Hewitt&rsquo;s radio broadcasts when they played against Toronto.&rdquo;&ldquo;I was offered a contract for $2,000.1 didn&rsquo;t have two pennies to rub together, along with many other people. However, I turned it down. I told Mr. (Art) Ross (the Bruins&rsquo; legendary GM) I was only 17 and I thought I was a little young to turn professional. So, I went back to Kitchener and played junior hockey. They gave me a better job to keep me there.&rdquo;Schmidt turned pro the next year and was called up from Providence of the American Hockey League midway through the 1936-37 season. The Bruins have won only five Stanley Cups in their 75-year history, but they did it twice in a three-year span, with Schmidt leading the way-first in 1938-39 and again in 1940-41.In the middle of Schmidt&rsquo;s fifth full season, 1941-42, the entire line joined the Royal Canadian Airforce. In their last game before shipping out, the Bruins defeated Montreal 8-1 at the Boston Garden. The date was Feb. 10, 1942, and the line accumulated 11 points: Schmidt had three assists; Dumart one goal and three assists and; Bauer two goals and two assists.After the game, they were presented with their full-season paychecks and various gifts. Then players from both teams hoisted the trio onto their shoulders and skated them off the ice to the strains of Auld Lang Syne. Schmidt missed three full seasons in the prime of his career to help the war effort. Overseas, he and the rest of Canada&rsquo;s soldiers would get a chance to play hockey once every two or three weeks.&ldquo;They had a rink in Durham, in the northern part of England,&rdquo; Schmidt recalls. &ldquo;The roof was blown off this rink, so in order to have public skating and to keep morale up, they put a tent up, so it was like a big circus tent. You had four poles going down the center of the ice and you had two more poles where the defensemen were standing. So it wasn&rsquo;t only the opposition you had to contend with, but the posts as well.&ldquo;However, it was a day away from the station and we were doing something we loved. We had a bit of a league going and there were always two games. One station would play against the other-we were a bomber command- and the only bad part of it was the equipment. If you didn&rsquo;t play in the first game, you had to wait until the first game was over and you&rsquo;d put on the same equipment. It was all sticky and slimy and wet, but we got along okay.&rdquo;In his heyday, Schmidt had some pitched battles with Howe, but his most memorable confrontations were with the Red Wings&rsquo; Black Jack Stewart. &ldquo;He and I were like two freight trains, running at one another every opportunity we had,&rdquo; says Schmidt. &ldquo;For some reason, that&rsquo;s the way it started. We were bitter enemies out there. I will say this, when Jack retired and I was coaching in Boston, I was going over the exercises we would do on the ice one day and, all of a sudden, the door to the dressing room opened up and who was it? Jack Stewart. I immediately straightened up. He came in through the door and he gave me a little smile and I gave him a little smile and he put his arm around my shoulder and put his hand out to shake. He whispered into my ear, &lsquo;Weren&rsquo;t we a couple of crazy buggers? As bitter as we were, we ended up being real good friends. It was one of the highlights of my career-just another example of how you might have bitter feelings towards one another, but when the game was over, when you retired, it was all forgotten. I did appreciate that, Jack coming in to say hello. It wasn&rsquo;t two years later that he was dead of cancer.&rdquo;Schmidt played another 10 years after his return from World War II. His career began to wind down in 1952 as injuries took their toll. He retired in December, 1954, and within two weeks, was appointed coach of the team, replacing Lynn Patrick.&ldquo;I had two bad knees,&rdquo; Schmidt says. &ldquo;I was getting them taped up before every game. I&rsquo;d fall and have trouble getting up, on account of the bandages being wrapped so tightly. My legs were very stiff and I couldn&rsquo;t maneuver as well as I wanted to. We were in Chicago and I played my last game and Lynn Patrick and I were walking from the hotel to the LaSalle Street station to catch the train. I said to Lynn, who was the manager at the time, &lsquo;What would be your opinion if I decided to hang them up?&rsquo; I&rsquo;m bleeding so badly because the tape was taking all the skin off my knee. I said, I don&rsquo;t know how much longer I can stand this.&ldquo;I was 36 years old. Counting war years, I had 19-and-a-half years in the National Hockey League. He said, &lsquo;Milt, I was hoping you would say that, because I didn&rsquo;t want to tell you that maybe the end had come.&rsquo;&rdquo;For Schmidt, the finest moment of his distinguished career came the night the Bruins won the Stanley Cup for the first time.&ldquo;After that final game was over, Eddie Shore skated off the ice and the crowd would not let the president present the trophy to us until Shore came back on the ice. When Shore came back on the ice, the ovation that man received was tremendous.&ldquo;I still get goose pimples down my back thinking about it. That was the highlight of my career. When you stop and consider the many great hockey players that have never been on a Stanley Cup team- and here&rsquo;s this skinny little kid from Kitchener, playing on a Stanley Cup team with the likes of Dit Clapper and Eddie Shore and Bill Cowley and Tiny Thompson.&ldquo;To me, that was really something.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0101-0173/10123361-1-eng-US/f0101-012.jpg" title="f0101-01" width="4004" height="2705"><figcaption class="caption-body">Schmidt played in the first NHL All-Star Game in 1947; he was among those honored on the 50th anniversary in 2000 at Toronto. (Mark Wilson)</figcaption></div> &#9632;

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GUTS & GLORY

The Boston Bruins have a history of producing better players than teams. Five of the best 30 players in NHL history&mdash;as selected by The Hockey News-made their marks with the Bruins.Only the Montreal Canadiens, 23-time Stanley Cup champions, have more representatives with nine among the top 30. Boston has won just five Cups.The Bruin legends are defensemen Bobby Orr (No. 2 all-time behind Wayne Gretzky), Eddie Shore (No. 10) and Ray Bourque (No. 14), plus centers Phil Esposito (No. 18) and Milt Schmidt (No. 27).<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0100-0180/10123413-1-eng-US/f0100-012.jpg" title="f0100-01" width="933" height="942"><figcaption class="caption-body">(The Hockey News)</figcaption></div>Each was a seminal player in his time. Orr and Shore defined their eras, the 1960s-70s and 1920s-30s; the still active Bourque earned an NHL-high 17 consecutive all-star honors; Phil Esposito rewrote the record book during the 1960s and '70s and; Schmidt was the consummate twoway forward during the first 50 years of the 20th Century.Only two players who played the bulk of their careers during the first half-century rank ahead of Schmidt-Shore and Montreal center Howie Morenz (No. 15). &#9632;

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Pantheon of Greats

<div class="byline">by deveFESCHUK</div><div class="image-hero"><img title="f0106-01" src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0106-0175/10123552-1-eng-US/f0106-012.jpg"><figcaption class="caption-body">(Mark Wilson)</figcaption></div>Anson Carter&rsquo;s off-season sounds enviable: Last summer, the Boston Bruins&rsquo; free agent right winger hung around with movie stars and drove around in a Mercedes; he bunked in a cavernous beach house and baked in the California sun.But for all the perks of the West Coast lifestyle, for all the fun of playing shinny with Cuba Gooding Jr. and cruising the strip in a German convertible, Carter also experienced plenty of pain. On any given summer day, after all, he didn&rsquo;t enjoy a game of beach volleyball until he endured a dose of boot camp.While the West Coast slackers snoozed, Carter rose just after sun-up.And while the Hollywood types practiced yoga with their personal trainers, he hired a professional drill sergeant to push him through a daily grind of musclebulging grunt work-all in an effort to rehabilitate the shoulder he injured last spring, and, as he puts it, &ldquo;to redefine my body.&rdquo;He accomplished both goals: The effects of the April surgery on his right rotator cuff wouldn&rsquo;t have forced him to miss so much as a training camp practice, although a contract squabble with the Bruins did. And he can&rsquo;t say enough about what his military-style training regimen has done for his resilience. If he has redefined his body, the new definition is "physical specimen.&rdquo;Which is why he likes to point out that living beneath the southern sun isn&rsquo;t all about hot cars and frivolity. He&rsquo;s a Canadian in citizenship and sentiment, after all, so he sounds a bit guilty when he speaks of the luxurious lifestyle his profession affords.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0108-0182/10123545-1-eng-US/f0108-012.jpg" title="f0108-01" width="1612" height="1849"><figcaption class="caption-body">California isn&rsquo;t just where people go to dream, they also go there to work out. (Jim Mclsaac/BBS)</figcaption></div>&ldquo;When you&rsquo;re working out, it isn&rsquo;t fun,&rdquo; says Carter, who on this August day, is sporting California fashions (mini dreadlocks and wrap-around Oakleys) at a gym near his childhood home in Toronto. &ldquo;You could be on the beach all day, hanging out, playing beach volleyball. But there&rsquo;s plenty of time for that afterwards. Work has to be done. The alarm goes off at seven o'clock in the morning. It&rsquo;s not fun. But four hours later, after you&rsquo;ve finished your workout, it feels good.&rdquo;It looks good, too, although when Carter is asked to remove his T-shirt for a photograph, he is at first reluctant-mostly, he says, because he doesn&rsquo;t relish the thought of his National Hockey League enemies getting a glossy-paged glimpse at the three-inch scar on his recently repaired shoulder.But he acquiesces to the photographer&rsquo;s request. And he credits the impressive ripple he reveals to a man named T.R. Goodman, a former small college hockey player from Connecticut who runs the California-based Pro Camp, where Carter and more than 20 other NHLers-including Chris Chelios, Rick Tocchet and Rob Blake-spend many sweat-soaked summer mornings.Goodman says Carter, is "definitely a drill sergeant.&rdquo; But the exercise expert is also that rare individual who convinces professional athletes to pay up to $18,000 (US) to have him yell at them for months at a time&mdash;and to have him dispense plenty of useful advice about the ins and outs of high-performance athletics.paying him that money to train you. That&rsquo;s what you&rsquo;re looking for,&rdquo; Carter says. &ldquo;If you come to the gym without the right attitude, T.R. won&rsquo;t be afraid to send you home. He&rsquo;ll get on your case. He&rsquo;ll send you home if you&rsquo;re not working.&rdquo;Carter, for his part, has never suffered such banishment. But he said he couldn&rsquo;t muster the same motivation if he remained in Boston during the league&rsquo;s down time.&ldquo;The whole lifestyle of California is fitness,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Everyone&rsquo;s trying to stay in shape all the time, whether they&rsquo;re seven years old or 70. It keeps you pumped up. Plus, in Boston, I&rsquo;d be going out with my friends all the time. Out West, I stay focussed.&rdquo;He says he also stays "humbled" by the presence of Tocchet and Chelios, whose long careers-both of which began in 1984-can be chalked up to, among many things, an utter lack of laziness.&ldquo;These guys are chiselled,&rdquo; Carter says. &ldquo;Tocchet told me the other day he was 36. I thought he was 31 or 32. His body&rsquo;s in such good shape, you can&rsquo;t tell how long he&rsquo;s been in the league by looking at it.&rdquo;Carter is 26, but he wasn&rsquo;t always a ripped-and-ready professional. He remembers leaner days as a 17-year-old Jr. B speedster, when his 6-foot-l frame carried just 150 pounds and he could barely bench press the unimpressive sum of 135 pounds more than a couple of times.Back then, he didn&rsquo;t understand the importance of dry-land training. His on-ice skills, after all, had secured him a scholarship at Michigan State University. But Stan Butler, the coach of Carter&rsquo;s Wexford Jr. B team, told him his string-bean body wouldn&rsquo;t keep him healthy on the NCAA ice.&ldquo;That summer, I worked my butt off and put on 20 pounds,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;The same thing happened when I turned pro. I weighed 185 my senior year at Michigan State, then I came into camp with Washington weighing 206.&rdquo;Carter weighs about the same these days. But thanks to Goodman&rsquo;s program, which includes plenty of circuit training, in which athletes lift weights under the stress of a rapid heart rate, he says he is vastly stronger than he was when he made his NHL debut back in 1996.The extra might has shown in his statistics. His points-per-game average has improved every season, from .55 in 1997-98 to .73 in 1998-99 to .80 in 1999-2000. Last season, when he scored 22 goals, he was on pace to score 30-a figure just 18 players reached-before he lost an edge and tumbled to the injury that sidelined him with just 59 games in the books.<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0110-0176/10123538-1-eng-US/f0110-012.jpg" title="f0110-01" width="2585" height="2960"><figcaption class="caption-body">&ldquo;He&rsquo;s attentive, he&rsquo;s inquisitive&hellip; He&rsquo;s egoless.&rdquo;-T.R. Goodman on Anson Carter (Steve Babineau/SA)</figcaption></div>Bruins&rsquo; coach Pat Burns says, &ldquo;Carter&rsquo;s a good skater and has a great sense of the game. He could be more physical because he&rsquo;s a big guy: He could be a great power forward.&rdquo;Now Carter has to do it. Consecutive seasons of scoring at a 30-goal pace is fine; scoring 30 goals is better. Carter says he feels he&rsquo;s on the verge of a big breakthrough. His drill sergeant thinks so, too. &ldquo;This guy, mentally, he&rsquo;s got all the qualities of a superstar,&rdquo; Goodman says. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s attentive, he&rsquo;s inquisitive, he&rsquo;s intense, he&rsquo;s never late. He&rsquo;s ego-less. He&rsquo;s like a racehorse in the gate. Just let him out and you won&rsquo;t believe what you see.&rdquo;If Carter&rsquo;s improvement curve continues at its sharp ascent, it won&rsquo;t be long until he&rsquo;s among the League&rsquo;s elite forwards. And it won&rsquo;t be a stretch to put him on the short list for the 2002 Olympic team-a perfect position for a loud-and-proud patriot.Indeed, Goodman says Carter is a frequent flagwaver in the gym.&ldquo;I get sick of hearing it. He always talks about how beautiful Toronto is and how great it would be to represent his country at the Olympics,&rdquo; says the American exercise expert. &ldquo;I say, &lsquo;Let&rsquo;s see how patriotic you are when they start paying you in Canadian dollars&rsquo;&rdquo;Says Carter, who won gold as a member of the 1994 world junior champions: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know any guy that wouldn&rsquo;t want to play for Canada. If I could play in the Olympics, it&rsquo;d be a dream.&rdquo;He&rsquo;s already living the dream, though. He&rsquo;s got the body and the Benz and the sunny off-season address. And he&rsquo;s got famous friends, too. He&rsquo;s among a big-named bunch of hockey fanatics who, twice a week, strap on the silver blades with stars of the silver screen such as Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Priestley and, Carter&rsquo;s personal favorite, the ever-exuberant Cuba Gooding Jr.&ldquo;I like picking their brain about what&rsquo;s going on in their business, what movies they&rsquo;re in and what roles they&rsquo;re playing, but they just want to talk hockev.&rdquo; he savs of his star-studded pals. &ldquo;You might not think so, but it&rsquo;s usually a pretty good game. But it could only happen in L.A., I guess. Only in L.A.&rdquo;<div class="figure-block image-bleed"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0111-0175/10123531-1-eng-US/f0111-012.jpg" title="f0111-01" width="2163" height="3147"><figcaption class="caption-body">Carter is driven to be the best he can be&hellip;and hopes that leads to the Olympics. (Mark Wilson)</figcaption></div> &#9632;

f0106-01

work-in-progress

<div class="byline">by aIlanMAKI</div>you&rsquo;re 40 and you have money, all the money you need to fulfill your every hockey fantasy.So what will it be? Fly to Denver for the 2001 NHL All-Star Game? Buy up every copy of the movie, Youngblood, and set them on fire? Purchase Alexei Yashin&rsquo;s contract from the Ottawa Senators and ask him to clean out your basement?The idea here is if you&rsquo;re rich and middle-aged there are certain things you should see and do before considering yourself a certifiable hockey nut. We know these things.10. Watch a Boston Bruins&rsquo; game with Bobby Orr. Not at the FleetCenter, but on TV in the neighborhood bar that spawned the series Cheers. As an added bonus, have actor Jay Thomas join you. Thomas played Eddie LeBec, the Bruins&rsquo; goalie who married Carla the barmaid. If LeBec challenges Orr to a game of 1-on-l, make sure it&rsquo;s tabletop hockey.9. Go to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. See everything. Absorb everything. Then buy yourself a day with the Stanley Cup. Hey, the NHL put its prized trophy up for bids on a TV shopping channel this spring, so what&rsquo;s the big deal? Grab the Cup, and take it to all your favorite spots-your parents&rsquo; place, the office, the brew pub down the street. How about getting your hands on a convertible and driving around with the top down and Lord Stanley in the passenger seat&hellip; in January. We're talking very cool.8. Be an NHL general manager for a day. Be the New York Rangers&rsquo; GM for a day. Being the Rangers&rsquo; boss means never having to say no. Try your luck at calling up rival GMs and asking for their top player. Fire people, sign people. Tell the New York Post to get off your back. Do a good enough job and you might last the entire 24 hours.7. Have dinner at the Sutter family home in Viking, Alta. Imagine the excitement as you listen to Brian tease Darryl tease Brent tease Duane tease Rich tease Ron. Sit back and roar with laughter as the six NHL-playing Sutter brothers tell tall tales and whack each other in the arm. A word of caution: Do not get caught between a hungry Sutter and his mom&rsquo;s casserole.<div class="figure-block image-block"><img src="/var/site_2854/storage/images/media2/images/f0112-0184/10123583-1-eng-US/f0112-012.jpg" title="f0112-01" width="576" height="1234"><figcaption class="caption-body">Gary Roberts Toronto Maple Leafs (Dan Hamilton/VPS)</figcaption></div>6. Take a peek inside Wayne Gretzky&rsquo;s garage. Denis Leary likes to tell the story of how Janet told husband Wayne not to keep all his hockey trophies in their home, which is why he put them in the garage. Forget about gawking at what&rsquo;s inside a superstar&rsquo;s locker. Check out No. 99&rsquo;s garage-the trophies, the game-worn jerseys. At worst, you'll get a good look at Wayne&rsquo;s wheels.5. Play a game in the Victoria Ice Hockey Association in Melbourne. Jet your hand-picked team Down Under and compete in against the Melbourne Sharks. While you&rsquo;re in Australia, you might want to hit the beach and catch a few waves.4. Drop in on Hockeytown, Sweden. Ornskoldsvik may be small, isolated and dark 18 hours a day in winter, but it&rsquo;s a hotbed of hockey talent. Peter Forsberg, Niklas Sundstrom, Markus Naslund, Daniel and Henrik Sedin were all born there and played for Modo, one of the oldest club teams in Sweden. If it&rsquo;s something in the water that makes the locals play better, be sure to take a barrel or two home. You can put it in the water bottles of your favorite NHL team at playoff time.3. Rent Maple Leaf Gardens. Have lunch and entertain friends in the corporate suite that was once Harold Ballard&rsquo;s private bunker. Ballard&rsquo;s arena apartment, complete with the chandelier that hung over his bed, was remade years ago into a marketing office. But no matter, you can still take your friends to the Leafs&rsquo; old dressing room and then onto the ice for a pick-up game. Challenge the Maple Leafs to one last game at the Gardens.2. Be a goal judge in the gold medal game at the Winter Olympics. You cant skate well enough to play or officiate at an Olympic hockey tournament. So how about the next best thing making the call on the winning goal? You might have the best seat in the house for a shootout.1. Visit the Luzhniki Ice Palace in Moscow. Luzhniki is a portrait in early modern drab and as palatial as a bus shelter, but it&rsquo;s a Mecca for Canadian hockey. Go there and sit in the end seats behind the net where Paul Henderson scored for Team Canada in 1972. Stand near the penalty box where the Canadian players rescued an embattled Alan Eagleson and walked him across the ice. (You dont have to re-enact Eagleson&rsquo;s one-finger salute.) &#9632;

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