PICK YOUR STATISTIC. He had 694 career goals, 1,193 assists, and 1,887 total points in the regular season–making him the National Hockey League’s second all-time leading scorer, behind only Wayne Gretzky–plus 109 goals, 186 assists, and 295 points in the playoffs. He appeared in 15 NHL All-Star games. He took home two Hart trophies as the league’s MVP. He also received the 1984 Conn Smythe Award as MVP of the Stanley Cup Finals. Speaking of Stanley Cups, he won six of ’em, and in 1994 became the only player in NHL history to ever captain two separate teams to championships.
Now pick your nickname. Grateful New Yorkers used to call him “The Messiah.” Among teammates he answered chiefly to “Mess,” though others referred to him by such monikers as “The Moose,” “The Captain,” and “Jurassic Mark.” Wayne Gretzky, his best friend and longtime teammate, once said he was “the most unselfish player I’ve played with.”
Mark Messier is one of the few genuine superstar-celebrities to come from the NHL. Until he brought his quarter-century career to a close this past September, Messier was the league’s last active player left over from the 1970s. Tonight marks a different sort of retirement for the Captain. Over the past two weeks, the New York Rangers and their local cable affiliate have celebrated the “11 Days of Mark Messier,” spotlighting one of his “best hockey memories” each day. It was all an extended prelude to this evening’s on-ice ceremony at Madison Square Garden, in which the Rangers will officially retire Messier’s famous No. “11” jersey before their game against the Edmonton Oilers.
The Moose’s 25-season NHL odyssey spanned three franchises–Edmonton, 1979-1991; New York, 1991-1997 and 2000-2004; and Vancouver, 1997-2000–but reached its pinnacle in the Big Apple, where Messier ended the Rangers’ 54-year Stanley Cup drought (known by fans simply as “The Curse”) and reached his apotheosis as hockey’s version of Captain Courageous. Many consider him the NHL’s greatest team leader. (Though Gordie Howe and Bobby Orr partisans might quibble with that assessment.)
HOW TO EXPLAIN the legend of Messier? With so many clutch performances over so many years, it’s hard to boil his career down to just two games. But, as it happens, two games stand out above all the rest.
The first is Game 4 of the 1990 Campbell Conference Finals, between Messier’s Oilers and the Chicago Blackhawks. The Oilers trailed two games to one in the best-of-seven series, having lost Game 2 at home in Edmonton and having been blown out, 5-1, by the Blackhawks in Game 3 at Chicago Stadium.
Messier, the Oilers captain, played Game 4 like a man possessed. He crosschecked. He slashed. He elbowed. He scored. It was mean, dirty, nasty–and brilliant. The ferocious center tallied two goals and two assists and propelled the Oilers to a 4-2 victory. Both of Messier’s goals came on partial or clean breakaways: the first after he jumped on a loose puck and tore down the wing, the second after he flew through the neutral zone and caught a breakout pass from Oilers forward Craig Simpson.
Chicago coach Mike Keenan complained that Messier “could have been called for 15 stick infractions” but had “intimidated” referee Bill McCreary. Messier had indeed dominated the game as few can. The Oilers went on to clinch the series in Game 6, then skate past the Boston Bruins to win the Cup–Messier’s fifth in 11 seasons. But the team’s playoff tipping point had come in Game 4 against the Blackhawks. “Messier had fire in his eyes,” marveled a Chicago Tribune columnist. Veteran hockey writer Kevin Allen later called it “the best single-game performance I’ve ever witnessed.”
OF COURSE for diehard Rangers fans (like me), Messier’s best single-game performance came in Game 6 of the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals, which pitted the Messier-captained Blueshirts against their bitter cross-river rivals, the New Jersey Devils. In what turned out to be one of the most riveting series in modern NHL history, the Devils had taken a three-games-to-two lead by winning Game 5 on Garden ice. Messier responded with his famous guarantee: that the Rangers would “go in and win Game 6” at Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford.
New York sportswriters immediately compared it to Joe Namath’s guarantee of victory before Super Bowl III. There was one big difference: While few people had expected the Jets to knock off the Colts, the Rangers had gone into their series with the Devils heavily favored. Now they were on the brink of elimination, one loss away from giving The Curse a new lease on life. And yet, as author Barry Meisel later put it, Messier “had taken the outrageous step of putting his muscular neck squarely in a sullen city’s guillotine.”
One period into Game 6, his premonition looked faulty. The Rangers trailed, 2-0. They had managed few quality scoring chances and were being out shot. New York coach Mike Keenan–the same Mike Keenan who had berated Messier for his stick work in the 1990 Oilers-Blackhawks series–took a timeout early in the second period, during which Messier sought to rally the troops. With less than two minutes remaining in the period, he helped get the Rangers on the board, charging into the Devils zone and dropping a pass to Alexei Kovalev, who fired the puck past Devils goalie Martin Brodeur. The Rangers were now within one. As the teams skated off for the final intermission, it was a new game.
What happened next was the stuff of Hollywood. Less than three minutes into the third period, Messier took a pass on the right wing and barreled in on Brodeur. With a quick flick of the wrists, he squeezed a low backhand shot between Brodeur and the near post. The game was tied. Several minutes of feverish, nail-biting action went by. Then, some 12 minutes into the third, Kovalev took a slap shot on Brodeur from the left circle. The Devils netminder made the save but gave up a bad rebound in front of his crease. Messier came streaking in–with a Devils player draped all over him–and banged the puck home. The Rangers led, 3-2.
And still Messier wasn’t done. As the clocked ticked down, the Rangers took a penalty and the Devils pulled Brodeur to gain an extra attacker. As they pressed for the equalizer, Messier stole a pass in front of the Rangers goalmouth and, standing just outside the crease, cleared the puck the length of the ice toward the empty net. It sailed right into the cage.
Three goals. One period. A natural hat trick. A come-from-behind victory to stave off elimination. A guaranteed victory. “That has to be one of the most impressive performances by any hockey player in the history of this league,” Keenan said after the game. Two days later, the Rangers clinched the series in Game 7, a double-overtime thriller. They went on to defeat the Vancouver Canucks in the finals–with Messier scoring the eventual Cup-winner in Game 7–and capture their first league championship since 1940.
WAS MARK MESSIER the greatest NHL player of all time? Certainly not. Skill-wise, he might not even crack the top ten. But there’s a difference–a crucial difference–between being the greatest individual player and being the greatest team player. In 1999, for example, Sports Illustrated ranked Michael Jordan as the greatest basketball player of the 20th century but also named Boston Celtics center Bill Russell “the greatest team player” ever.
Messier, a fearsome but universally respected competitor, was also the consummate teammate–reliable, gritty, charismatic, unselfish, and surely one of the best money players in hockey history. That’s why he won five Cups in Edmonton and one in New York. That’s why he’s a guaranteed–that word again–first-ballot Hall-of-Famer. And that’s why, later tonight, the Madison Square Garden crowd will again be cheering his name and honoring his legacy.
Duncan Currie is a reporter at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
