Stasiuk Leads By Example Chiefs’ Trade Of Bryan Mccabe Thrusts Stasiuk, Line To Fore

The bruises under each eye - black and red slashes left over from a recently broken nose - are only beginning to fade.

Jeremy Stasiuk doesn’t have the finesse player’s face.

Yet on a forward line with Darren Sinclair and Kevin Sawyer, Stasiuk is the most likely of the three to beat a goaltender with a move and a shot.

Still, he smiles at the notion.

Finesse?

Sawyer, Sinclair and Stasiuk?

They’re the Snap, Crackle and Pop of the Spokane Chiefs. The Black and Blue Division. It’s the Leadership Line - one newly appointed captain (Sawyer) and two assistant captains (Stasiuk and Sinclair).

They’re back at it tonight with the Portland Winter Hawks in the Coliseum, the Spokane Chiefs’ first game after the Bryan McCabe trade.

What the Chiefs do the rest of the season without McCabe, an attacking, all-star defenseman, rides in part on the strength of the leadership.

“It’s going to be a change,” Stasiuk said this week. “Bryan added a lot of heart, character and offense. Now we have Adam (Magarrell, the defenseman acquired from the Brandon Wheat Kings in the McCabe deal). He’s a good defensive player.

“Our forwards will have to bear down a little more now. It puts a little more load on my shoulders, Kevin’s shoulders, Jason Podollan’s shoulders. The chances we get we have to bury.”

Burying a scoring chance is really a bonus when Sawyer-Sinclair-Stasiuk are on. They’re the artillery. They soften the target for the next wave.

“Were not fancy,” Stasiuk said. “We get it in, roll into our forecheck, take the body. It’s a hard-checking defensive line. When people are looking for us, not only for us hitting, but if they think we’re coming into the piles, they’re going to have their heads up.

“If they’re thinking about us - if we can throw them off their game - we’re doing our job. We’re halfway there.”

Here is the lead-by-serious-example 20-year-old.

The other night, a Kamloops Blazers fist or elbow, he’s not sure which, came flying out of nowhere. It connected with the bridge of Stasiuk’s twice-broken nose.

“I dumped the puck in along the boards, turned around and there it was,” Stasiuk said. “I managed to get to the bench. It was only dripping (blood) a little bit, but my whole face was hurting.

“I asked T.D. (Forss, the trainer) for a mirror, looked at my nose and said, `Oh yeah, it’s broken.”’

Curiosity satisfied, Stasiuk tuned back into the game.

“Babs (coach Mike Babcock) said he needed me, so I went up to the front row again,” he said.

From the front bench he was over the wall - his breathing a little more labored than before - and back at it.

Not everybody concentrates through the numbness and shuts out the pain.

The hardness comes from the bump and grind of the game. Some of his tough exterior comes from the toughest experience.

It was three years ago this March that his mother died young of cancer.

Then in his first season in Spokane, Stasiuk coped, sometimes on the phone with his father and sister, sometimes later, with his extended family. He’s billeted in Spokane with John and Kerry Grimes and their three children.

Sometimes, especially early on, he coped alone.

“He didn’t talk about it a whole lot,” Kerry Grimes said. “He came to us halfway through his first year here (‘92-93). We just tried to let him know that the lines were open and he could communicate about anything.”

It’s the living arrangement that turned into a family.

“Last year, when the team was losing, he was down in the dumps,” Kerry Grimes said. “You’ve seen that commercial where Grampa gives the kid a Life Saver and makes him feel better?

“We bought him a whole case of Life Savers. We weren’t sure he’d seen the commercial but he was quite taken by it. He knew what it meant.”

When his mother’s name came up this week Jeremy Stasiuk didn’t speak of her in the past tense.

The routine question (who had the impact on your career?) eventually brought him to his parents.

Stasiuk began by thanking the club for the A on his shirt, signifying his status as assistant captain (“It’s a boost for me,” he said. “Starting out, I was just another player. Now this. I appreciate it.)”

The Chiefs had caught up with him late in the developmental process - he was undrafted as a bantam-age player - and he thanked them for recognizing what he could bring to Spokane.

Then he brought up his family in Saskatoon.

“My dad and my mom, Lloyd and Katie Stasiuk, were always at my tournaments, took me to practice, made sure I had the best equipment,” he said. “I really appreciate it.”

Appreciate it, present tense. End of subject.

Only later, the interview concluded, did the loss of his mother come up through another source.

“It was tough on him,” said his father, Lloyd, an electrician in Saskatoon. “His sister (Angela, 23) and I had each other to lean on at the time. He was by himself. I’m not much of a letter-writer, so we got him a calling card. We spent a lot of time on the phone.”

Lloyd Stasiuk was home for lunch, looking forward to tonight’s Chiefs game. Incredibly, he can pick up Spokane broadcasts at home in Saskatoon.

“I love listening to the games, but you almost have to be a hockey parent to stay with it,” he said. “It fades. There are interruptions. But Spokane is a 15-hour drive away.”

Talking openly about the loss of a wife and mother is part of the healing, he added.

“Jeremy and his mom were super close,” Stasiuk said. “She lived hockey with him, just as we did. She did the traveling and the cheering. You think of the happy times. They’re part of what you have left.”

As for hockey, Jeremy Stasiuk has 5-1/2 weeks of the season left, and whatever the Chiefs make of the playoffs. He hopes to sign with Dallas and start next year in the Stars system. Failing that, he’ll look at independent minor league clubs.

“He has a chance to be a pro (Dallas picked him in the seventh rounds of the ‘93 NHL draft) because of how strong he is and how hard he can play,” Chiefs coach Mike Babcock said. “He’s a great body checker and his offensive skills have improved (his 17 goals and 21 assists are career highs). He’s shooting a little better and going to the net harder.”

“Sometimes I don’t have the greatest games,” Stasiuk said. “I can accept that as long as I come back and try.”

Accepting it. Broken noses and more. The clouds and the silver linings.

“We talked about the nose on the phone,” Lloyd Stasiuk said. “He said this time it wasn’t bad. This time it might have even straightened it out some.”