A fish out of water
DALLAS – Mike Modano didn’t make much of an initial impression on his junior hockey coaches. They weren’t even sure the lanky teenager from Minnesota would make it at that level.
“He came walking in, about 6-foot-1 and weighed about 145 pounds, if he had about $15 worth of quarters in his pockets. He had braces and bleached blond hair,” his former coach Brad Tippett said. “We looked at each other and said he’s going to get killed.”
The Prince Albert coaches drastically changed their opinion a few hours later when they saw the 16-year-old Modano skate.
“After about three minutes, we picked up our jaws and he was given the name ‘Magic’,” Tippett said, recalling that day in 1986.
Two years later, Modano was the No. 1 pick in the NHL draft. The Dallas Stars center is now in his 17th full season and closing in on the records for most goals and most points by a U.S.-born player.
“You think USA hockey, he’s the guy,” said second-year New Jersey left wing Zach Parise, a young American who grew up watching Modano.
Modano entered the weekend with 496 goals, six short of matching Hall of Famer and New York City native Joe Mullen for the most by an American-born player. He was 26 points shy of Phil Housley’s 1,232.
“You don’t think about it when you first start to gather those kinds of numbers,” Modano said. “But when you have the ability to play a long time and play with some great players, those things happen.”
While playing all 1,215 games of his career with the same franchise, Modano has gotten this far without leading the league in goals or points. He’s never had a 100-point season and only once scored at least 40 goals – when he had 50 in 1993-94, the first season after the Minnesota North Stars moved south.
“He can’t be that consistent and that good for so long without being dedicated,” said teammate Philippe Boucher, a starter in last month’s All-Star game in Dallas that Modano missed with an injury. “What he’s going after just speaks volumes about the kind of player he is.”
Modano helped the North Stars reach the Stanley Cup finals in 1991. He became the face of the franchise when it moved to Dallas, where his No. 9 jersey remains the club’s runaway best seller and likely will never be worn by anyone else. He is the only player left that moved with the team from Minnesota.
“That part has been just as meaningful as anything, the ability to make this town work as a hockey town,” Modano said.
The Stars won the Cup in 1999, when Modano played the championship series with a broken left wrist and assisted on both goals in the triple-overtime title-clinching game at Buffalo. They made it back to the finals in 2000 and have been to the playoffs in nine of 13 seasons since moving to Dallas.
“Numbers speak for themselves when you have the ability to play that long,” Modano said. “The Stanley Cup was something. They can’t say he was a great player but he never won.”
With his championship, pending scoring records and likely several seasons left, Modano is easily considered one of the top American players ever in the NHL.
While Mullen is No. 1 on the list for American goal-scorers, that is only 35th overall on the NHL list. Only about 15 percent of the league’s current players were born in the United States.
“It tells you there’s a lot of great players, a lot of great Canadians, a lot of great players in the world,” Modano said. “Just to be in that category will be very meaningful, but still to look at it retrospective, there are a lot of great players.”