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MODANO MAKES A STAR TURN By Stephen Rodrick ESPN The Magazine      You think Lennox Lewis got robbed? Well, you must have missed the NHL All-Star Game down in Tampa. There was this guy name Modano. Bit of a pretty boy. Plays for the Dallas Stars. All he did was score on that longtime patsy Dominik Hasek and set up Paul Kariya, Ray Bourque and teammate Darryl Sydor for their own moments of glory. Four big points. He also did the unthinkable in an All-Star tilt: He played friggin' defense.      Then they went and gave the Dodge Durango to somebody named Gretzky. Sure, the old guy had some nice moments -- he really should have worked a little more on his skating -- but Modano clearly outpointed him. Afterward, Modano said all the right things about being awed having a dressing stall next to No. 99. About how it was an honor to be on the same ice with the guy. But now, in the comfort of his Dallas locker room, Mike Modano glances up to see if anybody's looking, pushes his sweaty golden hair, gives a toothy smile and answers good-naturedly but succinctly.      "I got f---ed."      So what's Gretzky got to say?      "Mike's one of the elite players in the game," said Wayne after his last appearance in Big D, his fourth-to-last game ever. "If you can play the game at this level, at that speed and see the ice, well, that's special. He's the kind of player this game needs to grow to get better and bigger."      As for Tampa ... Gretzky gave his tie a Dangerfield-like tug: "I was just lucky I had a couple family members on the panel and edged him out."      But seriously, folks. Mike Modano swindled by the Great One? Blasphemy. Three years ago, that would have been like saying De Niro robbed Hasselhoff. No longer. Now, Gretzky's at home with the wife and kids, while the Stars are riding Modano, a checking, penalty-killing fool, toward a Stanley Cup. Wait a sec. Riding Mike Modano to the Cup? Maybe to a photo shoot, but to a Cup? Past boyhood hero Steve Yzerman and the defending champion Red Wings? In Dallas, the antihockey town where the sweltering heat and cruddy surface of Reunion Arena aren't fit for Aladdin on Ice, much less the Cup finals? It could happen. Correct that: It should happen.      Things that have not endeared Modano to your average twisted-nosed defenseman from Yellowknife: 1) scoring a hat trick in his first junior-league game, 2) becoming the 1988 No. 1 overall pick of the late and not-so-lamented Minnesota North Stars, 3) prancing around on the perimeter.      And that's on the ice. How about being named one of the 10 sexiest men in Dallas? Or being asked by the NHL to pose with Tyra Banks to promote the game? Then there's the fact that he prefers Charlie Rose to Jerry Springer.      Modano's original NHL persona wasn't what he had envisioned for himself. "You could say it's been an evolving process," he says with a beatific grin and an airbrushed cover-boy look. "Ten years and counting."      Sure, he helped the North Stars to the 1991 Cup finals and scored 50 goals in 1993. But something was missing. The kind would say defense; the cruel would call it courage. Yes, Modano's speed and shot were deadly, but was he willing to muck in the corners or battle the Yzermans on defense? Nope. A sniper with the puck -- Lady Modano without it.      Maybe it was the team. In 1989, an 18-year-old suburban Detroit kid joined a North Stars team not known for its kindness to strangers. Being a rookie-year holdout didn't help. "We had some great players," says Modano, "but I wondered if they all had their own agenda. It's been tough. There really hasn't ever been anyone to tutor me. Jagr had Lemieux. Everyone had someone. I never had that great support system."      The frustration continued when the franchise relocated in 1993. After scoring 50 goals his first season in Dallas, Modano's game headed south with the rest of the team's. He played in only 30 games in 1994-95 because of injuries and the lockout. After he rehabbed during the offseason, '95-96 wasn't much better. He scored just 81 points and the Stars missed the playoffs. The game that once came so easily was now a debilitating chore. Often, Modano woke up wishing he could skip the rink and head to the links. At 26, he even contemplated retirement.      "I was frustrated at not being the player I wanted to be," he says. "I wasn't regarded as a top player. I started wondering, 'Are you good enough to put numbers up in the NHL?' "      Two things saved him. His love of the game was rekindled with his play on the '96 U.S. World Cup championship team. And, before the '96-97 season, new Stars coach Ken Hitchcock approached him with a request that he transform his game and change from scorer to complete player. Hitchcock told Modano he would be matched against the opponent's top threat, kill penalties and take crucial faceoffs.      "It's very similar to asking a figure skater to be a hockey player," says Hitchcock, using a comparison Modano will most likely find unamusing. "Not only do you have to do all the jumps, but now you have to do them in the corners, battle and hit the boards, too."      Magically, Modano became a different player in midcareer (much as Yzerman had). He was no longer a hat trick-or-nothing man. In November '96, just a few months after the Hitchcock-Modano summit, the Stars went on an early-season road trip. The team won four in a row, with Modano twice being named first star of the game despite not scoring a goal. He began using his speed to cover the ice and pressure puckhandlers, forcing turnovers. He began to understand that offense also comes from opportunistic defense. "I began to feel more a part of the whole game," Modano says. "Earlier in my career, I thought if I wasn't scoring, I wasn't succeeding."      Modano's attention to defensive detail has helped the Stars score back-to-back Presidents' Trophies. Sure, linemate Brett Hull jokes that he, Modano and Jere Lehtinen make up the most expensive checking line in hockey history, but they may be the best one playing today. While finishing 12th in scoring, Modano's plus-30 rating is third in the NHL. While 100-point scorers are becoming rarer than sellouts in Carolina, defense counts more in grading a top player. And Modano, more aggressive than ever, uses his 6-foot-3-inch frame to move opponents off the puck and his speed to get back quickly enough after forechecking deep to thwart the opposition's transition game.      Hull figures Modano should bring home the MVP to Big D.      "I think it's a real shame that he doesn't get consideration for the Hart Trophy," Hull says. "You've got a team that's 14 points ahead of the next team. Someone has to be the catalyst. If it's not Mike Modano, who is it? You notice the brilliant plays, but you don't notice he and Jere are the two top checking people in the game today."      Bob Gainey, the Stars' GM and Modano's coach during his early years, sees Mike's progression as the adaptation of a smart player. "Putting Mike in a position of playing against the other teams' top lines psychologically puts him into a two-way role," says Gainey, one of the best two-way forwards ever. "His natural abilities are not going away, and they're now in combination with real mental participation in the game. Who's he playing against? What's the score? That all becomes part of his game. Not just, 'Where is the puck, can I have it?' "      Of course, having such standup teammates as Ed Belfour, Joe Nieuwendyk, Hull and Lehtinen takes some pressure off Modano. In the second year of a contract worth $44.2 million over six years, he knows Dallas fans are expecting a Cup.      "The first couple years were smooth," Modano says. "It was like a big party at Reunion Arena. Everybody went down, saw a couple of brawls, got hammered and just had a good time. Now you've got people moaning and groaning on the power play if we don't score or if Eddie lets in a bad goal. Now we've got 17,000 GMs in the stands."      In last year's loss to the Wings, with Nieuwendyk injured, Detroit's defensemen were able to lock up Modano like George Lucas is about to lock up your local Cineplex. With no room to maneuver, Modano grew bruised and defused. Now, Nieuwendyk is back and he and Modano might be the league's best one-two punch at center ice. Opponents can no longer zero in on the man called Mo. Remember, too, that the Golden Brett has been added to the lineup. After a 51-win season and their first-round sweep of the Oilers, the Stars have enough talent. But can they stay healthy? While Hull and Modano have shown flickers of brilliance together, Hull's season has been dogged by injuries. Modano was having one of his healthiest seasons in years until he sustained a groin injury in April. Says Hull: "I'd love to have one season where we were both healthy, just to show people what we can do."      The glimpses have been tantalizing. The dual danger leads to open-ice opportunities neither would see individually. Just as important, Modano's example -- not to mention Hitchcock's strict defensive scheme -- has Hull checking and holding his own on the defensive end.      "It's kind of scary to see what we could do if we're both healthy," Modano fantasizes. "We could be a Kariya-Selanne or Lindros-LeClair kind of thing."      Or better. Why? Because Modano, 29, is tougher. Flash back to February in Toronto and the quintessential goal of the Stars' season. Early in the game, Maple Leaf defenseman Dimitri Yushkevich smacks Modano with a molar-rattling hit that leaves MM unsure of what province he's in. Earlier in his career, Modano might have been done for the night. Not now. Next shift, Belfour blocks a shot that's gathered in by Derian Hatcher.      He whips it to Lehtinen, who spots Modano leaving -- yep -- Yushkevich in his ice shavings. Modano gathers it, flips it and scores. Finished? Not even close. Modano puts the biscuit in the basket on three of four shifts and skates off with the hat trick.      Evolution complete.      Like many of his hockey compadres, Modano loves the links. Unlike many of his hockey compadres, he can actually play. In an offseason jock tournament in Lake Tahoe, Modano bested John Elway in the long-drive competition with a 379-yard moon shot that hit a rock-hard fairway, a la Don Johnson in "Tin Cup," and kept bouncing.      "Just warming up on the range was really amazing," Modano says. "You've got Jordan, Elway, Sampras and Ditka. And then me. I'm like, 'Wow, what am I doing here?' "      Modano might be the last guy to realize he's now more than just a show pony. While he's building a downtown Dallas home with his longtime girlfriend, Kerry Nelson, he still garners a lot of female attention, which has grown out of photo shoots he has done for various glossies to promote the game. While he doesn't mind his teammates calling him GQ, he wants to make one thing clear: "It wasn't my idea to do those shoots," he says. "It wasn't like I was making calls to Cosmo saying, 'Can I come to a photo shoot with Tyra Banks?' It was the NHL. Now I see why those models get all that money. It's monotonous sitting around, waiting for something to happen."      There has been collateral damage from the glam image. "It's all in fun, but you get called 'cover boy' and players label you as soft," Modano says. "That comes with the profile -- some people still think of me that way."      If they do, they're wrong.