STARS TREK
by Mike Modano
Sports Illustrated, May 11, 1998
Wednesday, April 22: I’ve never been so down after a playoff win. We beat the San Jose Sharks 4-1 tonight at home, in Dallas, in the opener of our best-of-seven first-round series, but we lost Joe Nieuwendyk, our leading scorer and a guy who takes a lot of pressure off me. About four minutes into the game he injured his right knee after being driven hard into the boards by Sharks defenseman Bryan Marchment.
Why doesn’t this surprise me? Marchment is an eighth-year journeyman playing for his sixth team, and his specialty is blowing out guys’ knees. He put me on the operating table in December with a low hit that tore ligaments in my right knee. I missed 10 games; the league suspended him for three.
I’m sick for Joe. He was playing great and was really excited about the postseason. As soon as I left the arena I called him at home from my car, just to tell him, Hey, we’re thinking about you.
Thursday, April 23: Grim news. Joe has a torn anterior cruciate ligament and cartilage damage. I’d be surprised to see him return before the third round.
I’ve heard complaints from the Sharks that Game 1 had no flow. Steve Walkom, the referee, called 11 minors on San Jose and nine on us. I’m just happy to see the rules being enforced. Last season our first-round series against the Edmonton Oilers was a free-for-all. We lost in seven games, even though we had finished the regular season with 104 points to their 81. To ease the sting of that upset, I bought a puppy, a golden retriever I named Scout. This year we won the Presidents’ Trophy as the league’s best regular-season team. Losing in the first round isn’t an option. I don’t have enough room in my house for another dog.
Friday, April 24: I wasn’t around at the end of our 5-2 win. In the second period Marchment nailed me with an elbow to the face, but he was just softening me up for Marcus Ragnarsson, another Shark defenseman, who later in the period caught me in the back of the head with his stick during a center-ice collision. I blacked out for a bit and missed the third period with a mild concussion. I’m woozy right now, a good twenty minutes after the game, but it’s a good woozy. We’re up 2-0 in the series.
I’m told that I missed some wild action. I was icing my head when San Jose right wing Owen Nolan ran our goaltender, Eddie Belfour. Eddie was playing the puck behind the net, and Nolan nailed him. It will be interesting to see if the league suspends Nolan.
The Sharks took 20 penalties tonight. All but one of our goals came on power plays. There’s a lot of frustration on their side. I think some of their players still want the league to be the way it was in the early 1990s, when the referees put the whistles away. But this is the way the NHL wants it, with the emphasis on creativity and excitement.
Saturday, April 26: We must have borrowed the Sharks’ stupidity pills. In today’s Game 3 in San Jose we took 20 penalties and lost 4-1.
Their fans rode Belfour the way ours have been riding Marchment. After playing 13 games with the Sharks last season, Eddie signed with us in the off-season. Apparently a lot of San Jose fans took his departure personally. Before today’s game a video clip was shown of San Jose’s mascot, Sharky, throwing a Belfour dummy off the top of the San Jose arena. The message read, THE EAGLE HAS LANDED.
Eddie, a.k.a. the Eagle, didn’t appreciate that, and he’s not happy that the league didn’t suspend Nolan. With the game out of reach and a few minutes left to play, he wigged out. When Sharks forward Shawn Burr fell into the crease, Eddie slugged him a few times. After things settled down, Ragnarsson skated through the crease, so Eddie kicked him and got a game misconduct. When a reporter asked Eddie why he had kicked Ragnarsson, the Eagle answered, “I didn’t kick him, I slew-footed him.”
How do you slew-foot an opponent? Eddie didn’t bother to explain it, so I informed the reporters that slew-footing is tripping someone by sticking your leg out and then pushing him backward over it. In a relatively new hockey market like San Jose, I like to do my part to educate people about the game.
When someone asked Eddie why he snapped, he said, “That wasn’t snapping. You haven’t seen snapping.” Scary thought.
Monday, April 27: When I get to practice, our coach, Ken Hitchcock, calls me into his little cubicle. Hitch thinks that I’ve been trying too hard to pick up the scoring slack with Joe out and that my defense has suffered. He wants me to get back to the checking, two-way style that he has insisted I play since he was hired 2 1/2 seasons ago. If I do that, he says, the scoring will take care of itself.
After practice, while some of the guys are watching Jerry Springer, Hitch reminds the media how “unfair” it is to expect me to be at the top of my game, since I missed the last six weeks of the season with a separated right shoulder. The shoulder feels great, although I still have this weird dent where it healed. As long as I can still swing a golf club, though, and as long as the dent doesn’t gross out my girlfriend, Kerri Nelson, I don’t care.
I appreciate that Hitch is trying to take the pressure off me, but pressure is pretty much a constant in this profession. Before I signed a six-year, $43.5 million deal with the Stars on April 13, I felt pressure to earn a big contract. Now that I have one, I feel pressure to justify it. No complaints. Most people would love to have my problems.
Tuesday, April 28: Whoever coined the term sudden death was right. We play our guts out for 66 1/2 minutes, and some San Jose rookie--a 20-year-old defenseman named Andrei Zyuzin--throws a what-the-hell shot through traffic with the score 0-0 in overtime. The shot trickles past Eddie, and suddenly, instead of walking away with a 3-1 series lead, we’re back where we started. Except now it’s best-of-three.
The good news is that after the first 10 minutes, when the Sharks has us on our heels, we stopped throwing the puck away and regained out poise. We just couldn’t get anything past their goalie, Mike Vernon.
Wednesday, April 29: Hitch is doing some serious coaching at 30,000 feet. On the charter back to Dallas, he tells us that we need to stop living in the past, to stop copping the woe-is-me attitude. We need to face up to the fact that Jose is out, he says, and make a stronger commitment to playing a full 60 minutes. Earlier today he had taken me aside and suggested I start dealing out some big hits, instead of just taking them. “Be the hunter, not the hunted,” he said. I’ll give it a shot.
Thursday, April 30: The hunting is good on home ice. In a 30-second span in the first period, I flatten Ragnarsson and nail Marchment with a solid check into the end boards. It gets me into the game. I pop a couple of goals, including the deciding one, and we win 3-2.
My first goal came with 2.4 seconds left in the first period, when I dunked the rebound off a shot that Vernon had blocked. It was a huge goal for the team and a big one for me, too. My only goal of the series had been an empty-netter in Game 1. Damn right I was relieved to see the red light go on.
I scored the game winner with 8:52 left in the third. Darryl Sydor, one of our defenseman, had been pinched deep into their zone, and he backhanded a pass toward the goal that I knocked in. The Sharks went bananas because Jamie Langenbrunner, my linemate, had a skate in the crease when I scored. After the game a San Jose reporter asked me if I thought the goal should have been reviewed. “I wasn’t running over to tell them to check it,” I said.
One of the biggest challenges of playoff hockey is trying to beat the same guys, night in, night out. You think it’s fun going up against a hair farmer like Mike Ricci night after night? The Sharks know us, and we know them. We know we’re not going to solve Vernon with slap shots from the perimeter, which is pretty much where I spent Games 3 and 4. Tonight I unloaded on a few guys, mixed it up inside, and it worked. We’re one victory away from advancing to the second round. “Whatever you’re doing, keep that s--- up,” a Dallas columnist said to me.
Later I’m in a tunnel at Reunion Arena, talking to reporters while I wait to do a live shot for TV. I’m starving and standing in my socks on wet concrete until Larry Kelly, our thoughtful media relations director walks up and hands me a pair of sandals. “Don’t put that in your diary,” Larry says of this act of servility. “I’ll never live it down.”
Sure you will, Larry.
Friday, May 1: Disturbing revelation in today’s newspaper; The producers of Jerry Springer have announced they intend to eliminate brawling from the show. Trust me: that won’t improve its ratings among the Dallas Stars.
Some in the media are calling last night’s game the most important of my career. I don’t know. Scoring a hat trick in my first game with the Prince Albert Raiders, when I was 15, seemed pretty important at the time. This time of year, it seems, your most important game is your next one.
Saturday, May 2: Our general manager, Bob Gainey, is looking pretty smart in the wake of our series-clinching 3-2 overtime victory. He had increased out team’s grit quotient significantly in March by trading for New York Rangers Mike Keane and Brian Skrudland. Keane scored two goals in tonight’s 3-2 overtime win, and Skrudland had an assist. Thank god we won’t have to play a seventh game.
Afterward, as the teams filed past one another, I didn’t think twice before shaking Marchment’s hand. Joe isn’t in San Jose tonight, but I’m sure he’d agree with me: Advancing is the best revenge.
