Recchi’s Hall of Fame nod well deserved
Ernie (Punch) McLean knew how good Mark Recchi was and how good he could be.
The Kamloops native, who has a street named after him in his hometown, had his junior number retired and is part owner of the Blazers, was officially inducted in the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday in Toronto.
His stellar Western Hockey League career will be saluted along with three Stanley Cup championships in a 22-year National Hockey League career that included 1,533 points with Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Montreal, Carolina, Atlanta, Tampa Bay and Boston.
There was also a pointed jab at the Vancouver Canucks on a Boston sports radio talk show months after he became the oldest player in league history at 43 years, 216 days to score a Stanley Cup final goal on June 6, 2011, when he scored in Game 3.
But more on that later. McLean has a better story to tell.
The former cantankerous coach of the New Westminster Bruins also knew how much the Blazers coveted their native son and would do anything to acquire him. So, when McLean was in northern B.C. looking after his mining interests, the Blazers swooped in for a lopsided Western Hockey League swap in the summer of 1986.
“I was way up in the mine site and they (Bruins) made a trade and my buddy Kenny (Hitchcock) gave us three guys off his team (Recchi is convinced it was four) that weren’t even going to play for him for Mark,” recalled McLean. “I told Ken you would never get that trade with me if I had been here. Mark was too good a player to give up.”
Recchi scored 21 goals in his 1985-86 rookie season. In his second season with the Blazers he piled up a whopping 61 goals and 93 assists and would then be selected 67th overall in the 1988 draft by the Pittsburgh Penguins. It was a steal. He had a 30-goal rookie season and followed it up with 40 goals and hit a career-high 52 goals with the Philadelphia Flyers in the 1992-93 season where Hitchcock served as an assistant.
Yet, even in junior, McLean sensed there was something special in Recchi.
“It was the speed,” said McLean. “The way he played and worked was just great. But I think he really wanted to go home to play, but I think we could have done a better deal.”
Three seasons under the microscope in Kamloops prepared him for that because the city was dubbed “Little Montreal” and fans had an intense passion and scrutiny of the franchise.
“Going home was easy for me,” recalled Recchi. “I had supportive parents who didn’t put any pressure on me and only asked that whatever I do, that I put in 100 per cent. It prepared me perfectly for the NHL and the culture was wonderful and it became a confidence thing for me. When you’re in that culture you live it and breathe it and continue on.
“I was very fortunate to have Ken Hitchcock, Don Hay and Don Moores as my coaches in Kamloops and obviously Hitch was the hammer guy, but when you have coaches like that, it sets you up to succeed.”
Recchi was a big deal in the NHL because he played big. He was a 5-foot-10, 185 pound bowling ball winger. He had to fight through the clutching and a grabbing that was more pronounced.
“I think I was pretty relentless,” said Recchi, who resides in Pittsburgh and is an assistant coach with the Penguins. “I had a work ethic that I didn’t want to be stopped and I would do whatever it took. I felt I could have played in any era because of that.”
Now, about that 2011 radio appearance.
Recchi called the Canucks arrogant and divers. But that’s the competitor in Recchi, a force off the right wing who could go around you or through you and even chirp at you. Recchi admitted he could have chosen his words better, but the bitterness of that final series was tough to dismiss. Even months later.
“I probably shouldn’t have said anything and I wish I wouldn’t have, but that’s what happened and that’s how the series was,” said Recchi.
“People know I love B.C. and Vancouver and it was an unbelievable series, but there was a lot of dislike on both sides. And it wouldn’t have been a Stanley Cup final if there wasn’t that much dislike — we really didn’t like each other.”