Perfect place for No. 500 , Sakic can make history at home

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Perfect place for No. 500
Sakic can make history at home
By Terry Frei
Denver Post Sports Writer

Tuesday, December 10, 2002 - In the early 1980s, the complex in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby was called "4-Rinks." In the summers, Joe Sakic, the son of Croatian immigrants who had settled nearby, hustled to the rink early in the morning. As he remembers it, he pulled out "a buck, maybe two bucks" and signed up for an hour of kids' open hockey at what then was a run-down complex. After the first hour, he would hang around, playing all day if he could manage it.

Two decades later, the man known in British Columbia headlines and conversation as "Burnaby Joe," fittingly could get his landmark 500th goal in Vancouver, where the Colorado Avalanche plays the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday night at General Motors Place.

Out in the suburb to the east, 4-Rinks is almost unrecognizable as the building in which Sakic learned how to play the game and started honing the wrist shot that has bedeviled NHL goalies since 1989. It now is a refurbished and expanded 8-Rinks, and it's nice enough to be the Canucks' practice rink - and also have ice time go for a premium compared with the era of kids fishing two bucks out of their pocket for the first hour.

Sakic's parents, Marijan and Slavica, no longer live in Burnaby or even Vancouver itself. They are comfortably ensconced in a home their son - the son they still prefer to call "Joseph" or "Joey" - had built for them in White Rock, about an hour south, or nearly to the U.S. border.

So on Wednesday night, the possibilities for high drama and a Sakic family celebration are very real. If Sakic gets No. 500, he will become the 31st NHL player to reach the milestone.

It's also safe to say that the Vancouver fans, who have seen the hometown boy come back as a member of the Quebec Nordiques, then more often after the franchise moved to Denver and joined the Canucks in the Western Conference, will suspend allegiances determined by uniform colors and join the Sakic clan in the cheering.

Sakic again was trying Monday to downplay the personal milestone, in part because this is a significant game for Colorado, which trails the Canucks by seven points in the division. But by now, he is used to the questions, since he started being asked about the approaching No. 500 with regularity after reaching 497 at home against St. Louis on Nov. 27. His two goals against Montreal on Friday got him to 499.

"It's a milestone," Sakic said. "It's a milestone. Not a lot of guys have done it, and 500 always seems to have been the number."

How many tickets has Sakic ordered?

"It's going to be a few more than normal, I can tell you that," Sakic said after the Avalanche practice. "I don't know the number yet, though.

"I'll be a little excited, a little nervous, excited, no question about that. I'm going to have to have a lot of people there, so I hope I can find a way to get it done. If I can get it done, the sooner the better. It will be a great honor to be amongst all those other players."

The active players who have cracked 500 are Detroit's Brett Hull, Steve Yzerman, Luc Robitaille and Brendan Shanahan, Pittsburgh's Mario Lemieux and Tampa Bay's Dave Andreychuk, who scored one of his goals during a brief stint with Colorado in 2000.

There are other Colorado connections among the 30 previous 500-goal scorers. Lanny McDonald (500) had 66 goals in his two-year stay with the Colorado Rockies. Bryan Trottier (524) served as an Avalanche assistant coach before getting the Rangers' head coaching job. Michel Goulet (548) is the Avalanche's vice president for player personnel, and Jari Kurri (601) got his final five with the Avalanche in 1997-98.

If Sakic doesn't score Wednesday, the next chances will be at Edmonton on Friday and Calgary on Saturday. Colorado's next home game is Monday against Washington.

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http://media.mnginteractive.com/media/paper36/sakic1203.jpg

I really hope he does it there. I think that he is awesome GO JOE!!!

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Sakic in 500 club
Milestone comes on home turf
By Adrian Dater
Denver Post Sports Writer

Thursday, December 12, 2002 - VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Joe Sakic got No. 500, but the Colorado Avalanche still is stuck on nine.
Only 30 other NHL players have more goals than the Avalanche captain, who reached the 500 milestone in front of his mother and father Wednesday night at General Motors Place. The Avalanche, however, has more victories in the Western Conference than only three other teams, failing to get No. 10 in dropping a 3-1 decision to the Vancouver Canucks to fall nine points behind the Northwest Division leaders.

Sakic's 500th came at four minutes, 25 seconds of the second period on the power play, a quick wrist shot past Canucks goalie Dan Cloutier from the left circle after a pass from Derek Morris.

Sakic, born in a Vancouver hospital, was given a standing ovation. But that's when the cheering stopped for the Avalanche.

"It's a great feeling to get the goal, but kind of tough right now, losing a game and falling further behind in the division," Sakic said. "We got off to a bad start and got some chances in the third period, but Cloutier made some good saves. But we're struggling right now. We're not going to catch anybody (in the division) playing like this."

Colorado, last in the league in penalty killing entering the game, didn't do anything to improve its standing. The Avs allowed two Canucks power-play goals in the first two periods. The latter, a Daniel Sedin one-timer from his brother, Henrik, was a killer for the Avs. It gave Vancouver a 3-1 lead with 4:27 left in the second, after Sakic had cut a 2-0 Canucks lead in half with his historic goal.

The Avalanche power play, 24th in the league coming in, wasn't much better. Colorado had four chances in the third period to get back in the game on the PP, but couldn't get anything past Cloutier, who was helped by a post on one shot.

"It's one thing one night, and it's another thing another night. But mostly it's been our special teams that have let us down all year," Sakic said.

What also killed the Avs? Some bad penalties, something they can ill afford with their anemic PK unit. Sedin's goal came after winger Milan Hejduk was called for interference on Cloutier behind the play.

The Canucks' first power-play goal, by Brendan Morrison, came with Scott Parker in the penalty box serving the final two minutes of a double-minor (roughing, slashing). The Avs did a good job of killing off the first two minutes, but Morrison's tip of a Ed Jovanovski's shot from the point deflected past Patrick Roy to give Vancouver a 2-0 lead. Parker was inserted into the lineup in place of veteran Mike Keane by coach Bob Hartley.

"Our discipline wasn't very good tonight," Hartley said. "We had a couple of good shifts right after Joe's goal, but we took three minors after that."

Former Avs coach Marc Crawford said Colorado got "great games from their top players," but that his team's defensive core had its best game of the season.

"Sakic was great tonight, (Rob) Blake was great, (Peter) Forsberg was so patient with the puck. We had to be good to beat them tonight, and we were," Crawford said.

Sakic, who had about 30 family members and friends in the crowd, said he was surprised by the standing ovation.

"They love their Canucks here, so I didn't expect that," he said. "I'm very appreciative of the crowd doing that. It would have been nice to get a win, though, too."

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Sakic: What you see isn't what you get
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By Terry Frei
Special to ESPN.com

Fuss over milestones sometimes is a contrived salute to society's adoption of the base-10 decimal numbering system. In this era of all these marketing morons (a.k.a., "gurus") going to league meetings and producing generic screaming game-night "presentations," sometimes we expect these scoreboards and public-address announcers to implore the crowd to give a second-year winger a standing ovation for reaching his "ONE HUNDREDTH GAME PLAYED! COME ON, GIVE IT UP BEFORE WE GET TO THE TRIVIA QUIZ!"

Just think: If the highest single number was 7, not only would round-number milestones come more often, but Wayne Gretzky would have worn 77 as he racked up three-digit goal seasons. And beyond hockey, the song would be "77 Bottles of Beer on the Wall," and Barbara Feldon of "Get Smart" would have been Agent 77.

Or something like that.

But in significant issues, such as goal scoring, reaching a nice, round milestone truly can be meaningful. Colorado's Joe Sakic is poised to become the 31st NHL player to reach 500 goals, and that still means something. The way the enigmatic Avalanche are going, he could get the requisite three goals this week or -- if he continues to not get minimal help -- in March.

But it will matter, and be worth a tip of the fedora to Sakic and New Jersey's Joe Nieuwendyk, who opened the season at 494 and added only two goals in the Devils' first 21 games.

Sakic's response the other day when asked about the approaching 500th goal was characteristic. He has politely declined to pose for any pre-packaged photo shoots, commemorating 500, and he only will talk about it when the questions swoop in from the left-wing side.

"Let me get it first, then ask," Sakic said, smiling. "It's something I'm looking forward to, no question."

OK, in general, what does 500 mean in today's NHL?

"It's a goal scorer's milestone," he said. "Not a lot of guys have gotten to that, it will be an excitement and a relief if it happens.

"You have to play a long time to accomplish that, unless you're Mario or Wayne. The rest of us, we have to play a long time to achieve that. I've been pretty lucky in my career, with not too many major injuries. And I've been playing with some great players."

Last season, a former Sakic teammate, now with another team, was involved in a social conversation with your correspondent. At the end, he passionately argued that "you guys" -- and he said it as if he considered the Fourth Estate roughly the intellectual equivalent of a puck -- never have sufficiently grasped how good Sakic is. The former teammate meant it both on the ice, where he does a lot more than get off those uncanninly quick wristers, and off the ice, where he is effective as a subtle leader with a sardonic sense of humor that rarely is displayed in public.

But, it was pointed out, Sakic was coming off a Hart Trophy season, certainly not a sign of under-appreciation. The player's point? "You guys" acted as if it that season was resoundingly extraordinary for Sakic. It is there that Steve Yzerman and Sakic can be almost taken for granted in an era in which Gretzky and Lemieux have eclipsed everyone else.
A lack of respect? Of course not. That's the most overused word in sports, and Aretha Franklin and Rodney Dangerfield should be chastised for giving NBA players, for example, the idea. We know how good the subtle superstars are; it's just a matter of degree. Sakic and Yzerman -- who is, after all, the seventh all time in goals scored and has a chance to crack 700 if he recovers from his knee surgery and plays long enough -- are two of a kind.

Sakic's subtlety sometimes is misunderstood. Because he doesn't dispense fire and brimstone, or snap sticks, e-mailers and talk-show callers accuse him of lacking the requisite passion of a leader. Because his effectiveness sometimes is like his shot -- you can miss it if you're taking a sip or even blinking -- it almost takes sustained, big-picture viewing to "get it."

He doesn't make those shake-of-the-head-inducing moves, as does Peter Forsberg, so in that sense he suffers in comparison to his own teammate. And that's another reason, though, the two have been complementary all these seasons, even now that Forsberg is playing on the wing -- sometimes on the same line with Sakic, but more often not.

It all goes back to the fall of 1988, when a 19-year-old played his first regular-season game in the Colisee, against New Jersey -- appropriately enough, in the city where his father, Marijan, first landed in Canada after riding in steerage from what now is Croatia. Already on that night 14 years ago, Joe was being called "Giuseppe" and the "Croatian Sensation" in Quebec City.

"Second period, first home game," Sakic said. "I took a faceoff, won the draw, it went to Robert Picard, I went to the net, he threw it back to me and I just tipped it through Sean Burke's five-hole."

Of course, that puck was retrieved.

"But I couldn't tell you where it is," Sakic said. "I don't know. It must be somewhere, but I haven't seen it in 15 years."

Typical.

The other thing: Sakic is a "young" 33 in the sense that he isn't prone to major injury (as he noted and figuratively knocked on a wooden stick), and he also is one of the bigger physical fitness nuts in the league. So depending on how long he wants to play and how the league's enforcement of obstruction/interference standards affects scoring, he could reach 700.

Which would mean at least a couple more milestone commemorations.

Terry Frei is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. His book, "Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming," was released Monday by Simon and Schuster. It also can be ordered from many online outlets, including Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com.