If Mark Recchi wants to stay in the game he needs to show he can adjust his game.
Mark Recchi said all the right things when he was unceremoniously dumped by the Pittsburgh Penguins via the waiver wire.
He talked about how he still has gas left in the tank. He talked about how he intends to prove people wrong. He talked about how he expects to help his new team, the Atlanta Thrashers, and backed that up with a two-goal performance in what, unfortunately for the Thrashers, proved to be a 5-3 loss to the Boston Bruins Wednesday night.
In fact he did a lot of talking and that might be a part of the problem.
Understand I have no ill will toward Recchi. I believe he’s already compiled numbers worthy of consideration by the Hockey Hall of Fame. I believed he helped Pittsburgh win its first championship it might not have won had he not been in the lineup and I believe the Carolina Hurricanes made a brilliant pickup when they got him for a late playoff run in 2005-06. I know he was one of the most exciting players to watch throughout his NHL career and that includes the time he spent in Montreal and Philadelphia.
But it’s not without reason that there is a silence out of Pittsburgh regarding the transaction.
Recchi was and likely still is furious with the way he was treated. That’s understandable, especially coming from a player who gave so much of himself to hockey. But that’s also life in the NHL these days. There is no room for sentiment and not much even for players who have made lifelong contributions to winning. But the simple fact of the matter is that for all his talk about how well he had been playing before the cruel cut came, it simply isn’t true.
Recchi had five points in his first six games of the season, six in the first eight, but nothing in his final 10 before being put on the departure list. He’ll argue, and with some merit, that he would have continued producing had he remained on the top line and that his demotion to a role as a third- or fourth-line winger cut into his scoring.
There’s truth to that, but there’s also truth to the fact that he had lost a good deal of his once glorious speed, that he wasn’t showing the same hand-eye coordination he once had, even when set up nicely by Sidney Crosby and others. You can also look to the numbers and see that he was downright lousy in terms of his plus-minus, his even-strength goal scoring was nearly nonexistent and that he wasn’t accepting the facts and may well have been fighting them.
That’s hard for a coach or a general manager to point out in public. Anything they say in their defence is going to look like they are denigrating the player and Recchi does not in any way deserve that, especially in Pittsburgh. But facts are facts and the facts, in this case and with this team at least, were that Recchi couldn’t or wouldn’t see the hard truths.
The Penguins up front are fast; he is no longer in that class. The Penguins have to make room for younger players who deserve their shot and can keep up. Recchi, in not accepting third- or fourth-line status, refused to do that.
The Penguins ask their forwards to come back hard and support a young defence and some inexperienced goaltending. Recchi couldn’t do that any longer either.
The Penguins offered him around, teams looked at his stats and his salary and said "no thanks, we’ll wait until you put him on waivers," the hockey equivalent to shopping at the dollar store.
That’s hard, but that’s reality in the NHL these days and it’s true if you’re a fourth liner looking to hold onto a spot in the bigs, or a future Hall of Famer not willing to accept the fact that your very best days are behind you and you simply aren’t needed in the present environment.
That could change with the Thrashers and certainly getting two goals in an opening-night performance indicates there still might be something there. But it’s never the first night that tells the tale concerning a veteran player on a new team. It’s what happens night after night after night when you are soon to be 40 years old and kids are flying by you with the kind of effortless grace that was Recchi’s hallmark when he first entered the game.
Recchi might yet prove them all wrong. He can show the folks in Pittsburgh and elsewhere that they grossly underestimated his commitment, his desire and his ability to compensate any age-related shortcoming with age-defined smarts, but if he does, it still serves no purpose to be mouthing off in the media.
He would be better served by proving it on the ice, night after night after night with good two-way play, sound defensive responsibility, a commitment to team winning above even scoring. It’s the best way of proving someone wrong.
Recchi didn’t show that kind of commitment to his coach in Pittsburgh, Michel Therrien. He didn’t convince his general manager, Ray Shero either.
That’s a performance problem and maybe even an attitude and communication problem as well, but whatever the circumstances those days are over.
Recchi may not know it, but the Thrashers have given him a chance, maybe his last chance to remain a player of consequence in the NHL and they are perhaps his only chance to show the league he can adjust his game to his physical circumstances regarding speed, coordination and attitude. It’s something that doesn’t come easy to a veteran who refuses to see the writing on the wall, but if he wants to stay in the game it’s what he needs to do.
It’s the only option he has left.