To measure Joe Sakic's greatness only by his numbers is to measure only half the man.
The word is out now and the praise and the platitudes are already rolling in.
Joe Sakic, the definition of a class act on and off the ice has accepted the inevitable and will, according to numerous reports, announce his retirement from hockey after 20 seasons; all of them with the Quebec Nordiques turned Colorado Avalanche.
The media conference is scheduled for Thursday afternoon and already people are lining up to praise his contributions to both teams. It will carry on for days as others will single out his prodigious offensive totals while still others will mention how he was one of the stellar defensive players in the game. There will be praise, praise much deserved, for his steady leadership of a franchise that grew to championship status under his command first as a young phenom and, later, a steel-willed captain. Many will tout out lines about his grace under fire, his ability to perform under pressure and his talent for scoring not only a lot of goals and points, but for scoring so many of them at just the right time, the time when a team needs simply to win a game, the time when a team needs to be lifted from contender to championship status.
Take it all in Joe, you've earned it.
But that's not what I'll remember about Joe Sakic and I doubt that's what former Buffalo Sabres player and current Buffalo Sabres coach Lindy Ruff will remember most about him either.
What I'll recall is how Sakic, some 20 years after the bus crash that killed Ruff's then 16-year-old brother Brent and three other members of the Swift Current Broncos, very quietly met with Ruff and talked about the tragedy.
Sakic was a member of that Swift Current team. He was at the front of the bus along with the now disgraced coach, Graham James and teammate Sheldon Kennedy. Brent Ruff, though just a rookie on the team was at the back playing cards with his linemates. The bus was just a few miles outside of town when it hit some black ice on the Trans-Canada highway and --in what was literally as quick as the blink of an eye -- everything changed. The bus went out of control, twisted off the highway, went airborne over an embankment and ended up on its side. There was no evidence of speeding and the driver was not found to be at fault in any way. It was just one of those things that happen in winter on the prairies. Bad weather combined with bad luck and in an instant lives were lost and lives were forever changed.
Those up in front got out just fine, a cut here, a scrape there, but fine. Those four in the back, Ruff, Chris Mantyka, Scott Kruger and Trent Kresse, were killed. In Ruff's case death came instantly, he was thrown right out the window he was up against and the bus landed on top of him. He never had a chance.
It's not the way of Westerners to talk much about tragedy. Sakic, quiet by nature, put the incident behind him as best he could. Ruff, a native Albertan, after a period of mourning, did the same.
Still there was always a bond, a connection between the two and sometimes you could see it. There would be a glance from the player toward an opposing team's bench. A look of recognition, perhaps even of understanding from a coach behind the bench toward a player on the ice.
It went that way for years, two men who were not close. Two men who really didn't know each other but knew they should. It took time, but finally they spoke.
I'd like to be able to tell you the details of that conversation. It would make for a great story and maybe even a greater insight into how to deal with suffering, the kind of pain that is in the mind and not the body. The kind of suffering that, in the hockey world, is almost never discussed.
I wish I could but I can't.
Ruff acknowledges that the conversation took place. Sakic says the same, but the rest is private. Whatever was said likely needed to be said. A brother needed to hear about his sibling's final moments. A witness who also happened to be a teammate and a friend perhaps understood that need even though talking about it, like thinking about it, was almost too painful to endure.
The discussion was theirs and theirs alone, but one had the sense afterward that Ruff took something from Sakic's words. It might have been something as simple as an understanding of how it all came to be. It might have been something more complex, like an older brother finding a way to finally accept there are things he simply cannot change, but Joe Sakic's words seemed to have an impact on Lindy Ruff and he seemed better for having heard them.
I can only presume the talk might have eased some of Sakic's pain as well.
There was a lot of tragedy associated with that crash. Young lives full of hope and promise and dreams were snuffed out. Four young men dead before their time and the survivors - both the families of the dead and the young men who walked away from that crash-burdened with thoughts of "what if" and never-to-be-answered questions as to why. Why him and not me. The what if... played out in the mind over and over again. Always it comes as a question, never an answer; a difficult thing indeed.
There was also the connection to James and his dirty little secret, a secret of sexual abuse that played a role in ruining Kennedy's career and, in many ways, his hopes for a normal life in and out of hockey. Graham was convicted of being a sexual predator for his actions with Kennedy and one player who testified with protection and has never been named.
It made life hard for all of them and drove many into what some say was a conspiracy of silence. Silence about James was to be expected, but silence about the crash and that Swift Current team came right along with it. It wasn't intentional. It wasn't anything agreed upon. It was more a way of coping with both the crash that brought death and the scandal that brought a completely different kind of pain.
Had their paths not crossed time and time again in hockey it's likely Sakic and Ruff simply would have moved on, but seeing each other, even if only for a game or so each season, kept the connection alive and Sakic, eventually, found a way to deal with it and to help Ruff deal with it as well.
You can go elsewhere, across the internet, through a slew of newspapers and even on this site and find the numbers that make Joe Sakic a hockey legend and a sure fire future inductee to the Hockey Hall of Fame. I can tell you stories of those early days in Quebec, when he was the bright young star in what was a sorry excuse for a hockey team. I can tell you about his dedication, his perseverance, his wickedly effective wrist shot and his seemingly uncanny ability to make the right play at the right time, but that's a part of the story you can find almost anywhere.
The Joe Sakic I'll always remember is the one who found a way to do what didn't come easy. The Joe Sakic I'll never forget is the one who found a way to ease another man's pain by sitting down to talk about something neither man can ever forget.
It takes a certain kind of courage to do that. Courage that's different from the kind you saw whenever Sakic was on the ice.
He was a great player, of this there is no doubt, but in finding away to help ease another man's pain he was and is a great man as well.
I'll carry that memory of Joe Sakic forever and in even higher regard.
Perhaps, after you've read this, you will too.
