The Hockey Hall of Fame was a long time coming for Mark Recchi, but he will officially be inducted Monday night in Toronto alongside contemporaries Dave Andreychuk, Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya, plus Danielle Goyette, Jeremy Jacobs and Clare Drake.
Recchi, currently an assistant coach with the Pittsburgh Penguins after three seasons working in player development, took some time to reflect on his playing career in a post for The Players’ Tribune.
Recchi played any and all sports as a kid growing up in British Columbia, but his passion for hockey eventually won out.
“Hockey took over my brain,” Recchi explained. “When I wasn’t playing hockey or watching hockey, I was thinking about the next time I’d be playing hockey or watching hockey. There was no trick to how I stayed in the game for so long. I didn’t have any superstition or secret breakfast that kept me in the game. Didn’t have a real pre-game ritual like so many great players do. I’m not really even superstitious at all, about anything. … I just really, really love hockey.”
Recchi’s junior career was capped off by two outstanding seasons in the WHL with his hometown Kamloops Blazers and he made his NHL debut with the Penguins during the 1988-89 season.
“A lot of scouting reports had me as an undersized, potentially risky forward,” Recchi wrote. “My game wasn’t flashy. I played inside the dots, in front of the net. I was decent at hitting guys.”
All told, the undersized, unflashy, risky forward suited up for seven different teams in his 22 seasons in the NHL. His 1,652 career regular-season games played is fifth most in NHL history and his 1,533 points ranks 12th on the all-time list. In fact, prior to his selection to the Hall, Recchi had more points than any other eligible non-Hall-of-Famer. That distinction now belongs to Pierre Turgeon.
Recchi won a Stanley Cup in 1991 in his second full season with the Penguins, leading his team with 113 points in 78 games and finishing second in playoff scoring behind only Mario Lemieux. The Penguins followed that championship season with another but Recchi was traded to the Philadelphia Flyers midway through the 1991-92 campaign.
“I wasn’t angry or bitter when I was traded to Philly,” Recchi wrote. “Of course it’s sad seeing your friends win the big one without you, but I was young and healthy and just happy to be playing, so I knew that I’d get another chance.”
Recchi had to wait 15 years for another chance, though, yet made the most of it as a member of the Carolina Hurricanes and hoisted his second Cup in 2006. Recchi spent the next several years bouncing from team to team — back to the Penguins, then the Atlanta Thrashers, then Tampa Bay Lightning before being traded to the Boston Bruins.
Despite being in his early 40s with the Bruins, Recchi still had some hockey left in him. He had initially planned to retire after the 2009-10 campaign, he explained, but that season ended in heartbreaking fashion.
The Bruins were up 3-0 in a second-round series with the Flyers and up 3-0 in the opening period of Game 7 yet ended up blowing it and getting eliminated.
“I was crushed,” Recchi wrote. “My heart had been ripped out of my chest. I looked around the locker room after the game and saw some of the saddest faces I have ever seen in my life.
“That’s just not how I wanted to end my career.”
After the season he spoke with then-Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli and then-Bruins coach Claude Julien, both of whom agreed Recchi had one more good year left.
So Recchi returned for one last kick at the can in 2010-11 and went out on top.
The Bruins beat the Vancouver Canucks and Recchi, the oldest player to ever score in a Stanley Cup final, got to raise the Cup above his head one last time, in his home province no less.
“I moved around a lot in my career. I’m grateful to have spent 22 years playing in the NHL,” Recchi wrote. “Grateful for all seven of the different teams I played on. Grateful to have ended my last season with a third Stanley Cup in Boston. It was a more storybook ending than I could have possibly imagined for myself growing up.”
He added: “To everybody who has been a part of my career for 22 seasons. Every fan in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Montreal, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Atlanta and Boston. Everyone in Kamloops. You are the ones who made my career. Your love of hockey is what gave me so much faith in hockey. You are the reason people love and give so much for this sport.
“To have accomplished enough in a career to be accepted into the Hall of Fame — I will never be able to thank you all enough.”
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