Sports: The anointed one

Times photo: Dirk Shadd

Groomed for Greatness

From an early age, Lightning captain Vinny Lecavalier was groomed for greatness. This year, he skates into the spotlight, as ready as any 20-year-old has ever been to face the demands and excitement of stardom.

By DAMIAN CRISTODERO

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 6, 2000

ILE BIZARD, Quebec -- The making of a superstar began when he was 4.

That's when his parents gave him a hockey sweater with No. 4 on the back. No. 4 because the grandfather idolized Jean Beliveau; the father, Bobby Orr.

It continued at age 6, when the bedtime story his parents read to him was the biography of Maurice Richard, who played and worked on his game with passion.

To be sure, the making of a superstar was just as serious on the ice, where his father gave him 25 cents for every goal but a dollar for every assist.

Times photo, 1999: Dirk Shadd

Lightning captain Vinny Lecavalier had team highs last season of 25 goals, 42 assists and 67 points.

But it was the off-ice teachings that had the greatest impact.

Maybe that's why when Vinny Lecavalier attended Richard's funeral last summer, it wasn't Richard's athletic accomplishments that stood front and center for Lecavalier, but how he must have touched people's lives with his personality.

"It just shocked me," the Lighning center said. "Just to see everyone coming to see him. I was thinking he must have done something right. For sure, he was a great hockey player, but everyone loved him. They respected him off the ice and that's why these people came to see him and showed respect for him."

Lecavalier said it brought together all his parents had tried to explain.

"I don't think I would have gotten where I am right now if my parents wouldn't have been like that," he said. "They have been great with me. They taught me to be a winner and about dedication and hard work. ... But the biggest thing is people. You have to treat people with respect and that's what I try to do."

Times photo: Dirk Shadd]

That Lecavalier has his feet firmly planted on the ground will help him more this season than his remarkable ability to hold on to and pass the puck, and more than his love of the game.

For this is when Lecavalier is supposed to come of age. The 20-year-old, in his third season, has been anointed as one of the NHL's next superstars.

The Hockey News did two stories on Lecavalier in one month, put him on the cover, and ranked him as the league's 48th-best player, though he is four years younger than anyone on the list.

A Sports Illustrated reporter spent two days with Lecavalier for a story in its hockey preview issue. And NHL Cool Shots, the league's official television show, is doing a feature.

The Lightning also is on the bandwagon, making Lecavalier the centerpiece of two commercials that will run this season.

"He's going to be the best player in hockey without a doubt in my mind," said former Lightning general manager Phil Esposito, who drafted Lecavalier first overall in 1998.

"I don't know if he will become a Wayne Gretzky or a Mario Lemieux, only time will tell that. But if there is one guy in hockey, in this league now, that people should want to see play, that is Vincent Lecavalier. And that is the true mark of a superstar."

Lecavalier, who had team highs last season of 25 goals, 42 assists and 67 points, and is the NHL's youngest captain, doesn't mind the distinction.

"I like having pressure," he said. "I love when people give me challenges. It motivates me. I love it. That's how I get better."

The greatest pressure may come from within.

"In my head, my goals are very high," Lecavalier said. "I want to be the best I can be and that's the most important thing. I want to win the Stanley Cup. I want to have a great team. I want to develop and be as good as I can be."

Home is where the heart is

The Lecavalier home is about 20 miles west of Montreal in Ile Bizard, which is part of an area called the West Island. Former Devils star Claude Lemieux and former Canadiens great Guy Lafleur have homes there. Lecavalier's father, Yvon, 50, a fire department officer, said there are 14 hockey rinks within 5 miles.

The Lecavalier basement in Ile Bizard, near Montreal, is decorated in early and late Vinny. The walls are filled with pictures of him playing in community leagues and in the NHL. It also is where Lecavalier keeps hockey sticks signed by Jaromir Jagr, Wayne Gretzky, Steve Yzerman, Peter Forsberg and Joe Sakic.

The Lecavalier basement is decorated in early and late Vinny. That is, the walls are filled with pictures of him playing in community leagues and in the NHL. It also is where Lecavalier keeps hockey sticks signed by Jaromir Jagr, Wayne Gretzky, Steve Yzerman, Peter Forsberg and Joe Sakic.

Lecavalier said he wants to add Mario Lemieux and Paul Kariya. Ask him his favorite player, though, and there is no hesitation. It's Jagr. "Best player in the world," Lecavalier said. "He controls the tempo of the game. We don't know what he's thinking on the ice, and that's the most important thing. You make them think you're going to do something and you do something else."

Yvon said there was no doubt what direction his son's life would take. Yes, there was that television interview when Lecavalier was 6 in which he said he wanted to be a fireman "like my father." But Yvon said Lecavalier never mentioned that again.

So Yvon, who got as far as junior majors in his hockey career, drove his son to the rinks and watched. When he saw Lecavalier's skating was too choppy, he hired a local figure skater to teach the 11-year-old to extend his legs and gain more speed.

"Every day, for eight months out of the year, he would play," Yvon said. "He had all the skills, but you need more than that."

Yvon said his son needed to learn to control his emotions because opponents would try to enflame them to take him out of his game. He needed to establish a work ethic because God-given skill takes you only so far.

Most important, he needed a sense of self and maturity he could call on when he made it to the game's highest level.

"He has been raised very well," Lightning general manager Rick Dudley said. "His family was smart enough to understand that he was going to be special and he had better be trained to handle the attention he was going to get.

"It was amazing for a kid of 17 when he came out of juniors to be as mature as he was. He just understood most of the things you expect would take a kid a long time to understand."

The toughest assignment was cooling those competitive juices.

Lecavalier moves in on an opposing goaltender. He is the youngest team captain in the NHL.

Lecavalier's brother, Phil, 24, said Lecavalier was so determined to win, at everything, that if you beat him he would demand an immediate rematch.

"He'd just want to play you until he won," Phil said. "Sometimes you would just have to give up and say, "Okay, you won."'

In juniors, where the other team's only goal was to stop Lecavalier, "People would be running around trying to stop me and they'd be on my back the whole game and I'd snap and get like five penalties," said Lecavalier, who played for Rimouski of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.

"But I learned from that. You lose a game, you have to be p--- off. I mean really p--- off, but there's always tomorrow."

It's no coincidence that phrase is used in the Book of Life, three short volumes containing one-sentence inspirational phrases Lecavalier received from his parents on his 12th birthday.

Lecavalier said he keeps the books on the night stand in his Tampa apartment and reads them when he is relaxing.

They are reinforcements, he said, of lessons taught by his parents; lessons applicable for a teenager learning how to get along in the world and for the captain of an NHL franchise.

His mother, Christiane, who works in a provincial employment office, was adamant her son not bully or look down on others.

"When they were kids," she said of Vinny, Phil and daughter Genevieve, 22, "I told them never laugh at people. It's not their fault if they have a handicap. It's not their fault if they are overweight. They can have a good soul. You can be friends."

To drive the point home and show Vinny "how lucky he is," his parents got him a job at a summer camp working with handicapped children.

Lecavalier, 13 at the time, got the point.

"I would never cut down, let's say, a girl who had something," he said. "A lot of my friends were bugging her and I would say stop. I just would never hurt someone. I was always like that."

Maybe that explains Lecavalier's non-confrontational captaincy. Previous Lightning captain Chris Gratton was caustic and got in the face of players who made mistakes. Lecavalier is more likely to tell a teammate to keep his head up.

"Vinny has been around for a few captains and he knows what they've done wrong," defenseman Paul Mara said. "If you make a mistake, he doesn't jump all over you. He may not be the most vocal guy on the team, but he leads by example and every player respects him."

Lecavalier said he leaves the Rockne-like pep talks to defenseman Petr Svoboda. Lecavalier's model captain: Detroit's Yzerman.

"When he's on the ice, everything is an attitude," Lecavalier said. "You never have to show you're beaten up. You always have to be fresh. When I got my captaincy (in March), every game I just kept going and going and going to get the team where we have to be. You always have to be positive. You always have to be working hard.

"So I think a good captain is showing an example. Everything will come after that."

Example set

Vinny Lecavalier clutched the 30-pound weight to his chest and twisted at the waist as fast as he could. His face contorted into what looked like rage but was a mix of pain and determination. The sweat poured off his 6-foot-4, 205-pound frame as if he was in the middle of a Florida heat wave.

But this was Ile Bizard in mid-August and Lecavalier was in the middle of a brutal workout.

"Oui, monsieur. Oui, monsieur," trainer Vincent LaGarde yelled as encouragement.

After 30 seconds, Lecavalier put the weight down and went into a series of crunches that further burned his already red-hot abs. From there it was straight to a pair of weight stacks where he did biceps curls with one hand and triceps extensions with the other -- at the same time.

He did the circuit three times. It was the third different circuit done in 50 minutes. When it was over, Lecavalier, bent at the waist, made plans with LaGarde to meet at a Montreal church, where Lecavalier would run the steps of the steeple.

"He is probably the most dedicated athlete," LaGarde said. "He takes it seriously. You have to put the emphasis on that. You can see the fire in his eyes. Lots of intensity. He wants me to push him and push him. He never whines."

Lecavalier said that's because there's no whining in hockey.

"On the ice I have to be the one (to lead by example)," said Lecavalier, who went through that murderous workout six days a week during the summer. "I can't give up. Never give up. You have to play every game hard, like it's your last game."

The effect Lecavalier had on his teammates last season was undeniable. Just ask Todd Warriner. The left wing had eight goals and six assists in 19 games after switching to Lecavalier's line. Before that, he had three goals and seven assists in 36 games.

"He skates and checks and likes to go to the net," Warriner said. "And he just doesn't get tired. It seems like he can play the whole game. It's remarkable, and guys feed off that. That alone makes him a leader."

Lecavalier got a similar lift from the pairing with Warriner and right wing Mike Johnson, getting six goals and eight assists in his final 14 games. That's an 82-point pace.

If he can keep that up, the Lightning will have to open the vault wide. Lecavalier is in the final year of a three-year contract that paid $975,000 last season and $3.8-million in bonuses. He also will be a restricted free agent, meaning Tampa Bay has the right to match any offers.

Has Lecavalier thought about playing for the Canadiens?

"I love Tampa and, for sure, I'd like to play my whole career in Tampa," he said. "But Montreal has a lot of tradition and I'm from there. I think that would be pretty cool.

"But I love being in Tampa and I love our situation right now. We're going to be a great hockey team, so this is where I want to be."

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