Wayne Gretzky's Ghost by Roy Macgregor Read Free Book Online

of the Toronto Maple Leafs?
    Sundin is now thirty-five years old. He has lost every golden hair that shone that day in 1989 when he became, at eighteen, the first European hockey player ever to go No. 1 in the entry draft. He has played for only two teams: the Quebec Nordiques, who traded him before they headed off to Denver and the Stanley Cup, and the Leafs, who have been poor to middling to not-quite-good-enough in the dozen years that he has been, by far, the team’s most consistent player. He has never won a Stanley Cup, never played in a Stanley Cup final.
    He scored twenty-three goals as a solid six-foot-five rookie and has scored twenty goals or more every single season since, a remarkable record given the teams he has suffered and the certainty of injury in today’s NHL. When he scored his twentieth last week—the game winner against the New York Rangers—he set a new Leafs record for consecutive twenty-goal seasons, surpassing the likes of Darryl Sittler and Dave Keon. He played his twelve hundredth game that week and, a month earlier, had recorded his twelve-hundredth point—again, the picture of consistency.
    Saturday night in Ottawa, he scored the second Toronto goal on a calm and deliberate pause move that had Ottawa goaltender Ray Emery helplessly sliding out of the net and out of the way. And then, when overtime still ended in a tie, he scored on a magnificent backhand in the shootout to give Toronto the chance to win, which they eventually did. All in a night’s work, with no one in particular to play with. This night it was Alexei Ponikarovsky and Nik Antropov, two forwards who benefit hugely from playing with him but are otherwise unremarkable. When they were injured earlier, it was at times Alex Steen and Jeff O’Neill, both of whom saw their games pick up thanks to Sundin.
    It is a curious story of bad luck. The best winger Sundin ever had with the Leafs was Alexander Mogilny, then near theend of his glory days. When Sundin was with the young and rising Nordiques, the team decided to trust in centres Joe Sakic and newcomer Peter Forsberg, trading Sundin off to the Leafs for former Leafs captain Wendel Clark, two others and a draft pick.
    The Nordiques became the Avalanche and, for a while, such an elite team that it seemed every star had a star to play with, while Sundin headed off to Toronto and a seemingly endless string of wingers simply not up to his level. Because he was replacing Clark, one of Toronto’s all-time most popular players, Leafs fans warmed slowly to the big Swede and never have warmed as much as they would if he brought them a Stanley Cup. But, of course, they have yet to make the finals with him and, again this year, are middle of the pack.
    Every few years, however, Sundin shows the hockey world that he stands among the best who have ever played. In World Cup play, he has been the best player in the tournament, though Sweden has come up short. In Olympics play, the same. In Salt Lake City in 2002, the Swedes were by far the best team, only to implode mysteriously against Belarus. In 2006, he finally led his country to the gold medal in Turin.
    â€œWith the national team, he’s tremendous,” says Ottawa captain Daniel Alfredsson, who has been Sundin’s linemate over several of those tournaments. “He just dominates out there.”
    At thirty-five and after sixteen seasons, it is likely that the best of Mats Sundin has been seen in the NHL—but also likely that the best was never allowed to be seen. Simply because of chance. Simply because, in careers as well as in games, the bounces sometimes go different ways.
    â€œSports is hard to explain,” Sundin said Saturday night in regard to another question. But it was also a good enough answer for a remarkable career that has been, pretty much, one man alone in a team game.
    In the summer of 2008, unrestricted free agent Sundin was pondering retirement and turned down a two-year,