Making his Mark

Monday hit me like a ton of bricks. I woke up feeling lousy -- both from the pitiful performance of my Jets the day before and from a stuffy nose and a cold four days in the making. \nI can still hear it: Chad Pennington, $64 million for six fumbles. Talk about a deal. But as I walked toward the couch where my roommate anxiously waited to take his shots, the headline on ESPNNews caught my attention. What should have been somber news turned into a sense of relief. As I droned out my roommate's Pennington attacks, I learned that Mark Messier, longtime New York Ranger, had retired.\nSo what, right? It wasn't alarming or surprising at all. This was two years in the making. Some fans outside of New York might have even forgotten he was still playing, still grinding it out in Manhattan. Would he have scored 30 goals this year? No. Would he have centered the Rangers' top two scoring lines? Definitely not. Would he have brought the Rangers to the playoffs? As a die-hard Ranger fan, but also as a realist, no.\nI wasn't upset or surprised by his retirement Monday, but rather happy. Because what Mark Messier did for New York, and for me, is something I, and New York, can never forget.\nMessier was the greatest leader in the history of sports. First, in one of the most tenured sports in our country's history, the Edmonton native is the only hockey player to ever captain two Stanley Cup-winning teams. Both, mind you, without Wayne Gretzky. \nHe ranks second all-time with 1,887 points behind the Great One, seventh all-time in goals scored with 694 and was only 11 games shy of equaling Gordie Howe's record for the most games ever played.\nEleven games, eh? Coincidently, No. 11 probably didn't care about needing the 11 games -- he rarely cared about any records, just winning. Messier had it all. He could score on you, he could skate past you, he could pass around you and he could out-muscle you. He had so many intangibles you could argue that Messier, not Gretzky, was the driving force behind the five Stanley Cups won by the Edmonton Oilers in the 1980s.\nAt this point, my roommate gave up on the criticism, and just let me enjoy the 1994 Stanley Cup highlights on the television. Oh man, anytime I watch a highlight from that year I get chills. Stephane Matteau in Game 7 against the Devils (I was there at 9 years old watching a double-overtime classic), Mike Richter's save in Game 3 against the Canucks, and who can forget the greatest guarantee in sports history? I'm talking about Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals at the then-Brendan Byrne Arena, where Messier scored a natural hat-trick in the third period facing elimination -- that was No. 11's way of backing up a guarantee. And he capped off that year with the game-winning goal in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, ending New York's 54-year drought without a title. \nOn a school night when my mother reluctantly let me stay up, Messier's goal brought little Evan Harris to jump and scream in his pajamas. If she hadn't let me stay up, I think I would've been incomplete for the rest of my life. That year and that hockey player changed the way I look at the Rangers and the sport of hockey. I love it more than anything. I love the feel of a blue Ranger jersey while sitting in chilly Madison Square Garden, and I owe it all to Mark Messier. \nI just think of the name and I get chills. I talk about the type of leader he was and I am inspired. I don't look at his retirement as somber news, but as uplifting, reminding me of all he did for the game and for me as a Ranger fan. \nNothing can change the way I feel right now. Well, except if Pennington fumbles six more times against the Dolphins Sunday.