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Monday, December 2
Updated: December 3, 10:18 AM ET
 
Sakic: What you see isn't what you get

By Terry Frei
Special to ESPN.com

Fuss over milestones sometimes is a contrived salute to society's adoption of the base-10 decimal numbering system. In this era of all these marketing morons (a.k.a., "gurus") going to league meetings and producing generic screaming game-night "presentations," sometimes we expect these scoreboards and public-address announcers to implore the crowd to give a second-year winger a standing ovation for reaching his "ONE HUNDREDTH GAME PLAYED! COME ON, GIVE IT UP BEFORE WE GET TO THE TRIVIA QUIZ!"

Just think: If the highest single number was 7, not only would round-number milestones come more often, but Wayne Gretzky would have worn 77 as he racked up three-digit goal seasons. And beyond hockey, the song would be "77 Bottles of Beer on the Wall," and Barbara Feldon of "Get Smart" would have been Agent 77.

FASTEST TO 500
Joe Sakic (497 goals, 1,041 games) and Joe Nieuwendyk (496, 1,054) are on the verge of becoming the 31st and 32nd players in NHL history to reach 500 goals. Below is a list of the other 30 players in order of number of games it took them to reach 500, their total career goals and their total games played:
 
Player
 
Game
Total
goals
Total
games
Wayne Gretzky 575 894 1,487
Mario Lemieux 605 665 834
Mike Bossy 647 573 752
Brett Hull 693 688 1,124
Phil Esposito 803 717 1,282
Jari Kurri 833 601 1,251
Bobby Hull 861 610 1,063
Maurice Richard 863 544 978
Marcel Dionne 887 731 1,348
Steve Yzerman 906 658 1,362
Guy Lafleur 918 560 1,126
Luc Robitaille 928 623 1,228
Mike Gartner 936 708 1,432
Dino Ciccarelli 946 608 1,232
Michel Goulet 951 548 1,089
Gordie Howe 1,045 801 1,767
Joe Mullen 1,052 502 1,062
Dave Andreychuk 1,070 601 1,466
Brendan Shanahan 1,100 509 1,127
Jean Beliveau 1,101 507 1,125
Dale Hawerchuk 1,103 518 1,188
Bryan Trottier 1,104 524 1,279
Frank Mahovlich 1,105 533 1,181
Lanny McDonald 1,107 500 1,111
Mark Messier 1,141 668 1,628
Gilbert Perreault 1,159 512 1,191
Stan Mikita 1,221 541 1,394
Pat Verbeek 1,285 522 1,424
John Bucyk 1,370 556 1,540
Ron Francis 1,533 523 1,594
Or something like that.

But in significant issues, such as goal scoring, reaching a nice, round milestone truly can be meaningful. Colorado's Joe Sakic is poised to become the 31st NHL player to reach 500 goals, and that still means something. The way the enigmatic Avalanche are going, he could get the requisite three goals this week or -- if he continues to not get minimal help -- in March.

But it will matter, and be worth a tip of the fedora to Sakic and New Jersey's Joe Nieuwendyk, who opened the season at 494 and added only two goals in the Devils' first 21 games.

Sakic's response the other day when asked about the approaching 500th goal was characteristic. He has politely declined to pose for any pre-packaged photo shoots, commemorating 500, and he only will talk about it when the questions swoop in from the left-wing side.

"Let me get it first, then ask," Sakic said, smiling. "It's something I'm looking forward to, no question."

OK, in general, what does 500 mean in today's NHL?

"It's a goal scorer's milestone," he said. "Not a lot of guys have gotten to that, it will be an excitement and a relief if it happens.

"You have to play a long time to accomplish that, unless you're Mario or Wayne. The rest of us, we have to play a long time to achieve that. I've been pretty lucky in my career, with not too many major injuries. And I've been playing with some great players."

Last season, a former Sakic teammate, now with another team, was involved in a social conversation with your correspondent. At the end, he passionately argued that "you guys" -- and he said it as if he considered the Fourth Estate roughly the intellectual equivalent of a puck -- never have sufficiently grasped how good Sakic is. The former teammate meant it both on the ice, where he does a lot more than get off those uncanninly quick wristers, and off the ice, where he is effective as a subtle leader with a sardonic sense of humor that rarely is displayed in public.

But, it was pointed out, Sakic was coming off a Hart Trophy season, certainly not a sign of under-appreciation. The player's point? "You guys" acted as if it that season was resoundingly extraordinary for Sakic. It is there that Steve Yzerman and Sakic can be almost taken for granted in an era in which Gretzky and Lemieux have eclipsed everyone else.

Sakic's subtlety sometimes is misunderstood. Because he doesn't dispense fire and brimstone, or snap sticks, e-mailers and talk-show callers accuse him of lacking the requisite passion of a leader.
A lack of respect? Of course not. That's the most overused word in sports, and Aretha Franklin and Rodney Dangerfield should be chastised for giving NBA players, for example, the idea. We know how good the subtle superstars are; it's just a matter of degree. Sakic and Yzerman -- who is, after all, the seventh all time in goals scored and has a chance to crack 700 if he recovers from his knee surgery and plays long enough -- are two of a kind.

Sakic's subtlety sometimes is misunderstood. Because he doesn't dispense fire and brimstone, or snap sticks, e-mailers and talk-show callers accuse him of lacking the requisite passion of a leader. Because his effectiveness sometimes is like his shot -- you can miss it if you're taking a sip or even blinking -- it almost takes sustained, big-picture viewing to "get it."

He doesn't make those shake-of-the-head-inducing moves, as does Peter Forsberg, so in that sense he suffers in comparison to his own teammate. And that's another reason, though, the two have been complementary all these seasons, even now that Forsberg is playing on the wing -- sometimes on the same line with Sakic, but more often not.

It all goes back to the fall of 1988, when a 19-year-old played his first regular-season game in the Colisee, against New Jersey -- appropriately enough, in the city where his father, Marijan, first landed in Canada after riding in steerage from what now is Croatia. Already on that night 14 years ago, Joe was being called "Giuseppe" and the "Croatian Sensation" in Quebec City.

"Second period, first home game," Sakic said. "I took a faceoff, won the draw, it went to Robert Picard, I went to the net, he threw it back to me and I just tipped it through Sean Burke's five-hole."

Of course, that puck was retrieved.

"But I couldn't tell you where it is," Sakic said. "I don't know. It must be somewhere, but I haven't seen it in 15 years."

Typical.

The other thing: Sakic is a "young" 33 in the sense that he isn't prone to major injury (as he noted and figuratively knocked on a wooden stick), and he also is one of the bigger physical fitness nuts in the league. So depending on how long he wants to play and how the league's enforcement of obstruction/interference standards affects scoring, he could reach 700.

Which would mean at least a couple more milestone commemorations.

Terry Frei is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. His book, "Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming," was released Monday by Simon and Schuster. It also can be ordered from many online outlets, including Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com.







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