Thursday, October 14, 2010
The Franchise’s Fresh New Face
By KEVIN CLARK
Rangers coach John Tortorella was wrapping up a speech at a preseason banquet last week, saying his thank yous to the crowd, when he unexpectedly called on 20-year-old rookie Derek Stepan.
Mr. Stepan had spent training camp as part guinea pig, part fraternity pledge. Mr. Tortorella used the preseason to see if Mr. Stepan could handle a training camp (he could), center the first line in preseason (he scored a goal that same night) and score in a shootout (which he did).
But this was a different sort of test. Mr. Tortorella gave Mr. Stepan the microphone and asked him to tell this roomful of legends about training camp.
How would he handle that?
Clearly rattled, Mr. Stepan cleared his throat, regained his composure and quickly got a laugh with a line about still not being able to feel his legs, so rigorous had been the preseason workouts.
He went on from there to wow the crowd that included Mark Messier and other former Rangers captains with his personality and wit, making it official: There’s nothing you can throw at this kid that he can’t handle.
“A lot of 20-year-olds would have folded in that spot,” Mr. Tortorella said. “He handled it very well.”
Mr. Stepan has become the biggest story line for the Rangers as they prepare for Friday’s home opener against the Toronto Maple Leafs. His hat trick on opening night in the Rangers’ 6-3 victory over the Buffalo Sabres put him in elite company, as one of four players in NHL history to score three goals in their first regular-season game.
He could well be a phenom in an organization that has been short of them. He has developed from an above-average, second-round pick into the potential face of the franchise.
The fact that Mr. Stepan has arrived so early may shock some?particularly those who saw him as a 5-foot-4 Minnesota high-school freshman who was so slow that his father worried that he wouldn’t make the local high-school team. But his story is one of hockey instincts, proven leadership ability and an unparalleled hockey education.
“He’s like a Mark Messier, guys who aren’t the most skillful but are the most important cogs for good teams, who play entire shifts goal line to goal line and block shots, win draws and are incredibly reliable,” said Tom Ward, his high-school coach. “A complete player who might be a leading scorer, but he’s more interested in winning. We call it ‘hockey sense,’ and he’s blessed with it.”
The hockey smarts started early. Mr. Stepan would sit on his grandfather’s lap with a notepad, drawing up complex hockey plays over and over like a mathematician drawing up proofs. He developed an all-around game when his father, his coach from a young age, would forbid him from scoring after he had scored a few goals and force him to assist.
The mental aspect was well taken care of, the physical wasn’t. He and his father both concede that he wasn’t the best player on his team on any level because of his small frame. For most of his life, he was undersized and slow with nothing to keep him on the ice but those hockey smarts.
He grew, however, from 5-foot-4 to 5-foot-11 in the summer before his sophomore year. While still relatively small, he could now get invited to top camps, where he would still have to use his mind more than his legs.
He became faster, though, while keeping the hockey smarts. He was able to enroll at über high school Shattuck-St. Mary’s, a Faribault, Minn., school known as an incubator of NHL talent.
Mr. Ward, Mr. Stepan’s coach at Shattuck, said that among the Shattuck alumni, Mr. Stepan’s work ethic most closely resembles a player like Jonathan Toews, the captain of the Chicago Blackhawks, last year’s Stanley Cup winners. Other notables who have been educated at Shattuck include Sidney Crosby and Devils star Zach Parise. The team doesn’t have captains?in no small part because it might be impossible to pick from such a large talent pool?but Mr. Ward said that Mr. Stepan was an impressive leader while helping the team win a national championship.
Since joining the Rangers, Mr. Stepan has had a few encounters with Mr. Messier, the captain of the Rangers’ 1994 Stanley Cup team and a player daydreaming Rangers fans are prematurely comparing him to. He told Mr. Stepan to keep up the good work at a prospect camp and tutored all the centers on faceoffs earlier in training camp.
The “future captain” label seems to follow Mr. Stepan around. He captained team USA to the gold medal in the 2010 World Junior Championships, leading the tournament in assists and points. He also led the NCAA in assists last season with 42 while at the University of Wisconsin.
He was the center of a defensive-oriented line with the Badgers and scored just 12 goals. Mr. Tortorella, however, asked him to go back to his goal-scoring roots when he put on a Rangers jersey.
The hype around Mr. Stepan’s game has built slowly. He signed in June after being drafted in 2008, but he wasn’t on many radars until Mr. Tortorella casually mentioned before training camp that, regardless of team, Mr. Stepan was the best player he saw in the prestigious prospect tournament in Traverse City, Mich.
Mr. Tortorella liked his all-around game and the “good arrogance” that he had. As he handled each situation, the whispers about his future became shouts that he could actually make the team.
“I think his ceiling is unlimited due to his maturity,” Mr. Tortorella said. “I have a 20-year-old son, and it’s amazing that I’m coaching a 20-year-old. He has an intangible about him as far as his mindset.”
To start the season, Mr. Stepan has been centering a line of two established veterans, Ruslan Fedotenko, 31, and Sean Avery, 30.
“It’s nice to see such a young guy who isn’t afraid to take the puck and make a play and is at the same time aware of the [whole game] and where to make the smart play,” Mr. Fedotenko said. “He’s really good at knowing where the puck is. That’s why he’s here.”
That Derek is with the Rangers is extra special for the Stepan family. While he was drafted 51st overall, his father, Brad, was drafted 91st by the Rangers in 1985. They are the only father-son combination to be drafted in franchise history.
Brad Stepan played junior hockey with former Blueshirts star Adam Graves in Canada and played for the Rangers’ minor-league team in Denver in 1988.
But his NHL dreams ended early. A week after an article was published mentioning him as the next possible call-up to the Rangers, his sister died of leukemia. When he returned from being with his family, he was behind?then hampered by a string of injuries. Finally, when he got his teeth knocked out by a high stick in Boston, he quit hockey. He has never set foot in Madison Square Garden.
But he plans to be there for his son’s debut at the Garden on Friday. He and his father, Dennis, are driving Derek’s car from Minnesota to Manhattan.
“It’s going to be emotional,” Brad Stepan said. “Just to see his name on that jersey, in that building and knowing he’s arrived.”