DALLAS – This was back during the winter of 1997-98, when Neil Smith was looking to move Alexei Kovalev and Glen Sather was looking to deal Jason Arnott. The Rangers needed a power center and the Oilers, always looking for speed and skill players, had one to offer.
But Sather wanted more than just Kovalev for Arnott; he wanted a young defenseman. Smith wouldn’t budge. The prospective deal fell through. Soon after, Edmonton sent Arnott and a minor-league defenseman to the Devils for Billy Guerin and Valeri Zelepukin. And early the following season, the Rangers sent Kovalev to Pittsburgh for a package featuring Petr Nedved.
Now, Arnott is front and center of what very well may be the NHL’s best line, with Czechmates Petr Sykora and Patrik Elias on his flanks. Now, Arnott is front and center on the best line of what going into last night’s Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals was two wins away from being certified as hockey’s best team. While in the meantime Nedved centers Czechmates of his own named Radek Dvorak and Jan Hlavac on a team that finished 23rd out of 28 overall this season, on a team that still has no power center whatsoever.
But the temptation to point a finger at Smith for his failure to pull the trigger must be tempered. There is no guarantee whatsoever that Arnott would have been able to develop on Broadway the way he has in East Rutherford. No guarantee that Arnott would have been able to mature on a bad team the way he has on a very good one.
Rather, the signs are that Arnott, third on the playoff scoring leader board with 19 points (7-12), leading the Finals with six points (3-3) after three games, would have struggled in New York. The signs are that Arnott, who became suffocated by all of the attention he had received in Edmonton after being selected seventh overall in the 1993 Draft, would probably have withered under the spotlight on Broadway.
“At the end of [Arnott’s] career in Edmonton, he was very frustrated there. There was pressure, and he wore that pressure poorly,” said Stars coach Ken Hitchcock, who saw a great deal of Arnott as an Oiler. “Now he’s free. You read what he says. He likes the anonymous lifestyle of living in Jersey and he is just a hockey player.”
Anonymity on Broadway? Players don’t come to Broadway for anonymity; not, that is, unless the player is named Theo Fleury.
But we digress.
Not only would have been no anonymity in Manhattan for Arnott, the poor start he’d endured after coming over to the Devils, largely ignored by the masses, would have created a storm had he stumbled as a Blueshirt. And he probably would have, not only given the thin supporting cast that would have surrounded him, but his own attitude at the time.
“I saw a person who wasn’t enjoying hockey at all after what he went through in Edmonton,” Scott Stevens said before last night’s match. “We talked a lot. He even asked me, ‘How do you get up for games?’ This is a guy who’s [23 years old] asking me that. I thought, ‘That’s not right.’
“But that’s how tough it was for him, coming from that environment. He had to find his game again.”
Imagine Arnott getting the time to find his game again on Broadway. Imagine Arnott getting the grace period as a Ranger he did as a Devil after playing just miserably (on right wing) through the 1997-98 season and that spring’s first-round playoff loss to the Senators. Not only hard to imagine, it’s impossible.
But since his difficult beginning in New Jersey, after living with Stevens and his family from the beginning of training camp through the first three months of the 1998-99 season, Arnott has made the jump back to where he was his rookie season, when as a 19-year-old he scored 33 goals while adding 35 assists. Actually, he hasn’t jumped back, he’s taken a quantum leap forward.
“Arnie has become a man this year; he’s a much different person,” said Larry Robinson. “I don’t think he knew how to work before, but when you become a man, you learn what it takes to win, what it takes to succeed.
“Most of us get to the point where we say, ‘OK, it’s time to grow up and accept some responsibility. There are guys who never do, but they’re the ones who are here for the short ride, not the long ride.”
Now Arnott is here for the long ride, and he and his linemates are taking the Devils with them.
“What really impressed me the most is that Jason is starting to take on a leadership role in the locker room, especially the last two months of the season,” said Ken Daneyko. “He’s wanting to be the go-to guy. To be an elite hockey player, you have to have that cocky attitude, and he has it in a good kind of way.
“Jason is finally coming to the forefront here.”
And in doing so, he is risking the anonymity he cherishes, the anonymity he never, ever would have been granted had he come to the Rangers.