You have to make things happen to survive. That's the bottom line in sports, where times stands still for no one.
What becomes painfully clear over the past few years is that there have been plenty of magically gifted players who were lost amid the clutch-and-grab mentality in the NHL.
One of those players who has suddenly taken center stage one again is Calgary Flames left winger Kristian Huselius, whom most observers would never figure as a Darryl Sutter-type player. To the contrary, a look at Huselius in the first round of the playoffs shows his combination of skills look pretty darn good in Sutter's lineup next to Jarome Iginla and Daymond Langkow.
"You don't have to tell me about the Sutter way of playing the game," Huselius told me late in the season. "My first year in the NHL, I played for Duane Sutter and he said the same thing as Darryl did: 'We'll have no trouble as long as you work hard. If you don't, you don't play.' "
Larry Wigge has covered the NHL since 1969. The longtime NHL columnist for The Sporting News, Wigge is now an NHL.com columnist and a frequent contributor to the website.
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In 24 games with the Florida Panthers earlier this season, Huselius had five goals and three assists and was a minus-11. In 54 games after being traded to Calgary for defenseman Steve Montador, Kristian had 15 goals and 24 assists and was plus-2.
Before the trade, Huselius had actually been on waivers ... and no one around the NHL claimed him.
"It was the worst feeling I've ever had," he said. "I'm in South Florida and they don't want me. No one wants me. You start to wonder what you're doing wrong."
It's all strange for me, because I remember hearing scouts say that just like Teemu Selanne and Peter Forsberg before him that Kristian Huselius was the best player not playing in the NHL before he arrived in Florida for the 2001-02 season and had 23 goals and 22 assists and dazzled with his deft moves as a rookie.
I remember seeing Huselius play for the Panthers early that season on Long Island and seeing the rookie wait and wait and wait some more. Each time, he eluded another defender with a deft move until only goaltender Chris Osgood was left. One head fake later, the puck was deposited in the net. Osgood came out of his crease and yelled at the rookie, his anger obvious.
"I told him a rookie wasn't supposed to do that," Osgood told me later. "He gave me a little smile, like he was saying, 'Get used to it. I'm going to be around for a long time.' "
Huselius (pronounced Hue-SAY-lee-us) had two goals in that Oct. 30, 2001 game. And only one month into the season, he had nine goals. The only rookie to score more than nine goals in his first month was Selanne, who had 11 for Winnipeg in 1992-93.
Before he arrived in south Florida, Huselius led the Swedish Elite League in six offensive categories: goals (32), assists (35), points (67), power-play goals (10), game-winning goals (9) and shorthanded goals (5).
Then teammate Pavel Bure told me: "What he seems to do best is read off his teammates. He's got opponents thinking about him, and yet he's always ready to make a pass."
"He's a winger, but he handles the puck like a center," Carolina Hurricanes winger Marc Recchi told me. "I haven't seen a player break into the NHL with this kind of impact since Forsberg."
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"He's a very skilled guy. We're a hard-working team and a determined team, but that skill is huge for us. He's just naturally gifted offensively."
-- Calgary's Jarome Iginla on Huselius
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In the following years, when time stood still for Huselius, he added 20 and 10 goals in Florida, making one wonder if he had just become disinterested or had just lost his skills. But then, his 14 goals and 35 assists for Linkopings HC in the Swedish Elite League in 2004-05 during the lockout was just one point less than scoring champion Henrik Zetterberg.
Time and place obviously have spelled time and space for Huselius in Calgary, where the Flames reportedly were trying to make a deal before the March trade deadline for a playmaking center to help make life easier for captain Jarome Iginla. No center arrived. But down the stretch and in the playoffs so far, Huselius has often been on the other end of some pretty nice setups for Iginla.
When Sutter juggled his lines late in Game 1 against Anaheim, Langkow and Huselius just happened to be on the ice for the game winner as Huselius, stationed behind the Mighty Ducks' net, sent a perfect pass in front to Darren McCarty to give the Flames a 2-1 victory 9:45 into overtime.
Huselius made one of those distinctive stickhandling moves through traffic for a goal that cut Anaheim's lead to 3-2 en route to a 4-3 triumph over the Flames in Game 2. And then Kristian had a goal and two assists in Calgary's 5-2 triumph in Game 3.
"He's a very skilled guy," Iginla said. "We're a hard-working team and a determined team, but that skill is huge for us. He's just naturally gifted offensively. Any team can use that."
What is strange about Huselius' success is that he uses a noticeably skinny handle on his stick -- presumably to keep his glove from slipping off when he's making his magical moves. Then he ices his stick.
"I've seen him with a little ice cube, icing his stick," teammate Sean Donovan said.
On the surface, nothing about Huselius makes him a Darryl Sutter player. He has offensive skill, but is not 6-2, 200 pounds (he's slightly built), doesn't play strong defense and not known for fearlessness.
"It was one of those deals where a skilled guy maybe needed a change of scenery," Sutter said. "He's a young guy in the last year of a contract going to a hockey town, so you'd think it'd be in his best interests to help out a good team."
"He's one of the (most) skilled players in the whole league," Panthers captain Olli Jokinen said of Huselius earlier this season. "With the new rules and his skills, you expect him to make plays every game."
That was before Panthers General Manager Mike Keenan sent out an e-mail to the other 29 teams in the NHL saying that Kristian could be had in the right deal.
When he was young, Huselius' father, a carpenter, built a wooden board to use as a smooth surface for him to practice on in his backyard in Osterhaninge, Sweden. Neighborhood kids, a half-dozen or more at a time, would try their luck at taking balls and plastic pucks away from him, helping him perfect his moves. Now those kids have been replaced by grown men in the NHL and Kristian Huselius still displays the same puckhandling magic he did as a youngster.
And time is no longer standing still for this 27-year-old Darryl Sutter type of hard-working, passionate player.
