Broadway revival a hit Who says you can't go home again? New York Rangers President and General Manager Glen Sather proved that theory wrong by bringing Mark Messier back to Broadway in 2000. The announcement of Messier's return was long anticipated and rocked with emotion as three holdovers from the Rangers' 1994 Stanley Cup team were on hand to welcome him home, Brian Leetch, Mike Richter and Adam Graves. Messier was brought to tears several times during a Madison Square Garden press conference, especially when Leetch presented him with a Rangers sweater that not only had his patented No. 11, but it also had the captain's "C" sewn in the upper left-hand corner, which ended the reign of Leetch as New York's on-ice leader.
When asked why he gave up the captaincy, Leetch joked: "I was concerned Mark would become a problem in the locker room.
"Obviously, what Mark means to the three of us (Leetch, Richter, Graves) off the ice as friends means quite a bit," Leetch said on the day of Messier's return. "He's certainly helped us on the ice, leadership-wise, helping us grow as people. We're always going to look at Mark that way. Our team is a veteran team and it makes perfect sense to have the best leader in sports lead the team. He would be our leader regardless of what's on his shirt."
Messier was not only emotional in his acceptance of the captaincy from his friend and teammate, he also was gracious.
"I know the type of quality person he is and the type of leader he is and how much I've learned from him," Messier said of Leetch. "Brian has the mentality engrained in him of what's the best thing (to do). How can we make it better? Or what can we do to make it better? That's why he played the way he did when we won in '94. He's so confident in himself, with where he's at as a person and as a player. He's confident enough to give the captaincy up and not feel that he was a failure personally. I think he can hand it over to me and feel good about doing that."
Messier returned to New York after three seasons with the Vancouver Canucks. In his final season with the Canucks, 1999-2000, Messier scored 17 goals and 37 assists. He scored 24 goals and 42 assists in 82 games in 2000-01 with New York, seven goals and 16 assists in 41 games in 2001-02 and 18 goals and 22 assists in 78 games in 2002-03. Through the halfway mark of the 2003-04 season, Messier led the Rangers in goals with 13 and assisted on 11 more and was a plus-5. "I knew he wanted to come here," Sather said of re-signing his longtime player, "and I knew I wanted to bring him here." Sather wanted someone in the locker room he knew he could trust to lead the team on the right path. And who better than Messier, who not only led Sather's Edmonton Oilers to the Stanley Cup five times, but who also brought the Stanley Cup home to New York after a 54-year drought?
"Mark said to me in one of the conversations we had that he may not be able to carry a team to the Stanley Cup, but he could certainly lead them. I mean that's the way it's always been as far as I'm concerned. I don't think anybody could carry a team to a Stanley Cup. Leading is what I'm looking for."
"I just know what it meant to be a Ranger before and to be here and to play here," Messier said. "How tough it was leaving and having the chance to come back and play again is pretty exciting. It was the right decision for me for a lot of different reasons, not only professionally, but personally. I'm really excited about the possibility of being successful here again. That was part of the lure of coming to New York and overcoming all the obstacles."
Messier originally came to the Rangers on Oct. 4, 1991 in a trade from Edmonton and spent six seasons skating at Madison Square Garden. In 412 career games with New York, he netted 183 goals and 335 assists for 518 points. During the playoffs, Messier always seems to raise the level of his play come crunch time. He recorded 29 goals and 51 assists for 80 points in 70 postseason games as a Ranger. Messier trails only Leetch in assists (61) and points (89) and Ranger Hall-of-Fame forward Rod Gilbert in goals (34) on the team's all-time playoff scoring list.
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