John-Michael Liles was born and raised in Hoosier country, where basketball is king.

Liles makes Hoosier
country a hockey haven
By Larry Wigge | NHL.com columnist
Feb. 16, 2006

It all started with John Liles. And his son, John-Michael Liles, wanted to make certain he wasn't going to miss the best moment of his life.

That's sort of how the Colorado Avalanche defenseman put it about a month ago, when he told his dad to make time in his schedule to go to Torino, Italy, to see him play for the United States Olympic team in mid-February.

"He's the one who got me into this," Liles said of his love for hockey that began when his dad got hooked on hockey in Indianapolis, Indiana, of all places, when he was a season-ticket holder for the WHA's Racers. There, he saw Wayne Gretzky play as a teen-ager and, well, he just fell in love with the game.

The 25-year-old Liles was born and raised in Hoosier country, where basketball is king. So, this is all pretty heady stuff for a kid from Zionsville, Ind., about a half-hour north of Indianapolis.

"It's like a suburb outside the suburbs," Liles said. "Cornfields, brick main street, stuff like that."

Actually, Zionsville, population 8,775, is like hockey's "Field of Dreams" in this instance. No hockey arena there. A volunteer fire department. Mayberry, if you will. But there's this brick street that runs through the heart of Zionsville's business district that recognizes the fact that Abe Lincoln once stepped off a train and spoke there while on route from Illinois to Washington, D.C., for his inauguration back in 1860.

Liles has no hockey bloodlines, but tenacity and competitiveness are in his blood. His grandfather played semi-pro baseball. His father enjoys golf and plays a spirited game of basketball. The late Michael Laughlin, a 5-foot-8, 160-pound prep star who played quarterback despite his lack of size, was John Michael Liles' great uncle, who died unexpectedly in 1982. The talented, young defenseman is named after him, as well as his grandfather and father.

The fact that Liles is thriving in the NHL today is testament to his will, his drive to be a success -- having to travel miles and miles to Carmel, Ind., to play in an organized hockey program -- and do it so well that he was invited to be part of USA Hockey's under-17 and -18 training programs before starring at Michigan State University, nearly winning the Hobey Baker Award as college hockey's top player.

It was especially pleasing considering that hockey hasn't really been a place for defensemen 5-10, 183 pounds, particularly in the NHL, where you almost have to be 6-foot, 200 pounds to get a look. That's probably why Liles, despite his imposing skating ability and an innate knack of moving the puck and making offensive plays that made him a Hobey Baker contender, was only an fifth-round choice, 159th pick in the 2000 Entry Draft by the Avalanche.

Whether it's the preparing to play in the NHL or for your country's Olympic team, there's always a need for offensively-skilled defensemen.

It's no coincidence that the Avalanche at this writing were one of only three NHL teams to have scored 200 goals this season. That's because Avalanche GM Pierre Lacroix learned long ago that you have to be creative and skilled in the transition game to make an offensive tough to play against each night in a long 82-game schedule and in the playoffs when the checking becomes tighter and having offensive defensemen step into the play to make things happen is essential.

For Lacroix that started for the Avs in their first year in Denver, when he acquired Sandis Ozolinsh, who quarterbacked the offense from the defense and led the Avalanche to a Stanley Cup in 1996, their first year in Denver. The tradition has carried on with such standout defensemen as Ray Bourque, Rob Blake and now Liles.

In the Olympic game, played on a wider ice surface, it is no less important to have mobile defensemen.

"John Michael Liles is an extremely talented offensive player. He's clearly the catalyst of a very fine Colorado power play," said Atlanta Thrashers G.M. Don Waddell, who doubles as the GM of the U.S. Olympic Team. "Power plays and penalty killing play such a big part of the game today -- and that's where we think he will stand out for us."

"Sometimes, I take a step back and look at where I am," Liles told me. "I know how lucky I am every day."

It's that honest and passionate look at life that drives the 25-year-old defenseman on and off the ice.

It's a great story. There aren't a lot of kids that leave programs like Michigan State and play right away in the NHL. It doesn't hurt that NHL All-Stars like Adam Foote and Joe Sakic took a shine to Liles in his first professional training camp. Foote helped him with the little things on defense he would have to learn to play in the NHL. Sakic, well, he provided the leadership he does so well as captain of the Avs.

"It's hard to get a young guy to step in on defense who has as much composure as he does," said Foote, who was Liles' mentor in 2003-04 and has moved on to Columbus as a free agent this season, but still raves about his former student. "He's not a big guy, but he plays big; he's stronger than he looks and he really moves the puck well."

There's a lot more responsibility on the defensive side of things, and that's usually the part of the game that junior players and college players have the biggest adjustment to make at the NHL level. But Liles is an older kid and he's very mature. He uses his body positioning extremely well to compensate for his lack of size, and he keeps getting better and better.

When it comes to standout defensemen playing in Colorado, Liles follows Sandis Ozolinsh, Ray Bourque, and Rob Blake.

"I never really got into basketball when I was growing up," Liles said. "I played a little with my buddies in pickup games. I liked hockey so much that I stuck with it. I was pretty fortunate that all the teams I played on had parents who wanted us to play against the best competition. So, we traveled to Michigan every couple of weeks and went up to Toronto and anywhere we could find the best competition. It was tough. You're a team from Indiana wanting to play them, and they aren't coming down to Indiana. But we had one another, hockey buddies to pal around with."

After playing in just 10 professional games at Hershey of the AHL after his senior season at Michigan State, Liles was surprisingly ready for the NHL.

His showed off his offensively skills right away, finishing tied for sixth among rookie scorers and first among rookie defensemen with 10 goals and 24 assists and a plus-minus of plus 7. He added plenty of meat to the Avs power play, dumping up into the offense.

"He moves the puck so well and he's so smart," Blake said. "His size was never a factor. At first, he was rarely in the corner battling the bigger guys. He was moving the puck quickly out of our zone and up the ice. But once we got into the season he never shied away from the physical play, partly because he is so good at establishing his position defensively."

Even before he knew he would be invited to the U.S. Olympic trials in Colorado Springs back in September, Liles was captivated with the thought that he could potentially get a chance to play for the Olympic team. Last year, in fact, when he was playing for the Iserlohn Rooster in Germany, he made a side-trip to Italy to get a look at the Olympic site in Turin.

"I had a chance to go down there for a few days," he said, eyes wide with excitement. "It definitely wasn't long enough because it was amazing -- just awesome food and good wine. It's a very, very pretty country."

Liles was born nine months after the chilling, February, 1980, U.S. Olympic gold-medal run at Lake Placid, N.Y., but he grew up watching and rooting for the Americans in all of the Olympics that have followed.

"Since we don't have an abundance of goal-scorers, the key for us will be to gel together quickly and play quick on the ice, and that starts with having mobile defensemen like John Michael Liles," said Carolina Panthers Coach Peter Laviolette, who captained the 1994 U.S. Olympic Team and now serves as coach.

For a lot of years, Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman Ken Klee was probably the best known Indiana-born player in NHL history. You can add Philadelphia Flyers tough guy Donald Brashear to the Indiana-born alumni list, even if he was raised in Canada. But it's clear that Liles is nearly ready to surpass Klee on that short list of Indiana fame.

"When you have to really work to get this far, you clearly demonstrate a hunger and passion for the game -- two qualities we all need to be better players," Sakic said. "John Michael Liles is a byproduct of that hard work, that passion and dedication and determination to be better. The Avs are lucky to have him."

Hockey is lucky to have John Michael Liles.

That brick road down the center of Zionsville is about to become famous for more than just a whistle-stop visit by Abraham Lincoln more than 100 years ago.