Standing out from the start

Every time Craig Heisinger looks up at the banners hanging at Canada Life Centre, showing the names of alumni inducted into the Winnipeg Jets Hall of Fame, a smile comes to his face.
The Winnipeg Jets assistant general manager has been around the game a long time. In fact, he formed relationships with a number of the players that have been inducted so far - Dale Hawerchuk, Randy Carlyle, and Thomas Steen are just a few examples.
"It's always great to see guys who gave their heart and soul to the organization get rewarded," Heisinger said. "It means a lot to them, and I think even more so to their families."
This year, when Teemu Selanne and Teppo Numminen's names join the other eight members of the team's Hall of Fame, Heisinger will once again be full of memories.
One of those will be from the 1988 IIHF World Junior Championship.

"(Numminen) played for Finland and I was the equipment guy for Canada," said Heisinger. "We had a lot of great players on Canada - Theo Fleury, Joe Sakic, Trevor Linden, guys like that - but I thought Teppo stood out above the crowd. He was a tremendous one-on-one defender, really good skater, used angles well, it was hard not to notice."
Numminen had five goals and seven points in seven games that tournament, helping Finland to a bronze medal, was named the tournament's best defenceman, and was also named to the tournament all-star team.
Heisinger was the equipment manager for the Western Hockey League's Brandon Wheat Kings at the time, but his opinion was one that then general manager John Ferguson and head coach Dan Maloney valued. So when they asked who stood out at the tournament, the product from Tampere, Finland was at the top of Heisinger's list.

That was good news, as the Jets had selected Numminen 29th overall in the 1986 NHL Entry Draft.
When Numminen made his NHL debut in Canada, wearing a Jets jersey for the first time in 1988-89 as a 20-year-old, he scored once and had 15 points in 69 games. Those numbers jumped to 43 points in 79 games the following season.
"Very quickly everybody recognized his talent and his ability. He had a great personality and demeanour despite being really quiet," said Heisinger. "He earned respect through his work ethic, through his play, and his overall commitment to the team. He was a Winnipeg Jet through and through. He never took any practices off. He never took days off, and he had fun playing the game."
Heisinger had a front row seat to all of it. Numminen's first season in the NHL was also the first season Heisinger began with the Jets as the assistant equipment manager.
Day in and day out, Heisinger worked with every player on the roster, including Numminen. The smooth-skating defencemen and four-time Olympian was only particular about one thing - his skate blades.
"He wore the old ICM blades on his skates. He always took half a dozen or so pairs home to Finland to have radiused in Finland," Heisinger recalled. "One year we ran out and we had no more. Myself and Stan Wilson were the equipment guys and we didn't have the heart to tell him. We just took an ordinary pair and put the blue or black mark with the Sharpie in about the same spot the guy in Finland always did. We put a new pair of ICMs on his skates and he told us they were the best pair he ever had."

No matter where his blades were worked on, Numminen continued to have success on the ice. He was rewarded for his efforts at the start of the 1993-94 season, as he was named an alternate captain for the first time.
Although his career took him to Phoenix, Dallas, and Buffalo from 1996 until he retired in 2009, Numminen kept that 'A' on his jersey. In fact, from 1993 until 2009, there were only three seasons that Numminen didn't wear a letter.
"Was it a surprise he wore an 'A' everywhere he went? Absolutely not," said Heisinger. "Not every leader is a vocal guy in the room, and certainly Teppo wasn't, but he was very much a leader on the ice with his play. Everybody respected him."
So now Numminen will get that respect back from the fans that watched him play 547 of his 1,372 career games in the Manitoba capital. He's already a member of the IIHF Hall of Fame and the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame, but on November 17 against the Anaheim Ducks, his number 27 will join other Jets legends in the Winnipeg Jets Hall of Fame.
"Everyone deserves that honour that's up there," said Heisinger. "Teppo really was an underrated superstar and he brought a lot more to Winnipeg than a lot of people will ever know."