Vermont Made

John LeClair of the Flyers has become a force at power forward and a hero in his home state

By Michael Farber

John LeClair, who at one time in his career didn't have a prayer of being an NHL star, scored a goal from his knees last month. Maybe you saw it. The tally made nearly all the television highlight packages, even the ones that usually show just the fights. LeClair, the Philadelphia Flyers' resident stoic, stumbled to the ice near the net after jostling with a Montreal Canadiens defenseman, took a pass from linemate Eric Lindros and pushed the puck into the cage. That simple. That complicated.

"Yeah, well," says LeClair when asked about the goal, "I saw the replay the next morning, and it didn't seem like anything spectacular to me. I mean, Eric made that play with his pass, and the goalie was out of position. There were a lot of circumstances involved. That's all. That goal is no ESPY winner or anything. Really, you just have to take things for what they are."

That's LeClair. When he looks at a cup, he sees it as neither half empty nor half full. He sees water. So why can't he see himself as anything but half empty?

After scoring the game-winner with 1:53 remaining last Thursday in a 4-3 victory over the Calgary Flames, LeClair was leading the NHL with nine goals. So why does it seem as if the first words out of his mouth are always, "Yeah, but..."? Why does he have a goal-scoring streak of six games and say, "In honesty, we haven't been that consistent?" Why does he hit the 50-goal mark two straight years during an era when scoring is off more than World Series ratings and still feel he hasn't really proved himself? Why doesn't he crow that most defensemen need a Denver boot to handle him in front of the net instead of fretting that he doesn't use his industrial-strength shot coming down the wing often enough? "My goals don't usually travel very far," LeClair says. "Face it. If you wanted to put on a uniform and skate, you could score most of the goals I do."

When is this 6'3", 226-pound bundle of self-deprecation going to realize just how splendid he is? If we're lucky, never.

Of course, a part of him understands that he is Big John LeClair, NHL star. He knows that he's one of 37 players in league history to have multiple 50-goal seasons, because that fact is cold and hard, plain and simple, not subject to debate. But another part of him is Little Johnny LeClair from St. Albans, Vt., who married his college sweetheart, Christina; who thought that a four- or five-year career in the minors would be swell; who, after twice scoring 19 goals in a season for Montreal, thought he had reached his potential; who envisioned himself as "a third-line checking forward who could go up and down the wing, not hurt the team and maybe chip in with a goal once in a while."

With 15 points at week's end, LeClair was four points behind Lindros for the NHL scoring lead, yet Little Johnny still stalks Big John. With his name regularly popping up in box scores and his likeness featured in a video game, he sometimes wonders if the job of hockey star isn't two sizes too large for him. He is routinely mentioned with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks' Paul Kariya (a restricted free agent who has yet to sign a contract), the Detroit Red Wings' Brendan Shanahan and the Phoenix Coyotes' Keith Tkachuk as one of the NHL's four top left wings, but LeClair says, "Those guys are a lot better than I am." Such comparisons take LeClair into the uncomfortable realm of opinion and interpretation. Nuance never has been the strong part of his game. "I want to be respected around the league, but it's not my goal to be the top left wing," says LeClair, who didn't report to training camp for nine days until the Flyers agreed to upgrade the remaining three years on his contract, to $3.3 million annually, plus incentives. "What matters to me is what matters to the guys in the dressing room."

When general manager Bob Clarke called after the Feb. 9, 1995, trade in which the Flyers swapped right wing Mark Recchi and a third-round draft choice for LeClair, defenseman Eric Desjardins and forward Gilbert Dionne and told LeClair he would be playing with Lindros, LeClair's first impulse was to hang up before Clarke changed his mind. "We figured we would try him with Eric, and if that didn't work, we'd move Rod Brind'Amour to the first line and use John at center on the second line," Clarke says. "We wondered whether he would be a good player or a failure, but he gave no indication he would do what he has done."

LeClair scored 25 goals in 37 games with Lindros and right wing Mikael Renberg on the newly minted Legion of Doom that spring, an outburst of scoring that had LeClair envisioning not a spot in the Hall of Fame but the possibility that he might become the next Warren Young. Say Warren Young around the NHL and eyes roll. Young was a middling winger for the Pittsburgh Penguins who scored a total of two goals his first 20 NHL games over three seasons, before riding Mario Lemieux's coattails to 40 in '84-85. After he was taken off Lemieux's line, Young averaged 10 goals a year for the rest of his career. "The thing that drives me most is not embarrassing myself," the 28-year-old LeClair says. "Not being a joke, like Warren Young, not having people use my name like that. That drives me more than self-doubt. Nobody likes to be embarrassed. I scored some goals [51] my first full year here, but it was important for me to back it up the next season. It's the next year that says a lot about you."

LeClair was spectacular in 1996-97, helping the U.S. win the inaugural World Cup and then scoring 50 goals during the NHL season, including 17 in the 30 games that Lindros missed because of injuries -- only a modest decline in per-game average from the 33 goals in 52 games he had when Lindros was in the lineup. Though the Flyers were swept by the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals, LeClair scored twice despite playing with a badly bruised left shoulder. Lindros, meanwhile, didn't score a goal until 14.8 seconds remained in the series.

LeClair and Lindros have a grand working relationship, understanding what kind of passes the other can and can't make, and who will go to the corner and who will head for the net in a given situation. They may not finish each other's sentences, but they can finish each other's passes, as LeClair did from his knees last month and as Lindros did late in Game 4 of the 1997 semifinals, after New York Rangers defenseman Jeff Beukeboom nicked LeClair's face in four places with a high stick. LeClair missed just 30 seconds of action -- trainer John Worley applied Vaseline and pressure to the streaming cut above LeClair's left eye -- returning to create the winning goal with a blind, backhand pass through the crease to Lindros at the left face-off circle with 6.8 seconds left. "People made a big deal out of my coming back, but the only cut that was bleeding was over the eye, and that was mostly because of the sweat," LeClair says. "It looked a lot worse than it was."

When he left the University of Vermont to join the Canadiens in March 1991, LeClair was already a big, strong kid, but he skated like Bambi on the pond with Thumper for the first time. His balance was so poor that he would often cruise into a corner with his left leg pointing north and his right leg heading south, and down he would go. He set off a Rube Goldberg reaction at practice during Montreal's 1993 Stanley Cup run by stumbling and knocking down a teammate, who in turn slid and wiped out coach Jacques Demers. Too bad. Back then Demers was about the only person standing up for LeClair. Other than occasionally lamenting his shortcomings, LeClair was about as quotable as those fictional Vermonters, Darryl and his other brother Darryl. So analysis fell to the voluble Demers, who proclaimed LeClair the next Kevin Stevens, then a two-time 50-goal scorer and the NHL's top power winger. That Jacques, what a kidder. Montreal writers would smirk and jot down the name Connie Stevens.

Still, LeClair had his moments as a Canadien. He established squatter's rights outside the crease and scored overtime winners against the Los Angeles Kings in Games 3 and 4 of the 1993 Cup finals. He was delighted to contribute but unimpressed with his play. "It's not as if I dominated the games and deserved to score," LeClair says. "Did you see those goals? The first went off their guy [defenseman Darryl Sydor] into the net, and the other I took three swipes at."

"All I know," says Demers, now a Montreal scout, "is that I have a Stanley Cup ring I owe to John LeClair."

The Cup, as tradition dictates, journeyed that summer to LeClair's hometown, which is 70 miles from Montreal. In a state that has produced twice as many presidents (Chester Arthur and Calvin Coolidge) as NHL players (LeClair), this was a huge event. The newspaper reports said that 10,000 people, including Senator Patrick Leahy, passed through the St. Albans rink to see the Cup, though LeClair suspects the figure was inflated considering that only 12,000 live in the town. St. Albans, primarily a farming community, is at 45 degrees latitude, halfway between the equator and the North Pole. This is but one of its several claims to fame. Not only was St. Albans a stop on the Underground Railroad, but it also was the site of the Civil War's northernmost skirmish. LeClair invariably fails to point out such fascinating facts to his guests. Shjon Podein, his road roommate with the Flyers, says, "The first time I was up there for his golf tournament" -- the John LeClair Foundation has raised $500,000 for Vermont children's charities since 1993 -- "we're going through town, and Johnny's pointing out all the sights: 'There's Bill's shop. There's Tony and Wendell. There's Frank's workout place, that's where you'll be going later.' He's the big fish who's come from the small pond, the small-town kid who's made good. Everybody knows him, and he knows everybody."

LeClair really does seem to know everybody, though he has never been introduced to Ben or Jerry. If those ice-cream emigres from Brooklyn really wanted to honor their adopted state, they would come up with a flavor named for LeClair. Vanilla is taken, so we humbly suggest LeClair Eclair, which would be a little bit of everything -- except the fluff.

Issue date: November 3, 1997