Their hallmark was leadership

2007 inductees a classy group

The NHL's latest immortals (from left) - Ron Francis, Al MacInnis, Jim Gregory, Mark Messier, and Scott Stevens - were allowed to do a little high-sticking at the shrine in Toronto yesterday. (ADRIAN WYLD/Associated Press)

TORONTO - Scott Stevens won the Stanley Cup three times with the New Jersey Devils, and any highlight reel of the bruising, rock-jawed defenseman usually will include repeated shots of him lowering the boom on all customers, be they big (Eric Lindros) or small (Paul Kariya).

To be on the receiving end of a crushing Stevens check was nasty business. He was fair, but punishing, a come-to-life version of a Rock'em-Sock'em Robot on skates. In his earliest days with Washington, he often had to be restrained from jumping off the bench to enter a fight, young coach Bryan Murray racing to the far end of the bench to grab him from behind with an upper-body bear clench.

"I liked to play an aggressive game," he said yesterday, shortly before he was formally inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. "If you look around, I think each of us was known for something, but to have a successful career, you have to do more than one thing. You have to be a complete player."

True enough, as evidenced by Stevens's fellow inductees. Mark Messier was known for his toughness and leadership. A blistering, accurate slapper (delivered with a wooden stick, mind you) was defenseman Al MacInnis's trademark. Ron Francis, his skills perhaps the most sublime of the group, quietly and efficiently passed off enough pucks to become the game's second all-time assist man (1,249 total, or exactly 714 in arrears of Wayne Gretzky).

"My dad stressed two things that always stuck with me," said Francis, who is now Carolina's assistant general manager. "The first is that play in the defensive zone is just as important as the offensive zone - because it's just as important to prevent a goal as it is to score it. The second is that if you set up a guy and he scores, that's just as important as if you scored yourself."

Never again will the Hall see a class imbued with as much leadership as the 2007 Fab Four. Stevens, Messier, MacInnis, and Francis all were captains during the course of their distinguished careers, and Messier, perhaps more than any athlete in any sport, personified the leadership role.

Mike Keenan, who coached the Rangers to their '94 Stanley Cup with Messier the captain, recently noted that Messier perfected the captain's art of galvanizing the locker room. According to Keenan, Messier understood how vital it was for a club's 12th and 13th forwards to feel they were first-liners in the club's overall success, and how spare defensemen had to be made to feel like stars rather than pluggers.

"To me," said Messier, standing in the Hall yesterday morning with his back to the etchings of his fellow immortals, "that was as basic as lacing up my skates or taping my stick. You have to have 'em. You don't win a Cup without those guys, and it takes tremendous commitments on their parts, especially if they're not playing every game, to stay ready.

"Hey, I was hurt sometimes, coming back from injury and working out with those guys, and I know what a monotonous job it can be to stay ready."

Unlike his playing days, when he was forever fierce and intense, Messier appeared relaxed and comfortable inside the shrine, his new Hall of Fame ring snug on his right hand. Growing up, he said, he was a big fan of both Bobby Orr and Guy Lafleur, and he took time to glance at their short biographies posted beneath their likenesses on the hallowed Hall's glass wall.

"It's amazing to read some of these," he said. "As my uncle Victor would say, 'We sail in the wake of those who've gone before us,' and there is no greater testimony to that than standing here, looking at the names and pictures on the wall . . . players sewn up with binder twine and thrown back on the ice because they didn't have trainers. It makes you think of what they endured to create the legacy and history of the game."

Orr was one of his favorites, said Messier, just because of the revolutionary style No. 4 brought to defense. Messier was intrigued by the Hub's love affair with Orr and the Big Bad Bruins, and admired the defenseman for arriving at rinks early in the afternoon, hours before game time, to prepare for the opening faceoff. He loved walking into the old Garden on Causeway Street.

"Just knowing that Orr had done it in that rink," said Messier.

All of the Garden's, shall we say, idiosyncrasies, were on display, Messier recalled, when his Oilers took on the Bruins in the '88 and '90 Cup finals.

"They must have jacked up the heat to 120 degrees in our room," he recalled. "It was boiling. Then we got up to open the windows, and someone had soldered them together. And the rats, they'd come in and eat our muffins between periods. Come back in the room, and yeah, my old friend had made off with my muffin. But, hey, you can't replace those places."

Stevens, for all the hits he dished out, also received his share, and the one he remembers most came compliments of then-Bruin Bryan Smolinski. It was at Continental Airlines Arena, the Devils' former home at Exit 16W, and some of the details remain a little sketchy. The hit knocked Stevens cold.

"The next time I woke up," said Stevens, "I was in the trainer's room, on my back, and Bob Carpenter was in there in street clothes. I said, 'What are you doing wearing a suit?' I didn't know where I was.

"I know it was the playoffs, and I wish I could remember the year . . . but, you know, I don't remember a lot of it."

Stevens, Messier, Francis, and MacInnis are here now, for everyone to remember, forever.