As first NHL stars of internet age reach twilight years, how has fame changed?
Kirill Marchenko stands at his locker with a bemused grin as a throng of reporters slowly make their way towards his stall at the Ford Performance Centre. Marchenko has been with the Toronto Maple Leafs for exactly one week, after being traded on the eve of the regular season from the Columbus Blue Jackets. He’s been readily available throughout the busiest seven days of his professional career, so why is he the subject of interest following a routine Monday practice? Alexander Ovechkin announced plans to retire after the season earlier this morning, and it naturally invites some contemplation on the NHL’s first stars of the internet era. Marchenko clues in and is ready to play ball.
“It’s our favorite player, especially Ovi and (Evgeni) Malkin,” Marchenko said with a smile on Oct. 5, when asked to speak about Ovechkin’s impact on him as a kid growing up in Russia. “You always go between these two guys, especially me when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I used the same curve, same stick, tried to do like, same yellow laces and just copy the style. It’s so nice.”
Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby, Steven Stamkos and John Tavares are all prodigies that came of age during the internet’s revolution, the infancy of social media, and are now among the NHL’s elder statesmen. We knew that Ovechkin wasn’t going to play forever, but after 22 seasons in the league, it’s worth examining how the nature of fame has changed.
There’s another simple catalyst: Gavin McKenna is one of three first overall picks on the Maple Leafs, and all eyes have been on the 18-year-old’s every shift through the opening month of the season. How has the nature of fame changed for hockey prodigies, from Ovechkin’s time in the league, to the McKennaissance Era?
“I think you just want him to be himself,” Tavares told a small group of reporters, including Daily Faceoff’s Matt Larkin, at the NHL Player Media Tour in September. “There’s a reason why he is who he is and the position he’s in. So he doesn’t have to come in and look to change or do a number of different things. I think just come in and try to soak it in. You’re a rookie once in the NHL and have this amazing opportunity to just enjoy it, be driven, compete your ass off and have fun with it.
“You’re going to have a tremendous number of resources, influences, mentors, people within the organization, on the team, that are going to do everything they can to help you along the way. And there’s going to be ups and downs, but that’s part of the journey, part of the learning. And you get to live your dream. You’ve been thinking about this for as long as you can remember. You’ve really got to enjoy it and have fun with it. So I’m excited to be there along with him as a teammate and just remember what it was like for myself.”
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Steven Stamkos was seemingly predestined for NHL fame. As legend has it, Stamkos was the first player in his age group to develop a potent slapshot, and he was considered a future first overall pick at 13 years old, while starring for the Markham Waxers in the Ontario Minor Hockey Association, before being selected first overall by the OHL’s Sarnia Sting. It’s quite possible I may have misremembered a small detail: Stamkos tells me he was not the MVP of the Quebec Pee-Wee Tournament, as I thought, but it’s true that he won the OHL Cup and countless other tournaments as a kid.
After having a few laughs and giving this reporter a chance to save face, Stamkos thoughtfully engages on how his experience may differ from McKenna’s, 18 years apart, on Oct. 6.
“I think it’s changed dramatically, especially when you come to a market like this,” he said. “I think that’s first and foremost. I don’t think many people knew who I was in Tampa when I got drafted. So a completely different set of circumstances. I think it starts there. And then obviously the game has grown so much, which is amazing. And you’ve seen the skill and how ready these kids are coming into the league now. It’s pretty remarkable. When you come to a place like this, it’s a pressure cooker, right? You know, I walked into our hotel last night and the TV was on in the hotel and it was all Maple Leafs, right? There’s not many cities you walk into and it’s like that. So that’s just the way it is here, and I’m sure he’s gonna do fine. I got a lot of nerves. You know, it’s a tough league, so it takes some time sometimes.”
Stamkos doesn’t know it yet, but later this evening, McKenna will register his first two NHL points, bringing the house down upon roofing a shot into the top corner past Nashville Predators goaltender Juuse Saros. Although they’re competitors, Stamkos provides a generous assessment of the Leafs’ rookie sensation:
“That’s still how it goes for whether you play 20 years in this league. You go through rough patches, you get one, all of a sudden the confidence is there and you’re off and rolling. It’s going to come for him. He’s too good of a player. And I think he’s surrounded by too many good players and good veterans and all-stars and superstars in this league that are going to help him navigate especially what it’s like to play here.”
John Tavares was the best player in Ontario, playing almost two years up with the Toronto Marlboros in minor hockey, a team that sent six players to the NHL. Tavares was preternaturally gifted as a scorer in the slot and gained exceptional status into the Ontario Hockey League, where he went first overall to the OHL’s Oshawa Generals. Three years later, Tavares was a household name, as there were roaring evaluations of his on-ice prowess throughout the Greater Toronto Area for several years.
Nick Paul is now teammates with Tavares and remembers this phenomena well. Paul played in the Greater Toronto Hockey League with the Mississauga Senators and would often commute to Leafs games as a fan. Five years Tavares’ junior, Paul recaps his initial memories of him.
“I mean, you just knew he was something special,” Paul said to Daily Faceoff on Oct. 15. “Obviously with how he played and the numbers he put, especially in the OHL,, you just knew he was gonna be a special guy, special player. He’s just one of those guys, like, same as Connor McDavid, you just knew. It’s like, all right, lights up the GTHL, goes to OHL, does crazy numbers. He’s just one of those guys that has it.”
Paul also reflected on how the nature of hockey has changed, with players specializing in one sport, rather than excelling as multisport athletes. Although elite hockey has often been prohibitively unaffordable at times, there are other dimensions to the new nature of stardom.
“Social media is way crazier now than it was then,” Paul said. “The game’s obviously different. You know, back when I played, it was like, all right, like I said with John, you play lacrosse, you play soccer, you play football, you play hockey, and then when you get good enough at hockey, you just kind of take that and run with it. But now I feel like it’s just like, you don’t know these kids because they’re just hockey 24/7, camps, everything’s videotaped now. All the tournaments have cameras, all the games have cameras. It’s just a lot more serious now, I guess. It’s more professional at a younger age. With social media and everything, you get to see a lot of… there were more clips and everything like that. And I know when me and John played, if there was a video, it was on a camcorder, so it wasn’t really going anywhere.”
New York Rangers defenseman Sean Durzi also falls into this camp. Durzi has developed into a solid player for the Rangers, and the Mississauga native also recounts his initial memories of Tavares, ahead of an Oct. 22 contest in Toronto.
“I actually remember my first memory of him was I went to an OHL game,” Durzi said. “I saw him play for the (Oshawa) Generals. My parents took me with a few friends, and I remember they’re saying this new kid’s in town, you go see him. And we went to the game and it’s funny now, we’re friends. Now that we played with each other, I went to the Islanders camp when he was there way back in 2017. So he’s a great guy. Again, it’s someone I’ve looked up to, and that was my first memory, was seeing him at camp and just how well he took care of himself, how much of a professional he was. Someone I could look up to.”
Durzi’s teammate, Alexis Lafreniere, is amid a breakout in his own right, during his seventh season in the NHL. Lafreniere was preemptively labeled as a bust, but through the opening month of the season, he’s been one of the NHL’s premier forwards, while operating in the spotlight.
“They’ve both done a great job,” Durzi said of Tavares and Lafreniere. “Two pretty big markets that they both play in now, and just the way that they handle themselves as professionals every day. There’s not much more they could do.”
Owen Power wasn’t as highly touted as Stamkos and Tavares before him, but that’s immaterial in the long run. Power went wire-to-wire as the best prospect in his NHL draft year before being selected first overall by the Buffalo Sabres. Six years into his professional career, Power is taking the leap for the Sabres, utilizing the full arsenal of his vast skill set. Power defers any comparisons about his own experience, but he speaks to what McKenna may be experiencing in hockey-mad Toronto on Oct. 15.
“I think especially for him, summer like this, it’s pretty crazy,” Power said. “I bet he probably can’t really walk around anywhere. So, you know, it’s… I think just that for him, it’s going to be an adjustment and take a little bit to get used to. But he’s going to be fine.”
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We’re two decades removed from when Sidney Crosby’s feats at Shattuck St. Mary gained international attention before he tore up the QMJHL with the Rimouski Oceanic. Ovechkin and Crosby as a duopoly singlehandedly revamped interest in the NHL across the United States, while Stamkos, Tavares, Power and McKenna have all survived, and thrived, in the hyperpressured Canadian hockey media economy. The nature of 24-7 media presences is now innate in professional sports, but it wasn’t always a given. As Ovechkin basks in his retirement tour, we’re witnessing the dying embers of the NHL’s first internet age, all the more reason to appreciate the greatness in front of us in plain sight.
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