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Checking With 100% Interest

Rick Meagher

Became One Of The NHL's Best Defensive Centers When He Learned Less Is More.

Rick Meagher has learned that less can add up to more in the National Hockey League. Following the off-season trade that sent him from the New Jersey Devils to the St. Louis Blues back in 1985, Meagher took stock of his NHL career and, in doing so, threw out some of the stock in his kitchen. Now considered one of the best checking forwards in the NHL, the Blues' 36-year-old defensive dynamo shed some pounds following the trade and has been going strong ever since. Not that Meagher was ever Refrigerator Perry; he simply found that leaving some excess baggage behind served to speed up his game. "I lost 18 pounds when I went to St. Louis, and that had a big effect on me," Meagher recalls. "It kept me skating well, and as long as I stayed in shape I knew I could skate and keep playing. "The big thing was I started dating a dietician," Meagher says. "She didn't make me lose the weight, but she educated me on my eating habits-what was good and bad. I started working out more, but the big thing was watching what I was eating. Once I did lose that weight, boy I tell you, I felt so much better. My endurance was better, my wind was better, and my recovery rate was better. So losing the weight was big."

Listed at 5-foot-8, and with his age a factor in his conditioning, Meagher knows he can't carry around a lot of excess weight. Yet he remembers back to college days at Boston University and a certain Italian-American mother who encouraged him to have another plate of pasta. "I was heavy in college," Meagher laughs. "I think I was 185, and that's only because I hung around with Mike Eruzione and spent the weekends eating Italian food at his mother's. That put on the pounds." Meagher knows now that to continue his remarkable stretch of longevity in the NHL, speed is of the essence-speed and the ability to check the opposition. "If you told me 10 years ago that I would be playing 12 years of hockey I would have told you you were crazy," says Meagher, who signed a new multi-year contract with the Blues prior to the start of the 1989-90 season.

With snipers like Brett Hull, Paul MacLean and Peter Zezel dotting the St. Louis roster, Meagher knows goal scoring isn't a vital element to his game-defense is. In the Norris Division, the Blues face a steady diet of Chicago's Denis Savard and Detroit's Steve Yzerman. Then, there are those occasional pests, Los Angeles' Wayne Gretzky and Pittsburgh's Mario Lemieux to contend with. It's always a pretty safe assumption that when one of the game's top centermen jumps on the ice against the Blues, Meagher is sure to follow. "Checking is a job where you don't get a lot of recognition," Meagher says. "It's nice to get a pat on the back once in awhile."

Meagher gained some recognition in last season's playoffs. The Blues downed the Minnesota North Stars in the opening round and Meagher had three goals and two assists in the series, leaving North Stars Coach Pierre Page a Meagher fan. "Rick Meagher gave some life to a couple of guys in the League," Page says. "A couple years ago, teams started getting rid of guys that were 30 years old. Now, look at Meagher; he's a role model." A role model extolling the virtues of defense and checking skills.

In St. Louis, the Blues have found this checking account to be money in the bank. "Checking really prolonged my career," Meagher says. "The role I'm doing now, checking guys and killing penalties. The thing is, you could make a career of it but not a lot of guys want to do it. Most guys want to go out, score goals, and get the recognition that goes with it. There's pressure on me when I go out against a Lemieux, a Gretzky, an Yzerman or Savard. There's pressure on guys who are expected to score 30 goals a year, too. I've always been able to skate and that's been a big advantage for me. I can keep up with a lot of these guys and I've been around long enough now to know I can take some shortcuts. I used to skate 100 miles a game and as the years have gone on, I've learned I don't have to do that all the time. You use your head more. You get a little smarter the more you play. My biggest thing is my skating and I credit my defensive ability to my skating. I can keep up with these guys."

These guys - Savard, Yzerman, Gretzky and Lemieux - all present unique challenges and problems to a player like Meagher. Facing them, Meagher already knows the odds are stacked against him. Just look at the scoring totals next to their names and it's clearly evident few clubs have been able to shut down these skilled snipers. "They are the obvious guys-Gretzky, Lemieux and Yzerman - who I see the most," Meagher says. "Yzerman is just a tremendous hockey player and what's really good about him is he plays both ends of the ice. When he gets the puck, he comes back behind his own net. Gretzky and Lemieux look for that breakaway pass quite a bit. They'll be up by the blue line or the red line or something. It seems a little easier to cover them because you know where they're going to be. Somebody like Yzerman or Savard is tougher to watch because they go back into their own end and use guys to set up screens. It's a little more skating, a little more work covering them. Those four guys are the toughest simply because they are the best. Those four guys stand out because they're centermen and I see them quite a bit."

Chicago's Savard holds the reputation as hockey's most exciting player, a whirling dervish of dekes, fakes and skating skill. He is perhaps Meagher's greatest challenge. "He's unbelievable when he gets wound up," Meagher says. "When you go into Chicago Stadium and those people get him going and he's skating at 100 miles per hour... He can go down with the puck, do a 360 and still hang on to the puck. He's amazing to watch. "That's the fun part of my job. I can go out there with them. If I'm checking these guys, I'm on the ice with them all night and I'm watching what they're doing and they amaze me, too. I can't believe what they can do. You can't sit and watch what they're doing though or they'll put three pucks in the net before you know what's going on. That happened to us with Lemieux last year. He had eight points against us, five before we knew what happened. He does it to everybody. "I wouldn't want to see him eight times a year," Meagher notes of Lemieux. "Against us last year, he scored a goal with two guys on his back, still deked the goaltender and put the puck in the net. He's so big and strong. He takes one stride and he's gone. If he's got his back to the red or blue line, and if he takes half a turn and gets the puck right there, there isn't a guy in the League that can catch him. He's got those legs and in two strides it's 'See you later.' "When Savard gets going, he's going 150 MPH-spinning. Yzerman is just a great all-around player, one of the best in the game. He's a big offensive threat."

Gino Cavallini

Meagher is well aware stopping players of this caliber isn't a one-man project. He may be the one to check Savard directly, but it's a team effort to achieve success against the League's top scorers. "I've always had good guys out there with me when I'm checking somebody," Meagher says. "I had Mark Reeds when I first came to St. Louis and then Herbie Raglan and Gino Cavallini. I've had some pretty good players to help me out, so it isn't a one-man thing. You really have to rely on everybody on the ice. But as any checker will tell you, the best thing is to just stay with them no matter where they go. It's not as easy as it looks; it gets to be pretty tough. You can't even worry about the puck half the time. You just have to stay with them. But you get to a game some nights and a guy is really confident, he's going good, and whether you have a checker on him or not, he's going to do something against you." Speed is a key element of Meagher's game, yet so is experience. Coming into the season, he had 591 NHL games under his belt, so there is a lot of savvy in those skates.

Meagher isn't reluctant to share the wealth of that knowledge with his teammates. When he broke into the League, veterans passed along many a trick of the trade to him. Now, that tradition continues. "I really think you need some guys who have been around because they know other players," he says. "I know we would have been in a lot of trouble last year without Greg Millen ... a lot of trouble. Greg's been around for a long time and he knows the players and he knows the teams. He knows what it's like to be in the playoffs. You need that experience around. When I first came up (to Hartford in 1980), I looked up to Davey Keon, Ricky Ley and guys like that," Meagher recalls. "When they told me something I listened because I knew they had been there before. It helped me a lot. Gordie Howe was there at the time and he helped me a lot. So it rubs off on the young players. Davey Keon and I used to talk quite a bit. Just little things, like what he would do on a 2-on-i or a 3-on-2. He would tell me different things, pass to the wing, go to the net, little things like that."

At 36, Meagher is among the game's elder statesmen. Yet he still displays a child's enthusiasm for the sport and, armed with the new contract, is closing in on another career goal. "I'd like to try and play two or three more years," he says. "I'd like to get to 15 years and then call it quits. I feel good, I think I can play that long as long as-knock on wood - my skating keeps up and my legs are healthy. I'm playing a role now where I think I can play three more years. With the changes now and the young guys coming up, it's going to take those young guys a couple years to develop. That would be fine. It would be a good career and time to look for something else to do." Like maybe drop back to Mike Eruzione's place for some more pasta. No, make that a salad.

By Phil Coffey; Goal Volume XVII Issue 11

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