Road to 1,000 games paved with rock-like durability, considerable skill and dogged determination for Jets' Wheeler
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Blake Wheeler has long been a player who isn’t interested in diving into the reflecting pool while his career is ongoing.
This much was true on Saturday, the eve of his 1,000th NHL game — a milestone only reached by 357 players before him in the league’s 100-plus year history.
When the time is right, Wheeler will jog down memory lane, and he will have plenty to ponder.
You don’t reach quadruple digits in the games-played column without some of the stars in the sky aligning themselves.
It’s arguable, however, that Wheeler arranged those celestial bodies himself to get to Canada Life Centre on Sunday night against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Here’s a guy that reached the 1,000-game mark having missed only 18 games (he was ineligible to play a full 82-game schedule during the 2010-11 season after being traded from Boston to Atlanta).
Only seven of those games missed came before the start of last season, and three of them were nights off as he was rested prior to the playoffs. That’s just 15 games missed due to injury and illness during his 14-year career to date, including 11 over of the past two seasons (six with a concussion in 2020-21, and five more this season due to COVID protocol.)
Durable doesn’t even begin to describe the 35-year-old’s career.
The most visible evidence of this came on March 24, 2014 — Game No. 445.
Wheeler, skating through the neutral zone after accepting a pass from former Jets forward Eric O’Dell, was shoved by Stars forward Colton Sceviour into what should have been the smooth surface of the boards along the Stars’ bench. What happened instead appeared to be catastrophic.
The door on the Dallas bench closest to centre ice was still ajar from a recent line change. Sceviour’s push knocked Wheeler off-kilter which, coupled with the latter’s forward momentum, sent him shoulder-first into the sharp corner of the door opening.
The impact had Wheeler writhing on the ice for several minutes before having to be helped off and down the tunnel.
His night was surely over, and immediate thoughts were not if he was to miss time, but how long No. 26 would be absent from the lineup.
And then there he was, perhaps a minute or so later, emerging from the tunnel to rejoin his teammates on the bench. Furthermore, with 11 seconds left in a 2-1 loss, he was back on the ice as the Jets tried to find a late equalizer.
“Trainer is shaking his head, they’re worried he broke his shoulder blade,” said Jets head coach Paul Maurice, who was just a handful of games into his tenure in Winnipeg that night in Texas.
Wheeler would play all 82 games that season.
Missing games — and even time within those games — has been a rarity for Wheeler.
“I guess I was dramatic as a kid,” Wheeler said, smiling as he met with the media on Saturday morning. “So I was a kid that laid on the ice a lot, liked (the) attention and all that. I don’t think my dad liked that a whole lot, so I was taught early that there’s a difference between being hurt and being injured. If you’re going to play this game for a living, you’re going to feel hurt a lot. And the difference between being able to go out there and play and not is a pretty black-and-white thing for me.”
So a broken bone in his foot was merely an annoyance a few years ago, as were the fractured ribs he gutted his way through last season.
It’s been his calling card, and something that will be etched into his legacy when he’s done with the game as a nose-to-the-grindstone player that’s proved he’s as tough as they come.
“There’s players that have played 1,000 games that can probably play 5,000, and it’s style, stay out of traffic. And they’re good players,” Maurice said. “But (Wheeler’s) been an in-traffic player, full sprint, every practice, every game. So it’s not just the games, it’s the days that he would prep, it’s the summer that he’d put in to drive his body as hard as he has, to be as prolific as he has. That’s what I take away from it, the handful of guys that have — Rod Brind’Amour was like that, Mats Sundin drove himself real hard, learned how to compete heavy like that.
“Those guys, because they play like that, carry 1,000 games injured an awful lot. Broke a bone in his foot, ribs, just a whole bunch of things that you marvel at his ability to go out and play, and he’s played hard games — 1,000 the hard way.”
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The genesis of Wheeler’s NHL career came on June 26, 2004, when the Arizona Coyotes drafted the 17-year-old fifth overall out of Breck High School in Golden Valley, Minn., — a pick after Carolina snagged the man he’d learn so much from later on in his career, Andrew Ladd.
Wheeler’s selection seemed like a reach for the Coyotes at the time. He wasn’t ranked in the top 10 among North American-born skaters, not to mention those internationally, a list that included names such as Alex Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin.
“Everyone was saying who the hell is this guy?” said Wheeler, who was now reminiscing.
He’d never play a game for the ‘Yotes.
Citing the regime change that saw the Coyotes sold two years after he was drafted, Wheeler became an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2008 after playing four years at the University of Minnesota. Wheeler would sign with the Boston Bruins and would play the first 81 games of his career the following season, putting up 21 goals and 45 points as a rookie.
At first, Wheeler wasn’t the hard-nosed power forward that would eventually become his trademark. The Bruins, on the cusp of winning the Stanley Cup in 2011, traded Wheeler and Mark Stuart to the then-Atlanta Thrashers for Rich Peverley and Boris Valabik on Feb. 18, 2011. The move would also help the Bruins facilitate a trade for defenceman Tomas Kaberle later that same day.
Years later, Wheeler would admit getting traded stung, especially given that the Bruins would hoist the Stanley Cup later that spring.
“It was a blow for sure. I knew we had a good team in Boston. I knew there was a chance to win there,” Wheeler said. “I also knew that my role, the fit wasn’t maybe the best.”
The Thrashers would be sold to David Thomson and Mark Chipman later that year. Now in Winnipeg, Wheeler would blossom into one of the game’s premier power forwards.
“It’s the first place that let me be me,” Wheeler said. “Everywhere that I went before this was trying to make me into something that I’m not. Being a big guy, you’ve got to hit more, you’ve got to fight more, you’ve got to do this more, you’ve got to do that more. I got to be me (in Winnipeg) and I think the people here embraced the way that I play.”
On his 30th birthday on Aug. 31, 2016, Wheeler would be named captain of the Jets after Ladd had been traded to the Chicago Blackhawks prior to the trade deadline during the season before. Wheeler had served three years as one of Ladd’s alternates.
During the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons, Wheeler’s production would hit an all-time high, posting back-to-back 91-point campaigns, contributing to one of the game’s most productive lines alongside Mark Scheifele and a young Kyle Connor.
“He’s taught me a lot. He’s been a mentor of mine. He’s been there through it all. I’m very, very lucky I got to play with him; still playing with him,” Scheifele said on Friday. “Obviously, it’s a huge accomplishment to get to a thousand games. He’s definitely been a big role model of mine in the way that he works, the way that he comes to the rink and puts his best foot forward and works hard and shows that each and every day. I’ve been the beneficiary of a few tap-ins and a few really nice passes by him so I’ve been very, very lucky to play with him and looking for even more in the future.”
Sunday will be Wheeler’s 779th game with the franchise, second-most in team history after Bryan Little’s 843 games played.
His 707 points are a franchise record, as are the 478 assists that helped him get there. In a seven-year stretch, Wheeler had the fourth most assists between 2014-15 and the 2020-21 season with 348, with only Connor McDavid, Patrick Kane, and Niklas Backstrom producing more.
In the same stretch, he was tied for sixth-most points at 506 with Leon Draisaitl and Alex Ovechkin.
* * *
Wheeler’s impact on the Jets has been unmistakable and, at times, controversial.
With Scheifele, Wheeler was instrumental in showing Connor the ropes as he was coming up in the NHL.
“His approach each day and his work ethic — it’s contagious,” Connor said. “He wants to get better and he leads by example. He’s also a big voice in the locker room. For me, that’s one of the takeaways that I got from him, that you’ve got to bring it every single day, that it doesn’t matter, you’ve got to earn it every single day.”
If you ask Maurice, he’ll tell you every player has benefitted from Wheeler’s leadership.
“Kyle practices like Blake now. He doesn’t go at half speed, and at his size, I wouldn’t expect Kyle to burn it out every day, but he has a fitness level that he can,” Maurice said. “So those would be the guys that would be directly related, and it includes (Adam) Lowry and Josh Morrissey.”
A lot of that, Maurice said, comes from leading by example, pointing to Wheeler’s training and diet regimen that’s undoubtedly helped Wheeler through the bumps and bruises he’s played through.
“If your big dog is: show up, throw your skates on, eat some pizza and all that other workout stuff is meaningless, then the rest of your group will look like that, and your younger kids, especially,” he said. “They get a taste of that in camp… that’s the first time they’ve been on the ice with a guy that’s 6-foot-5 that skates like that, he’s strong and he’s snarly on every drill. That has a major impact on your group.”
That snarl can be found off the ice, too. And it’s something Wheeler has had to rein in over the years.
In an interview prior to the 2019-20 season, an offseason removed from the Jets crashing out in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Wheeler told TSN’s Sara Orlesky he wasn’t happy with the person he had become.
“I was disappointed for the first time in myself after last year not because we didn’t win the Stanley Cup,” Wheeler said. “I lost touch with myself as a dad, as a husband, first and foremost, because I invested so much into trying to win.”
On Saturday, Wheeler credited his wife, Sam, for helping him get to where he is, sacrificing her own ambitions in life in the process.
“Sam, she’s the only one that sees the day in and day out, the highs, the lows. She’s been there for me through it all,” Wheeler said. “Having her there, that one means the most to me. Nobody knows what 1,000 good days and bad days or the in-between has looked like more than her.
“She’s been my support system for the last 14 years. We’ve had a lot of, we’ve celebrated a lot of highs and when it’s as bad as it gets, I mean that’s when you need her. That’s when she’s been there for me. I’ll never be able to pay that back.”
Wheeler’s fiercely competitive nature and protect-at-all-costs attitude toward the team he leads has led, at times, to a thorny relationship with the media.
He infamously told Winnipeg Sun columnist Paul Friesen to “f— off” after his team’s Game 6 defeat to the Blues in the 2019 playoffs, following a question about what went wrong.
Prior to that, the Jets had gone from first place in the Central Division at Christmas to third by the end of the season. The transition into the playoffs did nothing to stop the team’s free-fall from grace.
Wheeler was criticized for being too hard on his younger players, acknowledging he needed to put himself in other people’s shoes a lot more as a captain than he was used to from those who helped him develop.
“I had to do it a certain way in my career to get to where I’m at,” Wheeler told TSN. “That’s not going to be necessarily the same for everyone else, but there’s a pretty common theme in this league that you’ve got to do a certain thing, you have to prepare a certain way if you want to be successful. So, I just try to show the guys what it looks like and from there, you’re not holding people’s hands, this is the big leagues.”
It’s a style that’s reportedly led to some strife inside the room over years, but the impact Wheeler has had is unmistakable, according to his teammates.
“I’ve been with him for a long time,” Scheifele said. “He’s taught me a lot. He’s been a mentor of mine. He’s been there through it all. I’m very, very lucky I got to play with him; still playing with him.”
Added Lowry: “He’s really been the heartbeat of our team for so long. He drives the bus for us. He’s a guy we all look to in the room when we need to get going, when we need some direction.”
No one gets to 1,000 games unscathed, and Wheeler won’t be the first exception to the rule.
Instead, he’s another testament to how much it takes, how difficult it can be and how unclear the path is until it’s finally traversed.
sbilleck@postmedia.com
Twitter: @scottbilleck
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