Nothing typical about Brodeur's path
NEWARK, N.J. -- So, this is what greatness looks like up close.
Sweaty, smiling, relaxed.
It's been, what, 20, 25, 30 minutes since Martin Brodeur exited the ice after practice Monday morning, and he's still hanging around, chatting with reporters, yakking with New Jersey Devils broadcast analyst and former NHL netminder Glenn "Chico" Resch. He is some 31 hours from his first opportunity to become the winningest goaltender in the history of hockey and he is more bemused than agitated.
"I'm happy that I was able to tie it up [the career wins record] in Montreal and now it's just a matter of winning my next one and it's all going to be over," Brodeur said. "It'll be definitely nice if we're able to do it tomorrow."
BRODEUR: CHASING HISTORY
Martin Brodeur passed Patrick Roy's all-time wins record and stands alone with 552 career victories:
- Chasing History: Photos, video and top moments from Brodeur's career
Will he do anything different to prepare for Tuesday's home tilt against Chicago?
"I try not to do too much. I know there's a lot of demands for me to be everywhere because everybody loves to talk to me about it and stuff like that," he said. "I try and accommodate everybody as much as I can, but I have to stay focused on what I have to do, and that's play hockey."
These moments are rare in professional sports -- a significant milestone, and one that might never be re-created; so, we search for what defines greatness and try to explain what it is to be part of it before it passes.
Moments like this are decidedly about reflection. How can it not be when you're looking at a body of work that spans 15 seasons and 986 regular-season games, never mind the 551 wins, three Stanley Cups and raft of individual honors.
But that reflection is mostly external. Internally, there is just the game. Simple.
"It's probably mostly you guys," Brodeur said with a chuckle. "It's hard to reflect on anything when it's not over yet. That's the bottom line. I don't feel that that point has arrived in my career, but, I mean, it's normal. It's quite an accomplishment that I'm going through right now, and I'm glad to answer all the questions about it. But, personally, for me, it's just another game and hopefully we'll get through this and after that we won't talk about it until I'm done. I want to set the bar as high as I can for everyone else to follow me."
So there you have it. For all the things that define Brodeur as great, that suggest something otherworldly (like the 11 straight seasons of 35 wins or more), he is remarkably mortal.
Forward Brian Rolston played with Brodeur for parts of six seasons and won a Cup with him in 1995 before playing elsewhere, then returning to the Devils this past offseason. Rolston said Brodeur is exactly the same person now as before.
"He's got that temperament, that kind of laid-back temperament," Rolston said. Yet, the forward added, Brodeur is intensely competitive.
Somehow, he has managed to find the balance between the two. It's not something others have been able to achieve.
For many of the game's great goaltenders, greatness always seemed to come at some price, as though that greatness needed to be fueled by anger or destructiveness.
Terry Sawchuk was a heavy-drinking, abusive father and husband.
Ed Belfour, who sits third on the wins list at 484 and almost certainly will go to the Hockey Hall of Fame, was difficult to deal with and moody and had trouble with the law on at least one occasion.
Patrick Roy, whose wins record Brodeur equaled Saturday in an emotional win in Montreal, was combustible, once smashing the television set in Bob Hartley's office after the coach pulled him from a game. Roy has had his share of off-ice problems, too, both as a player and now as a coach in junior.
Brodeur? Not so much.
Columbus Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock, who coached Belfour and the Dallas Stars to a Cup in 1999, recalled being shocked at how much fun Brodeur had at the Canadian Olympic orientation camp in fall 2001.
"What was incredible for me was how much fun he was having and how focused he was at the same time during practice. I couldn't believe it," Hitchcock, an assistant on Pat Quinn's Olympic coaching staff, told ESPN.com on Monday.
When Quinn made the decision to replace starter Curtis Joseph with Brodeur, Hitchcock warned Quinn it wouldn't be a one-off thing.
"I told Pat when he made the change, if [Brodeur] gets in the net, he's not going to give that up," Hitchcock said. "'You need to know that. He'll be so good, you won't be able to make a change.'"
Hitchcock was right; Brodeur stayed in net, and Canada won its first men's Olympic gold medal in 50 years.
If Brodeur has run against type with his personality, he also has done so in the handling of his career.
For years, he has represented himself in contract talks with GM Lou Lamoriello. He has left more money on the table than many players will make in a career. He could have gone somewhere else and played for a king's ransom. Heck, he could have gone anywhere. He didn't. He stayed in New Jersey because this was what made sense to him, what was comfortable for him.
He regularly took less money so the team around him could stay strong and competitive. The Devils didn't win every season, but every season they looked as if they might, and the list of NHL teams about which you can say that is very short indeed.
Teammate Patrik Elias has been a Devil his whole career, too, and could have gone somewhere else for more money, but didn't. He has never missed the playoffs.
"The bottom line is that you have a good chance every year," Elias said. "So you always have a chance to win and sometimes you give up on other things just to be in that position, and that's the same thing for Marty what he did."
Does Brodeur ever wonder about it?
"You always wonder. It's just human nature," Brodeur said. "You see other people, other organizations, how they operate and stuff like that. But I think when you have something good, the grass is not greener, necessarily, on the other side all the time, and I felt my grass was green enough to play here.
"I have zero regrets. A lot of good things are happening to me, we have a lot of success and hopefully there'll be success in the future for us here, too. But you always think of all these things," Brodeur added. "I dreamed to play for the Canadiens when I was a kid, so you always think about these kinds of things, but this is where people gave me my first shot at playing in the NHL, here in New Jersey, and hopefully I'll retire here."
Up in Lamoriello's office, the patriarch of one of the NHL's most successful franchises sees a link between his goalie and his team. Not just because Brodeur has played well enough for his team to win a lot of games but because of what they both symbolize.
"We are an organization that never changes," Lamoriello told ESPN.com on Monday. "He is a person who hasn't changed."
The beliefs and character of Brodeur have remained constant from the moment he arrived, just as the beliefs and goals of the Devils' organization have never changed. Lamoriello joked about having traded down in the 1990 draft to get Brodeur. "Shows how much we know," Lamoriello said.
Brodeur was the first of three goalies the team took in that draft.
Now, with Brodeur on the verge of setting a record for the most wins of any goaltender in the history of the game, Lamoriello remains convinced that none of this means anything to Brodeur next to what the team might accomplish, that the goalie would trade records and honors for more wins and a shot at another Cup.
"Sometimes people can say that, but they don't really mean it. He means it," Lamoriello said.
The dressing room finally empties of reporters as they head to chat with Devils coach Brent Sutter. Brodeur is still there puttering about. Then again, it seems as though he has always been there, doesn't it?
"There's that sense of pride of being on one team and making the commitment to the people in the organization, the fans, that you want to stay here and you love where you're at," he said. "For me, there was never a secret about that. I love being in New Jersey, love being a part of this. Definitely the success of the organization became my success at the same time."
Is that, then, what defines greatness? Hard to think otherwise.
Scott Burnside covers the NHL for ESPN.com.
