Brian Leetch turned 22 last week without the pocketful of Norris Trophies, MVP awards and Stanley Cups he was supposed to have won for the Rangers by now.
The last time somebody checked, Denis Potvin was still the highest-scoring defenseman in National Hockey League history. And connoisseurs of offensive defensemen haven`t exactly forgotten Bobby Orr.
Of course, the expectations for Leetch, now in the final month of his second full NHL season, were enormous. That`s nothing new in New York, where canonization of a high-profile sports figure occurs on the hour, every hour.
But when the Rangers started slipping from first to fifth in the Patrick Division three months ago, New York was not alone in pressuring Leetch to accomplish more.
Leetch, last season`s rookie of the year, did it to himself.
”I`ve been like that all the time, growing up,” he said. ”I`m used to doing what I set out to do. When things weren`t going well, I felt I could change it and I wanted to change it. In hockey, I knew I could go out there and do well. When things weren`t going like I expected, I was upset and disappointed.
”I just felt like the team needed someone to step up when we had the injuries. We had, at one point, about 10 guys in their first or second year. I really thought that the guys were going to look to me to do something.”
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The fair-skinned lad with the strawberry blond hair and bushy eyebrows is having a very competent sophomore season for the Rangers, who have rebounded smoothly from their midseason swoon and may actually be closing in on their first divisional title since 1941-42.
He is the most talented defenseman on the NHL`s fourth-ranked defense. He plays 25 or 26 minutes out of every 60-minute game, the most of any Ranger. He plays on the power play, kills penalties, takes a regular shift and appears at most critical moments. He has scored 11 goals, 52 points.
It`s just that last season he set an NHL record for goals by a rookie defenseman with 23. His 71 points fell five short of that rookie record. And he finished plus-8-meaning he was on ice for eight more even-strength and short-handed goals than against. But this season he is minus-14, the worst among his team`s defensemen.
”I couldn`t have asked for any more of a second-year guy,” first-year Ranger coach Roger Neilson said. ”I hear every once in a while that he hasn`t done this or that, that he`s only got this number of points. I don`t care. He`s been our key guy all year.”
Everything worked last season. If Leetch passed a puck to a teammate, that teammate scored. If he took a slap shot, it hit an opponent and bounced into the net. The Rangers faltered late in the season and were swept out of the playoffs, but Leetch had become an NHL sensation.
He thought about this season while he and his buddies spent part of the summer tarpon fishing in Fort Myers, Fla. He came to training camp with a little more bulk on his 5-foot-11-inch, 185-pound body and a realistic goal.
”I set out to do as well as I did the year before,” he said. ”Point-wise and everything.”
Early in the season he was fine. The Rangers started 9-2-3 and he had 13 points in those 14 games. But Neilson`s system stressed defense, a style quite different from the one Leetch thrived under with former coach Michel Bergeron. In a stretch of games from Dec. 2 to Jan. 6, the Rangers yielded 44 even-strength goals.
Leetch was on ice for 27 of them. In 16 games, he scored one goal and seven points. He had become a liability.
”It was the one time I called him in,” Neilson recounted. ”We went over a 10-game segment and showed him he was causing too many chances against us defensively. We told him not to worry about creating so many chances offensively. And the next segment he cut his defensive chances caused by 60 percent by concentrating totally on defense. It was an incredible cutdown.”
Characteristically, the mature young player accepted full responsibility for the Rangers` midseason slump. Now that Leetch is playing well again, he insists he`s doing nothing special.
”I`m just sitting back and playing defense now, going up the few chances I have. Roger`s system is just something I have to get used to doing. Of course I`d like to play more wide open,” he said.
”I feel like I`m more into the game when I make a rush and I have to turn around and get back as quickly as I can to go the other way. It`s just more my game. It`s been harder for me to concentrate all the time when I`m skating backwards and maybe I touch the puck once and give it to my partner. When I`m going down the other end and then back I`m just more into it. It`s still hard for me right now, to always stay in our zone and stay awake.”
He`s awake. He`s making $210,000 in the second full year of a four-year contract worth an estimated $1.1 million. Last season he lived in Greenwich, Conn., with the family of a friend. This season he moved in alone into an upper West Side apartment.
”We heard what a terrible thing it is for a guy living in Manhattan,”
Neilson said. ”Well, Brian`s never missed a meeting. He`s always here.”
Leetch jokingly says that he`ll probably win a Norris Trophy one day ”if you get Ray Bourque out of the league.” He`s got the skills, desire and disposition to become an NHL superstar, but not right away.
He`s young. But he`s eager.
”There`s going to be a time-I don`t know when-that I`m going to have to step up another level and get better. Right now, it`s important for me to play steady, gain confidence and learn things. But I don`t want to be an average player. I think I have the ability, if I work hard, to be one of the better defensemen in the league . . . somewhere along the line.”