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Sunday, November 03, 2002

By Dejan Kovacevic, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

French-Canadians. All born and bred as offensive wizards. All expected to be the savior of the franchise. All surrounded by moribund casts for their first few years in the league.

But forgive Vincent Lecavalier for wanting any comparisons to Mario Lemieux or Alexandre Daigle, positive or negative, to stop right there.

“I just want to play the game, be my own player,” Lecavalier said upon his visit to town. “I’m not thinking about anything else except being my own player.”

At long last, that appears to be happening.

When the Lightning chose him first at the 1998 draft in Buffalo, he had been hailed by some Quebec scouts as having traits similar to those of Lemieux. If that wasn’t bad enough, Art Williams, then owner of the Lightning, boasted to anyone who would listen on the draft floor that Lecavalier was “the Michael Jordan of hockey.”

It didn’t end there.

In March 2000, at age 20, he was named team captain. That made him the focal point of a team working on its fourth consecutive season of 50 or more losses, forced to answer all the tough questions not only about his performance but also that of his teammates.

His play degenerated to the point he was a regular third-liner and even a healthy scratch. Some were labeling him a bust.

All of that seems to be changing, thanks mostly to a tough approach from Coach John Tortorella.

Tortorella stripped the ‘C’ from Lecavalier’s sweater early in 2000-01 and prodded him to become a more complete player. The two feuded publicly, reaching the boiling point when Lecavalier demanded a trade last season. But today, neither man is a threat to leave Tampa, and neither is fretting over their various differences.

Lecavalier has been one of the catalysts of Tampa Bay’s stunning 7-3-2 start, producing six goals and seven assists in 10 games. He also is backchecking with vigor, taking a lead role on the power play and even killing the odd penalty.

He is 22 now, the age when most top-shelf talents figure out what it takes to excel. And he might just be at the doorstep of his breakout year, never having topped 25 goals in a season previously.

“So much was heaped onto him so early, so much was expected, that I don’t think people have given him the opportunity to go through the process of becoming a player in this league,” Tortorella said. “That’s what we’re seeing now. From the first day of camp, he came in with a whole different strut about himself, a nice type of arrogance about himself.”

Lecavalier attributed that partly to intensive workouts this past summer in which he bulked up his 6-foot-4 frame to 210 pounds, doing so without sacrificing a slice of his smooth skating.

More important, he said, was some heavy thinking he did.

“I think I’m just really focused. This summer, I felt, was a time where I really prepared mentally. I worked hard to think about what I need to do to be ready for each game, for each shift. It’s really paying off, I think. I feel like I’m ready all the time. I can’t worry about what’s happened in the past. I can’t do anything about that. But what I do now, that I can control.”

Penguins Coach Rick Kehoe has been around the NHL long enough to see how all of Lemieux, Daigle and Lecavalier handled the heat. And he, like many in the game, believes Lecavalier has arrived.

“It’s a big burden for some guys to be No. 1, and it takes some guys longer than others,” Kehoe said. “With Vinny, you could always see that the talent was there. Now, you’re seeing what it’s like when he puts it all together. That’s going to be pretty scary.”