The legacy of Marty St. Louis, from castaway to champion to legend

by Erik Erlendsson | @Erik_Erlendsson | Like us on Facebook
January 13, 2017

TAMPA, Fla. – Passion.

Heart.

Desire.

Dedication.

Leader.

Trailblazer.

Champion.

Marty St. Louis filled all those roles throughout his career. The heart and soul of a franchise who defied anybody who challenged his will to succeed. He played with that chip on his shoulder and it drove him to heights few outside of himself thought he would achieve.

The 5-foot-9ish forward from the Montreal suburb of Laval, Quebec, blazed his own path to stardom on the ice in a region of known for gridirons, golf courses and palm trees – Tampa.

For 13 years, St. Louis starred on the ice at Amalie Arena, transforming himself to an also-ran run out of Calgary in to an MVP, league scoring champion and Stanley Cup winner.

The kid from Quebec found his hockey home in Florida.

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“As a player, I grew up here,’’ St. Louis said. “I matured here. This will always be home. When I come back here as a professional, as a young adult this was home. That’s why it will always be a special place.’’

It will also become a permanent home for his No. 26, which will be raised to the rafters in a 45-minute pregame ceremony to honor his Hall of Fame worthy career. The No. 26 is the first number officially retired by the Lightning, cementing the legacy St. Louis created during his time with a franchise he helped turn from a doormat in to a champion.

”He has a heart as big as this building,’’ former Lightning coach John Tortorella said. “When this organization was floundering and just trying to compete in this league and try to be there night after night, that’s a guy leading the way, along with others, who put the organization on his shoulders and brought us through. There’s a couple of (banners) hanging upstairs out there and he has a lot to do with it and I hope people don’t forget that. Remember what he did for this organization.’’

It’s something that should not be lost, how St. Louis came to Tampa on a two-year, one-way contract worth $250,000 per year, plucked from the free agent market by general manager Rick Dudley, after being bought out by Calgary after two seasons with the Flames. St. Louis was the small tree trying to find his light in a forest dominated by the bigger trees around him.

St. Louis broke free of the forest and followed his own path to glory, guided by a self confidence in his abilities and willingness to prove it. He just needed a chance.

That chance didn’t come until after he asked for one-on-one meeting with head coach John Tortorella, all but demanding he get the ice time he needed to prove he could be a difference maker. Tortorella gave him the ice time to back up his request. The rest . . . is Lightning history.

”I’m an emotional guy, that’s how I’m wired and at that time I felt that’s what I needed to do,’’ St. Louis said. “Maybe my emotions pushed me to do that, not be afraid and go talk to Torts and demand more. It worked out for me. And it’s intimidating some times to go to a coach and demand things, but if you do it, the coach respects you regardless of whether he gives it to you or not. And from that point on, because the coach respects you more, you end up building a relationship. For me, I felt that was the right time, that I earned the right to voice my opinion of how I felt I wanted and needed to be played and I ran with it.’’

From that point on, St. Louis channeled that chance in to becoming arguably the greatest player in franchise history, driven to be the best with a work ethic surpassed by nobody. His actions demanded that others follow along.

His actions made him a natural leader, even to other leaders.

”Performance on the ice is what everybody sees, everybody sees the goals and the game-winning goals and that was a huge factor in us winning, no doubt,’’ former captain Dave Andreychuk said of St. Louis. “But I think it’s the way he worked off the ice. His desire to compete, the way that people wanted to be around him off the ice. Those are the things that maybe normal fans won’t see, but as players, we followed his lead every night. If things weren’t going well in a game, his battle, his compete level, it raised our game. This is a guy that was a soldier.’’

St. Louis was also a revolutionary player, in a sense. At a time when teams were looking to fill rosters with big and bulky, there wasn’t much room for the smaller players. In the era of clutch, grab and hold, the perimeter is where the smaller players liked to roam, avoiding the high traffic areas and waiting for the puck to come to them.

But not St. Louis, who changed the game for the undersized player, according to Winnipeg Jets head coach Paul Maurice, who saw more than his fair share of St. Louis “putting his arms up’’ while coaching the Carolina Hurricanes.

”Marty had a really big impact on the overall NHL game,’’ Maurice said. “He was the small guy who came in to the league as a skilled guy that paved the way for a lot of little guys because there just were not that many. And there certainly many that teams took a pass on. But there was so much more to his game than just the skill level, it was his compete level. He was really one of those first little guys that were highly skilled that didn’t play a perimeter game. He was on the puck and hard on the puck, in front of the net. He played as a first-line talent with a fourth-line attitude and that changed the game.

“In some ways I think he made it easier for coaches because you used to go to the little guys and they’d say, ‘Coach, that’s not my game’, well it’s Marty St. Louis’ game and he’s pretty good at it so maybe you want to throw a little bit of that in to yours.’’

St. Louis would go on to write one of the greatest success stories in hockey history. Never drafted in to the NHL, St. Louis went from Junior-A hockey in Hawkesbury, Quebec, to star at the University of Vermont where he left the school after four years as a two-time finalist for the Hobey Baker Award and led the Catamounts to the Frozen Four in 1996. Yet, despite 91 goals and 267 points in 139 NCAA games, NHL teams shied away from giving St. Louis a chance, so he turned pro with the Cleveland Lumberjacks in the International Hockey League. He final caught the eye of the Calgary Flames, who signed him to his first professional contract midway through the 1997-98 season after he racked up 16 goals and 50 points in 56 games as a rookie in a veteran-laden league, assigning St. Louis to the American Hockey League.

Point production continued in the AHL – 58 goals and 114 points in 95 games over three seasons – but in his few chances at the NHL level with Calgary, he was placed in bottom line role asked to be a checker. And when the Flames changed management, his contract was bought out which led to the famous line from in-coming Calgary general manager Craig Button, who said St. Louis “looked like the paperboy’’

That’s when he landed in Tampa Bay, signing a two-year deal worth $250,000 per year, which amounted to the league minimum at the time. The fact that it was a one-way deal led to some internal reservations.

”I’d be lying if I said that when we signed him that this would be a slam dunk,’’ said Jay Feaster, who was assistant general manager at the time under Rick Dudley. “Rick was the one who wanted to sign him, and we were in the midst at that time of the bigger, stronger, faster (model) and that’s what we were trying to be, and it was tough for a small guy and everybody said that to Rick. And his point was that if you are going to make it at Marty’s size, you have to have something dimensional skill, talent and Rick’s point was his skill, his speed was dimensional.

“And I do remember looking at him and he did look like the paperboy, a fresh face, the whole bit. Then at some point at time during training camp and you see him doing off-ice, see him in a pair of work-out shorts and you see those thighs, they looked like red wood tree trunks. That’s when you say that if the legs feed the wolf, this guy is going to be able to eat.”

As his game grew, he proved his worth when he was given the chance. His true value was realized during the 2001-02 season when he suffered a broken leg and missed nearly 30 games. By the 2002-03 season, he was a 30-goal scorer and right in the middle of the team’s rise to prominence, winning the first division title in franchise history. And it was St. Louis who proved the playoff hero, scoring the triple-overtime, series-clinching goal against Washington in the first round to give Tampa Bay a first-ever playoff series victory, rallying from down 0-2 in the series. St. Louis notched the game-winning goal in the final three games of the series.

The next season, he was a league MPV, scoring champion and Stanley Cup champion. He scored the most memorable goal in franchise history, picking up the double-overtime winner in Game 6 at Calgary, breaking the hearts of Flames fans thirsty for the Cup and forcing a Game 7 back in Tampa two nights later.

”There’s a reason for that, it just comes back to the way he played the game,’’ former linemate Fredrik Modin said. “With the attributes that he had, his sense of reading the plays, the sense of never ever giving up on anything, it all just combined on the ice to allow him to score these goals at those times. It was fitting that it was him. We didn’t care who scored it, obviously, but a few years later in looking back at it, nobody is surprised it was him that put that puck in.’’

That’s how the legend of St. Louis was born, how the young man who was told by everybody he encountered that he was too small to make it, showed the biggest heart and desire anybody came across to become a champion’s champion.

It’s a legacy he tried to pass down to those who have come through the Lightning locker room. It’s a legacy that still echoes through the organization nearly three years since he left and more than a year after he’s retired from the game.

” ‘Heart’ and ‘soul’ are two words that will forever be attached to Marty St. Louis,” current Lightning captain Steven Stamkos said. “For me, he was that, is that and will always be that to this organization. That’s something that nobody can take away and something I know when Marty looks in the mirror, he’ll be pretty proud of.’’

Now, everyone who enters Amalie Arena will be able to look up to the rafters, see the No. 26 banner hanging, and be proud of what St. Louis meant to the Lightning franchise.

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