The fans and his peers around the NHL keep telling him, keep sending him obvious signals, but Tony Amonte doesn’t listen or pay them any mind.
Kudos and compliments can wait until, oh, at least retirement.
As far as Amonte is concerned, the minute you begin to believe you are among the game’s elite–which his 24 goals and a third consecutive berth in this weekend’s All-Star Game would seem to indicate–is the same minute you fall from that group’s grace.
Satisfaction has a strange way of breeding complacency.
So when will Amonte admit it? When will Amonte realize he is one of the game’s prodigious goal scorers? When will he understand he deserves to be in the same dressing room as Wayne Gretzky, Brendan Shanahan and Eric Lindros, as he will be this weekend in Tampa?
In a word, never.
“He’s too humble,” says his close friend, former teammate and fellow All-Star Jeremy Roenick. “Tony takes success and brushes it aside. He is without a doubt one of the best goal scorers in the National Hockey League and one of the fastest skaters. He may know it, but he is never satisfied and that’s what’s so good about Tony Amonte. No matter what he’s doing, he wants to be better.”
Don’t get Amonte wrong. The third straight All-Star appearance has him so excited he will actually talk about himself for a few minutes, an activity he enjoys only slightly more than a cross-check to the face.
He enjoys the game. He enjoys the format, in its second year, of pitting the league’s best from North America against the league’s best from the rest of the world. He even enjoys playing during a weekend in which he could snag some much-needed rest.
But self-analysis and self-congratulation don’t excite Amonte. Competing does. And winning. And that’s about it.
“I am definitely not in the game’s elite,” Amonte says. “There are too many great players in this game. I try to measure myself against them when I play them, guys like Lindros and (Paul) Kariya. I just try to outcompete them.
“I need to do more. There’s always more a guy can give. I still think I can become a better player. You can be having a good year, but you can always get better. And we’re not winning. You want to be as good as you can in this league. You want to show the world how good you can be.”
The world seems to have already noticed.
Just take a quick peek at Amonte’s accomplishments. Besides the three straight All-Star Game berths, he was a member of last year’s U.S. Olympic team. He also scored the memorable game-winning goal in the 1996 World Cup to lead the U.S. past Canada.
This season he is thick in the race for the inaugural Maurice Richard Trophy, to be awarded to the league’s top goal scorer.
Details like that are why Amonte’s words would almost be comical if they weren’t delivered with such earnestness. He doesn’t lack confidence, he just lacks satisfaction.
“That, to me, is exactly why he is among the game’s elite,” says Hawks coach Dirk Graham.
Graham also points to Amonte’s development as a total player for his inclusion in that group. Even a few seasons ago, Amonte and defense weren’t on a first-name basis. At times, they weren’t in the same rink.
But Graham says Amonte has become one of his most responsible defensive players, not a bad admission coming from the 1991 winner of the Frank Selke Trophy, awarded to the forward who best excels at defense.
“Tony has always been able to score,” says Graham. “The biggest thing he has been able to accomplish is becoming a strong defensive player. He didn’t have that when he first got here. That’s the key to his whole success. He does the little things defensively and gets all kinds of scoring chances because of it. That’s part of rounding out your game.”
Indeed, Amonte has come a long way from his first few seasons, when he crashed into the league with the New York Rangers and scored 35 goals his first season, finishing second to Pavel Bure for the Calder Trophy.
Not that Amonte doesn’t look at those days fondly. He got to play with two of the league’s greats–Mark Messier and Adam Graves–on some of his most impressionable and development-starved days in the league.
But he also remembers, at times, how little of a clue he had.
“Coming into the league, you don’t know much about the game and style of play,” Amonte says. “It is totally different from any other league in the world and you have to adapt your style to playing in the NHL. There are very few who step in and are successful right away.
“I was fortunate enough to play with Mark and Adam on a line for two solid years every night. I played 160 games with those guys and they taught me a lot about competing and showing up every night and being there for your teammates and playing hard. It was a great way for me to break into the league.
“But I didn’t know what defense was then. As the years go on, you pick up more things. Three years ago when I scored 40 goals (actually, a career-high 41 in the 1996-97 season), I was thrown into a bigger role than I had ever had in this league. I was a goal scorer and a top-line guy and a go-to guy. That is an opportunity everybody in this dressing room waits for. I’m just trying to make the most of it.”
Notice the use of present tense, indicating a battle that will continue the rest of Amonte’s career.
