Leclerc Will Take One for the Team

Mike Leclerc will do this. No questions asked.

He will take hockey sticks in his back from defensemen attempting amateur exploratory surgery. Without anesthesia.

He’ll dodge and try to deflect pucks zipping at speeds greater than those on the German autobahn. Success is imperative, because when those frozen rubber discs make contact, they can rearrange facial features.

His duties, screening goalies and tipping pucks past them, are definitely R-rated. But Leclerc, a left wing for the Mighty Ducks, has trained for this chore since he was a kid and relishes the moments, even if they involve planting himself between a rock-like puck and a hard stick.

“You get used to going in there,” Leclerc said, without a hint of bravado or a sign of resignation. “To me, it’s hockey. Grinding it out, getting your nose dirty. . . . I don’t have to gear myself up to go in front of the net. I’m big enough and strong enough to handle it.”

He handles it well. Leclerc had the Ducks’ first goal in a 4-0 victory over the Kings Sunday.

After cementing himself in front of the net, he fought off the prodding--legal and otherwise--from defenseman Mattias Norstrom and tipped a Paul Kariya shot past goalie Jamie Storr.

Minutes later, Leclerc again performed some ice dancing around the net. He screened a befuddled Storr, who never did see Oleg Tverdovsky’s shot until the puck hit the back of the net.

“It depends on your courage factor,” Duck Coach Craig Hartsburg said of Leclerc offering his body for punishment in front of the net. “For some guys, it might be very difficult to do it. Mike is a hard kid and he probably doesn’t think that it’s that tough of a job.”

He doesn’t, and he wonders, what’s the big deal.

“That’s what I’ve done wherever I’ve played,” Leclerc said. “It’s like Paul and Teemu [Selanne], they have things they do.”

Yeah, but what Kariya and Selanne do, skate and shoot, is pleasing to the eye. What Leclerc does can blacken his.

“I really haven’t taken too much punishment,” said Leclerc, who must be grading on a curve. “It’s like the Gong Show, doing this in minors,” he said. “Down there, guys take your head off and no one gets penalties. I’ve been used to it. It’s just a part of my game.”

The Ducks may be last in the Pacific Division, but Leclerc’s once-more-into-the-breech style is vital if the team hopes to avoid repeating last season’s failure to make the playoffs. He has 23 points this season. Only Kariya and Selanne, each with 26, have more. Leclerc has nine goals. Only Selanne with 11 and Kariya with 10 have more.

In the last 10 games, Leclerc has 11 points, including five goals. And that’s not counting all the goals he helped create just by being an annoying presence.

“The first thing I try to do is screen the goalie,” Leclerc said. “The second is to try to get my stick on the puck. Goalies hate that kind of traffic. Ask Guy.”

Duck goalie Guy Hebert agrees, but he also has grudging respect for those clogging the lanes.

“It takes a brave man to stand in front of that net,” Hebert said. “You’re getting cross-checked from behind and those pucks are coming in fast.”

That’s a bad combination. Center Steve Rucchin, the Ducks’ other inside guy, is Exhibit A. He set up shop in front of the net during a Nov. 15 game, only to have Colorado’s Ray Bourque shove him into the path of Selanne’s shot.

Rucchin suffered a fractured nose and cheekbone. He has missed eight games. Leclerc has suffered a few bumps and bruises but has not missed a game this season.

“Michael is a warrior and warriors are proud of those scars,” Hartsburg said. “They like that because they know that they’ve done their job.”

This has been Leclerc’s job his entire hockey life.

“Of all the goals I’ve scored in my life,” he said, “I bet 95% of them were within five feet of the net.”

And it has been a productive career, at least in the minors. Leclerc, a third-round draft pick in 1995, had 58 goals and 111 points for Brandon the following season. He was named the Western Hockey League’s player of the year. He was 19, a seedling then.

Leclerc was beginning to ripen last season, his first full year in the NHL, with four goals in eight games before an elbow injury forced him to miss 11 games after the surgery.

He never regained full strength, finishing with eight goals and 19 points in 69 games.

He already has surpassed those numbers in 28 games this season.

“That’s what we need from Mike,” Kariya said. “He’s a big guy and he’s got great hands. That combination is rare.”

Lacrosse, which Leclerc played when there was no ice, sharpened his hand-eye coordination. A flick of the wrist is all it takes to score when a player is close to the net.

Leclerc tries to blind the goalie with his 6-foot-2, 204-pound body and attempts to alter the course of pucks that rocket past.

“It’s so hard to see around those guys,” Hebert said. “If they redirect the puck an inch, it’s going to really mess you up. I don’t want to jinx Mike, but hopefully he’s going to develop into a guy like [Philadelphia’s] John LeClair. Just a big strong guy who scores goals from six feet out.”

The John LeClair idea doesn’t come from Hebert being hit by one too many pucks. Others see the possibility as well.

“Mike is most effective in front of the net because of his hands,” Cullen said. “He can shift the puck from his backhand to his forehand quickly.”

Just like . . . “He’s similar to John LeClair,” Cullen said.

Uh, LeClair had 311 goals before this season. Leclerc has 18. Leclerc would prefer to be compared to former Boston Bruin Cam Neely, his boyhood idol, who scored 395 goals.

“How did Neely get all his goals? Around the net, banging them in,” Leclerc said. “There are not too many pretty plays anymore. There are good players and they make nice plays, but watch the highlights tonight and you’ll see how goals are scored.”

What you won’t see is the assault and battery those who position themselves in front of the net endure to score them.

“Sometimes,” said Hartsburg, “those bumps and bruises mean your team wins.”