The energizer: like the battery, Islanders defenseman Adrian Aucoin keeps going and going and going

Hockey Digest, Feb, 2003 by John Kreiser

PUT PINK FUR INSTEAD OF A blue-and-orange jersey on Adrian Aucoin and the New York Islanders defenseman could be selling batteries instead of scoring goals.

Few players can gobble up ice time the way Aucoin does. It's not unusual to see the 29-year-old defenseman on the ice for all of a two-minute power play--or all two minutes of a penalty kill. He finished second in the NHL behind St. Louis defenseman Chris Pronger in average ice time last season at 28:53 per contest; the only reason he didn't lead the league is that it took Isles coach Peter Laviolette a few weeks to realize, that Aucoin could handle all the ice time the coaching staff would give him. Aucoin played 30 minutes or more 23 limes in the Isles' final 41 games last season, including 40:32 in an overtime loss in Toronto on March 19, 2002, the most ice time in a regular-season game since the NHL began tracking ice time in 1998.

That record lasted all of two games into this season. Aucoin was on the ice for 40:51 in the Isles' home opener against Washington and was averaging 30:48 per game through the first six weeks of the season, easily the most in the NHL (One player who won't catch him is Pronger, who'll miss at least the first half of the season after undergoing wrist surgery.)

And yet Aucoin never seems to get tired. In fact, he rarely ever even looks winded.

"It doesn't seem to affect him," Laviolette says of Aucoin's workload and the possibility that he might burn out his best defenseman. "It doesn't look like he's bothered by all those minutes. His play at the end of the game is sometimes better than it is at the start. His 40th minute may be better than his first. We've watched him, and there's no difference in his play. He absorbs all those minutes and recovers quickly."

Aucoin thrived on the work last season, scoring 12 goals (11 in the second half and adding 22 assists for 34 points while posting a team-leading plus-23 rating and helping the Islanders to their first postseason berth since 1994. In the playoffs, he tied for the team scoring lead in the Isles' seven-game opening-round loss to Toronto with seven points while averaging 32:19 per game. And during the early going this season, he was clearly the Islanders' most effective blueliner, even scoring the overtime goal that gave the Islanders their first victory and notching five goals in their first 21 games--a pace that would give him 20 goals for the season.

In fact, Aucoin says, not only does he not get tired, his play actually improves as the ice time piles up.

"As professional athletes, all you can ask for is playing time," he says. "The more you play, the better you get. Last year, we had some guys go down with injuries and things just started rolling--and I got more and more minutes."

Aucoin says that now that he's used to all the work, the huge chunks of ice time are actually a benefit.

"As long as I can stay in the flow of the game, the more ice time I get, the better I play--I think most players are like that," he says. "It's a matter of doing it gradually. You can't suddenly go from 15 minutes to 30 minutes or ask a fourthliner who's getting five minutes a night to suddenly play 15 or 20 minutes--that's when guys get tired and make mistakes."

The Islanders couldn't have expected all this when they landed Aucoin in a deal with Tampa Bay on the Friday before the 2001 entry draft. GM Mike Milbury wanted Aucoin for his shot--he scored 23 goals with Vancouver in 1998-99 and came with the reputation of being someone who could bomb away from the point. But at the price of young defenseman Mathieu Biron and a draft pick, Aucoin's acquisition was soon buried under the headlines the Isles generated by landing Alexei Yashin and Michael Peca in draft-day deals. Talk about coming in under the radar.

"Guys like me, who played in places like Vancouver and Tampa Bay, can be pretty much unknown," Aucoin says of the anonymity that accompanied him to Long Island. "We had a new coach who had been mostly on the East Coast, and he wouldn't have seen me play too much."

One person who had seen Aucoin was Peca. The two grew up together in the Vancouver organization in the mid-'90s and played together at Syracuse in the AHL, then the Canucks' top farm team, during the 1994 lockout. The Islanders' captain says Aucoin is an excellent combination of speed, strength, and smarts who just needed the opportunity to show he was more than a guy with a big slapshot.

"His role on our team then was the same as it is here," Peca says. "He logged a lot of minutes, took a regular shift, played the power play, and killed penalties. He's always had that really heavy slapshot--if you're a shot-blocker, you hate to get in front of it, and if you're a goalie, you hope the shot-blocker isn't afraid to get in front of it All he needed was an opportunity to show what he's got He had 23 goals in Vancouver, so he's proven he has some offensive ability. But I think he's also shown that he's an excellent ail-around performer."

Aucoin was so good last season that Milbury, who has the reputation of playing hardball when players go to salary arbitration, couldn't find anything wrong with his blueliner. Aucoin filed for arbitration last summer, but the two sides settled on a two-year, $6.3 million deal before the case went to an arbitrator. "Mike basically told my agent they didn't have anything bad to say about me if we went to a hearing," Aucoin says of the process, "so I guess both sides wanted to get something done."