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Bonus Baby

Sporting News, The, Nov 9, 1998 by Jim (American politician) Hodges

There's no telling how much potential Tampa Bay's Vincent Lecavalier has, but right now he's just an 18-year-old kid with a new job, a new apartment and a new car

Art Williams is the first to admit his limitations, one of which isn't money. When he said Vincent Lecavalier was going to be "the Michael Jordan of hockey," he wasn't slighting Wayne Gretzky or Maurice Richard or Gordie Howe or anyone else.

"I didn't know hockey," says Williams, who was completing a $118 million deal to buy Tampa's Ice Palace and its chief tenant, the Lightning, when it made Lecavalier (Lay-cav-aye-yay) the No. 1 pick in the NHL entry draft in June.

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"I'm a football coach and I knew a little bit about basketball, so I didn't know who Gretzky was," Williams says. "The press has a good time with me. I talk about the field and teeing it up and quarters. I haven't gotten the terminology yet."

Sure he has. Contract, bonus, incentive clause, all those hockey terms have become a part of his vocabulary since Lecavalier, 18, was signed to what could be the most lucrative deal for a rookie in NHL history.

It includes a base salary ($975,000 a year for three years) that is the rookie limit in the league's collective bargaining agreement. And there is a $3 million bonus for reaching two of six incentives:

* 20 goals.

* 35 assists.

* 60 points.

* Average at least 0.73 points a game in a minimum of 42 games.

* Finish with a plus-minus rating of plus-10, if Tampa Bay makes the playoffs, or be among the top three forwards on the team in plus-minus if the Lightning miss the playoffs.

* Finish fifth or better in voting for the Calder trophy as Rookie of the Year.

Bonuses for making the All-Star team, all-rookie team, winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, winning the Stanley Cup and being among the team leaders in power-play and shorthanded goals could bring the total to $16 million over three seasons, though the Lightning have hedged their bet for the first season by buying an insurance policy on the bonuses.

"If you're going to be in this business, you've got to stick your neck out," Williams says.

Lecavalier is a rangy, 6-4, 180-pound kid who won't be 19 until April 21. Some filling out is going to be necessary before he can put the Lightning on his back. Some growing up, too.

"I think he was just really excited about getting me No. 1," Lecavalier says of the man who signs his checks. "I think it was good pressure. It wasn't anything to hurt me. I don't think that's pressure. I just play hockey. I don't bother with that."

Of more immediate concern to him are his digs and his ride. His folks recently left Tampa to return to Ile Bizard, a suburb of Montreal, and he's alone in his two-bedroom apartment. Before he left, Yvon Lecavalier made sure Vincent's transportation wasn't ostentatious.

His son didn't need a Porsche. He got a BMW convertible, same as every other 18-year-old.

"We told him to start easy and each year give him some objectives: `Earn some bonuses and get your Porsche,' "says Yvon, a firefighter.

The easiest way to get respect is to earn enough bonuses to buy any car he wants. But Lecavalier's first five games were strictly used Ford Pinto material, with no points while being benched briefly and demoted from the second to the fourth line.

"That's part of hockey," Lecavalier says. "I had one bad game and didn't play in the third period. I didn't deserve to play. I think I was playing good the first five games, and then I wasn't intense and I deserved to be on the bench."

Says G.M./coach Jacques Demers: "I don't look at him as an 18-year-old kid, but I still have to think that when I'm coaching him.... This week he acted 18, but that's OK. New home. BMW.

"When I brought him in my office, I told him, `This is why I benched you. You didn't play. You didn't show up. Not because you make mistakes.' I won't bench him for making mistakes. I will bench him for not showing up."

Lesson apparently learned. Against Pittsburgh, fourth-line center Lecavalier climbed one-thirty-fifth of the way to the assist clause of his bonus arrangement when he fed Darcy Tucker for a goal. Against Vancouver four days later, he went one-twentieth of the way to the goal standard with his low screamer past Garth Snow.

By the next game he was back on the second line but had no points in a loss to Anaheim.

His talent is why he's in the NHL after two seasons in junior hockey. (He had 44 goals and 71 assists in 58 games last season for Rimouski of Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.)

It emerged during training camp, when Demers saw who scouts had been saying was the best amateur player to come into the draft in years.

Demers saw enough to have a talk with Yvon and Christiane Lecavalier before the season. "I told his parents I was going to make a commitment to him," Demers says.

Through nine games, Lecavalier has averaged about 15 minutes a game on the ice and is part of the second power-play unit.

Bonus Baby

Sporting News, The, Nov 9, 1998 by Jim (American politician) Hodges

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