DAIGLE HAS ACT TOGETHER
March 17, 1998
From the Philadelphia Daily News
Actors for $40, Alex.
"Stallone," Alexandre Daigle was saying. "I admire a
lot of actors, but Sylvester Stallone is definately
one of them. He's a favorite of mine. Why? I like
the way he was able to make his career based on that
one idea."
One idea: Rocky Balboa. Philadelphia's own.
This Daigle knows his audience.He says he wants to be an actor one day. He says hewill play hockey until he's 30 or 35, and then give it a real try. Between now and then, the 23-year-old
says he might take some acting courses and do some off
season acting work on a sporadic basis.
He talks about it easily, confidently. Daigle is two
months removed from Ottawa, and you get the impression
that it feels to him like 2, 000. For someone who has
never lived in Canada, who has never lived in a place
where hockey is less snack than it is sustenance, this
is all a bit hard to understand. Yet it's clearly
real, and it's clearly there.
The shackles have been removed, and Daigle says he
feels free. The glare of being the No. 1 pick of a
very young franchise has been replaced by the big
shadows cast by Eric Lindros and John LeClair, and
Daigle is very much enjoying the change -- very much.
Take this acting conversation.
"It's something I could not have done up there,"
Daigle said. "I just couldn't. Hockey is so big.
They tell you all the time that you just have to focus
on hockey. You're only allowed to do two things -- go
to sleep and play hockey. That's all.
"But I don't think that way. I never have. Why not
be interested in other things? It doesn't take away
from your game. Here, you're expected to have other
things in your life. No one thinks twice about it.
Who cares, right? In Canada, it's just different."
Talking down here about acting aspirations will
provoke yawns, mostly. Up there, though, Daigle said
he was ridiculed when the subject came up. He said he
got it from newspapers. He said he got it from just
plain people on the street. He had never lived up to
his potential with the Senators, and he was lugging
around a big contract, and who was he to talk about
acting?
Now, if the Eagles' Mike Mamula started talking about
acting, well, he might get worked over, too. Try
acting like a pass rusher, Mike. So maybe that's the
parallel. But on this team, in this sport, in this
town, Daigle is safe. There are a half-dozen guys who
make more money than he does on the Flyers and a bunch
with bigger profiles.
Here, Daigle is to be free. And now he's playing like
it -- fast and loose, fast and faster.
He and Mike Sillinger have become a pair of rockets
out there -- and Colin Forbes isn't just around for
the ride, either. In last night's 4-1 win over the
Toronto Maple Leafs at the CoreStates Center, both
Daigle and Sillinger made outrageous speed plays to
set up goals.
They are the kinds of plays that the Flyers lacked in
the past. It's not that they were a slow team before
Daigle and Sillinger were aquired -- Lindros is fast
in a runaway-train kind of way, and Trent Klatt is
fast, and Paul Coffey is still fast when he gets some
open ice.
But, well, put it this way: They were known as the
biggest team in the NHL, not the fastest. They were
known for going through people, not flying by them.
You know it was a concern just by looking on Bob
Clarke's most recent aquisitions -- Sillinger and
Daigle. The two have one thing in common, and it is
the jet packs in their skates. Their presence makes a
real, noticeable difference. When they are out,
together with Forbes, they win races and create
spaces. They intimidate in an entirely different way.
Opponents don't worry as much about body bruises as
they do about wind burn -- and the change of pace
seems to be getting deadlier by the day. And now,
well?
"Whether we need more speed or not, time will tell
that," said Roger Neilson, the new and undefeated
coach (3-0-1). "You're always looking for more speed
in the game."
Right now, Daigle has people backing up. After going
goalless in his first 15 games for the Flyers, he has
five goals in his last five games, including the hat
trick Saturday against Detroit. He sense mismatches
and he pounces, as he did last night when he bolted
past stumbling defenseman Rob Zettler and ended up
feeding Sillinger in front for a goal.
"When I can create some two-on-ones with my speed, I
will," he said.
And the thing is, Daigle and Sillinger benefit from
the size around them. Because other teams are still a
lot more worried about being big enough when they play
the Flyers than they are about anything else.
Take Zettler. He's a former Flyer, a big, lumbering
former Flyer. The only reason he was even dressed
last night was because Leafs coach Mike Murphy wanted
more size in his lineup against the
biggest-in-the-league Flyers.
You throw a guy with Daigle's speed into that opposing
mind-set -- you throw him into situations where the
other team is more worried about getting flattened
than anything -- and opportunities present themselves.
We're seeing more and more of it now.
Which, all by itself, has made him an interesting
addition to the cast around here. And the fact that
it really is a cast seems to be the thing that appeals
to Daigle the most. Yes, Lindros dominates, but the
group is what matters. That's where the pressure is.
Except in the case of Lindros and goaltender Ron
Hextall, the heat is much more of a collective concept
around here that it is personal -- more than any other
sport in town, more than any other team in town.
"Every body who plays for the Flyers is going to be
happy for that," Daigle said of Lindros and the rest
of a talented cast. "Here, everybody's got their
night. That's the good thing. They don't rely on
just one guy."
So there is pressure, but it's different. There is
scrutiny, but it's bearable. And if there's an acting
career in Alexandre Daigle's future, well, shrug.
Which brings us back to Rocky.
"I've seen the statue over there [by the CoreStates
Spectrum]," he said. "And the big steps are at the
Art Museum, right?"
