Mike Cammalleri was not your typical American Hockey League player during the 2004–05 season. Like many other well-regarded youngsters, Cammalleri, 22 at the time, was a displaced NHLer skating in the minors while a work stoppage kept him from the gig he deserved.
As a first-round pick who’d spent much of the previous two years with the Los Angeles Kings, Cammalleri knew a quality hockey player when he saw one. And when he did, he certainly expected to know the name on the sweater. That’s why, as a member of the Manchester Monarchs, he was so perplexed to see a defenceman he didn’t recognize running the show for the Lowell Lock Monsters.
In search of illumination, Cammalleri glided up to someone he did know on Lowell, fellow Torontonian Mike Zigomanis.
“I said, ‘Who’s that Giordano guy?’” Cammalleri recalls. “He said, ‘This guy’s, like, closet unbelievable; good, tough.’ He said he’s really, really a tremendous player.”
In the 10 years since Zigomanis delivered that glowing report, Mark Giordano has emerged as one of the best defencemen in the game.
Relentless drive coupled with an inherent ability to create offence and an ever-expanding understanding of how to operate in his own zone put Giordano in prime position to collect some hardware, before a galling injury in late February torpedoed his 2014–15 season.
Giordano’s absence became just another hurdle the counted-out Calgary Flames cleared en route to a surprising second-round playoff showing that caught even the most glass-half-full residents of southern Alberta off guard. Like the team he captains, Giordano has defied the odds to get where he is, and he’s pretty much circled the globe to do it. And he steadfastly believes the best is yet to come.
The biceps tear that ended Giordano’s season happened in freaky fashion near the end of what was otherwise a typical period for Calgary’s star defenceman. After teeing up Sean Monahan for a goal that provided the visiting Flames with a 2–1 third-period lead against the New Jersey Devils, Giordano was trying to kill off a penalty in the dying seconds. A clean faceoff win by Monahan resulted in the puck sitting just behind the Calgary goal line, and Giordano moved to retrieve it. As he brought his stick down to wire the puck along the boards and down the ice, Devils forward Steve Bernier wedged his twig between Giordano’s stick and knee.
The result was Giordano’s shooting motion—and, subsequently, his season—coming to sudden, awkward stop. “It was probably the toughest injury I’ve had in my career, because of the timing,” says Giordano, who could only watch as Calgary squeezed into the playoffs then took out the Vancouver Canucks in the first round before falling to the Anaheim Ducks.
The healing process also presented a challenge for Giordano early in the off-season: He had to go easy in the gym. To hear Cammalleri tell it, that’s akin to asking the sun not to shine. At the heart of Giordano’s rise is an indefatigable work ethic that makes even seasoned, seen-it-all guys marvel.
“It’s beyond… it’s not normal,” says Cammalleri, a close friend who’s now with the Devils after spending three seasons as Giordano’s teammate in Calgary. “Everybody likes to consider themselves hard workers; we’ve all played with hard workers—he’s at a whole different level. From anybody I’ve ever met. Period.”
While the willingness was always there with Giordano, the know-how was in short supply for a while. As a teenager growing up in the northwest of Toronto, Giordano played AA and AAA hockey, but he wasn’t one of those single-minded kids consumed by the idea of making it to the NHL. That changed when Giordano hit a late growth spurt and started to become more dominant on the ice. At 18—already entering his first year of NHL draft eligibility—he finally made the jump to junior-level hockey, playing Jr. A for the Brampton Capitals. At the time, Mike Futa was GM of the Ontario Hockey League’s Owen Sound Attack, and after catching a glimpse of Giordano on the ice, he had no doubt that this was a player he wanted.
With the help of ultra-fit Owen Sound coach Mike Stothers, Futa got Giordano’s training efforts properly directed, shifting his top-heavy strength—“He was kind of built like an Academy Award,” says Futa—down through his core and legs. Despite playing most of his final season with a cast-covered broken wrist, Giordano thrived in Owen Sound, eventually earning himself a contract offer with the Flames. In four short years, he had gone from a midget player with no real prospects to having a shot at skating in the NHL. He’d never played on world junior teams or experienced the combines or draft days that serve as signposts for most players chasing down their big-league dream. If there’s such a thing as the culture of making it, Giordano existed outside the margins. “I thought the NHL was such a long shot,” he says.
In those days, Calgary shared an AHL farm team with the Carolina Hurricanes, meaning spots were tougher to come by on the Lowell club because both teams were sending prospects there. That had Giordano—who was on a three-way contract—concerned he might end up in the ECHL. But on the strength of a good NHL camp, he earned a full-time gig with the Lock Monsters. The most significant stat he posted in 2004–05 wasn’t a goal or an assist—it was his 60th game played. That triggered a clause turning his contract into a two-way deal for the following season, meaning no matter what happened, he was getting paid at least an AHL salary.
As it turned out, the only movement Giordano experienced the next season was a seven-game showcase with the Flames. He then played 48 contests for Calgary in 2006–07, registering a respectable 15 points and seemingly cementing his status as an NHLer. But when his next round of contract negotiations failed to produce a one-way offer, he started to consider other options. With his 24th birthday looming, Giordano prioritized financial security and the opportunity to skate big minutes by agreeing to play for Moscow Dynamo of the Kontinental Hockey League. The decision to move away from the NHL was agonizing for a player who’d made up so much ground to get there.
“There were a lot of times I stayed up all night thinking about it,” Giordano says.
To both the player and the team’s credit, neither party let hard feelings fester, and Giordano—after signing a three-year, one-way deal in 2008—was back in a Flames uniform the next season. In August, Giordano signed a six-year, $40.5-million extension that kicks in next year and could make him a Flame for life. Those gaudy figures—still quite club-friendly, with a $6.75-million annual cap hit—reflect the incredible strides Giordano has made since returning from Russia, particularly in the past two seasons, when he’s been half of one of the best defence pairs in the league skating beside T.J. Brodie. Giordano says a big part of his success is down to continuing to learn the nuances of his position and gaining what everyone else seemed to always have on him: experience.
“I used to hate hearing that word, but I totally understand it now,” he says. “You see the game a little bit differently, you’re a little more patient in your own zone with your reads.”
The growth in his defensive knowhow has been important, because Giordano has always been a blueliner who could make an offensive impact. His first pass is the league’s best, and his shot, though not the typical one-time cannon you associate with bombers like Nashville’s Shea Weber and Montreal’s P.K. Subban, is wickedly effective.
“He’s got almost a forward’s sniper release with his snapper,” Cammalleri says.
Giordano missed 21 games last season due to the biceps mishap, and the year before, he was forced out of 18 contests early on when a blocked shot resulted in a broken ankle. During that two-year span, the only defenceman with a higher points-per-game total than Giordano’s 0.76 is Ottawa Senators wizard Erik Karlsson and his 0.85 mark. Considering Giordano still wound up finishing sixth in Norris Trophy voting last year, it’s very possible that with better health, he would have won the award and cemented his spot in the conversation about the elite D-men on the planet.
“My mind goes right to Duncan Keith, Shea Weber, Mark Giordano,” says Cammalleri. “How do I rate them? Maybe all the same.”
Is it at all jarring for those who saw him as a teen to consider how far the never-drafted kid has advanced? Not for Futa, who, at one of Giordano’s first skates with Owen Sound, quickly ordered trainers to get him some team-issued gear because the hodgepodge of colours on his helmet, gloves and pants made him look like a men’s-leaguer who’d wandered into the wrong rink.
“Certain kids, nothing surprises you,” says Futa. “So many of these guys, they get success and it changes them. All success has done for him has taken his incredible personal assets and magnified them.”
In addition to locking up Giordano this past off-season, Calgary GM Brad Treliving acquired 22-year-old emerging blueline stud Dougie Hamilton from the Boston Bruins in exchange for a first-round pick and two second-rounders at the 2015 draft, and signed versatile forward Michael Frolik. With the highly touted rookie centre Sam Bennett on the scene, there’s reason to think the possession-challenged Flames may avoid the regression many predicted. But Giordano knows naysayers will emerge.
“We’re still going to have a chip on our shoulder,” he says. “I’m sure we’re going to hear: ‘Are they going to sustain what they did last year or are they going to fall off?’”
Giordano turns 32 four days before puck drop this season, and he notes that his later start in the league means he hasn’t seen as much action as other top D-men typically have by their early 30s. So, injuries notwithstanding, there’s a little less wear on his body and perhaps a little more knowledge for his brain to absorb.
“I still feel like I can get a lot better,” he says.
By now, there shouldn’t be anyone left in hockey who doesn’t understand what a frightening notion that is.
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