The front lines of Flames, Gaudreau, Lindholm, have tried to erase Mullen’s franchise mark

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Joe Mullen hasn’t lost any sleep tonight, worried that this Calgary Flames franchise record will drop soon.

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In fact, until a reporter walked up from their old grounds…

“I didn’t even know it was a record,” he said with a laugh.

It may not be for long.

Calgary fans will remember Mullen as the most prolific scorer on the best team this city has ever seen. When the Flames drank from the Stanley Cup in 1989, he buried a team-best 16 goals during that fairytale playoff run.

Mullen’s legacy at the Saddledome also includes a regular-season standard that remains unmatched more than three decades later. The stinging right winger, now enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame, finished that 1988-89 campaign with a 51-plus rating.

That is, to date, the best mark in the Calgary club records, although both Johnny Gaudreau and Elias Lindholm threaten to force an update to the history book.

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Heading into Monday’s clash with the Los Angeles Kings, Gaudreau led the circuit with plus-48, while Lindholm was 46 shots better than par. Both were negative in their most recent outing, something that has rarely happened this season.

“You know, records are made to be broken,” said Mullen, who grew up in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City, was a fan favorite wherever he played thanks to his skill and fearless style and became the first figure skater born in the United States. to reach both the 500-goal and 1,000-point plateaus on hockey’s biggest stage. “I don’t put a lot of value on them because one day, you know someone is going to come along and break them. And that’s great. It’s great to see people breaking records like that.”

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Especially with all the analyzes now available, many argue that plus-minus is a flawed statistic, that there are better and more revealing measures.

Fair enough.

But any time you’re in the 30s, 40s or 50s in leads, you’re doing a lot of good for your team.

Like Mullen did in 1988-89, when he scored 51 goals and collected a career-high 110 points, 25 more than any other skater on a stacked team. (That 110-point campaign remains the second-best in Flames tradition, topped only by Kent Nilsson’s 131-point outburst in 1980-81.)

During that splendid season, Mullen also won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy for the second time in a three-year span and was voted into the NHL’s All-Star First Team, joining Patrick Roy, Chris Chelios, Paul Coffey, Mario Lemieux and Luc Robitaille. in that super-six.

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I was really busy after the annual awards party because back then, they actually handed out hardware to the player with the most impressive plus-minus. Closest in Mullen’s rearview mirror were his two regular linemates, Doug Gilmour (+45) and Colin Patterson (+44), and Flames defensive stalwart Brad McCrimmon (+43).

“It’s a stat that I wouldn’t say I paid much attention to until maybe closer to the end of the season,” Mullen said. “You always want to be a plus player. You work to be a plus player. But it all falls into place based on how good your team is and how everyone on your team is doing. That year, our team was pretty dominant for most of the season.

“I think we focused more on what we were doing and winning games was the main thing. It’s nice to get awards, but it’s also nice to win as a team and be able to finish it the right way.”

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Certainly Gaudreau and Lindholm, one mentioned as a possible candidate for the Hart Trophy, the other in the mix for the Selke, would sing a similar tune.

They want something Mullen has, but it’s not the Flames’ franchise record for best plus-minus in a single season. They would prefer a Stanley Cup ring.

Mullen actually owns three of those. During Calgary’s championship race, the net-filling forward was shortlisted for Conn Smythe Trophy honors. He later helped power the Pittsburgh Penguins in back-to-back parades in 1991 and 1992.

“We were a tight-knit group,” Mullen said of the 1989 edition, with Mike Vernon between the tubes, Al MacInnis racking up points from the back and Lanny McDonald mentoring a deep and dangerous cast of forwards. “We had a lot of talent on the team and we just fit together well. We were more like a family, I think. We were so close.”

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Thirty-odd years after his stint in Cowtown, Mullen still keeps a close eye on the Flames, although he noted that “they’re a little late most of the time.”

From afar, he has admired the work of Gaudreau and Lindholm, and that was before he realized that the first in line were pushing to steal his franchise record. (Before Monday’s late date in Los Angeles, his partner Matthew Tkachuk was also flying +40.)

“Just their speed and their ability to go up the ice together… They always know where they are,” Mullen said. “I watch the Bruins game a lot now because I’m in Boston most of the time, and seeing that front row they have with (Patrice) Bergeron and (Brad) Marchand and (David) Pastrnak, they’re really fun. to watch because they move the record really well, and Johnny and Lindholm have been that way for a while now.

“Tkachuk is also a very good player. He complements those guys because he goes to the corner, he does a lot of the dirty work, he gives them two the puck. All three make plays and score goals, which is a good sign of a good line and a good team. They really are fun to watch.”

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