This article appeared in the October 30, 2000 issue of ESPN The Magazine.

This is about a defenseman and a psych major and a Buddhist, and what they all did for Mark Messier. This is about Elvis and Wayne Gretzky and Phil Jackson, and what they all did for Mark Messier. It's about weddings and Stanley Cups and dark locker rooms. It's about Edmonton and New York and turning 40. It's about hospitals and the Upper West Side and a Green Room. It's about yoga and meditation and marlin fishing. It's about a man who can cry.

Being Mark Messier means they always think they know you. He walks down West 78th Street in his black-frame, blue-tint eyeglasses -- beads around his neck -- and begins to hear it. "Hey, that's Mark Messier," someone says. "The greatest Ranger of all time." And he thanks them, but he knows that, at one time or another, he has also been the oldest Ranger, the saddest Ranger, the newest Ranger and the most complex Ranger.

He is in Manhattan for one last go-round, with a contract that runs through his 41st birthday, and the truth is he is more valuable now for his people skills than he is for his hockey skills. He is arguably the greatest leader in all of team sports, and perhaps the most eligible bachelor, and all the young Rangers sidle up to him now and ask, "Mess, what'd you do last night?" And he gladly tells them. He tells them that he ate at Shun Lee and that he had a brew and that he apartment hunted and that he then shut it down for the night. But he really should tell them what he did 35 years ago, and 25 years ago, and 15 years ago, and so on, because what he did all those years ago -- and whom he listened to -- is the key to all of this. That is why he is still here. That is why he still makes $4.8 million. That is why he weeps.

The story begins in western Canada, with his father the defenseman. This is the father who gave him social skills and an irreversible intensity. He calls his father Doug, not Dad, which explains a lot. This father of his played for semipro teams like the Edmonton Flyers and the Portland Buckaroos, and nearly every night the police had to break up one of his father's fights. Doug Messier once KO'd four men in one game and was never once shown the penalty box. The team bus had to be backed up to the arena door so the enemy crowd couldn't have at him, but to show his other side, he had his team over for pot roast that night.

Mark Messier learned on the lap of this man. This is a man who taught Mark how to skate and how to wear a party mask. This is a man who was wound so tightly that his hair fell out in clumps during the season. This is a man who, to make people laugh, dressed in drag. This is a man who organized the team's Halloween parties and made sure everyone had a bourbon. This is a man who enjoyed raising children so much that he and his wife had four babies in five years. Three of the four had January birthdays -- exactly nine months after the playoffs. As for Jenny Messier, who was born in November, Doug Messier has an easy explanation: "We were eliminated early that year."

The best thing he did was pass it all on to his youngest son. This is a son who, when he saw his father sneaking off to practice, would hop onto the bumper of the Ford coupe and plead, "Take me, take me." This is a son who played so many years of Pee Wee hockey that his father said, "Markie, you've earned a darn Pee Wee League pension." This is a son who became stickboy for the junior team his father coached and was like a fly on the wall. This is a son who memorized all his father's speeches and learned the politics of the locker room. This is a son who, on road trips, asked to sleep on a makeshift cot in the same room as the team's tough guys. This is a son who later became captain of the junior team his father coached. This is a son who, when that team was playing miserably, would beat his father to the locker room to deliver the pep talk. His father would walk in, and the trainer would say, "Don't worry, Doug, it's done. No.11 already did it." So by the time Mark Messier was a teenager, he was ready to deal with a larger world. On ice and off.

There were those summers the family spent in an Oregon log cabin. That cabin had no TV or telephone, just a phonograph. The children complained of boredom, so Doug and his wife, Mary-Jean (a former Miss Teen Edmonton), urged them to "take a walk or pick flowers." Mark began carving wood with his father, while the others swam in a nearby creek, and at dusk the family played its favorite card game, BS poker. As a reward, Doug began playing the only music he'd brought along -- two 45s: "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" and "Walk On By." He'd play it over and over, and the Messier children soon realized they did not need to be entertained. They realized the power of conversation and listening. And so this was the Mark Messier who entered professional hockey at the age of 17. Wise beyond his years.

The psych major took over from there. His name was Glen Sather, and he'd studied psychology at Oklahoma State and Memphis State, and when he took over as coach of the Edmonton Oilers, he applied everything he'd learned. He rounded up his young men -- Wayne Gretzky, Grant Fuhr, Glenn Anderson, Mark Messier et al -- and asked them never to embarrass him. Then he turned them loose. The psych major allowed them to party hard, but on one condition: They had to party together. Always together. And this was right up Mark Messier's alley. This was how his father's teams were. The Oilers would return at 1 a.m. from an exhausting road trip, and Messier would stop the team bus in front of some dive and buy everyone beer. He had their backs, and they had his. After his first-ever game in New York as an Oiler, he drank an impossible amount of alcohol and, the next day, his teammates rushed a staggering Messier past customs officers.

Likewise, his teammates were always invited to pregame meals at his apartment, cooked by Maria, his live-in housekeeper. Postgame meals could be arranged as well. The psych major saw these boys bonding (his grand scheme), and he bought each of them a lambskin coat with this inscription inside: "Stanley Cup Champions, 198????" Sather was clearly into subliminal messages, and he also sent the squad to positive-thinking seminars. "We were 18, sitting in a seminar all day, shooting spitballs at each other and playing hangman," says Mark. "But some of it must've sunk in."

Evidently. The Oilers won five Stanley Cups from 1983-84 to '89-90. There has never been such a synchronized hockey team. On ice and off. Messier organized Halloween costume parties, which worked because the superstar Gretzky nodded in support. Gretzky and his girlfriend, Janet Jones, showed up as Raggedy Ann and Andy one year, and then as Dorothy and the Tin Man another. Messier was usually Elvis. He adored Elvis and sang his songs on cue. At teammates' weddings, he would croon with the band. At Gretzky's wedding, he sang Elvis' "Spanish Eyes." At Kevin Lowe's wedding, he sang "Suspicious Minds." But not long after the Gretzky wedding, with four Stanley Cups already won, the team made a most stunning trade. Owner Peter Pocklington dealt Gretzky to the L.A. Kings, and Oiler players were near mutiny. "I remember saying it was like someone had taken our brother and killed him," says Anderson. "But I'll never forget Mark. He took total control. He said, 'It's happened, let's get over it. This is our family now.' He pulled us together."

Without Gretzky, Messier used his patented off-balance wrist shot to become an elite scorer and the premier two-way player in hockey. And in 1990, he led the Oilers to their fifth and final Stanley Cup. But he was underpaid, and the psych major knew it wasn't fair to stunt Messier's financial and emotional growth. "Gretzky was so overexposed in Edmonton," says Sather, "but Mark was more dominant internally. He was always able to step aside and pass the accolades on to Wayne. But now things had changed. I wanted to keep him, but it was time for him to leave."

So a trade went down with New York, a trade that literally saved a soul. Messier had felt stagnant in Edmonton, the only place he had ever lived for any length of time. He was entering his 30s now, and he wanted more culture and diversity. He would often speak to his father's younger brother, Victor Messier, about the world out there. Victor was a professor who had studied Eastern philosophy abroad and had embraced Buddhism. Victor long admired the "circle of energy" Mark was creating in locker rooms. He sent his nephew books and articles, and Mark was dying to bring these ideas of karma and intuition further into the sport of hockey. So when Messier arrived in New York in 1991 to join a somewhat cursed Ranger franchise, he simply blossomed.

He found Manhattan a little slice of heaven. He brought his brother Paul and his sister Mary-Kay to live with him on the Upper West Side, and he soon could rattle off every restaurant in the vicinity. He either walked or took the subway everywhere, and he frequented the American Museum of Natural History. He took guitar lessons, learned to make sushi and tried oil painting.

"He actually bought an easel and some paints, and went to the beach one day," his sister Jenny says. "And if I took a photo of his painting and sent it to you, you'd die laughing. It's not beautiful. But it was a good thing for him to try."

The hockey side was a challenge. At his first practice, his new team virtually ignored him. "Well, no one knew how to approach him," says Ranger defenseman Brian Leetch. "Everyone gave him 30 feet of leeway. James Patrick had been a Ranger for seven seasons, and he just stared from a distance saying, 'I cannot believe Mark Messier is on our team right now.'"

Messier's first act, as captain, was to rearrange the locker room. A table that held skates and Gatorade was dividing the clubhouse, and Messier had it removed. He noticed the defensemen had their lockers behind a pillar, so he relocated them, too. "He wanted to be able to see everybody's eyes," says Ranger goalie Mike Richter, "and sometimes that can rub people the wrong way."

It helped that former Oiler Adam Graves was on the club, but Messier needed time to weed out the team's more selfish players. He was eventually accused of getting coach Roger Neilson fired, and, in 1993, some in the media suggested he resign his captaincy. "I've heard him described as power-hungry, overpaid, wants to be GM, should retire," Richter says. "But just having him in our locker room made us better."

Something profound was happening, although the legions of Ranger critics didn't know it yet. Messier instituted his mandatory Halloween party and the team loved it. One year, Leetch was Sonny and his future wife was Cher; the next year she was Sonny and Leetch was Cher. Messier, of course, was Elvis. But it bothered Messier that the players were so spread out around Rye, N.Y., and he wanted to find a central place for them to bond after games, like in the old dives of Edmonton. He saw the married players retreat to a wives lounge at Madison Square Garden on game nights, while the single players headed to Greenwich Village. So Messier opened the wives lounge to everyone and renamed it the Green Room. Catered food was brought in and drinks were free. While it may have cost the Rangers a fortune, it created a certain harmony. As far as Messier was concerned, any friend of a player was a friend of his, and they were all welcome in the Green Room. Soon, the city's celebrities were banging on the door too. "It became the town's hottest ticket," Mary-Kay Messier says. Players brought their parents, their girlfriends, their limo drivers. And Messier personally made sure everyone had their glass filled with bourbon.

As Victor Messier says, "When you've met Mark, you've been met."

When 1994 rolled around, the team's aura had irrevocably changed. That's because Messier had made all players feel thoroughly equal. He protected everyone, including a naive rookie named Darren Langdon. When Langdon arrived, he didn't own a suit, and the Ranger players abused him for wearing a corduroy blazer to his first game. At the next practice, Langdon found a Hugo Boss outfit hanging in his locker.

"It was Mark," Richter says. "What he was telling him was, 'You're a part of the team.' But Mark didn't trumpet it. He just went to the trouble to find out his size, and that was it."

If a player was struggling on the ice, Messier would die to know why. He says he'd have his "lieutenants" -- Graves, Richter and Leetch -- keep an eye out for disenchanted players, and then he'd gently get inside those players' heads. "It can be something from their childhood bothering them," Messier says. "But whatever it is, I need to find out, because I want to win." He gave the players books, such as Pat Riley's The Winner Within. But his favorite to hand out was Phil Jackson's book on Zen and basketball, Sacred Hoops.

His lieutenants knew what he was doing. "He not only believed in Buddhism, he lived it," Richter says. "We'd walk in somewhere, and he'd say, 'This locker room is dark as hell, let's get some lights. Let's get some energy. Let's get some upbeat music.'" He'd ask every player to bring in a new CD, and he'd give "radio licenses" to players who had a knack for playing the most charismatic music.

"Me, I preferred Abba," Messier says, laughing. "Or the Bee Gees or Neil Diamond. The young guys would be, 'Who?' "

It wouldn't have worked if they hadn't revered him. He had been nursing sore ribs one night, and after an opponent, Ulf Samuelsson, smashed into his midsection, an angry Messier cross-checked him, knocking out two of Samuelsson's teeth. The league called Messier in for a disciplinary meeting, and Ranger executives argued that Samuelsson had instigated it. The league then asked Messier if he had any regrets, and his answer was, "Yes, I'm sorry I didn't kill him." He was suspended and fined, but his teammates admired the honesty.

Messier had this knack, at team outings, for loosening up the players. Borrowing from his father's motivational techniques, he would dress up in drag. "I've seen Mark with a G-string on and a blond wig, driving his boat," Victor says. "He doesn't mind getting dressed up as a woman. Mark doesn't have a lot of boundaries. It's just humor, fun, whim. It's childlike, and it's freeing for the other people around him."

And the next thing you knew, a franchise that hadn't won a title in 54 years was in the Stanley Cup Finals. It was a circus of a spring that included the Messier Game 6 guarantee that New York would beat New Jersey, making him the reincarnation of Broadway Joe, and Messier's magic soothing of the Rangers' tyrannical coach, Mike Keenan, who had alienated the players during the season.

"The only one Coach would listen to was Mark," says Richter. "Brian Leetch was on his way to winning the Conn Smythe Trophy, but if he missed one pass, he'd be benched. Mark had a talk with the coach, told him to ease off the pedal, stop whacking a dead horse. He got Mike Keenan to take a step back. And Mike Keenan doesn't listen to many guys."

The Rangers won it all, of course, and after a day of celebrating, Messier addressed the team. No one had seen a teammate, Esa Tikkanen, in 24 hours, and they were concerned for his safety. But Messier calmed everyone and organized a search party, which eventually located Tikkanen. He also told the team to tip the locker-room attendants and the stickboys well, and he made certain every inebriated player had a ride. "Here I am trying not to lose my breakfast, and he's making sure everyone's safe," Richter says. It was clear to Messier's intimates that he had evolved as a person. In his Edmonton days, he'd been reckless and had fathered a child out of wedlock. In New York, he still dated the models du jour (such as Frederique), but his family noticed he was more reflective. He would immerse himself in the city's charities, and to this day the people at the Tomorrows Children's Fund revere him. They tell the story of a dying child he visited, a boy who was so despondent he hid under his bed covers for two weeks. The child wouldn't speak to doctors, to nurses or to his own family, and he didn't want to speak to Messier, either. But Messier sat on the boy's bed and talked patiently for 45 minutes, trying to convince him to wear a Rangers cap. Finally, the child peeked out from under the covers and took the hat, and later he ran down a hospital hallway calling Messier's name. The nurses broke down.

So that's why it was blasphemy when the Rangers actually ran Mark Messier out of town. Messier's contract was up in 1997, and Ranger GM Neil Smith told people Messier had too much control of the players. Smith lowballed him in negotiations while the Canucks camped out at Messier's home in South Carolina for a week. Messier had considered his time in New York "probably the best six years of my life," but he knew he had to go. Victor urged him to cry, to mourn New York, and on the day he signed with Vancouver, he wept on his father's sturdy shoulder.

"Mark can be a very feminine person in the sense that he is able to surrender and yield to what he's feeling," says Victor. "He's able to let it out."

At that crucial time in his life, he had his entire family join him at Hilton Head, S.C., bought a 55-foot fishing boat and let the water be his escape. He brought Leetch and Richter and Graves down to visit, and he caught several marlins larger than 450 pounds. He got into yoga and meditation.

"People get freaked out by meditation sometimes because they think they're supposed to be chanting or sitting a certain way with their legs crossed," Mark says. "But meditation can be anything. It can be sitting in bed for five minutes or it can be done driving your car or working out. Sometimes I relax to Metallica. Or sipping a bottle of tequila, that can be relaxing too. It doesn't have to be listening to Enya with a little incense burning. Though that can be good too."

The three years in Vancouver passed quickly, although Messier urged somewhat of a house cleaning. The team still fell shy of the playoffs. This summer, the newest Ranger GM -- the psych major Glen Sather of all people -- signed the 39-year-old Messier to a two-year deal. Sather knew he could still rule a locker room, and the GM pledged to reopen the Green Room, and Messier could not help but break down at the news conference. He is all about karma, and on one of his first nights out in the city, he opened a fortune cookie at Shun Lee that said, "Friends long absent are coming back to you." He passed it around the table, saying, "See that? See that?" He spent the rest of his summer having his dream log cabin built in South Carolina, the same kind of cabin his family used to have in Oregon. He made sure the cabin had no TV, and that it was large enough to house 22 hockey players, so he can have all the Rangers down. And that's all he would think about when he'd meditate -- his New York reunion. A soul had been saved again.

Elvis had re-entered the building.

This article appeared in the October 30, 2000 issue of ESPN The Magazine. To order the back issue for $6, call (888) 267-3684.