Mike Gartner flew by in a blur

Take a stroll through the NHL’s all-time goal scoring leaders some time. It’s a worthy trip and a good chance to reconnect with some all-timers.

There’s Wayne Gretzky at the top, of course, with 894 career goals. Sitting 93 behind him is Gordie Howe, the only two skaters (so far) to reach the 800 mark. Next is the 700 club, headlined by Jaromir Jagr, Brett Hull, Marcel Dionne and Phil Esposito. The most recent member of the group, Alex Ovechkin, sits at eighth all-time with 706.

And two goals above him? That’s Mike Gartner, a lightning-fast, goal-scoring machine who might also be the quietest star of his era. Part of that is location — he spent the bulk of his career with the Washington Capitals while Gretzky and Mario Lemieux owned the league — and another is the unfortunate circumstance that led to him not being part of one of the most high-profile teams of all time.

Through a 20-year career (19 in the NHL and one with the WHA’s Cincinnati Stingers, where he played alongside Mark Messier, Mike Liut, Barry Melrose and Robby Ftorek), all he did was score goals. He had fewer assists than goals in his career, which underlines his reputation as a sniper, and was he ever one. He got 708 over the line in those 19 years, good for 37 goals a season, and he scored 40 or more six times, including a career-high 50 for the Capitals in 1984-85, and hit on at least 30 17 times. The only years he missed were his last season as a 38-year-old in Phoenix, and the lockout-shortened 1994-95 season.

His career took him from Washington to the Minnesota North Stars at the trade deadline in 1989, where he swapped places with another sniper, Dino Ciccarelli. But the next year’s deadline saw another high-profile move, this time shipping him to the New York Rangers, who were in the midst of trying to shake off a 40-year-old monkey.

He produced immediately, scoring 11 goals in the final 12 games of that season before scoring five more through the first two rounds of the 1990 playoffs. And he’d keep scoring in New York — totals of 49, 40 and 45 goals through the next three seasons.

He had wheels, and he used them to get where he needed on the ice. He won the Fastest Skater competition at the 1993 NHL All-Star Game, and won it again — breaking his own record — in 1996.

It was at the 1993 All-Star Game where he jumped from just a still image on a hockey card to to a legend, when he scored four goals in the old Montreal Forum for the Wales Conference to earn MVP honors.

Yesterday I featured P.J. Axelsson, and detailed how I will always feel like he missed out on a deserving spot on the 2011 Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins. He wasn’t traded and he wasn’t pushed out, he just decided it was time to go home. Mike Gartner didn’t get that kind of choice in the matter.

Gartner was essentially the last man out on the curse-breaking 1994 Rangers. On March 21st, he was dealt to Toronto for Glenn Anderson. Anderson played the kind of grinding style that coach Mike Keenan — in his only season on the New York bench — preferred. Keenan had a reputation of alienating one player per team on the eight he coached, looking to make an example out of a star in order to assert control. He did it to Brett Hull in St. Louis and Trevor Linden in Vancouver, eventually driving both cornerstones off their teams.

Anyway, it’s hard to argue results. Anderson reunited with the Oilers alumni already on the Rangers (along with Messier, Jeff Beukeboom, Adam Graves, Craig MacTavish, Esa Tikkanen and Kevin Lowe), and he was money for them on that run. He scored two goals in their seven-game matchup with the Vancouver Canucks and the Rangers won the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1940. And Gartner got to continue his career in Toronto, playing two-and-a-half seasons there before wrapping up with two more years in Phoenix. His career began in the rebel league and ended in the desert.

Even without his name on the Cup, he’s gotten his due in other ways. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2001, the Capitals hung up his no. 11 sweater in 2008 and he was named to the NHL’s Century team in 2017. He’s certainly not forgotten. But he should likely be discussed a little more than he is. Ask anyone else in the club, and they’ll tell you that 708 goals don’t just score themselves.