'All-time player' Suter skates in 1,000th NHL game

Paul Fenton sat at the Nashville Predators draft table watched things fall the way he expected them to.
Off the board went Marc-Andre Fleury and Eric Staal, one and two, to the Penguins and Hurricanes. Nathan Horton was picked by the Panthers with the third pick, and Nikolay Zherdev fourth to the Blue Jackets. Thomas Vanek went fifth to Buffalo, putting the San Jose Sharks on the clock.
The guy Fenton had been eyeing for months was still on the board, but there was a chance the San Jose Sharks, picking sixth, one spot ahead of the Predators, would scoop him up.

Then the current Wild general manager's heart sank.
"Doug just told me they're taking Suter," Fenton remembers Nashville general manager David Poile telling him of Sharks GM Doug Wilson.
In charge of his first draft, Fenton took over the Predators director of player personnel job just a few months prior, after spending his entire career as a pro scout. In Suter, he fell in love with a player he could rebuild Nashville's blue line around.
There were other players available; Braydon Coburn and Dion Phaneuf were defensemen expected to be picked right around the time Suter was, but the Madison, Wisconsin native had caught Fenton's eye from the very first time he watched him.
Want more headlines? [Sign up for e-News]
"No question, his smarts and competitiveness. He is so quietly competitive," Fenton said. "Even the way he played the game as a 17-year-old, his efficiency, the way he managed the puck ... it was so attractive to me. For Ryan, I was looking at him as a guy who would play 15 years in the league."
At the draft, Fenton had a feeling Wilson was having a little fun with Poile. So Fenton asked then-Predators coach Barry Trotz, sitting at the end of the draft table, to ask Sharks Director of Scouting Tim Burke who they were taking.
Burke whispered back that they were taking Czech forward Milan Michalek. Trotz looked to Fenton at the end of the table and mouthed "Michalek."
Fenton was relieved. The guy he wanted was there for the taking, and with little hesitation, Nashville selected Suter with the seventh overall pick.

His debut delayed more than a year by an NHL lockout, Suter debuted with the Predators on Oct. 5, 2005 against those same San Jose Sharks.
He skated in his 1,000th NHL game Thursday as the Wild hosted the Los Angeles Kings. And like he was at Suter's first NHL game, there was Fenton watching proudly as Suter became the 325th player -- and 109th defenseman -- to play 1,000 NHL games.
For Fenton, Suter will always be a little more special than any of the multitude of great players he drafted with the Predators during nearly two decades with the club.
Suter was the first player he ever selected as the man running Nashville's draft table. The Predators picked 13 players, including Suter's long-time defensive partner Shea Weber in the second round, that same year.
But it's Suter's status as the first that will always have them attached at the hip.
"No question," Fenton said. "I'm thrilled. It should be a really special moment to see his 1,000th and hopefully many more."
"He drafted me. He scouted me before I was drafted. Now he's the GM of [this] team," Suter said. "It's kind of neat how it came full circle."
Fenton remembers the circumstance which solidified Suter as the guy he wanted to pick in the draft that year, scouting Suter, who was with the U.S. National Under-18 Team at the Under-18 World Championship in Yaroslavl, Russia.
U.S. coaches were intent on teaching their defensemen to block shots, using correct timing to trap the puck between their shin pads and the ice.
Suter was quite good at it, but on this day, he was a victim of some bad luck.
Alex Ovechkin entered the Russian offensive zone and whiffed on an initial slapshot. Suter, who had dropped to a knee to block it, got back to his feet, and was only able to get halfway back down as Ovechkin took another rip.
Ovechkin didn't miss the second time, and Suter blocked the shot square, but not with his shin pad. Instead, he took the blast in the leg, right above the knee.

"One of our scouts said, 'He's gonna get hurt blocking a shot like that,'" Fenton said.
After the game -- a win which advanced the U.S. to the Gold Medal game in the tournament -- Fenton met the bus outside the arena. Suter hobbled toward him on crutches, his leg swollen and badly bruised.
"I knew him quite well by this time, because I had interviewed him three or four times on the road," Fenton said. "So I asked him how he was doing."
Suter's response was all too typical Suter.
"He said, 'I'll be fine. Don't worry about it, I'll be playing,'" Fenton said. "And that was the kind of reaction and the type of player that I wanted to hang my hat on."
Now 15 years later, Fenton's gamble has paid off.
Suter played seven years for Fenton's former club, skating in 542 games in Nashville before his landmark signing with the Wild on July 4, 2012.
He's now in the midst of his seventh season in Minnesota.

In total, Suter has scored 77 goals and 423 assists in 999 games in the league. His assist on Zach Parise's goal in Dallas last week was Suter's 500th point in the NHL.
But where Suter's value really lies is in his ability as a shutdown defender, to play big minutes and to play those minutes at an incredibly high level.
A three-time All-Star, Suter has played against other team's top lines his entire career, but has still posted a plus-112, finishing as a minus player just twice in 13 full seasons.
"I think that's huge. Every player that wants to have a long career has to focus on that side of it," Suter said. "I think focusing on the defensive side of it and making good first passes and keeping things simple is so important for young defensemen. As you grow older, you work on the offensive side of it and you can get more involved in that regard."
At the time of his signing in Minnesota, some wondered whether Suter could flourish outside the shadow of Weber, his partner for years with Nashville.
The duo was arguably the top pairing in the NHL Suter's last couple of seasons with the Predators. Now, Suter would be counted on to be the clear top dog for the first time.

"They were both 1As in my mind, but completely different players," Fenton said. "But to me, Sutes is the anchor. You can put anybody with him and he's going to complement them."
In his first season with the Wild, Suter skated predominantly with then 19-year-old rookie Jonas Brodin.
For much of the past few seasons, he's skated with Jared Spurgeon. This year, and for parts of last season when Spurgeon was injured, Suter has been next to Matt Dumba.
"He's a calming presence back there," Spurgeon said. "He always talks to you on the bench, but he's never negative; he's a positive guy. Just calming, simple ... he doesn't try to be too fancy with the things that he does and I think you can see he's never out of position. He's always in the right spot, and that's what makes him so good."
No matter who is to Suter's right, that player is almost always playing to his full potential.
"He doesn't get anywhere near the accolades he deserves to get, so I'm really happy for him," said Wild coach Bruce Boudreau. "It's quite the accomplishment. And the minutes played to get to this point, it's a tremendous honor and it's well deserved."
Despite playing more minutes than any player in the NHL since signing with the Wild, Suter's level of play hasn't hit a rut. In fact, Suter seemingly plays better the more time he spends on the ice.

And he does it all without a grueling workout routine or a special, complicated diet.
During an ideal summer, Suter will spend much of his time on his skidsteer, on his tractor or hard at work repairing and fixing things in his family's Madison-area ice arena.
He'll be on the ice regularly for a few weeks before training camp, but he's been known to breeze through Boudreau's vaunted skating test.
Two years ago, with some players barely able to even crawl off the ice, Suter retreated to the locker room with a smile on his face, barely a breath more than normal.

"We talk about players in different eras, and a few years ago, we'd just say he's an all-time player," Fenton said. "He's an all-time player, one of those guys that you just say, 'tape an asprin to it,' and he'll go and play. That's exactly the way he approaches the game.
"He's old school. You can put him in magazines for shin pads and he'll go out there and play. He could carve a stick out of a tree and be able to do just as much with it. He's just one of those no-frills guys that doesn't have to worry about anything. It doesn't have to be perfect, he just goes out there and plays."
Suter's 1,000th game celebration will take place prior to the Wild's game on Saturday against the Colorado Avalanche. He's expected to have more than 100 people in attendance, including his wife, his children and his mom, as well as several dozen friends and family from both Madison and the Twin Cities.
But in typical Suter fashion, he's already eager for the spotlight to be off of him.
"It's exciting, and it'll be exciting when it's over," Suter said. "It's a nice honor. I think it's more important to have a Stanley Cup in my back pocket. That's what we're working on right now."

Related: