ST. PAUL, Minn. — Early in the summer of 1993, when Mike Modano went from being a baby-faced Minnesota North Stars stud to getting a letter in the mail instructing him to report for Dallas Stars training camp by Sept. 10, he never envisioned he’d ever touch back down in the Twin Cities permanently.
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On May 22, with a wife and five children in tow, he landed here at 2 p.m.
By 6 p.m. that night, two of Mike and Allison Modano’s kids were already at soccer practice.
By the following week, their children, ranging from ages 3 to 9, were signed up for activities like hockey, soccer, basketball, tennis and dance.
The kids have met so many friends and love Minnesota so much, they recently asked their parents if they could relocate here from Arizona permanently.
“They thought we were just visiting,” Modano, who has worked for the Wild as an executive adviser since 2019, said, laughing.
Life has sure changed for the 53-year-old Hall of Famer and NHL’s all-time top U.S-born scorer (561 goals and 1,374 points).
Amazingly, though, Modano still has that baby face, still is in playing shape and still has the vigor of that fast, dynamic 23-year-old whom fans were crushed to see leave.
“What’s crazy is, he has more energy than I do,” said Allison Modano, 36, the former pro golfer and daughter of Hibbing legend and former Gopher Joe Micheletti. “He is the most fun of the two of us. It’s almost frustrating for me because I look so boring compared to him because I can’t keep up. Everyone’s always said this about him, but he’s got that big kid innocence.
“I think that’s what made him such a great player. He went out there and he just loved what he did and didn’t think a whole lot about it. And he’s like that with parenting. He just has fun with it and he keeps them smiling and he’s playful and he’s on the floor rolling around. He’s just a big kid right there with them.”
It boggles Modano’s mind, though, to be back in Minnesota and raising his kids here. At 8:30 Sunday morning, he was inside a rink watching his oldest boy, Jack, 9, play hockey. He loves the drop-offs at school and sat there perfectly content at daughter Kate’s ninth birthday party when she and her friends painted his nails and jazzed him up with makeup.
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“I have a soft spot for the girls, and Mom’s got a soft spot for the boys,” Modano said.
Mike and Allison Modano with (left to right) Jack, Luca, Reese, Quinn and Kate. (Courtesy of Allison Modano)
So much has changed since Modano was basically a kid himself, arriving in Minnesota after being drafted by Lou Nanne No. 1 in 1988. Modano first lived in Bloomington, not far from the old Met, with the family of Bill Mack, the famous artist who designed the Hobey Baker Trophy and North Stars’ third jersey — the one Norm Green brought with him to Dallas and adopted as Stars jerseys.
Then he lived on the top floor of an Uptown duplex owned by Reed Larson.
Modano barely had a responsibility in the world other than to play hockey. He’d hang out in downtown Minneapolis, going to the Loon Café, J.D. Hoyt’s Supper Club, Manny’s, Murray’s and Jose’s, his favorite Mexican joint. He’d often sneak off to West St. Paul to get mouth-watering donuts from Granny’s.
Now he’s back and amazed by the growth of Minneapolis and the urban feel, with so many people moving downtown or out west.
“Talk about coming full circle,” Modano said. “I never thought in a million years I’d be back living in Minnesota. Life has a weird way of working out. You get these forks in the road and different turns and all these decisions you make along the way that kind of form your life, and it’s just really weird to look back at.
“I came to Minnesota thinking I’d be here forever. I left Minnesota thinking I’d never be back. But now I’m home.”
Modano was basically set up with Allison.
She was working with a golf psychologist in Florida, and one day the teacher told her he was going to have one of his students come to town to play nine holes with her.
The day before, the psychologist called Modano, an avid golfer with whom he had also worked, and told him he needed to get on the next flight for Florida to meet a girl who was about to leave for three weeks’ worth of golf tournaments.
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“You’re going to marry her,” Modano remembered him saying. “You may know her. Her name is Allison Micheletti.”
“I said, ‘Wait a second. Micheletti, like Joe’s daughter?’ I was like, ‘Uhhhhh, yeah, I know the name,” Modano, said, laughing … since he has known Micheletti since he was 18, when the longtime NHL broadcaster was doing North Stars games.
Similarly, the psychologist told Allison Micheletti, “You may know this guy. He plays hockey.”
“I go, ‘My dad’s involved in hockey. Who is it?’” Allison said. “He goes, ‘Mike Modano,’ and I go, ‘Oh, my God, that’s one of my dad’s favorite people.’”
She called her father and said, “You won’t believe who I’m playing golf with?”
As Modano boarded a plane for Florida to meet Allison, he got a phone call from a 516 area code. He answered to the voice of Joe Micheletti saying, “Have fun, but don’t beat up on my daughter too bad.”
It took a while after for Micheletti to learn Modano and his daughter had started dating.
“It was probably when I showed up to New York at Christmas when Joe was finally like, ‘OK, soooooo, why is Mike coming?” Modano said, laughing.
Today, Micheletti, the longtime national TV and Rangers color analyst, and Modano are best friends and talk daily.
Allison Modano grew up in St. Louis and eventually moved to New York at around age 11, when Joe started working for the Islanders. She was a basketball and soccer player and didn’t pick up golf clubs for the first time until she was 16.
She was a natural.
She also played hockey growing up, but there was no girls team, so her parents made her stop playing when things started getting physical.
When the Modanos lived in Arizona, they’d split time at their cabin east of Park City, Utah. There, Allison joined an all-women’s hockey team, and she’s currently searching for one to play on in Minnesota.
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Her husband and the kids used to attend all of her games in Park City.
The team was sponsored by the Nashville Predators. In her first game, Allison scored three goals. Modano was so proud, he got the puck from the first goal and wrapped it in tape as a keepsake.
“I find it in random drawers,” Allison said. “Mike says, ‘Do not throw that away. That’s your puck!’”
Like their parents, the Modano children are terrific athletes.
Jack, who wanted nothing to do with hockey in Arizona, has caught the bug since arriving in Minnesota. He starts shooting pucks as early as 5:30 a.m. Same with his twin sister, Kate. The other kids are following their lead, especially 4-year-old Luca and 3-year-old Quinn, who can’t wait to play hockey and just started skating.
In fact, at least three of their kids will be flagbearers before the Wild’s home opener Thursday night.
Reese, 7, is a terrific athlete and has started to fall in love with golf.
“We can’t get them off the basketball court or off the fields,” Allison said. “We are so laid back with sports and don’t push them, so it’s just funny how we were both that way as kids and that’s genetic, how it’s just in there. We almost pushed the other way, like, ‘Oh, let’s go do something else.’ They’re like, ‘No, Mom, we are a sports family. We’re playing sports today.’”
Jack, Kate and Mike Modano on the golf course. (Courtesy of Allison Modano)
Allison, laughing, was quick to point out that despite the age difference between her and her husband, “I can still beat him at every sport besides hockey, and he would agree. … Just so we all know where our kids’ athletic ability comes from.”
Does this include the golf course?
“I have cobwebs on my golf clubs right now, so that’ll tell you how much I play,” Allison said. “However, when we go out there, all I have to do is get in his head and it’s game over. So mentally, I can beat him. He is physically a much better player than I am now, but I feel like I can get out there and just grind the heck out of him.
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“Yeah, I’m pretty confident. I’m a competitor. I’m more competitive than he is, and trust me, he would say the same thing.”
Despite their playful jabs, Mike and Allison are a heckuva team.
“I never have to ask him to be around, because he always is,” Allison said. “I’m so lucky that I have him at home. I don’t know how the other wives do it. I really don’t know how their husbands play and they run the household and get their kids everywhere they need to be, because it really is a full-time job.”
Added Modano of his wife, “She runs the show. We’re just following her lead. She is the most amazing wife and mother. I was pretty lucky to find her. She’s an amazing mom, great wife, and to handle five kids — and sometimes it’s six because I’m kind of one, too — sometimes she handles a lot for us.
“I don’t know if I was capable of having kids while I was playing. I don’t know if I was selfish in the sense where I was just so in tune with my career and playing and knew how important that was to me. So I don’t know if I had time to do the family thing, or maybe I just hadn’t found the right one to have kids with at the time.
“I love being able to be home and do all the things that I probably would have missed if I was playing. I enjoy the drop-offs and the mornings and dinners and bedtime routine and the dancing in the kitchen and the makeup being put on my face. That’s my meaning in life now.”
Modano still remembers when the rumors began to swirl that Green was working hard to relocate the North Stars. The first hint the team was toast was the logo change.
“As soon as they got rid of the ‘N,’ we were like, ‘Well, that’s the staple,’” Modano recalled. “Went to just Stars. Very generic, like you could move them anywhere. I mean you could have moved to any city and named them the Stars.
“As soon as the ‘N’ was gone, we all knew something was up. That was the writing on the wall.”
The Stars moved to Texas and were an immediate hit. Modano’s stardom continued to soar and the Stars went on to go to the conference final in 1998, win a Stanley Cup in 1999 and go to the Stanley Cup Final in 2000.
“I often think about how this town would have received those teams that we had in Dallas if we stayed here, because it probably would have been the same personnel, same people,” Modano said. “We would have had the same type of team, and to have those runs here, this town would have loved it.”
In 2010, when the Stars announced they’d be moving on without Modano, who is still the franchise’s leader in virtually every statistical category, he had two choices: sign with his hometown Red Wings or return to Minnesota to play with the Wild. He chose Detroit.
“In hindsight, I should have signed here,” Modano said.
Mike Modano has some regrets over signing with the Red Wings. (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
“That whole year, the whole Mike Babcock situation, the way that whole thing ended, boy, it just took the wind out of my sails,” Modano said. “I was emotionally and mentally drained after that. I was like, ‘That’s it for me,’ and I retired.”
On Nov. 26, Modano took a skate to the wrist and suffered a gruesome injury in which his tendons were sliced. He underwent surgery and missed exactly three months.
On April 3, the Red Wings’ fourth-to-last game of the season — against the Wild, with Modano needing four games to get to 1,500 — Babcock scratched him. Modano’s career ended at 1,499 games.
“He knew,” Modano said. “The assistants had said something and he was well aware of it and made it clear that he didn’t bring me there to play 1,500 games. He brought me there to win a Cup. When he told me that, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it.”
Modano considered calling the Wild to see if they were still interested after that season. Instead, he signed a one-day contract with Dallas so he could retire with the Stars, who have since also retired his No. 9.
“The injury and how it all unraveled with Babcock just left a bad taste in your mouth,” Modano said. “I feel I still had a little bit left physically. I think mentally, it was just more exhaustion and it needed to end.”
Only 21 NHLers in history have skated in 1,500 regular-season games.
Still, while 1,500 would have been a fitting end to a distinguished career, Modano said, “I can’t complain about 1,499. It was probably 900 more than I thought I could play.”
But it’s funny how things work out.
In 2019, Wild owner Craig Leipold and CEO Matt Majka called and offered Modano a job.
He and his wife had talked about raising their kids in the Midwest for a long time. This seemed like a perfect opportunity. In fact, they planned to move here in 2020 and even had their eyes on a home in Edina, but their plans came to a halt when COVID-19 hit and they had their fifth child.
“Even growing up and having so much of my family here in Minnesota and always visiting, since I was a kid, this is always where I dreamed to raise my kids and where I had my best memories on the lakes,” Allison Modano said. “But last year, we thought, ‘OK, our oldest are going into third grade. If we don’t do this now, it’s going to be a really difficult transition for them.’
“It just makes perfect sense. Mike works for the Wild. And this hockey community has been so good to him and so good to us. And my dad growing up here, that was kind of the driving force to get us back here and really raising our kids in the healthiest environment we could find for them.”
Allison and Mike Modano at the Wild practice facility with (left to right) Quinn, Reese, Luca, Kate and Jack. (Courtesy of Allison Modano)
It’s not all about being a dad. Modano has also thrown himself into his work with the Wild.
He’s always been a sounding board for Leipold and Majka, and in 2019 he was part of the interview process when his old Stars and USA Hockey teammate Bill Guerin was hired as general manager. In fact, when Leipold and Majka called Guerin to offer him the job, Modano was on the call, too, and put himself on mute because he got choked up knowing the hard work and long path Guerin had put into landing this dream position.
Modano and Guerin played together in six international tournaments, including three Olympics. Modano often played in the middle of Guerin and Keith Tkachuk, calling one “Con” and the other “Crete” … as in cement.
“Ron Wilson just loved putting those two with me,” Modano said. “(Brett Hull) and I used to just give it to them. They were so loud, so rambunctious. They were wound up so tight, ready to kill anybody on the ice.”
Said Tkachuk, laughing, “Mo still has nightmares of playing with Billy and I.”
These days, Modano acts as a sounding board for Guerin. But he really likes talking to players and that’s his big role: to show up in St. Paul or for the minor-league team in Des Moines and be somebody a player can feel comfortable talking to.
“I love the locker room atmosphere,” Modano said. “I hope I can give some insight to guys when they’re struggling or things are going wrong and to kind of make it seem as though it’s not as bad as it seems to be when you’re in it. Bob Gainey was amazing at that. He’d say, ‘It doesn’t look as bad to us as you feel it is to you.’ You’re always your worst critic. When things aren’t going well, you try to do too much too hard. I try to relay that.”
Added Guerin, “No matter how good a player Mike was, and he was a great one, there were tough times that he went through, and that’s the type of knowledge and experience he can help our players with. Mike has really expressed to me his desire to help players individually, and we really couldn’t have a better guy for that.”
So Modano’s in a great place right now.
He loves working for the Wild. He loves raising his kids in Minnesota. And he loves that he’s back in a place he figured 30 years ago he was leaving behind forever.
“As much as everything’s changed, it feels like nothing’s changed,” Modano said. “It almost feels like a time warp.”
(Top photo of Mike Modano at the 1988 NHL Draft: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images; and of Modano at his twins’ ninth birthday party courtesy of Allison Modano)
