Odelein's death is a reminder the shutdown guys don't get enough credit

Lyle Odelein died Friday night of a heart attack. He was 58. He never scored much and never made an All-Star team. He spent sixteen years doing the job nobody notices until the guy who did it is gone.

Odelein was a seventh-round pick, 141st overall, Montreal in 1986. That tells you how the league undervalued a defenseman who just eats shifts and clears the front of the net.

He spent his first six full seasons with the Canadiens and won a Stanley Cup there in 1993. He chipped in six points and a plus-9 over 20 playoff games on a team that's still one of the last old-school Montreal champions. That's a real line on a résumé, not a participation trophy.

He kept playing hockey the way the job used to be done. 2,316 penalty minutes. 184 career fights. A body that went to New Jersey, Phoenix, Columbus, Chicago, Dallas, Florida and Pittsburgh over the back half of his career.

The Blue Jackets made him their first captain in 2000-01 after claiming him in the expansion draft. That's its own kind of honor. A brand-new franchise looks around the room and picks the guy who's been doing this longest and hardest.

He wore the red and white for Canada at the 1996 World Cup, too. And yes, he passed through Sunrise as a Panther before he was done, one line on a career that touched almost everywhere.

The stat line reads modest next to the guys he protected: 50 goals, 202 assists, 252 points across 1,056 games. That's not why anyone remembers him.

The Blue Jackets built an anniversary tribute around him. Montreal still claims him as part of that 1993 group. Odelein played the position the way it's supposed to be played when nobody's grading it on highlight reels. Block the shot, finish the check, answer the bell, go home sore. Ferda, basically, before the word landed on a hockey blog's name.

He lived in Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania, and leaves his wife Laurel and three kids, Paulyna, Dylan and Mackenzy.

Hockey loses guys like this and the league moves on fast, onto tonight's slate and tomorrow's trade rumors. That's fine. It's still worth a minute to say: a defenseman who never cracked a scoring title anywhere mattered enough that three different franchises wanted him wearing a letter. That's the job description. He did it for sixteen years.