Mark Recchi played his final two seasons of junior with his hometown Kamloops Blazers. In his last year, he led the WHL in assists and starred during the playoffs, leading all skaters with 31 points in 17 games. The Pittsburgh Penguins were first in line to draft Recchi, in 1988. They sent him to Muskegon of the IHL for some fine-tuning. There, he helped lead his team to a Turner Cup championship. Shortly after the start of the next season, he got the call to join the Pens where he used his opportunity to good effect, finishing second in the rookie goal-scoring race with 30 markers. Year Two brought even loftier results as he potted a red-hot 113 points topped off with a Stanley Cup victory. His successful stay in Pittsburgh was cut short, however, when the Pens set their sights on acquiring Rick Tocchet and Kjell Samuelsson from the Philadelphia Flyers with Recchi as part of the collateral.



In Philly, he carried on his usual trend of scoring enormous quantities of goals and assists. But as was the case in Pittsburgh, Recchi's prolific services went up for sale when the Flyers saw a chance to pry Eric Desjardins and John Leclair away from the Montreal Canadiens. In Montreal, Recchi's numbers declined somewhat although he continued to be a team leader on offense. He lasted with the club until March 1999 when he was unloaded back to the Flyers. Upon his return to Philly, he picked up right where he left off the first time around. In his first full season back, he was voted the team's MVP, having led the team in points scored. He also made his seventh All-Star Game appearance. But his awards were not only limited to the NHL. With the approach to the millennium, Recchi was named male athlete of the 20th century in his hometown of Kamploops. To commemorate the event, the street outside the local arena was named "Mark Recchi Way." After parts of six more seasons in Philly, which saw the former WHL Star surpass the 1200 point mark, Recchi signed as a free-agent with Pittsburgh in the summer of 2004, thus marking a return to his first NHL club. On the international stage, Recchi was a member of Canada's 1988 World Junior team, three-time member of it's World Championship team 1990, 1993 and 1997 and represented Canada at the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan.