BUFFALO — Ask the Islanders star John Tavares about his most influential role models, and he will tell you he has always looked up to his uncle John.

Uncle John is named John Tavares, too. He is a 44-year-old math teacher at Philip Pocock Catholic Secondary School in Mississauga, Ontario, where he has taught algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus to students in Grades 9 through 12 since 1998.

He is also the highest-scoring player in the history of indoor lacrosse.

In 22 seasons with the Buffalo Bandits of the National Lacrosse League, he has collected 779 goals, 887 assists and 1,666 points. He has amassed similarly stratospheric totals playing summer lacrosse for teams in Ontario and in British Columbia. The games he plays in Buffalo and Toronto and in other N.L.L. arenas stretching all the way to Colorado and Washington State regularly draw crowds of 15,000. He has been on 12 championship teams.

Tavares may be reaching the end of his career in box lacrosse, as the sport is known among the Canadians, Six Nations Indians and upstate New Yorkers who have played it for some 80 years. But lacrosse was always just a second job.