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New 'Big Joe' A Winner - May 24, 2010 – Vol. 63, Issue 25

THE STORY OF JOE PAVELSKI’S emergence as the NHL’s latest overnight sensation actually begins much earlier – last year, around this time, during a more troubling period for the San Jose Sharks.

By mid-May, the Sharks’ management team was already conducting a series of painful exit interviews after their squad, the Western Conference’s top seed for the ’09 playoffs, fell with a thump in the opening round to the No. 8-seeded Ducks.

Pavelski, in his post-season discussions, did something refreshing and relatively uncommon. Even as the team’s stars, most notably Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau and goaltender Evgeni Nabokov, were publicly taking the heat for the loss, Pavelski issued a mea culpa of his own; that he and the rest of the team’s second line needed to be more productive as well. Before leaving town for the summer, Pavelski outlined the different ways he could make that a difference in a meeting GM Doug Wilson remembers well.

‘CONTRIBUTIONS HAVE TO COME FROM UP AND DOWN THE LINEUP’

“What’s said in those situations remains private, but I can tell you, he took responsibility,” Wilson said. “He started off by saying the things he could have done better and then how he would address them. That’s the type of guy Pav is.”

Wilson is a big booster of Pavelski’s and had been even before the University of Wisconsin product scored most of the big goals in the Sharks’ opening round for victory over the Colorado Avalanche. Pavelski’s strong play also spilled over into the second series, where he was an offensive force against the Detroit Red Wings.

For a time there, Pavelski and the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Sidney Crosby were running 1-2 in playoff scoring, creating a temptation to compare and contrast the two, if only because both are just 5-foot-11, a number that generally makes hockey scouts wince with dread.

Pavelski’s size was one of the reasons he was available in the seventh round of that glorious 2003 draft, where he was playing the first of his two years with the Waterloo Black Hawks of the United States League.

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Wilson was only a month into his tenure as the Sharks’ full-time GM back then, a seminal moment for the organization, given that they had two first-rounders and four picks in the top 47 overall. But while Milan Michalek (sixth overall) and Steve Bernier (16th overall) have moved on, Pavelski looks as if he’s with the Sharks to stay.

Wilson said he remembers well what it was his scouting staff, particularly Tim Burke and Pat Funk, liked about Pavelski – and why they pressed him so hard to take a flyer on him.

“He’s a hockey player, it’s that simple,” Wilson recalled. “He was a guy, while not big or physically dominant, who just had the hockey sense. That was very attractive. Watching tapes of him – and certainly, after we drafted him and watched him play at Wisconsin – he was a guy that our guys felt very strongly about adding to our mix.”

Pavelski spent two years at Wisconsin, won a national championship and at that point, began to think that a pro career was a reasonable possibility.

“But then you go to that first NHL training camp and you’re skating around with these big bodies, guys that have been playing in the league for 10 years, and it’s a whole different story – and a whole different way of training,” Pavelski noted. “Guys here have a completely different understanding of the game, so there was a lot to be learned. I played three exhibition games and then got sent down and you realize, there’s a lot of work to do before getting called back up – and there are no guarantees even then, so you’ve got to stay on top of your game.”

Pavelski’s minor league apprenticeship lasted just 16 games, a time in which he produced 26 points for the Worcester Sharks.

“He was a guy that just had high-end hockey IQ,” Wilson said. “And those are the players that can normally play at the next level.”

Already an integral part of the team’s leadership group, Pavelski may ultimately be captain material, once the incumbent, 40-year-old defenseman Rob Blake, decides to hang up his skates.

As for last year’s playoff disappointment and the way things have turned around, Pavelski simply states the facts in the no-muss, no-fuss manner he has. The numbers, he says, generally don’t lie.

“I had one assist, our line probably only had three or four points combined; and you’re not going to win many games like that,” he said. “If you look at any team, the contributions have to come from up and down the lineup. And so far, we’ve gotten that this year.”

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