I can’t remember the specific circumstances of why Joe Pavelski was a media focal point that day in the San Jose Sharks dressing room sometime during the 2011-12 season, the first I was there covering the team. I can, though, easily recall the adjective Joe Thornton used to describe him.
“He’s just dirty, man,” Thornton said, shrugging his broad shoulders, unable or unwilling to come up with anything more illustrative. “I don’t know. He’s just dirty.”
Thornton wasn’t suggesting that Pavelski was out there trying to injure his opponents. Rather, it was a term of endearment from one of the most successful and talented players of his era, who seemed to be particularly delighted to witness what was, at the time, a teammate’s emergence to eventual stardom.
The obvious implication is that Pavelski was getting to the dirty areas of the ice to score, on his way to the first 30-goal season of his career that year. But I took it as Thornton trying to convey something deeper.
Joe Thornton and Joe Pavelski in 2015. (Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
Some players’ roads to the NHL are paved at an early age. They are born with enough God-given tools already in their arsenal in their mid-teens that it’s inevitable they’re going to reach the highest level. Thornton himself was one of them, with the size, vision and hands that led to his going No. 1 in the 1997 draft.
Pavelski’s road wasn’t smooth. Not at all. Rather, it was — if we’re going to stick with the metaphor — more like a dirt one. Here was a former seventh-round pick who was among the slowest players in the league in terms of straight-ahead foot speed; at 5-foot-11 wasn’t very big, and didn’t possess a slap shot that was going to overpower many NHL goaltenders. There were natural obstacles and impediments on Pavelski’s road, and only the most determined individual was going to successfully traverse it. Maybe that’s what Thornton meant.
But traverse it, Pavelski did, and then some. Pavelski, who officially retired on Monday in a statement posted to his Instagram page, not only hangs up his skates as one of the most successful U.S.-born players in NHL history (sixth all-time in goals with 476 and points with 1,068), but leaves behind a sterling reputation of leadership, hard work, determination and class that few players of his era have equaled.
Two coaches I covered during Pavelski’s time in San Jose, Todd McLellan and Pete DeBoer, mentioned that Pavelski would be the first player they would point to when suggesting to their young, hockey-playing sons whom they should try to emulate. John Tortorella, coach of the 2016 U.S. World Cup team, named Pavelski the captain of that squad. “You can’t do nothing but respect that guy as far as what he’s done in his career and how he handles himself, too. Forget about what he does on the ice, just how he handles himself,” Tortorella said.
I know from my conversations with DeBoer over the years since we both left San Jose that he was especially grateful to be able to coach Pavelski in two locations, reuniting with him in Dallas in 2022 for what ended up as the final two seasons of the player’s career.
But of course he was. DeBoer witnessed firsthand what might have been the most impressive stretch of Pavelski’s career, both on and off the ice.
In the summer of 2018, Pavelski had just one season left on a five-year Sharks contract. At $6 million annually, it was a bargain. Over a four-season span from 2013-14 through 2016-17, Pavelski’s 145 goals were fewer than only Alex Ovechkin. (That’s one of those stats that East Coast hockey fans might be surprised to read today, since those 10:30 p.m. starts in San Jose tended to be a bit too late for many.)
But 2017-18 had been a down season for Pavelski, with 22 goals and 44 assists for 66 points in 82 games. That number, though, was misleading. In fact, according to DeBoer, “most guys wouldn’t have even played the first two months,” after Pavelski underwent hand/wrist surgery in the offseason. He battled through it.
And then, during a 2018 offseason in which he was eligible for a contract extension, Pavelski had to watch as the Sharks gave recent arrival Evander Kane a seven-year, $49 million deal, but never had meaningful discussions with him or his agent about keeping him around for the long term. That silence persisted throughout the 2018-19 campaign, too.
Pavelski was well within his rights to be ticked off or insulted. He almost certainly was, to some extent. He’s only human. But he didn’t seem to let it bother him or affect how he conducted himself. He was still first on the practice ice every morning, as he always was, redirecting floating pucks from the point from Brent Burns, attempting to further perfect a skill at which he was already the best in the league. He proudly wore the captain’s “C” on a stacked team, keeping the dressing room together after the arrival of an outsized presence and personality in Erik Karlsson. He never complained — and, of course, never pointed out that the Sharks’ worst stretch of the 2018-19 regular season came when they went 1-5-1 when he missed seven games due to injury just before the playoffs began, which, in hindsight, should have been an enormous red flag for the front office.
Pavelski finished with 38 goals that season, tied for the second-best of his career. In the playoffs, he suffered a serious concussion in Game 7 of the first round — that infamous Sharks third-period comeback against Vegas, when his teammates rallied around him and reeled off four power-play goals to stun the Golden Knights. Even while recovering in the dressing room, Pavelski’s presence was evident simply in the way his teammates responded to what was a terrifying injury to their captain, whose crimson blood stain was literally still on the ice in the end that the Sharks were executing their power play.
Incredibly, Pavelski returned a couple weeks later, dressing for Game 7 of the second round against the Avalanche and promptly scoring the first goal on one of his patented redirections, blowing the roof off of SAP Center and setting the tone for an eventual Sharks win.
The Sharks finally did offer Pavelski a contract extension, for two years and $10 million. Dallas, trying to reestablish its own culture at the time, stepped in and offered a much more significant three years at $21 million, or a little more than double what the Sharks put on the table. They’d end up extending him twice on one-year deals.
It was a decision that sent the Sharks spiraling into oblivion, while helping boost Dallas into Stanley Cup contention for just about the duration of Pavelski’s time there. They didn’t win a Stanley Cup, but in five seasons with Pavelski they made the Final in 2020 and Western Conference final in 2023 and 2024.
On the ice, Pavelski led the Stars in scoring in 2020-21 and 2021-22, finished third on the team in 2022-23, and second in 2023-24. But it was evident he was just as important to that team off the ice, too. In fact, as Pavelski pointed out in his Instagram farewell address, there were eerie similarities between what happened with the Stars in 2023 and what happened with the Sharks in 2019 — Pavelski suffered a serious head injury in the playoff opener against Minnesota that year, but his teammates made sure to stay in the tournament until he was able to return. Pavelski scored four goals against the Kraken in his first game back.
And then there was the end. After the Stars were eliminated this past June, Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn and Wyatt Johnston were all visibly emotional when asked about their veteran leader and friend potentially walking away from the game.
Joe Pavelski may have played his last NHL game, and his Stars teammates got emotional discussing his impact 😢 pic.twitter.com/NqKbTgkvaq
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) June 3, 2024
That blend of talent combined with leadership and the respect of his peers will be Pavelski’s legacy.
“One of the best teammates and leaders I have had the pleasure of working with,” DeBoer told me via text on Monday. “Whether you were a rookie, a trainer, a team services guy or the leading scorer on the team Pav made everyone feel important. His greatest gift!”
Thornton, reached via text on Monday, added: “He’s the f—ing best!! Every single day I loved being his teammate, he put the work in every day, he’s adored by everyone that meets him. Just a great human being.”
(Top photo: Brandon Magnus / NHLI via Getty Images)
