News from March 1993

Pavel Gossip Line
Summarized from PBFC newsletter

• Former linemates from the 1989 World Junior Championship team, Alexander Mogilny, Sergei Federov and Pavel Bure have combined for 160 goals and 133 assists so far this NHL season.
• Pavel scored more goals in his rookie season (34) than Jarri Kurri (32), Glen Anderson (30), Brett Hull (32), Guy LaFleur or Bryan Trottier (32).
• Pavel scored his Canuck season record 100th point in the 5-1 victory over Lightning on April Fool's Day.
• So far, at $50 a goal, Pavel has raised $2750 for the CKNW orphans fund.
• Pavel holds 14 club records including most goals (55) and most points season (100), most goals rookie (34), most short-handed gpals season (7).
• Pavel appeared briefly on a TV show entitled 'The Performers', which BCTV is considering rerunning.

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Russian Rocket Poised for Lift-Off
by Bob Dunn - - The Opening Whistle
March 1993

The scene is Victoria. On TV sportscasts all over the province, Vancouver Canucks' fans engulf Pavel Bure like he's a matinée idol, or at least the greatest player they have ever seen. To many of them, he is both. Good-looking, with the purity and innocence of youth. Good-looking, with the speed and skill of a hockey maestro. It is a love affair that, while less than a year old, is still whirlwind perfect.

Now it is several days after the latest in a summer of encounters with the fans who love him. Bure is sitting across the table, discussing the fan adulation, and the season ahead.

"I didn't expect anything close to this," he says, with a certain degree of bewilderment. "It is almost one year. I never heard bad words from the fans. They are always glad for me. They always say 'Nice season."'

No kidding, nice season!

Two years ago, he was a name from a forgotten draft. Most Vancouver hockey fans didn't know whether to call him "Burr" or "Byurr-ay" or "Burr-ay." Then, after the break up of the Soviet Union, his promised arrival started to make sense. But, even as it became apparent that the Canucks would have Bure if they could sign him, the optimism was guarded. Yes, he was fast. Yes, he was gifted. But he was also slight, if not small, and this was the NHL, a league unlike anything he had ever seen.

In the end, it was Bure who was unlike anything the NHL had ever seen. He exploded like, yes, a rocket. He did things with the puck that most players don't think of doing. He was supposed to be nursed into the line-up, and then the power play, but in the end he made it too tough for Coach Pat Quinn to bring him along slowly. And with every shift, he added to his legion of fans.

"Sometimes, too many people want autographs" he says, with resignation and not indignation. "I can't stay for two or three hours after the game. The game finishes about eleven and I have to prepare for the next day, so I can't sign every autograph like they want. I try to do the best I can. It's very tough. The kids especially. It's tough to say no."

The swarms, like the one that day during training camp in Victoria, are now commonplace. Bure expects them and accepts them, because they come with the popularity, and he does his best to be accommodating.

"I don't go out a lot," he admits.

The popularity is Bure's own doing. His first game with the Canucks was on the third of November , 14 games into the 1991-92 season. By the middle of April, 66 games later, he'd established himself as a contender for all hockey's rookie awards. However, given his late start and the distance between forward Tony Amonte of the New York Rangers and Detroit defenceman Niklas Lisdstrom, Bure was still considered something of a long shot for rookie-of-the-year.

"Fifty-fifty," he says, when asked what he thought his chances were.

The first of the Canucks to win a major individual trophy, Bure had to overcome more than his late start to win. As a player three time zones away from the centre of the universe, the eastern seaboard, Pavel's heroics and statistics were often "Bure'd" in overnight newsreels and wire reports. That in itself is an old story, one that Dave Winfield of the Toronto Blue Jays often hurt him in balloting for All-Star teams and MVP awards when he played in San Diego. That Bure overcame it is a tribute to him, or to the voting hockey writers who seemed to have done their homework.

Because Bure's statistics, when pro-rated, were just as impressive. In a full season, he'd have had 40 goals and 73 points (Amonte led with 35 and 69). The only category in which Amonte would've been better were assists (34-32) and power-play goals (9-7). Even with a shorter season, Bure had the most short-handed goals (3), game-winning goals (6, tied with Buffalo's Donald Audette) and shots on goal (268) among the NHL's top rookies.

"My teammates and the coaching staff gave me lots of help," Bure reflects. "I really appreciated that. And the fans give me help. I had some energy from the fans, and I really appreciated that, too."

He knows that Canucks' fans have high expectations now, as he does himself, and there is talk of a 50-goal season. The club record is 45, set nine years ago by Tony Tanti, who has the most 40-goal seasons in Canuck history (3). Nobody on the Canucks has scored 40, in fact, since Tanti left in a trade with Pittsburgh three years ago.

Bure has heard, too, what often happens to sophomores in pro sport. It'll make for interesting comparisons this year to chart the output of last year's rookies Bure, Amonte, Lidstrom, Audette along with San Jose's Pat Falloon, New Jersey's Kevin Todd and Nelson Emerson of St. Louis.

And there's also the matter of being in the top 10 scorers, something that might still be beyond Bure's reach. The Canucks have never had a player in the NHL's top ten for more than a week or two and last year didn't have anyone within 25 points of it. It would've taken a 100-point year in each of the last two seasons.

Bure has given the high expectations some consideration.

"If the fans expect forty or fifty goals," says Bure, who was once quoted as predicting 50-goal greatness, "you never know how you will play. When I just came over, the first fifteen or twenty games I play so-so. I was worried. Everybody expected miracles, and I couldn't do it. I worry about this season, too. Maybe some people will expect that. I will try!"

This season, whenBure looks to his left, he won't see the familiar form of fellow countryman Igor Larionov. Fans may never know how much Larionov had to do with Bure's tremendous first season, because there is no yardstick that measures the value of communication Q in words and in passes.

"I will miss him," Bure says flatly.

This is a part of the country that has always maintained a naked admiration for the Montreal Canadiens, who've had a generous share of dominant players. While it's purely coincidence, in Pavel Bure the Canucks have at least a little of two of the Canadiens' most dominant players in history. They have their Rocket (okay, their Russian Rocket), hockey's first since Maurice Richard. And they have their Number 10, just as Montreal had Guy Lafleur.

While the original Rocket and Lafleur were both native sons, Bure remains a foreigner on Canadian soil. A year ago, he spoke through interpreters. Today, his command of English is excellent, but he intends to take English classes.

Why?

"I want to be perfect," he says.

To anyone who watches him on the ice, that should be obvious.

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A 50-goal Canuck
Bure breaks 23-year drought
by Frank Luba - - The Province
2nd March 1993

Finally.

When Pavel Bure scored his 50th goal of the season Monday in a 5-2 win against the Buffalo Sabres he was not only hitting a personal milestone, he was ending a frustrating drought for the Vancouver Canucks that had lasted into this, the team's 23rd year in the NHL without a 50-goal scorer.

The goal came in the 63rd game of the 1992-93 season for the Canucks and the speedy 21-year old, who is only in his second NHL season after winning the league's rookie of the year award last year.

"I'm very happy I scored the 50 goals," said Bure, who went on to add his 51st goal in the second period.

Bure had what appeared to be his 50th goal disallowed Friday in Winnipeg and admitted to feeling a little pressure.

"Maybe lately I tried too hard," he admitted. "I feel much better."

In fact, the Russian Rocket, who has been limited to just five goals in his past 14 games, was loose enough to crack a joke.

When one ill-informed reporter asked the Moscow native if he could remember the last Vancouver player to get 50 goals, he broke up a media crowd by grinning and replying: "Yeah, me."

Only the Canucks and the New Jersey Devils, along with the most recent expansion teams in Ottawa, San Jose and Tampa Bay, have never had a 50-goal scorer.

Bure's historic marker came at 18:06 of the opening period but it didn't come on one of his classic end-to-end rushes.

Instead, the Russian right winger got clear of the left side in the Buffalo zone after a pass from rookie Dixon Ward and drilled a 35-foot slapshot through the five-hole on goaltender Grant Fuhr.

"It was a perfect pass," said Bure. "I just got into the zone and made the shot."

But he didn't really watch it.

"I just closed my eyes," he said.

Bure's second goal Monday was on one of his big rushes, as he carried the puck up the middle of the ice and fired a wicked, top-shelf blast past Fuhr.

"Pavel's got a bit of monkey off his back and he played like it tonight," said Vancouver head coach and general manager Pat Quinn. "Early on he was pressing."

"So, I'm happy it's over," added Quinn of Bure's pursuit of the elusive 50th goal, "because maybe we'll get back to seeing him not pushing, not pressing for the goal."

"Now he's got to get 60," laughed Vancouver centre Cliff Ronning.

And, quite possibly, he may.

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Bure leads popularity polls
by Kent Gilchrist - - The Province
4th March 1993

It should be Pavel Bure Day. Nobody would mind if the civic leaders declared March 1 a holiday.

The only one in B.C. vying with Bure for newspaper space and air time is Gordon Wilson.

The issues were similar. Everyone wondered when and if they would score. But Bure buried the competition.

He got his 50th NHL goal of the season Monday night in Hamilton when he scored Vancouver's second goal against Buffalo Sabres in a 5-2 Canuck win. For historical purposes, the goal was set up by coat-tail-riders, rookie Dixon Ward and defenceman Robert Dirk.

This Bure became the first Vancouver Canuck in history to accomplish a feat that is becoming more and more routine everywhere else, but not here.

This being hockey-mad Vancouver and the Canucks having to wait until their 23rd season for their first 50-goal scorer, it isn't that far-fetched to think someone may ask Bure to run for the Liberal leadership.

So what if he doesn't have his Canadian citizenship. So what if he has only been in town a couple of years. He could not only get elected leader by the Liberal party, but probably take them to a win in the next provincial election!

This kid has the city, indeed the province, at his feet. In less that two seasons, Bure is the most popular athlete to ever play games for money here.

He has his own fan club. He does advertisements with the Wingnut at the Hockey nut radio station for a car dealership.

There is a Bure video. A Bure calendar. There are Russian Rocket billboards. There are television ads.

And he is just scratching the surface. He is the Franchise Player the organization has been unable to acquire or keep; if you count Cam Neely as the club's only other potential Franchise Player.

Neely scored more than 50 goals in back-to-back seasons for Boston Bruins after Canucks gave him away and so did Ricky Vaive, but Bure should easily go over 60 before the end of the season.

He led the team in goals last year when he got 34 in only 65 games. And he was rewarded with the Calder Memorial Trophy as the NHL's best rookie. It was the first major award for a Vancouver player.

This year he was a Hart Trophy candidate until he lost ground to the likes of Mario Lemieux, Pat LaFontaine and Doug Gilmour.

The only Canucks to ever be remotely considered or arguable by even the most zealous Vancouver supporters as the NHL's most valuable player was in 1974-75, when Gary Smith had a career year.

But Smith was working in his fifth NHL organization by the time he got here. And neither Neely nor Vaive could cause 17,000 people to simultaneously rise up out of their seats just by winding up in their own end for a rink-long dash.

Bure is a bargain at his present $600,000 base salary, which will top $1 million with bonuses.

Neely and Vaive aren't in exclusive company. There are few 50-goal scorers in history that can electrify the fans the way Bure does.

If he hasn't already agreed to run for the Liberal leadership, the Canucks would be wise to tie him up to a long, long-term contract as soon as possible.

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