59. Mark Pavelich

Fresh off winning Olympic gold for the USA in 1980, Mark Pavelich played his first season as a pro in Switzerland. In 1981, he reunited with a handful of Olympians in New York. Head coach Herb Brooks was now behind the Rangers bench, assistant coach Craig Patrick was now the Rangers GM, and teammates Rob McClanahan and Dave Silk were skating for the Rangers. Bill Baker joined the party a year later.

Pavelich immediately became a fixture of the Rangers offense and was one of the top producers for the team for three straight seasons. The undersized, wily center could hang on to the puck while skating circles around the defense. “He always focused on stick handling, passing and skating, like his childhood idol Bobby Orr.“

On February 23, 1983, fans were treated to a free hat as they entered MSG to see the Rangers host the Whalers. Many of those free hats hit the ice after Pavelich scored his third goal of the game. According to the New York Times, “Glen Hanlon, the Ranger goalie, skated out of his crease, holding his stick straight up in front of him, and speared a hat that was floating down. He hoisted the hat high as the crowd laughed and cheered. Behind his mask, Hanlon was grinning, too.” Many more hats flew down after Pavs sent home goal number four…and then even more were tossed after he put in his fifth goal 11 seconds later. “I never saw so many hats,” Pavelich said. He became the second Ranger to score five in a game. Don Murdoch in 1976 was the first, and Mika Zibanejad became the third in 2020.

(Pavelich) grinned as he sat on the bench after the fifth goal, with the crowd cheering, the hats flying, and his teammates slapping him in congratulations. “It was crazy out there,” said Pavelich…”You just have to accept these things. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and I was just lucky enough to be the one it happened to. They weren’t spectacular goals; the puck just seemed to be lying there for me all night.” New York Times Feb. 24, 1983

Times writer Lawrie Mifflin gave Pavs a little more credit. Forgive the long quote, but it paints a nice picture:

(Pavelich) has turned smallness into an advantage. The Ranger center, who weighs about 170 pounds, is listed as 5 feet 8 inches, and he clearly appears to be an inch or two shorter. There isn’t much point in his trying to knock down hefty defensemen or shove burly forwards off the puck along the boards. There is value, though, in being able to take a hit and in being able to maintain a radar-like bead on the puck while being hit.

Time and again, a larger player will slam Pavelich against the boards, then turn away, only to find that Pavelich has either kicked the puck to a teammate or recovered from the check quickly enough to regain the puck further down the boards.

In open ice, Pavelich has advanced the science of beating bigger players even further. Often, he simply uses quickness – ducking them, darting around them or poking the puck between their skates and recovering it behind them. And he has created an advantage for himself by anticipating checks; opponents often can’t find him to check him until it’s too late…His five goals Wednesday night came from five different angles. When Scot Kleinendorst fed him a pass into the circle on a powerplay, Pavelich surprised the Hartford goaltender, Greg Millen, by receiving the puck and slinging it toward the net in the same sweeping motion. On his next goal, he reached out chest-high to deflect downward a slapshot by Mikko Leinonen.

The third goal was a perfect example of Pavelich’s opportunism. Kleinendorst slapped a shot from the point. If saved, the puck ordinarily would rebound out front, where a defenseman was waiting to shove aside any Ranger forwards. But Pavelich was lurking out of the defenseman’s range, and the moment the shot hit Millen, Pavelich saw that the puck got between his pads and was going to trickle out behind the goalie. Instantly, he dodged the defenseman, ducked behind Millen and swatted the loose puck into the net.

His fourth goal was a plain slapshot from the right faceoff circle, the most mundane of the five. On his fifth, he was aided by the fact that both Hartford defensemen converged on Tom Laidlaw, who was carrying the puck down the slot. But again he steered clear of the cluster of bigger bodies, focusing instead on the puck. It squirted loose to the left of the slot, he pounced on it, and he rifled his shot while Millen was still worrying about the three players in front of the net.

”Size doesn’t mean much,” Pavelich said. ”It can help, but there’s lots of ways around it.”

Ted Sator became head coach in the 1985 offseason, and managed to dishearten the players, and especially Pavelich, within a few months. Sator criticized Pavelich for having the gall to use his skating and puck skills to carry the puck into the offensive zone rather than dump it in. Pavs was also frustrated with his own play and publicly wondered where his own spirit for the game had gone and called himself a burden and liability to the team. In March, 1986, after sitting out two straight games, Pavelich disappeared. The team’s front office could not get in touch with him for several days, but teammates revealed that Pavelich had retired. (In fairness to Sator, the team did go on to reach the conference finals in 1986 despite a sub-.500 regular season record.)

Pavelich did end up skating a few more NHL games and a couple of seasons in Italy. Other than that, he returned home to northern Minnesota and stayed out of the spotlight. Later in life, Pavelich was troubled in ways that made his family suspect he was suffering from C.T.E. after sustaining “several serious head injuries during his playing career.” Pavelich passed away in 2021.

Jump to 18:35 of this video to see a Pavelich goal: