How good was Neal Broten?

[Moose Head]

Also, as an aside, what happened with Mark Pavelich. Averaged about a point/game for a few season and then disappeared.

 

[FerrisRox]

Also, as an aside, what happened with Mark Pavelich. Averaged about a point/game for a few season and then disappeared.

In terms of his NHL career, Ted Sator happened.

Mark, who was undrafted, played in Europe directly following the 1980 'Miracle on Ice' but when Craig Patrick and Herb Brooks (who were both behind the bench for Team USA) took over the New York Rangers a year later, they brought in the undersized Pavelich. He thrived in New York and posted four seasons of close-to-a-point a game production but when the Rangers cleaned house and Patrick and Brooks were replaced by Phil Esposito and Ted Sator, things changed for Pavelich.

Sator re-jigged the Rangers system to a dump-and-chase style that the diminutive Pavelich wasn't suited for and despite scoring 20-goals in 59 games under Sator, Pavelich wasn't happy with the direction the team was headed in and he retired at seasons end saying he no longer found the NHL "fun."

When Brooks re-surfaced as the coach of the Minnesota North Stars the following year he reached out to Pavelich who agreed to give the NHL another shot. Though he managed ten points in 12 games with the North Stars, he walked away from the game again and spent the next two seasons in Italy.

In 1991, after being out of the game for two seasons, San Jose Sharks General Manager Jake Ferrira, who knew Pavelich from their time together with the North Stars, lured Pavelich out of retirement a month before the Sharks were set to host their inaugural training camp. Pavelich and his girlfriend at the time flipped their car en route to the training camp and were lucky to survive the crash unscathed. Pavelich made the Sharks out of camp and assisted on the first goal in franchise history. The Sharks began that season with a back-to-back game and following the second game he abruptly retired again. Brian Lawton, who knew Pavelich from their brief stint together in Minnesota, was on that Sharks team and he be-friended the notoriously shy Pavelich said he believed, quite simply, that Mark no longer found joy playing in the NHL and that he would be "more comfortable laying under a tree in the middle of winter." Pavelich walked away from the league for a third time and retired into the Minnesota wilderness.

 

[Moose Head]

Thanks Ferrisfox. Excellent post.