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HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my One True Hockey Love, Pavel Bure!

The Russian Rocket turns 39 today. He's been out of hockey (officially) since 2004, but hasn't played a game since the 02-03 season. If not for the recurring injuries, he could possibly still be playing today. I miss seeing him on the ice. He was one of the reasons I started watching hockey, and THE reason that I continued.. and for that I will always love him. Besides that, I have yet to see anyone who can skate- and not just skate, but stick-and-puck-handle, WHILE skating at top speed, like he can. He made goalies and defencemen look silly almost every night.

Poor guy never won a Cup (though he came about as close as you can get in 1994) and never really played on a contender (aside from that Cinderella year, the Canucks were pretty bad and the Panthers even worse). He never played with a top centerman (which could have made a difference) and even still, he finished his career with 779Points in 702 NHL games, which is good for 1.10 points per game, and 437 G which is .62 goals per game. Not too shabby. (and playoff-wise, he had 70 pts in 65 games- 35G 35A, also not bad)

To compare a bit with today's top Russian player, Ovie has 265 G in 390 games, which is good for .67 goals per game, and he scores 1.33 points per game but he's played on better teams--and with better centermen (no offence to Trevor Linden) than Pavel did. You can't really compare much more because they are such different players, style-wise. Ovie is more like a Fedorov- a power forward, where as Bure was a sniper and really too small to be a "power forward".

Enough comparisons, Pavel Bure was and always will be my favorite hockey player of all time. Say what you want to about him, but he was super exciting and could (and usually did) make magical things happen when he was on the ice. I think if he had ever won a Stanley Cup, then he would have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2008, when he was eligible. I think I wrote about that here, so I won't bore you again, but I think it was outrageous that he wasn't inducted, when they only picked 2 players out of 4 spots that year. B.S.