Brent Johnson wasn't the first, best, winningest, or most recognizable mutual teammate of Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby. The retired NHL goalie was never the primary starter for Ovechkin's Washington Capitals or Crosby's Pittsburgh Penguins, and he didn't backstop either player to a Stanley Cup. But he was around for the start of their rise. It shaped his thoughts on what makes them amazing.

During the 2005-06 season, the NHL's first after a yearlong lockout, Johnson backed up Olaf Kolzig for a rebuilding Capitals team that had little going for it but a sensational young Russian winger. Nowadays, expecting Washington and Pittsburgh to compete for titles is common sense; the same goes for Ovechkin and Crosby lighting up opposing goalies. They debuted in the league together as top picks from consecutive drafts, and Johnson had front-row access to their rookie breakouts. Ovechkin bagged 52 goals, and both players eclipsed 100 points, instantly validating enormous hype.

"From early ages, people around the hockey world have known about their greatness. They've known about their abilities. Maybe Alex went a little bit more under the radar, just because he wasn't in North America early. We all heard about Sidney Crosby as the next coming," said Johnson, who's now a Capitals studio analyst for NBC Sports Washington.

"They're able to perform at such a high level despite the pressure that's being put on them. Some players who aren't really (great), I think, would fold a bit under pressure. They never seem to. They never seem to fold. They never seem to falter."

The observation is as relevant as ever entering 2020-21, Crosby and Ovechkin's 16th season battling head-on for team and personal superiority. Their overlap has defined a hockey generation, and the rivalry is about to intensify. Starting Sunday in Pittsburgh, eight Penguins-Capitals games beckon in the realigned, hypercompetitive East Division - eight clashes between fading yet hopeful contenders long conditioned to dislike and irk each other.

Hockey's emphasis on team sometimes compels players to downplay individual battles. Penguins versus Capitals is what matters on the scoreboard, not Sid versus Ovi. But it's obvious why plenty of fans and talking heads, plus the occasional out-of-town writer, gravitate toward the latter framing.

Crosby and Ovechkin cross paths all the time, the result of their draft status, divisional proximity, and success in revitalizing once-stagnant franchises. The four postseason series they've played each produced a Cup champion: Pittsburgh in 2009, 2016, and 2017, and Washington in 2018. If Crosby and Ovechkin both dress as expected Sunday, it will be their 53rd regular-season meeting.

Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux, titans of another era, never met on the ice even half as often.

Assuming good health - a surer bet for Ovechkin than for Crosby - new accolades await both stars in 2021. Each is very likely to record his 1,300th point. Crosby's nearing his 1,000th career game. If Ovechkin scores 36 goals, he'll climb from eighth to fourth on the all-time leaderboard, surpassing Mike Gartner, Phil Esposito, Marcel Dionne, and Brett Hull en route. If he scores 30, he'll have done so for a record 16th straight season, eclipsing a mark he shares with Gartner.

These distinctions are tributes to Sid and Ovi's longevity, as was this recent compliment from Capitals head coach Peter Laviolette: They've been hockey's best players for most of his 20 years in the league.

"There are younger players coming now who want to challenge that," Laviolette said during training camp. "But for so long, when those two teams, Pittsburgh and Washington, squared off, they made noise. They made noise because of those guys."

Conor Sheary, the former Crosby linemate who signed with Washington in December, offered similar sentiments.

"I think they're two generational talents who gave this league life. Normally, they put people in the stands," he said. "From my standpoint, I started with Sid in Pittsburgh (in 2015). Playing alongside him, he gave me a chance to break into this league, which is awesome. Moving to this side of the rivalry, I'm excited to be a part of it.

"Just to be a part of it with Ovi is pretty special - to be able to play with him, too."

Sheary is one of four ex-Penguins skating for Washington this season, joining Carl Hagelin, Daniel Sprong, and Justin Schultz. Historically speaking, the members of this group are in select company. They know firsthand - or soon will - what makes both Crosby and Ovechkin tick, acquiring a teammate's insight into their personality differences and the traits that bind them. As Johnson put it, "I got to see both sides of the story."

Crosby and Ovechkin's past mutual teammates

*Won 2016 Stanley Cup with Penguins
**Won 2018 Stanley Cup with Capitals

The contrasts in how Crosby and Ovechkin approach the game have been evident since they were teenagers. The Penguins captain is the serious, calculated, pass-first genius who surveys the ice like a chessboard, thinking moves ahead like Gretzky. From the start of his NHL career, Johnson said, Ovechkin has been the physical, jocular, fun-loving powerhouse who seeks to impose his will in 45-second bursts.

And yet they're also fundamentally similar. During his nine seasons with the Capitals and a 107-game stint with Pittsburgh, Eric Fehr took note of both players' tireless efforts in practice: Crosby is the classic first-on, last-off type, while Ovechkin devotes time each day to perfecting his shot.

"They're both super intense when they're playing," Fehr said, and that shared killer instinct is symbiotic. Especially when they were young, Fehr and Johnson recall, each star truly cared about outdoing the other, forcing the opponent to play at his absolute peak.

"To whoever was out there saying Ovechkin is the better player or Crosby is the better player, they wanted to prove that they were," Johnson said.

New York Islanders head coach Barry Trotz, who coached Ovechkin to the Stanley Cup in 2018, affirmed as much.

"I had the pleasure of being a part of that rivalry. It's fierce," he said. "They don't like each other. They never have, and they never will."

Crosby, for his part, said last season that his relationship with Ovechkin has always been cordial, if distant: "We're not best buddies, but at the same time, I respect the way he plays and what he's doing; can relate to the pressure and the expectations he (faced) coming into the league."

To that last point, Trotz praised both for shouldering an immense burden after the 2005 lockout. Before either player came close to winning a Cup, their brilliance kept the league interesting and relevant at a time when fan support could have cratered.

Their brushes have always been electric and consequential. Fehr played in the 2009 playoff game that both stars punctuated with hat tricks. He scored twice in the 2011 Winter Classic at Heinz Field, the site of Crosby's first costly concussion, and he loved facing the Penguins in feisty matchups in D.C. on Super Bowl Sunday (it's happened four times in the Crosby-Ovechkin era). Winding down his career in Switzerland, the 35-year-old center said he's thought about Crosby and Ovechkin's bond from a big-picture perspective.

"I never saw the games with Wayne and Mario. But I would have to assume that this would go down as the best rivalry in hockey history. Because they were in the same division. Because they were both able to win Cups out of it. Because they've met up with each other so many times, and they had great games against each other," Fehr said.

"You'd have to put a bunch of options in front of me. But I'd have a hard time believing there's (been) a bigger rivalry in the NHL."

About those options.

Picking the NHL's all-time best player rivalry depends on how you define the term, or at least on the element you prioritize: mutual hatred, frequent high-stakes matchups, the simultaneity of two pursuits of greatness. Taking into account the skills and accomplishments of Crosby and Ovechkin, each era has its equivalent pair of superstars.

Gretzky and Lemieux were those legends in the 1980s and '90s. The Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins owned much of the 1970s, led by top talents Guy Lafleur and Bobby Orr. Of the players who dominated the prior few decades, said hockey historian Eric Zweig, two stand out from the fray: Maurice Richard and Gordie Howe.

Individually, Gretzky headlines the GOAT conversation, and Lemieux probably has an inside track on the top five. Yet despite overlapping in the NHL for 13 seasons from 1984-97, the two faced off a mere 25 times. Lemieux's Penguins were bottom-dwellers when Gretzky's Edmonton Oilers were in their prime. They were never divisional or conference foes; they didn't contest a single playoff series. Predictably, their head-to-head stats pop, but as Zweig told theScore, the league never stoked or marketed their rivalry with the same zeal as Sid and Ovi's.

In the '70s, knee surgeries cut short Orr's prime and snuffed out a potential rivalry with Lafleur. The Bruins and Canadiens met in four playoff series that decade: one right before Lafleur was drafted, and three - including the 1977 and 1978 Stanley Cup finals - just after Orr left Boston.

A closer comparable to Crosby-Ovechkin might be Lafleur-Dionne, which featured the top two picks of the 1971 draft. Dionne ranks sixth in NHL history with 1,771 points. Lafleur sits 27th. But where Lafleur paced the Habs to five Stanley Cups, Dionne's Detroit Red Wings and Los Angeles Kings teams were generally bad or mediocre, depriving him of widespread, breathless media coverage and the opportunity to compete for those championships.

"We all knew who he was and that he was a great player, but you never saw him. You never heard stories about him," Zweig said. "I don't think you ever hear about (Lafleur-Dionne) as a classic rivalry. It sort of should be. Should have been, I guess."

Instead, to Zweig, Howe-Richard "is the classic (rivalry), at every level." From Howe's 1946-47 rookie season to Richard's retirement in 1960, their teams were the toast of the Original Six. Either the Red Wings or Canadiens appeared in every final during that span, and they combined to win 10 Stanley Cups, with Howe and Richard meeting in the finals three times. Not that they only brought the heat in the playoffs. Dan Holmes of Vintage Detroit Collection once recalled the events of the first NHL encounter between Richard and Howe: The Rocket elbowed Howe in the chin, and the future Mr. Hockey responded that same shift with a right haymaker.

Even in a less violent, less acrimonious era, Crosby and Ovechkin have engaged in their share of scrums and shouting matches, including the 2018 tiff depicted above. But their rivalry, Zweig said, lacks the subtext of Howe and Richard's: the younger player aiming to usurp the incumbent superstar. Jean Beliveau, Bobby Hull, and Stan Mikita all excelled in the Original Six age, but Howe and Richard were in the NHL first, a budding all-around great from Saskatchewan farm country challenging the rule of the French-Canadian icon who was the game's purest scorer.

"You're trying to take it away from me," Zweig said, summarizing the stakes for the older Richard. "I've been the guy, and now here comes you."

This century's equivalent storyline has seen Crosby pull away from Ovechkin in Cup wins, with the Penguins clinching three before the Capitals earned their first. The 13-year, $124-million contract Ovechkin inked in 2008 expires after this season, and he hopes eventually to finish his career in Moscow. But he's also said he intends to stay in D.C. past 2021, and though their East Division competition is strong, time remains for both Washington and Pittsburgh to try to avenge recent playoff disappointments.

Invoking his own historical comparison before the season started, Trotz said Crosby and Ovechkin will one day be remembered as "the Howe and the Hull" of their time: one a paragon of offensive consistency (Crosby's 1.28 points per game ranks sixth all time among 500-point scorers), and the other capable of surpassing Gretzky in goals. Thanks to Washington's 2018 breakthrough, both will also go down as winners - their unifying motivation.

"A lot of people were right on the mark," Johnson said, reflecting on the buzz Crosby and Ovechkin once commanded as No. 1 picks. "They had these two guys come in the league, and (they) said how absolutely unbelievable these two guys were going to be."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2021 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

For that, the Astros can blame Matt Kemp. In 2014, the veteran outfielder was traded to the San Diego Padres and soon developed a reputation among the Petco Park faithful for trying, let's say, less than his hardest. Memories of Kemp dogging it stuck with Kanter, a transplanted Chicagoan and a White Sox fan since childhood whose workplace overlooks the Padres' stadium. He was out on the office balcony this summer when Kemp, now with the Colorado Rockies, stepped to the plate about 700 feet away, an open invitation for disgruntled onlookers to jeer him. So Kanter started booing.

"The left fielder turned around and looked up at me," Kanter recalled recently.

As COVID-19 marauded the globe this year, no spectators were allowed inside Petco Park or any MLB venue until late in the postseason, magnifying the sounds of the game for players and coaches: the crack of the bat, the thud of ball meeting mitt, taunts bellowed from 13 stories above street level. Playoff series were held at neutral sites, including the ALCS in San Diego, and the Astros were among the last clubs standing. If one player had heard Kanter heckle Kemp without amplification …

That train of thought leads to the top of the fourth inning on Oct. 14. Game 4 between the Astros and Tampa Bay Rays was underway in front of zero paying fans. Kanter was alone on the balcony with sunflower seeds and a can of .394, a locally brewed pale ale named after Tony Gwynn's best single-season batting average. He held his cellphone, on which he'd typed a short script, and a $200 megaphone, purchased with the help of family and friends.

Confident in the appliance's power - Kanter had tested the megaphone by shouting down a canyon - he stood when the Astros took the field in the fourth inning. It was nighttime in Chicago, but not so late that his buddies there had gone to bed. Kanter was nervous but spoke clearly. “You all are a bunch of cheaters," he read, loud enough to break through the silence the pandemic imposed.

"What is the word 'sport' without 'fan'?" asked LeBron James. It was late March, a couple of weeks into the NBA’s coronavirus hiatus, and the Los Angeles Lakers superstar was speaking from his wine cellar to Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye, the retired players who headline the "Road Trippin'" podcast. James had proclaimed right before the shutdown that he wouldn't compete in empty arenas, only to walk that back when it became clear the season couldn't be completed otherwise. He had a sense of the spirit these games would lack: the crying, the joy, the motivation to quiet a wrathful road crowd.

"That's what brings out the competitive side in players: to know that you're going on the road in a hostile environment," James said to Jefferson, Frye, and show host Allie Clifton. "Yes, you're playing against that opponent in front of you. But you really want to kick the fans' ass, too."

Deprived of the feeling, many teams spent months vying for wins and titles in sealed venues, showing viewers how weird it is to consume sports in a pandemic. The only seatholders in the NBA bubble were beamed into the building on 17-foot video screens. The only fans on hand for the NHL playoffs were the machine kind, masked to suit the occasion. Cardboard cutouts - of celebrities, of pets, of "South Park" characters in Denver - filled space at NFL and MLB games. Barred from the arena, fans lost the role they play in the theater of pro sports.

"No one was really able to speak for the people who (wanted to shame the Astros)," Kanter said. "Except for, you know, the yahoo with the megaphone."

Across North America, sports' biggest leagues and events were forced for the first time to anoint victors in sterile environments. No one got to attend the tennis US Open this summer, nor the rescheduled Masters in November. Some NFL and college football teams have welcomed spectators in limited numbers, and MLB sold 11,500 tickets to NLCS and World Series games in Texas. Far more often, though, canned chatter was broadcast to conceal stillness, and legendary venues or sparkling new sports palaces, from Lambeau Field to L.A.'s SoFi Stadium to Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, were shut for the year.

2020 changed what it feels like to be a fan in the ways James forecasted. People couldn't congregate with pals or by the tens of thousands to yell, despair, and berate opposing stars. James' Lakers, like the Tampa Bay Lightning, triumphed in the postseason without once playing in their home city; the L.A. Dodgers took their last two steps on the championship ladder 20 miles west of Dallas. Everything was televised, but those among us who prize being in the stadium, bedecked in team gear or customized costume, endured a visceral loss.

"It's like watching a commercial on TV for a steak restaurant," said Mark Acasio, the Las Vegas Raiders superfan who goes by the nickname Gorilla Rilla. "You're hungry and you can taste that food, but you can't eat it."

In recent weeks, theScore spoke to prominent fans and sports fandom scholars about the thrust of James' question: How is engaging with sports different when everyone is holed up inside? Some noted that we still could witness games as they happened, preserving the spontaneity, and maybe much of the allure, of the experience. Before sports came back, market research company MRI Simmons concluded in June that U.S. fans felt disconnected without live action to watch, and that they missed the ready-made excuse to gather with family and friends.

If the resumption of games eased the first feeling, it didn't restore interest to pre-COVID levels. With the exception of the National Women's Soccer League, the first league to return to play in a bubble, TV sports ratings have been down across the board since the summer. Until things return to normal, we won't know if this is the beginning of a trend or a reflection of how 2020 altered our usual patterns.

The coronavirus pauses that took hold in March utterly discombobulated everything in sports. LeBron won his fourth ring when NBA training camps are usually in session. Dustin Johnson slipped into the green jacket at Augusta during Week 10 of the NFL season. Indeed, every major team sport played high-stakes games opposite the NFL this fall, disrupting viewing habits like never before.

"That kind of compression basically causes an upset stomach," said Joseph L. Price, a Whittier College professor emeritus who has studied the intersection of sports and religion. "The regularity is gone."

Gone, too, when objects were all that populated the bleachers, was the pretense that the games were normal. Only the 2020 baseball season could have opened, in Los Angeles, with the destruction of Austin Donley's cutout at the left-field wall.

Weeks later, it happened again. Donley, 25, is a Dodgers devotee whose family usually attends up to 70 home games a year, and during L.A.'s first series in July, catcher Will Smith beaned his cutout with a home run. The likeness was left halfway decapitated, and Smith mailed Donley a signed bat for the trouble. Then, early in September, Mookie Betts deposited another dinger in Donley's virtual lap.

"To have been even a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the story of the year is so cool to me," said Donley, whose tweets about the homers went viral.

There are advantages to tuning in from afar. Acasio prefers the frenzy of the Black Hole, but removing his gorilla mask to watch the Raiders on TV has let him see and analyze the game better. Taylor Soper, a Portland Trail Blazers fan and the managing editor of the tech publication GeekWire, wrote favorably in August about his night as an NBA virtual spectator, in which his upper body appeared via LED monitor near center court of a Blazers-Lakers playoff matchup. The stream he watched was smooth, Soper said in an interview, and he liked chatting with his section mates from the comfort of his apartment, which approximated the camaraderie of the arena.

As James divined from the start of the NBA break, it's harder to recreate a crowd's excitement, or nerves, or the noise that swells when pressure mounts. Reflecting on baseball's pandemic summer, Price said the cardboard interlopers in the stands lacked a crucial third dimension: "I think the passion that fans show is much deeper than length and width." Lethargy is all the more apparent when, say, 65,000 chairs go unused at Allegiant Stadium, as Daniel Wann noticed when he turned on the Raiders game one recent Sunday night.

"(Teams build) these stadiums with tens of thousands of seats," said Wann, a psychology professor at Murray State University whose research focuses on sports fandom. "That tells you all you need to know. They expect fans to be a part of it, and when they're not, it just feels like something is missing."

Just as the year's oddities have influenced the feel of fandom, so too will 2020 shape its future. This summer, as COVID-19 hiatuses ended, 75% of respondents to a Fan Three Sixty survey said they'd only attend live games again if venues established new safety protocols, be they "extreme" or as basic as installing more dispensers for hand sanitizer. Personal mileage will vary, but those results suggest it'll take some convincing for the masses to return.

The next time spectators are able to flock to Allegiant or Lambeau, to Petco Park or basketball and hockey arenas everywhere, the operators of these venues will have to balance substance and perception, industry executives said in interviews. That means implementing sound safety measures and making it obvious those measures are in place.

"When you're coming back from COVID, the really important thing that you need to have as a fan is clear information," said Adam Goodyer, the founder and CEO of Realife Tech, a data-aggregation platform that's designed to streamline how spectators move through live events. "Where do I go? How do I get there? How do I stay safe?"

From security lines to concession stands, we probably can expect many aspects of the live experience to become increasingly touchless.

Cash and paper tickets may soon be relics. The same goes for food and condiment buffets, as well as the practice of vendors and strangers passing beers down a long row. (At Tottenham home matches in London, Realife's technology coordinates mobile orders through the team app, notifying people where and when to collect their order.) Hygienic changes could include the removal of restroom doors; sinks could be configured to time handwashes in line with health advice. Venues might hire more janitorial staff and, during games, have them stand and work in plain sight.

While cardboard cutouts and pixelated faces tend not to move much, actual spectators meander and queue around the concourse, creating logjams. Stadiums of the future could be built to maximize spaciousness and physical distance, but adjustments are likely to take hold in the meantime. To prevent free-for-all circulation, people could be instructed to walk in aisle formation and restricted to certain zones of the building. Software can be used to monitor the number of people in a given space, alerting venue staff to excessive crowding.

"They have to have this insight now in terms of where crowds are, how they're moving, where to push them in terms of distribution," said Zachary Klima, the founder and CEO of the AI startup WaitTime, which fulfills this function for the San Francisco 49ers, Miami Heat, and Buffalo Sabres, among other clients. "Everything that was once a 'nice to have' is now a 'need to have.'"

COVID-19 precautions forced people to live digitally, and post-pandemic, away from stadiums, emergent technology could change how we tune into sports. Soper sees potential for the NBA to expand its foray into virtual spectatorship - by enabling food orders through the platform, for instance, or by charging people to watch that way. James Carwana, the general manager of Intel Sports, sees potential for volumetric video to upend the traditional sports telecast. He envisions a future where this 3D tech, which Intel has installed at NFL and NBA venues, captures the action from 360 degrees and lets fans personalize the perspective from which they consume games: the quarterback's, the defense's, innumerable others.

More than usual this coming season, NHL chief content officer Steve Mayer said, his league is going to try to entertain fans with clever material on social media. Over the summer, Mayer was in charge of managing hockey's 2020 playoff hubs, where game operations staff were given rein to experiment with in-arena messaging. "At the conclusion of tonight's game," one note on the video board in Edmonton read, "please exit your couch safely."

Words to live by in 2020. In September, when the Lightning blanked the Dallas Stars to win the NHL final in six games, the workers who kept the bubble running were the only people there to see it up close.

"One day," Mayer said, still processing the reality months later, "we'll (remember) there were maybe 100 people who were actually physically in the bubble watching the Stanley Cup Final happen."

Seventy-two days after the NBA's own title series ended, the 2020-21 regular season is set to start Tuesday, with the NHL's expected to follow in January. Early games won't be as tense as those that unfolded in hubs, and rather than be isolated from society, players will live at home and stay at hotels in road cities. But one fact of bubble life persists in the immediate term. In many cases, teams don't plan to permit spectators.

Two scenarios would allow fans to return to arenas safely, Zachary Binney, an epidemiologist at Oxford College of Emory University, said in a recent interview. In one, attendance is limited to those people who've received a COVID-19 vaccine. Short of that requirement, he said, some critical mass of the population has to be vaccinated or immune to be sure that indoor games won't spark or compound an outbreak.

No other option is prudent right now, Binney said. If positive case counts are low in a given area, and if rapid, accurate tests can be deployed on-site to screen spectators for COVID-19 right before they enter, maybe it'll be safe in the spring for some arenas to open at limited capacity. For the moment, he preaches caution and patience.

"You can always get sick from going to an NBA game. What we want to do is make sure that we're getting back down to that risk that we had all agreed - before (COVID-19) - was acceptable," Binney said. "Not 100% of people have to be vaccinated to get to that, but some appreciable portion that will take months. Very possibly through the end of the next NBA and NHL seasons."

Baseball season is still a ways off, leaving time for diehards like Donley to think about how 2020 redefined their fandom. Once the domain of streakers, fair-ball interferers, and escaped cats, fans no longer had to visit the field to blow up for 15 minutes. As the man behind the magnetic Dodgers cutout wrote in October, in a blog post for the website Simply A Fan, "I've joked with people that this is the least possible effort one could expend to go famous: having a picture of yourself getting hit by a ball at a game you were never at."

Donley was at home with his parents and girlfriend the night of Oct. 27, when Julio Urias struck out Willy Adames in Texas to seal the Dodgers' first championship since 1988. That they hadn't played in L.A. since the wild-card round didn't dampen his joy, Donley said, considering the glum alternative that the pandemic could have wrought: the season being canceled, Betts leaving in free agency, the title drought continuing unabated.

Randi Radcliffe, a Dodgers podcaster and superfan who went to more than 100 games in 2018 and 2019, didn't expect to kneel on the ground, her hands shaking and tears falling, as Urias hurled his last, triumphant strike. Following this season from afar was hard, she said, without friends by her side or fans anywhere in sight. Yet she looked forward to every game, and familiar emotions surfaced for the World Series. Anxiety about the stakes. Anger when the Rays walked off with Game 4. Dread that this, again, wouldn't be the Dodgers' time.

In the end, one thing made a surreal year feel real, Radcliffe said: "Seeing them finally hold that trophy above their heads."

Before the Dodgers and Rays descended on Texas for the World Series, when Houston still had championship ambitions, few viewers got as near the playoffs as Kanter. On his San Diego office balcony, over his megaphone, he called out Jose Altuve for cheating, and then Carlos Correa, and George Springer, and Alex Bregman. It caught the attention of reporters covering the ALCS, and he got to explain his actions to The New York Times.

Not that personal notoriety was the point, he said: "The point was for the Astros to hear it." Once that happened, Kanter set down his megaphone and took a seat, content to savor his sunflower seeds and perch above the park.

"I felt incredibly fortunate to be able to have that vantage point," Kanter said. "I figured I may as well enjoy watching the game for as long as I could."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Ellert Vickström was already old by hockey standards - older than Joe Thornton is now - when his 6-year-old son, Timy, began to travel with him to away matchups in the lower ranks of the Swedish pro game. Ellert played left wing in Falun, his hometown and the site of a world-renowned medieval copper mine. His teammates were tight-knit, bonded by banter and the hands of poker they'd deal on the bus. Young Timy, impressionable and along for the ride, got hooked on team spirit and, in turn, on the sport.

This was late in the 1990s. Timy is now 28 years old. He leads a Falun-based semi-pro team in scoring, and occasionally his shifts overlap with those of his captain, a beloved elder statesman who nonetheless poses a threat to his cred.

"Sometimes, I've wanted to shout at Ellert. I've almost been shouting, 'Dad!'" Timy said. "And then (I think), oh, f---. I can't say that."

Such is life on the ice with the 64-year-old man who, as far as theScore can tell, is the oldest competitive hockey player on the planet. Safe to say he's the only Swede of his vintage with a hard wrist shot, abidingly good injury luck, and hope that the country's ongoing, pandemic-induced sports hiatus won't hasten the end of his career.

Ellert Vickström hasn't missed a season since 1962, the year he joined his first Falun youth team. It was the same year Chris Chelios, to cite a more recognizable but less prolific iron man, was born. Where Chelios, the Hall of Fame defenseman, hung up his skates a decade ago after 1,651 NHL games, Vickström doesn't plan to retire until April - from his longtime day job, that is, as a paint factory and lab technician.

His hockey future is less definite. The 2020-21 season is Vickström's 59th across all levels of the game, as well as his first playing alongside Timy for BK Ockra, the club he and his son helped found this year to compete in HockeyTrean, Sweden's fifth division. Leagues below the third tier have postponed play as Sweden combats a surge in coronavirus cases. That means Ellert and Timy are idling in Falun, having recently contracted and recovered from COVID-19 themselves.

"What to do?" Ellert said. "Just wait."

Barred from practicing, hoping that the schedule will resume in the new year, the disruption has at least freed time for Vickström to consider the fruits of his longevity. He's gotten to represent a dozen teams: Kniva IK, Falu HC, Hälsinggårdens AIK. He scored four goals in an outdoor game for fourth-tier Sundborn around 1990. ("Some years ago" is his best estimate on the timing.) He played three games for BK Ockra this October before he fell ill with fever, cough, a headache, and pain in his bones, which laid him low for a couple of weeks.

Pre-coronavirus, Vickström's health history was characterized by surprising fortune. The knocks he's suffered over six decades - broken ribs here, a puck to the nose there - all hurt but healed. That, sleeping well, and sticking to his home squat-and-bench-press regimen form the extent of his explanation for how he's still mobile. Vickström "doesn't go as fast as he used to," concedes BK Ockra forward Kalle Gunnarsson, a longtime teammate. "But he can still manage to get on the team for every match and be competitive."

"I don't think I've done anything special," Vickström told theScore in a recent Zoom interview, though he added one more word to the wise: "Get yourself good teammates. That's good advice."

Vickström's BK Ockra teammates are an eclectic bunch. They range in age from 16 (forwards Albin Eljas and Andrei Jansson) to 52 (reserve goalie Ulf Alexandersson), and they include a 38-year-old former KHL and Swedish Hockey League netminder, Daniel Sperrle, who once went six playoff games - 390 minutes and 12 seconds in all - without allowing a goal in the Russian second division.

Gunnarsson, a fellow BK Ockra co-founder, teaches hockey and carpentry at a Falun high school. Other players work by day at hospitals, sell office supplies, and comprise three-fourths of Bolaget, a party-rock quartet with 450,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Bolaget's vocalist has moonlighted as the PA announcer at Ockra home games.

BK Ockra's top scorer, with 11 goals and five assists in four games, is Timy Vickström, who used to play as high as Sweden's third division. Tiring of the sport and wanting to prioritize his university business studies, Timy stepped away from competition in 2017, cementing a rare family dynamic: "I actually quit playing hockey before my dad." When Hälsinggårdens AIK, Ellert and Gunnarsson's old club in Falun, folded last year, a few players committed to launching their own HockeyTrean squad, and the younger Vickström was persuaded to mount a comeback.

Sweden's secondary pro rungs feature a promotion and relegation system reminiscent of English soccer. It's BK Ockra's ambition to move up from the fifth tier once the pandemic abates, the economy recovers, and fan interest and sponsorship dollars help stock the roster with more talent.

Before the season stalled, the founders sought to drum up buzz in part by aligning with local lore. "Ockra" translates to ocher, the earthy pigment found at Falun Mine, a UNESCO heritage site that dates back a millennium. The team's logo is an ibex, the mountain goat that is said to have dug up the town's first copper extract.

The most distinctive story they have going for them is that of their captain. When BK Ockra welcomed Ellert Vickström to the lineup in a Facebook post this summer, replies in English and Swedish hailed him as a "legend," "Superman," and "The King." One fan suggested erecting a statue of him at the Falun sports complex. "Everybody you meet on the street, he's played with," Timy said in the Zoom interview. That Ellert is still going is a credit to his refusal to skimp on training, Timy added, tapping his dad's upper arm for effect.

"He's got some muscles," Timy said. "To be able to play at the level he still does, you have to have really good fitness. He's the golden example of it. If you keep up your preseason workouts, then you can do it. And, of course, you have to have talent. It's not amateur hockey we play. It's real senior hockey."

Though he didn't record a point in his three October appearances, Ellert took a regular shift as BK Ockra secured some convincing wins, including a 9-1 rout of lowly Kvarnsvedens GoIF. Late that month, a COVID-19 outbreak sickened the Vickströms and five other players, forcing Ockra to shutter operations for two weeks as everyone recovered. Ockra returned to practice in mid-November just as public health authorities instituted sweeping restrictions, pausing the planned 16-game season before any team in the region got even halfway there.

Whether or not the schedule can be salvaged, Timy figures this'll be his last season; he intends to enter the workforce once he graduates next summer, and he wants to focus on guiding BK Ockra off the ice as club chairman. Ellert has yet to decide if he'll be back next year for a 60th go-around. Retiring from work and play would free him up to winter in the Philippines, where he has a house, and fulfill a longstanding wish to live abroad for a time.

"In one way, I want him to quit, and in one way I don't. There's pretty tough, big guys in the league, and I don't want him to get hurt. At this age, it feels unnecessary," Timy said. "But at the same time, we all think it's amazing that he plays."

Exiting the game together would feel complete to the Vickströms, closing a circle that opened with those lively bus trips out of Falun. By hanging on this long, Ellert has already cinched worldwide distinction. More than 800,000 men's and women's players have their stats logged on the hockey website Elite Prospects. Seven active players were born in the 1950s, per the site's database, and he's the oldest to have dressed in games this season.

By enduring in obscure leagues around Europe, these players - Maria Senkowsky, 63, in Austria's second women's division; Josef Cechura and Jaroslav Prantner, 64 and 62, teammates in the Czech eighth tier - represent a rare breed of old-timer. The competition is far less skilled, yet they're encroaching nevertheless on Gordie Howe territory, "Mr. Hockey" having laced them up at age 69 to play a single game for the minor-league Detroit Vipers.

It so happens that Ellert Vickström was once part of an inline hockey team named after Howe. The late Red Wings icon is his idol, the reason Vickström ditched his customary No. 25 this season to sport jersey No. 9. He admired Howe's staying power, plus his swagger and edge, qualities that are ascertainable in old YouTube clips. He never actually got to watch Howe live.

"It was a little bit before my time," Vickström said, smiling.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Earlier this week, theScore explored the writing and release of "Fabric of the Game," Chris Creamer and Todd Radom's deep dive into the history of the names and logos of every NHL team - plus 15 bygone franchises and the Seattle Kraken.

In a recent interview, the authors identified their all-time favorite NHL logos and broke down the design characteristics that make these emblems so appealing. Each expert's top five choices are listed alphabetically below, and their analysis follows.

Creamer: Buffalo Sabres, Colorado Rockies, Detroit Red Wings, Hartford Whalers, New Jersey Devils

Radom: Atlanta Flames, Boston Bruins, Minnesota Wild, Philadelphia Flyers, Winnipeg Jets (original)

Atlanta Flames

When new, Canadian ownership whisked this franchise north to Calgary four decades ago, the Flames' uniforms retained a dash of Atlanta: the Coca-Cola shade of red native to the soda giant's home city.

The simplicity and coherence of Atlanta's flaming "A" logo have long stuck with Radom, a renowned graphic designer: "It conveys a lot with a little, which is always my criteria."

Radom was 16 when, in 1980, he attended one of the Flames' first games as a Calgary-based team and came to appreciate the "C" variant on its own merits. It's just that the "A" set a high standard.

"Once you've seen the 'A' with the flame right in the middle, (the 'C' isn't) quite as elegant," Radom said. "But listen, 40 years on, the Flames are not only wearing them but reverting back to that original look. It holds up."

Boston Bruins

"Fabric of the Game" dispels a well-worn tale about the Bruins' spoked "B": that the logo was designed in 1948 to assert Boston's status as the "Hub of the Universe," a voguish nickname for the city in the 19th century. The authors' research turned up no corroborating evidence, though Radom said they're still on the lookout.

Setting aside what the "B" isn't, Radom finds it easy to value what the mark is. It's solid, includes arresting colors, and remains faithful to the 72-year-old initial design despite minor font and outline tweaks. Badass teams donned the "B" in the 1970s, Radom said, and today, historical consistency begets instant recognition.

"They look like the Bruins," Radom said. "You flip on a game, look at your screen: They are the Bruins."

Buffalo Sabres

"Extraordinarily clever" is how Creamer, the editor of SportsLogos.net, describes the balance Buffalo struck with its 1970 expansion logo. The jersey crest features a buffalo and crossed sabers. "It says it all," Creamer noted. Chef's kiss. 'Nuff said.

Why meddle with perfection? Seymour Knox III, the Sabres' founding owner, voiced that sentiment during the mid-1990s rebrand that completely changed the club's appearance. If Original Six teams don't overhaul their logos, he argued, Buffalo shouldn't feel the need, either. Only in 2010 did the Sabres ditch the maligned "Buffaslug" to revive the original design, vindicating Knox 14 years after his death.

Next season, the crest will again be royal blue rather than dark blue, completing the return to roots.

"We can look back on this now and think, 'This guy was onto something,'" Creamer said of Knox. "If only he could see what's happening now."

Colorado Rockies

It's Creamer's belief that blue-red-yellow color schemes should get far more play across North American sports. The NCAA's Kansas Jayhawks swear by such a pattern. The same goes for the NBA's Denver Nuggets, though red isn't paramount in their motif.

From 1976-82, before the Rockies moved to New Jersey and an expansion MLB team picked up the name, this NHL club rocked a tricolor, white-striped Rocky Mountain logo crafted in the image of Colorado's state flag.

"An amazing, remarkable thing to do," Creamer said, praising the decision to meld two signature state symbols.

It's only fitting that the Colorado Avalanche, recognizing their heritage, now trot out a similar mountain icon as an alternative logo.

"In the wrong colors, but still," Creamer said.

Detroit Red Wings

As with the Bruins, Creamer applauds Detroit for riding with the same logo through the eras. Save for the occasional cosmetic update, no one has touched or sullied the winged wheel that Ted Lindsay, Gordie Howe, Steve Yzerman, and Nicklas Lidstrom each sported in turn.

Longevity is one thing, but how's this for added historical significance: Detroit's famous emblem is a tribute to the first winners of the Stanley Cup, the amateur Montreal Hockey Club's "Winged Wheelers." That outfit lifted the chalice in 1893, a full 115 years before the Red Wings celebrated the most recent of their 11 titles.

"To me, that alone - the history attached to it, to the origins of hockey - make it one of the greatest logos in the NHL," Creamer said.

Hartford Whalers

Creamer named his top logos in no particular order, but this one might be his favorite, partly because of a childhood lesson his dad imparted. He recalls browsing old sets of Upper Deck hockey cards and mocking team insignias he didn't understand, Hartford's trademark whale tail among them.

He'd never noticed the hidden green "H" just above the Whaler "W." When his dad pointed this out, it was a lightbulb moment for Creamer - the realization there's more to some logos than immediately meets the eye.

The whale tail is at once nuanced and straightforward, he said, not to mention pleasantly colorful. It depicts the franchise's identity through an illustration a kid could replicate.

What else explains the logo's enduring charm?

"The team doesn't exist anymore," Creamer said. "That doesn't hurt."

Minnesota Wild

"How do you embody something that is a Wild?" Radom wondered when this franchise settled on a name in the late 1990s. Unlike a saber or a whaler, unlike a flame or a mountain range, Minnesota saddled its designers with an abstract muse: something rugged or picturesque, sure, but without a readymade or obvious form.

Happily, Radom said, the end product nails the look and feel of venturing off the grid in the State of Hockey: "It takes you to a certain place."

At the top of the logo, the sun sets above green trees and a handsome red sky. A river winds into the forest from the bottom right corner. The scene unfolds within the contours of an animal head, the creature's eye represented by the north star that salutes Minnesota's first NHL club.

Radom believes the logo has "gained equity over the past two decades," even though the Wild have iced few great teams in that period.

"That's a hard thing to pull off, but they pulled it off," he said.

New Jersey Devils

Like Hartford's whale tail, camouflaged "H", and foundational "W", elements in the Devils' logo fuse to produce a harmonious whole. There's power in being direct, Creamer said. New Jersey's creation - interlocked initials that contort into a devil's tail and horns - certainly fits the bill.

The Devils released the mark in 1982, not long before Creamer was born, and the only notable edit in 38 years has been a change in the color of the background circle: a shift from green to black for a more assertive, less Christmassy motif. The organization wore black trim in its three championship seasons, a coincidence that strengthened the brand.

"Some logos are elevated by success," Radom said. "(The Devils) become a little dynasty, and that logo is elevated by virtue of the fact that they have those Stanley Cups."

Philadelphia Flyers

Fundamentally, Radom likes the shapes Philadelphia has used to brand itself since 1967: the slanted "P" that sprouted wings; the central orange dot that imitates a puck. The Flyers helped kick-start the league's expansion era, but their commitment to visual tradition is reminiscent of an Original Six club. Like Boston and Detroit - and unlike Buffalo - they've stayed the course.

Spiritually, Radom has long appreciated that the Flyers wear orange and black, verging off-trend in the cradle of U.S. independence.

"Where 1776 rules all, the Flyers are not red, white, and blue, and there are no stripes or stars," he said.

Apart from brief experiments with silver and gold trim, Philly's logo has remained untouched, its aesthetic distinctive.

"It looks as good now as it did when Bobby Clarke was out there with no teeth," Radom said.

Winnipeg Jets (original)

Winnipeg's original hockey team, a three-time World Hockey Association champion in the 1970s, took what Radom characterizes as a "kitchen sink" approach to its emblem.

"It has everything," he said. "It says Winnipeg. It says Jets. It has a picture of a jet. It has a hockey stick. But you put all that together, it's only two colors, and there's something about it that is kind of goofy and '70s."

Those Jets wore the logo in the NHL until 1990. Long after they departed for Phoenix, the current name-holders reprised the style - airplane silhouette and all - for the Heritage Classic in both 2016 and 2019. The tributes looked great, Radom said, and they reminded him of a fond teenage memory: requesting a pocket schedule from the WHA by mail.

"The WHA sent me back these decals, which I still have, all these years later," Radom said. "Among them is this Winnipeg Jets logo. It makes me feel warm inside."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

On the fall day in 2017 when they started the research for their NHL history book, sports logo experts Chris Creamer and Todd Radom embraced some Canadian tropes.

They went to Tim Hortons. They listened in the car to The Tragically Hip, the band that sang about Bill Barilko and Bobby Orr. They checked out vintage jerseys and century-old game programs at the Hockey Hall of Fame's suburban Toronto resource center. They watched the Maple Leafs skate and later bought last-minute tickets to the club's home date with the Detroit Red Wings, landing reasonably priced seats in the lower bowl at center ice.

Radom was visiting from out of town, and after the game, Creamer led him to Wayne Gretzky's restaurant near the arena for poutine. As the bill arrived, they glanced across the room in time to spot a celebrity: Walter Gretzky, hockey's most famous dad and a restaurant regular, leaving for the night in his signature red letterman jacket.

"We took that as a sign," Creamer recently told theScore. "This is the right path we're going on here."

Three years on, Creamer and Radom are the co-authors of "Fabric of the Game: The Stories Behind the NHL's Names, Logos, and Uniforms," a coffee-table offering published Tuesday through Simon & Schuster. True to the title, their book is a one-stop resource to learn how 47 NHL franchises - current, relocated, defunct, and even the roster-less Seattle Kraken - were named and outfitted.

The authors recount the saga of the Montreal Wanderers, the charter NHL team that took its name from British soccer, played six games in 1917, lost its home arena in a fire, and promptly folded. They celebrate the advent of outdoor games, the ideal setting for throwback uniforms. They chronicle the excesses of the 1990s when the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim's Disneyfied original jersey - featuring splashes of purple, teal, yellow, silver, black, and white - set league sales records. The Maple Leafs and Red Wings are in the book, too, forever sporting blue and red as models of sartorial consistency.

Walter Gretzky is a bit player in Creamer and Radom's narrative; he garners a shoutout in the acknowledgments for his presence at the restaurant on that formative day. Naturally, his son is a central character. In words and photos, proceeding through each team alphabetically, the book recalls Wayne Gretzky rocking blue and orange for the Edmonton Oilers in his first NHL season, the LA Kings' new silver uniform on the day he was traded in 1988, and the Blues' red-tinged garb during his stint in St. Louis in 1996. (Seriously, the '90s were a trip.)

The origin stories Creamer and Radom tell form a definitive account of the subject, something Creamer, the Toronto-based editor of SportsLogos.net, wishes he could have read as a kid.

To find exhaustive historical detail, he and Radom plumbed newspaper articles dating as far back as 1909, when the Montreal Canadiens were created and New Jersey farmers banded together to hunt the Leeds Devil, the fabled fiend whose namesakes now play in the Metropolitan Division. They interviewed executives who thought up more recent designs, from Colorado's mountainous "A" to Minnesota's tranquil wilderness scene to the Islanders' ill-fated fisherman logo of the mid-'90s.

Clearly, some looks are cleaner and more memorable than others. The concept itself, the authors suggest, is what's distinctive, charming, and timeless.

"NHL hockey, in particular, you think of the sweater. We have this history of very bold, big crests that instantly communicate what they're trying to communicate," said Radom, an accomplished graphic designer. Style specifications, he explained, complicate jersey design in other sports: buttons in baseball, big numbers in football, the smaller surface area in basketball. Those constraints don't apply to hockey, maximizing the chance a jersey - through the front emblem, vivid color, and connective striping - will come to be indelible.

"The hockey sweater, in my estimation," Radom said, "is the most complete uniform in sports."

If NHL logos are so alluring, it only makes sense they spawn myths, inspire cult followings, and provoke visceral debate. "Fabric of the Game" addresses all of those notes. Creamer and Radom set the record straight about the Boston Bruins' abiding spoked "B." True: Developed to honor the club's 25th anniversary in 1949, it's the rare specialty mark that evolved into a primary logo. False, as far as they can tell: It represents an old nickname for the city of Boston, "Hub of the Universe."

Creamer and Radom break down the elements of forsaken yet fondly remembered logos, including the Quebec Nordiques' classic insignia: the igloo-resembling red "N" originally sketched by a local teenager and accompanied by white fleurs-de-lis that evoke the provincial flag. The book lauds the simplicity of the Hartford Whalers' whale tail - and laments the team's 1992 decision, championed by general manager Brian Burke, to inject silver into the mark, alerting the eye to the implicit "H" in the middle.

The book also explains how all 47 teams were named. A few themes recur in those stories.

Intriguing inspirations: This category accounts for New Jersey and Seattle deriving identities from mythic creatures. For the Mighty Ducks latching on to the popularity of a certain Disney film. For Panthers ownership seeking to highlight the plight of Florida's endangered state animal. Did you know the Tampa Bay Lightning, according to Phil Esposito, were named during a storm? Or that a wartime bootlegger told an early Vancouver owner to name his team after Johnny Canuck, Canadian cartooning's answer to Captain America?

"Who would have thought that the Canucks' identity began with a guy who was illegally peddling alcohol back in the 1940s?" Creamer said.

Misadventurous anecdotes: Think of the 1967 expansion team that cycled through six names in 11 seasons: California Seals, Oakland Seals, Bay Area Seals, San Francisco Golden Seals, California Golden Seals, Cleveland Barons. Think of the Calgary fan who, following the Flames' 1980 move from Atlanta, tried to enter the team's nickname contest but instead mailed their utility bill. Think of Chicago brass declaring in 1986 that the name should be Blackhawks, not - as had been the case for 60 years - the Black Hawks, nor any other kind of bird.

Names that didn't stick: Columbus, the birthplace of the Wendy's fast-food chain, would have been home to the "Frostys" had burger magnate Dave Thomas gotten his way, Creamer and Radom write. For a time, the Avalanche's original owner, Charlie Lyons, purportedly wanted to rename the Nordiques the Rocky Mountain Extreme. Before the Predators took the ice in Nashville, Gary Bettman had to spike the name "Edge," the moniker of a shaving gel once sold by the SC Johnson conglomerate, the family business of owner Craig Leipold's wife Helen.

Even Original Six names weren't always sacrosanct. Chicago almost became the Yankees in 1937, befitting ownership's short-lived plan to ice an all-American lineup. Detroit played four NHL seasons as the Cougars - honoring the roots of the club's first players, who were acquired from a defunct British Columbia team of the same name - until it became painfully evident Michiganians couldn't pronounce the word. Was it "Cow-gars"? "Cowg-ders"?

"I kept finding example after example from different newspapers in the late 1920s alluding to this," Radom said. "It was hilarious."

Book projects have firm deadlines, but NHL designs are fluid, which is why "Fabric of the Game" omits mention of some recent wardrobe changes. The Dallas Stars' neon, Texas-shaped alternate logo seems to jibe with trends Creamer has noticed around the league: the shift to adopt bright, captivating color schemes and ensure logos appear sharp at any scale, on jerseys and Twitter hashtags alike. Why are the Ottawa Senators resurfacing the 2D centurion? The book has evergreen wisdom to share, if not a specific answer: Throwback threads are a comforting reminder of the past.

When Lanny McDonald wrote the foreword to "Fabric of the Game," the mustachioed Hall of Famer took the opportunity to visualize the trajectory of his career. For much of the 1970s, he wore Toronto's ubiquitously recognizable maple leaf. The Colorado Rockies' kaleidoscopic look - modeled after the state flag - was far flashier. Raised in Alberta, McDonald later joined and eventually won a Stanley Cup with the Calgary Flames, who still don the fiery "C" he adored.

Creamer was grateful for McDonald's contribution. His childhood introduction to hockey came in May 1989, when the Flames beat the Canadiens in six games to clinch that championship. Young Creamer, entranced by McDonald's playoff beard and undeterred by his subsequent retirement, briefly became a Flames fan.

"Iconic is a word that gets thrown around way too often these days. Lanny McDonald is iconic. He looks iconic. His career was iconic. Even today, as the chairman of the board of the Hockey Hall of Fame, he remains out there and iconic," Radom said, summarizing what it meant to the authors to include his name on the cover.

"It elevates us, to wrap it all up. In the (same way as) Walter Gretzky looking after us that night."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Willie O'Ree's surname, the four letters that changed hockey for the better when they appeared on an NHL lineup card in 1958, derives from that of the American military officer who enslaved his great-great-grandfather. The officer was Peter Horry, pronounced unlike what you'd expect. He fought the British in the Revolutionary War, and in recognition of his service, he was given a Black man to own. The man was Paris O'Ree, as the name was later stylized, whose courage unlocked a future for his descendants.

Willie O'Ree isn't sure how Paris secured his freedom, but archival records he's read relate the enormity of what the man accomplished. Along with some family and at tremendous risk, Paris is believed to have escaped South Carolina, where Horry lived, late in the 18th century, becoming a farmer and father upon settling north of the border. He came to own a couple hundred acres in New Brunswick, Willie's future home province. Paris' son had a son who had a son who had a son, the trailblazing winger who's proud to share his ancestor's spirit.

A name is weighted with history, and Paris O'Ree rewrote his family's. Anti-racism protests gripped his great-great-grandson's sport this year, as they have North American society at large. Where Paris sought liberty, NHL players want their game to be inclusive and welcoming, full stop. They want to eliminate any remnant of the barriers and the hate that Willie O'Ree - the first Black man to play in the NHL - conquered when he debuted with the Boston Bruins.

Paris and his family "set goals for themselves, I guess the way I did," O'Ree said in a phone interview this week. "They wanted to make a better life for themselves. (Despite) the hardships and things they had to go through, they just made things happen."

Together with author Michael McKinley, O'Ree has written a new memoir, "Willie: The Game-Changing Story of the NHL's First Black Player." The book, released in hardcover Tuesday, recounts his ascent to hockey history: how he twice dressed for the Bruins in 1957-58, tallied 14 points in 43 games for Boston in 1960-61 - no small feat in the Original Six era when NHL roster spots were in short supply - and skated in a further 785 games in the minor-pro Western Hockey League, from which he retired in 1974 as a top-20 career scorer. As it happens, 1974 was the year the Washington Capitals drafted and signed Mike Marson, the first Black player to follow O'Ree to the NHL.

O'Ree turned 85 last week, and his presence in the game remains cherished. He was elected as a builder to the Hall of Fame in 2018, and became that same year the namesake of the NHL's Willie O'Ree Community Hero Award, presented annually to a person who harnesses hockey to positively impact his or her part of the world. O'Ree lives near San Diego, his longtime WHL home, but he's a product of Fredericton, New Brunswick. It was there as a child that he listened by radio to Hockey Night in Canada. He idolized Maurice Richard, and Foster Hewitt's nasal, rousing commentary provided the soundtrack to his Saturday nights.

Without a TV at home, O'Ree never watched Richard play. Only later did he think about the upside of this constraint: how seeing no Black men on the ice might have snuffed his childhood ambition, and how instead he was empowered to visualize a sport and league in which he belonged.

O'Ree's first hockey mentor was his oldest brother, Richard (nicknamed "Coot"), a regional light-heavyweight boxing champion 17 years his senior whose tutelage helped fine-tune O'Ree's best skills: the blazing speed, the stickhandling honed on choppy pond ice, the will to absorb hard hits and respond in kind. Booted off his high school team for hurting the coach's son with a clean open-ice check, O'Ree charted his own course through Fredericton's youth ranks to Quebec's top junior league. There, his coach - the former NHL star Phil Watson - endorsed O'Ree's towering potential, telling him he had the talent to become hockey's Jackie Robinson.

Emulating Robinson's breakthrough on the diamond required O'Ree to keep a troublesome secret: He was blind in one eye, the consequence of a deflected slapshot that had smashed his right retina in junior.

O'Ree told a single confidant, his older sister Betty, about the injury. To everyone else, he looked like the same fleet left-winger with scoring touch, and the Bruins, whose vetting process didn't include a sight exam, soon promoted him to the NHL. Squeezed out of the 132-player league after 1961, O'Ree went on to excel for 13 seasons in the WHL, where the Los Angeles Blades cleared a positional glut by shifting him to the right wing. The switch enabled his good eye to process more of the ice, powering him to five 30-goal seasons.

"It was a big move for me," O'Ree said.

The 13th and youngest child of one of two Black families in Fredericton, O'Ree writes in his memoir that he was never bullied for the color of his skin growing up. In adulthood, racism tailed him across the continent. O'Ree rode a segregated bus to attend a pro baseball training camp - he was a good middle infielder, too - in Georgia in 1956. Junior hockey fans in Chicoutimi, Quebec, chanted racial obscenities at him. Minor-league fans in Virginia hurled a black cat over the glass during one of his shifts. During an NHL road game in 1961, O'Ree writes, Chicago forward Eric Nesterenko called him the N-word, shattered his front teeth with a butt-end to the mouth, and repeated the slur. (Nesterenko has said he doesn't remember the oft-told incident.)

In 1965, O'Ree and a Blades teammate drove through the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts in the aftermath of the area's six-day uprising against racial discrimination. He recalls breathing in the air and surveying burned-out buildings, processing the fury and sorrow that compelled Watts' Black residents to take to the streets.

Rage and the desire for justice - for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black victims of U.S. police violence - moved millions of Americans to protest this spring and summer. In the absence of justice, O'Ree writes in his reflection on Watts, anger is an understandable response.

"People of color have always been targeted, way back since slavery," O'Ree said. "I'm all for protesting in a nonviolent way, and the marching to let people know that people's lives matter. They really do. I'm just hoping, and I keep my fingers crossed, that things are going to get better."

In hockey, Black players who followed O'Ree to the peak of the profession have taken it upon themselves to lobby for change. At the start of the NHL's bubbled postseason, Minnesota Wild defenseman Matt Dumba spoke at center ice on behalf of the nascent Hockey Diversity Alliance, exhorting his sport to take seriously the need to combat racism. The players who kneeled before a Vegas Golden Knights-Dallas Stars game - Ryan Reaves, Robin Lehner, Tyler Seguin, and Jason Dickinson - were among the hundreds who forced the playoffs to pause later in August, hockey's contribution to the athlete sit-out protests following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

In effect, players such as Hockey Diversity Alliance co-founders Evander Kane and Akim Aliu now front the cause O'Ree has championed for decades. After his minor-league career ended, O'Ree recalls in his book, he took jobs spanning a wide gamut. He worked construction, drove a Pepsi truck, sold Pontiacs, and even supervised security at San Diego Chargers NFL home games. In 1996, not long after O'Ree turned 60, NHL executive Bryant McBride recruited him to the league's diversity outreach program; in the days before search engines were prevalent, McBride went so far as to ask acquaintances at the FBI to track down his phone number.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, O'Ree's ambassadorship kept him on the road 10 days a month, running hockey clinics and recounting his journey to youth of color from coast to coast. He said the fire to work - to make the game more accessible to kids who lack the means or opportunity to play - still burns within him. He hopes he'll soon get to travel for the first time since March and that he'll be able to stick with it for a couple more years.

In the meantime, hockey's best and most promising Black players continue to log major milestones. Blake Bolden, the first Black player in the National Women's Hockey League, joined the LA Kings last winter as an AHL scout. The Kings just drafted Quinton Byfield second overall, making him the highest-selected Black prospect in NHL history. The cast of standout players, present and past, with whom O'Ree keeps in touch - P.K. Subban, Wayne Simmonds, Anson Carter - includes Jarome Iginla, the newly elected Hall of Famer who wrote the foreword to "Willie."

In his book, O'Ree makes clear that other Black men could have ascended to the NHL before him. He counts six predecessors or contemporaries who, in his view, were worthy of the honor: Herb and Ossie Carnegie, Manny McIntyre, Art Dorrington, John Utendale, and Stan Maxwell. If O'Ree's story is a testament to his own self-belief and persistence - "I stayed true to my goals (through) the things that I had to overcome," he said - it's also intertwined with a larger legacy.

O'Ree hopes his readers come to understand the magnitude of the challenges he endured, starting with the eye injury and recurrent bigotry. In Iginla's foreword, the legendary Calgary Flames captain contemplates the maltreatment O'Ree would have faced in the NHL: Every opposing agitator and prejudiced fan had a ready-made target to try to rile, knowing O'Ree, bearing a pioneer's burden, was out there alone.

All O'Ree did, Iginla marvels, was smile and proceed to prove he belonged. His example has uplifted generations.

"(Black players aren't in the NHL) because of their color. They're there because they have the skills and the ability to play in the National Hockey League," O'Ree said. "They've proven that. It's just a nice feeling to know that I was the person who made it possible for them to be there."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Brian Burke's shoulders are wrecked, the lifelong price he pays for suiting up at prop for Harvard Business School's men's rugby team in his twenties. Labrum and rotator-cuff troubles have forced him to undergo major surgeries, including in the spring of 2007. When he won the Stanley Cup that June as general manager of the Anaheim Ducks, he struggled to lift the 35-pound silver grail overhead.

That isn't to say Burke's physical limitations marred the moment. Besting the Ottawa Senators in a tidy five-game final was the crowning achievement of his NHL executive career, and he thinks those bellicose, supremely skilled Ducks - led by Scott Niedermayer, Chris Pronger, Teemu Selanne, and young Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry - could have beaten pretty much any team that's clinched the Cup since.

Winning at Anaheim's Honda Center felt like scaling Everest, the Toronto-based Sportsnet television analyst said in a phone interview Tuesday. He got to bask in the glory of victory for five days - tops - before flying to Montreal to try to re-sign star goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere.

The compartmentalization Burke's old job demanded mirrors the burden Tampa Bay Lightning GM Julien BriseBois is bearing this month. Little more than a week passed between the Lightning's Sept. 28 coronation as champions and the NHL draft, and BriseBois had to plot all the while for free agency. Defensemen Kevin Shattenkirk and Zach Bogosian have already signed elsewhere. Restricted free agents Anthony Cirelli, Mikhail Sergachev, and Erik Cernak need new contracts. That Tyler Johnson just went unclaimed on waivers means BriseBois remains cap-crunched.

"I know exactly what Julien's going through. But I got on that plane (to meet with Giguere) with a pretty big smile on my face, too," Burke said. "He's got a lot of headaches, but he's got a ring. That changes everything in your life."

Burke's own eventful hockey journey is the subject of his new memoir, "Burke's Law: A Life in Hockey," out in hardcover this week under Penguin Random House. His resume justifies the title: Burke is a Harvard Law grad who chose school over an attempt to crack the NHL as a scrappy right-winger. He scored in the 98th percentile of LSAT takers in 1976, he recalls in the book, after his college coach - one Lou Lamoriello, himself a decade out from ascending to an NHL front office - ordered him to take the entrance exam.

Lots of hockey people, Lamoriello among them, have seen their share of seismic moments in the game. Burke's outspokenness is what's long distinguished him in the public eye, and it's easy to see how his flair for the candid might entice readers. Yet Burke did plenty in his own right to shape NHL history across his stints heading hockey operations for five franchises, episodes he and co-author Stephen Brunt narrate in revealing and colorful detail.

Remembering his tenure as Pat Quinn's right-hand man with the Vancouver Canucks, Burke recounts how he could have brought Wayne Gretzky to Vancouver in 1988. How the Edmonton Oilers' $25-million asking price - plus two good players and three first-round picks - was prohibitively steep. How, in order to dispel rumors that he'd acquire No. 99, Burke leaked word to future TSN sportscaster Gord Miller - then a 23-year-old radio reporter in Alberta - that Gretzky would soon be bound for the Los Angeles Kings instead.

Burke put his law degree to use the next year when he argued in court that Pavel Bure's Russian playing contract should be voided, paving the way for the dazzling 18-year-old to eventually join the Canucks - after Bure told the judge he'd pay part of the settlement himself. In 1999, then employed as Vancouver's GM, Burke negotiated three trades to select Daniel and Henrik Sedin with the second and third overall picks, respectively. Those were the last blockbuster offers any rival entertained from him on draft day.

As the NHL's lead disciplinarian in the 1990s, Burke helmed a fledgling department of player safety, the resources of which totaled four VCRs. (Kris Draper's family, irked by the four-game suspension Claude Lemieux received for an infamous playoff cheap shot, once mailed Burke a petition calling for his firing.) As Ducks GM in 2005, he endured history's most painful commercial break right before his club finished second in the Sidney Crosby draft lottery. Later, he orchestrated the Toronto Maple Leafs' Phil Kessel trade, built the U.S. men's team that claimed Olympic silver in Vancouver, and threatened to rent a barn in Lake Placid, New York, to fight Oilers executive Kevin Lowe over an offer sheet. (Commissioner Gary Bettman phoned within 10 minutes to threaten a suspension.)

The memoir originated from a 100-page outline Burke penned following his departure from the Calgary Flames in 2018. Though Brunt handled the final draft - "Stephen didn't like any of my writing," Burke said. "He said I wrote like a lawyer, not like an author" - the principles and convictions that surface throughout the text are characteristically his. Even in non-pandemic seasons, Burke maintains, the schedule should be shorter than 82 games. Bettman is a brilliant and fearless leader. A team ought to play fast, tough, and to entertain. The end of a GM's first season in charge is a great time to make a big move, a la the Sedin and Kessel trades.

In that spirit, here are some of Burke's unfiltered thoughts on pressing and evergreen hockey issues, which he shared with theScore.

On what the league at large can learn from the 2020 postseason: "The final four teams, and most of the final eight teams, were all big. They're big and they're deep. You can say that Tampa beat (the) Dallas (Stars) because they were deeper. They banged Dallas up. They took out Roope Hintz with a legal hit. They took out Blake Comeau with a legal hit. (Tyler) Seguin was hurt. A lot of that was inflicted by the Tampa Bay Lightning."

On the challenge of planning the 2020-21 season: "(The NHL gets) straight A's for what they did with the bubbles and pulling off the Stanley Cup championship. It was amazing. But this is still the same pandemic, the same set of problems, and they've got to pull another rabbit out of their hats. My prediction is we're not going to play 82 games. My prediction is we'll start in January with no fans, and then progress to socially distanced seating, and then wait and see what happens with a vaccine."

On the broadcasting prowess of Kevin Bieksa, a 2001 draft pick of Burke's who contributed to Sportsnet's game coverage throughout the playoffs: "There are very few players who can explain technical situations that clearly. He's self-deprecating. He's funny. He's a star. He could work full-time in the media whenever he wants. Fortunately for people like me, he doesn't want to do it full-time right now."

On the scrutiny that accompanies life with the Maple Leafs: "The issue in Toronto isn't that there's an overwhelmingly negative media here. In fact, most of the media are supportive. It's the size. You get 75 or 80 people in the room after a game, and if you lost - and we did a lot of losing when I was here - they're all picking up a different rock. Twenty rocks for Dion (Phaneuf), 20 rocks for me, 20 for the coach, 10 for Phil Kessel, 10 for Vesa Toskala. It's overwhelming negativity when you're losing just based on volume."

Eventually, Burke said, one executive or another will return the Maple Leafs to the promised land using the same blueprint as any winner: "Draft, develop, ignore the white noise, and put a team together that's competitive." Unlike in 1998, when his competitiveness compelled him to leave the league's headquarters to run a team again, he's content knowing it won't be him. He likes his coworkers, bosses, and analysis duties at Sportsnet. He sees his youngest daughters far more often than he did as an NHL executive. At 65, the lifestyle change suits him: "I sleep in my bed every night now, and that's worth its weight in gold to me."

That said, Burke's favorite experience to recount for the book was Anaheim's 2007 title. He still has the puck Pronger retrieved for him at the buzzer following Game 5. He's among those who believe Tampa Bay's bubbled championship deserves an asterisk - not because it's tainted, but because of the magnitude of the feat. In this or any year, and in a league stocked with quality GMs who have never won a Stanley Cup, he knows to properly value a trip to the mountaintop.

"If you go back and look, every game we played against Ottawa in the finals was a (close) game, except the last one. Even though we won in five games, they weren't a pushover. It's right down to the bitter end," Burke said, reminiscing about an encounter with his Senators counterpart in the waning minutes of the series.

"Even when John Muckler told me congratulations, I thought, 'He's jinxing me. He's trying to jinx me,'" Burke said. He laughed at the memory. "I mean, how paranoid are we?"

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Nikolai Khabibulin answered the phone in Yekaterinburg, Russia, late on a recent Friday and expressed his pleasure with the trajectory of the NHL postseason. The Lightning, one of the retired goalie's past clubs, had advanced to the Stanley Cup Final the previous day, emerging victorious from an all-Russian netminding matchup - Andrei Vasilevskiy against Semyon Varlamov - to set up another with Anton Khudobin. It was all a bit surprising, Khabibulin said, but nice for his country all the same.

Khabibulin was also keeping an eye on the KHL, including 18-year-old Yaroslav Askarov's first start of the new season for SKA Saint Petersburg. Teen goalies don't typically dominate in the world's second-best league, yet Askarov stopped 33 shots in a 2-0 shutout of HC Spartak Moscow. He challenged shooters assertively. He sprawled to his left to commit theft, then did that twice more in a performance that solidified goalie and rookie of the week honors.

"He read the plays well. He stopped a penalty shot. Some other guy had a breakaway," Khabibulin said. "Everything he did (worked)."

Khabibulin was Russia's goaltending coach at the 2020 world juniors, about the only event at which Askarov has stumbled. His track record is close to immaculate. Last season, he became the second-youngest goalie to start a KHL game, which he won. He shone for SKA's farm team in the second-tier VHL, compiling a .920 save percentage across 18 contests. The number was stellar for a draft-eligible player, a status Askarov will shed soon after the NHL draft begins Tuesday night.

Setting aside the world juniors in the Czech Republic, where he was yanked in Russia's tournament opener and again in the semifinal, Askarov's success versus men and against prospects internationally has ratcheted his draft stock to rare heights. The comparisons to Vasilevskiy, the perennial Vezina Trophy nominee who was selected No. 19 overall in 2012, are inevitable thanks to his passport and promise.

Few goalies get picked that high anymore. To make the case that Askarov is worth it - "I think he can be as good as he wants to be," Khabibulin said - evaluators sometimes invoke a weightier parallel: the guy whom the Canadiens trusted 15 years ago to live up to the No. 5 slot.

"Best goalie I've seen entering the draft since Carey Price," said TSN's chief scout, Craig Button.

"He's a lot of things you look for in a franchise goaltender," said Mark Seidel, director of the independent North American Central Scouting agency. "There's going to be risks with teams taking him, maybe, in the top 10. But I'd rather take a risk and get a franchise goaltender than take a risk and you miss on a second-pairing defenseman."

In interviews, Khabibulin and four prospect analysts characterized the 6-foot-3, right-catching Askarov as a spirited competitor who reads the game well and moves explosively out of the butterfly, which helps him maintain aggressive yet sensible positioning and splay when needed to foil chances at the far post. Askarov's hands are good, as is his rebound management. In his KHL cameos and several pressurized medal games, he's projected the confidence and composure of a goalie entirely in control.

Askarov's netminding profile is devoid of serious flaws, leaving viewers to scrutinize what Button calls his developmental, rather than inherent, weaknesses. To goalie analyst Catherine Silverman, Askarov could probably stand to narrow his stance slightly and move a little less in the net. His hands could and should still get sharper. But even if those elements of his game remain unfinished, she said, his best attributes wouldn't look out of place in the NHL right now.

"Call him precocious; call him advanced - whatever word you want to use to describe him. He's gifted. He's as gifted a goaltender as you might say about the players who get 'exceptional' status (in the Canadian Hockey League)," Button said. "You just don't see that in goaltenders at that age. It's a position that requires refinement of technique."

Well before he debuted at the world juniors at 17, Askarov stymied his peers at numerous marquee events, powering pedestrian Russian lineups, Seidel said, to podium finishes they had no business attaining. Said NHL Central Scouting director Dan Marr, "There's a history of this guy going out there in high-pressure situations as one of the younger players and delivering."

Below are four examples in the span of a year.

• November 2018: Askarov recorded a .948 save percentage across five games as the Russians took gold at the World Under-17 Challenge in New Brunswick.

• December 2018: Askarov upped his percentage to .954 over four games to lead Russia to silver at the Under-20 World Junior A Challenge in Alberta.

• April 2019: Playing a year above his age cohort, Askarov earned top goalie honors at the Under-18 World Championship in Sweden. His 40 saves in the semifinal forced the powerhouse United States to the shootout shown above, during which five of the eventual top 15 picks in the 2019 draft - Jack Hughes, Alex Turcotte, Trevor Zegras, Matthew Boldy, and Cole Caufield - failed to beat him.

• August 2019: Russia won gold at the U-18 Hlinka Gretzky Cup despite being outshot 37-13 in the final by a Canadian squad replete with top 2020 prospects, including Quinton Byfield, Cole Perfetti, and Jamie Drysdale. Askarov made 35 saves in the victory, and his save percentage for the tournament was .960.

"If he's got 21 good viewings and two or three bad games at the world juniors, (scouts) say, OK, we can live with that," Seidel said.

The pandemic scrubbed this year's U-18 worlds and Hlinka Gretzky tournament, but the draft's postponement granted Askarov's NHL suitors a few extra glimpses of him stonewalling pros. Including his shutout against Spartak, he denied 76 of 78 shots (.974) in three KHL appearances last month. One gymnastic stop against Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod on Sept. 20 seemed to pierce the opposing forward's soul.

The list of goalies who've stood tall in the KHL at Askarov's age doesn't extend far beyond Vasilevskiy and acclaimed Islanders prospect Ilya Sorokin. Plenty of teams - Ottawa at No. 5 overall, New Jersey at No. 7, Minnesota at No. 9, Carolina at No. 13, Edmonton at No. 14 - could conceivably buck recent draft history on Tuesday and bring the shot-stopper aboard with a high pick, trusting he won't wind up as a cautionary tale.

It was commonplace a couple of decades ago to see as many as four goalies selected in Round 1, but that investment frequently preceded disaster. 1999 first-rounders Brian Finley, Maxim Ouellet, and Ari Ahonen combined to appear in just 16 NHL games. Their shared shortcoming contrasts with the long, fruitful careers of Craig Anderson and Ryan Miller, third- and fifth-round choices in 1999, respectively, who were the oldest netminders in the league this past season.

Many drafts have since upheld the maxim that teams can find good goaltending at any point in the process. Consider the distribution of the NHL's 2019-20 goals saved above average leaderboard. The top 10 performers include two first-round picks (Tuukka Rask and Vasilevskiy), a second-rounder (Robin Lehner), two third-round selections (Ben Bishop and Elvis Merzlikins), a fifth-rounder (Connor Hellebuyck), a sixth-round pick (Darcy Kuemper), a seventh-rounder (Khudobin), and two undrafted free agents (Pavel Francouz and Antti Raanta).

How does Askarov's high stock fit into this calculus? For all of the first-round flops drafted between 2000 and 2010 - Brent Krahn, Adam Munro, Marek Schwarz, Riku Helenius, Leland Irving, Tom McCollum, Mark Visentin - there remains the odd 18-year-old whose bright future between the pipes looks assured.

Tampa Bay correctly believed Vasilevskiy would reach his ceiling. Florida has bet big that Spencer Knight, last year's No. 13 pick, will pan out as a quality starter. As Montreal executive Trevor Timmins once told Sportsnet about his club's famed gambit, "We just felt, (in 2005), that Price was the one guy who really had the chance to develop into a franchise player, even though he was a goalie."

"If you find that special rare breed who you think can be a starter and a potential star, that's where a team will step up and take him," Seidel said. "That's what I think will happen (with Askarov)."

Irrespective of its Russian headliner, this draft's crop of eligible goaltenders is strong, Silverman said. Canadians Nico Daws and Dylan Garand submitted solid CHL seasons in 2019-20. Joel Blomqvist is one of Finland's finer recent prospects. Calle Clang is no Jesper Wallstedt - the class of 2021's answer to Askarov - but he's fared well to date in the Swedish junior ranks. Wednesday's later rounds may wind up producing several future starters, Silverman said. It's just that Askarov is dusting all of them on the development curve.

Askarov is signed to SKA through 2021-22, The Athletic's Corey Pronman reported in June, and Silverman thinks he could follow an accelerated version of Igor Shesterkin's path. The Rangers backstop and former SKA star moved to the AHL last season at 23, excelled there for a few months, was promoted to New York with Henrik Lundqvist still in the fold, and now looks set to claim the No. 1 role.

"Can (Askarov) make that jump? He's not going to do it overnight. He's going to have to probably play in the (AHL) for a couple of years," Seidel said. "But he's already proven that he can play with men. It checks another box that you don't have to worry about as much."

Khabibulin, for his part, won't sweat Askarov's subpar two weeks at the last world juniors. If he wasn't fully ready for the stage at 17, he impressed behind the scenes by taking responsibility for his play and committing to improve, the goalie coach said. Askarov is coachable and dissatisfied when he falters, Khabibulin added, which so far has been a nonissue in the KHL.

The results support Khabibulin's read from afar. Askarov is handling net-front traffic more capably than in the past. He's robbing Grade-A attempts with his quick footwork and long legs. He's delivering consistently, not unlike the Russian Vezina finalist who just led Tampa to a title.

"If he can do it once, he can do it twice. If he can do it twice, he can do it many times," Khabibulin said. "It seems like he's getting better and better."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Several times a week for four years, Michael Rossi got home from work in Rankweil, Austria, to find his teenage son's equipment bag placed outside the garage, a silent signal to dad that no night off was ahead. Even then, Marco Rossi didn't take nights off. Suggesting, say, on a drab Tuesday in January that he should rest, kick back, maybe catch a movie with friends, tended only to rile him. Better to load the Fiat Freemont and drive 90 minutes to practice in Zurich, west across the Swiss border in the general direction of the NHL.

"I've always thought since I was younger, if I don't train, I don't get better," Marco said.

"People thought, 'That Rossi father, he's f------ crazy. He's sick, what he's doing,'" said Michael, reflecting on his and his son's nightly commute. "Marco is 10 times crazier than me. He's really a beast, I'll tell you."

Here we have the signature trend of Marco Rossi's hockey upbringing: onlookers questioning Michael's judgment, and Marco, a potential top-five pick in next week's entry draft, acting to alleviate their angst or dispel doubts. As the elder Rossi tells it, they figured Marco wouldn't succeed at each stage of the game that he's surpassed. He was too small to excel against Swiss competition; too young to keep pace with men there at age 16.

Certainly, he couldn't withstand the physicality of the Ontario Hockey League. As it happens, he's now the OHL's reigning MVP.

A 5-foot-9 center from the Alps is hardly the archetype of an elite prospect. Indeed, the unusual story of how Rossi became a junior star - the kind of player who older Canadian teammates swear they look up to, and whose self-assurance at age 19 leads him to swear he can crack the NHL this coming season - originates with those drives to Zurich. Michael's SUV logged close to 500,000 kilometers, and the resolve needed to stick with the dream came into crystalline focus.

The Rossis required a strict routine to live at home and commit to the ZSC Lions, the Swiss parent club of Marco's youth teams from 2014-18. Marco rose at 6 a.m., shortly after his dad did. He was back from school by 3 p.m. to finish homework and eat. Forgiving traffic patterns and lively conversation - about school, current events, choice memories from Michael's own 20-year pro career - got them to Zurich on time and energized by 6:30.

The retired defenseman stood waiting in the rink hours later with heated pasta or chicken in hand, ready for the return leg that got Marco to bed by midnight.

"Up at 5 again, 5:30," Michael said, "and let's go."

The schedule was a grind and was made more difficult, Michael acknowledges in hindsight, because he lost two jobs in sales during this period. Still, he won't entertain the notion that his participation entailed sacrifice. "You do it (because) you love your kid," he said, and he's adamant about one point: he never pressured Marco to do anything.

Marco confirms this, knowing that bristling at relaxation was his call. He was the one who kept his bag at the ready.

"If you see the mental part, I got so strong," he said, thinking back to the demands of the commute. "I think I'm mentally so strong that nothing can (affect) me."

Once the New York Rangers draft Alexis Lafreniere first overall next Tuesday and Quinton Byfield and Tim Stutzle, in all likelihood, are selected next, several remaining standout forwards will headline the top of the board. Teams may balk at Rossi's height or find another reason to downgrade him to the bottom of the tier, below Cole Perfetti, Lucas Raymond, and Alexander Holtz. Maybe defensemen Jamie Drysdale and Jake Sanderson each go before him. A scenario exists whereby the class' strength pushes Rossi out of the top 10.

If that happens, it certainly wouldn't negate all he's accomplished to date. Rossi was a force for the Ottawa 67s in 2019-20, as his 120 points led Canadian major junior hockey when the pandemic halted the season in March. Members of the 67s and analysts who watched them tend to draw the same conclusion; his potential is that of a future No. 1 center, size be damned.

"You normally would use the phrase 'complete package' with a player who's bigger than 5-foot-9," NHL Central Scouting director Dan Marr said. "But as it is, he's the complete package with skills, smarts, skating, and a competitive game. These are all the ingredients that you need today."

In Rossi's case, those ingredients amount to an astute playmaker who thinks a beat or two ahead of the action, enabling him to tilt the ice in his squad's favor and exploit unseen scoring opportunities. He's a capable shooter and his stride, though not the fastest, is powerful and quick. He defends with gusto, protects the puck with force and leverage, and is a workhorse in all phases of the game. Rossi's idol is Pavel Datsyuk, but his favorite active player is Stanley Cup champion Brayden Point, the best shorter center around.

"I've talked with a lot of people about his size, and some people say, 'Do you think he'll play center (in the NHL)?'" said 67s head coach Andre Tourigny. "I guarantee he'll play center, but one thing I know even more: Whatever he will play, his coach will trust him, because he knows he will be prepared. He knows he will be focused. He knows he will compete."

Rossi's teammates, coaches, and front-office executives rave about four facets of his game: hockey sense, lower-body strength, defense, and maturity and drive. It's worth running through each attribute in turn.

'His brain is just fabulous'

If anyone within the 67s can be said to have discovered Rossi, it's assistant general manager and director of scouting Jan Egert, a Swiss who grew up near Zurich. Egert and Ottawa GM James Boyd were with the OHL's Mississauga Steelheads five years ago when Egert's contacts in the ZSC Lions organization suggested he keep tabs on their top prospect.

Egert listened. He made some calls, cued up footage of Rossi dazzling in the Lions' system, and urged Boyd to be prepared to target him in a future Canadian Hockey League import draft. Before Egert ever tracked him live, Rossi's intelligence and vision were plainly discernible on screen.

"He did things, even when you watch it on video and you slow it down and you stop it freeze-frame, it makes you wonder: How did he do that? How did he come up with that idea? How did he see that teammate or that player in that situation? How did he know to change that angle to give himself a better opportunity to make a play?" Egert said. "All those innate things, Marco showcased those assets when he was 14, 15 years old."

Rossi continued to showcase his playmaking chops in Ottawa, where bench staff and former linemates alike marvel at how he reads sequences and dictates offense. "His brain is just fabulous," Tourigny said.

"He can get (passes) over two, three sticks like it's nothing," said Austen Keating, Rossi's left winger for two years, contextualizing how Rossi slung an OHL-best 81 assists in 56 games last season.

Rossi notched a point in 52 of those 56 games. He tallied at least three points 23 times. The numbers substantiate a startling claim from his father: that he can count on one hand the bad games he's ever seen his son play.

"Marco is good any Friday night, any Saturday night, any Tuesday morning practice," Tourigny said. "His consistency, not just game to game - shift to shift in a game - is almost perfect."

Slackline strong

In an interview during the NHL playoffs, Mark Seidel, director of the independent North American Central Scouting agency, observed something about the rigors of the postseason: Guys have to play remarkably hard to make a positive impact. He connected the thought to his faith in Rossi; some shorter forwards who score prolifically in junior stagnate as pros, he noted, when they're hesitant to leave the perimeter, muck about in traffic, and attack the net.

The knock doesn't apply to Rossi, Seidel said: "This kid has no fear."

Rossi wins battles and makes plays through contact at 5-foot-9 because of his balance and build. His legs are trunks, his center of gravity is low, and his weight is listed at 183 pounds on NHL Central Scouting's final draft rankings. When Rossi asserts that no one can knock him off the puck, that includes Serron Noel, the 6-foot-5, 216-pound Florida Panthers prospect whom he flipped over his back as an OHL rookie.

Unorthodox training methods have helped. In addition to deadlifting and running hill sprints in the Alps, Rossi has tweeted throughout the long offseason videos of him squatting on exercise balls and walking, turning, and landing jumps on slacklines.

"I would never be able to do that in a million years," Keating said, adding, "You wouldn't expect him to be that strong in the corners, especially with the amount of skill he has. But when you dump the puck in, he's going to be the first guy in the corner, making a hit, making a play, grinding it out."

200-foot player

To the extent that plus-minus is a useful stat, it's telling that Rossi's plus-69 rating last season was one tick shy of the OHL record. On a 50-11-1 juggernaut, the Austrian wasn't merely the Ottawa offense's driving force. He didn't shirk his defensive responsibilities, either.

Rossi attributes his attentiveness at that end of the ice to two inspirations. One is Datsyuk, whose Selke Trophy-caliber backchecking and doggedness shone through on the YouTube highlights Rossi binged as a kid. The other is his dad, a stay-at-home rearguard in his playing days who convinced his son that defending with discipline is a surefire way to regain possession.

"To tell a kid who's 8, 9, 10, 11, to play in the defensive zone, it sounds very, very boring. It is," Michael Rossi said. That Marco applied the advice nonetheless won the notice of his coach in Ottawa. Tourigny praises Rossi's willingness to forgo undue risk in order to maintain sound position, which is key to thwarting any possible opposing rush.

"In the NHL, you'll see Sidney Crosby stopping on top of the puck. You'll see Jonathan Toews doing that. Marco already does it," Tourigny said. "He takes as much pride in his defense as his offense. When you're 30 years old, I can see that. When you're 17, 18 years old, it's rare."

Influence beyond his years

Keating and Noel Hoefenmayer, another recent 67s alumnus who signed an AHL contract in the offseason, brought up in separate interviews the peculiar dynamic that shaped their final years in Ottawa. They looked up to Rossi, who's 30 months younger than each of them.

Rossi, they say, has long acted like a consummate pro even as he waits to get paid like one. Teammates take cues from his habits at the rink, in the gym, and elsewhere. He works hardest in battle drills. He eats well and, his dad noted, abstains from alcohol to remain in tip-top shape. He locks in to whatever task is at hand with striking, contagious focus.

"Whatever he did or he said went," Keating said. "It didn't even matter that he was an 18-year-old and 21-year-olds were on the team. That's just the amount of respect he (commanded)."

Stories from across the pond evince Rossi's quiet confidence and the impression he leaves on those around him. In 2017-18, he dressed for 18 games with the GCK Lions in Switzerland's second pro division, a wunderkind promoted to face men. Current Lions coach Michael Liniger, who was 38 at the time and about to retire as a player, recalls a clarifying moment from the lone game he skated alongside Rossi: the 16-year-old, devoid of apprehension, nonchalantly excusing Liniger for missing a pass.

Forced to wait longer than expected for his draft day and debut training camp, Rossi opted against signing in Europe this fall, anticipating he'll be in the NHL whenever the 2020-21 season begins. His family and his agent, retired forward Serge Payer, are hardly Rossi's only believers. Marr, the Central Scouting director, said Rossi's maturity suggests he's closer to making the show "than he is having to bide his time and develop."

In recent weeks, Rossi has remained sharp by skating with a couple of Austrian pro teams and his old club in Zurich. Consider it a throwback to his roots as he awaits the breakthrough he figures is imminent.

"Marco's going to be an outstanding NHL hockey player," said Egert, the 67s executive. "He wouldn't allow himself not to be."

Compared to Switzerland, let alone any traditional hockey power, Austria's NHL track record is negligible. Seven born-and-bred Austrians have seen ice time, none before 2002, and just three - Thomas Vanek, Michael Grabner, and Michael Raffl - have managed to stick in the league for several seasons. Until Tuesday night arrives, Grabner and Andreas Nodl, members of the class of 2006, will remain the country's most recent draft choices.

It's with relief and eagerness, then, that Roger Bader, head coach of the Austrian men's national team, expresses his hope that a record handful of homegrown prospects will be selected next week. Thimo Nickl, a mobile defenseman who plays in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, may be worth a look by the third round. QMJHL center Senna Peeters has an outside shot at going late. Might a team take a flier on Benjamin Baumgartner, a 20-year-old center from Swiss club HC Davos?

Bader's aspirations for Rossi, the jewel of the cohort, are ambitious in the short and long term. Bader pulls double duty as the Austrian hockey federation's director of national teams, and in December, Austria will return to the world juniors having toiled in the second tier since 2011.

Maybe Rossi joins his Under-20 counterparts in the IIHF's planned Edmonton bubble. Maybe he's entrenched by then in the pros. Rossi says he upped his stamina and explosiveness to new heights this offseason. He trusts his psyche, curiosity, and experience; how he's already matched up with men double his age and asked the likes of Liniger endless questions, as he did of his dad on so many Zurich-bound drives.

"I see no big problem going to the NHL right now," Rossi said. "I'm not underestimating the league or anything like that. I know it's a really good league. But I have a lot of confidence, and I know how good I am."

He has another backer in Bader. The NHL is where the national coach envisions Rossi elevating the game back home.

"I felt this when Mark Streit (became one of) the first NHL players from Switzerland," said Bader, who is Swiss himself. "He had a good career. Many Swiss guys wanted to do this, and at the moment we have about 15 players in the NHL.

"We hope that if Marco plays regularly in the NHL, it'll be a good example for young (Austrian) kids to work hard," he said. "They can make the step."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

In Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Final, as the Tampa Bay Lightning built what proved to be an insurmountable series lead, Brayden Point passed the puck in the neutral zone and beelined to the foot of the New York Islanders' crease. Ondrej Palat's return feed found him there, and Semyon Varlamov splaying to cover his glove side was the only resistance Point met. He whacked the disc over the goal line, then skated away with his arms raised.

As Bruce Bennett sees it, the NHL playoffs are unfolding inside two kinds of bubbles. One is the stronghold that has housed Point and Varlamov's squads during their time in Toronto and, from the conference finals onward, Edmonton. The second is the scene Bennett observes from his perch in the uppermost deck at Rogers Place, where a camera he positioned high above the visitors' net captured Point's jubilance - and the Islanders' corresponding angst - 200 or so feet across the rink.

Bennett, 65, is the prolific Getty Images photographer whose work appears atop and throughout this story, like it has in most every publication that's covered hockey over his 45 seasons in the game. He's used to shooting from ice level, risking the odd cracked rib or head wound from an errant puck - more so in the old days, before protective plexiglass was omnipresent - to record history in real time from point-blank range.

But few precedents have persisted in 2020. Bennett isn't staying in the league's secure zone, and strict coronavirus protocols govern movement inside the arena. That's why Getty's Edmonton operation is based at center ice far above the fray, as if Bennett is watching and chronicling table hockey matchups from an impassable remove.

"Instead of playing bubble hockey with rods, and twisting those rods, I'm playing (with) cameras, twisting and contorting myself shooting from a photo position that's not conducive to the kind of photography that I like to produce," Bennett said in a recent phone interview.

"There's a lack of intimacy when you shoot from a higher angle. You don't have what I always stress in hockey photography: the faces. You don't have a good look at what the players are going through. Here, I look at the top of a lot of helmets. Occasionally, I can get a face. But it's a very different form of photography - a very different way of seeing the sport."

Few people have witnessed more NHL action than Bennett since the dawn of the league's expansion era. The mustachioed Long Island resident has shot, to be painstakingly precise, 5,157 games in dozens more arenas than are now in use, though primarily from the nearby home barns of the Islanders, New York Rangers, New Jersey Devils, and Philadelphia Flyers.

Bennett's bio isn't all hockey - he happened to be at Yankee Stadium the day Kansas City Royals third baseman George Brett was busted for pine tar in 1983 - but it does account for the lion's share of his career highlights. His marquee assignments include five Olympic tournaments (Lillehammer, Nagano, Vancouver, Sochi, and PyeongChang), eight World Hockey Association games in the 1970s (some involving Wayne Gretzky, then a prodigy on the verge of debuting in the NHL), and 39 matchups that decided the Stanley Cup champion. A milestone 40th beckons at Rogers Place within the next 10 days.

Only a handful of photographers, two of whom the league hired to stay in the bubble and shoot from ice level, are on site in Edmonton, where Bennett emerged from a two-week hotel quarantine early in the second round. Tapped by Getty to work the playoff stretch run solo, he employs four cameras to supply diversified imagery to the agency's worldwide clientele: his handheld Canon 1DX Mark III, plus remote devices stationed around the rafters that focus on points of interest, including one goal line, the team benches, and the net at the opposite end.

Bennett couldn't make use of that last angle if a crowd was present; the netting that usually rises from the back glass would obstruct the camera's sightline on plays such as the Point goal. The confines of his vantage point necessitated creativity, and the result is a lot of shots from a bird's-eye view.

Via Bennett's Instagram, here's William Karlsson (goal-line cam) celebrating a goal; the Dallas Stars (bench cam) toasting John Klingberg; the Lightning (bench cam aimed instead at the nearest net) soaking in another recent win. If those pictures each told a night's story, another snap got at the larger spirit of this bizarre postseason.

Conversations with Bennett about his craft can cover wide ground. In a call with theScore not long before the Stanley Cup matchup was set, he lamented his inability to stick a camera in either net - that right has been reserved for Dave Sandford and Andy Devlin, the NHL Images lensmen in Edmonton - and reflected on his encounters with a few compelling and legendary subjects.

Here's Bennett's take on Sandford's iconic shot of Nazem Kadri's round-robin buzzer-beater: "Stellar frame. I envy him being able to put that net cam in almost every night. There are times when people ask me about my net-cam shots and I minimize the amount of work that goes in there by saying, 'You hold that button down for 12 frames a second, hoping that something's going to happen.' But Dave's (not only) an extraordinarily talented photographer, but also has a tremendous sense of timing. It's setting up the camera correctly and giving yourself the best chance to succeed in an image like that. That will go down as a very historic frame."

Bennett on the unique appeal of photographing Scott Stevens and Mark Messier up close: "Both those guys, you would see the fire in their eyes. You would be able to tell whether those players or even others were motivated to play the game - whether they were in the zone."

Bennett on photographing Gretzky in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1979: "He was a scrawny kid once. Look what he (went on to do) … It was key for me that year to photograph Gretzky because the following year, (he and the Edmonton Oilers) were going to be entering the NHL. I wanted to make sure I had something of him in a WHA uniform."

Bennett on the chaos of Stanley Cup celebrations in the 1980s: "Here in Edmonton, I came off the ice one year, and I had a flash on the top of a camera that was broken off. My watch was missing. It was a vicious, vicious time. … I couldn't tell you which year that was, but I was right in front of (Gretzky), and he's looking with fear in his eyes and just going, 'Back up! Back up!' I'm going, 'I'm trying to back up.' There was so much pressure and force behind us. There were 30 guys at that time running around the ice, trying to get exactly the same image."

The task of shooting the on-ice merriment that caps every postseason has become less physical and more civilized, Bennett said, thanks to the NHL limiting the number of people with cameras allowed over the boards. Victorious players can skate without bumping into bodies or tripping on wires, and Bennett has leeway to block out the noise and focus on preserving the scene in its entirety. "Every single guy who holds up that Cup is important," he said, be they a first-liner, Black Ace, or besuited staffer he identifies by their name tag.

Bennett has experience snapping Cup celebrations from upstairs: He sought out that angle in two past go-rounds in a bid to get creative but came away unsatisfied. Consider it a welcome possibility, then, that he might be permitted to descend from high above when the Lightning or Stars clinch this year's title. The NHL confirmed to theScore that its medical team is helping devise a plan to let all photographers present cover the trophy handoff from the ice.

Bennett operated independently for a few decades before he joined Getty in 2004, when the agency obtained his studio's trove of 2 million hockey images - originals and many more archival acquisitions - that date as far back as the early 1900s. No game in that comprehensive historical span has looked quite like what's gone down in the bubble, where simulated crowd noise has alternately helped Bennett lock into the action and provided a laugh when the roar arrives a beat late.

It's another reminder that these playoffs have no precedent. Bennett said he's been happy to be there, familiarizing himself with Western clubs he doesn't often see and managing any attendant irritation.

"At times it's quite frustrating, shooting from the position that we're shooting from," he said. "But it's a challenge, as well. If you don't rise to the challenge, you might as well just quit the business. The goal is always to get the best photos, and a good photographer should be able to do that from anywhere they're placed in a hockey arena."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.