And to think, as a 6-year-old in Chelyabinsk, Russia, Sergei Gonchar had visions of playing a different sport altogether.
"To begin with, I was thinking about soccer, I wanted to play soccer,'' Gonchar recalled this week, chuckling.
"Then my father told me that we had better hockey schools in our hometown. He convinced me to change sports. Once I started playing hockey a bit more, I loved it more and more. So eventually there was no question for me, I never thought about soccer again.''
Thank you, then, Papa Gonchar. The NHL would not have been the same without your son's 811 career points (220 goals, 591 assists) in 1,301 regular-season games over the past couple of decades.