From The Hockey News NHL Future Watch 1993
Steve Dryden
Peter Principle
Play it hard and fast: Those are the rules Peter Forsberg follows. DETROIT - Wispy blond hair, free-falling over his forehead in two waves, obscures Peter Forsberg's face. But not nearly as much as the superstar hides himself. The only thing Forsberg guards more vigilantly than the puck are his private thoughts. Forsberg reveals more than name, rank and serial number, but prefers to keep locked away the passion he brings to his work. It's 9:15 a.m., Nov. 13, and Forsberg is friendly and pleasant between mouthfuls of French toast and sips of tea, but finding precisely what makes Forsberg tick (and talk) is a challenge equal to relieving him of the puck in the corner. Not going to happen. Fast forward 13 hours. Forsberg has just played his best game of the year, scoring two goals and two first assists to demoralize the hometown Detroit Red Wings in a 4-1 victory. The win extends the Colorado Avalanche's franchise record unbeaten streak to 11 and Forsberg sits on a bench, legs pulled up, face flush with the excitement of accomplishment, very much looking 23 years old. "I felt really good tonight," Forsberg says. "I was fired up for the game." It's not what he says. It's how he says it. He is animated - not the customary picture of Nordic reserve - almost as animated as the cartoon-like efforts of Detroit players to get the puck from him. Forsberg owns the boards and corners, coming out from and off of them to earn three of his four points. He is 6 foot and 190 pounds, below average size in the NHL, but nobody plays bigger when the puck is attached to his stick. "It's like he is playing keepaway," sighs frustrated Red Wings' assistant GM Ken Holland. Forsberg scores a power play goal on his rebound, feeds defenseman Sandis Ozolinsh in the slot for two more goals and wraps the Red Wings around his little finger on a wraparound goal. Mike Keane, who sits beside Forsberg in the dressing room, says the Swede was talking to himself before the game. "I don't speak Swedish," Keane says, "so I don't know what he was talking about." It doesn't matter. Forsberg's most eloquent statements are made on the ice. That's where he speaks from the heart. That's where the artist bares his soul on a frozen canvas. Local legend in Norra, Sweden has it Henneng Sandsqvist was a farmer capable of astounding feats of strength. Thousands of miles away, in Denver, Detroit and 24 other cities across North America, another family legend is in the making. Forsberg, Sandsqvist's grandson, is emerging as the most physical elite finesse player since Mark Messier during his glory years with the Edmonton Oilers. "I'll tell you what sticks out in my mind isn't so much the talent level," says Colorado backup goalie Craig Billington, "but his toughness. He's tough. When you watch him play, he's gritty and tough and he doesn't back down and he gives it back. You get a lot of people who are skilled, but perhaps don't have the grittiness." Not since Messier has a player combined stick skills, skating and strength like Forsberg. Not even Messier did it with Forsberg's flair. "He's magician," says Avalanche GM Pierre Lacroix. "He does things I don't think we've seen done before." With four points against the Red Wings, then the NHL's second-best defensive team, Forsberg climbs to within one point of teammate Joe Sakic in the league scoring race. Forsberg has 30 points, including 11 goals, putting the third-year NHLer on pace for a career-high 43 goals and 117 points (one more than last season). Just as notable as how many points Forsberg records is how he earns them. Like Jaromir Jagr of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Forsberg doesn't score points as much as paint them, drawing defenders toward him, finally, filling in the color. It's usually red. The native of Ornskoldsvik rules NHL corners and boards not so much because he has inherited his grandfather's uncommon strength, but because of uncommon strength on skates and of character. Forsberg, whose wide skating stance is the foundation of a wonderful balancing act, is all but impossible to knock off the puck. He is a gifted stickhandler and exudes an air of confidence that must infuriate would-be checkers held off with one arm while Forsberg manipulates the puck with the other or controls it in his skates. "It seems like he's laughing at you," says teammate Eric Lacroix. "I've never seen anything like it." Lacroix's father, Pierre, says Forsberg looks like a ringette player, swinging the puck from side to side, back and forth out of opponents' reach. "When Peter has the puck," adds Avalanche broadcaster Peter McNab, "you have to cheat to get it from him." Forsberg hangs onto the puck endlessly - opposition GMs have been heard to mutter there should be a second puck for their teams - awaiting the optimum moment to pass or, occasionally, shoot. If he were a quarterback, he'd be the consummate scrambler who buys time until a receiver finds open field. He would not send up Hail Marys and a prayer. Every Forsberg pass has an intended receiver. "That's the meaning of it," says the 1995 NHL rookie of the year. "There has to be a target. Otherwise I can just keep it. Usually, there's somebody open in front of the net. (Linemates) Valery (Kamensky) and Keith (Jones) are doing a helluva job and if they're not there I can keep it and go to the net." Poise and patience are Forsberg trademarks. So is a hunger fpr victory. "I hate losing" he says. "I can't stand losing." With a series of national, international and North American triumphs - the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup last season, only his second in the NHL - Forsberg hasn't endured much failure. It was a teenage Forsberg's relentless pursuit of excellence that caught the attention of Anders Hedberg, Toronto Maple Leafs' scout, Swedish hockey great and fellow native of Ornskoldsvik. "He had the same incredible determination that I hadn't seen in a player since Ulf Nilsson," Hedberg says. Hedberg's first enduring image of Forsberg wasn't a pretty goal or pass; it was of Forsberg hounding an opponent on the back-check-hooking, holding, hacking, doing anything and everything to keep him from scoring. Nilsson teamed with Hedberg and Bobby Hull on the World Hockey Association-champion Winnipeg Jets. While watching Forsberg set records for scoring - including 10 points in one game against Japan - at the 1993 World Junior Championship, Nilsson was an uncanny forecaster of the future. "I have not seen a player of Forsberg's calibre in a long time. If Quebec keeps him, they're going to be the team of the '90s." Turns out Nilsson may have predicted everything right but the relocation of Quebec Nordiques to Denver. With Forsberg in just the earliest stages of what promises to be a brilliant career, superstar Sakic, 27, and clutch goalie Patrick Roy, 31, guiding Avalanche fortunes, Colorado could dominate the rest of the millenium. Never in the 80-year history of the NHL have two centers from the same team finished one-two in league scoring. Sakic and Forsberg could become the first to do so. Sakic led the league with 33 points in 21 games and Forsberg trailed by three. Teammates have occupied the first two places in the scroing race many times, in part because they had the opportunity to play together a significant amount of time and benefit from each other's talents. Sakic and Forsberg combine only on power plays and penalty-killing situations. The remainder of the time, they are the driving forces on sperate lines. Sakic and Forsberg are as different as home and road uniforms. Sakic relies on quickness and alertness, generally reacting to the pace of a game. Forsberg is more deliberate, generally dictating the pace of a game. "With Joe, you never know where he's going to be," McNab says, "and with Peter you never know what he's going to do." Sakic and Forsberg share a unique distinction: they are the only two Avalanche players to appear in all 82 regular seaosn games and 22 playoff games last season and all 21 games this season. Nobody detects any hint of rivalry between the two players, least of all the players themselves. Their humble by natures and are credited with establishing an equilibrum in the dressing room. Neither concerns himself with a pecking order and they trade compliments in dressing the room. Sakic, last year's playoff MVP, is among Forsberg's admirers. "He's probably the most complete player in the game," Sakic says. "Both ends of the ice. He's so strong defensively and he's so unselfish." Few would dispute Forsberg is among the best - if not the best - two-way player in the game. That honor was expected to be Sergei Fedorov's for this and many years to come, but the Red Wings' center has fallen into disfavor because he doesn't do precisely what Forsberg does: stake out the war zones as his turf. Fedorov won the Selke Trophy as the NHL's best defensive forward last season. Forsberg will be a contender this season. "He could win the scoring championship and at the same time win the Selke award" Lacroix adds. Don't expect Forsberg to help with a publicity campaign. He'll do ESPN promos - surprisingly the shy, reluctant superstar is shown in a hot tub with two women as tongue-in-cheek proof success hasn't changed him - but don't ask him to do Forsberg promos. "I don't want to be the most defensive forward," Forsberg says. "I don't think I play a defensive game." Tell that to the rest of the NHL, where a growing number of players and executives believe Forsberg is the game's best two-way player. So, is he? "No," Forsberg says. Who's better? "A lot of guys. It takes a long time to mention them all." Forsberg wouldn't name them even if he had the time; he says talk about players he admires would be like saying he looks up to them. "If he wants to become the great scorer we all think he can be," says Colorado Avalanche coach Marc Crawford, "he's going to have to be a guy who gets to the point where he wants to be a threat all the time." To do that, he has to shoot more. Forsberg was averaging 2.7 shots per game, two fewer than Sakic (4.8). Forsberg says he has a bad shot. "He's wrong," Crawford says. "He has got a very good shot. He can put it wherever he wants it. He just doesn't use it enough." Crawford says Forsberg has something many great offensive players possess - change of pace or hesitation move. "They can slow down and pick it up very quickly," Crawford says. "They can almost freeze the defenseman. He has got it. You saw it the other night in Phoenix. He slowed down just enough so that the defenseman (Oleg Tverdovsky) didn't know what he was doing and then, bang, he was right by him." In Sweden it's known as the "Stamp Goal." In the hockey world of large, it helped Forsberg put his stamp on the game. His famous shootout goal against Canada in the gold medal game of the 1994 Olympics was depicted on a Swedish stamp and cemented Forsberg's burgeoning reputation as a world class player. Forsberg is the most decorated player in the world for someone so young. He has won gold medals in the World Championship (1992) and the Olympics (1994) and the NHL equivalent, the Stanley Cup (1996). If the trend continues - a major title in alternating years - Sweden will win the first-ever Olympic hockey gold medal at Nagano in 1998. Forsberg is expected to develop into the best Swedish player has produced. The most talented Swede ever may have been Kent Nilsson, a phenomenal offensive player known as an underachiever in the NHL. It was Nilsson whom Forsberg copied when he beat Canadian goalie Corey Hirsch at the Olympics. Forsberg saw Nilsson beat U.S. goalie John Vanbiesbrouck with the distinctive move at the 1989 World Championship in Stockholm. In both situations, the left-shooting Nilsson and Forsberg drifted to the left and reached back to score on the right. "A little bigger to do it in the Olympics, eh?" Kent Nilsson says. "I'm usually bad at penalty shots," Forsberg says. "I had to do something special." The connection between them two has been solidified with the publication of Forsberg's biography, Magic Boy. Nilsson's biography was named Magic Man. "I didn't make up the name," Forsberg says. "I didn't know about the name. Actually I got pissed when I saw it the first time." Why? "Because I'm not really Magic Boy." More and more people around the NHL feel otherwise.
