Joe Sakic

Joseph Steven Sakic (born July 7, 1969) is a Canadian professional ice hockey executive and former player.

Soon after, he was added to the Lethbridge Broncos of the Western Hockey League (WHL) for the last part of the 1985–86 season.

During the 1986–87 season, the Broncos relocated to Swift Current, Saskatchewan, becoming the Swift Current Broncos.

Sakic, playing in his first full season, scored 60 goals and 73 assists for 133 points.

These totals saw him named the Rookie of the Year of the WHL.

But while Sakic enjoyed success on the ice, he and his team faced a tragedy on the night of December 30, 1986.

The Broncos were driving to a game against the Regina Pats, and due to bad weather conditions, the bus crashed after the driver lost control on a patch of Black Ice outside of Swift Current.

While Sakic was unharmed, four of his teammates (Trent Kresse, Scott Kruger, Chris Mantyka, and Brent Ruff) were killed.

This incident had a lasting impact on the young Sakic, who declined to talk about the crash throughout his career.

The next year, in 1987–88, Sakic was named the WHL Most Valuable Player and Canadian Major Junior Player of the Year.

He scored 160 points (78 goals, 82 assists), tying him with Theoren Fleury of the Moose Jaw Warriors for the WHL scoring title.

Sakic was drafted 15th overall by the Quebec Nordiques in the 1987 NHL Entry Draft, a pick the Nordiques received when they traded away Dale Hunter and Clint Malarchuk to the Washington Capitals.

Rather than make the immediate jump, he told the Nordiques management he would prefer to spend the 1987–88 season in Swift Current to prepare for the NHL.

He played his entire 21-year National Hockey League (NHL) career, which lasted from 1988 to 2009, with the Quebec Nordiques/Colorado Avalanche franchise.

He made his NHL debut on October 6, 1988, against the Hartford Whalers and registered an assist.

Named captain of the team in 1992 (after serving as a co-captain in 1990–91), Sakic is regarded as one of the greatest team leaders in league history and was able to consistently motivate his team to play at a winning level.

Nicknamed "Burnaby Joe", Sakic was named to play in 13 NHL All-Star Games and selected to the NHL First All-Star Team at centre three times.

Sakic led the Avalanche to Stanley Cup titles in 1996 and 2001, being named the most valuable player of the 1996 playoffs, and honoured as the MVP of the NHL in 2001 by the hockey writers and his fellow players.

He is one of six players to participate in the first two of the team's Stanley Cup victories, and won the Stanley Cup a third time with the Avalanche in 2022 while serving as the team's general manager.

Sakic became the third person, after Milt Schmidt and Serge Savard, to win the Stanley Cup with the same franchise as a player and general manager.

Over his career, Sakic was one of the most productive forwards in the game, scored 50 goals twice and earning at least 100 points in six different seasons.

His wrist shot, considered one of the best in the NHL, was the source of much of his production as goalies around the league feared his rapid snap-shot release.

He represented the team in six other international competitions, including the 1998 and 2006 Winter Olympics.

During the 2002 Winter Olympics, Sakic helped lead Team Canada to its first ice hockey gold medal in 50 years, and was voted as the tournament's most valuable player.

At the conclusion of the 2008–09 NHL season, he was the eighth all-time points leader in the NHL, as well as 14th in all-time goals and 11th in all-time assists.

Sakic retired from the NHL in 2009, and had his jersey number #19 retired prior to the Avalanche's 2009–10 season opener.

Following the end of his playing career, Sakic continued with the Avalanche organization in a management capacity, first serving as executive advisor and alternate governor from 2011 to 2013.

In 2012 Sakic was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

In 2013 Sakic was inducted into the Canada Sports Hall of Fame.

He was promoted to executive vice president of hockey operations on May 10, 2013, and named general manager the following year.

After overseeing a team rebuild culminating in the franchise's third Stanley Cup victory in 2022, Sakic won the Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year Award.

The team announced shortly thereafter that he was being promoted to president of hockey operations.

Sakic was born in Burnaby, British Columbia, to Marijan and Slavica Šakić (originally Šakić, ), immigrants from Croatia.

Growing up in Burnaby, he did not learn to speak English well until kindergarten, having been raised with Croatian as his mother tongue.

At the age of four, Sakic attended his first NHL game, a match between the Vancouver Canucks and Atlanta Flames; after watching the game, Sakic decided that he wanted to become a hockey player.

As a smaller player, he was forced to use skill rather than size to excel, and modelled himself after his idol, Wayne Gretzky.

After showing exceptional promise as a young hockey player in Burnaby, Sakic was referenced as a new Wayne Gretzky in the making.

He scored 83 goals and 156 points in 80 games for Burnaby while attending school at Burnaby North Secondary.

In 2017, Sakic was named one of the '100 Greatest NHL Players' in history.

He was also inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame in 2017.