SAN JOSE — Will Sharks captain Joe Pavelski return to the ice for tonight’s win-or-go-home Game 7 NHL playoff game against the Colorado Avalanche at the Shark Tank?
One authority thinks there’s a good chance.
“I’m 75 percent sure he will play,” his wife, Sarah Pavelski, said Wednesday morning. “He’s hoping to, but wants to see the doctors one more time this morning to be sure.
“Joe is feeling good.”
Pavelski’s return could provide a huge emotional boost in the Sharks’ quest for a first Stanley Cup after his brutal concussion two weeks ago sparked an unthinkable comeback in Game 7 of their first-round playoff series victory over the Vegas Knights.
As a hockey wife, Sarah Pavelski has watched her husband suffer the gamut of injuries, from cracked ankles to lost teeth (he took a slapshot to the face for the Sharks’ first goal of the playoffs). But the fall he took that ultimately turned around the Sharks’ playoff hopes has become one of the defining moments in the team’s 28-year history.
So what about tonight? Pavelski and Sharks trainer Ray Tufts have a close bond, his wife said, so “whatever decision the other makes they trust in that. If Joe thinks he can play, Ray trusts that.”
With the series tied at 3 games apiece, the Sharks must win tonight at SAP Center in San Jose to advance to the Western Conference Finals.
As her husband recovered off the ice, Sarah Pavelski said these last two weeks have been filled with frustration, but also special moments that reinforced their connection to San Jose. The couple have been flooded with well wishes. An ice cream shop in their Willow Glen neighborhood, where Pavelski and his 8-year-old son Nathan are frequent customers, posted a sign out front saying “Get well soon, Joe.”
“We’ve been here a really long time and you go about your day-to-day life and it gets routine like anybody else’s life,” she said. “Having an experience like that where there’s just a rush of support — those little things have made us realize how deep our roots here actually are.”
The Pavelskis were high school sweethearts in Waterloo, Iowa, and have been married for 10 years. She’s seen her husband get injured countless times — from broken fingers and teeth to ankles and feet — but nearly every time he either popped right back up or returned to the ice in the same game. (Tight skates make effective casts.)
But the April 23 injury that left a pool of blood on the ice and Pavelski with a concussion and in need of staples in the back of his head was a surreal moment for Sarah Pavelski. Sitting with other hockey wives in Section 113, she had a clear view of her husband’s awkward fall after being cross-checked after a face-off. The injury led to a controversial 5-minute major penalty for the Knights and powered the Sharks to erase a 3-0 lead with four goals in just over 4 minutes.
At first, she thought he had been struck again in the mouth, the same spot where a puck deflected off Pavelski’s face for the Sharks’ first goal in the opening game of the series. She thought “that he was lying still because it hurt really bad,” she said. “And then I realized, you know, he really wasn’t moving. At that moment, it was all kind of a blur.”
Two of her closest friends, Joe Thornton’s wife, Tabea, and Brett Burns’ wife, Susan, “dove over the people sitting between us and kind of grabbed me and took me downstairs” to the lounge, she said. Luckily, the Pavelskis 8-year-old son, Nathan, wasn’t at the game to witness the real horror of it, watching instead from a friend’s house. He texted his mother right away, who assured him his father “was fine.”
She is thankful, because she knows that her husband’s injury could have been much worse, she said. “He had no sensitivity to light or noise. His headaches weren’t severe, no memory problems,” she said. “I know girls whose husband had had such bad concussions they don’t remember their kids’ names.”
Sarah missed all the mayhem in the stands as the team pulled off its historic comeback, a powerful tribute to her husband from his teammates that she didn’t get to see until the next day. It was the first time she saw the powerful image of his teammates escorting him off the ice, with Joe Thornton holding a towel to Pavelski’s bloody head.
“That was super emotional for me,” she said.
What she did experience from the stands, however, was the roaring ovation Joe received last week when made his first public appearance since the injury, albeit in a three-piece suit, waving to the fans during Game 5 against the Avalanche. The experience was overwhelming for them both.
“That was the happiest he had been” since his injury, she said. “Just to see his face and his smile. You know, it was a long couple of weeks.”
On Sunday, he joined his wife and son at their local Catholic church to celebrate Nathan’s First Holy Communion. Pavelski hopped a plane later that day to be in Denver with the team for Game 6.
The anticipation has been building for weeks about whether — and when — he will return to the ice, and Sarah Pavelski isn’t worried.
“Everybody has messaged to say how excited they are to have him back,” she said, “and hope he plays. It would sure make a good story.”
