Dallas – When Wojtek Wolski arrived with his family in Mississauga, Ontario, he was only 4. His developing vocabulary all was in Polish.
“I remember at first not talking to anyone, not playing with anyone, and just being on my own all the time,” Wolski said Saturday afternoon at the American Airlines Center’s visiting dressing room.
He overcame his shyness, and hockey eventually helped. Like many Canadian boys, he was at the rink and on skates before long, and his precocious talents helped break down social barriers.
But Wolski remains both conscious and proud of his heritage.
After his stunning playoff debut for the Avalanche, when he scored a goal and had two assists in Colorado’s 5-2 victory over Dallas in the opener of the first-round series, Wolski, 20, was expecting to get a call for comment from, among others, the folks at Fakty I Mity, a sports-conscious Polish-language newspaper.
“Hockey’s definitely not the biggest sport in Poland,” Wolski said. “Soccer is. But there are people who follow this and are happy to see their athletes have success and thrive wherever they are. So anytime I get an award or have any success, I get a couple of calls from (media in) Poland directly, or from New York and Chicago, because there are pretty big communities there as well.”
This was big news: Wolski not only helped spark the Avalanche to a road victory against the Western Conference’s No. 2 seed – illustrating that his addition to the playoff roster could considerably strengthen Colorado’s chances of being something other than a first-round walkover – he already is the fifth-leading playoff goal-scorer among Polish-born players in NHL history.
As near as anyone can tell, the only other native Poles who have scored in the postseason are current Boston winger Mariusz Czerkawski (eight goals); Nick Harbaruk, who had three goals for the Penguins from 1969-72; Joe Jerwa of the New York Americans (two in the 1930s); and recently retired enforcer Krzysztof Oliwa, who had two in the 2004 playoffs for the Calgary Flames.
It wasn’t just that Wolski so seamlessly stepped into the Colorado lineup after playing only nine games with the Avalanche before returning to play major junior for the Brampton Battalion of the Ontario Hockey League. Even more impressive, Wolski – who played wing in his early season stint with the Avs – was back at center and stayed there the whole game, playing with Jim Dowd and Alex Tanguay. Though he played only a shade under four minutes in the third period, with the Avs nursing the lead, the trust and faith Avalanche coach Joel Quenneville displayed in the rookie was startling.
In Game 1, it worked.
After the way the Avs stumbled down the stretch, when for a time it wasn’t even certain they would make the playoffs, it made sense for Quenneville to be conscious of innovation and even risk-taking. Yes, Wolski tore up the OHL this season, and did it in such a fashion that he was voted the league’s most gentlemanly player. That’s the sort of award that goes to a player who makes opponents shake their heads, then want to shake his hand.
There is a perhaps ominous parallel here – for the Stars and goalie Marty Turco.
Two years ago, after missing most of the regular season with a shoulder injury, Slovakian winger Marek Svatos got his first career playoff goal against the Stars and Turco in the first round, ending Game 4 in sudden-death overtime and giving the Avalanche a 3-1 series lead. Svatos isn’t available in this series after suffering another season-ending shoulder injury while taking a clean open-ice hit from the Stars’ Jason Arnott in Dallas on March 4. (Funny thing, though, there was no talk of putting a bounty on Arnott, or otherwise seeking revenge, for an unpenalized check on a team’s leading goal-scorer.)
And now another young European-born forward has come, relatively speaking, out of nowhere to bedevil the Stars. Wolski’s Game 1 goal tied the score at 2-2 in the second period when Turco failed to scramble back to the crease after playing the puck, and Dowd’s pass out set up Wolski.
“I had an open net there and I put it in,” he said. “I thought I was going to jump out of my skates.”
And how do you say goal in Polish?
“Same thing, goal,” said Wolski. He thought a second, then added, “Or bramkowy.”
Bramkowy it is.
Terry Frei can be reached at 303-820-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
