Joe exclamation mark
Canadian actor Kiefer Sutherland has played an artist and a writer, a serial killer and a Marine, a doctor and a supermarket delivery man, a vampire and an outlaw, a counter-terrorism agent and the Nutcracker prince.
But his most challenging role would be playing Joe Sakic, Hockey Superstar.
In a two-hour picture show, Sutherland would utter such memorable lines as:
“I’m happy.”
“I enjoy playing and competing.”
“I am ready for camp and look forward to the season.”
But not any of these lines:
“Let’s go kick the Red Wings’ (team). I guarantee we’ll beat them.”
“I was sensational in the game. I was feeling it. Nobody can stop me.”
“I want to rock and roll all night and party every day.”
Joe! is a strong, silent, leading-man type — reserved like a library book, dominant like an anvil. He has scored 2,329 points in professional, international and all-star games and provided for millions of meals through his charity work for Food Bank of the Rockies.
Joe! A man of few words and many feats. No ordinary Joe. Joe! Like other Joes in sports — DiMaggio, Louis, Montana and the mythical Joe Hardy.
The Avs got their “MoJoe” back. Colorado is the beneficiary. We will see more Joe and more wristers and winners.
“Joe! The Movie” would be a thrilling action flick — without much dialogue.
Here are some previews of scenes:
• In Vancouver, Canada, a small, young boy (who didn’t speak English until he was in kindergarten) comes in the door with ice skates over his shoulder. As the kid quietly polishes his skates, his parents, hard-working Croatian immigrants Marijan and Slavica, ask how he did in the game. “Bad,” he says. “We lost.” A day later, the father learns that his son scored five goals in the game.
• Called the next Wayne Gretzky, and named the Western Hockey League rookie of the year, the shy teenager for the Swift Current Broncos is staring out the window of the team bus when it slides off an ice-covered road. He crawls out unharmed, but four teammates are dead.
• The captain of the new Colorado Avalanche is standing on the ice in Miami hoisting the Stanley Cup above his head and . . . cut to the player riding atop a fire truck through downtown Denver in a championship parade, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of screaming fans. “We can win three straight,” he thinks out loud.
• Five years later, Sakic is presented with the Stanley Cup once more, but hands it immediately to teammate Ray Bourque.
• In a montage, Sakic gets hurt in a Winter Olympics game in Japan in 2002, but gets the gold medal and the MVP award in the Winter Olympics in Utah in 2006 as Canada wins for the first time in 50 years. Gretzky, his boyhood idol, is the team leader. There are flashbacks of Sakic’s seven international World Cups, World Junior Cups and three Olympic appearances and 12 All-Star Games.
• In the winter of 2008, the 38-year-old Sakic is shown in the rehabilitation room, recovering from a sports hernia, during the worst statistical season of his 19-year NHL career. He will play only 44 games. “Maybe this is it,” he says.
• But, wait. Sakic is reunited with Peter Forsberg and Adam Foote, his two old mates and friends, and the Avalanche reaches the playoffs, and Sakic scores his NHL-record eighth overtime playoff goal in the first postseason game with Minnesota. But the Avs lose in the next series to rival Detroit.
• In the summer of 2008, Sakic sits with wife Debbie, 12-year-old son Mitchell and 8-year-old twins Chase and Kamryn and asks if he should continue to play. Mitchell says: “Go for it, Dad.”
• Sakic, dressed in an exquisite gray suit, without the familiar No. 19 on the back, stands off to the side and speaks softly to a writer, who has trailed him for two decades from Denver to Detroit to Nagano to the home he gave his parents in suburban Vancouver, and says: “I was tired at the end of the season, and I was undecided. But as I got back on the rink, I finally knew that I wanted to come back and get back to where I was before the injury. It’s still fun for me.”
And:
• In the late spring of 2009, Sakic holds the Stanley Cup over his head a third time and skates alongside Forsberg and Foote and youngsters.
• In the winter of 2010, Sakic holds another Olympic gold medal — in Vancouver, where his story began. Happy ending.
“Joe! The Movie” stars Kiefer Sutherland, Sakic’s own fantasy choice.
Joe! The Life stars Joe Sakic, a great player and a great guy.
Woody Paige: 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com
