Early Life
Bure was born in Moscow to Vladimir and Tatiana Bure in 1971. At age 12, his parents separated, and Bure remained with his mother. Vladimir Bure, a Russian swimming legend, had dreams of Pavel becoming a professional swimmer, but Pavel aspired to play hockey at an early age. He attended his first tryout with the CSKA Moscow hockey school at the age of six despite his limited skating ability. Until that point, Bure had only played hockey on the streets with a ball. After Bure failed to impress in his first tryout, his father told him that if he did not show significant improvement within two months, he would withdraw him from the hockey school. By age 11, he was named the best forward in his league. Around that time, in July 1982, Bure was selected as one of three young Russian players to practice with Wayne Gretzky and Soviet national goaltender Vladislav Tretiak in a taped television special. By the time he was 14 years old, he was named to the Central Red Army's junior team.
In December 1986, he embarked on a tour of Canada, spanning from Ottawa to Vancouver, with the Soviet national midget team. Nearly five years before Bure made his NHL debut with the Vancouver Canucks in 1991 at the Pacific Coliseum, he played his first game at his future home rink as part of the tour. Bure also earned another opportunity to meet Gretzky, as well as defenceman Paul Coffey, when his team stopped in Edmonton to play at the Northlands Coliseum.
Read more about this topic: Russian Rocket
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“The time comes when each one of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow- men, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)