Bure Ready to Blast Off With his New Team

The buzz begins almost from the moment Pavel Bure crosses the red line, hoping for the puck from a Florida Panthers teammate. And when it comes, the crescendo builds as quickly as the Russian’s speed.

A few short strides to split the defense. Fake one way. Shoot the other. Red light. Foghorn.

“When he starts off with the puck, he pulls you out of your seat,” said Panthers general manager Bryan Murray, whose seven-player deal with Vancouver for the “Russian Rocket” has suddenly turned around a humdrum team.

Bure scored two goals in his Panthers debut, a 5-2 victory over the New York Islanders. He scored another in the next game and had three more against Philadelphia six days later, becoming only the second NHL player in the past 20 years to score six goals in his first three games with a new team.

After six games, Bure had eight goals and 11 points. The only thing that slowed him was a twisted knee and strained calf in a Feb. 5 game against Pittsburgh, causing him to miss the past week.

“He gives us something this franchise has never had -- a superstar,” center Rob Niedermayer said. “He can go out there and score a goal at any time.”

Even when they reached the 1996 Stanley Cup finals, the Panthers didn’t really have a star. They were a team that relied on hard work, grit and John Vanbiesbrouck’s rock-solid goaltending.

Bure changed all that. His boyish good looks, Mach-1 speed and deadly accuracy give the team a new identity.

While hockey remains largely a niche sport in the region, Bure found himself accosted by well-wishers at a Fort Lauderdale grocery store just days after arriving.

The 27-year-old Moscow native is amused by the attention.

“You can’t have one player do it all,” Bure said. “It’s got to be the whole team, obviously. We’ve got a good young team that’s working really hard and trying to do the best they can.”

Bure’s exit from Vancouver was bitter. A running feud with management led the three-time 50-goal scorer to sit out the season’s first 3 1/2 months and tell the Canucks he’d never play for them again.

He stayed in Russia and worked out twice a day with his old club CSKA Moscow, formerly the Soviet Red Army team. But he got no game action until joining the Panthers for their New York road trip.

“What’s so unique about what happened here is that Pavel hadn’t played since April,” coach Terry Murray said. “The way he made an impact, it impressed the whole hockey world.”

Bure also is impressing his young teammates. Nine Panthers are 24 or younger, the result of a youth movement begun last year.

“You can see what you have to do to get to that level,” said the 24-year-old Niedermayer. “He practices the way he plays. If we’re down one goal, it’s nice to have a guy that’s capable of scoring at any time. It makes you play hard all the way to the end.”

Now the Panthers must figure a way to keep that same level until their star returns, which could be in the next several days. Florida, second in the Southeast Division going into the weekend, was 0-2-1 in its first three games since Bure’s injury.