Date of Birth
13 June 1974, Moscow, Russia
Birth Name
Valer? Vladimirovich Bure
Nickname
The Pocket Rocket
Val
Category: Ice hockey player
Ethnicity: Russian / White
Height: 5ft 10in (178cm)
Candace Cameron Bure
(22 June 1996 - present) 3 children
Pavel Vladimirovich Bure (Russian: Па́вел Влади́мирович Буре́, IPA: [ˈpavʲɪl buˈrʲe]; born March 31, 1971 in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union) is a retired Russian professional ice hockey right winger. Nicknamed The Russian Rocket for his speed, he played 12 seasons in theNational Hockey League (NHL) with the Vancouver Canucks, Florida Panthers and New York Rangers. Trained in Russia, where he is known as Pasha, he played three seasons with the Central Red Army team before his NHL career.
Selected 113th overall in the 1989 NHL Entry Draft by Vancouver, he began his NHL career in 199192 and won the Calder Memorial Trophy as the league's best rookie, then helped the Canucks to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1994. After seven seasons with the Canucks, Bure was dealt to the Panthers, where he won back-to-back Rocket Richard Trophies as the league's leading goal-scorer (he also led the league in goal scoring with Vancouver in 199394, before the trophy's inauguration). Bure struggled with knee injuries throughout his career, resulting in his retiring prematurely in 2005 as a member of the Rangers.
Internationally, Bure competed for the Soviet Union and Russia. As a member of the Soviet Union, he won two silver medals and a gold in threeWorld Junior Championships followed by a gold and silver medal in the 1990 and 1991 World Championships, respectively. After the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, Bure competed for Russia in two Winter Olympics, winning silver at the 1998 Games in Nagano and bronze at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City. Following Bure's retirement in 2005, he was named the general manager for Russia's national team at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.
Bure was born to Vladimir Bure and Tatiana Gvovana. At age 12, his parents separated and Bure remained with his mother. Vladimir, a Russian swimming legend, had dreams of Bure becoming a professional swimmer, but Bure 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 limited skating ability. Up 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.
He quickly developed his abilities and by age 11, he was named the best forward in his league. Around that time, in July 1982, Bure was selected among just three young Russian players to practice withWayne 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.
Prior to joining the NHL in 1991, Bure competed in several junior international tournaments for the Soviet Union. The first was the 1988 Quebec Esso Cup, an under-17 tournament (now known as the World U-17 Hockey Challenge) held in Quebec City, where he earned a gold medal. That same year, he competed in his first of two consecutive European Junior Championships.
The following year, Bure debuted at the world under-20 level as a 17-year-old at the 1989 World Junior Championships in Anchorage, Alaska. The top line ofCSKA Moscow teammates Bure, Alexander Mogilny and Sergei Federov led the Soviet Union to a gold medal. Bure's eight goals tied him for the tournament lead with Jeremy Roenick of the United States, in addition to a team-high 14 points. He was named to the Tournament All-Star Team and earned Best Forward honours.
Bure competed in his second World Juniors the following year in 1990, winning a silver medal in Helsinki, Finland, while scoring seven goals in seven games. Later that year, he made his senior debut with the Soviet national team as a 19-year-old at the 1990 World Championships in Switzerland. He scored two goals and four assists for six points in ten games to help the Soviets to a gold medal finish, winning all three games in the medal round. Despite winning the overall tournament, the Soviets finished with a silver in the European Championship, which took into account only games played amongst European teams during the tournament. Nevertheless, each Soviet player was awarded $10,000 for winning the overall tournament, which Bure used to buy a new Lada. Several months later, in July, Bure took part in his third international tournament of the year at the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle. Scoring four goals and an assist in five games, Bure and the Soviets captured the gold medal by defeating the United States in the final.
In 1991, Bure appeared in his third and final World Junior Championships. Having won their first four games, the Soviets required only a win in their the second-to-last-game against Finland to clinch the gold medal. After the Finns built a 40 lead, Bure led a 5-goal comeback in which he scored his team's final three goals for a natural hat trick. Nevertheless, the Soviets gave up a goal in the final minute of the game to set up a gold medal match againstCanada. Despite finishing the tournament as the leading scorer with 12 goals in 7 games, Bure and the Soviets fell to Canada 32 to settle for silver. He finished his three-year World Junior career with a tournament-record 27 goals, to go with 39 points, in 21 games. Once again, Bure later competed in the 1991 World Championships for his second international appearance of the year. He improved on his previous year's senior total with 11 points in 11 games, tied for the team lead with Valeri Kamensky, helping the Soviets to a bronze medal finish. Bure was named to the tournament's Second All-Star Team. The 1991 team marked the last World Championships that the Soviets played as the USSR, giving way to the union's dissolution later that year.
Prior to the dissolution, Bure was set to represent the Soviet Union at the 1991 Canada Cup several months later in Canada. However, after turning down a three-year contract with his Russian club, CSKA Moscow, he was left off the final roster. Further controversy ensued five years later in the inaugural 1996 World Cup (successor tournament to the Canada Cup). Bure had just recently recovered from reconstructive surgery to his right knee and had begun practicing with the Russian national team, when he refused to sign a petition organized by national team veteran Slava Fetisov. With the Russian Ice Hockey Federation dealing with internal corruption, the petition called for the ouster of a select few Russian ice hockey officials. In response, Bure explained, "I do not sign petitions. I believe I should work play hockey. Petitions to the federation or to Olympic committees do not interest me."Despite the controversy, Bure would end up not playing in the tournament anyway, as a result of a bruised kidney suffered in an exhibition game against the United States.
Two years later, Bure made his Olympic debut with Russia at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano. He helped lead his team to the gold medal game after an Olympic record five-goal effort in Russia's 74 semi-final win against Finland, two of which came on breakaways. Playing the Czech Republic in the final, however, Bure and the Russians were shutout by goaltender Dominik Ha?ek and lost the gold medal by a 10 score. He finished with a tournament-high nine goals to be named the top forward and, while recording no assists, placed third in point-scoring with nine points in six games.
After the Panthers were eliminated in the 2000 playoffs, Bure was added to the Russian roster for the 2000 World Championships, held in Saint Petersburg. Despite playing as tournament hosts, the Russians were not able to make the medal rounds, suffering upset defeats to both Latvia and Belarus. In six games, Bure managed four goals and an assist. Two years later, Bure made his second Olympic appearance at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City. Attempting to make his second straight trip to the gold medal game, Bure and the Russians lost in the semi-finals to the United States 32. Bure finished his final international tournament as a player with two goals and an assist in six games to go with a bronze medal, having defeated Belarus in the consolation match.
Bure comes from an athletic family; his father Vladimir, whose lineage is of German ancestry (his side of the family originated from Furna, Switzerland) was an Olympic swimmer who competed for the Soviet Union in the 1968, 1972, and 1976 Olympic Games. He won four medals, including a bronze medal for the 100-metre race in the 1972 Games, in which he lost the gold medal by half a second to American swimming legend Mark Spitz. Bure retained his father as his personal trainer well into his playing career, before severing ties with him in 1997. Bure's grandfather, Valeri Bure, also competed for the Soviet Union in the Olympics as a goalkeeper for the national water polo team. Named after his grandfather, Bure's younger brother Valeri Bure, was also a hockey player, spending 10 years in the NHL. The two siblings played with each other briefly as members of the Florida Panthers, as well as on the Russian national team.
In addition to athleticism, nobility ran in the family. Bure was named after his great-grandfather, a watchmaker to Tsar Alexander III. Bure's family made precious watches for the tsars from 18151917; as craftspersons of the imperial family, they were granted noble status. After Bure sustained his first serious knee injury in 1995, he pursued the watchmaking business during his rehabilitation period in an attempt to revive the family business. Fifty replicas of the same watches his ancestors sold to the Russian imperial family were made and priced at US$30,000 each. Bure presented three of the gold replicas to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Moscow mayor Yuriy Luzhkov.
Shortly after arriving in North America from Moscow with his father and brother on September 6, 1991 (his mother Tatiana arrived two months later), Bure married an American fashion model in a civil ceremony five days later on September 11. Although his wife's full name was not released at the time, it was later revealed to be Jayme Bohn. The marriage was set up by Bure's agents as a preventative measure against deportation in the event that he and the Canucks could not come to terms with a contract. Bure and Bohn were quickly divorced the following summer and Bohn went on to become a costume designer in the film and television industry.
After being linked to girlfriend Dahn Bryan, a model and actress, early in his NHL career, Bure shared a relationship with tennis star and fellow Russian Anna Kournikova. The two met in 1999 when Kournikova was still linked to Bure's former Russian teammate Sergei Fedorov.Bure and Kournikova were reported to have been engaged in 2000 after a reporter took a photo of them together in aFlorida restaurant where Bure supposedly asked Kournikova to marry him. As the story made headlines in Russia, where they were both heavily followed in the media as celebrities, Bure and Kournikova both denied any engagement. Kournikova, 10 years younger than Bure, was 18 years old at the time. The following year, Kournikova and Fedorov were married in Moscow. They were soon divorced, however, and Kournikova then married pop star Enrique Iglesias in 2003.
Despite no longer being linked with each other, Bure and Kounikova continued to controversially make the news after their relationship ended. In 2002, Bure sued Russian newspaper the eXile for publishing an article stating that he broke up with Kournikova on account of her having two vaginas. Although the newspapers' editorial staff claimed the story was a mere joke, the court ruled in favour of Bure in the amount of 500,000 rubles (US$17,770). Furthermore, the eXile was obligated to print another article refuting the previous story. Two years later, on December 27, 2004, Russian cosmeticschain Arbat Prestige published a story in their free promotional paper that Bure had bragged about Kournikova losing her virginity to him. Shortly thereafter, on January 31, 2005, Bure sued the cosmetics chain for 300 million rubles (US$10.65 million) in a Moscow court. He further demanded that Arbat Prestige print a retraction and apology in a future paper, similar to the suit against the eXile. The court ruled in favour of Bure in November 2005. The amount was, however, reduced from 300 million to approximately 320,000 rubles.
At 38-years-old, Bure married 23-year-old model Alina Khasanova on October 10, 2009. Bure and Khasanova had known each other for four years after meeting in Turkey. The wedding was held in Moscow for over 300 guests at a restaurant. Pravda reported the couple had officially married on October 10, 2008, in Miami. Another news source reported an engagement, not a wedding, had taken place in Miami in the spring of 2009 and also mentions the newlyweds are expecting their first child in spring 2010.
During Bure's playing career, much speculation surrounded Russian NHL players and their potential ties to the Russian mafia as both victims and associates. As Soviet players began defecting to the NHL, many cases of extortion began surfacing that the Russian mafia was targeting the players' families still living in Russia. Former teammate Alexander Mogilny was involved in such an extortion attempt in 1994, while Bure was reported to have made payments totaling in the thousands of dollars to Russian extortionists, as well, in 1993. Three years later, however, in 1996, American sports network ESPN reported Bure as a potential associate to the Rusian mafia on account of his relationship with friend and watch-making business partner Anzor Kikalishvili. Kikalishvili was known to both Russian and American police as a suspected criminal and was speculated to be a Russian mob boss. Furthermore, Bure was revealed to hold a position as vice president in sports company Twenty First Century Association, which was owned by Kikalishvili and believed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to be a mafia front worth at least US$100 million in illicit funds. While Bure did not deny his business and personal relationship with Kikalishvili, he refuted the reports that Kikalishvili was involved in any criminal activity. Speculation resurfaced in 1999, as Bure was included in an investigation aired by CBC documentary series fifth estate that made several supposed associations between Soviet NHL players and the Russian mafia. Among the more serious allegations was that former Red Army teammate Slava Fetisov used a company that he was president of to launder money for Vyacheslav Ivankov, considered to be the "Russian godfather" in North America. Meanwhile, Bure's relationship with Kikalishvili continued to be questioned. Bure denied, once again, Kikalishvili's involvement in any criminal activity, dismissing the allegation as "rumours".
During his stay with the Canucks, Bure lived in a mansion on Vancouver's Southwest Marine Drive. He purchased the $1 million, 600,000-square-foot residence in 1994 after having lived in an apartment inDowntown Vancouver overlooking False Creek. He also spent numerous off-seasons during this time in Los Angeles.
Nearly a year after his retirement, on October 31, 2006, Bure filed another suit after being kicked off a British Airways flight by the pilot, having been mistaken for a rowdy soccer fan. Despite an official apology from the airline company in June 2007, Bure took the issue to court, suing British Airways for 20 million rubles. In late-August 2007, the Tver Court of Moscow ruled in favour of Bure in the amount of 57,000 rubles and an additional 10,000 rubles in moral damage.
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