The hits keep on coming

Sporting News, The, Oct 21, 1996 by Dan Le Batard

In only his second season, ED JOVANOVSKI has already hammered out a reputation as one of the best young defenseman and fiercest bodycheckers in the game

The game's glamour boys spent a season trying to score on the rookie's side. Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr and Peter Bondra would whistle in, all beauty and ballet, trying to produce a so-pretty portrait, but Ed Jovanovski's game isn't about art appreciation, pal. The world's best teenage hockey player would end all the fancy skating abruptly, with the kind of thud that would make glass tremble and fans shudder. Each confrontation was kind of jarring, a little like watching the homecoming queen's white dress suddenly splattered with blood.

"He has a favorite spot," Panthers coach Doug MacLean says, laughing now.

Jovanovski's body burying always seemed to happen in a personal graveyard against the south wall at Miami Arena, about 20 feet inside the black-and-blue line. Last season, by MacLean's count, Jovanovski checked half a dozen players there so violently they had to be helped off the ice. And that doesn't count Philadelphia's Rod Brind'Amour, whose nose was broken by Jovanovski. Or Vancouver's Martin Gelinas, who merely escaped with a concussion.

"Clean hits, too," says MacLean, a man not given to raving.

"Jovanovski is bar none the hardest hitter in the game," Rangers center Mark Messier says. "I saw players on our team come to the bench bent over in pain last season."

MacLean says, "We should build a statue for him over by his favorite spot."

No, no. no.

Wait.

MacLean has a better idea.

"Actually," he says, "how about we just put up a cross?"

Rest in pieces.

Jovanovski, who turned 20 in June, has a more lucrative notion. You know how stadiums all over the world are suddenly wall-papered with advertising? Jovanovski figures maybe he can team up with a company to sponsor his spot. How about a bank ad?

We here at First Union happily accept all of Ed Jovanovski's bounced Czechs.

"I enjoy a good hit more than scoring," Jovanovski says. "You can feel it throughout your body--the sound the rush, the wind leaving another man's body. I'm a frustrated goal scorer, basically. Goal scorers don't want to be hit, but they get to celebrate their goals. I don't get to score every game, so I celebrate this way."

When administered by Jovanovski, you can feel the hit as he describes the sound, the rush, the wind leaving another man's body.

He is but a big baby. Here's a kid who broke his hand on Brendan Shanahan's face even before his first pro game, a kid who teammate Mike Hough says "hits with as much power as anyone I've ever seen," a kid who delivered a check so vicious on Detroit's Keith Primeau that Panthers captain Brian Skrudland calls it the best open-ice hit he has seen in his quarter-century of hockey ... and he's still a baby. That's right, that tough, 6-2, 205-pound kid lived all of last season with his mother.

Jovanovski flew her down to Boca Raton, about an hour north of Miami, because he never lived away from her before and didn't think he was ready to begin now. Neutralize Eric Lindros? No problem. Live without Liljana Jovanovski's pasta? No way. Liljana woke Ed for practice and washed his clothes and bought his groceries while her son became a finalist for rookie of the year (Javanovski finished second to Chicago's Eric Daze). Jovanovski's father, Joe, back in their home town of Windsor, Ontario, handled Ed's finances, visiting long enough to buy his son's three-bedroom house in a gated community in Boca before Eddie ever saw it, and cringing more than a bit when his boy came home one day to announce he had just bought a bright red Mitsubishi Spyder convertible, paying $60,000 cash.

"I won't be living with him this year," Liljana says. "We'll keep in touch all the time though, I'm sure. He called me just the other day to ask how to wash towels. He had run out of clean ones, so I helped him over the phone, telling him where to set the machine and how much detergent to put in. He'll be fine with the towels. Now he has to move on to dress shirts."

This reminder tells us this is indeed a story of a kid learning how to grow up into a superstar's body, both mentally and physically, despite Jovanovski's key role in another great start, with victories over the Flyers at new Core States Center and against the Rangers in Wayne Gretzky's Broadway debut.

Jovanovski, so big and brawny, can be oafishly naive sometimes, a vulnerability not lost on his teammates. Like when Gord Murphy short-sheeted his hotel-room bed, then watched Jovo tug and pull at it for five minutes. Murphy eventually started feeling bad and explained the joke. Jovanovski isn't bothered much by the digs.

"Hey, I graduated," he says. "Made the honor roll three years."

Honor roll or no honor roll, Jovanovski's formula isn't calculus--hitting feels good, so he does it.

"I've been rewarded for the way I am so I'm not going to let go of it," he says. "This is what got me to the NHL, being physical, playing big. This comes naturally. There are parts of it that are learned--like the technique to hit somebody right--but it's mostly something that isn't taught. I don't remember the first time I made a big hit, but I do remember that I enjoyed it. I can't bring scoring to the team, so I bring this."