“My son, when he was in maybe the seventh grade, used to take them and sell them,” he said, laughing again. “I’d go to school to a parent-teacher thing and the teacher would say, ‘Oh, I bought two pucks from your son.’”
Pavelich still cherished memories of his own 1987 induction night, enshrined with players Bob Clarke, Jacques Laperriere and the late Eddie Giacomin, as well as John Ziegler, the late NHL president who was inducted as in the Builders category.
“It was in Detroit. I had all my family there, which was great,” he said. “My older brother, Marty, who played for the Detroit Red Wings (from 1947-57), was there.”
Marty Pavelich died in 2024 at age 96.
Mark Pavelich remembered his father in a Facebook post on Friday, saying, “To us, he was simply Dad. He was a husband to my mother, Dragica, a father, a grandfather, and a man who would light up any room. Somewhere along the way he even got himself and Mom invited to Studio 54 during an All-Star trip to New York.