Joe Thornton is headed to the Hockey Hall of Fame, where he belongs.

And two of his San Jose Sharks teammates, Rob Blake and Jeremy Roenick, will be there to greet him.

“To know Jumbo is to love Jumbo,” Roenick said.

It takes a Hall of Famer to know a Hall of Famer, so who better than Blake (class of 2014) and Roenick (class of 2024) to tell stories about why Thornton is Hall of Fame material, on and off the ice.

“Jumbo”

The 6-foot-4 Thornton was nicknamed “Jumbo” for good reason.

“He had that rare combination of that hockey sense with his vision and his size,” Blake, who played with Thornton from 2008 to 2010, said. “[Wayne Gretzky] is head and shoulders above everybody [as a playmaker], but he wasn’t as big as [Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr], right? They’re big, they had this long reach, they had the hockey IQ to be able to make these high-end plays, and never panicked with the puck.”

Lemieux, Jagr, Thornton. That’s some lofty praise.

“There’s not many like that,” Blake said.

Hockey IQ

Thornton was just as much about brains as he could be about brawn.

“He’s probably one of the top-10 smartest players of all time,” Roenick, who played with Thornton from 2007 to 2009, said. “I say smart because not many people could read the game like him, not many people saw the ice like Joe.”

“He sees things way before they happen,” Blake said.

The Passer

Thornton’s 1,109 career assists, seventh all-time in NHL history, speaks for itself.

“The guys that I think of when I think of the best passers are [Adam Oates], Wayne Gretzky, you could throw [Craig Janney] in there a little bit, Mario, and then Jumbo,” Roenick said.

“Just look at the list of guys that have played alongside him, on his wing, and the amount of goals they score — if you can get open, he’ll find you,” Blake said, referencing Jonathan Cheechoo and Devin Setoguchi. “[He passed] on his forehand and on his backhand equally as well.”

The Competitor

Beneath Thornton’s big smile and beard though, he would Hulk out.

“We needed somebody to yell and stand up and to get in somebody’s face when they weren’t playing well, or the whole team, he would be that guy that would step up,” Roenick said. “He became a different person, and then all of a sudden, he changed back into big, lovable Jumbo.”

This was how Thornton led, according to Roenick.

“There was always like a Jekyll-and-Hyde type of personality that he could morph into whatever a team needed, in terms of a leader,” Roenick said. “He’ll fight anybody for his teammates.”

Hall of Fame Personality

No doubt, Thornton was a Hall of Fame player, but he might have been an even more special personality off the ice.

“I’ve never been around a guy who enjoys the hockey room as much as him,” Blake said. “I’m not even sure I played with anybody else who enjoyed coming to the rink as much as he does.”

This came through in two uniquely “Jumbo” ways.

“Jumbo is the most naked player I’ve ever seen. If he wasn’t naked, he just had his jockstrap on and just walked around,” Roenick laughed. “You had to be very comfortable around Jumbo, because he loved to be in the locker room, and he’d love to just be free and have some fun.”

Fun like?

“Like, ‘Let’s go, boys, time to take a shower. Who’s in for the shower? Let’s go.’ Just really, really fun things that make everybody laugh,” Roenick (over)shared. “Nothing brings a team together when you’re losing than a big team shower together.”

There’s another, less graphic way that Jumbo brought the entire Sharks organization together.

“He treated everybody the same and it was all about the joy of coming to the rink. He wanted the trainers, the coaching staff, and the players to understand that this is the best job in the world that we do every day,” Blake said. “He involved the trainers in everything. Ricky Bobby is the one [equipment manager] that comes to my mind—Rick Bronwell—he just associated the staff around the team with the players. It didn’t matter if you were the lady that cleaned the dressing room.”

Blake said that he’s never played with anybody that glued the whole franchise together like Jumbo: “He’s not going to exclude anybody that’s with the organization.”

“His energy and his electricity and his love and his playfulness and his excitement, it was contagious,” Roenick said. “When you’re around Jumbo, you instinctively get happy and have a smile on your face, because his energy is contagious.”

Thornton, simply, was all about the team.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been around a person or a player or an athlete that I can honestly, honestly say that if you took a poll of every team, every player on Joe’s team, and asked them who their favorite player was, every single player on that team would say Jumbo. Every one of them,” Roenick said. “I think that’s one of the biggest compliments that you can give a teammate, is that every single person on the team, you’re their favorite player, because I know I was far from that.”

“Every holiday, every dinner or family thing you could think of, he was involved in it—and on the road, too. He just didn’t want to be by himself,” Blake recalled. “At that time, the guys who had played over 400 games were designated to have their own rooms, and I would say 99 percent of us did, we just took our own room. He didn’t want that. He wanted a roommate, whether it was Doug Murray or Seto or somebody like that. He needed to have a roommate because he wanted that joy around him with these guys.”

And Thornton still loves the guys, the rink.

“I was in San Jose a couple of weeks ago with my son for youth hockey, and Joe’s on the ice with his son. Then he’s with the development guys for San Jose, then he’s going to the game at night for the Barracuda,” Blake said of Thornton, officially named a Sharks development coach over the summer.

“Jumbo is genuine as you get,” Roenick said. “There’s not a fake bone in his body.”

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