"Joe Sakic might have been the nicest superstar who ever played in the NHL. But he was not an annoying kind of nice. He would not roam around a room asking: "Hey, how you doing? How's things? How's the family? Can I bring you a Gatorade?" You know, those people who are so overbearingly pleasant, you want to wring their neck? Sakic wasn't like that. Sakic, instead, was amazingly consistent as a player and a person. You would never know if the Avalanche won or lost by looking at him after a game. "There's a book about 'Level5' leaders and all the great ones have skill and other things but the last level that makes them special is humility. Joe had that," said Edmonton coach Pat Quinn, who won an Olympic gold medal as coach of

Canada with Sakic in 2002. "He wanted to make other people feel better. He didn't want to be the guy with the crown on his head." No one who played with him can name a time that Sakic lost his temper. Neither can a coach, a reporter or a team employee. "Best teammate I ever had," former Avs player Mike Keane said. "And I had a lot of great ones. He was just a very good guy to people. But he was never showy about it. He's just a regular guy who never changed." Sakic drives a fancy Mercedes and lives in a mansion in Cherry Hills, but he absolutely hated talking about money. The millions he earned in hockey seemed to embarrass him. Yet, he was far from a pushover at the bargaining table. He made sure he got what he was worth, but he didn't let money affect who he was or how he approached his work. "I've seen a lot of guys, once they get that first huge contract, they became a little different," former Avs teammate Claude Lemieux said. "They start thinking a little bit who they were. I was there when Joe got his first couple of big contracts, and he was the same guy as before. "Money can change you. It changed me a little bit when I first started making some good money. But Joe never changed.""