Shot Of Adrenaline Chiefs’ Favaro Grows From Timid 16-Year-Old To Playmaker Of 20

Watch Randy Favaro launch his 90-plus mile-an-hour slap shot. See him toss the body around, hear the crowd wake up, feel the momentum shift.

He has the occasional night as a non-factor, but Randy Favaro at his best is dynamite with a smoking fuse. To a rival forward whose likeness has been stamped into the Arena glass, the F word is Favaro.

Off the ice, the humor surfaces, like when you bring up the accuracy of his shot.

“Jan Hrdina,” he begins, citing his goal-scoring teammate, “shoots it hard. He can put the puck in a spot 3-by-3. I can shoot at a spot 12-by-12 and still miss.”

When the subject shifts to coaches, he can put a funny spin on the early years here under Bryan Maxwell.

“I was in Maxy’s office so much he might as well have given me a permanent chair,” Favaro said.

“One with my name on it. Favaro’s chair. He had that deep voice. I was 16. Just to hear that voice sometimes made the hair on your arms stand up.”

Favaro’s career - 204 regular-season games, 18 playoff games - bridges pivotal changes in the franchise, from Maxwell to Mike Babcock, from the Coliseum to the Arena, from dark horse to favorite.

He’s ninth on the Chiefs’ all-time list in games played, tied with Pat Falloon, Jon Klemm and Mark Wingerter. His first goal came in his first game with the Chiefs - in Kamloops, skating with Valeri Bure and Paxton Schulte.

Although with a February birthday he’s technically a 19-year-old with another year left of junior eligibility, Favaro finds himself a recently turned 20-year-old with a 20-year-old’s perspective.

“If I knew what I know now and felt what I feel now, I might not have been so intimidated then,” he said.

The universal claim of adulthood.

Favaro is long in the tooth, by junior hockey standards, and no longer among the hunted. When a faint smile tugs at his tanned face - aged a little by the outcropping of a goatee - Favaro does look like a different kid.

Along the way, growing from 16 to 20, he acquired the art of the finished check.

“If I can read where a guy’s going, I’ll end up chopping the ice as much as I can with my skates to kind of make the glass on the boards rattle as loud as it can to get the fans into it,” he said. “There are times when you know you have to do something. The fans in Spokane seem to appreciate the bigger body check than the nicer goal, so sometimes it’s the hit that gets the fans going.

“When the fans get going, they get the players going.”

Understanding that connection is why Babcock refers to Favaro as a momentum builder.

“You ask your guys for a turning point,” the Chiefs coach said. “Sometimes it’s a goal. Sometimes it’s a fight. Lots of times it’s a big hit. Randy has a way to get that for you.”

There are nights when he takes the momentum hat trick - the hit, the fight and the goal.

“Randy provides a dimension that a lot of teams don’t have,” Chiefs general manager Tim Speltz said. “We had it last year with Jeremy Stasiuk. He’s a physical, open-ice body checker who’s capable of turning around a game.”

The turnaround of the season was the Chiefs’ rally from three games down to win the opening-round playoff series with Portland. Favaro had the game-winner in the second overtime of Game 6, in Portland Memorial Coliseum.

In a season when he skated with a number of combinations, Favaro was on the right wing with Greg Leeb on the left and Trent Whitfield centering.

“In the last series, we needed Randy to step up because we lacked the physical presence on the forecheck,” Babcock said. “Randy did an excellent job of getting there. And when he gets there he can hurt you if you’re not prepared for him, he’s coming that hard.”

The game-winner in double OT wasn’t his first big shot. He ended an overtime in Kelowna on Feb. 16 with a shot that meant almost as much.

“It was the first WHL goal my dad had ever seen me score,” Favaro said. “I came over the blue line. I usually have the big windup that I’ve got to cut down on, but I remember the coaches saying, ‘Quick release, quick release.’ I got it off fairly quick and halfway put it on net. It went off the post and in.

“My family had never seen me score a bigger goal than that.”

Favaro grew up in North Delta, British Columbia, 20 minutes out of Vancouver, the only son of Aldo and Doreen Favaro, who raised three girls - Nancy, Lisa and Randy’s twin, Lori.

“It’s supposed to be that the older you get, the easier it is to be away,” he said, “and that’s true in a way. But sometimes I feel the other way - the older you are, the more you miss your family. Being an only son, I’m close to my dad.”

Babcock and Maxwell, he said, “both have similar coaching styles” - with one significant difference.

“With Maxy, you got maybe three days off a year,” Favaro said. “It was always work-work-work, and I think it wore the guys down. Mike knows when to push and when to give you the day off, expecting you to go twice as hard the next day.

“Guys usually go twice as hard the next day.”

“Randy’s good at saying what you want to hear,” Babcock said. “He got to play more (after Babcock took over prior to the ‘93-94 season).”

Favaro doesn’t press the point.

“I’ve had an opportunity under Mike. I’m thankful for that.”

Still, Maxwell wasn’t too far off-target most of the time, Favaro sees from his 20-year-old’s perspective.

“Kevin Popp and I never went to school there for a while,” he said. “I got called into Maxy’s office for that a couple times. There were a couple times when I didn’t weigh in and out on the chart. I got called in for that.

“Sometimes, it was for not working hard enough in practice.”

Favaro had to grow into his role.

Momentum Man.

It’s a role he feels in the heavy shoulders he shrugs when he’s asked about it.

“I don’t mind,” he said, the brief smile coming back, “as long as I’m not the one being bounced around.”

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MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CHIEFS ON TV KXLY-Extra will televise at least the first two home games of the Chiefs’ next series.