Taking a look at the troubled life of former Olympic hockey hero Mark Pavelich

Two seasons later, Pavelich set a Rangers rookie record with 76 points, a mark that still stands. One night at Madison Square Garden (Feb. 23, 1983), he knocked home five goals against the Whalers, a first for an American-born NHLer, and something no other American ever has matched.

“He scored … the hats rained down,” then-Rangers captain Dave Maloney recalled this past week. “Had to be 5,000 hats on the ice when he scored the third one. And each time he just went back to the bench, or lined up at center ice, and it was like, ‘Yeah, OK, that’s what I’m supposed to do.’ We’re in such a demonstrative age now, and have been for some time … I watched the clip the other day, and it was kind of refreshing, actually.”

“Pav,” as he was known, came across as simple, shy around the spotlight, arriving in the big time very much the unpretentious Iron Range kid from Eveleth, Minn., who was happiest playing hockey, hunting, and fishing, in no particular order.

“I’m pretty sure he had two flannel shirts, a pair of corduroys, and a tie — and the tie only because we had to wear one when the team traveled,” recalled Maloney. “And that was it. He drove a Jeep, and it always had his fishing stuff in it. That’s all he wanted.

“Pav was Pav. Good guy, and the guys liked him. Really good player. And fearless … man, I mean, fearless.”

The rest of Pavelich’s story, leading up to when he was found dead at a Minnesota rehabilitation facility, is festooned with tragedy, complexities, and hurt.

In his teens, prior to entering the University of Minnesota Duluth, Pavelich shot and killed a close pal in a hunting accident.

Decades later, in September 2012, Pavelich’s wife was killed when she fell from the second floor of their cabin home in remote Lutsen, Minn., halfway between Duluth and Thunder Bay, Ontario. News accounts of the day noted wife Kara (nee Burmachuk) tumbled off a balcony that was under construction.

“Mark actually died years ago,” his sister, Jean Gevik, posted on Facebook in the hours after he died, “when he lost his beloved Kara.”

Less than two years after losing his wife, saying he wanted to raise money for his adult daughter (from a short-lived first marriage in the ’80s), Pavelich auctioned off his Olympic gold medal for $262,900.

Then late in 2019, reportedly after a day of fishing with Lutsen neighbor Jim Miller, he beat him with a metal pole, allegedly under the belief that Miller had spiked his beer. Miller sustained a number of injuries, including broken ribs, fractured vertebrae, and bruised kidney.

Deemed delusional, paranoid, and a physical threat, and therefore mentally unfit for trial, Pavelich was ordered to a secured psychiatric facility in Minnesota. Roughly a year later, he was transferred to the Eagle’s Healing Nest, a rehab facility in Sauk Centre, Minn., and was scheduled for a court hearing, potentially a step toward a trial date, that was to take place less than a week after a staffer staffer discovered his body.

As the weekend approached, the county medical examiner’s office had not released a cause or manner of death.

Pavelich’s sister, who often has stated she believes his mental illness was the result of head injuries sustained when playing hockey, posted on Facebook last weekend that he was “facing a possible prison sentence and financial ruin.” She added the she believes an autopsy will show his brain “will be riddled with disease.”

Another Gevik posting on Wednesday noted that her brother a few weeks ago mailed her a “generous donation,” presumably earmarked for the rehab center, and requested that she wait before cashing it.

“I didn’t think much about it,” she wrote, adding that she often helped her brother with financial issues. “I just stuck it away. Now it all makes sense.”

It’s impossible to make sense of Pavelich’s unraveling and demise. The world best knew him as a gifted, creative, humble hockey player, key figure in the astounding win at Lake Placid, and briefly a shining star with the Rangers.

Only 5 feet 8 inches, Pavelich was arguably at his best on Broadway when centering the Blueshirts’ Smurf Line, flanked by the downsized Rob McClanahan (ex- of Team USA) and the slick, statesman-like Anders Hedberg.

“The Smurfs were great,” recalled Maloney, these days a commentator on the Rangers’ radio broadcasts. “They drove the Flyers nuts, and Pav just loved it.”

“Yep,” added Frank Brown, ex-Ranger beat guy for the Daily News, “he tormented the Flyers.”

In my days on the New York Times sports staff, I often covered the Rangers during Pavelich’s run. He was not aloof, or stubborn, or recalcitrant, but he had little interest in media. Brown fared better with Pavelich, in part, he believes, because they were both in Lake Placid that February long ago.

Pavelich abruptly quit the Rangers, ultimately forcing a trade to the North Stars, the season after I returned to Boston in the fall of 1985. Brown remained on the beat and recalled this past week going to Pavelich’s home for an interview after he made it clear he had no interest in playing again for then-coach Ted Sator.

“When I went to his house,” said Brown, “he and his wife were hiding under the table, because they were convinced that Sator was going to be looking in the windows, trying to see if they were home. You know … that’s juvenile, it’s what kids would do. It’s not like, ‘Oh, that’s deranged.’ It’s just some people are not capable of strategic deployment of … [masking feelings]. It’s very complicated with Pav.”

Sometimes, noted Brown, there’s no simple equation to tragedy and life lost, no sleuthing out reason or explanation from the history, the good, the bad, and the hurt.

“We disgrace ourselves if we draw simplistic analogies,” said Brown, now a retired NHL communications executive. “To me, there is nothing simple about this.”

Mark Pavelich, son of the Iron Range, Olympic dreamer, Broadway hockey star, and ever-complicated man, was 63 years old.

Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com.