NEW YORK — Artemi Panarin can pick some of it up now. Maybe not so much Joel Quenneville barking out orders from behind the bench, or the loud din of overlapping voices in the dressing room during an intermission; that’s still all white noise to him at this point. But in the quieter moments, when a few of his teammates are idly chatting in the room or over dinner, Panarin sometimes can catch the gist of a conversation.
Not that he can do much about it.
“I have a bunch of thoughts and I just can’t explain myself,” Panarin said through teammate and interpreter Viktor Tikhonov. “It’s tough. It’s tough because I want to add a little bit of my own to the conversation, and I’m not quite there yet.”
Seems like he’d have plenty to add. The 23-year-old mop-haired Russian’s ebullient personality and sense of humor already have broken the language barrier, even if his words haven’t. When asked the English phrase he likes best so far, Panarin smiled and said, “What the [bleep].” He celebrated his first goal on Wednesday night by jubilantly leaping into the glass, Alex Ovechkin-style. And as a couple of reporters sidled up to Tikhonov (who grew up in California and speaks perfect, unaccented English) on Friday to ask him about playing his first NHL game in more than six years, Panarin poked his head in and offered to help.
“Translate?” he said, earnestly pointing at himself.
Funny kid, this Panarin.
He’s taking English lessons via Skype, but it’s going to be a long time before he can freely converse with anyone other than Tikhonov or Artem Anisimov, who centers the line with Panarin and Patrick Kane. You’d think there would be some difficulties in playing alongside someone who doesn’t speak your language, but the Hawks haven’t encountered many yet.
Kane is particularly chatty on the bench between shifts — he’d talk frequently with Brad Richards and Kris Versteeg last season, and whenever Kane and Jonathan Toews are on the same line, the two longtime teammates talk at length about what’s working and what’s not, cracking jokes all the way. With Panarin, obviously, it’s different. The trio chat, but it’s quick and to the point, with the bilingual Anisimov often moderating the discussion. Anisimov also interprets Quenneville’s instructions during the game.
“I don’t think it’s an issue at all, to be honest with you,” Kane said. “If we need to communicate at all, usually I’ll try to tell him something, and if he doesn’t understand, then I’ll just tell Anisimov and he’ll translate the message to him. Both of them are very engaged in the conversation, engaged in trying to communicate and trying to get better at what we do.”
They don’t have a shorthand yet — no set of hoots or hollers when on the ice — but if their brief stint as a line so far has shown anything, it’s that they don’t really need one. They’ve created instant offense for the Hawks, and Quenneville called it the best line on Wednesday night. They might not speak the same language, but they’re on the same page.
“We’re just trying to understand each other in our own hockey language,” said Panarin, who had 26 goals and 36 assists in just 54 games last year in the KHL.
It’s a lot to handle for anyone, let alone a 23-year-old kid. Think of all that’s on his plate right now: He’s adapting to life in the NHL. To life in the United States. To a new team. To a faster game. To a more physical game. To a more defensive-minded coach. To a smaller ice surface. And above all else, to a new language, one that will take him months, if not years, to master.
But if any of it is fazing Panarin, if any of it is making him uneasy or overwhelmed, it’s certainly not showing. The big grin plastered on his face since he first got to Chicago speaks volumes in any language.
And besides, “Kane already told me the most important thing,” Panarin said. “And that’s to find No. 88 on the ice and give him a pass.”
Email: mlazerus@suntimes.com
Twitter: @marklazerus
