Zach Parise, Joe Pavelski head Class of 2025 for the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame

Zach Parise and Joe Pavelski entering the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame together is fitting, considering they had similar NHL careers, are the same age and played the same gritty type of game.

“If I’m on the bench watching him, I’m kind of watching myself out there,” Pavelski said of Parise. “We’re trying to get to the same areas of the ice, we did our best work around the net, in the corners and battles ... he could always make something out of nothing, which is kind of how I looked at myself.”

Said Parise: “You respected [Pavelski’s] two-way game, but you felt like he was always going to score a big goal. You played against him on a shift, and he was always in the way ... a good sign of a two-way player.”

The two standout forwards, who retired from the NHL in 2024, will be joined by Scott Gomez, Tara Mounsey and photographer Bruce Bennett as the Class of 2025 for the U.S. Hall, located in Eveleth. The induction ceremonies are Dec. 10 in St. Paul.

Parise was born in Minneapolis, the son of NHL player J.P. Parise, and played for his father’s program at Shattuck-St. Mary’s in Faribault.

“Ironically, I was just playing golf with [U.S. Hockey Hall of Famers Mike] Modano and Jamie Langenbrunner this morning,” Parise said Wednesday. “And growing up here in Minnesota we all loved the [North] Stars. I was always a big Mike Modano guy, big Neal Broten guy. These are the guys I looked up to when I was playing youth hockey.

“To be side-by-side with those guys, it’s special.”

He was captain of the Devils when they made the Cup Finals in 2012, then signed with the Wild before finishing his career with the Islanders and Avalanche. In 1,254 regular season games he had 434 goals and 455 assists, and added 39 goals in 122 playoff games.

He and his family are settled back in Minnesota.

“Even in New Jersey, I always knew at some point I was going to retire here and stay here and raise a family here,” Parise said. “From the childhood that I had here growing up, through the youth programs ... now everything is going full circle. I’m coaching my kids now, [they’re] playing peewees and 12U [twins Jaxson and Emmy] and I got another one in mites [Theo], so I’m just reliving what my parents did 40 years ago.

“It’s special with my dad having played for the North Stars. Everything just seems to come back to this, and having the Hall of Fame here in Minnesota, everything kind of ends up here one way or another. It’s always been a really great place for us.”

Parise won silver at the 2010 Olympics and was captain of the 2014 Olympic team; he played on the U.S. junior national team in 2004 when it won America’s first gold medal.

“It’s a little bit of a feather in the cap for us that we were able to be the first United States team to win it. You look at where it’s come to now. Every year they’re a favorite or they’re winning it.”

Pavelski played 18 NHL seasons with the Sharks and Stars. He won an NCAA title with the Wisconsin Badgers in 2006, and had 476 goals and 1,068 points in 1,332 regular season games. His 74 playoff goals are most by an American-born player. He was a teammate of Parise on Team USA at the 2010 and 2014 Olympics and is the fifth-leading scorer in NHL history among American-born players behind Modano, Patrick Kane, Phil Housley and Jeremy Roenick.

He’s possibly the best golfer in the Hall, having won the American Century Championship celebrity tournament this year, and definitely the all-time scoring leader among players born in Wisconsin.

“My older brother Jerry built a rink in my backyard,” Pavelski said of growing up in Plover, just outside Stevens Point. “Just for every kid growing up in Wisconsin, any time you have a chance to grow up with a rink in your back yard, it’s pretty special.

“It was a great childhood, thinking about it. The parents still talk about those hotel nights, and [us] playing knee hockey.”

Mounsey, from Concord, N.H., helped Team USA to gold at the 1998 Olympics and silver in 2002. She played college hockey at Brown, and is already a member of the U.S. Hall with the 1998 women’s Olympic team.

“I had to play on boys’ teams growing up, and was pushed extra by my parents and the players around me,” said Mounsey, a nurse practitioner in Boston. “It’s amazing to see the way [women’s hockey] has grown.

“And,” she joked, “it took until I won a gold medal until my dad said ‘Good game.’”