Canadiens tonight. And Joe Thornton can't wait to get to work. Fortunately, it's not going to take him very long to walk from his home to the FleetCenter for the Bruins game against Montreal. Jumbo Joe lives less than two blocks from his workplace, which gives him the best commute of any pro athlete since Robbie Alomar lived at the SkyDome Hotel while he was playing for the Blue Jays.

On the 37th floor of a high-rise tower overlooking Boston's Charles River, Joe has the bachelor pad of your typical 23-year-old millionaire sports star.

Giant TV ... bobblehead doll of self on top of TV ... huge leather couches arranged in L-shape in front of TV ... PlayStation ... Xbox ... autographed jerseys from Nolan Ryan, Jeff Bagwell and Bruins demigods Bobby Orr and Johnny Bucyk ... Ping-Pong table in living room ... fridge filled with Cool Whip, OJ, frozen peas and cases of Egg Beaters (beer discreetly hidden in cabinets) ... bedroom ... bathroom.

	Ray couldn't do it. Neither could Cam, but can Joe lead the B's to the Cup?

There's one book in the place, and it's a bio of another athletic Joe named DiMaggio. Jumbo Joe Thornton is not a big reader. "Not too much spare time out there, eh?" he says with a laugh. "Just play hockey and go to sleep."

He sleeps, though, knowing that the Bruins have the best record in the Eastern Conference and that he's largely responsible. Folks around Boston are touting Captain Joe as MVP timber. Playing on a line with sniper Glen Murray and the silky combo of Sergei Samsonov and Mike Knuble, Thornton is on a 100-plus point pace, trailing only Mario Lemieux in scoring.

Like Mario, Thornton is big (6'4", 225 pounds), strong and powerful. He can control the puck behind the net, holding off defensemen with one arm while he looks to pass. There's great leverage in his glutes. (Other than J.Lo, no one's made better use of a butt recently.) When Thornton's not strong-arming D-men behind the posts, he's looking to play give-and-go with Samsonov on the power play. With Joe, it's always pass first -- even when Boston fans yell, "Shooooooot!"

"I would like him to shoot just a touch more," admits B's coach Robbie Ftorek. (How often do you hear that?) "He's a great shooter, even though he doesn't realize it yet. I'd like him to become a little more selfish, but it's not in his character, and that's fine. He loves to see his teammates excel, which is not a bad thing."

It was no small story around Beantown when Thornton signed a contract extension in December. The Bruins have an owner who makes Carl Pohlad look like Mark Cuban. Jeremy "Montgomery Burns" Jacobs loses a lot of players because he won't overpay, but he didn't mind locking up Thornton through the end of the current collective bargaining agreement (2004). The big center will make $5.5M next season, which buys a lot of Egg Beaters.

No Bruin is ever likely to replace Orr in the puck pantheon, but Jumbo Joe has emerged as the franchise's signature player for the next decade or so. The star who grabs hold of Boston's sports psyche -- be it Cooz or Yaz, Larry or Pedro -- becomes a part of the town's DNA. And considerable collateral juice comes to the man who is the Hub's most popular Bruin. Joe does silly furniture commercials on TV. His bobblehead is as popular as Pedro's or Nomar's, and No. 19 Thornton jerseys pepper the FleetCenter during games.

"I can't complain, that's for sure," he says.

That's Joe, eh? No one's ever seen him in a bad mood. And no one's ever seen him playing better hockey. He's single, rich, handsome, famous and healthy. He plays a game for a living and lives for the game. What's his day like? "I get up around 9 and make myself some eggs. Practice is at 10:30, so I walk over for that, then have some lunch (Thornton can inhale lunch in the time it takes you to read this paragraph), walk back and shut her down for a nap. I get up around 4 and walk back over at 4:30."

As Bruins TV broadcaster Dale Arnold says, "Life is always good on Planet Joe."

***

So now it's off to work for tonight's game against the Canadiens.

Wearing an expensive suit that hangs loosely from his athletic bones, Thornton rides the elevator down 37 floors (he's yet to bump into Red Sox manager Grady Little, who lives in the complex) and walks out onto Staniford Street, peeling left toward Causeway Street. There's only one crosswalk on Joe's route, and most days he never breaks stride.

If he's coming off a bad game, he might switch to the other side of the street. There are no stalkers along the way. Joe is a hockey star in a hockey town, but Bruins legions (the NHL's answer to Steelers fans) would consider it rude and disrespectful to loiter near his residence waiting for autographs. No, Thornton just walks the walk of a guy going to work, enjoying the occasional "good luck tonight, Joe" from a meaty-faced fan in a car or a teenager in a windbreaker.

Above Causeway, steel wheels grind as the MBTA's Green Line cars make their way from North Station to Lechmere. While Joe walks, area saloons are gearing up for a big night. The B's are on top again, and every waitress and bartender knows that Bruins fans tip better than Celtics fans: Hub hockey krishnas have less, but spend more.

Joe passes the Tip O'Neill Federal Building, which is on Causeway across from several grimy fast-food joints and a bar called The Penalty Box. Joe hasn't spent much time in there, but he knows the patrons in Sullivan's Tap are lunchpail- carrying hockey fans. He also likes the Sports Grill and Four's on Canal Street, the type of places Ray Bourque would pop into.

Door-to-door in less time than it takes to sit out a major: "If I hit the one traffic light just right, it takes about five minutes to get to the rink."

The rink. The phrase marks this Boston hero as a true Canadian boy. When Larry Bird talked about going to work, it was always "the gym," even if he was going to play the Pistons at the Pontiac Silverdome. With Thornton, "the rink" is the 17,565-seat FleetCenter, and on Planet Joe, that's a sheet of ice no different than an outdoor pond in St. Thomas, Ontario.

Boston has been patient with the progress of its hockey prodigy. Bird, Orr and Ted Williams were superstars from the first time they played in the Hub. Tom Brady won a Super Bowl the first time he was allowed to start. It's been different for Thornton.

Jumbo Joe was the best amateur in the world when he was 17. The Bruins made him the top pick in the 1997 draft and immediately put him on the ice. But the No. 1 Pick in the Whole Damned World scored three goals with four assists in 55 games in his rookie season. Veteran coach Pat Burns made it clear that nothing should be expected from the teen angel, and that's exactly what Joe produced, especially since he was teamed with the brawlers and muckers of the fourth line. The baby-step approach made Thornton's dad, Wayne, do a slow burn. Bruins patriarch Harry Sinden also seethed while he wondered why the kid wasn't doing more.

"My dad wanted me to play more at first," says Joe. "Looking back now, I'm like, 'What was I doing?' But it runs its course. I didn't like sitting out, but I think it worked out well. Looking back at the numbers, it's a little strange, but I was so young. I was still a kid, and I hadn't grown into my body. I just had to be patient."

Says Burns, now the Devils coach, "I didn't want to go too fast with him. I had seen too many first-rounders get told, 'Here's the sweater, there's the ice, now haul the team around.' Joe wasn't ready to face the challenge. He got punched in the honker a few times. I was tough on him, but I think he understood."

Thornton's second season was hardly a breakout year. He scored 41 points in 81 games while the B's made it into the second round of the playoffs before losing to Buffalo. Things really didn't start happening until Mike Keenan came onboard, after Burns was fired early in Thornton's fourth season. By then, Thornton was a point-per-game player and one of the team's alternate captains. But Mad Mike wanted much more.

"He has no excuses," Keenan said in January 2001, before removing Joe from his rotation of alternate captains. "It's time for him to decide if he wants to be the hockey player he is capable of being, or whether he just wants to participate -- and be one of those guys who, years from now, we say, 'Well, he had the potential, but ... '"

Keenan, now coaching the Panthers, says, "I didn't think it was going to be that difficult to ask him to raise the bar to be more of a complete player, more disciplined, better prepared. Joe was at a point where he had to make a conscious decision to be responsible for his own play and bring his best game to the team each night. He was just an individual who was ready to make a change in his life."

"He shook me, yeah," admits Thornton. "Over time, he was so intense, he definitely brings that out in his players. Mike would tell you what he was thinking. If you had a bad game, he'd tell you, 'You were terrible tonight!' Flat out. I like that. If I'm playing bad, I want to know. I caught on: Be more intense, go out there and take the puck."

When Robbie Ftorek replaced Keenan after the 2001 season, he brought another essential element to Thornton's development: He made the game fun again. In a region that features some of the best high school hockey in the U.S., Ftorek was hands down the greatest scholastic player in Massachusetts history. As a teenager in the Boston suburb of Needham, he filled the old Garden on a regular basis, scoring goals and winning championships. Local hockey fans over 40 still talk about the teenage Ftorek the way Indiana folks speak of a certain high schooler from French Lick. Relying more on finesse than size, Ftorek was an average professional, playing most of his best games in the WHA. But he was a passionate student of the sport, ever a coach in the making.

"Robbie's a teacher and is always showing us little tidbits here and there," says Thornton. "He says some things to you, and you think, where do these guys get this stuff? Like, 'Why don't you just wave your stick in front of the goalie's eyes?' Who thinks of that? It's off the wall, but it totally works. He plays with us every day. He says he still has a better slap shot and better dekes than us. He even hits. I'm careful not to hit him back too much, maybe in the shins a little."

Thornton made it to the All-Star Game last year, but his breakout season was derailed by a three-game suspension after the Olympic break, which was followed by a nasty shoulder injury sustained when he hit a rut while skating during practice in Atlanta. He missed 16 games in March and April and started the playoffs without having scored a goal since Feb. 4. Despite owning the best record in the Eastern Conference, the Bruins were rudely bounced in the first round by Montreal -- and Boston fans thought Joe was too friendly with the hated Canadiens in the traditional handshake line after the final game.

"I don't know what that was all about," says Joe. "The only guy I was talking to was Jose Theodore. We've been friends for a long time. He played great, and I had to tell him, 'You're the difference in the series.' That's just how I felt." Boston GM Mike O'Connell understood: "I think Joe's outlook is refreshing. It's why he is what he is. If he tried to become somebody else, it might not work as well for him."

The coach understood as well, and he showed it. Thornton underwent shoulder surgery in the off-season. During training camp, Ftorek took Joe for a walk and told him he was the new captain of the Bruins. Like Johnny Bucyk. Like Ray Bourque. And now he's Boston's best player since Bourque. Red Fisher, the veteran scribe of the Montreal Gazette, says that Thornton is the best player in the league and should hold that distinction for many years to come.

But Jumbo Joe, only 23 years old, knows enough to keep his head up. "I'm just starting," he says. "I got a lot more to go and a lot more to prove."

***

Game over. Not a good night for the B's. Thornton scores his 15th, but the Bruins lose to the Canadiens, 4-2. Joe dresses quickly, talks to the press briefly, pulls a baseball cap over his wet hair and walks across the player parking lot toward Causeway Street. A few shivering fans are gathered at the gate. Joe signs, smiles, pulls his overcoat around himself and starts the walk home.

Joe walks home through the cold and dark. The tavern lights twinkle, but do not tempt. This is Boston, and the Bruins just lost to the Canadiens. Some nights, even when you're Joe Thornton, you don't want to go where everybody knows your name.

This article appears in the January 6 issue of ESPN The Magazine.