Since Wayne Gretzky's retirement after last season, the NHL has been searching for a charismatic and brilliant player to carry the league like The Great One did for 20 seasons. While many of the sport's top stars eased through the annual midseason no-hitter, Florida's Pavel Bure eagerly skated into the spotlight by scoring three goals and an assist.

	Pavel Bure scored the 11th hat trick in All-Star Game history on Sunday.

Bure dazzled the sold-out crowd, leading the World team to a 9-4 victory over the North American stars and winning the Most Valuable Player award.

"Obviously it is a great honor for me to be MVP of the All-Star Game," Bure said afterward. "It was just a special night for me. I was playing with my brother. He set up two goals for me. He was on my line and he helped me to get the MVP, so it is just a special night."

The Panthers superstar took home more than a 2000 Dodge Dakota Quad Cab and a fancy crystal All-Star MVP trophy. Bure secured his reputation as the most electrifying player in the world and showed the NHL that it should use all of its marketing and promotional power to publicize his amazing talents.

Energized by playing on the same line with his brother Valeri of the Calgary Flames, Bure was obviously the most motivated and impressive player on the ice. In a shinny-like pond-hockey game with no hitting and few hard shots, the Russian Rocket was zipping up and down the wing, hovering around the net for loose pucks and blasting slap shots.

All three goals were Bure beauties, but the first showed his unmatched hunger for goals. With the North American team turning up pressure in the World zone, Bure stripped the puck from Calgary defenseman Phil Housley just inside the blue line and started a rush.

After carrying the puck past center, Bure passed the puck up to Valeri. After Valeri brought the puck deeper into the North American zone, he dropped a pass back to a criss-crossing Pavel in the high slot. Pavel wound up and cranked a wicked slap shot behind goaltender Martin Brodeur to give the World a 4-2 lead 33 seconds into the second period.

Valeri, who has slightly emerged from his brother's shadow with a career-best 28 goals and 52 points this season, set up big brother 8:05 later with a nice pass across the slot, showing what potential this combination could have outside of the Olympics, national tournaments and the All-Star Game.

	THREE STARS
	1. Pavel Bure, World: Bure was by far the most motivated player on the ice, notching three goals and an assist to lead his team to a 9-4 win over the North Americans.
	2. Dimitri Yushkevich, World: The Maple Leafs defenseman delighted the hometown folks with a goal, beating teammate Curtis Joseph, and an assist.
	3. Jeremy Roenick, North America: Roenick had one goal and at least three good scoring chances. More noteworthy, however, was the fact he laid on the only hit of the game.

"Oh, yeah, definitely," Pavel said, bringing out wide smiles from he and his brother.

Bure was as enthusiastic in this game as any other was, showing his apparent love of the spotlight and an even stronger lust for goals. In other words, the same Pavel as always.

"I think he was normal," said Panthers teammate and World linemate Viktor Kozlov. "I did not see something special today, so he was OK."

The 11th hat trick in All-Star history and second by a European since Teemu Selanne's in 1998 might not be anything special to Kozlov, who assisted on Pavel's second and third goals, because he witnesses the magic every day. The NHL should be so lucky to have that privilege more often.

On the arena's Jumbotron just before the game started, in an NHL promotional film shot Friday on a frozen pond near Toronto, Wayne Gretzky stood with fellow greats Gordie Howe and Mario Lemieux and told four of today's biggest stars, "It's your turn now."

Apparently Bure was listening more than the three other stars on the pond, Eric Lindros, Paul Kariya and Jaromir Jagr. Gretzky also performed the ceremonial puck drop between Kariya and Jagr in another symbolic gesture. But it was Bure who seized the opportunity to show he is hockey's flashiest and most exciting player.

Pavel said he and his brother played many hockey games as children on ponds similar to the one in the commercial. "Sometimes instead of going to school, we would go play hockey," he said.

Bure said he was honored to be one of the four players representing the changing generation of hockey.

"It meant a lot to me to be around those guys, and I felt I was part of hockey history when you see those legends like Wayne, Mario and Gordie," Bure said. "I don't think it was just a commercial. It was much bigger than that."

Looking for a crowd-pleasing, sure-thing standing ovation, the NHL brought back Gretzky to commemorate the league-wide retiring of his No. 99. So anxious about its future, both financial and cultural, the NHL just can't let the greatest scorer in history go away quietly.

If Pavel Bure continues his scoring pace and lifts people out of the seats, maybe he'll let Gretzky start enjoying his retirement.

"I don't think anybody did more things for hockey than Wayne," Bure said. "He brought hockey to the south of the United States, to everywhere and he is still great. And so I think it is going to be really hard to compare our generation to guys like Wayne Gretzky."

In the second intermission, Gretzky said the free-wheeling, fun style of pond hockey is what kids today are missing. Exactly the way Bure enjoys to play.

"We need to get back to just the basics of having fun," Gretzky said. "I think that would go a long way in getting back a lot of the imagination back into our game."

No player appears to have more fun and imagination lately than Pavel Bure does when scoring goals. In 55 games since Florida acquired him in a trade with Vancouver last year, Bure has 50 goals and 77 points.

Ironically, it was Bure who might have allowed the league to have squeezed out another year from the Great One. Gretzky has said he would have played one more season if the New York Rangers had obtained Bure last season. Rangers general manager Neil Smith rejected the Vancouver Canucks' demands for young players and the Florida Panthers have been the happy beneficiaries in a blockbuster midseason trade last year.