Burnaby Joe Sakic of the Colorado Avalanche will be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame Monday night, many years after his high school guidance counsellor suggested a pro hockey career was not a realistic goal for a teenager. Photograph by: Michael Martin , NHLI via Getty Images Files

Craig Bassett acknowledges it was not his finest hour as a high school guidance counsellor.

It was back in the mid-1980s, Bassett was working at Burnaby North Secondary and he had given a group of students a career-ambition assignment. Basically, he was asking them what they wanted to do when they grew up.

One of the students knew exactly what he was going to do. He was going to play in the National Hockey League.

Well, Bassett thought this kid was being a tad unrealistic about his career goals and told him so. He suggested the young man come back to him with an alternative plan.

Perhaps you have heard of him. His name is Joe Sakic, who Monday night is being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

“It is kind of a funny story and I have had a few laughs over the years telling that joke on myself,” says Bassett, now retired and living in Comox. “I obviously wasn’t a hockey scout.”

Sakic remembers that encounter with Mr. Bassett and he too had a chuckle when reminded of it in a phone interview.

Sakic suggested it wasn’t so much that he was supremely confident as a 15-year-old that he was going to make it to the NHL.

“That definitely was my goal, but maybe for school work I thought it was a lot easier to say that than to actually come up with an alternative,” he said. “It was a lot easier just to go in and say what you wanted to do. And the good thing is it came true.”

Bassett remembers Sakic being quite adamant that he was indeed going to make it to the NHL.

“I just recall him being pretty firm on it, he really believed in himself and my recollection was I said I want you to come back with some other alternative and talk to me about it again. Let’s talk about alternatives. What if you don’t make it to the NHL?

“He was pretty adamant. I don’t think he ever did come up with any alternatives. It was, ‘no, I’m going to be in the NHL’ and I guess we let it go at that.”

Sakic, of course, did more than just make it to the NHL. He scored 625 goals and another 84 in the playoffs — many of them with one of the best wrist shots the NHL has ever seen – and won two Stanley Cups with the Colorado Avalanche in 1996 and 2001, as well as Olympic gold in 2002.

He played in 13 NHL All-Star Games and won the Hart Trophy, the Conn Smythe Trophy, the Lady Byng Trophy and the Lester B. Pearson Award. He retired in 2009, after 1,378 regular-season games and 172 playoff contests.

Sakic didn’t have to wait long for the Hall of Fame to come calling and is part of an impressive class that includes Mats Sundin, Adam Oates and Pavel Bure.

In an interview from his Denver-area home a couple of days before he headed to Toronto for the Hall of Fame festivities, Sakic said he wasn’t sure exactly what to expect in terms of emotions.