They have become things of legend.

Whispered about in NHL dressing rooms. Admired by trainers and teammates and strength coaches the hockey world over. Even the subject of lengthy, hilarious analysis on The Players’ Tribune during last year’s playoffs.

“They” are Vladimir Tarasenko’s muscles. His quads. Forearms. Chest.

Even the very biggest and strongest of his St. Louis Blues teammates are in awe of what their superstar brings to the table, both in the gym and on the ice.

They’ve never played with anyone quite like him.

“He’s just so gifted in that way and just so strong,” said Ryan Reaves, the Blues hulking, tattooed enforcer. “He competes with me [in the gym]. But I think I push him to be as strong as he can be.”

“He’s got big guys coming after him, and he can force them off almost with one hand,” 6-foot-6, 226-pound defenceman Colton Parayko said. “The strength he has with one arm and one hand on the stick is so impressive. It’s really tough to defend. Especially for myself, just in practice – and I don’t even think he’s going 100 per cent in practice obviously – he’s pretty impressive.”

“His centre of gravity and the way he can stand over a puck is second to none,” added another blueliner, Robert Bortuzzo, who’s 6-foot-4 and 221 pounds. “It’s even different than a Crosby or some of these low skating guys. You’ll very rarely see him get caught with a hit. When he does, it’s almost like the defender bounces off him. He just has this lower body mass that allows him to be solid wherever he is. I’m sure a lot of his shot is from the power he develops from his lower half.”

The Maple Leafs saw that shot in action on Thursday night. Tarasenko’s teammates had a set play to hand him the puck in the neutral zone at the start of overtime, and he did the rest, breezing through a couple Toronto defenders and rifling the winner past Frederik Andersen.

Tarasenko’s goal scoring gets talked about a lot – with good reason. He is second to only Alex Ovechkin in goals the last three years (with 103 in 212 games). Tarasenko leads the entire NHL in even strength goals over that time frame, with 77.

But players who have played with and against him tend to talk more about his superlative strength and physique than his skills, as impressive as they are. Those traits are what make him unique, given so few players are built that way.

So when former Blues executive Jarmo Kekalainen nicknamed him “Tank” in his draft year, it stuck for years.

Tarasenko with a normal human.

Among players under 6-foot-1, only Vancouver’s Bo Horvat (223 pounds) is listed as heavier than Tarasenko (219). The game’s only other extremely large “short” men are all power forward types: Kyle Okposo, Cal Clutterbuck and Dustin Brown.

None possess the kind of game-breaking speed and skill that Tarasenko has. According to Leafs defenceman Nikita Zaitsev, that’s a credit to Andrei Tarasenko, Vladimir’s father.

The elder Tarasenko was the head coach of Novosibirsk Sibir when his son and Zaitsev played together in the KHL between 2009 and 2011.

“His Dad coached him every day,” Zaitsev explained. “Always, after the practice, they were doing something [extra to build strength]. He’s a hardworking guy… He’s a huge guy. Like, I don’t know, if nature give it to you, [you’re lucky]. He was born like that. He’s big, and he’s comfortable with it. So he’s fast.”

“He’s massive,” added Roman Polak, another Leafs defenceman who has played with Tarasenko. “And he can still skate. That’s biggest part: You can move that body and still fly. And he’s got a great shot. He’s got a great combo.”

Those who know Tarasenko well marvel at how meticulous he is. He uses a CCM Ribcor Reckoner stick with a low kick point and 85 flex, but because of his upper-body strength, he snaps them faster than any other player in the NHL, often switching again and again during games.

What allows him to be so fast at such an unusual size, meanwhile, is his extensive training, which started with grueling Soviet-style tests of strength when he was only a boy and his father was still a Russian league star. (Andrei Tarasenko won that league’s MVP award in 1998, when his son was six years old and living with his grandfather, Vladimir.)

Think Tarasenko is getting tire-d?

“They do very, very brute strength type of conditioning that’s very, very hard on the body,” explained strength coach Brock Wilson, who trains Tarasenko in the off-season in St. Louis. “When he first came over here, he was already a big, big kid. It’s not like I had done anything. It was more about working on his imbalances trying to strengthen him even more. But his chest and his legs and his forearms – it’s just there. It’s like he’s trained like a football player, but he’s explosive on the ice. The weight of his legs doesn’t slow him down.”

That leg weight was what former NHLers Ryan Whitney and Mike Rupp picked up on when they wrote about Tarasenko last spring.

“I knew they called him Tank, but I’ve never seen a hockey player with that kind of build,” Rupp said. “His lower body, I can’t even explain it.”

“Tank makes Sid’s legs look like my legs,” Whitney said. “It’s crazy.”

“Everybody knows about his release and his skating, but he’s also built to go right through you,” Rupp concluded. “To have a superstar built like that? Holy crap.”

Wilson laughs when asked about the article. Of course he heard about it. Everyone in St. Louis did.

“The size of his legs are probably about four of mine,” he said. “It’s amazing what he has in those things.”

Credit: Billy Hurst-USA TODAY Sports

But what makes Tarasenko truly special, Wilson explained, is his work ethic and drive. Because he is a man of few words in front of the cameras and with the media, sometimes Tarasenko can be misunderstood.

But behind that is an unusual humility.

“I’ve worked with a lot of different guys, and his work ethic is second to none,” Wilson said. “He’s a star, but he has no attitude. He will do exactly what you tell him to do. Even if he can’t do it, he’s going to try to do it. There’s no quit there.

“The scary thing is, in Russia, they’re taught to not show any weakness. You have guys over here in the States that make noises and stuff when they’re tired. He just doesn’t show anything. It’s hard as a coach sometimes to gauge where he’s at. He just pushes through everything. He just wants to get better every day.”

What Wilson has also learned about is Tarasenko the person. Wilson’s father was Rik Wilson, the former Blues defenceman who became an institution in St. Louis as a trainer for hockey players in the area. When he died unexpectedly of a brain aneurysm a year ago, Wilson said Tarasenko was one of the first people in the hockey world who reached out and consoled him.

Wilson said he wants more fans to know that side of his friend. He wants to people to hear that Tarasenko is more than the muscles and all the goals.

And that the stereotypes about Russian players, in this case, couldn’t be more wrong.

“He’s a very, very down-to-earth guy,” Wilson said. “He’s just a good person. Fans don’t really get to see that side of him. They see the superstar, Vladimir Tarasenko. It’s really neat to just see it. He is all about his team. If you listen to his interviews, he’s always talking about his teammates. It’s not fake. It’s not him pretending. That’s the way he is. He wants the team to succeed. And he doesn’t want the spotlight. It’s a testament to the way that his Dad raised him. It’s just awesome to have as a friend.”