The Pasic’s pizza shop is the first of many critical elements essential to Nikola’s journey to the NHL draft. While the family had no connection to hockey, the restaurant was located next to the local rink, where Nikola became interested in hockey first through proximity, then practice, then on-ice success.

Nikola’s mother, Marijana, remembers when his obsession with hockey began.

“As a kid, Nikola tried different sports but nothing was fun enough. I think he was about seven years old when he said he wanted to play hockey, and we had to say no.” Marijana told Devils in the Details.

Nikola would watch kids playing hockey while he was waiting for his parents to close the restaurant and go home.

“His father and I are from Serbia and hockey isn't a common sport there. His father was a basketball player, and we didn't know much about hockey. We explained to Nikola that we were very busy with the restaurant and didn’t have the time to support and help him with the hockey - to drive him to the games, and help him with the equipment.

“So we bought him a pair of rollerblades and whenever there were no customers in the restaurant he would skate between the tables.” Marijana said.

This was the beginning of the end of a life without hockey in the Pasic household. Soon, Marijana began finding evidence of illicit activity in their home.

“After a while, I noticed very strange black marks on the wall in the hall at our home and even on the front door. I thought at first that it was shoe marks, that the kids were kicking the doors open, leaving black marks everywhere. Then we realized that Nikola was using the hall to shoot pucks on the door. We finally said: let the kid try hockey.”

Nikola began assembling whatever equipment he could to practice at home.

“He had a motor helmet on his head, an old (broken) goalkeeper stick, a beret to catch the pucks and he had taped cartons around his legs as leg protectors.” Marijana added.

NIkola began playing hockey for the local team in Gislaved, a small municipality of roughly 10, 000 people. Because of how busy they were running the restaurant, the Pasic family weren’t able to watch him play hockey for several months. Word started to reach his parents about his talent, and his strong desire to make hockey work for him.

“He never complained or asked for help. He carried everything by himself. I think that he wanted to show us that he can do it by himself - he was afraid that we would tell him to quit.”

Over time the family was able to see more of his games, and his on-ice success became evident. His father, a former pro basketball player, began to see some similarities between how hockey and basketball were played and could begin sharing with his son about tactics.

Nikola’s passion for hockey was apparent from the time he began watching local kids play at the rink, but over time the singular nature of his interest became more and more apparent.

“Nikola never liked school,” Marijana said.

School was something that got in the way of playing hockey, or practicing for hockey, or thinking about hockey. It wasn’t until Nikola formed a special bond with a teacher in the fifth grade that things started to come together.

Katrin Mijatovic was Nikola’s Swedish and Social Studies teacher in the fifth grade, and she remembers the first time she connected with him.

“I learned pretty fast that Nikola was a boy who lived and breathed hockey. He had a great passion for it, and when I went to watch one of his games I realized that he was a great talent and that one day he would play in the NHL.” Katrin told Devils in the Details.

“But Nikola was a boy who had no interest in school. Schoolwork did not come as easy to him as hockey. He didn’t see the point in reading, writing, and so on because he was going to play hockey for a living. So I decided that I would do whatever it takes to make him realize that even if he is going to play hockey for a living he needed a good educational foundation.

“I tried to convince Nikola that he needed good reading skills for the day when he read and signed his NHL contract. I really wanted him to feel and understand the importance of good reading skills so I found an oversimplified example of an NHL contract in English that I gave him and told him to translate into Swedish, and then I would quiz him about it. I think [it] could be the first time that Nikola got interested and excited about reading and writing in school.

“I will never forget that day when he asked me ‘Katrin, where is my NHL contract?’

“He had never asked to do school assignments before.” Katrin added.

Nikola began to flourish within the small hockey community in Gislaved. At age fifteen he moved over 200 kilometres (about 125 miles) to Linköping, a city of almost 160, 000, to play within a bigger system. Linköping had more opportunities to play competitively within his age group, and housed a team that played in the SHL - Sweden’s top league. That year, he scored over a point-per-game for their under-18 Allsvensken squad. In subsequent years, he earned a spot on Linköping’s under-20 squad in SuperElit.

During his draft year he scored over a point-per-game in SuperElit, played two games on loan to Karlskoga’s Allsvenskan team, and earned a fifteen game call-up to the SHL. He also scored four points in as many games for Sweden’s under-19 international squad.

It took Nikola Pasic ten years to go from his first game of organized hockey to his first game in the SHL.