Jeremy Roenick, Rob Blake on What Made Joe Thornton Special

Joe Thornton is headed to the Hockey Hall of Fame, where he belongs.

And two of his San Jose Sharks teammates, Rob Blake and Jeremy Roenick, will be there to greet him.

“To know Jumbo is to love Jumbo,” Roenick said.

It takes a Hall of Famer to know a Hall of Famer, so who better than Blake ‘14 and Roenick ‘24 to tell stories, both bawdy and insightful, about why Thornton is Hall of Fame material, on and off the ice.

“Jumbo”

The 6-foot-4 Thornton was nicknamed “Jumbo” for good reason.

“He had that rare combination of that hockey sense with his vision and his size,” Blake, who played with Thornton from 2008 to 2010, said. “[Wayne Gretzky] is head and shoulders above everybody [as a playmaker], but he wasn’t as big as [Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr], right? They’re big, they had this long reach, they had the hockey IQ to be able to make these high-end plays, and never panicked with the puck.”

Lemieux, Jagr, Thornton. That’s some lofty praise.

“There’s not many like that,” Blake said.