Pakistan
Few people know what it feels like to truly come from nothing to achieve greatness. Abdul Razzaq may well be the very next person on that exclusive list. Born in Karachi, Pakistan, during the most turbulent time in the country's history, his mother Isha died in childbirth. His father, Najam, had been killed in combat about a month previously, so poor Abdul was put up for adoption from birth. Unfortunately for Abdul, 'adoption' meant being left on the streets, unclothed but for the one item of protection that the hospital could afford to leave for him - a tattered and torn Chicago Blackhawks jersey.
Sweden
Nothing more is known about Abdul until he turned 14 years old. He is notoriously shy and refuses any interview question about his formative years, which makes biographing him particularly difficult. All we know for sure is that he turned up in Sweden to practice for the Haninge Anchors Junior section in roller blades and a home-made stick just two years ago. The Anchors couldn't really do much for him, as he didn't speak any Swedish (or English) and they couldn't work out why he was there. They refused to let him practice with the team, mainly because they had no other choice.
It was only after the third practice of the year that the coach noticed him again, out in the parking lot. Abdul was wearing his roller blades and stickhandling a stone that he'd found on the roadside, but the closer the coach looked, the more impressed he was. The drill that Abdul was doing was just a typical stickhandling drill, made slightly harder by the fact that the makeshift puck was a small stone. However, upon closer inspection, Abdul was performing this drill with the stone in the air, rather than on the ground. The coach was certainly impressed enough to go to talk to Abdul, but when he approached him, something strange happened. Abdul, full of rage from his recent rejection from participating in practice, flipped the stone up in the air. As the stone hit the top of it's arc at about waist height, Abdul baseball-swung his stick at it, making ferocious contact and sending the stone in the direction of the coach.
Two weeks later, the coach woke up from his coma with a 1/2" hole between his eyes. Abdul had been arrested in the parking lot and had been deported hastily back to Bangladesh, which the authorities had determined was his country of origin. But the story of this mysterious Bangladeshi boy had caught the eye of the the hockey world, and from there he had sparked a serious amount of interest and discussion from bigger teams. Three days later, Abdul Razzaq had his first tryout with the Seattle Thunderbirds of the WHL. Of course, at this stage, nobody had known his true age of just 14 years and 100 days old.
USA
From this point on, his story had become known to the wider public. Abdul insists that he is Pakistani but official documents from Bangladesh claim that he was a citizen there from the age of 7. This is the only formal connection to any country that he has, and thus this will be his registered nationality unless something else surfaces. Coaches in Seattle have reported that the day he tried out, he had no formal training whatsoever, not knowing how to take a faceoff, where to position himself on the ice, or even when to come on and off the bench. But they saw in him a raw talent like no other. His stickhandling and skating were second to nobody on the team, not even the best veterans in the whole WHL. This kid was destined to be great.
Once the coaches really began to get through to him, and the language barrier was overcome, Abdul dominated.. The first player to play 3 WHL seasons before his 17th birthday, Abdul Razzaq scored 120 goals in 3 seasons with only 40 assists to accompany them. It wasn't that he wasn't a talented passer, or that he was selfish, just that he was so good on his skates that nobody could keep up with his play style. It wasn't like anything that's coached in North America. Lots of play off the boards, or opponents skates, or even the referees. Lots of feinting, dekeing, and sublime stickhandling in the strangest of patterns. If it weren't for a 10-game suspension for trying to bank a shot in off the referee's helmet, his record would be completely clean as well.
We all know that Abdul is a particularly exciting prospect, but what we're all guessing at is just how exciting.
Fig. 1 - A blurry photograph may contain the only known image of Abdul (bottom left) playing hockey in his native Pakistan
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Biography - Abdul Razzaq [1/2]
