Russian transplant Nikita Pavlychev’s first official hockey action in North America was met with demands to view his birth certificate.

Even then, playing with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Knights before turning 16, Pavlychev’s towering stature helped him carve out a space inside the minds his opponents, as Alex Vasko told it. Vasko, who coached Pavlychev with the Knights, estimated Pavlychev was about 6-foot-4 when the two first met.

About five years later, Pavlychev is 6-foot-7 without skates, and the intimidation factor remains.

“He's a scary guy,” graduate transfer Ludvig Larsson said after meeting Pavlychev this summer.

And, during the beginning of his Nittany Lion career, that’s how Pavlychev, a seventh-round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Penguins, was perceived — as a defensively oriented player with a role defined by his physical traits.

But, Pavychev’s coach and teammates insist his mental qualities are what really matter. He’s more than just a big body on the ice. He’s become one of the nation’s premier defensive forwards on a Penn State team with few other players capable of filling that role.

The size is just a bonus.

“I honestly believe that if he had the choice between scoring a goal and shutting a guy down, he'd choose the latter,” Penn State coach Guy Gadowsky said. “It's his mentality. He loves it. He's exceptional at it.

“I think a lot of you guys now are seeing the value,” Gadowsky added. “What he does doesn't necessarily end up in the scoresheet every night, but I think everybody now that follows the team is really understanding how important he is.”

Last season, Pavlychev centered the line Penn State deployed against the most dangerous line of its opponent, often with Sam Sternschein and James Robinson on the wings.

“He’s very good at making very good players look very bad,” Larsson said.

From his perch on the bench, Gadowsky said he has seen more than one high-profile forward look less-than-thrilled to see Pavlychev skating out onto the ice to match up.

“You love to see that,” Pavlychev said. “Especially in the Big Ten. There’s a lot of skill players. Our line's job is a lot of times to shut those guys down. I enjoy it a lot. I enjoy shutting them down and going to the other end and actually creating something on our own because those guys are so used to playing offense all the time, they don't have to play a lot of defense, and when we are able to shut them down, they have nothing.”

No stretch better illustrated Pavlychev’s value than four games the Nittany Lions played against Minnesota last season across two weekends. The Gophers were led by skilled centerman Casey Mittelstadt, who is now a member of the Buffalo Sabres after they picked him eighth-overall in 2017.

Pavlychev shadowed Mittelstadt in the first two games of that stretch. Mittelstadt, visibly frustrated, was held to just one assist in those games. Pavlychev missed the next two games with an undisclosed injury, and Mittelstadt exploded for three goals and two assists.

“I had a lot of fun. I had a blast. Looking back at it, in reality, they didn't have much that weekend at all,” Pavlychev said. “You see a lot of frustration coming out of them, and that spices things up even more for you.”

And Pavlychev’s game is fueled by that “spice.”

Rarely a game passes that he isn’t involved in some sort of dust-up with an opponent, be it a shoving match or a verbal altercation.

Thanks to Pavychev’s size, those altercations often seem like an on-ice rendering of David and Goliath.

“I'm a bigger guy. First of all, the guys on other teams will always try to go at you,” Pavlychev said. “Everyone's goal is to try to take the big guy out or try to prove a point. It’s always my job to be a little bit more intimidating and be more physical and scare the guys on the other team.”

Penn State defenseman James Gobetz has played with Pavlychev for the last four seasons, dating back to time they shared in the USHL with the Des Moines Buccaneers. Gobetz has seen Pavlychev provoke his opponents countless times, even witnessing a few on-ice fights in the USHL.

Gobetz said they were a few other, more drastic, examples of Pavlychev’s antics affecting opponents, but he declined to share them with a laugh.

“We’re lucky to have him,” Gobetz said. “...He definitely gets under the other team’s skin.”

On occasion, Pavlychev will also put a puck behind the other team’s goaltender.

He scored nine goals last season — good for seventh on Penn State’s roster. Three of those goals came on the power play, where Pavlychev frequently resides in front of the net to screen the goaltender and collect rebounds.

Before a teenage growth spurt sent him up about four inches in one summer, Pavlychev was simply a different player. Since that summer, Pavlychev has been fighting a constant battle with his own coordination.

Vasko said, in Pavlychev’s teenage years, the Knights would often run drills with the goal of getting some of those hand-eye skills back.

“There was a lot of work that needed to be put in to get weight and coordination back,” Pavlychev said. “It was quite an experience, but eventually it got into its place and now I'm feeling a lot more confident.”

“Before I thought at some points in my career that I could be a skill guy,” he continued. “That idea went away pretty fast, and now I've accepted it, I've adjusted it and I'm kind of embracing it right now.”

What has remained through Pavlychev’s fights to maximize the output from his ever-changing body is the Russian’s drive.

He grew up best friends with Ivan Provorov, an elite defenseman who plays for the Philadelphia Flyers. The duo spent last summer training together, and Pavlychev made a point to try to emulate Provorov’s work ethic.

“If we're doing anything outside of the hockey rink, it would be getting better somehow else,” Pavlychev said.

Pavlychev said he and Provorov would play tennis or soccer together when they weren’t skating.

It’s safe to assume that those battles were heated. Gadowsky called Pavlychev the “funnest guy” to hang around with, but once somebody starts competing, a different Pavlychev emerges.

“On a day-to-day basis, he's really fun,” Gadowsky said. “But if you play a competitive game, even in practice, it shows up. Like, he's got the mentality. He doesn't turn it on and off. It's just him... There's no quarter asked or given with him. He doesn't expect anybody ever to take it easy on him and he's not going to take it easy on them, regardless of size or age or whatever.”

Even when Pavlychev isn’t the one competing, he has a tendency to get fired up over competition.

He spent the time preceding the highly anticipated UFC bout between Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov talking constant smack with his teammates. Most of them were rooting for McGregor, he said, while Pavlychev sided with Nurmagomedov, his countryman.

Pavlychev must have had a pretty good night, then, after Nurmagomedov earned a fourth round submission?

“Oh yeah,” he said.

That side of Pavlychev, that need to compete, that need to win, translates to just about every other competitive situation, whether it’s table games or informal games with his teammates.

One crucial exception to that rule is when he finds himself across from Gadowsky at the ping-pong table inside Penn State’s facilities.

There, Pavlychev admitted, he has little chance.

“He's a little bit out of my league,” Pavlychev said.

But that doesn’t stop him from competing.

“I still always try to play him.”