Doug Wickenheiser
Encyclopedia : D : DO : DOU : Doug Wickenheiser
Doug Wickenheiser (March 30 1961 - January 12 1999) was a Canadian hockey player. He was the NHL player who was drafted first overall by the Montreal Canadiens in the 1980 NHL Entry Draft.
Wickenheiser was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. A superstar in Major Junior hockey with the Regina Pats, during the 1979-80 WHL season he led the Western Hockey League in goal scoring (89), captained the Pats to a berth in the Memorial Cup and was the CHL Player of the Year. He was rated by the Hockey News as the top draft prospect in 1980. Drafted first overall by the Montreal Canadiens, he would become one of the biggest busts in league history. Not helping his status was that the player drafted third, Denis Savard, would become a superstar with the Chicago Blackhawks. Many Canadiens fans (Especially French Canadian fans, who mostly wanted Savard because he was from Quebec) resented him, and media attention soon turned negative.
He was later traded to the St. Louis Blues. Probably his most famous moment with the Blues was the "Monday Night Miracle" on May 12, 1986, when after St. Louis made a large comeback, Wickenheiser scored the overtime winner to force a Game 7 in the Campbell Conference Finals. Unfortunately, the Blues lost 2-1 in Game 7.
During his NHL career, Wickenheiser also played for the Vancouver Canucks, New York Rangers, and Washington Capitals. In 556 games, he scored 111 goals and 165 assists.
Wickenheiser was diagnosed with cancer in 1998. He died from the disease on January 12, 1999 in St. Louis, Missouri.
His cousin, Hayley Wickenheiser, is a Canadian Olympic athlete, known for her ice hockey excellence with Gold Medals from both 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympics, and competed in women's Softball in the 2000 Summer games.
|- style="text-align: center;" |- style="text-align: center;"
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.