Wanting to hear from local players, coaches, fans, and the like, HockeyThunderBay.com reached out to a number of Lakehead products, who have spent many years invested in the game, to get their thoughts and reflections to on the following two questions:
1. Who was your favourite local player, or someone from the city who played at any level, that you admired growing up?
2. Who do you think the best player from your era, or otherwise, from Thunder Bay was and why?
With that, we hear in this instalment from former NHL goaltender, Alex Auld.
ALEX AULD: In his minor hockey days in the Lakehead, he helped backstop the Thunder Bay Kings to an Ontario bantam title in 1997. … Was taken in the third round, 39th overall, in the 1997 OHL Priority Selection by the North Bay Centennials. … Spent four years in the OHL with North Bay. … Taken in the the second round, 40th overall, by the Florida Panthers in the 1999 NHL Draft. … Was a member of the 2001 bronze-medal winning Canadian side at the 2001 World Junior Hockey Championship. … Went on to have a 13-year professional career, including 10 seasons in the NHL, with the Vancouver Canucks, Florida Panthers, Phoenix Coyotes, Boston Bruins, Ottawa Senators, New York Rangers, Dallas Stars and Montreal Canadiens. … Finished with 91 career NHL victories, including six shutouts. … Sits sixth in NHL wins, among those from northwestern Ontario.
FAVOURITE PLAYER: For me this is easy – Greg Johnson.
I grew up on the same small street as the Johnson family.
I remember it being a really big deal for me when Greg played for Team Canada at World Juniors and the Olympics.
He was a star at the University of North Dakota in the NCAA and watching him play in the Stanley Cup Playoffs was also very cool.
This wasn’t a player that your dad watched, who was supposedly from Thunder Bay.
This was the very same Greg who would come home in the off-season and drive by in his black corvette with a wave.
It wasn’t all the glamour of World Junior & Olympic medals and the fancy cars though.
What I also witnessed first hand was the work ethic. I can remember driving around town and seeing Greg out for runs.
We’d be miles from home and he’d be running in the opposite direction.
I realized at a young age that a kid from Thunder Bay can make it to the NHL.
But you have to put the work in.
Greg was an inspiration, he represented what was possible. Kids need their heroes, and Greg was one of mine.
BEST PLAYER: Alex Delvecchio.
Incredible what he was able to accomplish. Hockey Hall of Fame; named one of the NHL’s Top 100 players of all time.
After that though, it gets interesting.
Let’s start with my birth year of 1981.
Five were drafted and three of us had NHL careers.
Patrick Sharp had the best career of the 1981 group.
Three Stanley Cups, an Olympic Gold and 620 points. Not bad.
More recently I got to go with Eric Staal.
What a career. Stanley Cup; Olympic Gold; World Championship. 40-plus goals three times and 30-plus three more times. Over 1,000 points and 455 goals.