Wayne Douglas Gretzky is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player and former head coach. He played 20 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for four teams from 1979 to 1999, retiring at the age of 38. Nicknamed "the Great One", he has been called the greatest ice hockey player ever by many sportswriters, players, The Hockey News, and the NHL itself, based on extensive surveys of hockey writers, ex-players, general managers and coaches. Gretzky is the leading career goal scorer, assist producer and point scorer in NHL history, and has more career assists than any other player has total points. He is the only NHL player to total over 200 points in one season, a feat he accomplished four times. In addition, Gretzky tallied over 100 points in 15 professional seasons, 13 of them consecutive. At the time of his retirement in 1999, he held 61 NHL records: 40 regular season records, 15 playoff records, and 6 All-Star records.
Kenneth Wayne Dryden is a Canadian former professional ice hockey goaltender, politician, lawyer, businessman, and author. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame. He was a Liberal Member of Parliament from 2004 to 2011 and Minister of Social Development from 2004 to 2006. In 2017, the league counted him in history's 100 Greatest NHL Players. He received the Order of Hockey in Canada in 2020.
Marc Joseph John Crawford is a Canadian professional ice hockey coach and former player. He is currently the head coach of the ZSC Lions of the National League (NL). He played as a forward for the Vancouver Canucks in the National Hockey League (NHL). Crawford won the Stanley Cup in 1996 as head coach of the Colorado Avalanche in the NHL. He has also been the head coach of the Quebec Nordiques, Vancouver Canucks, Los Angeles Kings, Dallas Stars, and interim head coach of the Ottawa Senators. He has also coached at the international level, as head coach of Team Canada at the 1998 Winter Olympics. Crawford has won the Louis A. R. Pieri Memorial Award as coach of the year in the American Hockey League and the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year in the NHL.
Christie Marie Blatchford was a Canadian newspaper columnist, journalist and broadcaster. She published four non-fiction books.
Ronald Wright is a Canadian author who has written books of travel, history and fiction. His nonfiction includes the bestseller Stolen Continents, winner of the Gordon Montador Award and chosen as a book of the year by The Independent and the Sunday Times. His first novel, A Scientific Romance, won the 1997 David Higham Prize for Fiction and was chosen a book of the year by the Globe and Mail, the Sunday Times, and the New York Times.
The 1986–87 NHL season was the 70th season of the National Hockey League. The Edmonton Oilers won the Stanley Cup by beating the Philadelphia Flyers four games to three in the Cup finals.
The 1985–86 NHL season was the 69th season of the National Hockey League. This season saw the league's Board of Governors introduce the Presidents' Trophy, which would go to the team with the best overall record in the NHL regular season. The Edmonton Oilers would be the first winners of this award.
Steven Richard "The Matador" Montador was a Canadian professional ice hockey defenceman who played 571 games in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Calgary Flames, Florida Panthers, Anaheim Ducks, Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres and Chicago Blackhawks before ending his career in 2014 as a member of Medveščak Zagreb of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL).
Zarley Bennett Zalapski was a Canadian professional ice hockey defenceman who played from 1987 to 2010.
Dominic Moore is a Canadian former professional ice hockey centre. He last played for the ZSC Lions of the National League (NL), and played nearly 900 National Hockey League (NHL) games. Initially drafted in the third round, 95th overall, by the New York Rangers in the 2000 NHL Entry Draft, Moore also played in the NHL for the Pittsburgh Penguins, Minnesota Wild, Toronto Maple Leafs, Buffalo Sabres, Florida Panthers, Montreal Canadiens, Tampa Bay Lightning, San Jose Sharks and Boston Bruins. He is currently an analyst for the NHL on ESPN.
The Hockey News (THN) is a Canadian-based ice hockey magazine. The Hockey News was founded in 1947 by Ken McKenzie and Will Cote and has since become the most recognized hockey publication in North America. The magazine has a readership of 225,000 people per issue, while the magazine's website counts two million total readers. It is the top-selling hockey magazine in North America and is available through subscription in North America and digitally to the rest of the world. The Hockey News is also available at many newsstands in North America.
Regis Pierre McGuire is an American-Canadian ice hockey executive who currently works for Sportsnet and last served as senior vice-president of player development for the Ottawa Senators of the National Hockey League (NHL). He previously worked as a television analyst for NHL on NBC broadcasts in the United States and on The Sports Network (TSN) in Canada. McGuire has also been a player, coach and scout.
David Murray Dryden was a Canadian professional ice hockey goaltender, who created and first used the modern goaltending mask, consisting of fibreglass and a cage. From 1962 to 1980, he played nine seasons in the National Hockey League for the New York Rangers, Chicago Black Hawks, Buffalo Sabres, and Edmonton Oilers, and in the World Hockey Association between 1974 and 1979 with the Chicago Cougars and Edmonton Oilers, as well as for other smaller teams in other minor leagues.
Greg Koehler is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player. He played one game in the National Hockey League (NHL), with the Carolina Hurricanes during the 2000–01 season. The rest of his career, which lasted from 1998 to 2007, was spent in various minor leagues.
Daniel Carcillo is a Canadian former professional ice hockey left winger. He most recently played under contract to the Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League (NHL). His on-ice reputation as an enforcer has led to him being nicknamed "Car Bomb". Carcillo won a Stanley Cup as a member of the 2013 and 2015 Blackhawks. After retiring from the NHL in 2015, Carcillo created a non-profit organization that assists former NHL-players who are suffering from post-concussion syndrome and mental health issues. Carcillo is the founder and CEO of Wesana Health, a life sciences company that leverages psilocybin-based medicine to treat traumatic brain injuries.
The 1979 Stanley Cup Finals was the championship series of the National Hockey League's (NHL) 1978–79 season, and the culmination of the 1979 Stanley Cup playoffs. The New York Rangers challenged the defending champion Montreal Canadiens, who made their fourth straight appearance. It was New York's first foray into the Finals since 1972. The Canadiens would win the best-of-seven series, four games to one, to win their fourth consecutive Stanley Cup championship.
Roy MacGregor is a Canadian author of fiction and non-fiction.
NHL on Sportsnet is the blanket title for presentations of the National Hockey League broadcast held by a Canadian media corporation, Rogers Communications, showing on its television channel Sportsnet and other networks owned by or affiliated with its Rogers Media division, as well as the Sportsnet Radio chain. Sportsnet previously held the national cable rights for NHL regular season and playoff games from 1998 to 2002. In November 2013, Rogers reached a 12-year deal to become the exclusive national television and digital rightsholder for the NHL in Canada, beating out both CBC Sports and TSN.
Bruce Dowbiggin is a Canadian sports broadcaster, journalist and writer. A graduate of the Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto, Dowbiggin has worked as a journalist for the Calgary Herald and The Globe and Mail and as a broadcaster for CBC Newsworld. He has authored several books about ice hockey and received two Gemini Awards for sports broadcasting.
On April 19, 2011, after ESPN, Turner Sports, and Fox Sports placed bids, NBC Sports announced it had reached a ten-year extension to its U.S. television contract with the NHL worth nearly $2 billion over the tenure of the contract. The contract would cover games on both NBC and sister cable channel Versus, which became part of the NBC Sports family as the result of Versus parent Comcast's controlling purchase of NBC Universal earlier in 2011.
