WHEAT KINGS TO HONOUR MCCRIMMON
Brandon, MB. – Former Wheat King Great Brad McCrimmon may be gone but won’t soon be forgotten.
The Western Hockey League club has confirmed that its players will be sporting a special decal on their helmets this season to honour McCrimmon, who died earlier this month in a tragic plane crash in Russia.
McCrimmon was one of four ex-WHLers to pass away this past summer, joining Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak.
In honour of these four, WHL Commissioner Ron Robison has announced that all players and officials will display a decal on their helmets this coming season, in their memory. As well, a league wide moment of silence will also be recognized across all 22 home openers, including the Wheat Kings game against the visiting Moose Jaw Warriors on Friday night.
A native of Plenty, Saskatchewan, McCrimmon played three seasons in Brandon, including the 1978-79 campaign when he led the Wheat Kings to their first Western League Championship and to within a goal of capturing the Memorial Cup in Montreal.
Chosen in the first round (15th overall) by the Boston Bruins in the 1979 National Hockey League Amateur Draft, McCrimmon went on to play eighteen years, including the 1988-89 season when he was a member of the Stanley Cup Champion Calgary Flames.
In addition to the Bruins and Flames, “Beast”, as he was affectionately known, wore the jerseys of the Detroit Red Wings, Hartford Whalers, Philadelphia Flyers and Phoenix Coyotes. As well, he coached in Calgary, Atlanta, Detroit and Long Island. He also spent two seasons as head coach of the WHL’s Saskatoon Blades.
During his 18-year NHL career, McCrimmon played in 1,222 games, scoring 81 goals and 403 points.
As a Wheat King, he scored 61 goals and 279 points in 203 career games from 1976-79. His 218 assists are sixth most in franchise history and the 24 goals that he scored during the ’78-79 campaign remain a Wheat Kings’ Single Season Record for defenceman.
A WHL First Team All Star in 1977-78 and ’78-79, McCrimmon won the Bill Hunter Memorial Trophy as the WHL’s Top Defenceman in 1978, before finishing second to Portland’s Keith Brown the following year.
While McCrimmon’s Funeral Mass was attended by hundreds in the Detroit suburb of Farmington this past weekend, a Memorial Service for the older brother of Wheat Kings’ general manager Kelly McCrimmon will be held in Saskatoon this Sunday, September 25th.
