The 4 Bill Hunter Trophy Winners In The WHA

Over the entire seven year history of the WHA, the Bill Hunter Trophy was given out each year to the player in the rebel league that finished the regular season with the most points. To put it another way, it was the World Hockey Association’s equivalent to the NHL’s Art Ross Trophy.

 Just four players won the award over the seven years, three winning on two occasions. Looking back, one would think that hockey greats Bobby Hull and Gordie Howe would be among this select group. However, that is not the case.

Andre Lacroix

Playing for the Philadelphia Blazers in the WHA’s inaugural season, Andre Lacroix was the first ever recipient of the Bill Hunter Trophy. Lacroix scored 50 goals and assisted on 74 others in 1972-73 for a total of 124 points. He was also the Bill Hunter Trophy winner two years later in 1974-75 as a member of the San Diego Mariners. That season, he scored just 41 but assisted on 106 for 147 points. He is one of just four major league hockey players to surpass 100 assists in a season. The other three are Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Bobby Orr.

Andre was no stranger to being at the top of a scoring race. He won the Eddie Powers Trophy in 1965-66 as the OHA’s top point-getter while playing major junior for the Peterborough Petes. Lacroix played in every WHA season from 1972-73 to 1978-79. He also appeared in 325 NHL games with the Philadelphia Flyers, Chicago Black Hawks and Hartford Whalers.

Mike Walton

In between Lacroix’s two Bill Hunter Trophy wins was Mike Walton, WHA scoring champion in 1973-74. Walton scored 57 goals and assisted on 60 for 117 points with the Minnesota Fighting Saints. It was the first of three years Walton would play in the WHA, all with Minnesota. He had a respectable NHL career, playing in 588 regular season games between 1965-66 and 1978-79 with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins, Vancouver Canucks, St. Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks. Not a Calder Trophy winner in the National Hockey League, Walton made some hockey trivia, winning the CHL rookie of the year in 1964-65 and the AHL rookie of the year in 1965-66.

Marc Tardif

The Quebec Nordiques dominated the Bill Hunter Trophy for the final four years of the WHA with Marc Tardif and Real Cloutier alternating victories. Tardif won in 1975-76 with 71 goals and 77 assists for 148 points. His 154 points on 65 goals and 89 assists in 1977-78 will forever be a WHA record for most points in a single season. At the time, it was a major league record, two points better than Phil Esposito’s total with the Boston Bruins in 1970-71.

Tardif was the second overall pick at the 1969 NHL Amateur Draft by the Montreal Canadiens. He played parts of four seasons with the Habs before jumping to the Los Angeles Sharks of the WHA for the 1973-74 season. He moved to the Nordiques midway through the 1974-75 season and remained with the club throughout their WHA days and four years into their existence in the NHL.

Real Cloutier

Real Cloutier is the only one of the four players to begin his career in the WHA. He was a ninth overall draft pick of the Nordiques at the 1974 WHA Amateur Draft. He played with Quebec from 1974-75 until the demise of the WHA after the 1978-79 season. He carried on with the NHL Nordiques for four more years and ended his NHL career with two partial seasons with the Buffalo Sabres.

Cloutier was the Bill Hunter Trophy winner in 1976-77 and 1978-79. In his first win, he scored 66 and assisted on 75 for 141 points. He reached 75 goals in 1978-79, adding 54 assists for 129 points. In 1973-74, as a junior with the Quebec Remparts of the QMJHL, Cloutier honed his scoring touch with 93 goals and 123 assists for 216 points in just 69 games. However, Real was a full 35 points behind league leader Pierre Larouche of the Sorel Eperviers who led the league with 251 points.

Bernie Parent: Backbone of the Broad Street Bullies

When Bernie Parent entered the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1984, the selection could not be argued or doubted. Parent starred in the NHL from 1965-66 until an eye injury prematurely ended his career during the 1978-79 National Hockey League season.

With the Boston Bruins owning his rights, Parent played his junior hockey for the Boston sponsored Niagara Falls Flyers of the Ontario Hockey Association. That version of the Flyers is now the Sudbury Wolves of the Ontario Hockey League. He was nearly unbeatable between the pipes for Niagara Falls in 1964-65 as he led the team to a Robertson Cup victory as OHA champions and a Memorial Cup victory as Canadian major junior champs.

Parent played his first two seasons of professional hockey split between the Bruins and the CPHL’s Oklahoma City Blazers. The Blazers and Bruins were amazingly full of strong youth in net with Bernie, Gerry Cheevers and Doug Favell. He played 39 games with the Bruins in his rookie season, 1965-66, but that number fell to 18 the following season.

The Philadelphia Flyers joined the NHL for the 1967-68 season, along with five other teams, doubling the size of the league from six to twelve teams. The Flyers selected Bernie in the expansion draft and he played most of the rest of his career with the club.

It wasn’t until the following year that players from the six expansion teams were featured on hockey cards. The Bernie Parent rookie card is without a doubt the first highly valued impact card showing a player from one of the new teams. The card appears as number 89 in both the 1968-69 O-Pee-Chee and 1968-69 Topps sets and is the highest valued rookie card in that year.

In 1970-71, Bernie Parent was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs mid-season. He played the rest of that season and the next with the Leafs. In a long string of big mistakes by Toronto, Parent’s services were not retained and he jumped to the World Hockey Association for the 1972-73 season.

Bernie played 63 games for the WHA’s Philadelphia Blazers in the league’s first year of existence. The team was unstable, beginning life as the Miami Screaming Eagles but moving to Philadelphia before a single game was played in Florida. Two professional teams proved too much for Philadelphia and the team moved to Vancouver the following season. Bernie didn’t follow the team, staying in Philadelphia and rejoining the Flyers.

Parent’s return to the NHL was nothing short of magical. Bernie won 47 of the 73 games he played in 1973-74, a record for most wins by a goaltender that has since been surpassed by Martin Brodeur. The Flyers won the Stanley Cup in both 1973-74 and 1974-75 with Parent being awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy both years. Both years also saw him win the Vezina Trophy.

The year following his exit from the NHL, Philadelphia retired his number 1. As mentioned above, Bernie Parent became an honoured member of the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1984 after a stellar career with the Broad Street Bullies.

 

Hockey Trivia: Bernie Parent

Bernie Parent is easily the best goaltender to ever wear the jersey of the Philadelphia Flyers. Until the untimely end to his National Hockey Career in 1978-79 due to an eye injury, Parent was one of the best goalies of that era in the NHL.

Test and expand your hockey trivia knowledge of Bernie Parent with the following four trivia questions.

Q. Bernie Parent played one season in the World Hockey Association. Which WHA team did he play for?

A. Originally signed by the Miami Screaming Eagles, after not playing a single game in Florida, the Screaming Eagles were moved to Philadelphia where they were known as the Philadelphia Blazers for the 1972-73 season. Parent played 63 games for the Blazers in their only season in the WHA before becoming the Vancouver Blazers.

Parent left the Toronto Maple Leafs to play in the WHA’s inaugural season. Upon returning to the National Hockey League for the 1973-74 season, Bernie returned to the Flyers, the team that had traded him to Toronto during the 1970-71 season.

Q. Bernie Parent played his first NHL game with what team?

A. Parent was originally a prospect of the Boston Bruins. He played 39 games with the team in his rookie season, 1965-66, winning only eleven games. He played 18 games with the Bruins the following season before being drafted by the Philadelphia Flyers in the 1967 NHL Expansion Draft.

In his first year with Boston, Parent moved right into the number one position, playing 39 games for the Bruins. Ed Johnston played 33 games and Gerry Cheevers appeared in seven. By 1966-67, Johnston and Cheevers had taken over as Boston’s goaltending duo and the 1967 expansion was a blessing for Bernie.

Q. In 2006-07, what record did Martin Brodeur break that Bernie Parent set in 1973-74?

A. It took over three decades for someone to break Parent’s record for most wins by a goalie in a season. In 1973-74 Bernie won 47 games for the Philadelphia Flyers while losing only 13 in 73 games. Brodeur’s season was four games longer than Parent’s and Marty had the advantage of overtimes and shootouts. In the end, Marty broke the record by just one win with 48. Bernie tied 12 games in 1973-74 which would have been potential wins in today’s game.

Q. Bernie Parent won a Memorial Cup in 1964-65 with what Ontario Hockey Association team?

A. Ironically, Parent’s junior success came with a team also called the Flyers. The Niagara Falls Flyers were an OHA team sponsored by the Boston Bruins. The team won the Memorial Cup in 1965 with the help of future NHLers Jean Pronovost, Derek Sanderson and Don Marcotte.

Niagara Falls met the Edmonton Oil Kings in the Memorial Cup final series. The series was entirely held at the Edmonton Gardens in Edmonton, Alberta. The Flyers won four games to one, outscoring their opponents 16-3 in the final two games. Bill Long coached Niagara Falls and would go on to coach the Ottawa 67’s and London Knights in the OHL.

Marcel Paille: AHL Hall of Fame Goalie

Marcel Paille is one of just 26 members of the American Hockey League Hall of Fame. Paille’s 1964-65 Topps rookie card as a member of the NHL’s New York Rangers is the most valuable rookie card in the series. Yet, how many hockey fans know who Marcel Paille was?

After playing junior for the Quebec Citadelles, Marcel Paille embarked on a professional hockey career as a goaltender that spanned from 1956-57 to 1973-74. In his rookie AHL season, 1956-57, his team, the Cleveland Barons, won the Calder Cup as the AHL playoff champions. Paille played sparingly for the New York Rangers from 1957-58 to 1964-65 with that final season being the only one he didn’t spend part of the year in the AHL.

He starred with the Springfield Indians at the start of the 1960’s. The team won three straight Calder Cups in 1960, 1961 and 1962. In the final two of those three years, Marcel was awarded the Harry Holmes Memorial Award as the goalie in the AHL with the lowest GAA.

Ironically, the year Paille finally got his face on a NHL hockey card was the last year he’d play in the league. His 1964-65 Topps rookie card is worth $250, largely due to scarcity because the card was short-printed.

Marcel did make it back to a major league hockey league for one more stint in 1972-73. In the first year of the World Hockey Association, Paille partnered with Bernie Parent between the pipes for the Philadelphia Blazers. Parent played the bulk of the games for the Blazers with Paille playing in just 15 and recording a ballooned 4.81 GAA.

Marcel passed away in 2002 and posthumously entered the AHL Hall of Fame in 2010. He still owns a handful of AHL records, including: most games by a goaltender, most playoff games by a goaltender, most playoff wins, the longest playoff shutout streak and most playoff minutes played. He was an American Hockey League All-Star on five occasions. Three times he was on the First Team and twice he was on the Second Team.