Portland Winterhawks This Week
Published on August 23, 2010 under Western Hockey League (WHL)
Portland Winterhawks News Release
Neely Cup Bios
Cam Neely:
In its second year, the Neely Cup is named in honor of Cam Neely, the former Winterhawk who went on to a legendary NHL career with the Vancouver Canucks and Boston Bruins that culminated with enshrinement in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Neely was a member of Portland's 1983 Memorial Cup team and the first Winterhawks alumnus to be enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Neely registered 56 goals and 64 assists for 120 points in 72 regular season games during the 1982-83 championship season, and followed up that impressive showing with 20 points in 14 postseason games en route to the Memorial Cup. He then posted 26 points in 19 games the following season before joining the NHL's Vancouver Canucks.
Originally a 1983 first round draft pick of the Vancouver Canucks, Neely came to Boston in a June 1986 trade. His potent blend of offensive talent and a punishing physical presence quickly endeared him to Bruins fans and he became one of the most revered players in team history. He earned four NHL Second-Team All-Star berths in Boston, led the team in goals for seven seasons and in points twice and he still ranks fourth overall on the club's all-time goal list and ninth overall on the team's all-time scoring list. He is the club's all-time leader in playoff goals and ranks seventh overall in team history with 87 career playoff points.He became just the fifth Bruin in team history to record a 50-goal season when he set a club record for goals by a right wing with 55 in 1989-90 and he was just the second player in team history to record consecutive 50-goal campaigns when he followed that with 51 tallies in 1990-91. His 50 goals in only 44 games in 1993-94 tied as the second-fastest such feat in NHL history and was all the more remarkable because he had missed most of the previous season with thigh and knee injuries. The 1993-94 winner of the Bill Masterton Trophy was forced into retirement by those injuries in September 1996. The Bruins retired his number 8 in January 12, 2004 ceremonies and he was elected into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2005.
Off the ice, Neely, along with his brother and sisters, established the Cam Neely Foundation for Cancer Care in 1995 following the deaths of both his mother and father from the disease. In addition to the Neely House, which provides housing and support for families of patients undergoing cancer treatments, the Foundation supports the Neely Cancer Fund, whose initiatives include the Neely Center for Clinical Cancer Research, the Neely Cell Therapy and Collection Center and the Neely Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant Unit in its mission to fund treatment and research efforts.
On June 16, 2010, Cam Neely was named President of the Boston Bruins. Neely becomes the eighth president in club history and oversees all hockey and business operations of the Boston Bruins.Neely and his wife Paulina have two children, son Jack and daughter Ava.
Wayne Babych
Before the Winterhawks came to Portland, they were located in Edmonton and known as the Oil Kings. One of the players to make the move with the team was high-scoring winger Wayne Babych. In four seasons he increased his scoring every year: from 36 to 78 to 112 and finally 121 in 1977-78. In each of the last two seasons he scored 50 goals.
Over thirty years since graduating from major junior, he still ranks sixth in franchise history with 348 points (151 goals, 197 assists). In 1978 he was drafted third overall by the St. Louis Blues and went straight to the NHL that season, scoring 27 goals in his rookie year of 1978-79.
Babych followed that up with a 26-goal outing the next year before exploding for 54 goals and 96 points in 1980-81. He played three more seasons with the Blues, and followed with stints with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Quebec Nordiques and Hartford Whalers.
He retired following the 1986-87 season with 192 goals and 246 assists for 438 points in 519 games. Following his career he ran a water slide park in Winnipeg and later joined his brother Dave in building and developing golf courses.
Dave Babych
Defenseman Dave Babych is the other half of one of the great brother tandems in major junior hockey history. Despite playing just two full seasons with the Winterhawks in 1978-79 and 1979-80, he tallied 165 points, still ranking sixth all-time among Winterhawks defensemen. During the 1978-79 season he helped lead Portland to the WHL finals, and registered 29 points in 25 postseason games.
Following the 1979-80 season he was selected second overall by the Winnipeg Jets. Babych went straight to the NHL without a game in the minors, suiting up for 69 contests with the Winnipeg Jets in 1980-81. By 1983, he was an NHL All-Star, and he went on to score 74 points that year, a career high.
He made two All-Star teams with the Jets before being traded to Hartford. With the Whalers, Babych provided solid defense and chipped in points on a consistent basis. After Babych's sixth campaign with Hartford, he was on the move again to the Vancouver Canucks. During his third season with the Canucks, they advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals and extended the eventual champion New York Rangers to a seventh game. Babych provided three goals and eight points that postseason.
Babych spent parts of four more years with the Canucks before he was traded again, this time to the Philadelphia Flyers. The 1998-99 season was his last in the NHL. He spent most of the year with the Flyers, but was traded at the deadline to the Los Angeles Kings. Babych went on to play three games with a Swiss team the next season before retiring.
Dave Babych played 1,195 in the NHL and finished with 723 points. Today he works part-time with the Vancouver Canucks as an assistant specializing in defensemen.
Gary Nylund
Gary Nylund was a hulking defenseman who patrolled the blue line for Portland in 209 games from 1978-1982. Although he was a punishing player who racked up 512 penalty minutes in his Winterhawks career, he also chipped in 138 points, still good for 10th all-time among Winterhawks defensemen.
In 1981-82, he registered 59 assists, was placed on the league's first all-star team, and helped Portland reach the Memorial Cup tournament. Although the Kitchener Rangers won the Cup, Nylund was placed on the tournament all-star team. That year he was a key figure when Canada won its first-ever-gold medal at the World Junior Championships in 1982. The talented prospect was chosen third overall by the Toronto Maple Leafs at the 1982 Entry Draft after only Gord Kluzak and Brian Bellows.
Nylund was off to a fine start as a rookie in the 1982-83 preseason but twisted his knee when he checked Quebec's Wilf Paiement and was able to play only a few games in mid-season. After re-injuring his knee, Nylund remained on the sidelines for the rest of the year and did not return until the 1983-84 schedule was over 30 games old. Nylund played 79 games in 1985-86 and doled out several punishing bodychecks when the Maple Leafs came within one game of the semi-finals.
In the off-season, Nylund signed with the Chicago Black Hawks as a restricted free agent and helped solidify their blueline for nearly three years. He scored a career-high 27 points in 1986-87 and fit in well on the deeper Hawks defense corps. In November 1988 he was traded to the New York Islanders and was a solid performer there until he retired early in the 1992-93 season.
Following retirement he moved back to the Vancouver area and became a firefighter. He was involved in a major fire at a paper products warehouse on Annacis Island on July 31, 2001, in which he went back into a burning building to rescue two of his trapped colleagues, who were buried under some of the warehouse's cardboard boxes. In June 2003, Nylund and two other firefighters received British Columbia's prestigious Medal of Bravery for their efforts in the warehouse rescue.
Perry Turnbull
Perry Turnbull was the rare player feared equally for his skill as for his brawn. Consider that in the 1977-78 season with Portland he racked up 318 penalty minutes, and followed that up in 1978-79 with one of the great offensive seasons in Winterhawks history: 75 goals and 43 assists for 118 points.
His 75 goals that season is the third-highest single season total by a Winterhawk. He finished his junior career with 134 goals and 100 assists for 234 points, while adding 791 penalty minutes, the fourth highest total in team history.
That 75-goal season propelled him to becoming the second overall pick of the St. Louis Blues in the 1979 NHL Draft. He registered three 30-goal seasons for the Blues before being traded to the Montreal Canadiens in the early stages of the 1983-84 season. After only 40 games with Montreal, Turnbull was traded to the Winnipeg Jets where he played three seasons before returning for a second stint with the Blues in 1987-88.
In 1988-89, Turnbull took his game overseas, where he had stops in Italy, Switzerland and Germany before calling it a career at the end of the 1991-92 season.
Throughout his NHL career, Perry Turnbull played in 608 games, tallying 188 goals and 163 assists for 351 points.
Glen Wesley
One of the steadiest defensemen in the NHL over the last 20 years, Glen Wesley played 202 games for Portland from 1983 - 1987. In that time he posted 49 goals and 175 assists for 224 points, including a 91-point season in 1985-86.
His 224 points still ranks second all-time among Winterhawks defensemen, and 24th overall in franchise history. He was named a Western Conference First Team All-Star in 1986 and 1987, and was a member of Canada's 1987 World Junior team.
Following the 1986-87 season he was drafted third overall by the Boston Bruins and stepped right into their lineup the next season, never suiting up for a single game in the minors. Wesley went on to play 20 seasons in the NHL, and completed his playing career ranked sixth on the NHL's all-time list of games played by a defenseman, skating in 1,457 total games over 20 seasons with Boston, Hartford, Toronto and Carolina. He played in more NHL games than all but one player (Brendan Shanahan) from the 1987 draft class.
He made an instant impact in his first year, being named to the NHL All-Rookie Team after earning 37 points (7g, 30a) and leading all rookies with a plus-21 plus/minus rating. Wesley played in the NHL All-Star Game in 1989, and completed his career with 128 goals, 409 assists (537 points) and 1,045 penalty minutes. He appeared in the Stanley Cup Finals four times, reaching the finals with Boston in 1988 and 1990 and with Carolina in 2002 and 2006, capturing the Stanley Cup with the Hurricanes in 2006.
When it was Wesley's turn to host the Stanley Cup for a day that summer, he took it to Camp Lejeune, a military base in North Carolina housing soldiers wounded in Afghanistan.
He's best known for his time with the Hartford Whalers/Carolina Hurricanes franchise, where he played 13 seasons. He played more games (913) for the Hurricanes franchise than any player in the history of the team other than Ron Francis, and his 728 games played for the Hurricanes are the most of any player. Wesley totaled 227 points (51g, 176a) for the Whalers and Hurricanes, and ranks 10th in team history in assists (176). The Hurricanes officially retired his No. 2 to the rafters on Feb. 17, 2009.
He's now in his second year as the Hurricanes' director of defensemen development. Wesley officially retired from hockey on June 5, 2008, following a career of 20 NHL seasons. As director of defensemen development, Wesley is responsible for working with all defensemen in the Hurricanes system, including drafted players in the Canadian major junior hockey leagues, ECHL and American Hockey League (AHL). Glen and his wife, Barb, have a daughter, Amanda, and two sons, Josh and Matthew.
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- Broncos Announce Season Ticket Blitz - Swift Current Broncos
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