Four Edmonton-related standouts named to Alberta Hockey Hall of Fame

March 19, 2024 Canuck

Six people and one team related to Alberta hockey will be honoured for their accomplishments this summer.

The Alberta Hockey Hall of Fame will induct Billy Dea, Jarome Iginla, Dave King, Kelly Kisio, Craig MacTavish, Shannon Szabados and the 2000-01 Red Deer Rebels to its ranks as the Class of 2024 on July 20 in Red Deer.

Four have ties to Edmonton. Dea, 90, Iginla, 46, and Szabados, 37, were born in Edmonton and grew up in the area, while the 65-year-old MacTavish, who was born in London, Ont., spent most of his National Hockey League career with the Edmonton Oilers as a player, coach and general manager.

Dea and Iginla, too, played in the NHL, while Szabados starred in goal for Canada in two Olympic gold-medal victories.

Billy Dea

Dea came up through the Maple Leaf Athletic Club ranks and caught the eye of the NHL’s New York Rangers in the late 1940s.

He played junior hockey in Lethbridge in the early 1950s before embarking on a 19-year professional career in four different leagues, including a nine-year stint with the American Hockey League’s Buffalo Bisons starting in the late 1950s. Dea, who won a championship with the Bisons and played 720 games with Buffalo, is a member of the AHL’s hall of fame.

While he played 146 games in the ’50s between the Rangers, the Detroit Red Wings and the Chicago Black Hawks, the majority of his playing time in the NHL came after the league expanded to 12 teams from six in 1967, playing 251 games for both the Red Wings and the Pittsburgh Penguins over four seasons.

Dea joined the Red Wings’ front office after his playing days, later coaching the team on an interim basis in 1982, stepping in for 22 games after Detroit fired Wayne Maxner.

Jarome Iginla

Iginla grew up in St. Albert, playing his minor hockey in the Edmonton bedroom community before starring for the major junior Western Hockey League’s Kamloops Blazers, with whom he won two Memorial Cup championships.

Iginla was drafted 11th overall in the 1995 NHL draft by the Dallas Stars and was traded five months later to the Calgary Flames, for whom he played the majority of his 21-year career that spanned 1,554 games. He led the Flames to the 2004 Stanley Cup final, won the NHL scoring title once, was named an all-star six times and holds the Flames’ all-time records for goals, points and games played.

He later played for the Penguins, the Boston Bruins, the Colorado Avalanche and the Los Angeles Kings.

Craig MacTavish

‘MacT’ won three Stanley Cups with the Oilers after joining the NHL team in 1986 and captained the team from 1992 to 1994, when he was traded to the Rangers and subsequently won another championship.

The centreman played 1,093 games over 17 NHL seasons with five clubs, including the Oilers, the Rangers, the Boston Bruins, the St. Louis Blues and the Philadelphia Flyers.

The last helmetless player in the NHL then turned to coaching, serving as an assistant with the Rangers and the Oilers before being promoted to Edmonton head coach in 2000.

He guided the Oilers to the 2006 Stanley Cup final and coached the team until 2009. He returned to the Oilers three years later in an executive role and became general manager the next year, serving in that role until Edmonton hired Peter Chiarelli in 2015.

Shannon Szabados

The northsider, like Dea a Maple Leaf Athletic Club alum, was the first female to play in the WHL, patrolling the net for the Tri-City Americans in four exhibition games in 2002.

She wound up playing 162 games over six seasons in the Alberta Junior Hockey League with the Sherwood Park Crusaders, the Bonnyville Pontiacs and the Fort Saskatchewan Traders. She then played five campaigns in Alberta college hockey for both MacEwan University and NAIT, followed by pro action over four seasons in a U.S. minor league.

Szabados starred for Canada on the international stage both at the under-22 and senior levels, backstopping the national women’s team to Olympic gold in 2010 and 2014, and a world championship in 2014. She played two seasons of women’s professional hockey in Buffalo from 2018-20.

On two occasions, Szabados was the subject of media and social-media campaigns urging the Oilers to sign Szabados to an emergency contract when the NHL team found themselves short a netminder. On both occasions, the Oilers opted to bring in male university goalies as temporary game back-ups.

Peace River native Kelly Kisio, 64, a former NHLer, one-time WHL star with the Calgary Wranglers and former long-time GM of the Calgary Hitmen, and former Flames and Canadian men’s hockey coach Dave King also have been named to the hall.
The ’00-01 Rebels won the Memorial Cup that season after posting the best record in major junior hockey. They won the deciding game in the Mem Cup, held in Regina that year, in a come-from-behind overtime victory over the Quebec league’s Val-d’Or Foreurs.

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