Top 100 Oilers: No. 31 — Dave Hunter

Notable

After the transition from the WHA, Hunter scored the second goal in Edmonton Oilers NHL history on October 10, 1979, against the Chicago Blackhawks. He had 12 goals and 31 points in that season, which saw a plethora of young Oilers’ superstars make their professional hockey debut, led by none other than “The Great One” himself.

He established himself as a 200-foot power forward in the ’81 playoffs when he shut down Guy Lafleur of the Canadiens. LaFleur was coming off a 70-point season in 51 games, after six straight years of scoring over 119 points, however, the emergence of Hunter’s two-way play was stymied to just one assist in the three-game sweep by the Oilers.

Hunter’s two-way checking and meat and potatoes kind of play is what got him ice time, but his presence was felt on the score sheet as well. During his ten years with the Oilers, he scored 119 goals and 290 points. No season was impacted by his scoring abilities as much as the 1983-84 season, though, where Hunter notched 22 goals and 48 points, assisting the Oilers as they finished first in the league.

That year would be the first of three Stanley Cup Championships for Hunter with the Oilers. He contributed five goals and ten points through their 17-game quest to the top, and along the way, he continued his mean play, with shining effectiveness along the boards, wearing down the opposition with his dogged forechecking and physicality. His penalty minutes had a drastic decline as well from the previous playoffs where he had 60 minutes in the box in just 16 games, in the ’84 season, he had 14 penalty minutes.

Hunter was one of the less celebrated but ever-integral pieces to the ’84-85 Oilers team that was officially acknowledged as the best team in the NHL’s history.

“It was a great privilege, and to be honest I was just fortunate to be on that team,” Hunter told Tom Gazzola of Oilers TV upon reflection of the ’84-85 Oilers squad. “I was a third and fourth liner, but we knew all our players would eventually score, and that Gretz and Coff would always come through.”

He played a total of 105 playoff games in Edmonton, contributing 16 goals and 40 points on top of his physical shut-down play style.

The Story

After electing to join the Oilers instead of the Canadiens following being selected 17th overall, Hunter became the first player in history to sign in the WHA as an NHL first-round draft pick.

His time with the Oilers was not short of success, as he played with generational players and won three cups throughout his ten seasons between the WHA and NHL. He played his best seasons here personally, and cemented himself as a legend in Oilers history, among many of his other teammates from that era.

Near the beginning of the 1987-88 season, the Oilers moved on from Hunter, Coffey, and Wayne Van Dorp, as they traded them for Dave Hannan, Chris Joseph, Moe Mantha, and Craig Simpson – who tied Jarri Kurri for 43 goals, leading the team that season – from the Pittsburgh Penguins.

“I’ll be honest, I enjoyed Edmonton,” Hunter told the Edmonton Journal in March 1988. “One of these days, I think I am going to go back, but right now you can’t do anything about it. It’s a part of hockey.”

And he did come back.

Hunter played in just one season in Pittsburgh before being transferred back to the Edmonton Oilers as compensation for Pittsburgh’s claiming Dave Hannan in the waiver draft, however, the Winnipeg Jets picked him up the same day as the Oilers had failed to protect him. With Winnipeg he played 34 games, scoring one goal and four points, but then he was reclaimed off waivers by the Oilers later that season.

Hunter’s final 32 games of his NHL occupation were spent in the city where it started, as he recorded three more goals and eight more points with the organization. His career formally wrapped up with totals of 746 games, 133 goals, and 323 points after he retired in Oct. 1989.

What Brownlee said

Hunter was smart enough to know he’d never be a big scorer at the NHL level. Of course, he didn’t have to be – not with Gretzky and all the other top-end talent the Oilers amassed in his first couple of seasons here. In his best season with the Sudbury Wolves of the OHL, Hunter managed 88 points. That came as a 20-year-old in 1977-78. For context, Bobby Smith won the OHL scoring title that season with 192 points. Gretzky had 182.

Hunter’s calling card would be that he could check opponents to distraction and play a two-way game – we call those guys 200-foot players today. Then as now, it wasn’t a very glamorous job description, but Gretzky, Mark Messier, Glenn Anderson and Jari Kurri pretty much had glamourous covered at the top of the marquee. Hunter, who scored 12 goals and had 43 points as a NHL rookie, figured that out pretty quickly. Find ‘em and grind ‘em would become his game.

Hunter established himself as a checker during the 1981 playoffs when the upstart Oilers shocked everybody by sweeping the Canadiens in three games in the first round. Hunter set his sights on Montreal kingpin Guy Lafleur, who was coming off a 70-point season (in just 51 games) after six straight years in which his worst total was 119 points. Lafleur managed just one assist in the series as Hunter and the Oilers waxed the Habs 6-3, 3-1 and 6-2.

The Last 10

• No. 41 — Mattias Ekholm
• No. 40 — Mike Krushelnyski
• No. 39 — Todd Marchant
• No. 38 — Darnell Nurse
• No. 37 — Petr Klima
• No. 36 — Joe Murphy
• No. 35 — Dwayne Roloson
• No. 34 — Taylor Hall
• No. 33 — Curtis Joseph
• No. 32 — Dave Semenko