Top 100 Oilers: No. 51 — Ethan Moreau

Notable

Born in the Central Ontario city of Huntsville, Moreau played his junior hockey with the Ontario Hockey League’s Niagara Falls Thunder (now the Erie Otters) from 1991-92 until he was traded to the Sudbury Wolves in 1994-95. With the 14th overall pick in the 1994 draft, the Chicago Blackhawks selected the winger 14th overall.

Moreau’s first professional season was mainly spent in the International Hockey League, but he made his National Hockey League debut that season, playing eight games. Moreau spent parts of the next three seasons as a regular for the Blackhawks, until he was traded alongside Christian Laflamme, Chad Kilger, and Daniel Cleary to the Oilers in exchange for Boris Mironov, Dean McAmmond, and Jonas Elofsson.

The bulk of Moreau’s career was spent with the Oilers, playing with the team from 1998-99 until the 2009-10 season. Looking to buyout the final year of his contract, the Oilers placed Moreau on waivers at the end of the 2009-10 season, where he was claimed by the Columbus Blue Jackets. In his only season there, he scored a goal and six points in 37 games.

Moreau’s final season was spent with the Los Angeles Kings in 2011-12. Over 28 games, he scored a goal and four points in 28 games, as the Kings became the first team in NHL history to win the Stanley Cup from the eighth seed. Moreau didn’t play a postseason game for the Kings, nor does he have his name engraved on the Cup, but he did receive a ring, a nice little send off.

The story

Moreau was a productive bottom-six player for the Oilers. In his first full season with the team, he scored a then-career-high 17 goals, adding 10 assists in the 73 games. He matched his career-high of 31 points in 2002-03, then scored a career-best 20 goals and 32 points in 2003-04, both were his career-highs.

After the 2004-05 lockout, Moreau helped the 2005-06 Oilers reach the Stanley Cup in a depth scoring role. During the regular season, he scored 11 goals and 27 points in 74 games, then added two goals and three points in 21 playoff games, as the Oilers were the first eighth-seeded team to reach the Stanley Cup Finals.

Moreau missed all but seven games of the 2006-07 season, then in 2007-08, was named the 12th Oilers captain since they joined the NHL. Unfortunately, he played just 25 games that season, scoring five goals and nine points. The winger’s penultimate season saw him score 14 goals and 26 points in 77 games, tied for the fourth-best goal scoring season of his career. That season, Moreau won the league’s King Clancy Memorial Trophy.

In Moreau’s final season as an Oiler, he scored nine goals and 18 points in 76 games, before the final two seasons were spent elsewhere.

What Brownlee said

If you hang around a team like the Edmonton Oilers for years and years, you come across a handful of guys who play the game with so much heart – you can call it competitiveness or desire – that it’s difficult not to admire their tenacity and sheer will to succeed. Like Kelly Buchberger, Igor Ulanov, Ryan Smyth and Jason Smith on the Oiler teams I covered, Ethan Moreau was one of those guys willing to pay a physical price every night. With players like that, the hands or the legs go and the rest of the body usually breaks down long before the heart does. At the end, the spirit is willing, but the body is not. You have to rip the jersey off their back. Moreau was a charter member of that fraternity.

The Last 10

• No. 61 — Ken Linseman
• No. 60 — Evander Kane
• No. 59 — Adam Larsson
• No. 58 — Cam Talbot
• No. 57 — Boris Mironov
• No. 56 — Mike Comrie
• No. 55 — Fernando Pisani
• No. 54 — Jeff Beukeboom
• No. 53 — Martin Gelinas
• No. 52 — Blair MacDonald