Top 100 Oilers: No. 54 — Jeff Beukeboom

Notable

Drafted from the Soo Greyhounds in 1982-83, Beukeboom played three seasons in the OHL, ending his junior career with a league title in 84-85 on a great Greyhounds team. That Soo team went undefeated on home ice that year, earning a Memorial Cup bid. 

After one of the best drafting runs in NHL history, the 1983 draft was the last where the Oilers would get multiple pieces for later Stanley Cup teams, as Esa Tikkanen was taken later in the fourth round. 

As a prospect, Beukeboom’s size was attractive. Standing 6’5”, 215lbs, he was an imposing force that Glen Sather believed would only help the blueline. 

He got a brief taste of a playoff game in 1985-86, and would stick around the Oilers until 1991-92 where he was traded as part of the exodus to the New York Rangers. Although a separate trade, it really completed the Mark Messier swap. 

He’d play eight more seasons with the Rangers, became a depth pillar on the 1994 Stanley Cup team, but was forced to retire at age 33. 

The Story

Beukeboom played the game heavy and hard, giving and taking as good as he got. 

In 1987-88, he enjoyed his best individual season in a career high 73 games. He scored five goals and 25 points, while accumulating 201 penalty minutes. But he would also miss portions of the season due to injury or as a scratch. Even in that career-high year, Beukeboom only played seven playoff games. 

But he and the organization kept at it. In 1990-91, it was Beukeboom’s time to shine against the Calgary Flames in that wildly entertaining Smythe Division semi-final series. 

As Edmonton Journal writer Cam Cole put it, “He has personally turned the Mild Disagreement of Alberta [sic] into a battle, after all, by starching several of the Calgary Flames with murderous hits in the first two games of the series.” 

That included a nasty hit from behind on Gary Roberts that he didn’t feel too great about. But as he said, Roberts speared him earlier in the season, so he didn’t lose any sleep. 

“It is better to give than to receive,” he said on April 8, 1991. 

His terrific play helped the Oilers make a real go of another playoff run in 1991, defeating the Flames in seven and dispatching the Los Angeles Kings in six. But they ran out of gas in the Campbell Conference final.  

Beukeboom’s performance made him hard to keep, as he was a later piece added to complete the Mark Messier trade in November 1991. 

He is remembered fondly for his honest style of play, and he’s got the rings to show it.

What Brownlee said

Jeff Beukeboom was a throwback player, a stay-at-home defenseman who took care of his own end of the ice first and made it possible for his more skilled teammates with the Edmonton Oilers to do their jobs because he was so good at his. Beukeboom was as tough and as honest a player as you’d ever meet, quietly winning three Stanley Cups with the Oilers. It was particularly sickening, then, to see Beukeboom’s career end prematurely as the result of a stunning act of cowardice by Los Angeles Kings thug Matt Johnson, who attacked him from behind. At the time, Beukeboom was 33 and playing for the New York Rangers. While he’d come back briefly after the incident, Beukeboom, who’d suffered multiple concussions during his career, was forced to retire.

The Last 10

• No. 64 — Tom Gilbert
• No. 63 — Mike Grier
• No. 62 — Marty McSorley
• 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