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Top 100 Oilers: No. 97 — Dean McAmmond

Originally posted on Oilersnation | By Zach Laing | Last updated Aug 21, 2025 4:11 PM ET

Oilersnation is reviving the Top 100 Edmonton Oilers of All Time list, a project originally created by the late Robin Brownlee in 2015. Dean McAmmond comes in at No. 97 on our updated 2025 list. He was ranked No. 99 on Brownlee’s original list.

Dean McAmmond was involved in two trades of note for the Edmonton Oilers, acquiring him alongside Igor Kravchuk from the Chicago Blackhawks for Joe Murphy in February 1993, sending him back six years later.

McAmmond broke into the NHL with the Oilers, playing parts of six seasons with the team, and while he was a solid part of the Oilers’ mid-to-late ’90s teams, but as Brownlee wrote in his original countdown post on him, you were always left wanting more.

Via The Nation Network

Notable

McAmmond arrived in Edmonton with much hype. One NHL GM told The Edmonton Journal’s Jim Matheson at the time the deal to acquire the forward was made that “he’s one of the best pure skaters to come out of junior hockey in the last few years.”

His longest tenure with a team in the NHL was with the Oilers, who he played six years for, racking up 61 goals and 161 points. 1997-98 was his most successful in Edmonton, drawing in for 77 regular season games, scoring 19 goals and 50 points, adding a goal and five points in 12 playoff games. He was second to only Doug Weight in team scoring that year.

Part of what ailed McAmmond during his time in Edmonton was the fact the team wasn’t very good. And as a result, like many Oilers later had to deal with during the Decade of Darkness, McAmmond had multiple coaches — Ted Green, Glen Sather, George Burnett and Ron Low — over the course of those six seasons.

After being acquired from the Blackhawks, he was sent back in a big deadline roster shakeup for both teams, alongside Boris Mironov and 1997 fourth-round pick Jonas Elofsson for Daniel Cleary, Chad Kilger, Christian Laflamme and future captain Ethan Moreau.

Via The Nation Network

The Story

McAmmond was ultimately left disappointed by his time in Edmonton, admitting “I feel like maybe I didn’t do a good enough job when I was here and whatnot.”

“Maybe I wasn’t, you know, what they thought I was going to be, or whatever.”

It was a tough exit for McAmmond, though he would go on to carve out a long, 996 game, 17 year career as an NHL’er, that included stops with the Philadelphia Flyers, Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche, St. Louis Blues, Ottawa Senators, New York Islanders and New Jersey Devils.

He retired after the 2009-10 season and has had a few coaching stops since, having spent a year each as an assistant coach and head coach of the KIJHL’s North Okanagan Knights in 2018-19 and 2019-20, and was hired this January as an assistant coach of the BCHL’s Vernon Vipers.

Oilers trade Dean McAmmond, Jonas Elofsson and Boris Mironov to the Chicago Blackhawks for Daniel Cleary, Chad Kilger, Christian Laflamme and Ethan Moreau

What Brownlee said

“Anybody who plays almost 1,000 games in the NHL, as Dean McAmmond did, can’t be labelled a disappointment. For me, though, McAmmond, who played 303 regular season games with the Edmonton Oilers, was one of those players who leaves you wanting more.

McAmmond, drafted 22nd overall by the Chicago Blackhawks in 1991, was a wonderful skater. He had nice hands. He could play centre or wing. All in all, McAmmond had a good NHL career with 448 points in 996 regular season games, including 161 points with the Oilers. Not bad. Just not as much as I expected.”