Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Geoff Kirbyson's recently published book titled Broken Ribs & Popcorn, which chronicles the first incarnation of the NHL's Winnipeg Jets in the 1980s. The author calls them "the best team in the NHL's most offensive era to not win the Stanley Cup." The Jets played in the league's dominant Smythe Division, which produced the Stanley Cup winner six times during that decade and the runner-up twice. The shining star on those Winnipeg teams was the late Dale Hawerchuk, who was the longtime coach of the OHL's Barrie Colts until his death from stomach cancer in August 2020. Kirbyson was able to speak to Hawerchuk at length two years ago about his years with the Jets. Broken Ribs & Popcorn is dedicated to him. For more information on the book, click here.
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Drafting Dale Hawerchuk with the first-overall pick in the 1981 draft was a franchise-changer for the Winnipeg Jets and the team’s owner had no problem pulling out all the stops for his introduction to the city’s hockey faithful.
The plan was for the 18-year-old to arrive at Portage and Main to sign his first contract with the Jets — just like Bobby Hull had done nine years earlier — but unlike the Golden Jet, Hawerchuk pulled up to sign his five-year, $800,000 deal in an armoured Brinks truck and emerged flanked by two models.
Welcome to Winnipeg, kid. It’s like this here all the time.
Barry Shenkarow said shutting down the city’s most famous intersection required a fair amount of leg work, including contacting the mayor.
“This is going to be a big deal, a happening. You make the right phone calls and get the right people and it happens,” he said.
“We really believed that Hawerchuk was going to be the rock of the team. He was 18 years old, but we also wanted to impress him. He was coming to Winnipeg; he wasn’t coming to Toronto or New York. (We wanted to say), ‘the whole city is going to love you.’”
Thousands of fans flooded downtown to watch the contract signing with general manager John Ferguson and the love-in was on.
There was even a song about him hitting the local airwaves — I Just Want to Play Hockey — by Juno award-winning singer Joey Gregorash.
(That wasn’t Hawerchuk’s only musical connection. About 20 years later, Quebec alternative rock singer Sylvain Seguin needed a band name in order to perform at a music festival in Lac Saint-Jean. He found a Dale Hawerchuk hockey card in his car shortly after and Les Dales Hawerchuk were born. Hawerchuk gave them permission to use his name on one condition — that they stay out of jail.)
The Jets earned the right to draft Hawerchuk by compiling one of the worst records in NHL history the previous season — 9-57-14 — for 32 points, a whopping 24 points behind the second-worst club, the Detroit “Dead” Wings. The low point was a 30-game winless streak, which not only cost coach Tom McVie his job, but ensured the Jets would remain in the NHL record books for, well, ever.
Hawerchuk and fellow rookies Paul MacLean and Thomas Steen wasted little time in showing that their revamped lineup was going to chart a new path.
In just his second NHL game, Hawerchuk scored the first goal of his career against Steve Baker in an 8-3 drubbing of the New York Rangers on home ice.
“I’ll never forget it,” he said after the game. “I had just got on the ice. Moe (Mantha) gave me a pass off the boards. I went wide on (Carol) Vadnais. I faked a shot. He went down. I slowed up, then went inside. The goalie was still to one side, giving me a little room. I think my shot touched him as it was going in.”
He added one more goal and assisted on two others, falling one point shy of tying the team record for points in a game. Not bad considering he’d been a pro hockey player for all of a month.
Then the Jets went into Calgary and Edmonton and pulled off the rare “Alberta double” defeating the Oilers 4-2 and the Flames 5-4.
The season was just 10 days old but so full of promise.
It wasn’t all days of wine and roses — a 15-2 shellacking at the hands of the Minnesota North Stars on Nov. 11, dubbed the Remembrance Day Massacre, comes to mind — but even that had a silver lining.
General manager John Ferguson, following a post-game debrief in a local tavern with coach Tom Watt, called up his old friend Serge Savard, whom he had picked up on waivers a few weeks earlier after the Montreal Canadiens had forgotten to file his retirement papers with the league. He told the eight-time Stanley Cup winning defenseman that he needed him to help settle his young team down.
Savard turned to his wife, Paulette, who could hear the conversation even though she was half-asleep in bed.
“I’ll be ready in 24 hours,” she said.
The Savards arrived in Winnipeg shortly after and it didn’t take long for Savard to recognize the skill that the Jets had up front, particularly Hawerchuk.
“I’m sure he was the best thing after Gretzky. He lacked speed a little bit but what a skilled player he was. Nobody had hands like him,” he said.
The Savards bought a house down the street from Hawerchuk and fellow rookie Scott Arniel. The two teenagers ate dinner at the Savard house two or three times a week. Paulette made fantastic pasta dinners while Savard introduced them to red wine.
“We didn’t have a clue we were drinking $50 or $60 bottles. We were drinking it like it was Coke,” Arniel said.
When the regular season wrapped up, the Jets had 33 wins and 80 points, a 48-point improvement from the previous year, the good kind of NHL record and another that will never be broken.
The Jets finished second in the Norris Division and faced the St. Louis Blues in their first-ever playoff series.
Hawerchuk, however, had come down with the flu at the end of the season and had to be quarantined from his teammates.
“It wasn’t fun. I had the flu real bad,” Hawerchuk said. “They didn’t even let me stay with the team.
"We roomed at the Viscount Gort for our home games and they wouldn’t even let me go to the hotel. I was at home,” he said, noting he also lost a considerable amount of weight and was down below 160 pounds.
The Jets lost the best-of-five series in four games, but Hawerchuk wasn’t done. He was selected to Team Canada’s roster for the world championships, where they won a bronze medal.
After becoming the highest-scoring teenager in NHL history with 45 goals and 58 assists for 103 points, Hawerchuk was awarded the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie.
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