Dino Ciccarelli will be the lone former NHL player inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2010
Dino Ciccarelli played 19 seasons in the National Hockey League, amassing 608 goals and 592 assists during his career. On Monday 8 November he will be given the ultimate honour for a hockey
player, when he is inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Ciccarelli, in his ninth year of Hall of Fame eligibility, will be the only former NHL player to enter the Hall this year. Female players Angela James and Cammi Granato will join Ciccarelli
in the Hall’s Player category.
Ciccarelli was known for scoring what some would consider “garbage goals,” goals scored by standing in front of the net. Ciccarelli said, “I used to get asked how many pucks I actually
shot into the net instead of tipping them or have them go in off my leg or a*s. I don’t know, but wherever I went, I was able to score.”
Ciccarelli got his start playing junior hockey for the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League. In four years with the Knights he played in 226 games, scoring 169 goals and adding
177 assists. Every NHL team passed on the scoring phenom due to concerns over his size, Ciccarelli stands 5'10". He also suffered a broken leg at age 16.
The Minnesota North Stars took a chance on the feisty Ciccarelli and signed him to a two-way contract as an undrafted free agent in September 1979. The contract gave him $18,000 for his
play in the Central Hockey League and $50,000 if he made the North Stars roster.
Ciccarelli spent parts of two seasons with the Oklahoma City Stars of the CHL before he joined the North Stars during the 1981 season. Ciccarelli scored 30 points in 32 games for the NHL
hockey club. In the play-offs that year Ciccarelli put up impressive numbers for a rookie, scoring 14 goals in 19 games. The North Stars would make it to the Stanley Cup final that season, losing in five games to the New York Islanders.
His rookie season was a precursor to what Ciccarelli would deliver in his second year in the NHL, scoring a franchise record 55 goals for the North Stars, and helping the team secure its
first division title.
Ciccarelli would play nine seasons in Minnesota before being traded to the Washington Capitals with Bob Rouse for Larry Murphy and Mike Gartner in 1989. Murphy and Gartner are also enshrined
in the Hall of Fame.
Ciccarelli would play parts of two seasons for the Capitals before being moved to the Detroit Red Wings in 1992 in exchange for Kevin Miller.
The Red Wings would make it to the Stanley Cup final in 1995, but Ciccarelli again tasted defeat as his team was swept by the New Jersey Devils in four games that spring. Ciccarelli would
not make it back to the Stanley Cup finals again.
In August of 1996 Ciccarelli was traded to the Tampa Bay Lightning and he played parts of two seasons for them before being moved to the Florida Panthers in January 1998. At the end of
the 1999 season, the Florida Panthers released Ciccarelli and he subsequently announced his retirement on 31 August 1999.
When Ciccarelli walks into the Hockey Hall of Fame for his induction, it will be the first time he will have entered the Toronto landmark. "People ask me what it's like at the Hall of
Fame and I tell them I don't know," said Ciccarelli. "I wanted my first time to be when I made it in. It became kind of a jinx, like when players won't touch the Stanley Cup before they win it."
Ciccarelli’s 608 goals ranks him as the number 17 goal scorer in NHL history, quite the accomplishment for a player that was never drafted by a NHL team.
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