Joe Nieuwendyk

A profile of the rookie centre who walked into the Saddledome in 1987, scored 51 goals as a sophomore, won a Stanley Cup, and left in one of the most controversial trades in Calgary Flames history.

You have to start with the rookie year. Joe Nieuwendyk played five games at the end of the 1986-87 season after his Cornell year ended, scored five goals, and that was the warning. The next October he came back as a 21-year-old rookie and proceeded to score 51 goals in his first full NHL season. Fifty-one. He won the Calder Trophy, then scored 51 again the next year, and then he won a Stanley Cup.

The Saddledome had been open four years when Nieuwendyk arrived. The Flames had moved out of the Corral and into the new building in 1983, lost a Cup final to Montreal in 1986, and were assembling the team that would win it all. Nieuwendyk became the missing piece. Lanny McDonald was at the end. Hakan Loob was in the prime. Al MacInnis was a force on the blue line. Mike Vernon was about to become the goalie that won a Cup. Into all of that walked a tall thin centre from Oshawa via Cornell with one of the most accurate wrist shots anyone had seen in a decade.

The 51-goal seasons

Two years in a row, 1987-88 and 1988-89, Nieuwendyk scored 51 goals. He was the third player in NHL history to do that as a rookie and a sophomore. The closest comparable was Mike Bossy. The other 51-goal season came in the Stanley Cup year, when the Flames had four 50-goal seasons on one team, which was its own kind of milestone.

What made Nieuwendyk different was not the volume but the type. He was not a power forward, he was not particularly fast, and he was not a slap-shooter. He scored from the high slot with his wrists, off rebounds, on the power play with his deflections, and on point-blank scrambles. He had what people in the press box called soft hands and what people on the bench called the right read. He always seemed to be where the puck ended up, two seconds before it ended up there.

The 1989 Cup

Game 6 against Montreal at the Forum, May 25, 1989. Lanny McDonald scored the goal that put the Flames ahead. Doug Gilmour scored the empty-netter that sealed it. Nieuwendyk had 4 goals and 5 assists in the final, and it is fair to say he was the best Flames forward in that series outside of Gilmour. The Cup came back to Calgary, the city had its parade down Macleod Trail, and the Saddledome had its banner.

Nieuwendyk was 22 years old and had a Stanley Cup ring, two 51-goal seasons, and a Calder Trophy. The trajectory was Mark Messier territory. Then the trajectory bent.

The injuries and the holdouts

The 1990s for Nieuwendyk in Calgary were complicated. He was still a star, still scored 30 to 45 goals most years, but the Flames roster turned over fast after 1989 and the playoff results stopped following. Then there were the contract disputes. Hockey in the early 1990s was changing, players were getting paid for the first time at scales that match what they were earning the team, and Nieuwendyk was at the front of that conversation in Calgary.

The 1995-96 season was the breaking point. He held out through the start of the season. The Flames had a first-overall draft pick named Jarome Iginla in their pocket from the Wendel Clark trade. They could afford to make a move.

The Iginla trade

December 19, 1995. The Flames traded Joe Nieuwendyk to the Dallas Stars for Jarome Iginla and Corey Millen.

It is one of the most consequential trades in Flames history and it has been argued about for thirty years. Iginla turned into the greatest Flame of the post-Cup era, the captain who became the franchise. Nieuwendyk went on to win two more Stanley Cups (Dallas in 1999, New Jersey in 2003) and a Conn Smythe. Both teams arguably won the trade. Both teams certainly got what they needed.

For Calgary, the trade meant losing the centre who had been the face of the post-Cup years. For Nieuwendyk, it meant getting out of the rebuilding situation and joining a team that was about to peak. The Saddledome went quiet on Nieuwendyk for a few years. Then Iginla started scoring 50 goals and the conversation shifted.

The legacy

Joe Nieuwendyk played 1,257 games in the NHL, scored 564 goals, and won three Stanley Cups with three different teams. Only six other players in NHL history have done that. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2011.

His Flames number, 25, has not been retired but it is in the rafters at the Saddledome in the Forever a Flame ring. He had his number raised in November 2014. He has been general manager of the Stars and the Maple Leafs since retiring as a player.

Watching old footage

If you go back and watch the 1989 final on YouTube, watch Nieuwendyk on the second power-play unit. Watch where he sets up. Watch how he reads the breakouts. The footage is grainy, the camera angles are 1980s wide, but you can see the read he had on the puck. He was always two seconds ahead. That is what made the 51-goal seasons happen, and that is what made him a Hall of Famer.

Saddledome connections

For more on the era Nieuwendyk played in, see the 1989 Stanley Cup page, the Lanny McDonald page, the Al MacInnis page, the Mike Vernon page, and the page on the player he was traded for.