Guys who never should have played a single game

[VMBM]

Jarkko Ruutu

But seriously, not a fan of his type of player.

 

[ICM1970]

Ernie Hicke should have never played.

The Seals may have landed Guy Lafleur if they didn't exchange 1st rounders with Montreal for Ernie.

Ernie Hicke was that fairly decent, steady player that unfortunately got associated with that trade for the first round pick from Oakland that Montreal used to select Guy Lafleur. His numbers certainly were not superstar quality, but probably bespeaks of that solid, decent player that probably would not have moved too far ahead had he stayed in the Montreal organization and it was likely that good thing for Oakland, NY Islanders, Minnesota, Atlanta, and Los Angeles to have his services. It is likely Guy probably would have stayed 2-3 seasons tops with the Seals and joined their other decent to very good players like Bobby Sheehan, Norm Ferguson, Wayne Carleton, and others who went to the WHA to get away from owner Charlie Finley's eccentric and penny pinching ways as Seals owner. Guy was already on speaking terms with the Quebec Nordiques when he was with Montreal in about 1973-74, so it would not have taken too much to pry him away as Finley's ways and being far away in the Bay Area would have made going back to Quebec City that much more appealing.

 

[brachyrynchos]

Towards the end of the '83-84 season, some of those Penguins looked questionable. Masterful tank job.

 

[Booba]

Milan Kytnar

Ryan O’Marra came down sick Wednesday morning, leaving Edmonton with just 11 forwards. Since they couldn’t get anyone here from Oklahoma City in time for the team, they had to reach down to the ECHL’s Stockton Thunder for Milan Kytnar, who’s expected to arrive in Edmonton at 5:30 for the 7 p.m. start.

Kytnar, a 190-pound winger selected 127th overall in 2007, has eight points in 14 games with Stockton.

Kytnar only played one NHL game and returned to Europe a few weeks later.

Connor Knapp

Knapp started the 2013-2014 season 6th on Buffalo's depth start (behind Miller, Enroth, Matt Hackett, Nathan Lieuwen and Andrey Makarov).

The Sabres even had a hard time finding him a spot at the ECHL level (Knapp played for 3 ECHL teams that year). However, Buffalo's goaltenders were affected by a serie of injuries and Knapp ended being called up. He even got some playing time in 2 NHL games.

 

[Michael Farkas]

And an assist! He's gotta have one of the highest points per game ratios among goalies in NHL history... @Doctor No

 

[Doctor No]

And an assist! He's gotta have one of the highest points per game ratios among goalies in NHL history... @Doctor No

Tied with Mike Greenlay (regular season only). Rest of the top five are Karl Friesen, Mike Wall, and David Goverde.

Among goalies with 50+ RS games, Darren Pang holds the crown with 0.11 PPG.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Mike Wall has got to be one of the biggest wastes of a name in hockey goalie history...come on! Steve Shields giving way to Michael Wall...a just God would have allowed that...

 

[Doctor No]

Mike Wall has got to be one of the biggest wastes of a name in hockey goalie history...come on! Steve Shields giving way to Michael Wall...a just God would have allowed that...

He should have traded names with Steve Passmore (or Ron Tugnutt).

 

[crobro]

Aribert Heim

 

[mrhockey193195]

I have no idea how Steve McKenna hung around so long. 373 NHL games. This was when the NHL would drool over you if you were big (call it the Eric Lindros syndrome) in hoping that maybe you could transform into a power forward if only, you know, you could play! McKenna was 6'8". If he was 5'11" we'd have never heard of him.

Oh god. I thought I successfully repressed this memory, but I guess not. Back in the dark ages of the Rangers (maybe 03?), we actually used McKenna on the powerplay in front of the net.

 

[JaegerDice]

Brandon Bollig

Genuinely useless player.

 

[billybudd]

Rumun Ndur. I think the idea was that his size and battle level would enable him to maybe be a Matt Carkner type or something, but he was even worse at fighting than he was at defense, though certainly not for lack of trying.

I have a vague recollection of a game he was in where he was responsible for multiple goals against and got his ass kicked twice by two guys half his size, where the announcer was like, "Well, just making it to the league could be considered a victory for this determined young man." Which was probably true.

 

[billybudd]

Oh god. I thought I successfully repressed this memory, but I guess not. Back in the dark ages of the Rangers (maybe 03?), we actually used McKenna on the powerplay in front of the net.

He was serviceable as a screen with Pittsburgh, but that's the only thing he could do.

 

[The Panther]

Towards the end of the '83-84 season, some of those Penguins looked questionable. Masterful tank job.

This is maybe the most famous 'tank job' by an NHL team. I think it deserves some investigation...

1983-84 Penguins' record: 16 - 58 - 6 (38 points), Finished 6th in NHL Patrick Division
Offense: 20th of 21 teams / Defense: 21st of 21 teams
Coach: Lou Angotti (former journeyman NHL right-winger of the 60s/early-70s, who coached a few games for St.Louis as he went into retirement; otherwise, this was the only NHL season he coached)
Captain: Randy Carlyle

Penguins' season-record in quarters:
First 20 games: 5 - 12 - 3
Games 21-40: 4 - 14 - 2
Games 41-60: 4 - 16 - 0
Games 61-80: 3 - 16 - 1

21 times in 80 games the Pens allowed 40+ shots on goal. (Twice they allowed 50 shots on goal -- and amazingly won one of them, over Vancouver 4 - 1.) Conversely, only 6 times all season did they themselves put 40 shots on goal (and they won only one of those six!).

Eighteen times they gave up 7 goals or more against! Seven times they gave up 9 goals or more against. And three times they gave up 10 goals or more against (including a 13-4 loss to 'rival' Philly late in the season). Every single time they allowed more than 5 goals against (which happened 35 times!), they lost the game. They team defence was so bad that only twice all season did they win when the opponent scored more than 3 goals.

As a sign of how bad their team defence was, their "top" goaltender, Denis Herron, posted a 4.10 GAA... yet that somehow amounts to a "goals-saved-above-average" of 13.25 (i.e., rather good!). A couple of years earlier, he'd been winning Vezina and Jennings trophies with Montreal....

The '84 Pens missed the playoffs by 55 points. Yes, 55 points...

During the season, they dressed 48 different skaters and 4 goaltenders. Nineteen different skaters played less than 20 games in the season. Of the 48 different skaters, only three who'd reached the age of 30 played at least half the season. Twenty-five skaters were 23 years old or younger. They had a rookie Marty McSorley on defence, going -37.

Part of the supposed conspiracy to tank is that the Pens brought up Vincent Tremblay to play goal in 4 games late in the season. Over the previous two seasons, he'd only played 1 NHL game, and he managed to lose all 4 games for the Pens in mid- to late-March '84 (he was first brought up to face weaker teams L.A. and Jersey), allowing a healthy 24 goals, for a tidy 6.02 GAA.

They lost the last 6 games of the season to ensure they finished in last place. The final game of the season, at home (fittingly, a loss to the Islanders), was played in front of 7,564 fans.

Here are all 21 "regulars" who dressed in 30 or more games for the Pens that season (ranked in order of number of games played)... to be sure, there are some also-rans here, but some guys have surprisingly respectable careers behind (or in front of ) them:

	Player	Age	Pos	GP ▼	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	EV	PP	SH	GW	EV	PP	SH	S	S%		OPS	DPS	PS
1	Mike Bullard	22	C	76	51	41	92	-29	57	36	15	0	0	25	16	0	213	23.9			7.0	0.5	7.5
2	Greg Hotham	27	D	76	5	25	30	-19	59	2	3	0	0	17	8	0	120	4.2			0.9	2.9	3.8
3	Pat Boutette	31	RW	73	14	26	40	-56	142	4	10	0	1	16	8	2	107	13.1			0.9	-0.2	0.7
4	Marty McSorley	20	D	72	2	7	9	-37	224	2	0	0	0	7	0	0	75	2.7			-0.7	1.8	1.1
5	Ron Flockhart	23	RW	68	27	18	45	-19	40	27	0	0	1	15	3	0	202	13.4			2.4	0.6	3.0
6	Doug Shedden	22	C	67	22	35	57	-37	20	15	6	1	1	24	11	0	160	13.8			2.9	0.2	3.0
7	Bob Errey	19	LW	65	9	13	22	-22	29	8	1	0	0	11	2	0	84	10.7			-0.4	0.5	0.1
8	Mark Taylor	26	LW	59	24	31	55	-20	24	24	0	0	1	22	9	0	107	22.4			3.2	0.5	3.7
9	Rick Kehoe	32	RW	57	18	27	45	-18	8	11	7	0	3	16	11	0	156	11.5			2.2	0.5	2.6
10	Tom Roulston	26	RW	53	11	17	28	-30	8	11	0	0	0	10	7	0	110	10.0			0.7	0.1	0.8
11	Tom O'Regan	22	C	51	4	10	14	-19	8	4	0	0	0	10	0	0	44	9.1			-0.7	0.4	-0.4
12	Andy Brickley	22	LW	50	18	20	38	-3	9	10	7	1	2	16	3	1	75	24.0			2.0	0.8	2.7
13	Randy Carlyle	27	D	50	3	23	26	-23	82	3	0	0	1	4	19	0	106	2.8			1.0	1.4	2.4
14	Greg Fox	30	D	49	2	5	7	-39	66	2	0	0	0	5	0	0	27	7.4			-0.4	0.5	0.1
15	Gary Rissling	27	LW	47	4	13	17	-8	297	3	1	0	1	11	2	0	40	10.0			-0.4	0.6	0.2
16	Rod Buskas	23	D	47	2	4	6	-15	60	1	1	0	0	3	1	0	39	5.1			-0.4	1.6	1.2
17	Bryan Maxwell	28	D	45	3	12	15	4	84	3	0	0	0	7	4	1	55	5.5			0.3	2.5	2.9
18	Denis Herron	31	G	38	0	0	0	0	21	0	0	0	0				0		2017	53:05	0.0	0.0	7.4
19	Norm Schmidt	21	D	34	6	12	18	-1	12	6	0	0	0	12	0	0	56	10.7			1.0	1.7	2.7
20	Kevin McCarthy	26	D	31	4	16	20	-32	52	4	0	0	0	10	6	0	57	7.0			1.0	-0.1	1.0
21	Michel Dion	29	G	30	0	1	1	0	2	0	0	0	0				0		1551	51:41	0.0	0.0	3.6

[TBODY] [/TBODY]
[TBODY] [/TBODY]

 

[FerrisRox]

Mel Angelstad

At least Mel Angelstad has a great one liner to go with his brief NHL career.

Mel was called up following the Capitals trade of Jaromir Jagr during a "lost season" for Washington. When the trainer asked him what number he wanted to wear, he requested #69 making him the first player in NHL history to wear the digits.

During his first face off on the ice, as he lined up for the draw, an opponent, who new Mel from his minor league days, saw what number he was wearing and burst out laughing drawing a smile from Mel. "Of course you are wearing that number, that's hilarious!" he said to Angelstad who laughed with him. "How on earth did you get them to let you wear that number?" Mel smiled and said "I just told the trainer, give me #69 because I'm a bit better than Jagr."

 

[aemoreira1981]

Joel Rechlicz---was purely a goon. 10 professional points and 1359 PIMs over 332 professional (26 NHL) games (was often an AHL healthy scratch), retired in 2017.

Trevor Gillies---was even worse than Rechlicz. He was once suspended 9 games for a dirty hit on Eric Tangradi in 2011, and then in his first game back, committed a dirty hit against Cal Clutterbuck for a 10-game suspension. He accumulated over 3300 penalty minutes over his career (815 professional games, 57 in the NHL), which only ended this year. He had a grand total of 3 assists over his final 10 professional seasons.

Stu "3 Minute Man" Bickel (in an overtime game, ice time was noted and he played just 3:24) He somehow managed to play 76 NHL games. He was active last year with the San Diego Gulls.

If I wanted to go with high busts, I'd also go with Alexandre Volchkov...no brain and a bad attitude. He saw only 3 NHL games when the Caps could have had players like Dainius Zubrus, Marco Sturm or Daniel Briere if they wanted a forward, or Derek Morris or Ruslan Salei on the blue line (all of those named played at least 917 NHL games). With his attitude, he did not deserve a callup at all.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Tanking expansion teams always had a lot of questionable guys on their teams who clearly were minor/Euro league material. Look at the Sharks in their early years..guys like Kevin Evans, Mike Colman, Rick Lessard, Peter Lappin, Mark Beaufait, Claudio Scremin. Or the Senators who had guys like Radek Hamr, Tony Cimellaro, Martin St.Amour, Kent Paynter, Darrin Madeley. Those are just the extreme examples of guys who gave fairly brief NHL cameos before disappearing again.. they had plenty more guys who were borderline but still somehow managed to play a 100+ games in the NHL.

I don't think you can hold it against them of course..most kids who start playing hockey aren't good enough to play major junior or D1 college..and only a percentage of those then get the chance to continue their career in the AHL or even a solid Euro league like the DEL..so it's not like they just had no ability..the NHL was just a reach for them.

 

[Bluesguru]

Cam Janssen. Had like 3 or 4 career goals and none of them were scored off the blade of his stick. All of them were off a body part. Worst hands I've seen at NHL level. I know he was there for fighting, but still.

 

[Langdon Alger]

Denis Hamel was a great AHL player, but wasn’t very good at the nhl level. He was stuck on the 4th line in Ottawa, but really wasn’t a 4th line kind of player. He was just better suited to be on a scoring line in the AHL.

 

[DEVILS130]

Cam Janssen was a great locker room guy and entertaining for the fans, but he was largely useless on the ice and probably never should've played in the NHL

I was at the game where he scored his first goal (one of 6 goals in 336 games) and the building exploded. It was just so astonishing...nice slapshot goal coming out of the box too

 

[aemoreira1981]

Digging further back, what about players like Sasha Lakovic and Brantt Myhres? Both were basically just goons.

 

[Hoser]

Digging further back, what about players like Sasha Lakovic and Brantt Myhres? Both were basically just goons.

Sasha Lakovic, Sami Helenius and Rocky Thompson are three of the worst players I'd ever seen.

 

[FrozenJagrt]

Can someone explain how Ryan Hollweg managed over 200 games? He did more harm to his own team every time he stepped on the ice.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Chicks, man...Hollweg could wheel...

 

[Filthy Dangles]

John Scott was just a laughably bad player, probably the worst skilled player who stuck in the league for any regularity. But obviously he only had an NHL career because he was a big goon who could fight.