Height: 5-9
Weight: 160
Shoot: L
Born: 2 Dec 1933, Wetaskiwin AB
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Regular Season & Playoff Scoring Record (key)
| year | team | |||||||||||
| 1972-73 | Alberta | |||||||||||
| 1973-74 | Edmonton | |||||||||||
| Totals: |
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Val Bridges Generation Gap • by Terry Jones • The Hockey Spectator • February 9, 1973
When Val Fonteyne broke into professional hockey, the current crop of professional hockey rookies had just been born. Teammate Ken Baird was three while Steve Carlisle and Bob McAneeley had just turned four. Fonteyne entered his 39th season of life midway through the Alberta Oilers first season. He's more than just your average run-of-the-mill old pro holding on to a job to milk a few dollars out of the game, now that they pay real money to play. Fonteyne is doing the job. He's the George Blanda of pro hockey. The difference is that Fonteyne makes his money with both legs. And the legs are still there. The minute they, go Val Fonteyne goes. It's a fact of life he is prepared to live with. Fonteyne, at 5-9 and 155 pounds, isn't about to be converted into a defenseman. Fonteyne figures he owes his 19-year pro career, 13 of them in the National Hockey League, to his skating ability. "I could skate with just about anybody in the NHL," he said. "So I usually was given the job of checking some of the big guns. One year I was playing at Detroit with Gordie Howe and got traded to New York where the first thing they wanted me to do was go out and check Howe. It's always tough checking fellows like Bobby Hull, but I guess Howe was the toughest assignment I ever had. He was speaking of the Howe of hockey players knew as a crafty professional who discouraged such such shadowing by slipping an elbow here, a part of the stick there, and using the dozen of other undetectable tricks he had up his sizable sleeve. "That was Gordie's style," said Fonteyne, "and that is part of the reason he was so successful; you didn't want to go near him." Fonteyne is, of course, the Alberta Oilers' official Bobby Hull shadow. It's not a glory job, but Fonteyne does it so well that Bobby Hull has scored only one goal against the Oilers all season. Fonteyne wasn't on the ice at the time. "Val isn't a clutch and grabber," said Oiler coach Ray Kinasewich. "Val doesn't resort to anything really dirty. I think Bobby will agree." Although a penalty killing and shadowing specialist, Fonteyne still managed to score 69 goals and added 141 assists in the National Hockey League. Despite his frail looking frame, Fonteyne something of an Iron Man. It takes more than a little pain to keep him out of the lineup. Only six Oilers haven't missed a game all season. Fonteyne is one. In his first 44 games he had scored seven goals and contributed 16 assists. When Bill Hunter lured Fonteyne to the Oilers from Pittsburgh of the NHL, it wasn't with the intention that he should become simply a checker. Hunter wanted points, and he was convinced Fonteyne could produce. Hunter had Fonteyne as his captain in his junior hockey days in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Kinasewich agrees. "I played with Fonteyne at Seattle and he filled the net," declared the coach. "I reminded Val of those days and told him he should concentrate more on scoring again." At Seattle he scored 34 goals and 75 points one year and 32 goals in 81 points the next. Val shrugs those years off. "I played on a line with Kinasewich and Guyle Fielder. You had to score goals with Fielder at center. This year I plan to think more offensively but mostly my concern was to fit in with the team and help the younger guys where I can." With Val Fonteyne and the younger Oilers there is no generation gap. |
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