Height: 6-0
Weight: 180
Shoot: L
Born: 8 May 1940, Edmonton AB
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Regular Season & Playoff Scoring Record (key)
| year | team | |||||||||||
| 1972-73 | Alberta | |||||||||||
| 1973-74 | Edmonton | |||||||||||
| 1974-75 | Edmonton | |||||||||||
| 1975-76 | Edmonton | |||||||||||
| Totals: |
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"Target" Joyal on Hot Streak • by Terry Jones • The Hockey Spectator • March 9, 1973
There is a target on every team in pro sports. He's the guy the fans paid money to come and raz, jeer, boo, and otherwise pelt with unpopularity. It varies little from place to place. Usually the rules are the same. It's never a player who just is not very talented. It's the main player who hasn't lived up to what the fans expected of him. The Mayor of St. Albert has been one such player. That's the nickname Ed Joyal played under as a junior hockey player with the Edmonton Oil Kings. During the first half of the World Hockey Association season, Joyal wouldn't have won an election as a dog catcher. His second-half play however has been inspired and his popularity renewed. Even though he doesn't live in St Albert, a small city on Edmonton's outskirts, Joyal has returned as the most prominent ex-citizen. He lived there through his entire pro career but moved into the city this year. In the span of less than two weeks, the much-traveled former National Hockey League journeyman scored seven goals and was the best man in that February comeback that stunned the Minnesota Fighting Saints. Joyal scored twice in the third period as the Oilers fought back in the final 10 minutes of the game to overcome a 5-0 deficit and win 7-5. He was the games first star. "It's hard to explain," he said that night. "Some seasons it seems like everything you shoot goes in the net, other seasons nothing goes in. All I did in the first half of the season was hit goal posts." Joyal is expected by the fans to score. Instead he became a checker for the first half of the season and despite the occasional wisecrack from the stands, was earning the money. In the second half, Joyal developed into an honest-to-goodness two-way hockey player, something that nobody had ever accused him of being before. Joyal has had the fan treatment before. It isn't really that bad in Edmonton, a city they expected more out of the player they once idolized as a junior. No chorus of boos or anything like that. Just a crack here and a crack there. And since the All-Star break, only a few members of his anti-fan club remained. Prior to joining the World Hockey Association club, Joyal had compiled an enviable record in pro hockey. He had scored 295 goals and picked up 348 assists. A man who has followed Joyal since he learned to raise a puck, Vancouver Canuck General Manager Bud Poile, spoke of Joyal before the season: "In my opinion, Eddie has never reached his potential. I know he's had great seasons and fantastic games but with that much natural ability he might have done more. I guess the problem is that we see Eddie score five goals in one night and make it look easy. And then we expect him to score five every night. Perhaps the most fantastic game Joyal had was with the junior Oil Kings in the 1960 Memorial Cup, the championship for the Canadian Juniors. He scored five goals in the game to set a Memorial Cup record. The Detroit Red Wings turned Joyal pro with the Western Hockey League Edmonton Flyers, coached by Poile in 1960-61. He scored 20 goals in his rookie season. The next season, Joyal scored 37 for the Flyers. When expansion arrived, Joyal was the prize draft of the Los Angeles Kings. They started calling him The Jet instead of the Mayor of St. Albert. The implication was that another Bobby Hull had arrived in California. Although Joyal scored 33 goals one season and had more than 40 points every year, owner Jack Kent Cooke and the fans wanted more. Last year he was traded to Philadelphia. "I don't believe Eddie is the sort of player it pays to put much pressure on," said coach Bill Hunter at the start of the season. "We're not going around making rash predictions for Eddie to live up to." In Edmonton, it wasn't necessary. The Mayor of St. Albert was coming home and he was expected to be great. Joyal takes the seven goals in two weeks just like he takes the occasional shots from the fans. "Hockey is a good way to earn a living," he says, "but after the first few years and the first few trades, it becomes a job." |
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