Height: 6-1
Weight: 180
Shoot: R
Born: 21 Sep 1949, Medicine Hat AB
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Regular Season & Playoff Scoring Record (key)
| year | team | |||||||||||
| 1972-73 | Chicago | |||||||||||
| Totals: |
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Knibbs Finds Cougars Groove • by Reid Grosky • The Hockey Spectator • January 5, 1973
Darrel Knibbs found it difficult at first to get in the groove with the Chicago Cougars. But the team feels that once he does, he will have an effect similar to that of Bob Hayes on a football field. Knibbs is a real speedster, both on ice and on land. He is a .300-hitting shortstop in an intermediate baseball league in Alberta during the off-season, and at 6-1, 185 pounds, he has size to go along with the speed. The Montreal Canadiens saw he had the hockey skill to go with the size and the speed. The Canadiens drafted Knibbs 5th in 1969, and the Habs rarely make a mistake with a high draft pick. Knibbs, however, feels they made a mistake after they drafted him. "They've got so many players, you're just a number," says the Cougar right winger. "I went to training camp with them and was sent to Muskegon in the International League. I played the first year in Muskegon as a pro (under new rules, no prosare allowed in the International League). The next year I went to training camp and got the same thing — never saw any ice time — and went back to Muskegon and won the scoring that year." Knibbs' 93 points earned him another "tryout" with the Canadiens and another trip back to Muskegon. "When the World Hockey Association was formed," says the 23-year-old Knibbs, "there was just no way I was going to turn it down." The Cougars, of course, are glad he didn't. Knibbs has been given a shot at permanent right wing on a line centered by Bobby Whitlock and flanked on the other side by Bob Liddington. This is Chicago's speed line and, as Knibbs says, "If I'm not skating I really can't do any of the things that are ayailable." Knibbs admits that confidence was a problem until he scored his first goal in a game against New England. "When you score the first one, everything — all the pressure — is lifted off you," he said. Knibbs is skating more freely now, showing the speed that impressed the Canadiens and is likely to impress the WHA before the season is through. |
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