Height: 5-11
Weight: 190
Shoot: L
Born: 28 Sep 1948, Sherridan MB
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Regular Season & Playoff Scoring Record (key)
| year | team | |||||||||||
| 1972-73 | New York | |||||||||||
| 1973-74 | New York-Jersey | |||||||||||
| 1974-75 | San Diego | |||||||||||
| 1975-76 | San Diego | |||||||||||
| 1976-77 | Edmonton | |||||||||||
| Indianapolis | ||||||||||||
| Totals (2 teams) | ||||||||||||
| Totals: |
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"Peako" Sailing on Raider Wing • by Larry Bortstein • The Hockey Spectator • December 15, 1972
Gene Peacosh was growing accustomed to setting his pro hockey sights low. All he wanted to do, really, was play long enough to pay for his home in British Columbia. Of course, playing for the Johnstown Jets in the Eastern League, that was going to take a while. "But it wasn't really too bad," says the tall 24-year-old left winger. "It was only a 21-week season and the people in Johnstown treated me good. I was making $200 a week, and then I could go back to Summerland, B.C., and help my father with his plumbing and heating business. That's where my house is, too." Dad Peacosh, your boy Gene will be a little late getting back to the plumbing business this year. He's been one of Coach Camille Henry's most pleasant surprises inthe New York Raiders' drive for the top of the World Hockey Association's Eastern Division. Gene, known as "Peako" around Madison Square Garden these days, has taken over as the regular left winger on the Bobby Sheehan-Norm Ferguson line. While he hasn't attracted the ink or the "celebrity" of his linemates, Peacosh has played steady, except for one recent three-game stretch, albeit unspectacular hockey. "The guys like to have him on their line, because all his passes are right on their sticks and easy to handle," says Henry. "Gene's not a fast skater, but he works like hell. He didn't look like much in camp, but he got a shot at playing and he's doing very well." Peacosh always has been a notoriously slow starter. Even during the last four seasons in Johnstown, where he was one of the EHL's all-time goalmakers, he didn't hit his stride until some weeks had passed. With Johnstown since the 1968-69 campaign, Gene scored 187 goals, a tick short of 47 goals per year, and never tallied fewer than 43. He had 426 points and 294 games over that span, playing center and right wing as well as left wing. A native of Sherridan, Manitoba, whose family moved to Canada's Pacific Coast 11 years ago, Peacosh had several shots at hockey's big time the past few years. He went to camp with the Detroit Red Wings twice, with the Buffalo Sabres once, and last year with Denver of the Western League. Asked if his slow starts at those camps ultimately landed him back in Jamestown each year, Gene replied: "You can't get a fast start or any start, if you don't get ice time. I don't think those clubs ever really intended to use me. They concentrated on guys they had money tied up in." The 5-11, 175-pounder was biding time on the Raider bench in the early weeks of this season, As usual, he had not had an impressive training or exhibition schedule. Then, in mid-November, Gene was placed on a line with Sheehan and Ferguson and responded with six goals and 10 points over one three-game span, He scored two goals in each game, losses to New England and Quebec, and a 7-1 victory over the Nordiques. Since then, he's operated at nearly a point-per-game pace. Softspoken off the ice, Gene never has been known as a hitter in hockey. "They tried me as a centerman when came here," he recalls. "But they had a lot of other centers, and I wasn't as good as some others guys at going into the corners for the puck, That's not my game." Until he was hit with a five-minute penalty for fighting in the third period of New York's 5-2 home victory over the Minnesota Fighting Saints November 30, Peacosh had not been tagged with a single penalty all season. His Minnesota combatant was Dick Paradise, one of the league's most penalized scrappers and a former Eastern League teammate of Gene's at Johnstown. "I went after the puck, but I hit his arm by accident and he went after me," Peacosh said apologetically, recalling the incident with Paradise, which also cost the Saints five penalty minutes. In 1965-66, Gene played with the Edmonton Oil Kings, Alberta's top junior team, where he was a teammate of third string Raider goalie Ian Wilkie. At the end of that season, Edmonton defeated a team from Oshawa that featureda kid named Bobby Orr. "I had nothing to do with it," recalls Peacosh, "I didn't play." Now he is. |
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Excerpts from Zander Hollander's Guide to Pro Hockey, 1975-76 (by Reyn Davis)
Rarely noticed until something happens... Figured 10th among WHA goal scorers in 1974-75 with 43... Has keen anticipation of as events unfold around a net... Skating is not his strong suit, but he gets by through hard work... Uses his body to good effect... Fired 12 power-play goals, matching Andre Lacroix, but one behind the club leader, Wayne Rivers... Like most of the Mariners, his output rose as the franchise finally enjoyed a degree of stability. |
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