I will admit that when I was tasked with writing about Phil Housley, I was a bit intimidated. How do I write a post that is interesting and informative? Wikipedia does a great job of “talking” about Phil and I felt that I couldn’t do it justice. I spent the morning cramming my work in for my real job and taking a few minute break to do a quick writeup. I made it a promise to myself that if I can’t summarize a post about him in 5 minutes, that I would stop. I am writing a blog, not a research paper LOL.

So in 5 to 10 minutes I came up with this.

Phil is an american born hockey player. Phew, that was the easy part!
Phil once played for the Leafs! Phew, 2nd point was easy too!
Phil shares the same name as Phil Kessel? Does that count?

I decided to review his draft class and draft year. More notably, he was drafted along with former Sabre teammate, who was none other than Dave Andreychuk. I will admit that I was more impressed that both had some sort of ties to the Leafs than the Sabres. Yes I am that shallow! Blue and white forever…Wait, it gets better. Doug Gilmour was also in that draft class. I’d say it was a pretty smashing year for the draft. But it doesn’t end there.

Let’s look at remainder of his classmates, shall we?

Brian Bellows, Ron Hextall, Scott Stevens, Gary Leeman, Pat Verbeek, Kevin Dineen, Dave Ellett, Ray Ferrraro, Tony Granato. What makes this list extra special is that Scott Stevens, David Ellett, went on to be stellar defenseman over their careers along with Phil.

 Now, the best part of his draft year was that apparently, the NHL believes in reincarnation. Did you know Taylor Hall was drafted that same year only to be drafted again almost 20 years later? Oddly enough the Taylor Hall of old suffered the same fate of Doug Wickenheiser. Crashed into the then solid goal posts and wrecked his legs. He was never the same again. Mind you the Taylor Hall of old is still very much alive so that puts the reincarnation theory to bed.

Back to Phil. Phil would never win the cup over the course of his career, which spanned 23 years. In layman’s terms, that is 1495 game played amassing 1232 points. That makes his ppg average equal to .82 or just under a point per game. WOW!

That was a pretty solid career and I am glad he got a chance to put on the blue and white. It has been a long time since we had a true champion on our team. I wonder if his kids play hockey?