On Thursday (Oct. 26), before the Edmonton Oilers take on the New York Rangers at Rogers Place, defenseman Charlie Huddy and forward Doug Weight will be enshrined in the Oilers Hall of Fame.
The Oilers Hall of Fame currently consists of 10 players (Glenn Anderson, Paul Coffey, Lee Fogolin, Grant Fuhr, Wayne Gretzky, Al Hamilton, Jari Kurri, Kevin Lowe, Mark Messier and Ryan Smyth), coach Glen Sather and broadcaster Rod Phillips.
Weight will become just the third Oilers Hall of Fame member that was not part of the team’s dynasty years (five championships between 1984 and 1990), and only one of two inducted players to not suit up for the Oilers in the Stanley Cup Final.
That might seem like an indictment of the American center, but it actually speaks to how important Weight was to this franchise. His contributions as an Oiler transcend what was not the team’s most successful period. Here are five moments that tell the story of his eight-and-a-half years in Edmonton:
Oilers Trade for Weight (3/17/93)
On March 17, 1993, just hours before they were set to play each other at Madison Square Garden, the Oilers and New York Rangers struck a deal.
The Blueshirts received Esa Tikkanen, a three-time 30-goal scorer and four-time Stanley Cup champion with the Oilers, and Edmonton acquired Weight, a 22-year-old in his second NHL regular season.
Related: Oilers’ History Isn’t Complete Without Esa Tikkanen
It was a trade made by teams going in different directions: the Rangers were chasing a championship (which Tikkanen would help them win the following year), and Edmonton was well on its way to missing the NHL playoffs for the first time, leaving Oilers general manager Glen Sather to begin a full-scale rebuild.
A report described Weight as being “clearly unhappy about the trade” (from ‘ Rangers Trade Weight For Oilers’ Tikkanen, Then Take a Loss’, The New York Times, 3/18/93). He was, after all, going from a team in win-now mode to a team facing years of growing pains ahead.
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At the moment, no one knew it, but Weight would emerge as the player to lead the Oilers through this period. He made his Oilers debut that night, helping his new teammates beat his old teammates 4-3. It was his first of 588 regular season games with the Oilers.
Weight Reaches 100 Points (3/30/96)
On March 30, 1996, the Oilers hosted the Toronto Maple Leafs at Edmonton Coliseum for one of the Oilers’ biggest games in years. After going 7-2-1 in their prior 10 games, Edmonton had lept into the playoff race, and now with seven games remaining, they trailed the Winnipeg Jets by just four points for the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference.
The Oilers wouldn’t have been anywhere near a playoff spot were it not for the season-long heroics of Weight, and their star centre delivered again on this night, with a goal and an assist.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough for the Oilers, whose playoff hopes were dealt a devasting blow with a 4-3 loss. But the night had a silver lining, as Weight recorded his 100th point of the season when he put the puck behind Leafs netminder Felix Potvin with 4:57 remaining in the second period to cut Toronto’s lead to one.
Weight finished with 104 points, comprising 25 goals and 79 assists, in what proved to be the greatest individual offensive performance over a quarter-century of NHL hockey in Edmonton: No other Oiler had a 100-point campaign in the 25 seasons spanning 1990-91 to 2015-16.
The Oilers ended the 1995-96 season 10 points behind Winnipeg for the final playoff berth. It would be the last time they missed the postseason during Weight’s Edmonton tenure.
Oilers Make Weight Their Captain (9/28/99)
After the Oilers left Kelly Buchberger, their captain of four seasons, unprotected in the 1999 NHL Expansion Draft and the veteran forward was selected by the Atlanta Thrashers, Weight was the undebatable choice for next captain.
With Buchberger’s departure, Weight was now the longest-tenured Oiler, going into his eighth season with the team, and had served the prior four seasons as an alternate captain under Buchberger. The Oilers made it official three days prior to the start of their 21st NHL season, announcing Weight as the 10th captain in the team’s NHL history on Sept. 28, 1999. His first game wearing the ‘C’ was Oct. 1, 1999, the night the Oilers raised Wayne Gretzky’s No. 99 to the rafters. He assisted on Edmonton’s lone goal in a 1-1 tie with the Rangers at Skyreach Centre.
Weight’s Epic Playoff Hat Trick (4/16/00)
It’s almost impossible to express how desperate Edmonton was for a win when the Oilers skated out before a raucous crowd at Skyreach Centre for Game 3 of the Western Conference Quarterfinal against the Dallas Stars on April 16, 2000.
The Oilers came into the game losers of nine consecutive playoff games to the Stars, a streak that included the last three games of the 1998 Western Conference Semi-Final, all four games of the 1999 Western Conference Quarterfinal, and now the first two games of this series.
Things were always close: seven of the nine games were decided by one goal, with the game-winning goal coming in the final nine minutes of regulation or in overtime. Edmonton had held Dallas to three goals or less in all nine of those games. The problem was, the Oilers hadn’t scored more than two. So their captain took matters into his own hands.
Weight, who had come under fire after posting a combined minus-4 in Games 1 and 2, had more goals in less than half a game than the Oilers had in an entire game during the streak. He opened the scoring at 8:40 of the first period and scored on the power-play late in the opening frame to give Edmonton a 3-0 lead. And he completed the hat trick just over six minutes into the second period, putting Edmonton ahead 5-1 with his third goal of the night.
It was the first playoff hat trick by an Edmonton player since 1991, and one of only two three-goal games (regular season or postseason) from Weight as an Oiler.
The incredible emotion that poured out of Weight during each goal celebration while the arena erupted showed just how much this meant to the captain, the team, and the city. Edmonton ultimately beat the Stars 5-2 in what would be its only win of the series.
Weight’s Shocking Departure (7/1/01)
The Oilers made relatively impressive strides in 2000-01, finishing the season with 39 wins and 93 points, both their highest totals since 1987-88, Gretzky’s final season in Edmonton. Weight had led the team with 90 points, the second-highest total (behind only his 104 points in 1995-96) by an Oilers player in 11 seasons.
While the Oilers had been eliminated 4-2 by Dallas in the Western Conference Quarterfinal, their roster was rich in potential, with rising young stars like Eric Brewer and Mike Comrie alongside NHL All-Stars in their prime like Janne Niinimaa and Weight.
But there was an elephant in the room. Weight was a restricted free-agent who would have commanded around $6 million to re-sign. The cash-strapped Oilers couldn’t afford their captain, so Edmonton general manager Lowe decided to trade Weight, rather than wait until the center became an unrestricted free-agent the following summer and risk losing him for nothing.
Even though they’d been through this countless times before, Oilers fans were still stunned on July 1, 2001, when Weight was sent to the St. Louis Blues in exchange for centers Jochen Hecht and Marty Reasoner and minor league defenseman Jan Horacek. Weight signed a five-year deal with the Blues worth $40 million. He had played 588 regular season games as an Oiler, tallying 157 goals and 420 assists.
On that fateful day in the Big Apple years earlier, Weight was none too thrilled about coming to Edmonton. Now he hated to leave the Oilers.
“It was pretty devastating last night. I just signed a great contract – a no-trade deal. We can go by a house, a beautiful place to live, and the first reaction from my wife and I was tears,” Weight said.
“I wanted to be back but they couldn’t offer me more than $6 million. That’s obviously a huge amount of money but they made the decision. It really blindsided me, to be honest. Now I move on” (from ‘Bittersweet Blockbuster’, The Edmonton Journal, 7/2/01).
Weight moved on, and the Oilers moved on. They met in the Stanley Cup Final in 2006 when Weight’s Carolina Hurricanes beat the Oilers in seven games. Now they come together again on Thursday. Rogers Place is where Weight wants to be, and he doesn’t have to worry about being traded out of the Oilers Hall of Fame.
