Bill Masterton - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

A native of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Masterton began playing hockey in Canada's far-flung junior hockey program with the St. Boniface Canadiens in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League in 1956-57. Masterton went on to play collegiate hockey at the University of Denver in 1957-58 where he would be named an All-American and help the Pioneers win three NCAA national titles in 1958, 1960 and 1961. He was signed by the Montreal Canadiens soon after he came out of the University of Denver in 1961 and would play a few years in the minors before retiring in 1963 in order to work for the Honeywell Corporation in Minneapolis, MN. In 1966 Masterton played as an amateur for the United States men's national ice hockey team and eventually became an American citizen in 1967. The Montreal Canadiens traded his rights to the Minnesota North Stars before their inaugural season in 1967-68. He scored the first goal in North Stars history on October 11, 1967.

Read more about this topic:  Bill Masterton

Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:

    Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...
    Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)

    Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
    Bible: New Testament Jesus, in John, 15:13.

    In Ulysses, James Joyce wrote, “Greater love than this ... no man hath that a man lay down his wife for his friend.”

    It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.
    Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)