Steve Buzinski - Playing Career

Playing Career

Born in Dunblane, Saskatchewan, Buzinski was brought to Swift Current, Saskatchewan in 1938 to play goal for the senior league Swift Current Indians where they competed for Allan Cup berths in the 1940s, winning the western Canadian senior championship in 1940 and 1941, and making it to the regional finals in 1942.

Ravaged by wartime enlistments - the Rangers would, during the 1943 season, field two 17-year-olds at various points, along with several other teenagers and minor leaguers - New York's key loss entering into the season was the enlistment of regular goaltender Sugar Jim Henry. To replace him, Rangers' manager Lester Patrick hoped to obtain the services of minor-leaguer Omer Kelly, but he was fixed in a wartime manufacturing job in Baltimore. Buzinski was invited to try out for the team in training camp, and did well enough to be named the starter going into the regular season.

Behind a notably weak Rangers lineup which had only Ott Heller from its previous lineup on defense, and which spent most of the season in last place, Buzinski fared poorly, allowing 55 goals in his nine games as the team's starting goaltender. He provoked several colorful anecdotes, among which was in making his first save in a game, to the glove side, and telling Heller "Nothing like it, Ott, just like picking apples off a tree" before going on to surrender ten goals in that match.

While his worst record came in the season's first four games - in which he allowed 33 goals, including a 10-4 loss to the Montreal Canadiens on November 8, otherwise notable for surrendering Maurice Richard's first NHL goal, and a 12-5 loss to Detroit where Red Wings star Carl Liscombe set the then-NHL record for points in a game with 7 - after an 8-6 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on November 28, Rangers' management had had enough. Replaced with Jimmy Franks, Buzinski was sent to the Rangers' AHL New Haven Eagles farm team on December 3 to practice with the club, with coach Frank Boucher saying, "If they think enough of him, he will get a chance to show what he can do in a regular game." Buzinski subsequently enlisted, never playing another professional game, and after the war returned to the Swift Current Indians senior team, where he played until retiring from organized hockey in 1953.