Dream now a reality for Roenick Never in a million years. In Jeremy Roenick's eyes, he has defied the odds. Although he was a good high-school player at Thayer Academy -- playing on a line with Tony Amonte and now-attorney Danny Green -- Roenick never envisioned his NHL success. He feared then that his inability to put on weight would keep him from playing in the NHL. "Never in my wildest dreams as a young, small kid growing up in New England did I ever imagine that I would have this kind of career," he said. "Or, that I would wind up on the all-time goal scoring, assists and total points list or that I would be among the top 20 active goal scorers. My career has far exceeded my expectations." Roenick is a Massachusetts partisan. He knows the Bay Staters that preceded him and he's well aware that Massachusetts is the second-leading producer of NHL players, behind only the entire country of Canada. It was right there in Boston that he found the player that he emulated as a teenager. "We like to call Massachusetts the USA hotbed of hockey," Roenick said. "When I was a kid, I loved to watch Rick Middleton skate and handle the puck, especially the way he made plays. I'd like to say I copied a lot of my game off the way Rick Middleton played. Like his nickname said, he was 'Nifty.'"
"Not a lot of people know this, but my first year in the League I weighed less than 160 pounds. I could eat a bag of rocks and not gain a pound. It wasn't until my late 20s that I started bulking up and adding some girth," Roenick said. "At the Draft in Montreal that year, I was very small and they had me going to all these meetings for interviews with team and League officials. I told them a little white lie about my weight and then did everything I could to avoid getting on a scale. I wanted to let my talent do the deciding rather than have a decision made based on my size." The Blackhawks, who selected Roenick eighth overall, put Roenick right into their lineup, but after three games opted to send him to the Hull Olympiques of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. He played 17 more NHL games later that season. "That was interesting because I spent a month in the NHL playing with the Blackhawks so I got a bit of an initiation," Roenick said. "I don't want to say it was a relief (getting sent down) but I was playing against kids my own age and I was a little bit more talented. I guess you could say that because of where I was drafted. I was a little bit in awe living in a non-English speaking community, but I lived with a fantastic French family, the Cadieux. I really enjoyed my time there. It was a great experience." The Blackhawks were coming off three straight losing seasons when Roenick joined them for the full 1989-90 season, although they had lost the 1989 Campbell Conference Finals to the eventual Stanley Cup-winning Calgary Flames. Roenick was with the Blackhawks for the playoffs that season and had a goal and three assists in 10 playoff games. With Roenick in the 1989-90 lineup, the Blackhawks won 41 games, 14 more than the previous year, and finished first in the Norris Division, as they would in two of the next three seasons.
After finishing first in the Norris Division twice, the Blackhawks slipped to second in 1991-92 but blossomed in the playoffs. After going down two games to one to St. Louis in the first round, the Blackhawks won 11 straight games, including sweeps of the Red Wings and Oilers. Roenick's overtime goal in Game 3 against the Oilers was a turning point in that series. He would finish the playoffs with 10 goals and 12 assists. The Blackhawks took a three-goal lead against the defending champion Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals, but surrendered the lead and were swept in four games, three decided by one goal. "There's no question that getting to the Stanley Cup Finals is one of the high points of my career but to get that far and fall short of your goal was not a pleasant experience," Roenick said. "I learned a lot from it. Obviously, I would change the outcome, if I could." Roenick had the first of his two 50-plus goals seasons in 1991-92 when he scored 53 goals and added 50 assists to lead the Blackhawks. He had 50 goals and 57 assists the next year for his career-high 107 points. He had a career high 61 assists in 1993-94 when he added 46 goals to equal his high of 107 points. Roenick led the Blackhawks in goals for the fourth time in 1995-96, but for the second-straight season he missed more than a dozen games at season's end due to a leg injury. Roenick and the Blackhawks couldn't come to an agreement on a contract, so they traded him to the Phoenix Coyotes on Aug. 16, 1996 for Alexei Zhamnov, Craig Mills and Phoenix's first pick in the 1997 NHL Entry Draft. In his five seasons with the Coyotes, Roenick was three times leading scorer and twice runner-up to linemate Keith Tkachuk.
Roenick loved Phoenix more than he ever dreamed he would. He built a beautiful home and continues to reside there in the off-season. Roenick loves to play golf around Phoenix, where you never get rained out. "Oh my God, I love Phoenix," Roenick said "I still have my home there and I plan to retire there. That's a place that will always be special to me because I made a lot of good friends." Roenick participates in many charity golf tournaments and is almost always the overwhelming favorite to win the long-drive competition. His 388-yard drive won one such contest. "I can bang the ball pretty good," Roenick admitted. "I've never had one measured over 400 yards, but I've come close." The Coyotes were going through an ownership change that dictated a budget cut, just as Roenick became eligible for free agency. He had hoped to stay with the Coyotes. "Everybody was telling me I would be signed and I would be with the team," Roenick recalled. "So, that's how I looked at it: 'They'll sign me and everything will be fine,' but then they said they couldn't afford what I was asking for." Instead, the Flyers signed Roenick and quickly discovered they had a live wire on their hands. Their staid press conference turned raucous and Flyers fans loved it as he hugged Flyers President Ed Snider and promised a Stanley Cup. They learned Roenick was a different kind of athlete the night the Flyers-Rangers preseason game was interrupted and then terminated by President Bush's address after the Sept. 11 attacks. Roenick called the Flyers radio station postgame show to say how proud he was of the fans for demanding the speech over the resumption of the game.
Roenick said he chose the Flyers "because they have a great reputation of being a hard hockey team, a big team with a lot of talent that plays hard-nosed hockey. I love being part of a hard-nosed team. Plus, they had John LeClair, Mark Recchi and my buddy, Rick Tocchet, with whom I played in Phoenix." Roenick had a reputation for putting his offense over his defensive responsibilities but opened some eyes last season by finishing plus-32. "I sometimes think that statistic is a little overrated, but I think plus-32 says something good about my defense. It shows I must have some knowledge about how to play defense. I think I've gotten better at my defense and last year proved that I knew what I was doing. "Being an all-around player is one of the things I take the most pride in," Roenick continued. "I don't want to be known as a one-dimensional player. You have to take pride, as a professional athlete, in being a productive player and someone to be counted upon. With hard work, that's what's happened."
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