A Seattle Hockey Legend Is Gone

There was a connection between hockey legend Guyle Fielder and Seattle that never truly went away, even if it did go dormant for a time ahead of a rather surprising late life resurrection.

In fact, the final act of the longtime Seattle Totems captain this week was packing his belongings in Arizona on Monday ahead of a planned permanent move on Tuesday back up to this area to live out his remaining time with family in Sammamish. But he never made it. Fielder suffered a massive stroke at home early Tuesday morning, just hours before the planned drive to Washington and never fully regained consciousness before dying Saturday at age 95 with family at his side.

“It was all very peaceful,” said his niece, Jackie Malsam, who’d been in Arizona with her husband planning to drive Fielder back to their Sammamish residence. “We were all sitting around the table reminiscing late into the (Monday) night and he just closed his eyes like he always did when he needed to take a rest. This time, he didn’t open them back up.”

The Idaho-born, Saskatchewan-raised Fielder had been the oldest remaining former Seattle professional hockey player, a living testament to the city’s sports history in having guided the Totems to their only three Western Hockey League minor pro championships in 1959, 1967 and 1968. He retired in 1973 and remains pro hockey’s fourth all-time point getter at 2,037 behind only Wayne Gretzky, Gordie Howe and Jaromir Jagr.

The Kraken have an annual Guyle Fielder Award given out to the player that best exhibits the qualities of perseverance, hustle and dedication to hockey. Jaden Schwartz has won it the last three consecutive years while Yanni Gourde captured the first honor.

“Hockey had a rich history well before the Kraken with one of the greatest players of his era calling Seattle home,” Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke said Saturday. “Guyle Fielder not only played for Seattle for 14 seasons he brought championships to our community and was regarded as one of the finest scorers to play the game. We named a team award after Guyle for perseverance, hustle and dedication and we will forever honor this great friend and his amazing spirit and achievements.”

For Seattle sports fans of a prior era, long before the Kraken and other major pro sports franchises arrived, “Golden Guyle” was a bonafide star back when the Totems were kings. His short-lived time in the NHL, a total of 15 regular season and playoff games, had seen Fielder play alongside Detroit Red Wings Hall of Famers Howe, Alex Delvecchio, Norm Ullman and Red Kelly.

At the time, word was the Red Wings worried that Fielder’s penchant for late night pool-playing and beer might be a liability. Fielder used to bristle at such suggestions, but it later became a bit of a running gag he’d laugh at as he lived on well past his 90th birthday.

“I didn’t drink beer as much as everybody said I did,” Fielder said in one of his final interviews three months ahead of his passing. “I did play pool a little bit on the side. But I looked after myself. I kept in good shape. I played a lot of golf in the off-season, and that kept your legs in shape. And yeah, I had my beer. But certainly not as much as people were saying.”

Fielder certainly did love playing pool and still did so every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the recreation center of the Arizona retirement community where he’d recently sold his home and moved in with his longtime companion Betty Johnson. As for his physical conditioning, he was in such good shape for his age that doctors allowed him to undergo knee replacement surgery 11 months ago at age 94, making Fielder one of the oldest people in this country to ever undergo such a procedure.

It allowed him to ditch his walker and use a cane to get around, which he did in a November birthday visit to Laughlin, Nevada with Johnson.

Whether it was his late-night pool playing, a bevy of legendary Red Wings forwards, or Fielder’s slender 5-foot-9, 165-pound physique that truly limited his NHL shot, it quickly became Seattle’s gain as he enjoyed a 22-year career mostly in the WHL and 15 of those with the Totems. The WHL back then was a top minor pro circuit – right alongside the AHL – with scores of NHL-capable players unable to crack a league comprised of just six teams compared to the 32 today.

Fielder was named the WHL’s Most Valuable Player six times. He topped the 100-point mark four times and his 122 points in 1957 was a pro hockey record at the time.

His childhood friend, legendary Chicago Blackhawks goaltender Glenn Hall, once said Fielder was the player all-time NHL point-getter Gretzky most reminded him of. The pair had long remained in touch, sending each other birthday and holiday greetings. When Hall died last month at age 94, it hit Fielder particularly hard.

Fielder had a longstanding fear of flying and famously had not been on a plane since retiring from pro hockey. All his travel since was by car, which limited his ability to get around vast distances. It also kept him from visiting Seattle, Saskatchewan and other places as much over the years, though he remained close with his remaining family and friends in this area.

He’d stayed in touch with former teammates, such as Seattle-area resident Jim Powers and his onetime linemate Tommy McVie, who died 13 months ago at age 89 while still living in the Camus, WA home he’d acquired after playing for the Totems. The trio had gone up to Vancouver, B.C. together when Fieder was promoting a 2017 book about his career: “I just want to play hockey: Guyle Fielder: The Unknown Superstar” by author James Vantour.

“I went to Vancouver with him to watch Guyle sign books,” Powers said. “And then we did the same thing here in Kirkland and we met the Seattle Thunderbirds (junior team) together. Those were some good times.”

His limited trips back to Seattle from Arizona had created more than a 1,400-mile distance between Fielder and the city he’d once called home. The Totems ceased operations in 1975 and as time went on, memories of their legacy sharing the city’s sports spotlight with University of Washington football began to fade as the Seahawks and Mariners arrived soon after.

Fielder’s exploits might have remained statistical footnotes had the NHL not made plans to come to Seattle, starting roughly a decade ago with the arrival of Tim Leiweke and his Oak View Group. They announced plans to overhaul Fielder’s former Seattle Coliseum – by then named KeyArena – into what became a $1.15 billion Climate Pledge Arena centerpiece.

The book about Fielder came out a few months later as memories of what pro hockey had once meant in Seattle were starting to be rekindled. The NHL Seattle group, awarded the NHL’s 32nd franchise in December 2018, invited Fielder up in spring 2019 for a ribbon cutting ceremony in which a replica of his locker was built at the team’s season ticket preview center in Queen Anne.

Fielder, who’d spent his Totem years living – and shooting pool – in Queen Anne, was visibly moved during the ceremony, choking up and fighting back tears.

“I think as he got older, I think the recognition really started to mean something to him,” said longtime friend Doug Buchanan, 75, a former Canadian Olympic hockey team member. “In the early days, he was too busy competing. But as he got older, into his 80s, he got to his reflective stage, and it really meant a lot to him.”

Buchanan first met Fielder in his Williams Lake, B.C. hometown in the late 1960s when the Totems legend bought a home there. He and Fielder would spend time golfing, shooting pool, drinking beer and just getting to know one another despite their 20-year age gap.

“I never even saw him play,” Buchanan said. “He was just a fun guy to be around.”

Buchanan said Fielder was also the most competitive person he ever met, whether on a golf course or in a pool hall. He didn’t need to see him play hockey to understand why he’d succeeded in the sport. Or, to understand the decades spent after his retirement.

“He lived a tight, compact life without a bunch of loose ends to tie up,” he said. “It was his own life the way he wanted to do it.”

One loose end was tied up for him, when Fielder’s hockey legacy in Seattle was recognized by the Seattle Sports Commission in February 2024. It invited Fielder up to Seattle for its annual Sports Star of the Year gala, giving him its Royal Brougham Sports Legend Award.

He and Johnson made the nearly-3,000-mile round trip drive together.

Two days later, Fielder attended his first Kraken game at Climate Pledge Arena with his former Red Wings the visiting team.

“What a beautiful building – oh my word!” Fielder said, glancing around. “It’s awesome.” He watched the game from the owner’s suite and was introduced on the twin scoreboards to raucous applause as then-general manager and current Kraken president Ron Francis gave him an honorary jersey.

The next day, Fielder received a guided tour of the Kraken Community Iceplex headquarters from CEO Leiweke, who introduced him to the team’s staff.

Fielder had hoped to get back to Climate Pledge for the team’s final regular season home game in April, when the annual Kraken award in his name is handed out. His niece, Malsam, daughter of Fielder’s sister, Judy, 80, is a Kraken season ticket member and had been sending Fielder videos of prior awards being given out.

“He loved those but seeing it in person would have been special,” she said.

Malsam and her husband, Marc, had built an apartment for Fielder at their Sammamish home in anticipation of his arrival, with his trophies and plaques displayed prominently, some Budweiser beer and non-spicy Bloody Mary mix in the fridge along with a separate cigar area. His grand niece, Marissa, and grand nephew, Marc Jr., were also awaiting his arrival at the home.

“Guyle’s desire was to spend what might be the last year of his life surrounded by his family,” she said.

That family, she added, didn’t know him as “Golden Guyle” but merely as “Uncle Guyle” – a man with no children of his own who cherished her and her two sisters, Jody and Joy Krueger, as “little ladies” growing up and had long had the sentiment mutually returned.

Just as the hockey sentiment Fielder had long expressed for Seattle began to be returned in earnest his final decade.

“I’ve always felt it was a hockey town and should be an NHL town and now it finally has become just that,” Fielder had said in that birthday interview three months ago. “If I even helped play a tiny part in it, then it was all worth it.”