Stan Mikita Biography - Early Years, Introduction To Hockey, Chronology, Joined The Blackhawks, Won Stanley Cup, Used Curved Blade - SELECTED WRITINGS BY MIKITA:
player team playing trophy
1940-
Canadian hockey player
Playing his entire career (1959-80) with the Chicago Blackhawks, Stan Mikita was a complete player on the ice, a team leader, and multiple award winner for his playing accomplishments. Often overshadowed by his more flamboyant, goal scoring teammate Bobby Hull, Mikita was nonetheless known for his outstanding abilities as a scorer, stickhandler, and passer, as well as on defense. As Stan and Shirley Fischler wrote in Fischler's Hockey Encyclopedia, "If any single player can be described as the guts of a hockey team, Stan Mikita, the shifty Chicago Black Hawk center, is precisely that man." After overcoming a penchant for fighting and penalties in his early career—a feisty attitude which earned him the nickname "Le Petit Diable" ("The Little Devil")—Mikita began playing intelligent hockey and using his skills. He went on to be the first player to win the Lady Byng Trophy (for gentlemanly play), the Ross Trophy (as the leading scorer in the National Hockey League (NHL)), and the Hart Trophy as most valuable player in one season (1966-67). He repeated the feat the following season. Mikita was also an innovator in hockey equipment, among the first to use a curved stick as well as an early wearer of a helmet, donned after a head injury. Mikita also was active in the teaching of hockey to hearing impaired young people, which led to the founding of the U.S. National Deaf Hockey Team.
SELECTED WRITINGS BY MIKITA:
I Play to Win, 1969.
Additional Topics
During the first days in Canada, Mikita saw some boys in the street playing hockey, and began playing with them. Though he hit one of the boys with his stick, he soon began playing the game. The first words he learned in English were related to hockey: "push, stick, and goal." But the language and cultural adjustments remained hard. Before hockey, Mikita thought about joining the Air…
At the end of the 1958-59 season, Mikita joined the Blackhawks for three games, and the following season jointed the Blackhawks full time. In his first years in the NHL, Mikita played an antagonistic style of hockey. He tried to make up for his small stature (only 5'9" and 165 lbs.) and lack of scoring output in his first full season (only eight goals) by fighting, tripping, and hook…
During Mikita's true rookie season, it was only the second season in many years in which Chicago made the playoffs. The following year, the 1960-61 season, Mikita played with two broken toes and racked up 100 penalty minutes in the regular season. But in the playoffs, Mikita was a leading offensive force. The Black-hawks had momentum going into the playoffs, and defeated five-time defending…
In 1963-64, Mikita began competing with teammate Hull for the league's scoring title. Mikita won the Ross Trophy by scoring 39 goals and 50 assists, while Hull had 43 goals but fewer assists. The following season, Mikita led the league in scoring again with 87 points, but also had 154 penalty minutes. Mikita added 53 additional penalty minutes in the playoffs. He changed his penalty-prone a…
While Mikita again scored 97 points in 1968-69, he finished fourth in the league in scoring behind Phil Esposito, Howe, and Hull. Mikita suffered a severe back injury in 1969 and had to wear a back brace for much of the rest of his career. A few years later, Mikita suffered a bad head injury and had a suspension helmet specially designed for him by an engineer. This led to his involvement in the h…
In 1972, Mikita played a marginal role in the Summit Series, which pitted Team Canada against the strong Soviet team in Russia. Though Mikita played in only two of the eight games in the series because Canada had so much depth at center, the trip had more meaning to Mikita who was finally able to play hockey in front of his birth family. After the Summit Series ended, the Canadian team played an e…
In 1974, Mikita was approached by Chicago businessman Irv Tiahnybik in a restaurant one night and convinced the hockey star to help teach hearing impaired children how to play hockey. Tiahnybik's young son Lex had played the game for several years, but had recently had a bad experience with a coach who did not want to deal with the young deaf player. Together they founded the American Impai…
Chronic back problems ended Mikita's career on November 30, 1979, though he did not formally retire until April 14, 1980, at the end of the season. Over the course of his career, Mikita played in 1394 regular season games, scoring 541 goals and 926 assists. He also played in 155 playoff games, with 59 goals and 91 assists. In October 1980, the team retired his No. 21 jersey, the first Black…
Beddoes, Richard, Stan Fischler, and Ira Gitler. Hockey! The Story of the World's Fastest Sport. New York: Macmillan, 1973. Diamond, Dan, and Joseph Romain. Hockey Hall of Fame: The Official History of the Game and Its Greatest Stars. New York: Doubleday, 1988. Fischler, Stan. The All-New Hockey's 100: A Personal Ranking of the Best Players in Hockey History. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Rye…
Citing this material
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments