Wilson had 245 points in 156 regular-season games with Ottawa and has his number retired by the 67s. I don’t take any credit for his development. His passing was unbelievable, quick, and accurate. “Once he started that I said, ‘we don’t need you breaking your hand.’ He was our power play. “He just had a tremendous shot as well as - which I didn’t realize until after a few games – that he had a pretty good temper, and he didn’t mind dropping the gloves if he had too, either. “He’s probably one of the few guys ever that could score from a non-screened blue line,” said Kilrea, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in the Builders Category in 2003. The message wasn’t always heard, though, as Wilson still had a team-high 142 penalty minutes in 1975-76, the height of the tough-guy era in hockey. Knowing that he needed Wilson for his top power-play unit, and not in the penalty box or out with an injury, Kilrea asked Wilson to tone down the fighting. There were two things that legendary Ottawa 67’s coach Brian Kilrea noticed about Wilson when he first got to the OHL team in 1974 as a 16-year-old: he had a howitzer of a shot and he had a feisty side. “The level of hockey in that game, I had never played in a game close to that.”
“The one thing it does stand out to me is playing against the KLM line and just how dominant they were and how good they were,” Wilson said of playing against the famous Soviet line of Vladimir Krutov, Igor Larionov and Sergei Makarov. These moments, without the opportunity to play in the Olympics, are ones Wilson cherishes. Wilson was selected to eight NHL All-Star Games, and also represented Canada at the Canada Cup in 1984, winning gold, and was chosen to play in the Rendez-vous ‘87 series, which pitted the top NHL players against the Soviet men’s national ice hockey team. “I never thought he wouldn’t be in the hall, but it feels like it probably took longer than I imagined.” “Definitely overdue,” said NHL Network analyst Brian Lawton, who was Wilson’s teammate with the Sharks from 1991 to 1993. The only defensemen who have had more prolific goal-scoring seasons are Paul Coffey with 48 in 1985-86 and 40 in 1983-84, and Bobby Orr with 46 in 1974-75. Wilson scored 39 goals during the 1981-82 season when he won the Norris Trophy, a total that’s still the fourth-most for any NHL defensemen in one season. He finished his NHL career with 237 goals and 827 points, which ranks 12th and 15th, respectively, among all defensemen. Wilson remains the Blackhawks’ all-time leader among defensemen in goals (225), assists (554), and points (779). But he established himself as one of the NHL’s most offensively prolific defensemen in 938 games over 14 seasons with the Blackhawks, who drafted him in the first round in 1977. Wilson played 1,024 regular-season games, 86 of which came with the Sharks in the last two seasons of his career from 1991 to 1993. He’s not the only one that waited that long and we all felt as teammates and friends that he should be in there.” Some might have felt Wilson, 64, warranted this honor long before last year, though. He was a great teammate to all of us that played with him.
“He’s a Hall of Fame hockey player, but he’s a Hall of Fame guy, too,” said Denis Savard, Wilson’s teammate for 10 seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks and who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2000. Wilson, who was elected in 2020 in his 24th year of eligibility, is expecting to have over 50 friends and family members in attendance for a ceremony that was delayed a year because of the ongoing pandemic. Wilson, after a playing career that spanned three decades, will officially join his idols as hockey immortals Monday night when he and five other individuals are inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. Hockey Hall of Fame: After ‘overdue’ election, Sharks’ Doug Wilson joins his idols – East Bay Times