Former NHLer Bobby Sheehan passes away at 77

The hockey world has lost a member of the Montreal Canadiens‘ 1971 Stanley Cup championship team.

On Monday, the NHL Alumni Association announced that former center Bobby Sheehan passed away at the age of 77.

The Weymouth, Massachusetts native was selected by the Canadiens out of the Ontario Hockey Association’s St. Catherines Black Hawks in the 1969 NHL Amateur Draft. He spent his first two professional seasons in Montreal’s organization, playing 45 total regular season games with the Canadiens and winning the Stanley Cup with Montreal in 1971.

Sheehan joined the California Golden Seals for the 1971-72 season, where he scored 20 goals and added 26 assists for 46 points in 78 games.

Following his lone season with the Golden Seals, Sheehan had a three-year stint in the World Hockey Association (WHA). His 1972-73 season with the WHA’s New York Raiders was the best of his career, putting up 35 goals and 53 assists for 88 points in 75 games. He stayed with New York (which would be renamed the New York Golden Blades and then the Jersey Knights) for most of the 1973-74 season before moving on to the Edmonton Oilers through the 1974-75 season.

Sheehan returned to the NHL with the Chicago Black Hawks in the 1975-76 season, and then played for the Detroit Red Wings in the 1976-77 season.

He went back to the WHA for one last season in 1977-78, when played for the Indianapolis Racers. Sheehan then spent the rest of his career splitting time between the New York Rangers, Colorado Rockies, and Los Angeles Kings of the NHL, the New Haven Nighthawks and Binghamton Whalers of the American Hockey League (AHL), and the Forth Worth Texans of the Central Hockey League (CHL), before retiring in 1983.

In 1979 with the Rangers, he was called up for the playoffs and made the Stanley Cup final, where New York lost to Montreal.