Danny Grant
Daniel Frederick Grant (born February 21, 1945 in Fredericton, New Brunswick) is a retired Canadian ice hockey left winger, who played in the National Hockey League for parts of fourteen seasons, most notably for the Minnesota North Stars.
After a fine junior career with the Peterborough Petes and a season and a half in the minor leagues with the Houston Apollos, Grant made the NHL with the Montreal Canadiens in 1968, playing 22 regular season games and 10 playoff games. Grant helped Montreal win the Stanley Cup in 1968.
He was then acquired by the Minnesota North Stars, and in his 1969 rookie season with the club won the NHL's Calder Memorial Trophy as the league's most outstanding rookie player, thus becoming one of only four players who won the Stanley Cup the season before winning the Calder Trophy. He would remain a star for Minnesota for six seasons, scoring nearly thirty goals a season during his tenure.
Despite this, Grant was traded in 1974 in a surprising deal for defensive forward Henry Boucha (whose attraction to the franchise may have been that he was a Minnesota native), and the trade backfired badly: Grant had his best season that season, scoring 50 goals for the Detroit Red Wings while on a line with superstar centre Marcel Dionne, and becoming only the 12th player in NHL history to accomplish that feat. However, Grant was plagued by injuries from that point on, and only played partial seasons at best thereafter. He retired after the 1979 season to coach a Tier II junior team.
In his career, Grant notched 263 goals and 535 points while playing for the Montreal Canadiens, Minnesota North Stars, Detroit Red Wings and the Los Angeles Kings, and played in three All-Star Games (1969, 1970, 1971).
In 1985, he was inducted into the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame.
Grant went on to coach the University of New Brunswick hockey team in 1995 and 1996, and the Halifax Mooseheads Quebec league junior team in 1998. Grant has been an assistant coach for the St. Thomas Tommies men's hockey team since the 2002–03 season.
Grant now sits on the TELUS Atlantic Canada Community Board (http://about.telus.com/community/community_boards/en/community_boards/atlantic_canada_member.html), which allocates funding to organizations which involve youth and/or technology throughout Atlantic Canada.
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