Roenick was larger than life on, off ice on way to Hockey Hall

The 2024 Hockey Hall of Fame induction is Monday. This year’s class includes David Poile and Colin Campbell in the Builder category, as well as former players Pavel Datsyuk, Jeremy Roenick, Shea Weber, Natalie Darwitz and Krissy Wendell-Pohl. Here, NHL.com staff writer Tracey Myers profiles Roenick.

For Jeremy Roenick, the memories of all those youth hockey games, all the road trips to them, remain fresh.

“I played everywhere from Virginia all the way up to almost up to the Arctic Circle, it seemed like,” Roenick said. “Every single weekend was a four- or five-hour drive for away games. It was quite the effort, quite the commitment.”

That commitment led to an NHL career that saw stops in Chicago, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Jose.

Now it culminates with the biggest trip of all: to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

It’s been quite the road but getting the call that he was headed to the Hall, the call he never thought he’d receive, was worth the wait.

“When you wait for a long time and you don’t know how it’s going to hit you, and I thought maybe before it wouldn’t be as big of a deal as it was, but it hit me like a train,” said Roenick, who retired in 2009. “I was really, really happy with my emotions and the fact that I couldn’t speak. That I was crying in front of a barista at Starbucks was pretty interesting. All in all, it’s been a really good (few) months since I got the call.”

The one disappointment for Roenick is his father won’t be there to enjoy the induction weekend festivities with him. Walter Roenick died in 2021.

“If there’s one person that wanted to see this the most it was him. He never missed a game, whether it was on TV or in person,” Roenick said. “He’s the one that drove hours and hours and hours and gave up a lot of his own life and jobs to make sure I had a stick in my hand on the best ice with the best players. He was proud. He was a proud dad.

“So, for me, he can’t see it, but the way I feel about life and all that stuff, there’s no question he’s going to kick somebody out in the first row and he’s going to sit right there on their laps and watch.”

Roenick went from being a teenager drafted out of Thayer Academy in Braintree, Massachusetts, about 30 minutes south of his hometown of Boston, to one of the League’s biggest stars. The No. 8 pick in the 1988 NHL Draft by the Chicago Blackhawks, Roenick had 1,216 points (513 goals, 703 assists) in 1,363 career games with the Blackhawks, Coyotes, Flyers, Kings and Sharks.

“He came in basically out of high school as this fearless kid, that nothing overwhelmed him. He just knew he could play,” said Hall of Fame defenseman and San Jose Sharks general manager Doug Wilson, who was Roenick’s first roommate on the road in Chicago. “He wasn’t very big at that time, but he just came in and stepped right in and said, ‘I’m ready, let’s go.’ It’s not very often you come across anybody like that.”

Hall of Fame coach Ken Hitchcock, who had Roenick with the Flyers from 2002-04, remembers not being a Roenick fan prior to those seasons.

“When he was in Chicago, I hated him. And he hurt a lot of our players, and he was a reckless player. He was so competitive and so tough that you wanted him on your team but as an opponent I hated him. Then all of a sudden, I’m coaching him,” he said.

“He had a competitive fire that was really, really unique for me because he had such passion. I don’t know if he had passion for the game or passion for competing, but in big games, especially playoff games, he was always a big-time player.”

Indeed, Roenick had 122 points (53 goals, 69 assists) in 154 Stanley Cup Playoff games. Twelve of his career postseason goals were game-winners, including one in Game 4 of the Campbell Conference Finals, which sent Chicago to the Stanley Cup Final in 1991-92.

He has the third-most goals among players born in the United States, behind Mike Modano (561) and Keith Tkachuk (538) and his points are fourth most on that list behind Modano (1,374), Detroit Red Wings forward Patrick Kane (1,291) and Phil Housley (1,232). He also played in nine NHL All-Star games (1991-94, 1999, 2000, 2002-04), a represented the United States at the 1988 and 1989 World Junior Championships, the 1991 World Cup, 1991 Canada Cup, and the 1998 and 2002 Olympics, winning silver in Salt Lake City in 2002.

Though Roenick produced plenty of points, he also welcomed plenty of attention. His big personality was evident on and off the ice.

“He loved the camera. He had license plates that were personalized. STYLES or something,” said Hall of Fame defenseman Chris Chelios, who was Roenick’s teammate in Chicago from 1990-96. “He was very outgoing, very approachable with the fans and that’s why they loved him so much. It’s not like I wasn’t approachable and stuff, but Jeremy just loved it.”

Chelios said Roenick was also part of the off-ice fun with teammates, including an ill-fated skiing excursion in Western Canada.

“On our annual trip to Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, we would spend four or five days in Banff (Alberta). (Coach) Mike Keenan told us we weren’t allowed to go skiing. So, there were 11 or 12 of us who said, ‘We aren’t listening to him.’

“Sure as heck, we ran into Mike on the slopes. Mike had his family out there and he goes, ‘What are you guys doing?’ We said, ‘What do you think we’re doing?’ The next day, Mike skated us for 45 minutes with no pucks and that was our punishment.”

Chicago will always hold a special place for Roenick because it’s where his NHL career began. Philadelphia, where Roenick played from 2001-04, held the same love because of all the hockey games he played there as a kid.

“I made a lot of friendships, I got to know the area, I know how passionate Flyers fans are about sports in general, not only just their hockey team but sports. And me being a huge sports fan and knowing Philly like I have since I was 11 years old, I was excited to play in front of the fans that cheered and rooted for the team the way I played for the team. I just felt it was a really good match.

“One of the reporters (in Philadelphia) asked me, ‘Are you nervous about the sports media here in Philly? They can be very difficult, very abusive.’ I said, ‘The media’s going to be more afraid of me than me of them.’”

Former forward Mark Recchi said Roenick “fit right in” the Flyers room.

“We had a great bunch of guys, and he just added another element to it that was fun but he also was very competitive and that’s how our whole group was,” said Recchi, who played with Roenick from 2001-04. “We enjoyed ourselves, but we played the game hard, we played the game the right way and he came in and just fit right in.”

Roenick averaged 18:16 time on ice per game with the Flyers, down from the estimated 20-plus minutes he had been playing with the Coyotes (time on ice/game became an official stat in 1997-98). Nevertheless, he was valuable.

“I knew in the heat of the game, when the game was on the line that I could play him a lot,” Hitchcock said. “He didn’t have the endurance because of all the physical beatings his body took. He didn’t have the endurance he had as a younger player, but he could sure muster it up when the game was on the line. We held him back early in games and then when the game was on the line, we put him out there all the time.”

Roenick’s ability to come through in the clutch was there again in San Jose, where he played his final two NHL seasons (2007-09). Averaging 13:45 of ice time with the Sharks in 2007-08, Roenick, at age 37, had 33 points (14 goals, 19 assists). Ten of those goals were game-winners, three shy of the career-high 13 game-winning goals he had with the Blackhawks in 1991-92, his third full season in the League.

“I remember when it first happened, I said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’” Wilson said. “When the game was on the line, he wanted the puck throughout his whole career, but to do it at that point? How he played right to the end when it mattered, that’s when he was at his best. So that little pearl, that stat to me was incredible.”

Roenick made an incredible impact on the game. Now he’ll get his moment at the Hall.

“He played the game so hard. I mean, he gave everything,” Wilson said. “When you play the way he played, to play with 1,360-some odd games, that’s a tribute to his heart, his toughness and his love for the game. Even when he first came in as a kid, he just played the game fearless. I’m so happy for him and his journey in life to get to celebrate this.”