Catching up with former Raider Dean McAmmond

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McAmmond played in the playoffs for three years with the Raiders, and they made it to the semi-finals of the league twice. In his third year with the Raiders, 1992-93, he believes that group should have accomplished more than they did. 

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“We had a really strong group of players. We actually had six guys in the All-Star game, which was not just for the Western League, it was the CHL All-Star game where the Western League played the OHL and the QMJHL. So we had six guys on basically the Western Hockey League All-Stars,” he said.

“I felt like that year we fell short. We ended up losing to Saskatoon in the third round and I think we could have done a little bit better with that group.” 

During McAmmond’s second last year with the Raiders, his 18-year-old season, McAmmond was drafted to the Chicago Blackhawks and ended up playing a five game call-up to the NHL that year. He attended camp with the Blackhawks during the fall, but was sent back down to the Raiders until February where he was called up in the middle of a game against the Medicine Hat Tigers. 

“I got benched halfway through the second period. We were losing 8-3, and I never saw a shift from halfway through the second period to the end of the game. So, the general manager at that time was Dale Engel, and I went running into Dale Engel’s office after the game… and I went in questioning his antics of benching me halfway through the second period when we were losing 8-3 in the Medicine Hat. Dale just said, ‘Sit down. The Blackhawks called halfway through the second period. They want you to play tomorrow night at Chicago Stadium’. That was just kind of like a wake-up call for me. Like wow, it’s right there in front of me.” 

In his first NHL game, against the New Jersey Devils, McAmmond jokingly maintains that he scored a goal, but Rob Brown took it away on him. 

“I did think I had a goal, but they couldn’t determine it, but Robbie Brown put in the rebound on the back door and kind of twirled his stick and threw it in his holster. I was like, ‘he had 49 with Mario(Lemieux) the year before, and I’m not going to go up to him and say, ‘hey, I think that was my goal’. So I joked with him about that.” 

Then in his final year in the WHL, McAmmond was traded in two different leagues for two different reasons. The first trade was in the NHL where he was traded to the Edmonton Oilers because, as McAmmond admits himself, he didn’t do enough during the summer to make the jump to the NHL like the Blackhawks like they expected him to. 

“I kind of felt like eventually I’d just be able to take a position at whatever pace, so they weren’t really happy with me, sent me back early, and I think that what that’s what led to them later on-trading me to Edmonton. I mean, on the table was Joe Murphy, so that was a pretty good player for Chicago to get for myself and Igor Kravchuk to go to Edmonton.” 

McAmmond picked up his play in the WHL after his rights were traded in the NHL, and as a result McAmmond was dealt from the Raiders to the Swift Current Broncos who were poised to make a Memorial Cup run in 1992-93. The Broncos traded five players to the Raiders in exchange for McAmmond and fellow future NHLer Darren Perkins. 

“Swift was pushing for a Memorial Cup run, and there’s also two other contenders, Brandon and Medicine Hat that had really good teams, and also Portland, who were very strong. Swift kind of sold the farm to try and make sure Darren and I didn’t end up in Medicine Hat or Brandon or Portland to kind of push them over the top as well.” 

While winning a WHL Championship with Swift Current, McAmmond also won gold with Team Canada at the World Juniors in Sweden in 1993 with teammates like Martin Lapointe, Paul Kariya, Jason Smith, Rob Neidermeyer, Adrian Aucoin, and Chris Pronger. The tournament was very different back then, where the host city of Gävle was only one of seven cities they played in during the tournament. 

“So Gävle was the host city which was the main hub, but we played in Lexe, which was maybe 30 minutes away. Back in that day, it was the best record out of seven complete games. That was it, you just played each team once and the team with the best record took home the gold. Our last game was against Japan in some little rink that nobody came to the game because, you know, Japan didn’t have a lot of fans. So I remember we had to beat Japan in the Game 7 to clinch the gold medal, and it was very anti-climactic because it was barely anybody there.” 

McAmmond had lots of run-ins with his teammates from the World Juniors, playing with Lapointe in Ottawa, Neidermeyer in Calgary, and Smith in Edmonton, but his most famous run-in with an old teammate would’ve been with Chris Pronger during the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals against the Anaheim Ducks. Playing for the Senators, McAmmond had 5G-3A-11P in 18 games of the playoffs, and McAmmond actually scored a goal in Game 3 when he banked it in of Pronger’s stick. 

Later that game in the third period, Pronger caught McAmmond with a high elbow that would earn Pronger a Game 4 suspension, but McAmmond was taken out of the series. The Senators would win Game 3 with a 7-3 score, but the Ducks went on to win in five games.  

While he has never spoke with Pronger since the incident, McAmmond said that he doesn’t hold any ill will towards him after what he heard during the game. 

“He was competitive and, and hey, everybody has their opinion. But  I know that after that hit, he went back to the bench and I heard through, I don’t know if it was through the, through Robbie Niedermeyer or somebody else on that team that he said something to his line mate like, ‘Yeah, I really messed McAmmond up’. Yeah, that was not intentional to hurt me. I just feel that way about it. So yeah, I’m good with it.” 

While McAmmond shared all kinds of stories from his NHL career, to his Memorial Cup run with Swift Current, to playing in the AHL during the lockout year of 2004-05, to boxing in the backyard and playing Blades of Steel on the Nintendo Entertainment System with his billet brother Shane Acorn, but this article is not long enough for all of them. So to finish off, we’ll wrap things up with a Terry Simpson story. 

McAmmond played for Simpson in only one year, his first in the WHL. McAmmond speaks highly of Simpson, but he remembers one particularly odd moment after a practice where some of the players tested Simpson’s patience. 

“Oddly enough, I remember him wanting to have a sprint race. I was like, ‘is he crazy, this old guy?’ I don’t even know how old he would have been at this point, but I was like, ‘what’s this old guy want to race us for?’ So I remember we had a foot race, like the whole team all lined up and he was part of it.” 

These days, McAmmond has a role as an advisor with the Vernon Vipers of the BCHL, and has just recently celebrated becoming a grandpa for the first time.