‘This wasn’t his battle to win’
Ex-Oilers enforcer Semenko ‘made everyone around him feel important’
— Dave Semenko, maybe the fiercest National Hockey League fighter of them all and the personal on-ice bodyguard of Wayne Gretzky during the Edmonton Oilers’ glory days in the 1980s, has died after a short battle with pancreatic cancer.
“I’ve never seen a man that big taken down that fast,” said former Oilers teammate Paul Coffey, who flew in from Toronto to see Semenko this week. “He won every fight (NHL) but unfortunately, this wasn’t his battle to win.”
“He’s the first guy our group (the 1980s Oilers Cup teams) to pass away. You never would have thought it would be Dave. He was in incredible pain (before the diagnosis). He said he’d get up in the middle of the night and go driving on the Henday to try to calm the pain.”
Semenko, who would have turned 60 on July 12, played 454 games with the NHL Oilers and was part of their first two Stanley Cup teams in 1984 and 1985. He played 142 games over two seasons with the World Hockey Association Oilers before that, after head coach Glen Sather brought him in after his rough and tumble junior career with the Western Hockey League’s Brandon Wheat Kings.
“We got him as a free agent. There were a lot of guys running around like Gilles (Bad News) Bilodeau in the WHA and we needed him,” said Sather, architect of the great Oilers teams of the ’80s.
“Then when we got into the NHL, Minnesota took him off of us and I traded a second-round draft pick to Louie (North Stars general manager Lou Nanne) to get him back. And he worked at his game. Worked at his skating. I could play him at times with Wayne.”
The Oilers were shaken when he died.
“I’m devastated,” said Kevin Lowe, Oilers Entertainment Group vice-chairman and teammate of Semenko’s. “He loved what he did. This was the first year he wasn’t scouting, but was an ambassador. He was the first ever Oilers ambassador ... And he was so happy, so happy of not travelling and he was really happy with the new building, the team and what he was doing, and he was really looking forward to the coming years. I’m shocked that this all went down so quick, and I’m going to really miss him.”
Lowe said Semenko started to seek treatment about three weeks ago because he hadn’t been “feeling well” the previous couple of weeks.
“There was no record of any of his recent health, because he hadn’t been to a doctor in 15 years because I guess he had been the picture of health,” said Lowe.
Garry Unger remembered a man who “made everybody around him feel important.” “Forget about the game, how do players treat people away from that ... It’s like Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe,” said Unger, a centre and one-time NHL iron man who joined the Oilers in 1981 and played parts of three seasons with the team. “He was one of the guys who was special on the Oiler team, part of the chemistry that made the whole team work.”
For the most part, though, he spent his life looking out for his friends on the Oilers. Even after he finished playing. “I remember coming into Rogers Place, and I didn’t have the right credentials and Sammy happened by and said ‘follow me,’ and away we went,’” said Coffey, who got his first taste of Semenko at his initial Oilers’ training camp in Jasper in 1980. “We were at a little bar, and Semenk said if you want to make some friends, buy them a round,’” he said. “I think I bought a round of beer, Olympia. The bill came to about $50. I thought ‘holy crap,’ I was just a kid. Dave looked over at me and said ‘look at all the friends you’ve made.’ That was Semenk. he was always taking charge.”
Sather always said Semenko was two different people.
Nobody was tougher, softer or funnier.
“I remember loaning him money so he could buy a place for himself and his daughter,” Sather said. “Years later, the prices went up and he sold them and he came back and wanted to give me 10 per cent interest, I didn’t want it. But he was such an honourable guy.
“I’m going to miss him a lot.”