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Former Flyer Orest Kindrachuk once described Bob Garke’s hometown of Flin Flon, Manitoba, as being just I north of where civilization ends.Flin Flon is a little mining town way up in the Canadian , wilderness, some 400 miles north of Winnipeg. It is, to be polite, remote. To be candid, it is the boondocks. -Yet Flin Flon wasn’t the sticks to everyone. To some, like Blaine Stoughton, it was the big city.Stoughton, now 31 and coming to the end of his pro hockey (career, grew up in Gilbert Plains, Manitoba, a dot on the map another 400 miles north of Flin Flon.How small is Gilbert Plains? Real small.“On my 14th birthday, my family drove to Flin Flon so I could see a street light,” said Stoughton. “Can you imagine? II sounds funny now, but that was a big, big thing.”.Stoughton, who started his standout career in Hershey in | .1973, played junior hockey for the same Flin Flon Bombers of the Western Hockey League just a couple of years after Garke I left to conquer bigger worlds in Philadelphia.Coincidentally, the Flyers had made several efforts to bring him to Philadelphia over the last few years but were never able to swing a trade for the 50-goal scorer.Stoughton was even rumored to be coming to Philly just prior to the start of this season, when the Flyers were still looking desperately for offensive punch on the wing, but general manager Garke squelched that rumor with the Murray Craven-Darryl Sittler deal.Now property of the New-York Rangers, Stoughton is • playing this season — probably his last — with the New Haven Nighthawks of the American Hockey League. Reportedly, the Rangers will buy out his contract at the end of the season, and he will slip quietly into retirement.S- Sort of an ignominious end to the career of a guy who scored 258 goals in eight NHL seasons. But finishing up in the minors doesn’t seem to bother the kid from Gilbert Plains.“Who am I to complain?” he offered. “I’ve had a good run. Whatever I have, I owe to hockey. You’ll never hear me carve
Newspaper Details
Upper Darby Sunday Times
Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, US
Sun, Jan 27, 1985
Page 56
Full Page
Clipped by
Daryl B.
CA 23 Feb 2025
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Upper Darby Sunday Times
