Oilumni #9: Dr. Randy Gregg

I'm not going to focus on statistics here, or analyze the play of Dr. Randy Gregg on the ice. I chose to write about Dr. Randy Gregg because my exposure to him redefined what I thought a professional athlete could be.

I was born in Edmonton in the early eighties. I have some vague memories of watching the legendary Oilers teams from that time, and I remember the surrounding excitement if not all the plays. I was a kid who knew only the star players and had a Wayne Gretzky Prostars poster hanging in my room. Gretzky, Messier, Kurri, Coffey, Anderson: I could not regard these players as people; they were something extraordinary, they were something beyond human. One player who never entered my mind then was Dr. Randy Gregg.

Gregg wasn't a star like the others, and wasn't a flashy player. I never really heard anyone talk about him. There were so many other extraordinary Oilers that drew attention far more easily. But on one day in the 1990s — a time when the pride of being an Oilers fan had receded — I was watching iTV news with my father and Dr. Randy Gregg came on the screen to do a Steve Brule style health segment. My old man made an offhand comment: "you know he used to play for the Oilers, right?"

This information astounded me because I was too young to fully comprehend that a hockey player could also be a doctor, or anything else. I actually thought that as a doctor he was obligated to see patients and wondered how he could do that and be a hockey player at the same time. I figured it out eventually.

So while I never really watched him play, and I honestly couldn't tell you much about his play style, he really fascinated me as a person and my respect for him only continued to grow as I learned more about him. Accepted into the University of Alberta medical school at sixteen, he nonetheless later found time to play for Clare Drake's Golden Bears, taking them to two championships and earning the "Canadian Intercollegiate Player of the Year" distinction in 1979. I learned that a CIS award and University of Alberta award bear his name. I learned about how he turned down a contract offer from the New York Rangers in order to captain the 1980 Canadian Olympic Team. One more thing I learned just while researching this — he played two seasons in Japan for the Kokudo Bunnies (a team Billy Moores would later coach from 1994-1996) as a player/coach before being lured back in 1982 for a playoff appearance with his hometown team, the Edmonton Oilers.

We all know the history of the Oilers from this time, and Gregg became a big part of it, earning himself five Stanley Cup championships. Obviously he got attention when he arrived for the amazing distinction of possessing a medical degree while being an NHL-calibre player, but as the team's success grew the prestige of being an Oiler overcame that of being a doctor. After taking off the 1990-1991 season to focus on his non-profit sports organization for children, Gregg played 21 games for the Canucks before retiring and later finding time to publish a series of hockey instructional books for kids.

I have left out some things here — a contract dispute with Slats, and some other minor events in his career. I didn't want to focus on that, and instead wanted to write about him as I regard him — a principled and community-oriented man who took his own path in life, who worked hard, and continues to work as a medical doctor at his sports medicine clinic in Edmonton today.