Curt Brackenbury

I grew up watching the Edmonton Oilers during their glory years in the eighties. The team was loaded with a level of talent that I suspect will never be brought together on a single team again. Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Ken Linesman, Grant Fuhr, Andy Moog, Paul Coffey, Kevin Lowe, Glenn Anderson, and Esa Tikkanen - all on the same team. We were spoiled to have a team like that to follow for so many years. The speed and the talent on that team were second to none in history.

Despite all that talent, I can still remember the buzz that would erupt every time Curt Brackenbury stepped on the ice for one of the few shifts he would get in a game. He did not score many goals but boy could he stir things up. You knew someone was going to get hit and the thing with Brackenbury was that you could never be sure that the guy he hit wasn’t going to be from his own squad. He did not have a lot of speed, he did not have a lot of talent, but there was no one who worked harder with more enthusiasm than Curt Brackenbury. He never stopped moving. When you talk about the cliche of giving 110%, Curt Brackenbury epitomized the ideal.

Curt Brackenbury is the definition of intensity. He gives everything he has to every endeavour he tackles. Decades after his retirement, he continues to inspire me and set the standard of effort to which I aspire to achieve.

“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.” - Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)