Reddox to Play Saturday
This is Dave Lumley, apparently skating through a wind tunnel in this mid-70s photo for the Nova Scotia Voyageurs. Lumley was a college man (University of New Hampshire Wildcats) who scored 55 goals in 126 NCAA games. Lumley could score goals (32 once in the NHL) and was known as a good two-way winger.
Lumley was also very effective in the “agitator” role. He had a wide enough range of skills to stay in the NHL for over 400 NHL games and in fact scored one of the memorable goals in Oilers’ history (imagine a puck rolled perfectly from the front of one net into the heart of the net at the other end, and then imagine it taking 11 minutes. That was the goal) on May 19, 1984.
Liam Reddox is almost exactly the same size as Dave Lumley (Reddox is 5-11, 185, Lumley was one inch taller) and he comes to the show with a similar reputation (agitator, some skill).
Reddox is ahead of several Oilers prospects in the callup pecking order for one very good reason: need. The Oilers need a gnat, a tough guy who can get the other side off their game. They have a guy who hugs as often as Barney (Stortini), a bunch of “team toughs” on the injury list (the injury list is too long to list), and guys like Steve Staios and Raffi Torres who are actually tough NHL players.
Reddox has been a player of interest for awhile, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what the kid can do at the NHL level. He may play only 5 minutes, but if he’s a true agitator that should be plenty good enough to make an impact.
10 Cents on Reddox getting demolished by Phaneuf and friends on his first shift and we never see the kid again.
Isn’t Spurgeon the same type of player – small, lots of hustle?
Sestito too I think – though he seems to be a level below the other two.
I think if Reddox has any kind of impact this season it’ll be on the level of say Alex Burrow’s contributions to his team.
How’s that for a comp?
I found a pretty fun looking blog type site that has a nice piece on “Lummer” and others.
If anyone hasn’t visited it…
http://oilerslegends.blogspot.com
It’s linked to a crapload of other fun stuff as well.
Oiler fans called him “Lummer”, fans of other teams called him “Lumber”. One of those guys who would “accidentally” spear guys in the back of the knees in a battle along the boards. An agitator who was also a solid defensive player with a modicum of offensive talent. He was an important member of the “Gang Green” line with Stan Weir and Dave Hunter in 1979-80, scoring 20 goals and 58 points on the “expansion” Oilers.
The former Habs’ prospect is remembered for a 12-game goal-scoring string in ’81-82, but I remember him as perhaps the most reliable winger I’ve ever seen for taking a breakout pass along the boards in his own end and getting it past the pinching defenceman and clearing the zone.
Lumley scored two memorable empty-netters, the one against the Islanders that clinched that first Cup, and one against the Habs in the last minute of the Oilers’ memorable sweep in 1981, that also made the score 5-2. Gretzky scored a meaningless goal with three seconds left to finish off his hat trick and up the final count to 6-2, but Lummer’s goal was the moment we knew we had won, foreshadowing the memorable 180-footer against the Islanders. He was on the ice in those dying seconds with Gretzky, Messier, Fogolin and Lowe, a tip of the hat from coach Sather to five “original” Oilers.
See, when I think of Lumley, I think of him on that show on ITV called “This Week In Hockey”? that used to run at 1030 NST and would precede an Oilers game at 11pm back when the Oilers played their home games at 730 local. And on that show, which was basically a deal where they ran highlights from the last week of games and did features on players, Lumley was a clown, but not in a good way. I don’t really remember him being all that great but that’s just because I was only a kid when the guy was drawing a regular shift and in NF, before ITV, you didn’t see many Oilers games. Well, until the playoffs started, of course;)
Lummer was a bit of a free spirit, all right. And you’re right, Dennis, he wasn’t “all that great”; he wasn’t good enough to make the Montreal Canadiens of the late ’70s, but he was good enough to help an expansion team, and later to win two Stanley Cups. On my personal favourites list, Lumley ranks a little above the other guy to whom the previous sentence also applies perfectly, Dave Hunter. Which is to say, not all that high.
But he had his moments.
I was gutted that LT would write about Lumley without mentioning the goal-scoring streak. It’s STILL the second-longest in the league since the days of Newsy Lalonde, behind Charlie Simmer’s 13-game skein (’79-’80).