Ab Hughes was 30 years old when he began his National Hockey League career. That is considered to be an advantage age for a rookie but he stayed up there for three years with the old New York Americans and went on to a successful coaching career in St. Louis.

Born in Guelph, Abbie started as a junior with Collingwood and immediately caught the eye of a Toronto hockey scout who induced him to come to Toronto in 1917. He was only sixteen at the time but he starred with Aura Lee and helped that team win the Ontario Junior “A” title.

His career was interrupted for almost three years when he served with the Canadian armed forces in World War 1 but he took up right where he broke off and was a
member of the Collingwood Intermediate O.H.A. champions in 1920.

He saw a great deal of senior action with Toronto, Hamilton and Welland and then signed a professional contract with the New Haven Eagles and later played two years with the New York Americans in the N.H.L. in 1931 and 32.

Scotty Carmichael  (founder of the Hall of Fame) was one of a group of Collingwood fans who made the trip to Toronto to see Hughes play his first game as a N.H.L. pro in the new Maple Leaf Gardens in 1931. What a show he put on for the home town fans. Abbie scored two goals and the Amerks beat the Leafs 3-2.

In the late thirties he was signed as a player-manager of the team fledging St. Louis
team in the American Association. He is credited with educating St. Louis to the ice game as he held skull sessions with the fans between periods and before games and organized the first hockey school.

Born in 1934, this hockey player got his start with the Collingwood Minor Hockey Association.

He played with the Collingwood Junior C Club, before playing with the Junior ‘A’ – Guelph Biltmores. He played professional hockey in several cities, including New
Haven, Three Rivers Knoxville and Philadelphia in the Eastern Hockey League (EHL). His career in the EHL ended following the 1968-69 season as a player-coach with the Syracuse Blazers.

He moved to Wallingford, Connecticut where he coached a high school hockey team.

Born in Collingwood on July 29, 1929, Cal is a lifelong citizen of our community. A graduate of Victoria Public School and Collingwood Collegiate, Cal and his wife Lenora have five children – Wendy, Patricia, David, William and Carole.

Cal’s hockey career spanned 5 decades as a player and coach. In 1944-45, Cal began his playing career in the Town League as a South End Dynamiter ascending to the Collingwood Juveniles (1947), Collingwood Junior B Sailors (1948 & 49), Collingwood Intermediate A (1949-54 & 1955-56). He played with the Aylmer Intermediates in 1954-55 and returned to play with the Collingwood Senior B team in 1964-65. His competitive career ended in 1966 with the Senior B – Midland Flyers.

During his playing years, Cal won the Intermediate A Championships in 1951 and 1952 and OHA Senior B Georgian Bay Group Champions in 1965.

Immediately following his playing days, Cal coached the Stayner Lions to the OHA Intermediate D Championship. He also managed the Senior A – Collingwood Kings from 1967-69 and Collingwood Intermediate A team from 1972-74.

Cal is recognized for his hockey career, becoming a worthy member of the Collingwood Sports Hall of Fame on June 12, 1998 in the Players’ category.

His brilliant career cut short by a near fatal accident in his early twenties, Frankie Dance, will still go down as one of the cleverest hockey players ever produced in Collingwood.

Born in Collingwood, he was the youngest son of another Collingwood Hockey Hall of  Famer, Jack Dance, a member of Collingwood’s first  Intermediate champions in 1910.

He started playing hockey shortly after he learned to walk and came all the way up through the Collingwood Minor Hockey system from Pee Wee to Juvenile.

Frankie was a member of the Collingwood Clubs, winners of the 1949 O.M.H.A. Juvenile championship, a team that went through the entire season without losing a game.

He collected four more provincial medals with the Collingwood Greenshirts, winners of four straight O.H.A. Junior “C” titles in 1950-51-52 and 53. The same team went to the 1954 finals.

Frankie was the playmaker on the great little Greenshirt line with Jim Barrett and Allan Morrill. During that four-year championship span, the Barrett-Morrill-Dance line scored 444 goals, chalked up 347 assists for a total of 791 scoring points.

The passing plays of that line could be described as “poetry in motion”. With that combination there was no such thing as “giving the puck away”. Every move, every play, was made as if the whole operation has been planned on a drawing board a forehand. Dance would lay out that pass dead on the point from right to let with deadly accuracy. He did not even have to lift his head. He knew that either Morrill or Barrett would be on the receiving end and the shot on goal was automatic.

In a game played in Barrie in 1951, Frankie collected ten points with three goals and seven assists.

He graduated to the Intermediate ranks in 1954 and scored thirty-five goals. That Spring he fell from a hydro pole while working as a lineman with the Public Utilities. His life hung in the balance for weeks. His sheer courage helped in his remarkable recovery but the great young athlete’s career was over. His injuries left him crippled for the rest of his life.

His athletic ability was not confined to hockey. Frankie played a creditable game of baseball for Collingwood teams in the early fifties.

He was able to carry on his duties at the Public Utilities Commission for twenty-five years following the accident and was superintendent of the main pumping station at the time of his sudden death, on the job, on the night of Feb. 1st, 1978. Frankie was forty-seven.

Ed Kea was born in Weesp, Holland but his family of fourteen relocated to Collingwood, Ontario when he was just four years old. In Canada he was exposed to the game of hockey and took to it very well. Kea never played Junior hockey, nor did he play collegiate hockey but he managed to turn professional in 1969 nonetheless. After two years with the Jersey Devils, and stops with the Seattle Totems and the St. Petersburg Suns, he was signed as a free agent by the Atlanta Flames in 1972.

Kea played 583 games over 10 seasons in the NHL, scoring 30 goals and
175 points. He spent his first six seasons with the Atlanta Flames, who signed him as a free-agent on Oct. 6, 1972.

The defenseman made his NHL during the 1973-74 season when he played three games for the Flames, but he was a regular the following season. Kea spent the next five seasons playing his solid, steady game on the Flames blue line before being dealt to St. Louis just prior to the 1979-80 season. With the Blues,  Kea played three and half seasons before being sent to the minors.

During the 1982-83 season, St. Louis shipped him to their farm team in Salt Lake. Unfortunately, while toiling for the Salt Lake Golden Eagles tragedy struck. Kea hit his head on the ice during a game and suffered severe head trauma and was left handicapped as a result. Though a series of operations saved his life, Kea’s hockey career was obviously over and he retired and spent time with his wife and children.

Sadly, this wouldn’t be the only tragedy for Ed Kea and his family. In September 1999, Kea drowned at his family cottage. Kea was just 51 years old.