CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — Rick Vaive had a decision to make.
He had been drafted by junior teams in Quebec and Ontario and had to choose between the Sherbrooke Castors and the Toronto Marlies.
The Ottawa-born Vaive, who grew up in Charlottetown, decided there was a better opportunity with the Castors, who had selected him fourth overall, compared to being taken in the fourth round of the Ontario league draft.
So, the 17-year-old packed up and headed to the Eastern Townships.
The decision worked out splendidly.
“I just felt comfortable from Day 1,” Vaive said. “Everybody was great to me. Playing on a good team with good players, it certainly helped me.”
He exploded onto the scene, recording 110 points in 68 games while playing on a line with veterans Jere Gillis and Mark Green. He added 23 points in 18 playoff games, including three of his 10 goals being game winners. The Castors defeated the Quebec Remparts to win the 1977 President Cup with Vaive scoring the series-clinching goal in the final.
The Castors then went 0-4 at the three-team Memorial Cup in Vancouver.
Vaive followed it up with a 155-point sophomore season before turning pro.
He went on to become the Toronto Maple Leafs’ captain and the first player in the storied franchise’s history to score 50 goals in a season.
Vaive, 60, was to be inducted in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League Hall of Fame earlier this month, but the ceremony was postponed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19 strain) pandemic.
“It’s an honour,” Vaive said of the recognition, from his home in Niagara Falls, Ont. “They do it very well in the Quebec league. It’s a big deal. You get a ring and everything else. They do it right. I was thrilled when they called me.”
He will join Murray Harbour’s Brad Richards and Summerside’s Gerard (Turk) Gallant as the only Islanders in the hall.
“It’s outstanding,” Gallant said. “It’s great when you see another Islander going into the Hall of Fame.”
Shane Turner, who played with Vaive growing up, said it was well-deserved recognition for his former teammate.
“You know what Islanders are like, we cheer for each other,” he said. “We can be our harshest critics, but we cheer like crazy for each other.”
Early years
Vaive played on some really good minor hockey teams in Charlottetown.
In peewee, they beat a team from Pointe-Claire, Que., who won the famed Quebec tournament, at a competition in Saint John, N.B. The Charlottetown squad was unable to raise enough money to attend the Quebec competition, Vaive said.
The squad dominated in bantam, too. In midget, officials said they were going to pick a team for a Maritime qualifier for the Wrigley Cup in Oshawa, Ont. Some players signed with junior teams before officials changed their minds and decided to pick a midget team for the entire season.
“They couldn't come back, which was frustrating,” Vaive said. “I’m pretty sure with those other five guys, we would have had a chance to win a few games (at Wrigley) and who knows what would have happened.”
Shane Turner played a handful of minor hockey seasons on teams with Vaive.
“Around here, he kind of had it all,” Turner said. “Very good puck skills, big shot, like he had when he made it to the NHL, and he was a competitor – he didn't like to lose – he played involved and he was a good teammate.”
Turner said Vaive was a smaller player in peewee but as he grew, so did his game.
“We were cheering for Rick because we knew he had the best chance of a lot of us to make it.”
Just how good Vaive was became apparent to his peers when he played up with the Colonel Gray Colonels junior squad in Charlottetown as a 16-year-old midget-aged player. Scouts followed his play as the team competed at the Eastern Canadian championship in Rockland, Ont.
“He had a big series up there,” Turner recalled, noting everyone realized, “We’re not going to have Rick long.”
Junior
Things were set up a bit different in Sherbrooke after player Gaetan Paradis died in November 1974 when the team’s bus skidded off the road north of Quebec City.
When Vaive arrived, players lived in a dorm-style facility located across from the rink. There was a meal hall downstairs, and people were hired to take care of the players’ laundry.
Vaive’s roommate was Charles (Chuck) Tuplin, who had played tier 2 in Summerside against Vaive in 1975-76 and had family roots to the Island community.
His rookie season ended in Vancouver as one of the top three teams in Canadian junior hockey.
“You’re 17, you’ve just played your first year of junior and all of sudden you’re in the Memorial Cup,” he said. “And we all knew how big the Memorial Cup was and still is.”
New Westminster, B.C., defeated Ottawa in the final.
Vaive’s first season in Sherbrooke gave him a sense of what he could achieve.
“Growing up as a kid, you dream about playing in the NHL,” Vaive said. “You don't really know what the chances are. After my first year in Sherbrooke, I really thought, ‘OK, there’s a really good chance that I could make it to the NHL’.”
After the second year, he knew it was definitely a possibility.
Turning pro
Vaive had little to prove by returning to junior for Year 3, so he signed with Birmingham Bulls of the World Hockey Association (WHA). He put up 59 points and 248 penalty minutes in 75 games for the Alabama-based Bulls.
“That summer a merger happened,” Vaive recalled.
It saw four WHA teams join the NHL, and the NHL lowered the draft age from 20 to 18.
The draft, which normally took place in June at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, was pushed back to August and held by phone.
Vaive had spoken with Washington before the draft and thought he might become a Capital.
“You’re sitting there waiting for the phone call,” he said.
When the phone did ring, the news was different than he had anticipated. The Vancouver Canucks selected him fifth overall, one pick after Washington chose Mike Gartner.
Vaive didn’t play much in the first half of his rookie NHL season and was traded to Toronto in February in a deal that saw Dave (Tiger) Williams head to the West Coast in the four-player deal.
RELATED: Click here to view the NHL trades Vaive was involved in
Vaive went from a limited role with the Canucks to playing regularly and getting time on the Leafs power play.
Trailblazer
The QMJHL was founded in 1969 and it was still relatively new when Vaive suited up for the Castors.
A couple of years after Vaive turned pro, the Castors dipped back into the Island’s talent pool for another star in Gallant.
“What did I know about Sherbrooke? Well, I knew Ricky Vaive played there,” Gallant said. “It was a great spot when I went there. I really enjoyed it. We had great ownership, we had great teams.”
Now each year, top Island kids make their mark in the league following in the footsteps of the players who laid the foundation in previous generations.
“It’s a great league,” Gallant said. “It’s a great steppingstone for a lot of players.”
Need to know
Who – Rick Vaive, a retired professional hockey player who grew up in Charlottetown.
Career – He played 876 NHL games from 1979 to 1992 with Vancouver, Toronto, Chicago and Buffalo. He scored 441 goals and recorded 347 assists for 788 points. He also amassed 1,445 penalty minutes. He was inducted into the P.E.I. Sports Hall of Fame in 2000.
The latest – Vaive was to be inducted into the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) Hall of Fame earlier this month. The ceremony was postponed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19 strain) pandemic. Vaive was named the league’s rookie of the year in 1977.
QMJHL Hall of Fame – The first members were inducted in 1995. Ninety-nine members have already been inducted, including P.E.I.'s Gerard (Turk) Gallant in 2014 and Brad Richards in 2017. This year’s class was to include left-winger Simon Gamache, coach Clément Jodoin, goaltender Roberto Luongo, defenceman Stéphane Robidas and Vaive, a right-winge .
Vaive’s QMJHL statistics:
Season GP G A Pts. PIM
1976-77 68 51 59 110 93
1977-78 69 76 78 155 199
World junior – Vaive played in the 1977-78 world junior hockey tournament, scoring three goals in six games. Wayne Gretzky had 17 points in six contests for a Canadian squad that included Mike Gartner, Bobbie Smith and Rob Ramage. They finished third behind the Soviet Union and Sweden.
Did you know? Vaive’s youngest son, Justin, plays with the ECHL’s Cincinnati Cyclones. The six-foot-six, 237-pound left-winger had 21 goals, 14 assists and 86 penalty minutes in 58 regular season games this season. The 30-year-old was drafted in the fourth round of the 2007 NHL draft by the Anaheim Ducks. He played with former Charlottetown Islanders winger Pascal Aquin this season with the Buffalo Sabres’ affiliate.
The Spud – Rick Vaive’s parents, Claude and Mary Vaive, were two of the driving forces behind the Spud minor hockey tournament in Charlottetown, which began in 1976. Rick never played in the tournament but knew how hard his parents worked on it. “To see that it is still going on is pretty special,” he said.
