Brent Ashton
Hockey (2001)

Brent Ashton played 998 National Hockey League games and 85 Stanley Cup playoff games and was one of hockey's most frequent travellers, having played for nine National Hockey League teams in 14 productive seasons. In that time, he made his mark scoring 284 regular season goals and 57 playoff goals, and three times reaching the Stanley Cup semifinals, once with Quebec and twice with Detroit.

Brent was born in Saskatoon on May 18, 1960, and grew up in the Buena Vista area. Among his earliest hockey experiences were with Buena Vista in the N Division of the Playground League. Brent was a standout player and captain of the Saskatoon Blazers in both the peewee and bantam divisions As a 15-year-old, he jumped to the Saskatoon Olympics of the Saskatchewan Junior League where he scored 90 points, including 40 goals, in 47 games.

He played 11 games with the Saskatoon Blades at the end of the 1975-76 season, and then played three full seasons, scoring 26, then 38 and then 64 goals. As a result of his junior record, Brent was drafted as an under-aged player by the Vancouver Canucks, where he played two seasons, and as an 18-year-old, was able to play against Gordie Howe.

He played one season with the Colorado Avalanche, then was part of the wholesale shift as the Avalanche players were relocated and to become the New Jersey Devils in the off-season of 1982.

After one season in New Jersey he was traded to the Minnesota Stars where he played a season and a half before being traded to the Quebec Nordique. Quebec was one of his favorite stops. During the 1984-85 season, he scored 27 goals in the stretch run, helped the Nordique go into the playoffs where they won a historic seventh game of a battle of Quebec series against the Montreal Canadiens. They went into the Stanley Cup semifinals but lost to Philadelphia.  He was traded to Detroit Red Wings in January, 1987, had one season where he scored 26 games, but on two successive occasions, the Red Wings lost to the Edmonton Oilers in the Stanley Cup semifinals.

Brent joined the Winnipeg Jets in the 1989-90 season, played there three full seasons and a little into the fourth before he was traded to the Boston Bruins.

He was picked for Canada's team at the 1989 world hockey championships at Stockholm, Sweden, and Canada wound up with silver medals for its performance.

His last NHL stop was with the Calgary Flames where he played 32 games in the 1992-93 season but a series of knee injuries over the years caught up to him. He played 16 games with Las Vegas Thunder of the International League a year later and then retired.

Brent has always maintained a summer home in Saskatoon.