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Wayne Rivers
Former Hamilton Red Wing a journeyman
in several leagues Hamilton-born Wayne Rivers had a long career in hockey, spanning 20 years as a player and a coach. This winger from the Beach Strip, born in 1942, spent a lot of time in both minor and major league dressing rooms. A star in the minors, he was often held in reserve for the parent club in the NHL, going back and forth between the Hamilton Red Wings and the Detroit Red Wings, and the Hershey Bears and the Boston Bruins. He learned his craft playing with the Red Wings, and followed the advice of one of the sport’s most famous players when in Detroit. In his last year of junior hockey with Hamilton, Rivers got a chance with the parent Detroit club, and applied some wisdom told to him by Gordie Howe: “Stay on your wing, keep your head up, and don’t miss a chance to shoot.” Rivers listened to his mentor, as he was the top scorer on the Hamilton squad during the 1962-63 American Hockey League season.
He played bantam, midget, and juvenile hockey in the Police Minor Association system, and served a year with the Burlington B club before joining on with the Red Wings in 1961. While in Hamilton for the 1960-61 and 1961-62 seasons, Rivers scored 27 goals, and became known as a hustler on the ice who wasn’t afraid to get things going while scrambling around in the corners. He also went to the Hershey Bears in the 1961-62 year, and was called up to the Bruins for the 1963-64 season where he scored a pair of goals in 12 games. He went back and forth between Boston’s AHL club and NHL club until the end of the 1967 season. He scored 37 goals in 65 games for the Bears in 1965-66, and got a goal with the Bruins in only two games with the team that season. “The pace isn’t as fast in the American League where they play positional hockey, do a lot of passing and don’t skate as fast or as much,” Rivers said about the AHL in the early 1960s. The back-and-forth between the Bears and the Bruins came to an end by the 1967 season. With the NHL expansion of twice as many teams, players like Rivers became a hot commodity, and he went to the newly-formed St. Louis Blues in the Expansion Draft. He put away four goals in 22 games for the Blues, but the consistency was not there, and was dispatched to the Kansas City Blues for the remainder of the 1967-68 season, where he played 50 games and amassed 25 goals. He went back to the bigs the next season with the New York Rangers but for only four games, finishing out his year with the Buffalo Bisons with a 30-goal effort in 67 games. Rivers played with several AHL and CHL clubs before signing on with the New York Raiders of the recently-formed World Hockey Association in 1972. He was very good with the WHA style of game, scoring 37 times in 75 games while in New York. In his third season with the WHA, he went to the San Diego Mariners, scoring 107 points in 78 games for the 1974 through 1977 seasons. Rivers joined the San Francisco Shamrocks of the Pacific Hockey League as a player-coach to finish out his career in 1979 after two seasons with the PHL club. Playing in seven seasons in the NHL, Rivers scored 15 goals in 105 games, but in 357 WHA games, he scored 158 times, including an outstanding 54-goal record for the 1974-75 season with the Mariners. His 10-seasons in the AHL were also fruitful, scoring 251 goals in 490 games of junior play. His
play was honored with selection to the Second AHL All-Star team
in 1967 and 1971, the First AHL All-Star team in 1972, and the
CPHL Second All-Star team in 1968.
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