Do you remember Colin Patterson?
Every week, we’ll look at a forgotten Calgary Flames player in the weekly series “A Flame From the Past.” Of course, the player had to have played a significant number of games for the Flames – at least a full season. Each week, I’ll put every Flames season (since moving to Calgary) in the Wheel of Names. This week, it landed on the 1985-86 season, with the player we’ll look at in today’s article being Colin Patterson.
Patterson played two seasons for the Royal York Royals in the Ontario Provincial Junior A Hockey League in 1978-79 and 1979-80. In his first season, the forward scored 16 goals and 46 points in 40 games. Patterson followed that up with 30 goals and 90 points but went undrafted.
Instead, he committed to Clarkson University in New York, playing three seasons there, scoring 64 goals and 155 points in 100 games, captaining the team in his final season, the 1982-83 season. Patterson signed with the Flames after his junior year, playing seven games with their Central Hockey League team to finish the season.
Starting the 1983-84 season in the CHL with the Colorado Flames, he played just six games with two goals and five points before being called up. Originally meant to be a short stint, Patterson impressed and became a regular with the Flames, scoring 13 goals and 27 points. His 1984-85 season was his career-best, scoring 22 goals and 43 points.
In 1985-86, Patterson scored 14 goals and 27 points, along with six goals and nine points in 19 games as the Flames made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals, where they lost to the Montréal Canadiens. Patterson had a similar season in 1986-87, scoring 13 goals and 27 points in 68 games.
Unfortunately, Patterson missed a large portion of games in 1987-88 due to a concussion, playing just 39 games where he had seven goals and 18 points. The Rexdale, Ontario native returned before the postseason, scoring a goal in nine games.
Patterson was with the Flames when they won their first and only Stanley Cup during the 1988-89 season. He scored 14 goals and 38 points in 74 games and also finished second in Selke Trophy voting, as he was a terrific two-way forward. In the postseason, the forward scored three goals and 13 points in 22 games as the Flames won the postseason.
Like the 1987-88 season, Patterson’s 1989-90 season was plagued with injuries, playing 61 games with five goals and eight points. He missed the entirety of the 1990-91 season due to a knee injury, playing one postseason game before the Flames traded him to the Buffalo Sabres.
In Patterson’s final two seasons, he scored eight goals and 18 points in 88 games, electing to head to Europe to finish out his playing days. Patterson joined Hokejsko drsalno društvo Olimpija Ljubljana in Slovenia (let’s just call them Olimpija for simplicity’s sake) where he scored an absurd 32 goals and 83 points in 14 games. That’s 2.29 goals per game and nearly six points per game, I can’t even do that in Be a Pro!
That was Patterson’s final season of his playing days. Getting a degree in marketing from Clarkson, Patterson served as Shaw Communications Vice President of Operations in the Noughties. He’s still active in the community and participates in alumni events. Not too shabby for an undrafted player.
Thanks for reading! You can follow me on Bluesky @ryleydelaney.bsky.social.
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