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A Flame from the Past: Ronnie Stern
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Photo credit: Sergei Belski/USA Today Sports
Ryley Delaney
Jan 24, 2025, 14:00 ESTUpdated: Jan 26, 2025, 01:49 EST
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Do you remember Ronnie Stern?
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 1996-97 season, with the player we’ll look at in today’s article being Ronnie Stern.
The right wing played three seasons with the Longueuil Chevaliers in the Québec Maritimes Junior Hockey League from 1986-97, winning the league’s trophy in the 1986-87 season. After his second season, where he scored 39 goals and 72 points, he was drafted 70th overall by the Vancouver Canucks.
Stern made his National Hockey League debut in 1987-88, being held pointless in 15 games with the Canucks, but picking up 52 penalty minutes, a theme throughout his career. In 57 games between the American Hockey League and the International Hockey League, Stern scored 15 goals and 34 points.
The Stainte-Agathe-des-Monts, Québec native played 17 NHL games in 1988-89, scoring his first career goal, as he spent the majority of the season in the IHL. In total, Stern scored 19 goals and 42 points in 45 IHL games.
Following the 1988-89 season, Stern became somewhat of a regular in the NHL, playing 34 games with two goals and five points, with 208 penalty minutes. He still split his time between the NHL and IHL though, scoring eight goals and 17 points in 26 IHL games.
Stern only played seven games in the minors in 1990-91, while playing 44 games in the NHL between the Canucks and Calgary Flames, scoring three goals and nine points with 240 penalty minutes. Before the 1991 trade deadline, the Flames traded Dan Murzyn to the Canucks for Stern and Kevan Guy.
Starting in 1991-92, Stern became an NHL regular. That season, he scored a career-high 13 goals and had 338 penalty minutes, third most in the league. Stern followed that up with a 10-goal, 25-point season in 70 games with the Flames in 1992-93 with 207 penalty minutes.  Interestingly, one of those goals was the last of three that the Flames scored in 53 seconds, an NHL record. The 1993-94 season was arguably his best, scoring nine goals and 29 points, with the latter being his career-high.
Stern only played 39 games in 1994-95 due to the NHL lockout, but scored nine goals and 13 points. He followed that up with another double-digit goal season, scoring 10 goals and five points in 52 games. Stern’s final season was in 1996-97, where he scored seven goals and 17 points in 79 games.
The right winger didn’t play in 1997-98 due to recovering from knee surgery but returned to the NHL in 1998-99 when he signed with the San Jose Sharks. That season, he scored seven goals and 16 points in 78 games. The 1999-2000 season was Stern’s last in hockey, scoring four goals and nine points in 67 games.
Stern’s final career goal came during the 2000 post-season. The Sharks finished as the eighth seed that season but took the Presidents’ Trophy-winning St. Louis Blues to Game 7. Stern opened the scoring for the Sharks before Owen Nolan scored the game-winning goal with 11 seconds left in the first period. The Sharks eventually won 3-1, setting up a second-round appearance against the Dallas Stars, with Stern playing a single game.
Overall, Stern’s 2,077 penalty minutes rank 48th in an NHL career, but Stern was far more than a fierce fighter. The winger finished with 75 goals and 161 points in 638 games, playing for the Canucks, Flames, and Sharks. In the post-season, he played 43 games with seven goals and 14 points, only missing the post-season a handful of times in his career.
Thanks for reading! You can follow me on Bluesky @ryleydelaney.bsky.social.

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