FN’s All-Time Greatest Flames Team: Robyn Regehr

I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Robyn Regehr.

Regehr came over to Calgary in the Theoren Fleury trade, forever ensuring that he’d be compared to the beloved Flames sniper. The summer after he was traded to Calgary, he was involved in a head-on car collision which broke both of his legs.

With the odds up in the air as to whether he’d be able to walk, skate or do anything else again, he seemingly scoffed at the odds, worked his back-side off in his rehab assignments and made the Flames roster – aside from a short rehab assignment to the American Hockey League.

The bruising stay-at-home defender soon became a fixture on the Flames blueline and the proprietor of a establishment affectionately known as the “Tunnel of Death,” so-named because he would steam-roll hapless attacking forwards into the boards with regularity.

He never put up a ton of points, nor did he score key goals, but Robyn Regehr was a shut-down defender’s shut-down defender and the second longest-serving Calgary Flame of all-time.

Regehr played 11 seasons with the Calgary Flames. As you can see, he was not an offensive powerhouse.

The highest-scoring season Regehr had with the Flames saw him amass 26 points. The lowest-scoring season saw him score 4 points. He played a very physical style of game and somehow had three seasons where he missed between zero and two games, which is pretty impressive all things considered.

Regehr left the Flames at the 2011 NHL Draft in a trade with Ales Kotalik and a second round pick to Buffalo in exchange for Chris Butler and Paul Byron.

The headlines usually go to guys that score the key goals, but Robyn Regehr was one of the biggest “glue guys” in the history of the Calgary Flames. Tons of guys scored more goals or generated more assists than he did. He absolutely punished opposition forwards for more than a decade, and he went from being one of a bunch of guys that the Flames acquired for Theoren Fleury into one of the team’s most memorable all-time players.

They don’t track this extensively, but I’m pretty sure that he wore the alternate captain’s A longer than anybody else in team history. The team’s leadership group throughout the mid-to-late 2000s “glory years” was Iginla and Regehr, and that kind of stability probably went a long way towards the group’s success.

Robyn Regehr: he’s not quite the best Flames defenseman of all-time, but possibly the best physical shut-down defender they ever had. And he’s undoubtedly the best Brazilian-born NHLer in history.