A Look At Bob Fitchner (Part Two)

Bob Fitchner was a solid forward in the 1970s in both the WHA and the NHL.

This is the second of a three-part series on former Quebec Nordiques player Bob Fitchner in his own words.

At the end of my second year with the Wheat Kings, I was drafted by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 6^th round (77^th overall) at the 1970 NHL Amateur Draft. The draft today is so different than what it once was. I was working construction in the offseason because I didn’t mind the work, was good at it, and it was a great offseason training workout for myself. Anyways, I had forgotten about the draft and wasn’t paying attention to it at all. I got a phone call that night from some guy at the Brandon Sun saying I was drafted by Pittsburgh and asked my thoughts about it. That was how I found out – a little different from today!

There were a few guys off our team that got drafted, maybe three that were picked. One guy, Chuck Lefley, was on our team and he was really good. When the National Team they were playing on got disbanded, Butch Goring went to Dauphin and Chuck Lefley joined Brandon. The league allowed Chuck to make the trek with us through Western Canada and it helped sell a lot of tickets in Calgary and Edmonton. When we got back to Brandon, he was deemed ineligible because all of a sudden we became a lot more competitive with him on our team, so that was a little disappointing. It was interesting because Butch wasn’t deemed ineligible, but Chuck was.

After I got drafted by Pittsburgh, I went to their training camp in Brantford, Ontario in the fall. We had an older team there. Red Kelly was coach. Guys like Andy Bathgate, Dean Prentice, Val Fonteyne, Eddie Shack, Ron Schock were there. Les Binkley was in net. There were a couple of Brandon guys in Bryan Hextall Jr. and Dunc McCallum. We also had one really good line of Jean Pronovost, Syl Apps Jr. and Lowell MacDonald. And Bryan Watson was one of the best guys there, making sure all the rookies got treated great, and I’ll never forget that. It was a neat experience because these were all guys I had watched on television.