Bryon Baltimore

Bryon Baltimore is one of only three people born in the Yukon to play in the National Hockey League. Peter Sturgeon (who played 6 games with the Colorado Rockies) and Hazen McAndrew (who played 7 games with the Brooklyn Americans) were also born in the Canadian territory.

Like Sturgeon and McAndrew, Bryon Baltimore saw action in only a handful of NHL games. The Whitehorse native, who was as strong as an ox, only got into two games, both with the Edmonton Oilers in 1979-80. However unlike Sturgeon or McAndrew, Baltimore did manage to play several years of big league hockey. While they were almost strictly minor leaguers, Baltimore played in the World Hockey Association for 5 years.

Baltimore, who attended the University of Alberta from 1970-1972 studying to become a teacher before joining the AHL Springfield Kings on a minor league contract, was signed by the defense weak WHA in 1974. He played that first year with the Chicago Cougars, where he enjoyed his best major league season - scoring 8 goals and 20 points plus 110 PIM in 77 games. He then proceeded to bounce around the WHA from 1974 through 1979 as a journeyman defenseman. He went to the Denver/Ottawa Civics the following before splitting the rest of his career with the Indianapolis Racers and the Cincinnati Stingers. In 331 WHA games, he scored 18 goals, 72 assists and 90 points.

The WHA folded for the 1979-80 season, and 4 of its member teams merged with the National Hockey League. The Edmonton Oilers claimed the little-noticed role player in a special WHA Dispersal Draft. He would spend the next two years playing for the Oilers affiliates in the CHL with Houston and Wichita, and also got called up for a brief 2 game appearance in the NHL.

A hard worker who often was banged up and bruised, Baltimore loved to relax at his cottage in Stettler Alberta when he wasn't playing hockey. That's when he was recovering from surgery though, which was more often than Bryon would have liked. He had a long list of nagging injuries over his career, most notably to his knees, wrist and groin.

Baltimore, whose wife skated with the Ice Capades, later became a player agent, representing NHL talent including Jay Bouwmeester.