Charlie Simmer

Charles Robert Simmer (born March 20, 1954) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey left winger who spent 14 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) with the California Golden Seals, Cleveland Barons, Los Angeles Kings, Boston Bruins, and Pittsburgh Penguins.

After a single junior season with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey Association, where he notched 99 points in 1973–74, the California Golden Seals selected Simmer in the third round of the 1974 NHL amateur draft, 39th overall. He spent his first three professional seasons splitting time between the Seals and the Salt Lake Golden Eagles of the CHL, seeing limited NHL action. When the Seals moved to Cleveland in 1976, his ice time did not increase. In 1977, he was traded to the Los Angeles Kings but spent that season with the Springfield Indians of the AHL, earning All-Star honors. Promoted to the Kings midway through the following campaign, he scored 21 goals in 39 games.

With the Kings, Simmer played left wing on the famed "Triple Crown Line" alongside Marcel Dionne and Dave Taylor. Despite injuries cutting into his playing time, he posted back-to-back 56-goal seasons and led the NHL in goals during the 1979–80 season, becoming the first—and still only—Kings player to do so. He was named an NHL first-team All-Star in 1980 and 1981. In the 1980–81 season, Simmer nearly scored 50 goals in 50 games: entering his 50th game with 46 goals, he scored three times to fall just short, while Mike Bossy became only the second player in NHL history to reach that mark that same night.

Simmer scored his 50th goal in his 51st game. His shooting percentage of 32.75 in 1981 remains an NHL record. On March 31, 1981, during a game against the Toronto Maple Leafs, Simmer missed a check on defenseman Borje Salming, causing his right skate to catch in the ice and break his right leg. The injury limited him to 15 goals in 50 games the next season, but he rebounded with two straight 80-point campaigns and was named to the All-Star Game in 1984.

That season, he scored 44 goals and 48 assists, earning the Bill Libby Memorial Award as the Kings' most valuable player.

Five games into the 1985 season, Simmer was traded to the Boston Bruins. Despite the cumulative toll of multiple injuries—including a broken jaw and a knee injury that cost him nearly 20 games in 1986, followed by a stick to the eye that nearly cost him his sight—he remained a consistent scorer, tallying 60-plus points in each of his three seasons with the Bruins, with at least 20 goals each time. In 1986, he won the Bill Masterton Trophy for perseverance and dedication to hockey. Placed on waivers in 1987 and claimed by the Pittsburgh Penguins, he recorded 11 goals in 50 games during what became his final NHL season at age 34.

Simmer played one more season in 1989 for Eintracht Frankfurt of the German Bundesliga, scoring 51 points in 35 games. After a year off, he spent parts of two seasons as a player-coach for the minor league San Diego Gulls before retiring.

He finished his NHL career with 711 points (342 goals, 369 assists) in 712 games. At the time of his retirement, he was the last active North American professional hockey player to have suited up for the Seals-Barons franchise. In 1994, he was inducted into the Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame. He was formerly married to Playboy Playmate of the Year Terri Welles, with whom he had one daughter; he remarried in 1995 to Jody, and they had a son and a daughter. After his playing days, Simmer worked as a color commentator for the Phoenix Coyotes and the Calgary Flames on Sportsnet. He lived in Calgary for several years before moving to Texas in the mid-2010s to work with Decca, an oil and gas consulting company. In 2023, he was named one of the top 100 Bruins players of all time.