Shjon Podein

Playing career

Shjon Podein finished high school at John Marshall in 1986. He started college at US International University but left mid-year to transfer to Minnesota-Duluth in the WCHA. Because he was ineligible as a transfer, he spent the rest of that season with the Rochester Mustangs of the USHL. After his sophomore year, the Edmonton Oilers picked him 166th overall in the 1988 NHL draft. He turned pro in 1990–91 with Edmonton’s AHL affiliate, the Cape Breton Oilers. Podein got his first NHL action in 1992–93 with the Oilers but was sent back to Cape Breton, where he won the Calder Cup. The next season he played sparingly for Edmonton, then signed with the Philadelphia Flyers as a free agent on July 27, 1994. In Philadelphia, he became a reliable penalty-killer and checking forward. He played over 300 games for the Flyers across five seasons and made it to the 1997 Stanley Cup Final, which Detroit won. On November 12, 1998, the Flyers traded him to the Colorado Avalanche for Keith Jones. With Colorado, Podein helped win the Stanley Cup in 2000–01, scoring a career-high 15 goals and matching his best points total of 32. He is famously known for wearing his uniform for 25 hours after winning Game 7 of that Final. The Avalanche traded him to the St. Louis Blues for Mike Keane on February 11, 2002. He played his final NHL season in 2002–03, then moved to Sweden’s Växjö Lakers and ended his playing days in Japan with the HC Nikko Icebucks. Off the ice, he founded the Shjon Podein Children’s Foundation and was recognized for his charity work and support of youth hockey, earning the King Clancy Memorial Trophy in 2001. On February 19, 2008, he performed the traditional “Let’s play hockey” cheer at a Minnesota Wild game.