Jeremy Roenick made a claim as one of the greatest American born forwards in hockey history and luckily for the Chicago Blackhawks it was there where he was the most productive.

The second Russian born player in the NHL (though he arrived in Canada before he was one year old) played his entire National Hockey League career with the Chicago Blackhawks.  Gottselig could do it all for Chicago.  He could score, he could check and he was a locker room leader and he was an integral part of Chicago’s 1934 and 1938 Stanley Cup win, the latter of which would see him lead all skaters in Points.  Gottselig who would finish ninth in Goals twice would be named a Second Team All Star in the 1938-39 campaign where he was a third place finisher for the Hart Trophy.

Bill Mosienko would make a relatively quick debut into the National Hockey League at the age of 20 in the 1941-42 season as the events of World War II would deplete the rosters of the premier league of Hockey.  Dubbed “Wee Willie” due to his short stature, Mosienko would blossom in the 1943-44 season with a 70 Point season and the season after would see him paired with the Bentley brothers to form the “Pony Line” a moniker derived from all three of the players being a little vertically challenged.  The trio would become one of the best lines in the NHL, and Mosienko would benefit with a pair of Second Team All Star Selections (1945 & 1946).

If you asked hockey scouts when they saw Ed Belfour at the age of 18, none of them would have pegged Ed Belfour as a future Hall of Famer.  That may very well have been the case for his next four years.  Belfour went undrafted and he would sign with the University of North Dakota where he took them to a Frozen Four win and in that time he was signed by the Blackhawks, though we doubt that even they knew what was to come.