Greg Holst
Though his NHL career consisted of only 11 games, Greg Holst had a long and rewarding hockey career, most notably in Austria.
Born in Montreal, Greg started out by playing for University of New Brunswick where he collected 28 goals and 46 points in 37 games between 1971-73 and was a second team All-Star in 1973. Greg then won a spot on the Kingston Canadians (QMJHL) team and immediately became a vital part of that squad, leading the way with an 80 point performance.
Still, NHL scouts basically ignored him because he was a relatively small player at 5'10" and 170 lbs. The New York Rangers finally took a chance on him when they selected the little center 139th overall in 1974.
Apprenticing in the minor leagues, Greg had a successful first professional season in the rough Southern Hockey League (SHL). He chipped in with 70 points in 62 games for Winston-Salem Polar Bears and didn't back down from anyone, collecting a necessary 112 penalty minutes to survive.
Greg was invited to NY Rangers training camp before the start of the 1975-76 season and did very well, but was sent to Providence (AHL). In Providence he got a flying start and eventually captured the Dudley "Red" Garrett Memorial Award as AHL's top rookie. In 69 games Greg scored 81 points, including 37 goals and 44 assists. In fact he played so well that he was called up to NY Rangers for two games.
The following two seasons Greg was still playing in the minors and couldn't crack the NY Rangers lineup. He played 5 games for New York in 1976-77 and 4 games in 1977-78. At this point he realized that he would probably be stuck in the minors for the rest of his career. That's when he started to look at other options.
When the Austrian club IEV Innsbruck offered Greg a lucrative contract in 1978, he thought to himself that it was worth a shot. Little did he know at that time that Austria would become his home.
Greg was an instant hit in Austria, and he would dominate the Austrian league for 15 years. In 533 regular season games he scored an impressive 921 points (462 goals and 459 assists). He also became an Austrian citizen and represented Austria in the Pool B World Championships on four occasions, winning the scoring title in 1983. He scored a total of 15 goals and 30 points in 28 WC games. In total he represented Austria on 53 occasions.
Greg's Austrian clubs included IEV Innsbruck (10 seasons), WEV Wien (1), HC Salzburg (1),VSV Villach (1), Gösser EV (1) and EC Graz (1). Greg eventually retired at the age of 39 in 1993, immediately turned to coaching in Austria.
In 1997-98 Greg became the coach for the Austrian U-20 and U-18 teams (juniors).He also became the assistant coach for the Austrian senior national team in 2000-2001.
Although his NHL career was very brief and hardly memorable, he made it up by having a long and rewarding European career. Somehow I suspect Greg Holst would not change a thing.
4 comments:
I skated with this guy and didn't know he did all this!?
In todays game Holsty would have been an NHL all star,no questions ask. Even had he been drafted originally by a different team an given a longer look he could have done great things in N. America
I saw the clip of his rant on YouTube. I can't speak a word of German, but it was still funny. I wish somebody would explain (in English) the backstory behind why that rant happened.
Wikipedia is the source :
Trivia[edit]
In Austria and also the German-speaking neighbouring countries of Switzerland and Germany, Greg Holst became a "legend" for his interview after a match between his team, Villach, and the Vienna Capitals (final result: 4:5 after penalty shoot-out). His team had already led by 2 goals at the beginning of the last period, but eventually had to play shorthanded for over five minutes (three minutes of it with only three players on the ice), helping the team of Vienna to draw the game. Holst used the four-letter-word nine times (!) in one minute, with an interesting mixture of English and German with a Canadian-Austrian accent.
Post a Comment