Ron Duguay, who starred for his hometown Sudbury Wolves and became an immediate sensation on and off the ice in the Big Apple with the New York Rangers, has died. He was 69.
Shay Thomas, Duguay’s daughter, said in post shared with her two siblings and Duguay’s partner that the 12-year NHL player died Thursday “after a hard fought battle with cancer.”
“Our hearts are broken. We love you forever Dad,” said Thomas, who added that a celebration of life would be announced at a future date.
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice-presidential candidate who was Duguay’s girlfriend for at least the past four years, posted a bedside picture on social media on Oct. 18 holding his hand. “Prayers for Ron Duguay so appreciated,” she said.
Duguay told the New York Post in February that he had had Stage 4 cancer for about a year at that time, which had originated in the colon. Duguay’s daughters Shay and Amber from his first marriage had started a GoFundMe to help their father fund treatment, which involved travelling to California from his Florida home.
Duguay appears with Mark Carney, then the Bank of England governor, at Trafalgar Square, London, for a ‘Canada 150’ celebration, on July 1, 2017. Janice Charette, then Canada’s high commissioner to Britain, is also shown. (Matt Dunham/The Associated Press)
The Wolves held a Ron Duguay Appreciation Night on Sept. 30 to help with his health-care expenses. Wayne Gretzky, in a video message for the event, said he was pulling for the man who was his Canada Cup teammate in 1981 as well as with the Los Angeles Kings later that decade. Gretzky called Duguay a “great person, great family guy.”
In a career that also saw him play with legends Phil Esposito, Steve Yzerman and Mario Lemieux, Duguay notched 274 goals and 346 assists for 620 points in 860 NHL games over a dozen seasons. The totals were impressive enough, but in an era when hockey players often didn’t make an impression beyond the game’s hardcore fans, he was an exception, his smooth skating and helmet-less long, curly locks providing an indelible image in the sport in the late 1970s and early ’80s.
Duguay was featured in a cover story in Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, was regularly admitted beyond the velvet rope at Manhattan’s legendary Studio 54 nightclub, where Liza Minnelli introduced herself and later connected him with Cher, who he would date for a time.
He was signed by Elite Models for promotional appearances, appeared in a hilarious and now-cringey chorus-line style ad with three Rangers teammates to promote Vidal Sassoon jeans, and partnered with Esposito and teammate Ron Greschner in a Manhattan bar called Sticks.
Duguay, then with the New York Rangers, poses for a portrait on the streets on Manhattan in March 1980. (Bruce Bennett Studios/Getty Images)
Duguay, in large part, backed up the hype off the ice with his play. Drafted 13th overall by the Rangers in 1977, made the jump to the NHL without playing a single game in the minor leagues. The six-foot-two, 210-pound player would earn the respect of his NHL foes as a two-way player.
“When he’s on, he’s a dominant force,” Craig Ramsay of the Buffalo Sabres said in a 1980 feature for the Toronto Star. “You can’t believe how much ice he covers killing penalties, and he’s always a scoring threat on the power play.”
Duguay, born to parents Fern and Anita on July 6, 1957, grew up in northern Ontario, delivering newspapers for the Sudbury Star and gaining strength as a teenager as his father was an avid weightlifter.
He would average 33 goals and 90 points with the Wolves over four seasons in Sudbury, eventually becoming team captain, in what was then called the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA). He represented Canada at the first official world junior hockey championship in 1977, when the team won silver.
Duguay had been mandated to wear a helmet like all OHA players, but chose not to wear one in the NHL. After having his head shaved in an initiation ritual as a rookie, he grew his hair back.
Duguay and Robin Bobo are seen together on Sept. 9, 1983, a few months before their marriage. (Mary Schroeder/Imagn Images/USA Today Network/Reuters)
New York had missed the playoffs in the previous two seasons but made the postseason in his rookie year as he successfully switched from centre to right wing. In his second season, talented Swedes Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson joined the team after playing for Winnipeg in the World Hockey Association, and the Rangers would make the Stanley Cup final before falling to the Montreal Canadiens. Duguay earned nine points in 18 playoff games during that run.
They were heady days for the Rangers. The team also featured Don Murdoch, the talented forward who was once suspended for half the season after beinag caught with five grams of cocaine at the U.S.-Canada border.
Duguay admitted decades later in a podcast that he palled off-ice with Murdoch and sometimes made it to practice without having had any sleep.
“We would do things to keep us awake,” he joked.
After a 40-goal season with the Rangers in 1980-81, Duguay was invited to camp for the 1981 Canada Cup tournament and impressed coach Scotty Bowman and the staff enough to land a spot. Duguay would appear in all seven games as Canada lost to the Soviet Union in the final, and he remembered it decades later in an interview with the Saint-John Telegraph Journal as likely his proudest achievement as a pro player.
Things soured in the 1982-83 NHL season with the Rangers, when he notched just 19 goals. The famed coach Herb Brooks questioned his commitment on the ice and Sonny Werblin, chair of Madison Square Garden, called him a “big, big disappointment.”
Duguay, left, plays for the Los Angeles Kings in 1988-89, toward the end of his NHL career. (Mike Powell/Allsport/Getty Images)
Duguay admitted to a reporter days after being traded to then-lowly Detroit in June 1983 that he was depressed about the move, but he would recover to record 80 and 89 points in his first two seasons with the Red Wings, the highest totals of his NHL career.
In December 1983, the New York Daily News reported on his marriage to American model Robin Bobo, writing that Duguay was “finally taking the plunge after being a free agent with such beauties as Cheryl Tiegs etc. etc.”
Beginning with a trade to the Penguins late in the 1985-86 season, Duguay would have relatively short stints with Pittsburgh, the Rangers again and in Los Angeles. By the 1990s, he was playing in Germany and in the minor leagues in San Diego.
Duguay’s first marriage eventually ended, and in 1994 he would welcome a son, Noah, with his second wife, the model Kim Alexis.
Duguay and Sarah Palin appear together during a campaign event on July 9, 2022, in Anchorage, when she was in the middle of an unsuccessful run for a U.S. Congress seat. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Duguay stayed busy in retirement. He appeared on an episode of Beverly Hills 90210, coached the Jacksonville Barracudas in the minor leagues for four seasons, spent time as a commentator for the Rangers on the Madison Square Garden network and participated in the first season of CBC’s Battle of the Blades with Olympian Barbara Underhill.
Duguay told the Eddie Matta Show podcast in 2021 that he had been single for about seven years, but reports of the Duguay-Palin relationship emerged the following year. She would initially describe him as a “buddy,” but he would be by her side as she launched an unsuccessful bid for Congress and was embroiled in a defamation lawsuit with the New York Times.
