Stan Mikita

Stanley Mikita (born Stanislav Guoth; May 20, 1940 – August 7, 2018) was a Slovak-born Canadian ice hockey player who played his entire 22-year National Hockey League (NHL) career with the Chicago Black Hawks.

Born in the Slovak Republic, Mikita was adopted and moved to Canada at the age of eight. After a few stellar seasons in the OHA, he was promoted to the Black Hawks in 1959. In the 1961 Stanley Cup playoffs, Mikita led the league in goals with six as the Black Hawks won the Stanley Cup, which made him the first Slovak-born player to win the Cup. The following season saw him named to his first All-Star Team on his first of fourteen consecutive 20-goal seasons. He won the first of four Art Ross Trophies as the leading point scorer in the 1963–64 season, which saw him record the most points four times in a span of five seasons. He won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, Hart Memorial Trophy, and the Ross Trophy in the 1966–67 and 1967–68 seasons, the first and so far only time a player has won each award in the same season. In 1972, he was the sixth person to record 1,000 points and in 1977, he became the eighth player to score 500 goals in NHL history.

Generally regarded as the best centre of the 1960s, Mikita recorded over 500 goals and 900 assists in nearly 1,400 games. When he retired, he was one of only two players to record 500 goals and 900 assists for a career and he had recorded the most points for a player to have played with only one franchise. Mikita was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983 along with the Slovak Hockey Hall of Fame in 2002. He had his jersey retired by the Black Hawks in 1980, the first player to receive the honor in franchise history. In 2017, he was named one of the 100 Greatest NHL Players.