Blessed with blazing speed and a hard shot, Danny Lawson was one of the WHA's All-Time great offensive stars. He was known as a defensive player in the NHL, but became the top goal scorer in the WHA;s inaugural season when teamed with skilled centre Andre Lacroix in 1972-73.
Lawson played a single game with the Detroit Red Wings in the 1968 season, before becoming a full-time professional the next year, shuffling between the Wings and the minor-league Fort Worth Wings of the Central Hockey League. Before season's end he was traded to the ,
serving the role of a defensive forward on the third and fourth lines.
He spent the next two years with the North Stars, further splitting his
time between the parent club and the minor leagues, before a trade in
the 1971 offseason to the Buffalo Sabres.
It was with Buffalo that Lawson finally received substantial ice time,
albeit in a checking role shadowing other teams' offensive stars. It
was to be his first complete season in the NHL without any time spent
in the minors.
In 1972 the WHA came into existence and Lawson made the jump and signed with the Philadelphia Blazers. Although having had a five-year career in the NHL under his belt, it was not until moving to the WHA that his scoring abilities were fully realized. In the WHA’s inaugural season, despite the presence of superstar Bobby Hull, it was Lawson who on February 22 became the first player to score 50 goals and by season’s end he led the league in goals with 61.Lawson capped that season by being selected to the WHA All Star Team's First Team.
According to Lawson, things were equally exciting off the ice (as told to Murray Greig): "The off-ice stuff was just wild. One night after a game in New York the team stopped off at a little bar in Blackwood, New Jersey. It turned out that a gang of bikers used this bar as one of their favorite hangouts, and they showed up juts after we got there. They started mouthing off, and one of them threw a shot glass at our table and hit Marcel Paille in the head.
"That did it. A big tough defenseman named Dave Hutchinson ran over and grabbed the biggest biker and was getting ready to plow his face through the window when the guy reached up with a choke wire and tried to get it around Dave's neck, so Dave dragged him outside like a side of beef and proceeded to beat the sh** out of him. By this time everyone else was throwing was fighting and throwing bottles and glasses, and a couple of minutes later a whole squad of cops showed up.
"It was pretty messy. Guys were cut up, and thee was blood all over the place. But it sure brought our team closer together. Bernie (Parent) ended up with a broken finger, and he missed game because of it, but word never leaked out about how it happened. The club did some fancy talking and none of us faced serious charges. It was all covered up."
Lawson remained a star in the WHA, almost entirely with the Blazers' franchise through moves from Philadelphia to Vancouver and finally to Calgary. Midway through the 1977 season he was traded to the Winnipeg Jets and reached the Avco Cup final, where the Jets lost to the Quebec Nordiques, after which Lawson retired.
In the NHL, Lawson appeared in 219 games, scoring 28 goals and 29 assists. However, in the WHA he played in 392 games, scoring 218 goals and adding 204 assists. Despite not participating in the final two seasons of the WHA's existence he still finished at #8 in all-time WHA goals
Danny Lawson died of cancer on September 15, 2008 at the age of 61.
Comments