Uninvited, an 18-year-old farm boy from Wakaw, Saskatchewan turned up at the Prince Albert Mintos training camp in the fall of 1955. He made the team, stayed three years and moved on up the hockey ladder, his 14-year NHL career highlighted by a pair of Stanley Cup victories. Added to the Regina Pats lineup for the Memorial Cup play downs, he helped the team to the finals where they fell to a Hull-Ottawa Canadiens side-loaded with future NHL Habs. Four of the Pats would also have their names engraved on the Stanley Cup as members of the Canadiens.

While some people may have learned everything they needed to know in kindergarten, Dave Balon’s rural roots equipped him with the skills needed to make his way in the world. He was strong, tough and adaptable, traits that caught the eye of the New York Rangers. After playing the entire 1958-59 schedule with the Saskatoon Quakers of the WHL, Balon cracked the Rangers lineup for the first time in 1959-60, appearing in three games without leaving any trace of his passage on the score sheet. He got into 13 games the next season, picking up the first of his 192 NHL goals and made 30 appearances in 1961-62.

At 26, Balon finally stuck with the Rangers for the full 1962-63 schedule, picking up 24 points and establishing himself as a rugged, reliable left wing who was more than willing to stand up for his meeker teammates. All signs pointed to an extended stay with the Broadway Blueshirts, but in the off-season leading up to 1963-64, the Rangers and Habs swapped goaltenders in a blockbuster seven-player deal that saw Phil Goyette and Donnie Marshall accompany Jacques Plante to New York in exchange for Gump Worsley, Balon, Leon Rochefort and Len Ronson.

Habs coach Toe Blake might have seen a bit of himself in the newcomer, a guy willing to undertake any task assigned, do it well and without complaint. Under Blake’s orders, Balon emerged as a classic two-way player, although he spent more time killing penalties than on the power-play.

Balon recorded his first 20-goal campaign in 1963-64; his 42 points that season equaled his entire NHL output until that season. The following year he and the Habs brought the Stanley Cup back to Montreal for the first time since 1960. In 1965-66, after a disappointing regular season that saw him pick up more points during a nine-game stint with the minor league Houston Apollos than he did in 54 with the Habs, Balon rebounded in the playoffs, picking up a fistful of postseason points, the last of them an assist on Henri Richard’s overtime winner in the sixth and final game of that year’s playoffs.

After a 1966-67 campaign that saw the 5-foot-10-inch, 180-pounder score only 19 points, the Habs left him unprotected in the NHL’s expansion draft and he was snapped up by the fledgling Minnesota North Stars. Things picked up for Balon in the NHL’s new division as he rebounded to 47 points, seeing first line action and attracting the interest of his original NHL masters.

Shortly after the season came to a conclusion, three New York Rangers became North Stars and Balon was back on Broadway, where he would enjoy the most productive years of his career. Playing on the Bulldog Line with Walt Tkaczuk and Bill Fairbairn, he skated to a pair of back-to-back, team-leading 30-goal seasons, earning the Boucher Trophy as the team’s most popular player, both on and off the ice, in the spring of 1971.

Sixteen games into the 1971-72 season, Balon, who had notched four goals to that point, was an ex-Ranger, sent west to the Vancouver Canucks. He scored another 19 in 59 games with his new team, adding the same number of assists and finishing in the sixth slot in Canucks scoring despite playing in only three quarters of the team’s games.

By the next season, it was apparent that Balon was nowhere near the player he had been only a few short years earlier. His legs had completely left him and he managed only three goals and a pair of helpers in 57 games. The unexplained fatigue that had begun affecting him sometime earlier could no longer be neutralized by his strength of character or desire to play. He made a final attempt to remain on skates with the Quebec Nordiques in 1973-74 but couldn’t compete, even in the diluted WHA, and hung them up for good after only nine games.

A medical diagnosis soon came, explaining his lack of balance and generally weakened condition. Dave Balon had multiple sclerosis, a disease he had never heard of. Despite the unfavorable prognosis, he faced his affliction as he had every other challenge, meeting it head on and battling it with all his energy.

Retiring to his home province, Balon spent summers operating a paddleboat he owned on Waskesiu Lake in Saskatchewan’s Prince Albert National Park. Winters, the first few anyway, were spent in Humboldt, coaching the town’s junior team, the Broncos.

Balon’s MS followed its inexorable progression and he was forced to use a cane, then two and finally a walker to get around. By the early 1990s, he was wheelchair bound, no longer able to drive himself and the body that had sustained him in the most physical of sports, had become his prison.

When a Prince Albert resident informed the four NHL teams that had employed Balon of his intention to raise funds to provide him with an adapted van, the Montreal Canadiens Alumni Association footed the entire bill. While the disease left Balon trapped in a shell of a body and reduced the talkative former NHLer to a few whispered phrases, it left his mind and sense of humor undiminished and his cheerful outlook largely unaffected.

After struggling against his illness for three decades, Balon, who spent the past few years at a full-care facility on the outskirts of Prince Albert, called the Herb Bassett nursing home, died on Tuesday, May 29th at the age of 68. He is survived by his wife of 47 years, Gwen, daughter Jodi, and son Jeff.