They were teammates with the London Knights.
Dennis Ververgaert remains one of the most prolific scorers in franchise history.
Dave Hutchison is still known as one of the toughest and fiercest competitors to ever wear the green and gold.
Together they will enter the Don Brankley London Knights Hall of Fame as its inductees of 2025.
“It’s such an honour for me because I just loved London,” admitted Ververgaert. “The Knights did so much for me when I got traded there (from the St. Catharines Blackhawks). They (basically) made my career. They boarded me with a family that I got to know and love. There was so much history for me in the three years I spent there.”
Hutchison echoed those sentiments in getting his call to the Hall of Fame.
“It’s a privilege to be coming in to join that group of fine men,” Hutchison said.
Hutchison grew up in London and learned the game in the rinks around the city.
“I grew up (in London) and we only had four rinks in the city at the time, so I would lug my equipment to Tecumseh in the south end,” recalled Hutchison. “It was maybe a couple of miles each way from my home. And then they built the rink in Glen Cairn when I was about 12, and not long after that came Treasure Island Gardens, and skating out there felt like Maple Leaf Gardens at that time.”
Hutchison would get his taste of playing at Maple Leaf Gardens soon enough, but he joined the Knights in 1969-70 just before the playoffs, and then helped London win their first-ever playoff series, alongside Darryl Sittler and Dan Maloney, who he would play with again in the National Hockey League.
“Maloney was a 19-year-old at the time and I was 17 and he kind of took me under his wing and said, ‘Here’s how you have to play this game.’ He and I became kind of a tag team with the Knights, and then we would play together with the Kings, and then with the Maple Leafs.”
Maloney was posthumously inducted into the Don Brankley London Knights Hall of Fame in 2023.
Hutchison spent two full seasons with the Knights and was selected in the 3rd round of the 1972 NHL Entry Draft by the Los Angeles Kings, but his professional career actually began in Philadelphia in the World Hockey Association.
“At the time they were the Miami Screaming Eagles, but they became the Philadelphia Blazers,” Hutchison says. “The Blazers came up first and offered me a contract. About a week later the L.A. Kings came up, and they were hard to deal with and told me that I was definitely playing in the minors even though I hadn’t been to training camp yet, so I wound up signing for two years with the Blazers. At the end of that the Kings had a new general manager who was a real gentleman, and I ended up signing for four years.”
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Once Hutchison stepped onto NHL ice he never left it. But he did leave L.A. for a chance to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
“The team that I always wanted to play for was the Maple Leafs,” said Hutchison. “I ended up signing there and playing along with Sittler and Maloney again. Walt McKechnie and Reg Thomas (two other Don Brankley Hall of Famer) were there, and so was Pat Boutette, so we had five ex-Knights on the team.”
Maple Leaf fans still wonder to this day what might have happened if players like Hutchison and Sittler and Lanny McDonald had remained in Toronto, but Hutchison soaked in every moment.
“I remember standing on the blue line at Maple Leaf Gardens with Borje Salming, who was my defence partner, and it was a Saturday night and the lights were so bright in that building, and I remember looking up and seeing all the people and that great high ceiling that the Gardens had. I honestly reminisce about that all the time.”
Hutchison was traded to Chicago where he spent three seasons and helped the Blackhawks make it to the semi-finals in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
He then went to New Jersey for a year, but before retiring Hutchison found his way back to Toronto one more time.
“I had finished my career the year before. I was done,” remembered Hutchison. “Bill Watters called me at home and he said, ‘Do you want to come back and play?’ I went down the next day and signed a contract. I didn’t even have skates. I had to find an old pair in my mother’s attic and we jumped on a plane to Pittsburgh.”
Hutchison finished out that season in Toronto and then put the skates back in the attic for good.
Ververgaert was very nearly a Maple Leaf himself.
The Grimsby, Ont., native posted back-to-back 100-point seasons with the Knights in 1971-72 and 1972-73.
His 58 goals and 147 points still ranks as the second-best single season point total in franchise history behind only fellow Don Brankley London Knights Hall of Famer, Dave Simpson’s 155.
Ververgaert is very quick to credit another Hall of Famer, Reg Thomas, for helping him to each those numbers.
“Reg was such a great centreman and Hutch(ison) made sure you had room out there. He had your back. And I was fortunate to get a lot of ice time.
After the 72-73 season, Ververgaert was listed as one of the top prospects for the 1973 NHL Amateur Draft and the Maple Leafs had the fourth pick.
“I was told by everyone that I was going to Toronto,” recalled Ververgaert.
One pick before Toronto’s selection, Ververgaert was chosen by the Vancouver Canucks.
“I had no idea,” laughs Ververgaert. “It made sense that Lanny McDonald, who was from the west would go west, and that I would stay in this area, but Peanuts O’Flaherty drafted me and I have no regrets. I’ve enjoyed my life there. Vancouver is beautiful.”
And he was very good to Vancouver. He finished second in scoring on the team in his rookie season and scored more goals than any other rookie in the NHL that season.
For that Ververgaert actually credits goaltender Gary Smith, who was best known for the things he did between periods, like removing all of his goalie gear and then putting it all back on.
“He also wore like eight pairs of socks,” Ververgaert remembered. “He just put on sock over sock over sock and then he would change them all. But he took me aside and said, ‘Ververgaert you’re out first draft choice and you have to start picking it up. We need you to start scoring.’ He laid into me like you wouldn’t believe. But he got me going.”
Ververgart’s goal totals went from seven in the first half of the season to 26 by the end of the year and he was off and running in Vancouver.
But Ververgaert also figured out very quickly what it took to survive in the NHL in the 1970s.
“Back then it was about intimidation and, even though I was a goal scorer, I had to drop the gloves and fight some pretty tough guys, Ververgaert admitted. “But that’s how you got room.”
That helped him again when he moved to the Philadelphia Flyers during the 1978-79 season.
The Flyers still had all kinds of the ingredients that made them the Broad Street Bullies in the middle of the decade, but they mixed in elite skill as well and went on a tear.
That Philadelphia team set a National Hockey League record by going unbeaten in 35 consecutive games.
It still stands today as the record for the longest unbeaten streak in North American professional sports.
Ververgaert finished his NHL career with the Washington Capitals two years later.
Combined Ververgaert and Hutchison played 299 games in a London Knights uniform and spent almost exactly the same humber of games in the National Hockey League.
Ververgaert played 583. Hutchison played in 584.
Together they will officially be enshrined on Fri., Feb. 7 when the 2024-25 London Knights host the Peterborough Petes at 7 p.m., at Canada Life Place.