Boys from Saskatchewan, Together Again

September 2026  |  3 min read

At this year's Legends Showcase on September 26th, three inductees will share the ice who go back further than any of them probably expected: Norm Beaudin, Terry Harper, and Bill Orban were all born and raised playing hockey in Saskatchewan, decades before any of them wore an NHL sweater.

A Shared Starting Point

Beaudin grew up in Montmartre, east of Regina. Harper and Orban were both born in Regina, with Orban's family later moving to Saskatoon. Each of them worked through the same development system that turned out a wave of NHL talent in that era: minor hockey into the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, with the Memorial Cup as the proving ground for the players good enough to keep climbing. It was a system built on toughness and positioning rather than highlight-reel skill, and it shaped players who were used to playing hurt.

Three Different Roads to the Pros

Beaudin, a 2026 inductee, reached the Memorial Cup final twice — first with the Regina Pats, then with the Edmonton Oil Kings, a feat few players manage even once. He signed with the Montreal Canadiens organization in 1962. Along the way, he picked up a strange piece of hockey trivia: in one game, he scored a goal and was later called on to play emergency goaltender. He'd later become the first player signed by the expansion Winnipeg Jets of the WHA, where he played on a line with Bobby Hull.

Harper, a 2025 inductee, had a rougher start. Severe burns as a boy left him needing years of skin grafts, and hockey was part of how he rebuilt his strength afterward. What began as physical therapy became a 19-year NHL career and five Stanley Cup rings with Montreal — earned less through scoring than through the unglamorous defensive work that keeps a team in games.

Orban, also a 2025 inductee, put up 44 goals and 55 assists in a single junior season for the Saskatoon Quakers before turning pro with the Chicago Black Hawks and Minnesota North Stars. This past April, both Orban and Harper were also inducted into Canada's 80+ Hockey Hall of Fame (Temple de la Renommée du Hockey 80+) at a ceremony in Saskatoon.

Staying Power

What really connects these three isn't the NHL résumés — it's that none of them ever really stopped. At 84, Beaudin is still on the ice coaching younger players. Orban, now 81 and still playing twice a week in a 60-and-up league, sums up why simply:

"Hockey is the glue. It keeps everybody coming back."

Harper stepped away from the game for ten years after his NHL career ended — and came back to it with less pressure and more enjoyment than he remembered.

"It was no pressure — we would just play and have fun."

Now 86, he's still skating twice a week, often against players decades younger. The three have crossed paths before: Beaudin and Harper were Regina Pats teammates in the early '60s and later played together again with the Hull-Ottawa Canadiens, while Beaudin and Orban skated together on the Cleveland Barons in the '70s. On September 26th in Superior, Colorado, three boys from Saskatchewan get to be teammates one more time.

Story based on reporting by Leone Merchant, originally published on The Real Iron Men of Hockey — visit the site for more.