14 Shades of Shea: Ranking Shea Weber’s Career Highlights

The season after being drafted was what you might call a breakout year for Shea. In the regular season with the WHL’s Kelowna Rockets, he notched 32 points in 60 games, but it was in the playoffs where Shea’s legend was born.

He was a point-per-game performer, ending the 2004 playoffs with 17 points in 17 games. Despite the Rockets being eliminated in the WHL playoffs, Kelowna was the host team for the Memorial Cup and qualified automatically for Canada’s premiere junior hockey tournament.

At the 2004 Memorial Cup, Shea continued the hot streak that he had in the playoffs by getting four points in four games, leading Kelowna to their first Memorial Cup championship. Shea was named to the tournament all-star team, recognizing his penchant for elevating his game when it matters most.

Lacing up your skates before your first NHL game is certainly one of the top career moments of any NHL player. On January 6, 2006, Shea Weber made his NHL debut for the Nashville Predators against the Detroit Red Wings.

It was a rather pedestrian debut for Shea after a hand injury to defenseman Marek Zidlicky opened the door to his first minutes in the NHL. He ended the game with three shots and 18 shifts for 11:08 in ice time. He was a -1 as the home team fell to the visiting rivals from Detroit 3-1.

It’s only fitting that Shea’s first NHL game was against the Red Wings as it seems that many of Shea’s career highlights are intertwined with the Predators’ most heated rival. If he was looking for inspiration in his debut, all he had to do was look over to the other team’s bench. Future Hall of Famer Nicklas Lidstrom paced the Red Wings with two power-play goals.

Little known fact: Shea actually wore jersey number 48 for the first six games of his career before changing to his more familiar number 6. A stick tap to OnTheForecheck.com for this little nugget that I had forgotten.

In terms of career highlights, closely following your first NHL game has to be scoring your first NHL goal. For Shea Weber, he didn’t have to wait long.

Shea scored his first NHL goal on April 6, 2006 as part of a 3-0 Predators victory over the St. Louis Blues. Goalie Reinhard Divis was the unwitting victim, but he wouldn’t be the last. While Shea only scored one more goal during the remainder of the regular season, he proved his clutch status by scoring two goals in four playoff games against the San Jose Sharks that season.

Shea has scored 99 goals and has 263 points in 480 regular season NHL games. In the 43 NHL playoff games that he has played in thus far, he has notched 10 goals among 20 points. In other words, on average in both the regular season and the playoffs Shea is scoring at a clip of a point in every other game. However, in the playoffs, he steps up his goal scoring. In the regular season, Shea scores once every five games but in the playoffs he scores once every four games. I would definitely call that clutch.

Shea Weber doesn’t fight often, but when he does, he fights to win. According to HockeyFights.com, Shea has had 13 regular season brawls in his seven NHL seasons. At roughly two fights per season, I think it’s safe to assume that Brian McGrattan’s job is secure.

Interestingly, Shea also has three preseason fights on his record. I mean really, who fights in the preseason? Shea Weber does apparently. He also has one postseason fight that no one could forget against Todd Bertuzzi in last year’s playoff series with the Red Wings.

Speaking of the Wings, Shea’s uncanny connection to them pops up here as well. On February 28, 2009 Shea squared off against Andreas Lilja after Lilja gave Weber a bit of a face wash and pulled him down. The fight wasn’t much of a contest as Shea’s fists concussed Lilja and forced him to miss almost an entire year of hockey.

We all know that Shea Weber hails from the Great White North, specifically the Pacific Northwest, but every playoff season he gives us a little hint that there might be some lumberjack blood in him. Shea’s superhuman ability to grow facial hair has spawned a Facebook page, a Twitter account and numerous fan blogs.

The Beard made its debut in the run up to the 2011 playoffs when Shea started his playoff beard early as the Predators were a dogfight just to make the playoffs that season in a hotly contested Western Conference. Since The Beard got an early start, by the time the playoffs started, it was already in mid-playoff form.

Last season, Shea took a more traditional route, starting The Beard at the beginning of the playoffs. So, when the Predators were eliminated in the second round, The Beard hadn’t quite lived up to the previous season’s high expectations.

Can you imagine though what The Beard will look like when Shea finally hoists Lord Stanley’s Cup? Move over Rip Van Winkle.

Shea has developed quite the professional face when it comes to dealing with the media. While many hockey players are known for being characters and joking around when the press show up, Shea maintains a business first mentality and is keen not to give bulletin board material to the opposition.

So, it was a bit of surprise to see Shea show up in a promotional video for an upcoming Dierks Bentley album. Dierks is a huge hockey fan and plays in a local men’s league in Nashville, so he thought it might be fun to challenge Shea to a game of P-R-E-D-S.

While the end result featured generous editing that made it appear that Dierks and Shea really made their trick shots, there was one shot that didn’t need any special effects help from Hollywood. Shea unleashed a wrist shot from the 300 level and the puck soared over the protective goal zone netting before finally landing on the ice and sliding into the opposite goal.

Although, to be fair to Dierks, I didn’t hear Shea call the bank off the goal post. You can watch the finished piece on the Predators’ web site.

In the waning seconds of the Predators 3-2 victory over the Red Wings in the first game of their playoff series this past season, Shea Weber and Henrik Zetterberg came to blows in what would become known as the head slam heard around the world. The outburst of brutality was uncharacteristic from Shea and while most simply said that Shea got caught up in the heat of the moment, some people actually started to call Shea a dirty player.

Was it a dangerous play? Yes. Was it a dirty play? I don’t think so.

What people seem to gloss over in the replay is the initial hit from Zetterberg on Shea in which he cross-checks him and drives Shea’s knee into the boards. Shea has a history of injuries on his knees dating back to his junior days and then a major knee cap dislocation in the NHL that caused him to miss six weeks of action. I won’t claim to be able to get into Shea’s head at that moment, but it is possible that he felt that the knee hit was intentional and reacted accordingly.

The Red Wings later claimed that Shea’s head slam cracked Zetterberg’s helmet, but the league did not suspend Shea, instead opting to fine him $2,500 for the hit, the maximum fine allowed under the current CBA.

There are few moments in an NHL player’s career that would trump being named their team’s captain. It is the one crowning individual achievement short of lifting Lord Stanley’s Cup over one’s head that defines who they are as a player. By earning the captaincy, a player proves that he’s not only truly gifted on the ice, but also a leader in the locker room and a face that can sell your franchise.

On July 8, 2010, Shea Weber was named the fifth captain in the franchise’s history. Given his recent 14 year contract, it’s bound to be a long time before the Nashville Predators name their sixth captain.

He was the first player drafted by the Predators to be given this honor. While Shea was always dominant on the ice, you really saw his leadership jump up another notch in the last two seasons after being named captain.

As spectators who witnessed Shea Weber’s slap shot up close at least 41 nights a season, we always knew that he had a very hard shot. On January 29, 2011, the rest of the world finally found out just how hard Shea can shoot the puck. Topping out at 104.8, he was unable to unseat Zdeno Chara for the title of “Hardest Shot in the NHL,” but he certainly opened a few eyes.

At the rematch this past season in Ottawa, Shea set a personal best at 106.0 MPH and yet Chara still bested him with his own shot clocking in at 108.8 MPH.

Although he has yet to win the event, the exposure of pushing Chara to close finishes the last two seasons bodes well for the future.

In a way, you could compare Shea Weber to the Butler Bulldogs Men’s Basketball team. Just as they finished in second place in the NCAA tournament two years in a row, so too did Shea finish second in the voting for the Norris trophy in consecutive seasons.

In 2011, Shea finished just 9 points behind Nicklas Lidstrom. While in 2012, Shea finished 12 points behind Erik Karlsson in the voting.

While I’m sure that finishing second is of little consolation to Weber, his continued top finishes just demonstrates the level of his game and the respect that he garners around the league. I certainly don’t think that I’m stepping out too far on this branch by proclaiming that Shea will win multiple Norris trophies before his playing career is over.

I think that winning a gold medal for your country in the Olympics would be a close second behind hoisting the Stanley Cup as far as hardware goes. Shea Weber has represented Canada four times on the international stage winning three gold medals and one silver medal.

But it was a simple play on February 23, 2010 that will forever be etched into the collective consciousness of hockey fans for generations to come. At 3:32 of the second period in a preliminary match against Germany, Shea Weber wound up and unleashed a rocket that was so hard that the twine netting was no match for its awesomeness.

It was an unforgettable moment in otherwise forgettable game in which team Canada beat the Germans 8-2. We all grow up dreaming of the day that we shoot the puck so hard that it literally goes through the net. Shea Weber no longer dreams of that day, he just points to the video above.