Gilles Meloche

Playing career

After playing junior for the Verdun Maple Leafs, Meloche was the 70th player chosen in the 1970 amateur draft by the Chicago Black Hawks. His first professional season was spent mostly with Flint in the International League with a two-game stint with Chicago. Chicago was strong in goal with Tony Esposito, so Meloche was dealt to the California Golden Seals, one of the weakest teams in the league. In his first season with the Seals in 1971–72, he recorded a strong goals against average of 3.33 and four shutouts, including one against the league powerhouse Boston Bruins. The Seals' fortunes in the NHL continued to worsen but Meloche continued to play well as the club's number one goaltender. Meloche faced a barrage of rubber directed at the Seals' goal for another four seasons up to the franchise's relocation to Cleveland. Moving to Cleveland for two seasons, Meloche solidly backstopped the Barons with only a slight improvement in the team.

Following the Barons' merger with the Minnesota North Stars in 1978, Meloche was Minnesota's primary goalie and experienced his greatest success. Meloche spent eight seasons with the North Stars, which included two appearances in the NHL All-Star game in 1980 and 1982. Minnesota experienced playoff success as well, with an appearance in the finals in 1981 and the semi-finals in 1980 and 1984.

Despite leading the North Stars with 32 starts in the 1984-85 season, the 34-year old Meloche was getting a significant push from fellow netminders Don Beaupre and Rollie Melanson, who was acquired from the New York Islanders during the season. Though Meloche handled the goaltending duties for the North Stars eight post season games, with his contract up and two much younger netminders under contract, Minnesota traded his rights to the Edmonton Oilers. With Grant Fuhr and Andy Moog firmly entrenched as the Oilers tandem, the trade was an odd fit and not surprisingly, Meloche was on the move again without ever playing a game for Edmonton. Prior to the 1985-86 season the Oilers sent Meloche to Pittsburgh in the deal that landed Marty McSorley in Edmonton.

Meloche spent his final three seasons playing for the Penguins serving as their starter for the 1986-87 and '87-'88 campaigns before retiring following the '87-'88 season (when despite having just 27 appearances, he led the Penguins in that regard.

In total, Meloche played in 788 NHL regular season games over 19 seasons with a GAA of 3.64 and 20 shutouts. Largely because of his stint with the dreadful Seals/Barons teams of the 1970s, his 351 losses are the fourth-most in NHL history, only behind Martin Brodeur, Curtis Joseph and Gump Worsley. He appeared in 45 playoff games and registered a GAA of 3.48 with 2 shutouts.

Following his retirement from playing, Meloche served as a Penguins scout from 1989 to 2006 and also doubled as a goaltending coach/consultant during much of that time. He was part of the staff when the Penguins won Stanley Cups in 1991, 1992 and 2009. Meloche and his wife, Sophie, reside in Pittsburgh. His son, Eric, is a professional ice hockey player who played 74 NHL games between 2000 and 2007 for the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers.