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1957 - 1969
The claim: Starred for a Fort Wayne team, as completely as the thing can be done. Len Thornson (4 February 1933 - 12 December 2021) was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, arrived in Fort Wayne in 1957, and then did not leave the middle of the Komets' lineup for twelve consecutive seasons. When the Komets announced his death at 88, the club called him its all-time leading scorer, and its general manager, David Franke, said the sentence this section takes for its headline: Lenny Thornson was the Wayne Gretzky of the IHL.
The numbers: In Fort Wayne's orange and black Thornson played 763 regular season games, scored 412 goals, second in team history, and set franchise records that still frame the club's book: 807 assists and 1,219 points. He passed a hundred points in a season seven times. In 1966-67 he set the franchise and league record with 139 points, 46 goals and 93 assists in 71 games. He led the Komets to Turner Cup championships in 1963 and 1965, led the league in scoring three times, and in his final season, 1968-69, served as player and head coach at once.
The standing: In 1997 The Hockey News named Thornson the greatest player in the history of the International Hockey League, a league that ran for fifty-six years and employed thousands of players, nearly all of them, like him, a level below the NHL and a level above forgetting. His number 11 had been retired by the Komets in 1987, and he was in the Komet Hall of Fame long before the obituaries. He made his home in Fort Wayne after retiring, which is how a Winnipeg centre became, for two generations of Memorial Coliseum crowds, simply the city's hockey player.
Sources:
- Fort Wayne Komets, K's Legend Thornson has passed, 13 December 2021 (komets.com): the Fort Wayne totals, the 1966-67 record, the Franke quotation, the 1997 Hockey News honour.
- Elite Prospects, IHL all-time statistics: the 763 games, 412 goals, 807 assists, 1,219 points line.
- News-Sentinel, Northeast Indiana Top 50 project, Thornson profile (egen.fortwayne.com).