San Jose Sharks – Jeff Odgers
If You want to find a fighter/enforcer that knew how to start a career, look no further than Jeff Odgers. Odgers broke the 200-minute mark for penalties in each of his first three seasons in the NHL, all with the San Jose Sharks. Talk about starting off hot.
But Odgers wouldn’t stop there. After posting seasons of 217, 253 and 222 minutes in the sin bin respectively, he would follow up that with seasons of 117 and 192 to finish off his 334-game tenure in San Jose.
The 1,001 penalty minutes he posted in San Jose stands as the most all-time in franchise history. The next closest active player at the writing of this article is Joe Thornton, who is quickly approaching the end of his playing days and is over 400 minutes behind Odgers. It seems Odgers is safe atop that list for the foreseeable future.
On top of racking up a massive amount of penalty minutes at the beginning of his career, he fought regularly. Odgers would fight 65 times total in his first three seasons in the league.
Some of the more notable names he would take on in his first three seasons include Mick Vukota, Basil McRae, Brendan Shanahan, Marty McSorley, Warren Rychel and even Tie Domi. Odgers truly did not fear anyone and he filled the boots of the enforcer fantastically in California.
Odgers would go on to post 2,346 penalty minutes over his 821-game csreer with the Sharks, Boston Bruins, Colorado Avalanche and Atlanta Thrashers. Impressively enough, he could have made a strong case against Cody McLeod to fill in two slots in the all-time best fighters.