Charismatic NHL star Ron Duguay found fame well beyond the hockey rink

Ron Duguay, who scored 274 goals in a dozen National Hockey League seasons, suited up for his home country in the 1981 Canada Cup tournament and claimed to have dated Cher and supermodel Cheryl Tiegs simultaneously as the nightlife-loving New York Ranger with the permed pre-Raphaelite hair, died of cancer on Thursday at 69.

The hockey heartthrob was a fan favourite at Madison Square Garden and other arenas as much for those cascading brown curls as his skating and shooting skills. He married models and was one too, signing with Elite Model Management and singing “Ooh la la” in a television commercial for Sasson Jeans in 1979. Not immune to the disco fever of the era, the native of Sudbury, Ont., was a regular at Manhattan’s most exclusive nightclub.

“I was in great shape in those years,” Mr. Duguay later told The New York Times. “I was doing extra cardio at Studio 54.”

He was a determined forechecker with an aptitude for offence whose charisma helped expand the popularity of the NHL beyond the game itself in the 1980s.

If he was one of a kind, he was also the last of his kind: Skating for the minor-league Brooklyn Aces and the Jersey Rockhoppers in 2009 at 51 for two games to raise funds for the Garden of Dreams Foundation, he became the final professional hockey player to compete without a helmet in North America. Mr. Duguay told The Hockey News in 2012 that vanity wasn’t the reason he shunned headgear, but that helmets were hot, confining and, at the time, unnecessary. (Though the NHL made helmets mandatory for players entering the league after the 1978-79 season, veteran players still had the option of wearing one or not.)

He had been receiving treatment at a City of Hope cancer treatment centre in Southern California. Colon cancer diagnosed in late 2024 had spread to his liver.

The New York Rangers organization issued a statement after Mr. Duguay’s death was announced: “Ron’s signature skating style − with his hair flowing as he moved down the ice − captivated The Garden Faithful, and his skill, tenacity, and charisma earned him the admiration of all New Yorkers.”

On Oct. 2, the Sudbury Wolves alumnus was feted at the same Sudbury Community Arena where he skated as a teenager for four seasons before the New York Rangers drafted him 13th overall on June 14, 1977. Mr. Duguay signed autographs and dropped the ceremonial puck before an Ontario Hockey League game against the Niagara IceDogs.

“He was there like a trooper,” said Joe Bowen, a Sudbury native who began his hockey broadcasting career calling Wolves games for the city’s CKSO radio station at same time Mr. Duguay played for the team. “But halfway through the game he said he had to leave. You kind of knew things weren’t going in the right direction, healthwise.”

Mr. Duguay had been involved in a long-distance relationship with former U.S vice-presidential candidate and one-time Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Earlier this year he told The New York Post that the Republican politician was “the sweetest, kindest person” and a “great companion.”

He married twice, first to California model Robin Bobo (with whom he had two daughters), then to Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue bombshell Kim Alexis, with whom he had a son.

In 2009, he teamed with Canadian pair skater Barbara Underhill in the first season of the CBC figure-skating reality show Battle of the Blades. Ms. Underhill hadn’t competed in 11 years and Mr. Duguay was also long retired.

“We had a three-week rehearsal period and it was an enormous challenge,” Ms. Underhill said. “But he was born for that show, and when the television lights flashed on he came alive. It was wild, it was a gift, and Ron was in his glory.”

Until the late 1960s, professional athletes weren’t normally considered sex symbols or adored the way musicians and movie stars were. Their nightlife was their own life; wholesomeness and aw-shucks humility was what got their mugs on the boxes of Wheaties cereal.

The cocky New York Jets quarterback and shag-rug superstar Joe Namath changed all that. And when in 1978 former Jets owner Sonny Werblin took charge of Madison Square Garden and its properties, including the Rangers, he brought with him a love of glam.

“Sonny encouraged his players to go to Studio 54,” said Larry Sloman, who wrote about the Rangers in Playboy and documented the team’s 1979-80 season in the book Thin Ice. “He loved the publicity when they made it into the gossip columns.”

Mr. Duguay partnered with teammates Phil Esposito and Ron Greschner in the short-lived Sticks restaurant in Manhattan’s Upper East Side and later co-owned another eatery, Cronies, in the same area.

In a 1981 cover story, Forum magazine dubbed Mr. Duguay the “Son of Namath” for his flashy charisma. The puck-shooter had no issue at all with athletes being hyped as sex symbols and using the allure to sell sports and other things.

“Damn right, I think it’s great,” he told Forum. “And I’m lucky I’m in New York and have a man like Sonny Werblin behind me.”

Mr. Duguay was a rock star − the Jon Bon Jovi of Broadway. In fact, his singing voice was heard on the 1979 song Hockey Sock Rock, written by Canada’s Alan Thicke. One of the other participating Rangers, Dave Maloney, later told New York Magazine that the single sold 100,000 copies but only because singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, a friend of Mr. Thicke’s, bought 90,000 himself.

The free-spirited athlete who answered to Doog, Doogs or Doogie graced the front of Stan Fischler’s 1982 book The New Breed: Hockey’s Hot Young Superstars. The picture was taken by the renowned sports photographer Bruce Bennett, making Mr. Duguay a rare personality photographed by both Hockey Hall of Famer Mr. Bennett and the New York-based pop-culture artist Andy Warhol.

In a story in Mr. Warhol’s Interview magazine, the skater said his first purchases when he signed with the Rangers were a white Cadillac Eldorado and shortly afterward a metallic gold speedboat he shipped back to Canada. Mr. Warhol noted that Mr. Duguay did not wear a “hat” while on the ice and said it would be a shame if his “beautiful nose” was wrecked.

“Andy had a crush on Ron,” Mr. Sloman said.

The strapping centre/right winger maintained his good looks while wearing the NHL uniforms of the Detroit Red Wings, Pittsburgh Penguins, Los Angeles Kings and, for two stints, the Rangers. In his only Stanley Cup finals he scored two goals in five games as a 21-year-old in 1979 for the Rangers, who lost to the Montreal Canadiens.

Playing with 11 future Hall of Famers on Team Canada’s Canada Cup side in 1981, Mr. Duguay took on a checking role for the team that lost to the Soviet Union squad in the final game by an 8-1 score.

After notching 40 goals for the Rangers during the 1981-82 season, he slumped to 19 goals the following year and was shipped to Detroit in a blockbuster six-player swap. He said Ms. Tiegs and actress Farrah Fawcett called him on the day the news was announced.

Analyzing the trade for Sports Illustrated, Jack Falla wrote that Mr. Duguay was a “problem child” for the Rangers’ old-school coach Herb Brooks because of his tardiness. “There is no reason to believe that Duguay will get along any better with Red Wings coach Nick Polano, a disciplinarian, than he did with Brooks,” Mr. Falla wrote in 1983.

Mr. Duguay proved his detractor wrong by scoring 80 and 89 points, respectively, in his two full seasons in Motor City. But by the time he finished his NHL career in Los Angeles in 1989, he was relegated to journeyman status. The one-time all-star lingered in the minor leagues, playing one season with Mannheim ERC of the German Bundesliga before returning to the U.S. to skate for the San Diego Gulls and the Jacksonville Barracudas. He also coached the Florida team for parts of three seasons.

Mr. Duguay traded his hockey stick for a microphone as an in-studio analyst for MSG Network’s television coverage of Rangers games from 2007 to 2018.

The glitzy Battle of the Blades competition was a far cry from his days playing in the rowdy hockey culture memorialized in Stompin’ Tom Connors’s 1969 folk song Sudbury Saturday Night, in which “Inco” rhymes with “gettin’ stinko.”

As a member of the Sudbury Wolves in 1976, the 18-year-old phenom fought Tony Horvath, a hard-rock enforcer with the visiting Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. Mr. Duguay’s dad emerged from the stands and socked Mr. Horvath, who was in the penalty box. As the two tussled, Mr. Duguay left his own penalty box to come to his father’s aid.

“It was mayhem,” Mr. Bowen said. “But it had nothing to do with hockey. It was family.”

Ronald Duguay was born in Sudbury on July 6, 1957. His father, J. Fernand (Fern) Duguay, worked for Falconbridge Nickel Mines Limited as an electrician and was an avid bodybuilder. His mother was Anita Duguay (née Young), who died on Aug. 10, at 97.

Ron learned to skate at the age of four and wore the purple and gold of the suburban Valley East community team as a bantam player. When drafted by the Sudbury Wolves at 16, he quit school. As a member of the Canadian side in the 1977 World Junior Championships in the former Czechoslovakia, he recorded five points for the second-place team.

The Ontarian never played for a Canadian team as a professional. In 1990, as a 33-year-old veteran, he tried out for the Toronto Maple Leafs. At that point he was living in Southern California and had adopted a health-conscious lifestyle five years earlier in hopes of prolonging his playing career.

“When I was in New York, I was enjoying myself, but I was drinking more than I needed to,” he told The Globe and Mail at the time. “Once I made the commitment to settle down, one of the things I concentrated on was making sure my body didn’t deteriorate any further.”

Mr. Duguay was cut from the team in training camp and would never again play in the NHL.

In 2022, he was back in the New York tabloids when he confronted a photographer at the Manhattan restaurant Elio’s, where he shared a meal with Ms. Palin. At the time, the former politician and self-described hockey mom told The New York Post, “He’s my buddy. We have hockey in common.”

On Sunday, Ms. Palin shared a bedside photo on Instagram of her holding the former hockey star’s hand.

Mr. Duguay leaves his siblings, Diane Menard, Richard Duguay and Norm Duguay; and children, Shay Thomas, Amber Stavros and Noah Duguay.

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