Nilsson was to stay in the deep south but one year before the franchise was uprooted and transferred to Calgary. Hot off a team leading 93 points in his NHL debut season down in Georgia, Kent again found Western Canada to his liking and had a spectacular season in 1980-81, posting career highs across the board with 49-82-131 and finishing third in the NHL in scoring, behind only Wayne Gretzky and Marcel Dionne. Kent Nilsson had arrived as a superstar.
After an injury-plagued 1981-82, Nilsson went on to lead the Flames in scoring three more years. In all, Nilsson led the club in scoring for five of the six years he was a Flame. Over that span his 562 points ranked 8th in the NHL, and was a comfy 222 more than any other Flame. Yet among 82 skaters who dressed for the Flames over that span, Nilsson ranked a lowly 81st in +/-. The man was renowned for his lack of defensive intensity. Or as Joe Pelletier of Greatest Hockey Legends put it:
Nilsson is one of the most technically superb players that Sweden has ever produced. He could awe crowds with his stickhandling and playmaking abilities and skated effortlessly. The slippery winger was as skilled a player as their ever was.
So with all that skill why isn't Kent Nilsson mentioned in the same breath as Gretzky or Orr? Simple. He was lazy. He'd even admit it on occasion. He rarely worked out and relied strictly on his god-given talent. But oh what a talent to watch!
The Magic Man's talent, and his curse, was his ability to disappear on the ice. He had this knack of materializing at a very dangerous spot along the space-time continuum, and when he was going good that was enough. He was a sublime passer, and a master of the "short breakaway". But when he wasn't scoring, he simply disappeared completely.
The Oilers made him disappear in the first Battle of Alberta, a five-game blowout in 1983 that saw the gushing Oil outscore their southern rival by an astonishing 35 goals to 13. Not a good series for any Flame.
The next year Nilsson managed to lead his team in scoring while posting a team-worst -24, a figure rendered all the more improbable given the fact that Kent himself scored nine shorthanded goals that season! He missed the playoffs with injury, but it didn't seem like the Flames missed him, as they had a much stronger run and pushed the Oilers to seven hard-fought games before ultimately bowing out in the Smythe Final.
In 1984-85, Nilsson did it again, leading the Flames in scoring with 99 points but having the worst (and practically the only) minus on the team. He scored just one point in a first-round upset by his old team, the Jets, and the writing was on the wall in Calgary. That summer Kent - a proud new dad of baby Robert - was shipped to the Minnesota North Stars for a modest exchange of draft picks. As luck would have it, the first of those picks became Joe Nieuwendyk, who after a great decade as a Flame was traded for a young Jarome Iginla. Thus Kent Nilsson remains just two degrees of separation from the current Flames team, a full quarter-century after he was traded! One doesn't often see trade lines as pure as that one - one star for another for another - but the Kent Nilsson trade worked out well for the Flames. Indeed, a tougher, harder-nosed group of Flames went on to oust the Oilers from the playoffs the year after Nilsson's departure, so it's awfully tough to argue that he was that sorely missed.
Kent bided his time in Minnesota, scoring a point per game over two incomplete seasons. He was a depth scorer in Minny, no longer the centre of the offence but still bloody dangerous. But for whatever reason, Lou Nanne soured on Nilsson and sold him to the Oilers for cash just before the trade deadline. Thus Nilsson became the only player of significance, and likely the only one at all, to play for all of Winnipeg, Calgary, and Edmonton.
