Steve Jensen Death, Obituary – On November 29, Steve Jensen, a former player on the left wing for the National Hockey League, passed away at the age of 67. In 1975, the Minnesota North Stars selected him in the fourth round of the amateur draft to join their organization. During his seven seasons in the NHL, he amassed 113 goals and 107 assists for a total of 212 points. Jensen began his professional career in his home state of Minnesota with the Minnesota North Stars. In 1977, the Minnesota North Stars made history by becoming the first team in the history of the National Hockey League to have four rookies score 20 or more goals.
Jensen was a part of this historic accomplishment. After that, he spent four years with the Los Angeles Kings, where he became just the sixth American player in the history of the National Hockey League to amass more than one hundred career goals. Jensen was the active leading goal scorer for Americans in the National Hockey League (NHL) during the 1980–1981 and 1981–1982 seasons. After spending his whole career in the NHL, Jensen went on to play and coach in the professional leagues of Switzerland and Austria for a combined total of four seasons. Jensen is the only hockey player in Swiss history to have ever scored seven goals in a professional game.
He accomplished this feat while playing for EVZ in Zug during the 1983–1984 Swiss-2 season. He played professionally in Switzerland for two years and scored 61 goals in 56 matches during that time. Additionally, Steve had a significant amount of experience playing hockey on an international level. He scored 52 goals for the United States Olympic Hockey Team in 1976, making him the team leader in terms of goal scoring. At the Olympic Games held in Innsbruck, Austria in 1976, Steve tied for first place in the tournament’s goal scoring with Vladimir Shadrin of Russia, both of whom scored six goals over the course of the tournament’s six games.
Jensen led Team USA in scoring at the 1976 World Ice Hockey Championships, which were held in Katowice, Poland, three months after the Olympics. He scored four goals and had five assists over the course of the tournament’s nine games. Jensen was also included on the preliminary rosters for the 1979 Team USA World Championship team that competed in Vienna, Austria, and the 1981 Canada Cup team. However, he turned down the invitations to play for those teams in order to run his summer hockey camp business. It is true that Jensen was a member of the United States National Team that triumphed in the Pool B competition at the 1983 Ice Hockey World Championships held in Tokyo, Japan. My condolences go out to his family and friends, and may he finally find some peace in his passing.