Basil McRae
Canadian ice hockey player
Basil Paul McRae (born January 5, 1961) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player. He is a part owner and alternate governor of the London Knights in the Ontario Hockey League and he is the director of pro scouting for the Columbus Blue Jackets. McRae was known as an enforcer with over 2,000 penalty minutes in his career.
Playing career
McRae played his major junior hockey with the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA).
In the 1980 NHL Entry Draft, the Quebec Nordiques drafted McRae in the third round, 87th overall. He played twenty regular season games and nine playoff matches with the big club in 1981, later spending some time with the Fredericton Express of the American Hockey League (AHL). He was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs for Richard Turmel and spent a couple of years toiling in the minors with the St. Catharines Saints of the AHL. In 1985 McRae signed as a free agent with the Detroit Red Wings but was traded back to his original team, the Nordiques along with John Ogrodnick and Doug Shedden for Brent Ashton, Gilbert Delorme and Mark Kumpel.
At the start of the 1987 season, McRae signed with the Minnesota North Stars, the team he would have the most success with. The 1987–88 season saw McRae play the whole 80 game season with the North Stars, the first time he played a full season in the NHL. He formed a tough enforcer duo along with Shane Churla, leading the league in penalty minutes with 351 in 1990.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Basil McRae” as canadian ice hockey player. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as canadian ice hockey player. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q810038. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1961, 1980, 1981 and 1985.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Basil McRae” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.