Charlie Conacher Humanitarian Award
award given to a National Hockey League player who made outstanding contribution to humanitarian or community service projects
The Charlie Conacher Humanitarian Award (or Charlie Conacher Memorial Trophy) was an award given to a National Hockey League (NHL) player who made "outstanding contribution to humanitarian or community service projects". It was established in 1968–69 in the memory of Hockey Hall of Fame player Charlie Conacher, who died of throat cancer in 1967, and featured an annual benefit dinner that raised money for the Charlie Conacher Research Fund for Cancer. The award was not affiliated with the NHL, though it was given to one of the league's players.
Toronto Maple Leafs captain George Armstrong was the first winner, named following the 1968–69 season. Co-winners were named on two occasions, as Jean Beliveau and Bobby Orr shared the award in 1970–71, as did Jimmy Peters, Jr. and Gary Bergman in 1972–73. Calgary Flames forward Lanny McDonald was announced as the winner of the award at the 1982–83 Conacher Hockey Awards dinner, though he was actually the runner-up to Boston Bruins defenceman Brad Park. The mistake was cleared up a few days after the dinner.
Calgary's Jim Peplinski was named the final recipient of the award in 1983–84, after which the trophy was retired and put on display at the newly constructed Charlie Conacher Research Centre for cancer at the Toronto General Hospital. Former Chicago Blackhawks star Stan Mikita was given a special award at that final banquet in recognition of his work with the hearing impaired.
The public source identifies “Charlie Conacher Humanitarian Award” as award given to a National Hockey League player who made outstanding contribution to humanitarian or community service projects. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Charlie, Conacher and Humanitarian.
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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 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5084720. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1968, 1967, 1970 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charlie Conacher Humanitarian Award” 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.