Bill Goldsworthy
Canadian ice hockey player (1944-1996)
William Alfred Goldsworthy (August 24, 1944 – March 29, 1996) was a Canadian professional ice hockey right winger who played for three teams in the National Hockey League for 14 seasons between 1964 and 1978, mostly with the Minnesota North Stars. He retired from playing after two partial seasons in the World Hockey Association.
Playing career
Signed by the Boston Bruins of the NHL as a teenager, Goldsworthy played his junior days with the Bruins' Ontario Hockey Association affiliate Niagara Falls Flyers, a powerful team with future NHL stars Derek Sanderson, Bernie Parent, Jean Pronovost, Don Marcotte, Doug Favell and Rosaire Paiement among numerous others. Even with such a strong squad, Goldsworthy finished second and third in the team scoring his final two seasons with the club, en route to a Memorial Cup finals appearance in 1963 and winning it outright in 1965 in a series marked by brawls and suspensions. The latter season saw Goldsworthy's NHL debut, playing two scoreless games with the Bruins.
Goldsworthy's first two NHL goals came on December 12, 1965, in Boston's 5–3 loss to Detroit at Boston Garden.
With big league jobs tight in the days of the Original Six, Goldsworthy served a minor league apprenticeship the next two seasons, playing with the Oklahoma City Blazers of the Central Hockey League and the Buffalo Bisons of the American Hockey League between occasional call-ups to Boston.
As it did with many other players, league expansion in 1967 gave Goldsworthy a full-time spot in the NHL. Drafted in the mid-rounds by the Minnesota North Stars, he became an immediate starter, showing his promise in the playoffs in Minnesota's debut season, scoring eight goals and fifteen points in fourteen games as the North Stars came within a game of reaching the Stanley Cup finals. His true break-out season came in 1969–70, when he scored 36 goals to begin a stretch where teamed with skilled playmakers such as Dennis Hextall and Jude Drouin, he scored thirty or more goals in five of the next six seasons to become the North Stars' first great scoring star.
His best offensive season was the 1973–74 season, when he set career highs in goals with 48 and points with 74, which saw him just missing a nomination to the Second All-Star Team at right wing.
The public source identifies “Bill Goldsworthy” as canadian ice hockey player (1944-1996). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bill, Goldsworthy and Canadian.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q862132. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 1996, 1964 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bill Goldsworthy” 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.