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Former Kings draft pick Tom Glavine hasn’t left the ice behind

By Helene Elliott
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This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Any discussion of the Kings’ atrocious drafting in the bad, old days inevitably raises one topic.

In the fourth round of the 1984 draft they picked a kid named Tom Glavine, five rounds before they got around to selecting a left wing by the name of Luc Robitaille.

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That Robitaille kid went on to a Hall of Fame career and Glavine, a high-school hockey player of great note in Massachusetts, turned to baseball. Not a bad decision, though: He won 305 games, two Cy Young awards and was an All-Star 10 times.

He hasn’t forgotten his hockey roots, though, and he’s trying to organize investors who will keep the Thrashers in Atlanta, where Glavine lives and coaches youth hockey.

Once a hockey guy, always a hockey guy.

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-- Helene Elliott

Sports Now
Helene Elliott

Helene Elliott was with the Los Angeles Times’ Sports department from 1989 to 2024, first as a staff writer and then, starting in 2006, as a columnist. She became the first female journalist to be honored with a plaque in the Hall of Fame of a major professional sport as the 2005 winner of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Elmer Ferguson Award, awarded to writers “who have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.” A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, she has covered 18 Olympics.

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