Back Stories: Downtown Robbie Brown

"Rob's career has come full circle from prolific junior scorer, to 49-goal man with Pittsburgh in 1988-89 and then to the minors where he assembled four straight 100-point seasons. He made it back to the NHL last season when he won a spot on Pittsburgh's roster based on a training camp tryout."

Just reading that little backstory paints a small picture of the yo-yo career of Rob Brown. When you look up prolific scorers of the IHL, he's the posterboy. After putting up an astonishing 259 points in 61 games for St. Albert's of the AMHL, he went on to continue his reign of terror as a Kamloops Blazer, scoring a ridiculous 464 points in 192 games. He even outscored budding superstars Theo Fleury and Joe Sakic in the 86-87 WHL season. That was enough to get him noticed by Pittsburgh and he became a Penguin with the 67th pick in the 1986 NHL Entry Draft. He would go on to spend and he spend three, very productive seasons (some say as a Mario coat-tail rider) on the Penguins. 

He's then traded to Hartford and proceeds to spend the next seven seasons bouncing up and down between various NHL teams that he couldn't seem to stick with, and still putting up a 1.6 PPG performance in the IHL, winning their scoring title three times. [ring...ring...] Pittsburgh calling again. He then goes on to put up solid numbers (40P/24P/23P) in his second, 3-year stint on the Penguins. After that, he went back to the Chicago Wolves of the IHL, who a year later joined the AHL, all the while continuing his onslaught of scoring and averaging over a PPG.

Why couldn't his scoring talent carry him through as an NHL regular? There are many who speculate it was due to him having a hardcore lifestyle away from the rink. Others point to him as being a known "diva" of sorts with an attitude that affected his play and clashed with management. Still, it's hard not to see that despite having a ton of offensive skills, he completely lacked in defensive prowess and his skating was sometimes a liability. 

This card is from the 1998-99 Be A Player set that was put out by In The Game. The card is number #265 in the set and it's the Gold parallel.

_________________________ 

Like what you read? Have a comment? Be sure to leave one below. 

Check out TheRealDFG on Twitter @therealdfg. 

Be sure to check out the latest #PuckJunkPodcast. 

Just search and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Podchaser, PocketCasts, Castbox, Castro, Overcast, TuneIn or SoundCloud.