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Top 100 Oilers: No. 32 — Dave Semenko

By Alicia LaBine

May 16, 2026, 09:00 EDTUpdated: May 16, 2026, 12:51 EDT

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Oilersnation is reviving the Top 100 Edmonton Oilers of All Time list, a project originally created by the late Robin Brownlee in 2015. Dave Semenko comes in at No. 32 on our updated 2025 list. He was ranked No. 32 on Brownlee’s original list.

Not many people can say they’ve shared the ice with Wayne Gretzky and stepped into the ring with Muhammad Ali.

In fact, there is only one person who can, and that’s Dave “Cement Head” Semenko, who played 10 seasons with the Edmonton Oilers.

He was beloved by Oilers fans and his teammates, not only for the protection he provided the team on the ice, but for his intelligent, gentle, and witty nature off of it. The city’s love was not unrequited, as the Winnipeg native spent more than half of his life in Edmonton between his playing and scouting days.

“Edmonton was Dave’s home. He came here in 1977 and never looked back,” Paul Coffey said in Semenko’s 2017 tribute hosted by the Oilers at Rogers Place, following his passing earlier that year. “This is where his heart was. He loved the Oilers, he loved the city. Edmonton was his home.”

Notable

Semenko’s relationship with Gretzky was integral to the team’s success in the 1980s.

“I always tell people he was like Santa Claus. Parents couldn’t wait to meet him, take a picture with him, and kids were scared to death,” Gretzky said at the tribute ceremony.

No. 99 also shared a memory from when Semenko was sent down to the CHL’s Wichita Wind.

After he was sent down to Wichita for two weeks, they asked him to pick the number he would wear for the time being. His first option was 27, the number he wore with the Oilers, but it was taken. Then, he requested 17 as the next best thing, but that number was taken too. Ultimately, Semenko ended up wearing 99, obviously the most esteemed number in hockey.

“He was wearing No. 99 in Wichita,” Gretzky laughed. “They went 0-6.”

When “The Great One” won a 1983 Camaro for being chosen as the MVP of the 1983 NHL All-Star game, he gifted the car to Semenko to show his appreciation for his on-ice work.

However, the narrative from the media and management was that the Oilers needed a left winger for Gretzky and Kurri. Even after the team won their first Stanley Cup in 1984, Gretzky recalled Semenko’s undeniable impact on the team.

“He scored before I did in the finals that year,” Gretzky said. According to Gretzky and Coffey, everyone stood taller and skated faster when Semenko was around. They knew that whatever happened, the enforcer had their backs, and other NHL teams feared playing against him.

On June 12, 1983, Semenko fought boxing legend Muhammad Ali in an exhibition game for charity. After three rounds, the match resulted in a draw, and Semenko said that the legendary boxer had been going easy on him. At one point in the fight, Semenko got Ali pretty good, and Ali jokingly wobbled in cartoonish fashion as if he was going to be knocked out. The former NHLer said that the boxer immediately caught him three times in a row after the theatrics.

“It was quite an experience, he was one of my idols growing up,” Semenko said in the Ice Guardians documentary in 2016. “He was bigger than life, and to get a chance just to meet him… I thought it was pretty cool that Muhammad Ali gave me a bloody nose.”

The Story

Semenko started his professional career with the Edmonton Oilers in the World Hockey Association (WHA). In 1979, he scored the last goal in the WHA’s history before getting drafted by the Minnesota North Stars in the expansion draft, when the NHL absorbed the former league.

The Oilers weren’t ready to let go of Semenko when they joined the NHL, so they traded their second and third-round picks in the 1979 NHL Entry Draft to acquire his rights back from the North Stars. In this trade, the Oilers also received a third-round pick, which they used to draft future Oilers superstar and Hall of Famer Mark Messier.

In his 454 games with the NHL club, he scored 59 goals and 136 points, while logging 981 penalty minutes. Semenko recorded 70 fights over his career, 53 of which came with the Oilers, accounting for 265 of his penalty minutes. He was a part of the back-to-back Stanley Cup Championships in 1984 and 1985, the latter of which was the NHL’s No. 1 Greatest NHL Team in history.

On December 16, 1986, he was traded to the Hartford Whalers for a third-round pick in 1988, after the younger Marty McSorley had taken his role on the team.

Jim Matheson of the Edmonton Journal wrote about Semenko’s departure from the team at the time.

“Me leaving? I don’t think it’ll be as bad as it was in Montreal when the fans rioted over Rocket Richard not playing,” Semenko told Matheson. “I’m a little shocked, to say the least. I thought I would finish my career here.”

Matheson also wrote that Glen Sather had told Semenko there would be a role for him on the team when he was ready to end his playing career. In the 1996-97 season, he worked as an assistant coach for the team before transitioning to be a long-term pro scout from 1997-2015.

In his first game back in Edmonton with the Whalers, Semenko found himself on a breakaway in the second period, rushing towards Andy Moog. According to Gretzky, the whole Oilers bench stood up, and when Moog made the stop, the entire team was crestfallen.

“You would think we were playing for the Hartford Whalers. Our whole bench threw our arms up, and we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, Fuhrsy. How could you do that?!'” not recalling that it was Moog who was in the crease that night.

After the period, No. 99 asked the goaltender why he didn’t let Semenko have the goal, and he said that he purposefully opened his five-hole, but Semenko still managed to hit his pads.

“Cement Head’s” career rounded out in one season with the Whalers and Toronto Maple Leafs, respectively, and he played 575 games total in the NHL, tallying 65 goals and 153 points. He published an autobiography in 1989 titled Looking Out for Number One, where he wrote about his time with the greatest player in the history of the game.

Semenko died on June 29, 2017, from liver and pancreatic cancer, and the Dave Semenko Legacy Project was founded in his honour. The project helps underprivileged children obtain equipment so that they can participate in the sport of hockey, despite any potential financial struggles of their families.

Newspapers.com/Edmonton Journal

A March 16, 1987, edition of the Edmonton Journal details Dave Semenko’s first game back against the Edmonton Oilers.

What Brownlee said

Years before I arrived in Alberta late in 1989, I remember thinking while watching Dave Semenko pummel anybody who even looked at Wayne Gretzky wrong, “Man, that dude is big and tough and mean.” When we eventually met, up on the catwalk at Northlands Coliseum in a corner where smokers gathered, I remember thinking the same thing. “You can’t smoke up here,” Semenko said straight-faced as I lit up. I was just about to stub it out and go wipe my ass when he laughed and took a drag of his smoke.
Yes, Semenko was as big and tough and intimidating as they come during his years playing beat cop for Gretzky and the Oilers during their final days in the WHA and entry into the NHL, but mean? No, not really. As a player and then a broadcaster and Oiler scout in his post-playing days, Semenko had a sharp tongue and a dry sense of humor, which he happily unleashed on the unsuspecting, like the night we met in the press box. He was also, for my money, one of the top-three enforcers to ever ply his trade in the NHL. – Robin Brownlee