Athlete: Hockey
Year to be Inducted: 2026
Date of Birth: May 10, 1907
Born in: Ottawa, Ontario

Born in 1907 in Ottawa, John Allan Shields was a sensational hockey player, remembered for his rapid rise to professional hockey success and his solid defensive presence on the ice.

In his early years, Shields played the sport on outdoor neighbourhood rinks with makeshift teams, like many young boys, until the star player for the Ottawa Montagnards, Ebbie Goodfellow, landed Shields an opportunity with the team.

Shields’ performance in the first game of the season was so remarkable that he finished that same year with the Ottawa Senators, completing his jump from a local team to the NHL in less than a year.

Shields wound up playing professional hockey for 17 years, 11 of them in the NHL. He dressed for the Senators, the Boston Bruins, the New York Americans and finished his NHL career with the Montreal Maroons in 1938.

Shields won the Stanley Cup with the 1934-35 Maroons, sweeping the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-0 in the final to win the club’s second and final Cup. He was presented with a Key to the City alongside other players from Ottawa on the Maroons.

Shields then played in the American Hockey League before joining the Washington Lions as a player and coach in 1942. That same year, during his Air Force service, he was posted to Arnprior, ON, where he became a player and the coach of the Arnprior RCAF Sabres hockey team. Postwar, he officiated in the AHL until 1948.

A member of the first NHL All-Star team ever assembled, the defenceman scored 42 goals over 459 career NHL games. “Big A”, to his teammates, “commanded such respect that he rarely had to prove it,” the Ottawa Journal’s Eddie McCabe wrote upon Shields’ passing in 1975.