Dustin Ray Byfuglien is an American professional ice hockey player who is currently signed to the Winnipeg Jets of the National Hockey League. He started his NHL career with Chicago Blackhawks afte being picked 245th overall in the 2003 NHL Draft.
The 6'4" tall, Dustin was born in Roseau, Minnesota, on March 27, 1987. His mother is of Norwegian descent. Her name is Cheryl Byfuglien. His father is African-American. His name is Rick Spencer. He has a younger brother named Calvin Spencer. His favorite music is rap music. He has a nice nickname "Big Buff".
Byfuglien first moved to Warrenville, Illinois to play AAA under 18 hockey for the Chicago mission due to his academic ineligibility. He then moved to play major junior hockey. He later moved to Canada to play major junior hockey for both the Brandon Wheat Kings and Prince George Cougars of the Western Hockey League.
He was then drafted by the Chicago Blackhawks in 2003 as a defenseman at the start of the season 2007-08 and was moved to a right-wing position to give a larger body to the team near the net. The experiment was proved somehow more successful to the team.
He spent his first two seasons with the Blackhawks' minor team. He stood out in his third professional season as the first Rockford Ice hogs player. He earned the player of the week award in the American hockey league when he scored one goal and had five assists in four games. He had scored seven points in eight games with Rockford before earning a recall on November 3, 2007, to the Chicago Blackhawks and never returned to the Ice Hogs.
On November 3 he had a goal in his first shift with Blackhawks against St. Louis Blues (2007-08 NHL season) and recorded his very first hat trick against Phoenix Coyotes on November 30. He played a major role in winning the Black Hawks' Stanley cup in 2010. He scored 11 goals with five assists in the playoffs in that game including three goals in the finals.
He was traded to the Atlanta Thrashers for the New Jersey Devils' first and second-round pick on June 24, 2010. He became an alternate captain for the thrashers after the few months into that season. The thrashers signed Byfuglien to a five year worth 26 million dollars contract extension on February 15, 2011.
Dustin Byfuglien got married to Emily Hendry in 2014. They live in Canada on a lovely lake house where the couple goes boating with their daughter Kira and their cute dog Walter. Their house is located in the middle of nature central because his wife recently took some awesome pictures of birds eating out her hand and a fox that comes to their porch asking for food.
She said that the birds are tame from local feeding them and the same as the fox. She said that if she had a fox coming around her place she'd give some scraps so that it would keep on coming around. She is supposed to be so much support and enjoys watching it on the TV and knows anything about the game. Emily watches almost all the games on TV when she's not going to them with Kira. She also gets together with her parents to watch them sometimes. That's pretty much standard for a hockey player's wife.
He is 6'4" tall and weighs 265 pounds.
According to some sources, he has a huge net worth of 26 million dollars. He is currently signed to a 5 year / $38,000,000 worth contract since 2015 that pays him the annual average salary of $7,600,000. He currently earns $8,000,000 as his annual salary while his salary is reported to be $6 million in 2020.
Dustin has so far earned $65,062,805 from his NHL career.
