He was named the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as the most valuable player of the playoffs in 1989 after leading the Flames to the Stanley Cup championship.

He famously split goaltender Mike Liut's mask with a shot, and became only the fourth defenceman in NHL history to score 100 points in a season.

MacInnis was born in Inverness, Nova Scotia, and grew up in nearby Port Hood, a fishing village on Cape Breton Island.

His father worked as a coal miner and later as the assistant manager of the arena in Port Hood when the mine closed while his mother was a school teacher.

[3] MacInnis often assisted his father's work at the arena, collecting pucks that he used to shoot repeatedly against a sheet of plywood set against the family barn during the summer.

[4] MacInnis left home in 1979 to join the Regina Pat Blues of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League (SJHL).

[12] MacInnis began the 1983–84 season with the Colorado Flames of the Central Hockey League, scoring 19 points in 19 games before joining Calgary full-time.

[12] He was a finalist for the James Norris Memorial Trophy as top defenceman in the league in three consecutive seasons, 1989, 1990 and 1991, but failed to win the award each time.

[15] He had four goals and five assists in six games in the final series against the Montreal Canadiens en route to winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs.

He improved to a career high 103 points the following year, becoming the first Flames' defenceman and only the fourth in NHL history to record a 100-point season.

While chasing a puck at high speed, he lost control and crashed into the end boards after Hartford rookie Patrick Poulin shoved MacInnis with his stick.

Following five consecutive seasons where the Flames failed to advance past the first round of the playoffs, both MacInnis and the team were looking for a change in the summer of 1994.

[37] MacInnis announced his retirement as a player on September 9, 2005, but remained with the Blues organization as part of its marketing and hockey operations departments.

[45] He suffered a separated shoulder shortly before the 1998 Winter Olympics, and while it was feared he would be unavailable for the tournament as a result, recovered in time to be cleared to play.

[46] MacInnis scored two goals during the tournament, but Canada finished in fourth place after losing the bronze medal match to Finland following a semi-final loss to the Czech Republic.

Though he scored no points in the tournament,[48] Canada defeated the United States to win the nation's first gold medal in hockey in 50 years.

The Flames selected him in the 1981 Draft on the strength of his shot alone; his skating ability was so poor when he arrived for his first training camp in Calgary he earned the nickname "Chopper".

[37] While some reporters expected he would be a bust as a result,[51] MacInnis said the patience the Flames showed him in his early days as a professional allowed him to develop into a more complete defenceman.

[52][53] In his first full season with the Flames, MacInnis took a slapshot from just outside the Blues' defensive zone that struck goaltender Mike Liut on the mask.

He continued to win "Hardest Shot" events at All-Star Game skills competitions despite competing with the technologically inferior wooden sticks.

[55] Used primarily as a power play specialist in his first years as a professional, MacInnis worked at improving his overall game such that he was named a Norris Trophy finalist three consecutive seasons between 1989 and 1991,[12] and was the runner-up to Ray Bourque in 1991.

[51] MacInnis married his wife Jackie shortly after winning the Stanley Cup in 1989,[57] and the couple have four children, Carson, Ryan, Lauren and Riley.

[65] In 2018, he finished third to hockey superstar Sidney Crosby and curler Colleen Jones in a listing of the greatest 15 athletes in Nova Scotia's history.