David Emma was a center who played college hockey at Boston College, twice making the Hockey East first-team All-Star team. In 1991 he won the Hobey Baker Award, given to the top college hockey player in the United States. Emma competed for the US at the 1992 Winter Olympics, the 1988-89 World Junior Championships, and the World Championships in 1991 and 1999. He played for five years in the NHL, starting with the New Jersey Devils, and later with the Boston Bruins and Florida Panthers, but he never played more than 15 games in a season (1993-94 with the Devils) and his entire career consisted of only 34 games. Emma played a lot in the US minors, spending time in the American Hockey League with the Utica Devils, Albany River Rats, Louisville Panthers, and Portland Pirates, and in the International Hockey League with the Detroit Vipers and Phoenix Roadrunners. He also played overseas, with Klagenfurter AC in Austria from 1997-2000, and with the Nürnberg Ice Tigers in Germany in the 2001-02 season, his final year of professional hockey.