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He was a player, coach, a player's coach, a general manager, president, chairman and team owner.
Pat Quinn did everything in hockey but officiate and was convinced he'd be better at that than the men in stripes, whom he loudly baited from the bench, always working a wad of green chewing gum.
'He was around the (NHL) 45 years,' said Leaf coach Randy Carlyle. 'That is longevity in this business.'
In all the places where Quinn's enormous shadow fell; Toronto, Hamilton, Vancouver, Edmonton, Atlanta, Los Angeles and even Boston where the Bobby Orr hit still resonates, people paused to remember one tough Irishman. Quinn passed away Sunday night at a Vancouver hospital after a lengthy illness at 71.
Years ago, a Vancouver reporter asked Quinn how he kept going in an often cruel sport that battered him physically, denied him a chance in The Show for so long and saw him hired and fired so many times as coach and executive.
'If there is such a thing as destiny, I just feel I get put back into this business,' Quinn said. 'Even when I didn't search it out, the game came back to me. For that I am grateful.'
Quinn's condition prevented him from attending last week's Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Toronto where he is chairman, a fitting tribute to a man who was a walking, talking archive of the sport. And Quinn was all about old school hockey which often led to clashes in the modern NHL, with player agents, a heavyweight league office and the media in the bigger cities he worked.
He wasn't always successful as an executive, but as coach, he put the Flyers and Canucks in the Cup final, became only the second coach since Punch Imlach to get the Maple Leafs to the conference final twice and holds the record among Toronto coaches with a .591 winning percentage. In 15 full seasons up to his last job with the Edmonton Oilers, his various teams missed the playoffs only three times.
First line, or fourth, Quinn made a place for someone willing to work their way to it.
'I'd never have played in the NHL without Pat,' said Mike Busniuk, who was on the Flyer team that had a league-record 35-game unbeaten streak in 1979-80. 'We were treated like men. You made a mistake, he put you back on the ice. You missed curfew, he didn't say a word, but you knew to work extra hard at practice the next day. Even when he sent me down, he looked me in the eye.'
Quinn was moved up, down and all around himself - he was once Tim Horton's defence partner on the Leafs - before the belt on Orr opened many eyes. He went to the expansion Canucks and later the new Atlanta Flames.
'I remember him in 1976, a rough and tumble defenceman,' Carlyle said of his own rookie year. 'I saw him in Le Baron's Steakhouse (a popular Church St. eatery) after a game.'
Quinn was not a gifted player, but later dedicated himself to make the game entertaining and railed against trap teams such as the New Jersey Devils. His proudest achievement might have been the 2002 Olympic gold and the 2004 World Cup, both with Canadians winning at free-flow hockey.
'The (1980s) Oilers had opened it up to a five-man attack and a lot of people campaigned on (Quinn's) type of hockey to compete with them,' Carlyle said. 'To some extent, that hockey is being played today, because if you don't play up-tempo and involve four or five guys in the rush, you don't create offence.
'These are tough days. He's had a tough battle for a while and anyone who saw the Pavel Bure sweater retirement (a year ago) knew that was a different Pat Quinn.'
Around the Leafs' practice arena on Monday, there were long faces on those who'd been part of the 1998-2006 Quinn years.
'He was a great man, but a better person,' said Reid Mitchell, director of hockey and scouting administration. 'He was a family-first guy. As much as hockey was important to him, anything that happened in our personal lives, he wanted us to take care of it. That will always be with me. I owe him a lot of gratitude and I'm not alone. He was a real father figure to a lot of us.
'He could be intimidating to players, but if you look at the Olympics, the Leafs and the Canucks, he had a lot of respect from everyone when he walked in the room. At the end of the day, he always demanded that you sign your name to your work. Be proud of what you did. And he did the same.'
Long-time Leaf equipment man Brian Papineau had a front-row seat for Quinn's legendary running battles with officials.
'Right from the drop of the puck, he'd be in the game and on the refs,' Papineau said with a laugh. 'There was a lot of stuff in the course the game he'd be on them about. Then the linesman would give him a shot back. They were good days, good fun.
'We had some trips to the conference finals, a veteran team whom Pat got along with really well. He was a great man to work for; me, the players, coaches, everyone in hockey. We're all sad to see him go.' ***************
You know that Pat Quinn would have been happy his Hamilton Tiger-Cats are back in the Grey Cup.
The Steel City shaped the future hockey icon, the eldest of five children raised on Glennie Ave. in the East End. The street has since been re-christened Pat Quinn Way and there are many tales of Quinn gaining his tough reputation playing baseball or contact sports in nearby Mahony Park.
Hamilton is where his father John (Jack) Ernest Quinn
was a fireman after tangling with U-boats as an officer aboard Canadian destroyer escorts in the Second World War.
'His Mom (Jean) and his Dad lived in the same house that Jack purchased after the war,' said long-time Hamilton TV host Paul Hendrick, now with Leafs TV. 'In 1998, his first camp with the Leafs was in Hamilton. I'd been at CHCH for a long time and recalled Jack and Jean danced in the Geritol Follies and were on our News at Noon Show. So she told him 'you be nice to that Mr. Hendrick'.
'Pat says 'here I am, coach of the Maple Leafs and my Mom is still barking out orders'. '
'The year before, Toronto hadn't made the playoffs. They were slow and plodding. Pat comes in with a transition team and three rookie defencemen (Tomas Kaberle, Danny Markov and Yannick Tremblay) and they went to the conference final.
'We came on the air with Leafs TV in 2001. Pat gave us credibility right away. He and Harry Neale would sit down in rocking chairs and chew apart the game, always interesting stories whether Toronto won or lost.'
Quinn's grandfather, George Ireland - nicknamed Snooze when he played for the old Hamilton Tigers football team - was also in the military and had the high-risk duty of a munitions carrier in the Canadian Army in the First World War. Quinn always noted the sacrifice of veterans in the Hamilton area and across the country on Remembrance Day.
'We can be so self-absorbed that we don't think of what our people gave up years ago,' he said in a recent Sun interview. 'Would we make the same decision to go and fight as they did? Even today, you could meet an older guy who says, 'I could've made the NHL if I'd stayed home.' You might think, 'Yeah, sure,' but so many really made that sacrifice.'
Quinn would even work military references into his post-game comments as in 'we couldn't hit the net with a Norden bombsight', often puzzling younger members of the media.
Post By http://www.torontosun.com/2014/11/24/former-leafs-coach-pat-quinn-dies
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