Hot News: Terry Jones: Pat Quinn was a joy to cover

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Pat Quinn's hockey career effectively began and ended in Edmonton.

And despite how it turned out, with a one-year-and-out final head coaching job with the Edmonton Oilers, I'll always remember his final year as a head coach fondly.

When the news broke Monday of the death of The Big Irishman at the age of 71, a great many marvelous memories flooded back with most who knew him, especially in the hockey writing fraternity.

No coach had a talent for taking one question in a post-game media press conference and chewing on it to such an extent he'd essentially write your column for you.

And it was vintage Quinn, when it came to his year here when Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle were rookies, throwing out quotes such as 'sucked the hind banana' and saying his team 'looked like a bunch of Barbara Ann Scotts' of the 1948 Olympic gold medal-winning figure skater.

Hockey world lost a legend today in Pat Quinn. Rest in peace Pat. #OnceAnOilKing pic.twitter.com/4gYbzrPqvw - Mitch Moroz (@MitchMoroz) November 24, 2014

Quinn's coaching style may not have been the one to go forward on with the excruciating rebuild here, but he made that season highly enjoyable for the media. For those who had never come in contact with him before, they received a pretty good glimpse of the colorful character the man was throughout his career.

Oilers Entertainment Group Vice Chair Bob Nicholson, a former colleague and close family friend said, 'Pat was a great friend and a great man. I will always cherish our special relationship and the many great memories and moments we shared. There is no other coach in hockey history to have won Olympic, World Junior and Under-18 gold medals. This is but one small part of Pat's legacy.'

With me, when it came to the career of Pat Quinn, it went all the way back to 1963 and I feel so fortunate to have experienced so many phases of his legendary hockey life.

I grew up watching Pat Quinn play defence with the 1963 Memorial Cup champion Edmonton Oil Kings. I was a 15-year-old kid already beginning my sportswriting career in Lacombe where the Oil Kings had their biggest rivalry with the Lacombe Rockets.

Full #Oilers statement on the passing of hockey legend Pat Quinn, including comments from Nicholson & Lowe | READ > http://t.co/raURqU53AQ - Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) November 24, 2014

Quinn told me returning to Edmonton as Oilers coach was something he'd always treasure because it made him think more about the 1963 Edmonton Oil Kings than in the previous 46 years.

'It's re-awakened those memories. It's just so many great memories. It's how I got there in the first place,' he told me.

'It was such an important year in my life. It was so important from a hockey point of view, but even more important from a life point of view. The people I met there as a 19-year-old made a huge impact on me as a person.

'It's about people like Mrs. Knox. I guess that's who I think about first. Mrs. Knox and her family. One of her sons was our stick boy.'

You may have heard of him. Swede Knox with a full meal deal career as an NHL linesman.

'Swede was 14 at the time. When I arrived, as a 19-year-old kid from Hamilton and the only Easterner on the team, I found out the people at the place they'd planned to put me had decided they didn't want to take in boarders. Swede took me to his house and asked his mom to take me in.

'It was a small house, about five or six blocks from the fairgrounds where the old Edmonton Gardens was located. Mrs. Knox and her husband and four of her kids lived there. But she said 'Okay, I'll take him in.'

'It was a major break. To be in and around that family was a great start for me. I became lifelong friends.

'Swede was like my little brother for a while. Then he showed up in the league as a linesman. In my opinion he was a terrific linesman. Swede was one of the few officials I never hassled. Well, there was the one time. I said 'Swede, I'm going to tell your mother!'

'Pat is a guy I have fond memories of.' @ebs_14 on Quinn, coached him with Team Canada and the #Oilers | VIDEO > http://t.co/GhWdvagmSK - Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) November 24, 2014

Swede's older brother Don was the best man at Quinn's wedding and Quinn flew back to give the eulogy for their mom's funeral.

'When I first came to town it was after I lost a scholarship at Michigan Tech. because in those pre-draft years I'd signed a form with the Red Wings and was paid $40 a week in Hamilton.'

If Mrs. Knox was the mother figure for Pat Quinn in 1962-63, Leo LeClerc was the father figure.

'He was a special man. Those were his kids,' he said of the general manager.

'Education was important to him with the Oil Kings. Remember, that was a different time. It wasn't like that in hockey back then. The Oil Kings were a Detroit Red Wings sponsored club back then. Clarence Moher was the scout and he worked really closely with Leo on the kind of young men they wanted. They made education a part of it. Jimmy Skinner ran the team in Hamilton and he didn't want anybody to go to school. Everybody in Hamilton was urged not to go to school.

'Leo was everything to those players. He helped you grow up. He talked to you about money. When you turn pro he'd do the negotiations for a lot of the guys. He was such a great influence. When Sandra and I decided to get married, he set it up. We got married the day before the Memorial Cup started. He said 'If you're going to do it, do it now and get it out of the way.' So we got married in a Catholic church right there on 118th Avenue.'

And the next night he was part of an 8-0 loss in Game 1.

Understand that the Oil Kings had been there before. In 1960. In 1961. And again in 1962. They lost all three of those Memorials Cups.

After Game 1 it looked like been there, done that, and we're doing it again, when they lost like that to the Niagara Falls Flyers, led by Terry Crisp and Gary Dornhoefer.

'On behalf of the #Oilers, our deepest sympathies go out Sandra, Kalli, Valerie and the entire Quinn family at the loss of such a dear man.' - Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) November 24, 2014

The Oil Kings would scratch out a win in Game 2 but the series turned in Game 3 when Pat Quinn nailed Dornhoeffer with a body check that broke his leg.

'We were losing by a big score in Game 1 and they were laughing. Dornhoeffer liked to hit. Throughout his entire NHL career he played a hard game. Earlier in that first game I caught Terry Crisp pretty good. Dornhoeffer ended up smacking me pretty good. I hit him back with a closed glove. I got the penalty. He came by the box laughing. Now it's game 3. He just came through the middle of the ice and wasn't paying attention. He was on the red line and I caught him. I was a stand up body checker, not a hip checker. I caught half his body and broke his leg.

'That seemed to have an effect. After that we started taking the series over and a lot of guys made big contributions.'

As a pro, Quinn was famed for his hits and his toughness. He'll always be remembered for the hit on Bobby Orr that knocked the young superstar unconscious.

I covered Quinn, of course, throughout his 20 NHL seasons as a coach with Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto and Edmonton.

He was the coach of the Flyers in the Oilers' first season in the NHL when Philadelphia fashioned a record 35-game unbeaten streak which still stands. The Oilers ended up playing the Flyers in a best-of-three first round series that year.

He won the Jack Adams trophy as coach of the year at the end of that season.

Quinn won the award again when he coached the 1994 Vancouver Canucks to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final when I was assigned throughout the playoffs to covering all those ex-Oilers -- Mark Messier, Kevin Lowe, Glenn Anderson, Craig MacTavish, Esa Tikkanen, Adam Graves, Jeff Beukeboom - and all those ex-Oilers who won it with the New York Rangers.

I was there when Quinn was Canada's coach ending the 50-year drought by winning gold at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. He went on to coach Canada to a World Junior title in 2009 when Eberle was the hero.

And, of course, I was here the day he was hired to coach the Oilers.

'How many jobs were there?' he said of the number of NHL head coaching jobs available between the time he was fired by the Toronto Maple Leafs three years ago and hired by the Edmonton Oilers.

Thirty-one coaches fired. Thirty-one coaches hired.

'Thirty one? Holy smokes!

'As a coach I missed the playoffs one year in Los Angeles and one year in Toronto. That was it.

'When I lost my job in Toronto, it was my seventh year. In the time I was there, we'd played the second most playoff games of any team in the league. Then we miss the playoffs by one point and I lose my job.'

He was 66 when he took the Oilers job.

Pat Quinn, when he left the Oilers, became the chairman of the Hockey Hall Fame. It was an appropriate place for him to end his career.

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