coaches

leafs in springtime: that’s it, the end of the road

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On The Verge: Punch Imlach in repose in the Maple Leaf dressing room in January of 1961. In the background? Bob Pulford on the right, chatting up (I think) Bob Nevin. Under Imlach, the Leafs would win four Stanley Cup championships in six years in the mid-1960s. (Image: Louis Jaques, Library and Archives Canada, e002343754)

You lose to the Boston Bruins in the first round of the playoffs, and that’s it, say goodbye, how can a coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs survive that? He can’t, of course, no way, it’s ordained, written in the stars, not to mention in flashing script across the high-up suites overlooking the ice at Maple Leaf Gardens, and throughout the fan-filled bars clustered around the corner at Carleton and Church.

This is, I should say, 1969 we’re focussed on here. Why — what did you think we were talking about? Maybe you recall that distant age of Leafian tumult. It is a long time ago, long enough that the Leafs were just two springs removed from having won the Stanley Cup — imagine!

The glory of that 1967 championship seems golden now, looking back, and I guess it was, but in 1968 the Leafs missed the playoffs entirely. They returned in ’69, but matched up against Bobby Orr’s Bruins, they, well — it was a mismatch, and abject. Boston won the opening game of the series at their own Garden by a score of 10-0, and followed that up with a 7-0 kicker. The next — final — games in Toronto were closer (Boston won those 4-3 and 3-2), but it was all over for the Leafs on Sunday, April 6.

Coach and GM Punch Imlach was fired minutes after the final horn sounded. Leaf President Stafford Smythe made the call. “That’s it, the end of the road,” he told reporters at Maple Leaf Gardens, “the end of the Imlach era.”

Imlach was 51. The Leafs were paying him $38,000 a year — something like $315,000 in 2024 terms — and would continue to do so for a further year. His era had begun 11 years earlier, in 1958, when he joined the Leafs as an assistant general manager. He was promoted to GM later that year, whereupon he fired coach Billy Reay and hired himself as a replacement. That worked out well: he steered the Leafs to the Stanley Cup final in both of his first two years on the job. Then in the 1960s, of course, the team won four championships on his watch. Imlach’s run lasted 849 games. His regular-season winning percentage was .569.

That’s not to say that Imlach’s time as Leaf boss was particular cheery. He was hard on his players and his domineering style made for turbulent times even when the Leafs were winning. In ’69, the culture of conflict saw centre Mike Walton temporarily quit the team.

Having fired his coach, Smythe didn’t waste any time on the hiring front. Having dismissed Imlach in the aftermath of the loss to Boston, he named 34-year-old Jim Gregory as the new Leaf GM, declaring that John McLellan, coach of the CHL Tulsa Oilers, a Leaf farm team, was the new bench boss — “if he wants the job.”

He did. McLellan, 40, spent the next four years behind the bench in Toronto, achieving … not a whole lot. His Leafs missed the playoff in two of those seasons; in two others, they went out in the opening round. He coached 306 games, finishing with a regular-season winning percentage of .462.

Sheldon Keefe, who’s 43, had been making about $1.95-million a year. His era, which wrapped up yesterday, lasted 383 games. His (regular-season) winning percentage was a lofty .607, which is higher than anyone else’s in Leaf history who wasn’t an interim coach or Frank Carroll in 1920-21. Carroll didn’t win any Stanley Cups in his time coaching the Leafs, either.

In 1969, amid the smoking wreckage of Leaf hopes, Imlach’s (former) players expressed their shock at his firing. “That’s burying the corpse while it’s still warm,” said one who didn’t want his name used. Maybe Stafford Smythe was suffering from some kind of shock, too? He told reporters that Imlach’s employment would have been curtailed even if the Leafs had won the Cup: he’d made the decision to fire him a month earlier.

Milt Dunnell, columnist at the Toronto Star, had some thoughts:

Imlach is no donkey. He undoubtedly knew the axe was poised. It scarcely is likely he expected it to fall before he had a chance to wash off the blood of defeat. Smythe spared him any shadowboxing.

Imlach did get some lunch before the month was out: towards the end of April, the City of Toronto paid him tribute at the Sutton Place Hotel. Mayor William Dennison presided, presenting Imlach with a silver water pitcher, suitably inscribed and bearing Toronto’s arms. Stafford Smythe and Leaf executive Harold Ballard were invited, but they didn’t show.

Imlach thanked his players, the fans, his friend and long-time assistant King Clancy. “I think Toronto is a great city, a progressive city,” he said. “When I came back after the war, I marvelled at what had happened to it. It was unbelievable.”

Imlach said he hadn’t decided he would do next. There was talk that he’d join Vancouver’s expansion team, maybe as a part-owner and league governor. As it turned out, he went to Buffalo, taking up the reins of the new-born Sabres in 1970.

A whole new Imlach era dawned in Toronto in 1979, when Harold Ballard, now Leaf owner, brought him back as GM. It was a fractious time, to say the least. Imlach clashed with players, including with captain Darryl Sittler, and traded away winger Lanny McDonald in a fit of … something. Imlach ended up naming himself coach again, in 1980, though it was his assistant, Joe Crozier, who actually patrolled the bench.

Imlach ran into (more) heart-attack trouble after that, which brought his second adventure with the Leafs to its end in 1981. In case you missed it, the team avoided winning a Stanley Cup championship that time around.

would you believe

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Cup Glory: The new NHL Winnipeg Jets remembered their old WHA triumph on the cover of their 1979-80 guide, putting Lars-Erik Sjöberg and the Avco Cup front and centre.

Quick check in on the Winnipeg Jets, who take on the Colorado Avalanche tonight at the Canada Life Centre in the hope that they can live to skate another day. Asked yesterday for his outlook, Jets coach Rick Bowness told reporters … just watch.

I think that’s what he said, anyway. His actual words were these:

“We can all say all the words in the world and say all the right things … tell you everything you want to hear. But everything will be decided on what our eyes tell us. Not our ears.”

Okay, then.

Whatever happens to the Jets tonight, Winnipeggers will always have what their ears told them in the spring of 1979. I wasn’t there, but I’m guessing it was a whole lot of hullabaloo, so maybe that’s inspiration the city could work with tonight.

It was a bad year, ’79, for the league those erstwhile Jets were playing in. The WHA was sinking fast, playing out its last season. On the bright side, the Jets surged past the Quebec Nordiques to open their playoffs that year, then overturned the Edmonton Oilers in the final Final to win their third Avco World Trophy.

The final Final finale was at Winnipeg Arena on the Sunday night of May 20, 1979, when the Jets browbeat the Oilers by a score of 7-3. Glen Sather was the Oilers coach, and his line-up featured an 18-year-old Wayne Gretzky, with Dave Dryden in goal.

Coaching the Jets was Tom McVie, who’d taken over from Larry Hillman 61 games into the season. Captain Lars-Erik Sjöberg was out for much of the year with an injury to an Achilles tendon, but he was back for the Trophy-clinching and, as pictured here, the Trophy-clutching. Other protagonists on the night included Jets’ goaltender Gary Smith and centreman Terry Ruskowski, along with the 10,195 fans who packed the rink, watched over by a surprisingly baleful Queen Elizabeth.

Both the Jets and the Oilers (along with Quebec and the New England Whalers) joined the NHL the following year, with Edmonton and Winnipeg both playing in the Smythe Division.

The Oilers made the playoffs that year, though they fell to the Philadelphia Flyers in the first round. The Jets fared … not as well. Just like Rick Bowness says, everything was decided that year by what our eyes told us, not our ears, and in plain sight, Winnipeg missed the post-season.

Skateabout: Sjöberg takes the Avco for a skate in May of 1979 at the Winnipeg Arena. (Image: Jon Thordarson, Winnipeg Tribune, University of Manitoba Archives)

 

montreal’s finest

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On The Beat: Yes, true, Pat Burns also coached the Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins, and New Jersey Devils, but his first NHL job was with Montreal, who hired the former Gatineau police officer to steer the team in 1988. His Canadiens lost in the Stanley Cup final to the Calgary Flames that year; Burns did win a Cup with the Devils in 2003. Born on a Friday of yesterday’s date in Montreal in 1952, he’s the only coach in NHL history to have won the Jack Adams Trophy three times. He was elevated to the Hall of Fame in 2014. Pat Burns died at the age of 58 in 2010. (Image: Watercolour and graphite on paper by Serge Chapleau, 1990, McCord Museum)

jean-guy talbot, 1932—2024

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Sad to hear news that the former defenceman Jean-Guy Talbot died yesterday at the age of 91. (Dave Stubbs has a fine appreciation here.) Born in Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Quebec, in 1932, he made his debut with the Montreal Canadiens in 1955. Seen here at practice in 1962 (alongside Henri Richard and Dickie Moore), Talbot played 13 seasons with the Habs back when they were mightiest, helping them win seven Stanley Cup championships. After NHL expansion in 1967, Talbot went on to play for the Minnesota North Stars, Detroit Red Wings, and Buffalo Sabres, and spent four seasons with the St. Louis Blues. After retiring in 1971, Talbot coached the Blues as well as the New York Rangers.

It was an unfortunate encounter with Talbot in 1952 ended Scotty Bowman’s career as a player. Talbot was a Trois-Rivieres junior when he high-sticked Bowman, a Junior Canadien, and fractured his skull during a game at the Forum. Talbot was suspended; Bowman never played another game. The latter understood it to have been an accident and the two later became good friends. It was Bowman who brought Talbot to St. Louis when he was coaching there. “He was one of the best buys I ever made in St. Louis,” Bowman would recall. “I got a couple of good years out of him. He played defence or up front and also was a good penalty killer.”

 

(Image: Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

phil’s the bill (at centre, for montreal, if not for long on the islander bench)

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A birthday today for erstwhile NHL centreman Phil Goyette, who’s 90 today: many happy returns of the occasion to him. That’s him above, middle, in 1959, when he was 26, alongside wingers (left) Claude Provost and Andre Pronovost.

Born in Lachine, Quebec, on a Tuesday of this date in 1933, Goyette was a dependable member of the Canadiens for seven seasons in the 1950s and ’60s, partaking in four Stanley Cup championships with Montreal. A 1963 trade took him (and Don Marshall and Jacques Plante) to the New York Rangers, in return for Gump Worsley, Dave Balon, Leon Rochefort, and Len Ronson. He played another seven seasons in New York before wrapping up his NHL career with stints as a St. Louis Blue and a Buffalo Sabre. He scored 20+ goals in four seasons, recording hits best offensive stats in 1969-70 with St. Louis, when he scored 29 goals and 78 points while securing the Lady Byng Trophy for conspicuously courtly conduct. In 1972, he was appointed the very first coach of the expansion New York Islanders, though the job didn’t last: Goyette was fired halfway through the season and replaced by Earl Ingarfield.

bobby baun, 1936—2023

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The Toronto Sun’s Lance Hornby is reporting the sad news of Bobby Baun’s death, last night. He was 86. Born in Lanigan, just east of Wolverine, Saskatchewan, down the road from Esk, he played 17 seasons as an unyielding defenceman in the NHL, earning a bodycheckers’ nickname, Boomer, along the way. He started and starred with the Toronto Maple Leafs, helping them to win four Stanley Cup championships in the 1960s, back when the Leafs were doing that. It was in 1964 that Baun scored his celebrated overtime goal on a leg that had been broken, solving Detroit’s Terry Sawchuk to beat the Red Wings and set the Leafs up to win their third consecutive Cup two nights later, whereby Baun earned himself the chance to injure himself further at the ensuing parade.

Lesser known than that famous injury is the one Baun suffered two years earlier, when someone tossed what was described as a “small bomb” onto the Toronto bench during a game at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Left unprotected by the Leafs in the 1967 expansion draft, Baun played a year with the Oakland Seals before taking his talents to Detroit and playing parts of three seasons with the Red Wings. He ended up back in Toronto with the Leafs, with he skated in three more seasons before a neck injury put an end to his playing career in 1972. Baun later went on to coach the WHA Toronto Toros in 1975-76, their final flailing year in the city, though he was fired in February of 1976, after which the team finished the year at the bottom of the standings under GM Gilles Leger’s direction.

the rendez-vous of good sports! (some conditions apply)

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Toe Blake’s playing days in the NHL came to an end in 1948 after the Montreal Canadiens’ captain collided with Bill Juzda of the New York Rangers in a game at Madison Square Garden and suffered a double fracture of his ankle. After several years coaching in minor leagues, Blake returned to the Canadiens as coach in 1955, launching an illustrious era in the team’s history:  in the 13 years before he retired in 1968, Blake, who died at 82 on a Wednesday of today’s date in 1995, steered Montreal to eight Stanley Cup championships.

In between the end of his captaincy and the start of his career as Canadiens’ coach, Blake bought a bar in Montreal a few blocks east of the Forum. Friday, May 20, 1949 was the day he took ownership, paying $90,000 for the license. “I couldn’t have kept up payments if I wasn’t coaching in Valleyfield in the winter,” he later recalled, “and umpiring baseball in the summer.”

In 1952, Toe Blake’s Tavern moved across St. Catherine Street into the premises it occupied for the next 31 years. It closed in December of 1983, and well past its due, I’ll say, considering that (as a news report in the Montreal Gazette noted at the time) women had never been welcome within.

Gazette columnist Tim Burke didn’t mention that in his requiem for the old boozy bastion. It went, partly, like this:

It was one of the oases in the West End, the sturdy rendezvous along Montreal’s equivalent of the Bowery (St. Catherine street between Atwater and Guy). Solid décor, walls festooned with caricatures of hockey’s all-time greats, good grub, and good company.

Down in the dumps, you could always stroll into Toe’s, and if none of your buddies were around, the best waiters in town — Vic, Gaetan, Frank, Lucien, Roland, Cliff, and the rest — would make you feel like the mayor of Westmount, with fast service and quicker wit.

The best sports debates I’ve ever heard were in Toe’s because anybody in the joint knew what they were talking about, they’d followed everything for one, two, and even three generations. And if they were stuck for some info, all they had to do was drop in on “The Bear” himself in his office, and they’d be straightened out immediately.

In short, Toe ran his tavern like he ran his hockey team, and nobody ran either better.

In the late ’60s, when everybody was grovelling to a rich, spoiled youth gone out of control, Toe had his waiters throw out anybody who came in with a beard. When one guy streaked the place in the mid-’70s, it took all the waiters to restrain him from doing a job on the guy.

Waxing Nostalgic: An Aislin cartoon from 1979 when Toe Blake’s Tavern was rumoured to be closing. It lingered on, in fact, until 1983. (Image: © McCord Museum)

happy jack

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Wingsmaster: Today he’s remembered as a coach, and that’s no surprise, he was such a great one that the NHL’s award for outstanding bench-bossing is named after him. He was a GM, too, and a superior (and ruthless) one of those. But before all that, Jack Adams was a very good centreman who won Stanley Cup championships with Toronto (in 1918) and as an Ottawa Senator (in 1927). Speaking of Cups, he won a further seven of those in his management years with the Detroit Red Wings, and remains the only man to have had his name hammered into hockey’s ultimate silvery prize as a player, coach, and GM. Jack Adams was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1959. He died at the age of 73 on a Wednesday of today’s date in 1968.

frontrunner

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The scroll commemorating Art Ross’ induction in 1949 into the Hockey Hall of Fame got it about right, deeming him a “super hockey star, brilliant executive, and inventive genius.” Born in Naughton, Ontario, on a Tuesday of today’s date in 1885, Ross was a pre-eminent defender on his own skates before he took up as an NHL referee and then as coach of the long-lost Hamilton Tigers. He was the original coach and manager of the Boston Bruins, of course, and in his time in charge there oversaw three Stanley Cup championships to add to the pair he’d won as a player.

That’s Ross in the black hat here, in February of 1937, coaching his Bruins from the bench at Chicago Stadium. Milt Schmidt is beside him, and Woody Dumart one along from him, with Dit Clapper (#5) in the background. Leaving the frame (#10) is winger Fred Cook. The Bruins beat the Black Hawks on this night, 2-1, getting goals from Clapper and Charlie Sands. Paul Thompson scored for Chicago.

 

(Image: ©Richard Merrill, Boston Public Library)

uncle miltie

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Milt Trip: It was in 2017 that former Bruins captain and Hall-of-Famer Milt Schmidt died on a Wednesday of today’s date at the age of 98. For Boston, he was a centreman first, smooth-skating and hard-nosed, who piled up the points playing alongside Woody Dumart and Bobby Bauer on the Bruins’ famous Kraut Line. He won two Stanley Cups as a player and shared in two more as GM of the team. His tenure as a manager might best remembered for the 1967 trade that brought Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge, and Fred Stanfield to Boston from Chicago in exchange for Jack Norris, Pit Martin, and Gilles Marotte. He coached Boston, too, in parts of 11 seasons, and later took on the same role with the Washington Capitals. Here, above, we find Schmidt in January of 1961, when he was 42. Despite the sunny demeanor, his Bruins were mired in last place in the six-team NHL. Phil Watson would succeed him as Boston coach the following season, but when that didn’t really work out, Schmidt returned to the Boston bench midway through the schedule. (Image: Louis Jaques, Library and Archives Canada)

bryan trottier: just wanted to be one of those guys that can be relied on all the time

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At the age of seven, Bryan Trottier told his mother he wanted to be a teacher when he grew up.

A year later, Jean Béliveau changed his mind. Trottier can’t forget the moment that fixed his future: it was 1965, April, when he watched the Canadiens’ captain take hold of the Stanley Cup. “He didn’t pump it up over his head the way players do now,” Trottier recalls. “Instead, he kind of grabbed it and hugged it.” There and then, Trottier told his dad: someday I want to hold the Cup just like that.

Better get practicing, his dad told him.

So Trottier, who’s now 66, did that. The son of a father of Cree-Métis descent and a mother whose roots were Irish, Trottier would launch himself out of Val Marie, Saskatchewan, into an 18-season NHL playing career that would see him get hold of the Stanley Cup plenty as one of the best centremen in league history. Before he finished, he’d win four championships with the storied 1980s New York Islanders and another pair alongside Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Trottier was in on another Cup, too, as an assistant coach with the 2001 Colorado Avalanche. His individual achievements were recognized in his time with a bevy of major trophies, including a Calder Trophy, a Hart, an Art Ross, and a Conn Smythe. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1997.

Trottier reviewed his eventful career in a new autobiography, All Roads Home: A Life On and Off the Ice (McClelland & Stewart), which he wrote with an assist from Stephen Brunt, and published this past fall. In October, I reached Trottier via Zoom in Garden City, New York. A version of this exchange first appeared at sihrhockey.org, the website of the Society for International Hockey Research.

What brought you around to writing an autobiography now?

I’ve been asked to write a book for a long, long time, probably 40-some years. But when I was playing and coaching, I just didn’t want to give any secrets away, or strategies. I’m a little more of an open book now, like when I do speaking and going into Native communities and talking to the kids. And they enjoy the stories, and those are the stories I love to tell. I really don’t dwell on negatives all that much, I really kind of look toward the positives. And there have been a heck of a lot more positive than negatives. I think when people are looking at headlines — negative headlines always seem to make stories a lot more interesting. But I’m not like that. I try to move on as fast as I can, and start making good things happen for me and my family. So that’s really what I’m talking about.

All Roads Home is a very positive book, all in all. But you’re also very frank about the challenges you’ve faced, including the deaths of your parents, and being diagnosed with depression. Those can’t have been easy subjects to get down on the page.

No, well, because I’m kind of an open book, I really don’t have a problem talking about a lot of stuff. The things I focus on are obviously the more … fun stuff. I bring the other stuff up to let people know that this is part of me, I’m human, there’s nothing that horrible about it. The really cool thing is that, out of that, you get some introspection, you get an opportunity to feel loved and supported, especially by family and friends, and the hockey world in general. And the stigma about some of that stuff is … you always say to yourself, oh my god, it shows weakness, or whatever. It doesn’t. It just shows that you’re human. And people rally. I rally for my friends when they have troubles or hardships. 

This COVID thing really left a lot of people like disconnected. It was really rough on a lot of different folks. And those moments of darkness, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s just human. A little bit of struggle: don’t worry about it, you know, just reach out. And you reach out, you’ll be surprised how people rally for you. Mental wellness and mental health is kind of a hot topic right now, thank god. So, yeah, whatever I can do through just stating something in a little book like this, if it helps a few people, great.

You worked with the writer Stephen Brunt on this project, one of the best in the hockey-book business. What was that like?

Stephen was fantastic at jogging my memory and reminiscing and checking up on me every once in a while, my memory, when I stumbled. But what I found was that the chronological order that he provided, and the structure that he provided, was fantastic. We did it all by phone. And the manuscript was thick, then we had to review it and edit it and condense it, throwing some stuff out, while still making it sound like my voice. So that was a little process.

And Joe Lee was a great editor, and you need that, I needed that, because I was a rookie writer. It was really kind of fun how it formed. And my daughter, who’s a journalism major, she was of great help. And then my other daughter was my sounding board. So I had a good team, it’s kind of like hockey, you know, we all rely on each other. Looking back, I call it my labour of joy.

The book starts, as you did, in Saskatchewan. Talk about a hockey hotbed: Max and Doug Bentley, Gordie Howe, Glenn Hall, Elmer Lach, and you are just of the players who’ve skated out of the province and on into the Hall of Fame. What’s that all about? 

[Laughs] Go figure how that happened. But yeah, I’m so proud of Saskatchewan. When I found out Gordie Howe was from Saskatchewan, that really gave me a boost. When you’re little province producing really great hockey players, it gives us all a sense of pride, about where we come from, our roots, our communities. I think every little town in Saskatchewan is like my little town. We’ve got grain elevators, a hotel, we’ve got a beer parlor, a couple of restaurants. We definitely have a skating rink and curling rink, right? I think a lot of little towns in Canada can relate to this little town of Val Marie, because it really is a vibrant little community.

He had the audacity to be from Quebec, but on and off the ice, Jean Béliveau was such an icon, for his grace and style as much as his supreme skill. What did he mean to you?

He was the captain, he was the leader. He played with confidence and, like you said, he had this style and grace. He just looked so smooth out there. He was just a wonderful reflection of the game. Everything that I thought a hockey player should be, Jean Béliveau was. And Gordie Howe, too, Stan Mikita. These guys were my early idols. George Armstrong, Dave Keon. I’d go practice, I’d try to be them. But Béliveau was above them all. And my first memory of the Stanley Cup was Jean Béliveau grabbing it.

You talk in the book about the Indigenous players you looked up to, growing up. How did they inspire you? Did they flash a different kind of light?

Well, they were just larger than life. Freddy Sasakamoose … I never saw him play, I just heard so many stories about him from my dad, who watched him play in Moose Jaw. He was the fastest player he’d ever seen skate.

When I saw players like Freddy Sasakamoose and George Armstrong and Jimmy Neilson, I said, maybe I can make it, too, maybe there’s a chance. Because those are the kind of guys who inspire you, give hope. So, absolutely, we revered these guys. They were pioneers.

There’s a lot in the book highlighting the skills of teammates of yours, Mike Bossy and Denis Potvin, Clark Gillies, Mario Lemieux. Can you give me a bit of a scouting report on yourself? What did you bring to the ice as a player?  

I didn’t have a lot of dynamic in my game. I wasn’t an end-to-end rusher like Gilbert Perreault. My hair wasn’t flying like Guy Lafleur’s. I didn’t have that hoppy step like Pat Lafontaine. Or the quick hands of Patrick Kane or Stan Mikita. I was kind of a give-and-go guy, I just kind of found the open man. And I made myself available to my teammates for an open pass. Tried to bear down on my passes and gobble up any kind of pass that was thrown at me.

I think when you work hard, you have the respect of your teammates. I wanted to be the hardest worker on the team, no one’s going to outwork me. It’s a 60-minute game, everything is going to be a battle, both ends of the ice, I would come out of a game just exhausted.  

And I really prided myself on my passing, on my accuracy, and I really prided myself on making sure I hit the net — whether puck went in was kind of the goalies fault. And I prided myself on making the game as easy as possible for my teammates, at the same time. If they threw a hand grenade at me, I gobbled it up, and we all tapped each other shinpads afterwards and said, hey, thanks for bearing down. That’s what teams do, and what teammates do, and I just wanted to be one of those, one of those guys that can be relied on all the time.

You mention that you scored a lot of your NHL goals by hitting “the Trottier hole.”

Yep. Between the [goalie’s] arm and the body. There’s always a little hole there and I found that more often than I did when I was shooting right at the goal. We always said, hit the net and the puck will find a hole. Mike Bossy was uncanny at finding the five-hole. He said, I just shoot it at his pads and I know there’s always going to be a hole around there. So I did the same thing: I just fired it at the net. If the goalie makes a save, there’s going to be a rebound. If I fire it wide of the net, I’m backchecking. It’s going around the boards and I’m going to be chasing the puck.

But Mike had a powerful shot. And Clark Gillies, he had a bomb. When I shot, I’m sure the goalies were waiting for that slow-motion curveball. They often got the knuckleball instead.

The last thing I wanted to ask you about is finding the fun in hockey. You talk about almost quitting as a teenager. With all the pressures for players at every level, I wonder about your time as a coach and whether that — bringing the fun — was one of the things you tried to keep at the forefront?

Coaching was fun for me on assistant-coaching side because you’re dealing with the players every day, working on skill, working on development, working on their game. As a head coach,  you’re working with the media, you’re talking to the general manager, you’re doing a whole bunch of other things, other than just working with the players. But you know, the fun of coaching for me it was really that that one-on-one aspect. There’s so many so much enjoyment that I got from coaching. And I hope the players felt that. When the coach is having fun, they’re probably having fun.

Signal Close Action: Bryan Trottier buzzes Ken Dryden’s net at the Montreal Forum on the Sunday night of December 10, 1978, while Canadiens defenceman Guy Lapointe attends to Mike Bossy. Montreal prevailed 4-3 on this occasion; Trottier scored a third-period goal and assisted on one of Bossy’s in the second.  (Image: Armand Trottier, Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

 

This interview has been condensed and edited.