Quinn leaves indelible mark on junior hockey in Canada

Pat Quinn was a great storyteller. It was that impressive skill that held him in good stead as a coach. He was able to use those words to not only get the most out of his players, but those around him as well.

In 2009, he coached Canada’s world junior team to a gold medal in Ottawa. Once the final roster had been selected, the team travelled to Petawawa, Ont., for three days to do some bonding exercises at the Canadian Forces Base.

At a reception for the team, filled with military personnel, Quinn was asked to say a few impromptu words to the men and women who kept Canada safe. He didn’t have anything prepared or planned, but as a master orator, he didn’t need to.

He spoke powerfully and movingly about how often hockey uses the analogies of war and battle in something as trivial as a game when Canada’s soldiers are the ones who truly sacrifice.

“He spoke for about 10 to 12 minutes and you could hear a pin drop in that room,” said Ottawa Senators assistant coach Dave Cameron, who was one of Quinn’s world junior assistants. “To this day I wish somebody would have taped that speech. It was just a testament to how worldly this man was and how smart this man was.

“When he spoke he just had the room because he had this charisma about him.”

Quinn passed away on Sunday night at Vancouver General Hospital after a lengthy illness. He was 71.

Like that impromptu speech, it wasn't the first time Quinn had been called to work on the fly. He was a late replacement to coach that 2009 world junior team, after Benoit Groulx - the man originally tagged to helm the team - left to take a job in the AHL.

Seeing as Quinn had been successful the year prior working with the nation's under-18 squad, he seemed like the perfect fit to takeover the job for Hockey Canada.

When Quinn stepped on the ice to run Canada’s under-18 team in 2008 he was all business. It was his first real coaching gig after being dismissed as head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs after the 2005-06 NHL season.

At that point in his career, he had already won gold with Canada’s Olympic team in 2002 and a world championship in 2004, still, Quinn didn’t take the role coaching a group of teenagers for granted.

“His meetings were the longest meetings I’ve ever had,” said Chris Carozzi, who was a goaltender on that U18 side. “We’d meet up and have an hour talk with video – it was a huge meeting and they were always the longest. He always gave it his all and he wasn’t shy to go over it all with you, that’s for sure.”

For many of those players, being coached by Quinn was a great honour. He was a man many of them were already familiar with as hockey fans, and it left them in awe.

“I remember watching him on TV with the Leafs,” said Carozzi, who plays for the University of New Brunswick Reds. “I’m from Ottawa so I’m a (Senators) fan so it was crazy just getting to talk to him and getting to experience his presence when he coached. It was just a pretty cool experience overall to meet him.”

Quinn coached that under-18 team to gold. They thumped Russia 8-0 in the final.

That he found success no matter what age group or skill level he was given to mould should come as no surprise, says Cameron.

“That just tells you how well rounded a man Pat Quinn was,” Cameron said. “He could adapt to it. I think he knew that hockey was hockey whether it’s the world juniors or pro. His real strength was that he was one of the few guys who could go from the National Hockey League and relate to juniors in a short tournament – he didn’t have a lot of time to build a repertoire.”

Quinn was able to pull from his vast experience in the game. In 1963 he won a Memorial Cup as a player with the Edmonton Oil Kings in junior before moving on to a long NHL career. He spent parts of nine seasons in the NHL as a defenceman with Vancouver, Toronto, and Atlanta before an ankle injury forced him to retire after the 1976-77 season.

It was soon after that he became an assistant coach for the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers. He went on to coach five different NHL teams in a coaching career that spanned four decades in addition to holding down jobs as general manager and president at various stops. Continuing his love of junior hockey, he became part owner of the Western Hockey League’s Vancouver Giants where he won a second Memorial Cup in 2007.

“He lasted through so many different eras,” said Cameron. “I think his legacy will be that he lasted as long as he did in so many different capacities which makes him not only a very flexible man but also a very intelligent man.  He’ll be missed.”