Pat Quinn named to Hockey Hall of Fame
SOMEWHERE, he’s taken up smoking cigars again.
Pat Quinn — he of Hamilton’s Glennie Street Quinns — was named as one of the inductees to the Hockey Hall of Fame Monday afternoon. The Hamilton native, who died in late November 2014, will be honoured at the annual induction in November for being one of the most successful coaches in Canadian international hockey history.
It was a good-news-bad-news Hall of Fame day for the city, however, as prolific scorer Dave Andreychuk, who retired as the highest scoring left winger of all time and won a Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning, was inexplicably snubbed
again. Since there was room on the induction roster for another player, it looks as if he will not be honoured any time soon, a situation that would be laughable if it were not so wrong.
Quinn, nicknamed the Big Irishman and famous for his large smile, love of good food and ever-present cigar (until he was forced to quit, for health reasons), was the head coach of the 2002 Canadian Olympic team which broke a 50-year drought by winning the gold medal over the United States at Salt Lake in February, 2002.
“I’m just tingling all over,” said his younger brother Barry Quinn when he heard the news. “We’re all proud of Pat and our parents ( John and Jean) would have been over the moon about this.
“It’s been a tough couple of years for our family, but I’m very happy and I’m going to phone my brother, Guy, about it right now.”
Barry and Guy’s sister, Carol Davis, died on Good Friday this year, 16 months after their older brother.
Quinn, who was recently named to the Hamilton Huskies’ Hall of Fame, was inducted into the International Ice Hockey Hall of Fame in Moscow last month for his contributions to the international game.
He first coached a Canadian team to a 1986 world championship bronze medal and was the Canadian head coach for seven different international events.
Those wins included gold medals at the Under-18 championships, the world junior championships in Ottawa (with Hamilton-area native Ryan Ellis as one of the stars) and at Salt Lake.
Quinn was also general manager or assistant general manager for Team Canada on four other occasions.
He played junior hockey for both the Hamilton Tiger-Cubs and Hamilton Kilty B’s.
Quinn then accepted a scholarship to Michigan Tech, but was forced to return home and work for a year because the Detroit Red Wings had informed U.S. college officials that he should be ineligible because he had played at the highest level of junior hockey, considered professional by their standards.
He never forgave the Red Wings for that, nor did he lose his passion for education even after making the NHL with the Toronto Maple Leafs. With the Leafs he was a solid, if slow-skating, hard-hitting defenceman. Older fans remember him most for the hip check which injured Bobby Orr’s knee.
Quinn’s real love was coaching. He always told The Spectator that it was the next best thing to playing because it was closest to the ice. And, we suspect, the educational component figured into that love because getting the most out of players was an intellectual and psychological challenge.
In his first year (1979-80) of NHL coaching, Quinn’s Philadelphia Flyers set the record for most consecutive games (35) without a loss, representing nearly half a season. The Flyers were beaten by the New York Islanders in the Stanley Cup final that year, the closest he would ever come to capturing the game’s Holy Grail, one of the few honours to escape him during his illustrious career.
Quinn was also the most successful Toronto Maple Leafs coach in the past 20 years, taking the team to the final four of the Stanley Cup playoffs in both 1999, his first year at the helm, and 2002.
He also coached the Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers and Los Angeles Kings.
“It’s interesting that he’s going into the Hall of Fame at the same time as Rogie Vachon,” said Barry Quinn, referring to the former NHL goalie and general manager of the Kings. “Pat would find that amusing.” Quinn was suspended from coaching by John Ziegler in 1987 in what the then-NHL president called a conflict of interest after Quinn signed a contract to become president and general manager of the Canucks.
Quinn used his legal training to argue that he had a clause to allow him to negotiate with other teams if the Kings missed a deadline on his option, which he said they had. Insiders say that Quinn was set to succeed Vachon as GM in Los Angeles but Vachon then re-upped.
Pat Quinn was probably the best — among, many, many of them — ambassador that this city ever sent out to the greater hockey world.
He was partial to players from Hamilton, like Ellis and current Bulldogs general manager Steve Staios, for their work ethic and The Spectator had often heard him praise the core values of his family and hometown at hockey venues around the world ... including that history-making fortnight in Salt Lake City.
It is a well-deserved honour for him and his wife Sandra and we regret only one thing: that he could not be here to receive it.