September 1998
by Barry Stagg
IRISH PAT QUINN LEADS THE LEAFS
Pat Quinn, the Maple Leaf prodigal son has come back to coach the team that brought him to the National Hockey League. Quinn was hired as Leaf manager this summer after Montreal alumnus Ken Dryden got through with his usual dithering. Maybe Dryden and Quinn had trouble connecting because they saw so little of each other on the ice when Dryden was the Hall of Fame goaltender with the Montreal Canadiens and Quinn was a very much offensively challenged, tough guy on the blueline.
Quinn was a slow-moving but quite fearsome defenceman with several teams in the National Hockey League. He travelled from Toronto through to Atlanta and Vancouver during early expansion days. It was in Toronto in the waning days of the Imlach era when he achieved his initial notoriety as a player. Really, it was in Boston Gardens that this happened but Quinn and the Maple Leafs had to show up for Quinn to accomplish what took on the proportions of the cosmic Big Bang at the time. Simply put, Quinn flattened Bruin superstar Bobby Orr with a legal but extremely devastating open ice body check. Orr was sent into never-never land for a time and the Bruin fans went into a blood thirsty frenzy over the antics of Mr. Quinn.
That body check on that particular superstar lives on in the legends of the National Hockey League. Quinn was never more than an average defenceman and his footwork more closely approximated that of a pylon than that of Mr. Orr, then and now the master of finesse. Their meeting in Beantown transcends time and athleticism.
In any event, Pat Quinn has led an illustrious career after retirement as a player. He first coached and managed in Philidelphia and then went on to Vancouver. His stature as a smart hockey man with talents that go far beyond coaching were evident in Vancouver. His position with the Toronto hockey club probably extends quite a bit beyond bench coaching duties but with the Leafs somewhat Byzantine management structure, it is difficult to say just where his duties end and those of associate general manager Mike Smith begin.
Suffice it to say that Smith and Quinn are running the hockey operation and that nominal general manager, Dryden is relegating himself to the role of corporate figurehead that was originally envisioned for him when he was hired by Steve Stavro.
Of course, the Toronto Maple Leafs would be completely out of character if they had been consistent in their management efforts over the summer. Hiring Quinn was a great move bringing intelligence, toughness and a solid hockey pedigree to the Leaf coaching job. At the same time, for some reason not apparent to this writer, the Leafs let Wendel Clark drift off to the Tampa Bay Lightning. Clark, who in this era, is the epitome of Leaf toughness was allowed to sign as a free agent with Tampa just as the Leaf toughguy of 1968 was making his return to the Leaf bench. Surely, there could have been a way to sign Clark with the realization that his presence is much more than just a sentimental one. With Quinn motivating the troops, a warrior like Wendel would be quite likely to elevate his game to the levels that it approached when Pat Burns, another tough Irishman, was coaching the squad. It is sad to see that Clark is departing his hockey home for probably the last time.
Perhaps the arrival of Quinn will mean that some of the harder working players on the St. John's Maple Leafs will get a chance to see the ice in Toronto this coming season. Young players like Jason Podollan and Jeff Ware were sent to a special European training camp this summer with a view to elevating their games to major league levels. A tough but fair motivator like Pat Quinn may be able to extract enough effort from these fellows to put them in Toronto instead of on the ice at Memorial Stadium.
As always with the Toronto Maple Leafs, these will continue to be interesting times. After Labour Day, the countdown to training camp begins. Hope springs eternal for the perennial and long suffering Leaf fan.
Until next month: Be proud, be prosperous.