Opinion: Pat Quinn brought respectability to the Vancouver Canucks
The meeting, which took place under the cover of darkness in San Diego, was into its second hour when Pat Quinn leaned in and fixed Frank and Arthur Griffiths with that stare which could melt diamonds.“Just bring respectability back to the team,” said the Frank, the patriarch of the family which owned the Vancouver Canucks.“I think I can do that.
“It raised some eyebrows when I got hired,” said Burke, one of the first lawyers to become a front-office executive in the NHL. “But that was Pat. We were the first team with a strength coach. We were one of the first teams to give lap tops to coaches and scouts. I had to laugh when Gillis brought in the sleep doctors. Pat brought in sleep experts in the late ‘80s to talk to the team.And it all started with that meeting in San Diego.
“ was going back and forth with Ron Caron and he insisted on the draft pick,” Burke recalled. “I was getting mad because it put the trade in jeopardy but Pat said, ‘ will call back. He wants .’ ““You look at Pat’s trade record and it was scary good,” said Burke.Pat Quinn loved to coach.
But he was never supposed to coach the Canucks. Quinn was hired by the Griffiths as a super-boss, an executive who would oversee each and every facet of the organization. The problem was late in the ’90-91 season, the Canucks were underachieving yet again under McCammon. But Quinn also assembled a team which maximized the Russian Rocket’s bountiful talents. An artless, stay-at-home blueliner in his playing days, Quinn openly embraced the modern, speed-and-skill game and the Canucks were an embodiment of his philosophy. They would feature seven 20-goal scorers that season, including Courtnall, Ronning and Momesso in their first full season in Vancouver. Larionov, in his last year with the Canucks, fashioned a 21-goal, 65-point campaign.
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