The one thing that virtually every head coach in the NHL usually also has in common with whatever counterpart he faces on any given night is that both have been professional players in the NHL or minor leagues earlier in their careers. That being the case, as NHL teams face off against each other throughout the season and in the playoffs, more often than not the coaches behind their respective benches had also either played against or with each other (and sometimes even one
for the other) at some point during their earlier playing careers as well. One striking example of this is the Western Conference semifinal series between the Los Angles Kings coached by Darryl Sutter and the Anaheim Ducks being guided by Bruce Boudreau.
I began thinking about these coaching/playing connections again when my long time friend and colleague Doc Emrick and I had an hour long phone conversation last Thursday afternoon while he was in Pittsburgh on an off day between games four and five of the Penguins/Rangers playoff series that the Rangers ended last night with the elimination of the once favored Pens in seven games. During our chat, Doc and I reminisced among other things about the 1980 AHL Calder Cup finals between the Hershey Bears and New Brunswick Hawks for which both of us had attended the sixth game played at Hersheypark Arena with the Bears leading three-games-to-two.
Although Hershey had finished that season four games under .500 collecting just 76 points to finish a distant second in the AHL's South Division some 25 points behind the New Haven Nighthawks' league leading 101, the underdog Bears had already upset the Nighthawks in the semifinals on their way to meeting the North Division's champion Hawks (96 points) in the championship series which the Bears then won in a six game upset to capture the Calder Cup.
Bruce Boudreau and Darryl Sutter: AHL linemates in 1979-80
Hershey was affiliated with the then still lowly Washington Capitals in 1979-80 while New Brunswick had a joint affiliation with Toronto and Chicago. And the top two scorers for the Hawks that year were the same Darryl Sutter and Bruce Boudreau who are facing each other a third of a century later in the current Southern California freeway series. (The Bears top scorer that year was center Claude Noel who went on to coach the AHL Milwaukee Admirals to a Calder Cup title in 2004 and later guided the NHL Winnipeg Jets from 2011 to midway through the 2013-14 season.)
An eleventh round draft pick of the Blackhawks in 1978, Sutter first joined the AHL Hawks as a rookie pro late in the 1978-79 season on which Boudreau, a third round pick of the Maple Leafs in 1975, was already playing. (Ironically earlier in that season current Chicago Blackhawk coach Joel Quenneville, a Leafs second round selection in 1978, had started the season in New Brunswick as well before moving up to the Leafs before Sutter arrived.) Sutter and Boudreau went on to play the full 1979-80 season together with the AHL Hawks with Boudreau, that club's top center, leading the team in scoring with 90 points on 36 goals and 54 assists while Sutter, his oft time linemate at left wing, finished second with 66 points on 35 goals and 31 assists. Together the two then combined for another dozen goals and 13 assists in 17 Calder Cup playoff games.
"I never imagined Darryl Sutter would become the major hockey figure he did," Boudreau said of him three decades later in his 2009 autobiography
"Gabby: Confessions of a Hockey Lifer". "Darryl was always a little grumpy. He was a pure goal scorer. He wasn’t a physical player, but he competed really hard. To see him transform into a really tough coach, though—I didn’t see that coming. Darryl was a competitive, determined bugger who hated to lose, and he has done so well for himself. I know Chicago management loved him."
If the Ducks beat the Kings in this round and go on to the Western Conference Final, Boudreau will be meeting another former New Brunswick and Toronto teammate in Quenneville who had a dozen year NHL career as a defenseman with the Leafs, Rockies, Devils, Whalers, and Capitals between 1978 and 1991 before going on to his long and highly successful NHL coaching career with St. Louis, Colorado, and Chicago.
“Joel Quenneville was always smart in the way he played and the way he talked,” notes Boudreau in his book. “Joel was one of the boys, but he was the one of the boys who had common sense. If somebody had plans to do something stupid, he was the one who cautioned against it. When Joel went to St. John’s in the AHL as a player–assistant coach, you could see he was being groomed under Marc Crawford and was going to someday be a head coach.”
So there is more than just their long coaching careers that connect the three remaining bench bosses left in the Western Conference playoffs. They have also all known each other for decades as one time
on ice teammates and opponents as well. And while none of those three ever carried the Stanley Cup around the ice as NHL players, all three have previously coached professional teams to playoff championships with Boudreau winning in the ECHL (Kelly Cup with the Mississippi Sea Wolves in 1999) and AHL (Calder Cup with the Hershey Bears in 2006), Sutter taking a Stanley Cup title with the Kings in 2012, and Quenneville collecting a pair of Stanley Cups with Chicago in 2010 and 2013.
Hockey's a small world, eh?
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