Madferret said:
Deebo said:
Madferret said:
Were Quinn & Burke close outside of hockey? I seem to remember them not getting along / being very fond of each but that could have been just a media thing
I don't ever remember hearing anything of the sort, maybe you're thinking about another combination of Leaf and Canuck GMs? Burke and Gillis?
The video the cw posted makes it pretty clear the they were close.
Yeah that's it it was Gillis v Burke - that was pretty nasty too wasn't it. Cheers
He had a pretty big spat with Bobby Clarke in the media over a trade that fell through and allegedly Clarke leaked the name of the Leafs player (Markov? or Kaberle?)
But look what Clarke had to say about him:
Clarke on Quinn
?Pat came in and re-invented coaching in the league,? says Bob Clarke, the captain of that Flyers team. ?Pat was miles and years ahead of everyone. Teams spent most of the ?80s catching up. The teams that won went with what he was doing. Teams that lost hung on to the old stuff. Eventually everybody came around. They saw what Pat was able to accomplish with the Flyers.?
...
"The players from those Stanley Cup teams were desperate for change,? Clarke says. ?Things had become old and stale for us. He came along when we needed him. Pat had a whole new approach. He changed the basic principles. If you see a hole, fill a hole. Wingers coming in off the wing. All that stuff that everyone uses today, that was what Pat came up to and taught us. No one else was doing it back then. We were an average team. We had average talent in the lineup. Nobody got more out of a team than Pat did that season.?
When I checked in 2006 or so, that '80 Flyers team was the youngest roster (25+ years old average age) to compete in the Cup finals since expansion (and maybe ever) - which blew away the stupid media notion at the time that Quinn couldn't coach kids or wouldn't give them a chance. Draft-Schmaft Fletcher didn't leave Pat many quality kids when he came in.
I'd describe that roster as above average but that's all.
http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0000531980.html
Clarke (in decline) & Barber were the only Hall of Famers. Pete Peters in goal. Average Hall of Famers on a Cup winning roster is 5+ since '67.
Pat took the Canucks to game 7 with Pavel Bure being the only Hall of Famer and Kirk McLean in goal - it was a roster of largely nonames/some above average and rejects - nothing like the Habs, Oilers or Islanders rosters in terms of talent.
http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0000391994.html
?You go to a practice and see a coach talking to a player one-on-one, personal instruction,? Clarke says. ?Pat started that. Without him we wouldn?t have coaches teaching players at the NHL level. That wasn?t done before. Scotty [Bowman] never did that. Fred Shero taught the team but not individual players. They didn?t look at their job as being communicators.
?Pat changed all that. Not to knock anybody, but Pat was the most important coaches of that era,? Clarke says. Even if fans or the media don?t know that, people in the league do.?
and during his time in Toronto, the Toronto media was floating that Pat wouldn't communicate with his players ... which many contradicted over the last few days - many giving him accolades for his teaching with one describing him as the best listener he ever encountered.
