What they're saying . . .

What people are saying about Ed Chynowth, the long-time WHL president and chairman of the board and majority owner of the Kootenay Ice who passed away Tuesday at the age of 66 . . .
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Bruce Hamilton, Kelowna Rockets governor, president and general manger, to the Kelowna Daily Courier’s Doyle Potenteau: “I lost a very dear friend. He was my mentor in this business and like a second father in a lot of ways. He’s the reason why we got the franchise in Tacoma. And he was very influential in helping us persuade our league partners to move the team to Kelowna. He was a believer . . . he believed in us that it could work in Kelowna. He knew coming it’d be tough because (of Memorial Arena), but he had faith that we were going in the right direction. He was a believer in the league like nobody else, right from the very first day I met him. He helped the league grow to where it is now. But because of Ed, we still have small-market franchises.”
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Gavin Hamilton, the Rockets’ vice-president of business development, speaking with Potenteau: “You knew with Ed that the league always came first, even when he was with the Ice. But the one thing I’ll always certainly remember about him is the respect he received. “When he spoke at a league meeting, everybody listened, and that doesn’t always happen when you get 22 owners or governors in a room. That everybody was listening to him always impressed me.”
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Roy Stasiuk, the Lethbridge Hurricanes’ general manager who worked for Chynoweth with the Ice, talking with Trevor Kenney of the Lethbridge Herald: “I couldn’t have asked for a better leader, mentor, friend to learn the major junior hockey business from than the first family of major junior hockey in Canada. That was certainly a real blessing for me. . . . Probably my fondest memories, I like to refer to them as the red-wine sessions . . . I was fortunate enough to be a house guest at Ed’s condo in Cranbrook when I was staying there and working for the Ice and there was many a night over the nine years there in Cranbrook where we’d pop open a bottle or two of red wine and just talk hockey. . . . I think the one thing that can’t be forgotten is he had a great sense of humour . . . there’s no doubt he should be in the Hockey Hall of Fame. . . .”
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Jack Brodsky, governor and president of the Saskatoon Blades, in conversation with Cory Wolfe of the Saskatoon StarPhoenix: “It’s the end of an era. The Ed Chynoweth era has been almost the entire history of the Western Hockey League. When you think of how far the league has come to where it is today, a great deal — if not most — of the credit goes to him. Certainly, there were other good people along the way, but Ed was the guy who drove the bus for so many years. He was a great leader and a great visionary.”
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Ron Robison, WHL commissioner: “The WHL and the entire Canadian hockey community have lost a great leader today in Ed Chynoweth. The success the WHL and our member clubs are experiencing today is a direct result of the vision and leadership Ed Chynoweth provided to this League over the past 37 years.”
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Kelly McCrimmon, governor, general manager and head coach of the Brandon Wheat Kings, talking to James Shewaga of the Brandon Sun: “It’s a tremendous loss for the league. I think he’s probably the most influential person that our league has known and he’s responsible for a lot of the growth and development of the league and he will be missed. . . . The one thing that Ed always stood for is the league being more important than any individual team in the league, so it’s not unlike the same things you stress with a team. And I think that Ed really genuinely believed in that and that was the way that the league got its feet underneath it in the early years. And I think that from there, he really put his stamp on the league on an ongoing basis by the impact and influence that he had on the key people in it. Ed always felt the league was first and the small market teams were every bit as important as the bigger markets . . . and the other thing that Ed really pushed and was largely responsible for was implementation of education contracts for the players, which obviously in the past 10 years has received a lot more recognition and is more common knowledge to players and families now. . . . on a personal note, he was a big part of my life. I think that over my time in the league, he has been a great ally and a great friend.”
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With the death of Ed Chynoweth, Bruce Hamilton of the Kelowna Rockets has stepped in as chairman of the board and will serve until the league’s annual meeting in June. At that time, it’s expected the governors will elect a chairman. Hamilton was the chairman from 1998-2004.