The Legend of Ernie McLean

You can argue until you are blue in the face about whether Pat Ginnell, with the Flin Flon Bombers, or Ernie McLean, with the New Westminster Bruins, put together and coached the toughest teams in WHL history.
Both men believed physical domination was the key to victory. And they put together teams that could do just that. They would beat you up on the ice, in the alley . . . anywhere and everywhere.
But that is the way the game was played. Or, at the very least, the way they believed the game had to be played in those days in order to sell tickets. That was in the days before marketing and public relations.
If you think about it, the likes of Ginnell and McLean may well have been before their time. Because they actually were the UFC, MMA . . . even the WWE . . . before the UFC, MMA and WWE.
McLean, as you may be aware, went missing Sunday. The worst was feared until he was found alive and well on Thursday evening.
All of this brought back a lot of memories. And I was able to go back in my files and uncover a lengthy story I wrote on McLean. I believe it was in 1994.
Let’s call it The Legend of Ernie McLean . . .
--------
He won four consecutive Western Hockey League championships, something no other coach ever did, or ever will do again.
He won back-to-back Memorial Cups, something that has been accomplished only a half-dozen times.
He was a legend during a 16-year WHL coaching career.
And if you don't believe that, just walk into a coffee shop, an arena, a restaurant somewhere, anywhere, in western Canada and mention the name: Ernie McLean. Ernie (Punch) McLean.
"I put together probably some of the toughest hockey clubs that ever played in the Western Hockey League,” McLean says.
Hey, it ain't boastin' if'n you can do the roastin'. And there's no probably about it. When McLean's big, bad burly New Westminster Bruins came ridin' into town, it was time to hide the women and children.
"I remember Scotty (Munro) calling up to Bill Hunter one time,” recalls McLean. "He said, "Bill, we've got to do something. I think we've created a monster out there.”
But we're getting ahead of ourselves here.
McLean, a hale and hearty Saskatchewan lad through and through, was born and raised in Estevan. He played in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, with the Humboldt Indians, and that's really where it all began.
Because that's when Lady Luck, Dame Fortune, or whatever you wish to call it brought McLean and Scotty Munro together.
"I started with Scotty back in 1950 in Humboldt,'' McLean remembers. "I played with him for two years. In 1957, he moved to Estevan with us.”
McLean and longime buddy Bill Shinske also had a construction company in Estevan.
"I stayed with Scotty at that time, doing odd jobs to get started in the hockey business,” McLean said.
Then, in 1961, when Munro left for Jacksonville, Fla., and an ill-fated attempt at getting into the pro ranks, McLean was on his own.
"I took over the coaching and stayed with it” is how he puts it.
"I've got a lot of great memories of Scotty,” McLean says, and he's chuckling as the memories come pouring in. “One of the ones that always comes to mind has to do with his eating habits. After a game, he always had to go have bacon and eggs. In later years, it had to be Chinese food. But in his earlier years he always had to have his bacon and eggs.”
It wasn't long before Munro was back on the scene. And it was about here where a few western hockey people decided bigger was better. It was time, they decided, to form a super junior league, even if it meant leaving the comforting umbrella of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association.
Little did they know at the time that they were about to begin rewriting hockey history. They would take on the CAHA, the National Hockey League, the World Hockey Association. There would be courtroom challenges. They would be barred from competing for the Memorial Cup. It would be ugly. But in the end . . .
We'll let McLean tell the story. After all, he had a front row seat.
"We were getting very disgusted with the CAHA. We weren't getting any help from them and they were taking a percentage all the time off the gates in the playoffs. At that particular time, we weren't getting what we felt was a fair deal from the National Hockey League.”
It all began, then, at Clear Lake in Manitoba's beautiful Riding Mountain National Park. It was on a clear day in Wasagaming, the small community around which park
life thrives. It was the summer of 1966.
"We call it the Clear Lake massacre,” McLean continues. "At that time, the CAHA was bringing in any team that they thought could come into the (Saskatchewan junior) league. They would apply and we were supposed to look after them. Melville was coming in, Yorkton was coming in.
"So at Clear Lake . . . it was really funny. In those days, you had to pay up your dues or you couldn't vote . . . you never had a vote.
"As it happened, Frank Boucher was the chairman. He called the meeting to order in Clear Lake. We're sitting around the table. They asked for Scotty's cheque. He said, ‘I can't afford to pay.'
“They said, ‘Well, Mr. Munro, you can't vote.'
“They asked Bill Hunter for his cheque and he said, "I haven't got one.'
“They said, "Well you can't vote.'
“It went around the table like that. All of a sudden they said, ‘Well, I guess we have no meeting.' And Frank says, ‘I guess we haven't.'
"At that point in time, the guys got up from the table and walked across to another room in the hotel and formed a new league.”
Thus was born the Canadian Major Junior Hockey League, the league that would eventually evolve into the Western Hockey League.
Munro, McLean and Shinske were there at the beginning, representing Estevan. Hunter had the Edmonton Oil Kings. Jim Piggott had the Saskatoon Blades. Bob Brownridge and Cec Papke represented the Calgary Buffaloes. The Regina Pats, Weyburn Red Wings and Moose Jaw Canucks were there, too.
They operated that first season outside the jurisdiction of the CAHA. But the next season the CMJHL became the Western Canada Junior Hockey League and, as such, it moved back under the CAHA's umbrella. It also grew from seven to 11 teams. In came the Flin Flon Bombers, Winnipeg Jets, Brandon Wheat Kings and Swift Current Broncos.
This was truly a Western Canadian hockey league.
"We called it the Western Canada Junior Hockey League,” McLean says. "We had quite a league.”
The Estevan Bruins, under Munro, Shinske and McLean, won it all that 1967-68 season. That was only fitting because Munro left Estevan after that season.
"We split the hockey club in 1969,” McLean says. "We had gone to the Memorial Cup 1968 and had built up a dynasty in Saskatchewan.”
You've got to understand that there's no false modesty surrounding one Ernie McLean. But a dynasty? Well, the Estevan franchise finished second in each of the league's first four seasons.
Hunter's Edmonton Oil Kings finished first in 1966-67, only to lose out to Brian Shaw's Moose Jaw Canucks in one semifinal. The Canucks won that best-of-nine series three games to two with four tied. Yes, that's right -- 3-2 with four ties. Regina won the other semi-final 4-1-1, sidelining the Bruins.
Pat Ginnell's Flin Flon Bombers finished ahead of Estevan in the second season, but the Bruins won the playoff championship, 4-0-1.
"Bill Shinske and myself kept six players in Estevan,” McLean says, referring to the aftermath of the 1967-68 season. "The other six went with (Munro) to Calgary. That year we won our division and he won his division, that's how strong we were.”
Actually, the Bruins and Calgary Centennials were second in their respective divisions. The WCJHL changed its name for the 1968-69 season, becoming the Western Canada Hockey League. It also split into two divisions -- East and West -- and it left the CAHA again.
No matter.
As McLean says: "If we'd have kept all of the 12 of them we'd have had a great hockey club.”
It was about here where things started to get ugly on the political front.
"As we went along, the CAHA said you won't be drafted, that the kids wouldn't be drafted and wouldn't be playing in the National Hockey League,” McLean said. And he laughs at the nerve of the CAHA. "We just told them to go jump in the ocean.
"Of course, we were outlaws from the CAHA. We preferred to call it independent.”
So it was that WCHL teams, again, weren't allowed to compete for the Memorial Cup. That was partially responsible for some teams -- Regina, Moose Jaw and Weyburn -- leaving the WCHL. Regina would return two seasons later, for the 1970-71 season. But Moose Jaw hockey fans would have to wait until the summer of 1984 to get back into the league. And Weyburn, well, it never did return.
The Bruins played what would be their last season in Estevan in 1970-71. They finished atop the East Division but couldn't get past Winnipeg in a first-round series.
That spring, on the night of Sunday, April 18, McLean went missing.
"Ernest V. (Punch) McLean, 36, Estevan businessman and coach of the Estevan Bruins junior hockey team, was reported missing in a light plane on a 200-mile flight from The Pas in northern Manitoba to Yorkton."
That's how the story began in the Regina Leader-Post.
According to the story, McLean was the pilot and lone occupant of the plane.
The next day, The Leader-Post reported that McLean was in satisfactory condition in a Regina hospital. He was treated for a broken jaw and lacerations, and he ultimately lost his left eye.
The plane had crashed into a clump of trees near Kamsack, Sask. McLean was found on a rural road near the community.
"After my plane crash, we moved out to the coast to New Westminster,” McLean says.
Eventually, this move became responsible for a great deal of bitterness that built up between Munro and his former protege.
"Because we were so successful in New Westminster, Scotty and I became bitter enemies for a while,” McLean said. "On top of it, my son (Brian) and Bill's son (Rick) were both playing for Scotty.
"He became very, very bitter at us because . . . I quickly saw when we got to the coast that in order to win you had to have a big, tough, aggressive hockey club.”
Which, of course, is just what McLean did. Thus was born the legend of the big, bad, burly, brawling Bruins.
Which led to Munro and Hunter bemoaning the fact they had "created a monster.”
"They called me,” McLean recalls. "I said, ‘What the hell are you guys talking about?’
“I remember it clearly. I said to Bill Hunter, ‘What about (Doug) Kerslake?' He was one of the worst hatchet men that you'd ever want to bring into the league. I said at least my guys weren't hatchet men.”
McLean points out that the Centennials weren't about to ice a rough, tough team because Brownridge, the owner, had been "a finesse-type player so he didn't want aggressive teams.”
McLean remembers going into Calgary one time. Well, let's let him tell it . . .
"They weren't drawing very well. Cec Papke was coaching. We used to come up from Estevan and play a couple of games. We'd play Calgary, go up to Edmonton and then come back and play Calgary.
"I was mad at my guys because Cec hadn't won a hockey game yet and he was beating us. I had a pretty good hockey club so I was giving the guys hell.
"In those days, in the Corral, they had a bell (in the dressing room to call teams to the ice once the intermission was over). The bell started ringing and ringing. I took a hockey stick and banged it right off the wall.
"The next thing you know, there's a knock on the door. It's (supervisor of officials) Joe Cassidy. He says, ‘Come on Ernie, get on the ice, you've got 15 minutes.'
“I said, ‘Joe . . . or what?'
“He says, ‘Come on, Ernie, get out here.' I says, ‘OK.'
"Next thing I know, (then WCHL boss) Ron Butlin's at the door. He says, ‘You've got 15 minutes to get on the ice or you'll be suspended.'
“I said, ‘We haven't even been told to come out yet.' I gave him the gears. When we got on the ice, they tapped me with two minutes for delaying the game.
"So I had all the guys stand still, they never moved. (Gregg) Sheppard stayed at centre ice, (Greg) Polis on one side, (Brent) Taylor on the other. They had (Rusty) Patenaude, (Bob) Liddington . . . my guys are all standing there. Patenaude skates down the wing, looks around, nobody's chasing him, he just casually throws the puck at the net. Liddington came in and scored.
“I said, ‘Well, now we can start the game.' My guys are still standing on the spot.
"Holy geez. After the game, Brownridge comes down and he's just jumping. Of course, they hadn't been doing too well in Calgary. Henry Viney was writing at the time. Ken Newans was there.
"Geez, Brownridge came down and he went up and down me. He said, ‘I haven't seen anything like that since sticks were cut out of hickory.'
"I said, ‘I'll tell you what I'll do Bobby. You give me two-bits for everyone who shows up next Saturday and I'll give you two-bits for everyone who doesn't.'
"Well there was so much ink in the paper that week that on the Saturday night they had a sellout. For the first time in junior hockey in Calgary they had a complete sellout. Everybody wanted to see what the hell was going on.
"That was the start of the dynasty in Calgary.”
McLean iced some great teams in New Westminster, where they played in the 4,900-seat Queen's Park Arena.
And beginning with the 1974-75 season, the Bruins rang up four straight league titles. They topped that off by winning the Memorial Cup in 1976-77 and 1977-78.
Of those four seasons, McLean says, "They were tough . . . they were tough.”
"Our best hockey club,” he says, "was in 1974-75 but we didn't win it.”
The Memorial Cup tournament was played in Kitchener that year. The Bruins won their first two games of the round-robin, beating Sherbrooke and the Toronto Marlboros to qualify for the final.
"After we won the two games we were in the final, so we sat Thursday, Friday and Saturday and played Sunday morning at 11 o'clock,” McLean recalls. "We were leading but our goaltender, Gord Laxton, who had played great for us all the way through was having a bad game.”
McLean had added Ed Staniowski from the Regina Pats for the tournament. But McLean felt Laxton was the reason the Bruins were there in the first place, so he chose to dance with the one who had brought him.
Toronto went home with the Memorial Cup.
"I could probably have won another Memorial Cup if I had been selfish and said to heck with Laxton and put Staniowski in,” McLean says. "After the game, everybody said, why didn't you? I explained to them why. It was a tough decision to make in about 10 seconds.”
The Bruins would win four league titles in a row, something McLean says "you'll never see again.”
"The way the system is now it'll never allow a team to have that many good players.”
The highlights that spring immediately to mind, though, involve the 1977-78 team, one that would barely sneak into the playoffs and then go on to win it all.
Late in the season, on March 8, the Bruins were in Billings to play the Bighorns.
"We were leading 2-1 with a minute and a half left in the game and goldarn if they didn't tie the game,” McLean says, pointing out that a tie wasn't much good to the Bruins and that there was no regular-season overtime in those days. "So I pulled the goaltender with the faceoff at centre ice. I had Dougie Derkson at centre ice. I put two guys on the left side; one of them was John Paul Kelly with that great acceleration.
"I had him come back like a halfback and Derkson pumped the puck through. The defenceman moved wide on the far guy. Kelly went in to about 25 feet and let a blister go and beat Andy Moog. 3-2 for us. We tried playing kitty bar the door and lo and behold they come into our zone and (Richard) Martens had to make a save. A guy was home-free 10 feet in front of the net with 15 seconds left to go in the game.
"We won the game 3-2.”
It was while in New Westminster, of course, that McLean built up what became one of the ugliest rivalries, if it can be called that, in all of western Canadian sports history.
It involved the Portland Winter Hawks and the Bruins. It involved Brian Shaw, who had over the years gone from Moose Jaw to Edmonton to Portland, and his coach, Ken Hodge. And it involved McLean.
There were incidents that can be looked back on now and seen to be somewhat humorous.
Like the night the Bruins were playing in Portland, and the score was tied 1-1 when defenceman Blake Wesley of the Winter Hawks was tagged with a minor penalty.
"They're still after me for this one,” McLean says. "The player boxes are side-by-side with a little piece of glass between them. I forget who was refereeing the game but he gave Wesley a penalty.
"As they were skating over to the far side (to the penalty box), I grabbed their water bottle and I threw it at the referee. Of course, the Portland Winter Hawks name was all over the bottle. So he tagged them two more minutes for delaying the game. That put them down five against three. We scored and won the game 2-1.”
Most of the incidents, though, weren't the least bit funny.
There was the one-sided brawl in Queen's Park on Thursday, March 22, 1979. The Bruins dumped their bench; the Winter Hawks didn't. It was not a pretty sight.
There were suspensions. Charges were pressed.
"That was in an era when things were starting to turn around,” McLean says. "People were tired of all the fighting.”
When it got into court, McLean says, "We made a mistake by grouping them all together. I said to Bill, ‘Don't plead guilty.' We had seven kids (in court). Some of them didn't do anything, but they still ended up sitting out for two months.”
Then there was the night in Portland the next season when, believe it or not, Shaw had to bail McLean out of the slammer.
"Yeah,” McLean says, "Hodge put me in and Shaw got me out. Hodge and I didn't see eye-to-eye. For whatever reason, he hated me with a passion, and likely still does.
"We had lost the game and one of his kids got cut. He was waiting for me, and said something about me not being able to play the game without someone getting cut.
"Then I saw a shadow on my blind side. It was a girl (Jackie Jones, 19) and she put a stick in my face. I gave her a push and Hodge said, ‘Now you've done it.’
"In come the police. They asked what happened. I told them. They told me to turn around. I turned around and they put the handcuffs on me, took me down to the police station and threw me in the drunk tank.
"I'd never been in jail in my life; I'd never had handcuffs on. It was pretty devastating to me as far as my personal self was concerned.”
McLean didn't have a cent in his pocket. He'd given his money to trainer Larry Dean in order to feed the players.
"They fingerprinted me and took mugshots, the whole thing,” McLean says.
Eventually, Shaw showed up and bailed him out, to the tune of $525.
The original charge of fourth-degree assault was later reduced to harassment. It ended on Feb. 22 in a Portland courtroom when what was termed a "civil compromise” was signed.
"When everyone got settled down and everything,” McLean says, "they had the girl drop the charges. But by that time the damage was done.”
And the end was in sight for McLean and his Bruins. The team went 10-61-1 in 1979-80, and McLean missed the playoffs for the first time in his coaching career.
"I've made up my mind. I've worn out my welcome,” McLean said as he and Shinske announced the club was for sale. "I will not be in New Westminster next year. We built a dynasty here but it's now time to move on.
"There comes a time in life when you have to say what more can you do. I'm at the crossroads now. I'm hitting the road. I've proven what I can do.”
In April, the franchise was sold to Vancouver businessman Nelson Skalbania. The price? More than $300,000.
But McLean didn't leave. Not yet.
"I stayed on and I worked for him for two months,” says McLean, who acted as the club's general manager, while Muzz MacPherson, a son of Winnipeg broadcaster Stew MacPherson, coached. "But there was no possible way that I could see that it was going to work out. Muzz stayed and I left and Tracy Pratt came in to my spot.”
As it turned out, that was the franchise's last season in New Westminster. The Edmonton Oilers, of owner Peter Pocklington, bought it and moved it to Kamloops.
New Westminster was back in the league for the 1983-84 season, as Vancouver businessman Ron Dixon bought the Nanaimo Islanders franchise and moved it to Queen's Park.
And guess who showed up a couple of years later?
"I got back into it with Dixon,” McLean says.
Incredibly, McLean returned to the front office while Ginnell was coaching the Bruins.
"I think Dixon had about four coaches that year,” McLean says. "With Patty, the guy kept coming on about doing his job. He kept talking to me about taking over and doing the whole thing.
"Finally, he was going to let Patty go anyway so I said, ‘OK, I'll take it over.'
"Dixon said, ‘This is my main man, he's going to run it for me.' Well, that lasted about two weeks.''
The relationship didn't last much longer.
"I could see there was no way that was going to work out so I told him he better find somebody for (1987-88),” McLean remembers. “So they brought in John Van Horlick and he lasted a year.
"(Al) Patterson worked for (Dixon). Bill Shinske, Harvey Roy. A lot of us that were in the hockey business worked for him. But Dixie wouldn't let us handle things.
"I said in Equity magazine that Dixon is a helluva guy as long as you don't work for him.”
Ernie McLean hasn't coached since. Nor has he been officially associated with a hockey team at any level.
Every April he leaves his Vancouver home and heads north, way up north, almost to the Yukon-B.C. border.
"I've got the placer mine in Atlin,” he explains. "We leave here in April and come back towards the end of October.”
You'll note that he returns to Vancouver just as the hockey season is beginning to heat up.
"I go to all the Canuck games,” he says. "I still get all my privileges from the Canucks. They've looked after me pretty well.”
But McLean, despite his winning record as a WHL coach (548-429-90, .556), never got a chance to coach in the NHL.
Why?
"At the time, when I probably should have been doing that I owned my own hockey club,” McLean responds.
He also feels that he was blackballed by the NHL, this after the Bruins were one of the junior teams that sued the NHL looking for compensation for drafted players.
"I sued every owner of the National Hockey League for compensation,” McLean says. "I don't think the NHL ever forgot.”
They'll tell you that, as a coach, McLean never backed down, that his teams took on all comers. Well, that's not exactly true.
There was a day in 1975 -- March 24, 1975, to be precise -- when McLean went out of his way to avoid a problem.
What's that. You don't believe it.
Well, it's true.
It was in New Westminster, too. In Queen's Park, of all places, where McLean backed off. That's right. He refused to allow his big, bad, burly Bruins to get physically involved with another team.
It was late in the third period. The Bruins, who would go on to win their first of four consecutive WHL championships, were whuppin' Regina, 5-2. It was then that Regina coach Bob Turner chose, as coaches back then were wont to do, to send out his tough guy. That tough guy just happened to be Bob Poley, who would go on to greater fame as an offensive lineman in the Canadian Football League.
And how did McLean respond to Poley's presence?
Well, McLean chose to take his tough guy, Harold Phillipoff, off the ice.
And that's how it went through game's end. McLean, with the benefit of last change, made sure that Phillipoff and Poley never did meet.
It's doubtful if that had happened before. You know that it didn't happen again.
And you know that if McLean were to come across a big, burly bruin in northern B.C., well, he wouldn't back down then either.

--30--

The legend of Ernie McLean grows . . .

It turns out that Ernie McLean found the searchers before they found him.
McLean, the former WHL coach who is so well known in the hockey community, went missing Sunday afternoon. He was spotted by a helicopter on Thursday shortly after 7 p.m.
On Sunday, while marking trees in preparation for building a road through thick brush, McLean, 76, apparently fell down a steep embankment, struck his head and became disoriented.
In that condition, and with neither food nor firearm, he got lost and wasn’t able to find his way back to his camp.
Over time, he saw the search planes and helicopters and was able to regain his bearings on Thursday. He made his way to a logging road where a helicopter spotted him and picked him up. At the time, he was about five kilometres from his camp.
McLean was taken to the medical centre in Dease Lake, where he was examined and released. He apparently spent Thursday evening at a friend’s home.
This was at least the second time McLean has gone missing and been the subject of a search.
On Sunday, April 18, 1971, McLean was piloting a plane that left The Pas, Man., at 8:35 p.m. CST. Ninety minutes later, McLean called the traffic tower at Yorkton, Sask., and asked for weather information.
The plane wasn’t heard from again. As it turned out, the plane crashed into a clump of trees about 10 p.m.
The next day, McLean was found by brothers Pete and Steve Chypyha on a rural road 15 miles northeast of Kamsack, Sask. McLean had been missing for about 20 hours.
McLean ended up in hospital in Regina after that crash. He suffered a broken jaw, lost the sight in one eye and had various cuts and bruises.
Such is the legend of Ernie (Punch) McLean that various reports this week had him missing for days in 1971 (or, as one report had it, in 1972) and wandering around the frozen Prairie terrain.
In truth, he went missing one day and was found the next.
As he once told me, “I happened to fly into the only tree for miles around on that stretch of Prairie!”
Surely, there was more to it than that. Here's hoping there's a book on the way.

McLean found . . . and he's alive

Details are still sketchy, but Ernie (Punch) McLean, the former head coach of the New Westminster Bruins, has been found alive.
He was found Thursday night near Dease Lake, B.C., and has been taken to hospital.
McLean was prospecting near Turnagain Lake, which isn't that far south of the B.C./Yukon border when he disappeared on Sunday.
Apparently, he was found five kilometres from the place where he was last seen on Sunday.

McLean search suspended for night

The latest release from the Dease Lake, B.C., RCMP detachment, issued at 10:02 p.m. PT:

The search for Ernie McLEAN (77 years old) is now suspended for the evening due to darkness. The search will continue in the morning with the addition of six RCMP officers from the Yukon.

Although the search ended today without any sign of Mr. McLEAN, there were no added complications.

Mr. McLEAN was last seen on Sunday, August 16 in a remote mountainous area near Turnagain Lake, approximately 80 kms east of Dease Lake. He was on foot, had no firearm and no food. He was expected back later that day.

Both the McLEAN Family and the RCMP understand the need to keep the public informed and will continue to do so as the search continues.

McLean missing

It is being reported by various news outlets that a search is underway for former New Westminster Bruins coach Ernie (Punch) McLean.

The Vancouver Sun story is right here.

Portland and Brian Shaw . . . Part 7

The winds of change are blowing through the Portland Winter Hawks’ organization. . . . Dean (Scooter) Vrooman, who left the Winter Hawks more than a year ago after a lengthy stint as the team’s much-loved play-by-play voice, remembers the legendary Brian Shaw in a story that was prepared a couple of years ago as part of a book project that never got off the ground . . .

PART 7:
During the good times, Brian Shaw was at his best in the press room before Hawks’ games. It seemed he always had a cigar, a big smile and a whole bunch of one-liners. I never felt that Shaw intentionally belittled or talked down to his opponents while the Hawks were in their glory years. I always felt Brian was just very happy that his team was on top. But other teams probably felt Shaw was arrogant, big-headed and egotistical. So now that the shoe was on the other foot and Shaw’s Hawks were getting stomped night in and night out, most felt little sympathy. In fact, I am sure many delighted in it.
One of Shaw’s favorite expressions was: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” During the tough times, I will always remember and respect the fact that Shaw took the heat.
During the 1990-91 season, a group of zealous Winter Hawks’ season-ticket holders circulated a petition throughout the Coliseum and submitted it to Shaw, asking him to fire Ken Hodge as the head coach. But every single time the Hawks’ poor record was the topic of a media report, it was Shaw who took the blame. Certainly, Hodge appreciated Shaw standing with him, but it wasn’t as if they were always on the same page.
“I think Brian fired me five times,” Hodge says. “I think I had to go back once to him and make amends and I think the other times he cooled off and came back to me. That was very nice of him because I am a bit stubborn and he certainly was a bit stubborn.
“The arguments were mainly over players and how I handled them, or trades, or my salary, or maybe a playoff bonus, but really never about the team’s poor performance during those trying years. He was very realistic about our talent level and that was really the issue, for the most part.
“The first time he fired me,” Hodge remembers, “I had packed up my personal belongings in my office and boxed them up and was in the process of leaving when he came in to make amends. That happened a second time, so I decided to just keep the box packed under my desk as a reminder that there were times I should keep my mouth shut.”
Hodge also remembers when Shaw fired another head coach.
“Brian would get rather heated,” Hodge says, with a smile. “After he had become ill and I first became general manager, he roared in one night and actually fired Pete (head coach Brent Peterson, who succeeded Hodge). I had to patch that one up. He was pretty fiery and when he got that way, it was his hockey team. Other’s opinions did not matter in those moments when he was hot, but he would cool down and wisdom would usually prevail the next day.”
Those were tough years, but we all learned from them. As a broadcaster, I had it pretty good, covering mostly winning teams until that 1987-88 season started the run of some very horrible hockey games involving the Winter Hawks.
I remember not looking forward to facing Shaw on the bus. He hated losing so much, he was miserable. He would sit with his arms folded and he would scowl. The funny thing was, the angrier he became, the less he said. It got so I almost wanted him to yell a little.
Shaw rarely lost his temper with individual players, at least around me. Everybody hates losing, but it seemed to me that being so intolerable when things were already bad enough just compounded the problem. But, looking back, I was very thankful he was so passionate. Losing prompted him to makes the changes necessary to improve the team.
Shaw started by revamping his scouting system. Then, when he realized his illness would reduce his ability to do his job, he hired Peterson. Hodge was well equipped to be a good WHL general manager and Shaw knew it. Still, those bad years made all of us appreciate the good years even more. Those years brought me to have an appreciation and understanding of what a team’s management and players had to go through when the losses begin to pile up. I now have a lot more empathy for what other teams go through when they have losing seasons even though, obviously, I always want the Winter Hawks to win.
Even though many other folks around the league reveled in watching Shaw squirm, slump and just plain get mad when his teams went through losing seasons, you couldn’t find very many people who would question Shaw’s generosity and heart.
Many, many times Shaw’s phone would ring late at night and it would be a former player in trouble. His hockey family would call “Unkie” about everything. Personal problems. Family problems. Hockey problems, like slumps and contract disputes. On several occasions, he was involved in drug and/or alcohol rehab programs with ex-players and their families. I can remember him telling me over and over how awful it was to be at those sessions, but how good he felt if the player got through it.
One of those players went public about Shaw’s generosity. Colin Foley played for the Winter Hawks from 1990-94 and during his tenure it came to the team’s attention that he had a problem with alcohol. It was a serious problem.
“They could have sent me home, kept me on their list and never let me play in the league,” Foley told Rob Vanstone of the Regina Leader-Post. “But they did not do that. (Shaw and Hodge) have a kind heart toward their players. They gave me another chance to prove myself and that might not have happened under different people.”
Every Winter Hawks player had to wear a suit surrounding games, at many player functions, and during meals on the road. Often, Shaw would take players from less fortunate families to a local men’s store and purchase the clothing necessary to meet the dress code. He also routinely offered to negotiate NHL contracts for his players. I know he was involved in negotiations on behalf of Perry Turnbull and Darrell May, just to name two.
And even after Shaw traded him to Regina for his 20-year-old season, and before he was hired by Hodge in 2000-01 as an assistant under current head coach Mike Williamson, ex-Winter Hawks sniper Troy Mick, the No. 5 scorer in franchise history with 353 points in 201 games, remembered Shaw’s role in his pro career.
“I remember when I signed with Pittsburgh, he negotiated my contract and never charged me a cent,” Mick said. “Usually, agents take five or six per cent, and Brian never even thought of doing that. I went in the seventh round of the draft and my knees were already a concern. He had a huge role in getting me a decent contract in spite of that.”
Shaw was steadfast in making sure the Winter Hawks helped local charities with ticket donations, fund-raisers and auction items. His main focus during his Winter Hawks’ days was the 65 Roses Club. Many professional sports teams had the clubs, so named because young children afflicted with cystic fibrosis sometimes sounded like they were saying “65 Roses” when telling others of their illness. Many, many Winter Hawks fans joined the club and every dollar they contributed went to the local cystic fibrosis chapter to help local children. Shaw was very involved in all of the fund-raising activities and made many personal contributions.
Shaw also was one of the most complex people I have ever met.
“Brian always wanted to present an image of wealth and success,” Hodge reflects. “In his mind, he was both of those – wealthy and successful. If you compare his net worth to the average guy, he probably wasn’t all that wealthy, but he was very successful. He was successful because he was able to do something he enjoyed doing for a large part of his life.”
“Brian had a huge personality, was fun-loving and could be silly and sometimes even outrageous at times,” recalls his sister, Sonia. “But, more than that, I remember how generous he was.
“Brian walked the talk.
“Brian Shaw made things happen.”

(Part 7 of 7)

Portland and Brian Shaw . . . Part 6

The winds of change are blowing through the Portland Winter Hawks’ organization. . . . Dean (Scooter) Vrooman, who left the Winter Hawks more than a year ago after a lengthy stint as the team’s much-loved play-by-play voice, remembers the legendary Brian Shaw in a story that was prepared a couple of years ago as part of a book project that never got off the ground . . .

PART 6:
After the Winter Hawks won the 1983 Memorial Cup, Brian Shaw and Ed Chynoweth came to the forefront to deal with another festering problem. Before 1983, there weren’t any rules in the NHL-CHL agreement regarding 17-, 18- or 19-year-olds being called up to NHL teams.

Yes, there was one rule under which NHL teams couldn’t take players younger than 20 years of age and assign them to professional minor league teams. But they could call up juniors any time they wanted. This had happened off and on before 1983 and it was a simmering issue, but the 1983-84 Winter Hawks brought it to a head.
Shaw had every reason to believe his 1983-84 team would be strong again – so strong, in fact, that he traded centre Ray Ferraro to the Brandon Wheat Kings. Shaw’s thinking was that Ferraro would be a 19-year-old third-line centre behind Hawks’ stars Ken Yaremchuk and Alfie Turcotte. But even after telling Portland that Yaremchuk would return to the Winter Hawks for his 19-year-old season, the Chicago Blackhawks changed their mind and kept him in the NHL.
At the same time, the Calgary Flames decided to keep Winter Hawks’ team captain Rich Kromm, 19. The Vancouver Canucks called up left-winger Cam Neely, an 18-year-old first-round draft choice. Finally, the Montreal Canadiens, in the throes of one of the storied franchises worst seasons, called up Turcotte, another first-round draft pick.
The recall of Turcotte meant that four underage players were called up to the NHL, all in the same season and all from the same major junior team.
Before Montreal called for Turcotte, I remember interviewing Montreal GM Serge Savard like it was yesterday. I was thinking during the entire interview that he was going to call up Turcotte because the Canadiens couldn’t get any worse and perhaps it would give the piranhas of the Montreal press corps something positive to write about instead of second-guessing every move Savard made.
I was right. Turcotte packed his bags and joined Yaremchuk, Kromm and Neely in the NHL. It was truly an amazing moment in league history to be a part of.
The Winter Hawks started out 10-2 that season, but once Neely and Turcotte joined Yaremchuk and Kromm in the NHL, it didn’t take long for Shaw’s hockey team, and his world, to unravel. The Hawks had never had a losing season in Portland, but they would go 23-37 the rest of the way.
Shaw was always popular with the press because he spoke his mind, which made him rather very quotable. He shot from the hip and made great copy. So he made a lot of headlines in 1983-84, telling anyone who would listen about the travesty of teen-agers in the NHL. Lots of money, no billets or host families or support staff, no ability to relate with older professional players, many of whom had families and were too busy to mentor teen-age prospects. And, worst of all, none of the four Winter Hawks’ underage players were playing very much, if at all, on their NHL teams.
“How can the NHL have the audacity to call up these high-impact junior stars and just put them in the press box to watch their teams play?” Shaw asked repeatedly.
Meanwhile, he publicly called the 1983-84 Winter Hawks a midget team because he had to call up 15-year-olds Dan Woodley and Jamie Nicolls, and even 14-year-old Dave Archibald, to play major junior hockey.
Glen Goodall played a full season in Seattle as a 14-year-old in 1984-85. This was ridiculous, Shaw argued.
So he and Chynoweth, another compelling speaker and a respected voice in the media, went on a public rampage to change the rules. It probably helped Shaw’s case that Yaremchuk, Kromm, Neely and Turcotte all performed below expectations in the NHL.
Neely, it could be argued, was the only one to eventually mature and become the player that scouts had projected. But it wasn’t just those four players. There were quite a few compelling stories of players being rushed to the big time only to fail. It made sense. It was just not good for most players this young to be launched into professional hockey.
So Shaw and Chynoweth spearheaded a move throughout the CHL hierarchy aimed at negotiating a new agreement with the NHL, one that would outline only specific extreme circumstances where NHL teams were allowed to keep players younger than 20 years of age on their rosters, or even to call them up.
The system, which went into affect in the late 1980s, is still the model that is used to this day and has probably been responsible for the timely development and maturing of many junior players to noteworthy NHL careers.
The Winter Hawks rebuilt and had terrific teams in 1986 when they once again played host to the Memorial Cup, and in 1987 when they reached the league final, losing in seven games to the Medicine Hat Tigers.
But I personally got to witness Brian Shaw deal with the other side of hockey – losing. Since coming to Portland in 1976-77, things had pretty much gone his way. Oh, there had been some playoff disappointments in the late ‘70s, but the Winter Hawks were clearly the model franchise in all of junior hockey.
However, things changed in 1987-88.
It would be the first of a stretch of three seasons out of four where the Hawks would be near the bottom of the league and would miss the playoffs. The main reason, without question, was that other teams had caught up to and, indeed, passed the Hawks in the areas of scouting and acquiring talent. More and more teams were looking at the long haul and there were fewer high-impact players being acquired through trades. It meant that you either beat the other team in the scouting trenches or they would beat you.
Kamloops revolutionized the WHL when Blazers general manager Bob Brown hired Ken Hitchcock, out of the Sherwood Park, Alta., midget ranks, in the mid-1980s. Hitchcock was much, much more than a good coach. He knew where the players were and developed the WHL’s first true scouting network. These days, every team in the league has a scouting network, but Shaw was slow to react and revamp his own team’s scouting personnel and methods.
Consequently, in spite of having two of junior hockey’s best forwards in Dennis Holland and Troy Mick, both of whom were acquired via trade, the 1987-88 Winter Hawks won only 24 games and gave up a whopping 449 goals. Shaw called that edition of the winter Hawks “Team Disaster.”
And after regaining prominence and reaching the league final the next season through a couple of stunning quick-fix acquisitions, the problems in Portland’s scouting system became acute when the team won only 24 games in 1989-90 and 17 in 1990-91.

(Part 6 of 7)

Portland and Brian Shaw . . . Part 5

The winds of change are blowing through the Portland Winter Hawks’ organization. . . . Dean (Scooter) Vrooman, who left the Winter Hawks more than a year ago after a lengthy stint as the team’s much-loved play-by-play voice, remembers the legendary Brian Shaw in a story that was prepared a couple of years ago as part of a book project that never got off the ground . . .

PART 5:
My first season with the Winter Hawks was 1982-83. I did not understand the magnitude, then, of what Shaw had done in order to woo the Memorial Cup tournament to Portland in May 1983.

The tournament had a glorious 65-year history, all of it in Canada. When the Winter Hawks won the WHL championship in 1982 and played in the Memorial Cup tournament in Hull, Que., Shaw stewed. The tournament was held in a small, old arena with crowds numbering 2,000 or less. The Winter Hawks had beaten the Regina Pats in the last game of the WHL championship series in front of a sold out crowd of more than 10,000 in Portland’s Memorial Coliseum. Shaw got on his soapbox in Hull and started asking the right people some pointed questions.
If this truly was major junior hockey’s showcase, shouldn’t the games be played in front of big crowds and a national television audience?
After all, the Canadian Hockey League was developing a vast majority of high-impact future NHL stars. The Memorial Cup, Shaw thought, should be an event worthy of special distinction. He started to dangle the then-radical idea of a host team to energize the community in which the event would be staged. The Hull tournament was a perfect time for Shaw to start his sales pitch. The Memorial Cup was starting to spend more money on team travel and putting on the event than it was receiving in gate receipts.
In other words, the climate was right for change, but this still had to be the penultimate sales job of Shaw’s life.
Imagine this. How do you convince hockey leaders from three different leagues scattered across Canada and the northwestern United States to consider allowing a team to participate in the Memorial Cup without “earning” its way into the tournament?
Money was certainly part of the plan. Shaw figured if he could prove that the host team format, in a decent-sized building, could actually produce a profit – a decent profit – that would be shared equally by every team in the host league, his plan would make more sense to more key people. And where else would he feel more comfortable doing that than in the 10,000-seat Memorial Coliseum with his very own Winter Hawks?
Everyone knew Portland would have a strong team that season, one worthy of challenging for a spot in the Memorial Cup field anyway. If it could be promoted, in advance, that the Winter Hawks would definitely be in the tournament, ticket packages could be sold well before the tournament in May.
Imagine this. How do you ask all of major junior hockey to not only change the format of its hallowed national championship, but also convince the powers to hold the championship in the United States?
Even then, Canadians were at least slightly hostile towards Americans when it came to their national sport. Some Canadians could see the writing on the wall, though. More money in the United States. The exchange rate. The ability to woo players south from Canadian teams. And more players from the United States were becoming elite players, capable of challenging Canada for international recognition. The Memorial Cup, which honours Canadians killed in the First World War, held on U.S. soil? Blasphemy!
But Shaw did it.
And he did it in classic Shaw fashion. He went one-on-one in order to convince the important people that had to support him and he sold them first. Once convinced, they would help him get the votes he needed at the CHL level. Boy, there was a lot of grumbling, too, but the bottom line is that the 1983 Memorial Cup in Portland attracted more than 56,000 fans. At the time, it was the most successful Memorial Cup. Ever.
Shaw came through on his promise. Every WHL team got a nice cheque as its guaranteed share of the proceeds. It turned out to be the format used to this day, and the event has gained a higher and higher profile since that 1983 tournament in Portland.
But all was not rosy. The Winter Hawks won the tournament even though the Lethbridge Broncos had beaten them in five games in the 1983 WHL championship series.
And there was the whole ‘extra goalie’ incident. Every year prior to 1983, each team in the tournament was allowed to add to its Memorial Cup roster a goaltender from another team in its league. Things really came to a head regarding this rule when Ken Wregget, Lethbridge’s No. 1 goalie, was hurt and couldn’t play in the 1983 Memorial Cup. The Winter Hawks wanted to add the best goalie in the league, Mike Vernon of the Calgary Wranglers, and so did Lethbridge. The league allowed Vernon to choose and he picked Portland, figuring Wregget would recover from his injury, which was thought to be minor at the time, and be able to play for Lethbridge. Vernon knew he could play for Portland because their regular goaltenders, Bruno Campese and Ian Wood, were injured and unable to play in the Memorial Cup.
Well, as it turned out, Wregget couldn’t play either and Lethbridge was the first team eliminated. And then Vernon and the Hawks won it all.
As you might expect, all of this, on top of Shaw’s success in selling the host-team format and bringing a Canadian tradition to the United States, did not sit well with a lot of folks.
I still remember going into Lethbridge the next year for a regular-season game where some fans had hung a real toilet from the rafters of the Sportsplex with a sign on it that read, “Shaw, here is your Memorial Cup!”
There were some in hockey who thought the host-team format was doomed because the host team would win every year. If that happened, they said, it would really compromise the event when the other three teams in the tournament all had to win their league championships in order to qualify. Shaw always said that would simply not be the case. He reasoned that when you had three other teams that were of the highest calibre, the home crowd wouldn’t be a major factor in determining the Memorial Cup champion.
Apparently, Shaw was right. In the 26 years of the host-team format, only five host teams have won without also earning their way into the field by winning a league championship: Portland (1983), Sault Ste. Marie (1993), Ottawa (1999), Kelowna (2004) and Vancouver (2007).
Kamloops (1995), Hull (1997) and London (2005) have been host teams that also won their league championships and went on to win the Memorial Cup on home ice.

(Part 5 of 7)

Portland and Brian Shaw . . . Part 4

The winds of change are blowing through the Portland Winter Hawks’ organization. . . . Dean (Scooter) Vrooman, who left the Winter Hawks more than a year ago after a lengthy stint as the team’s much-loved play-by-play voice, remembers the legendary Brian Shaw in a story that was prepared a couple of years ago as part of a book project that never got off the ground . . .

PART 4:
As a youth, Brian Shaw was a goaltender for the Nordegg Cougars and Nordegg Panthers hockey clubs, competed in horse races, was a member of the Military Cadets, sang in the United Church Choir, and loved theatrical productions.
That he loved the theatre would be no surprise to anyone in the hockey media who ever interviewed Shaw, shared time with him in the pressroom before games, or attended one of his press conferences in Edmonton, Moose Jaw or Portland. He definitely had a flair for the dramatic.
Shaw had a passion for baseball almost as much as he did for hockey. In fact, he pitched for the Nordegg Athletics baseball club. His practice regimen included throwing briquettes from the one tipple (where briquettes were made from coal) through the windows of adjacent tipples at the mine. He became a pretty good semi-pro pitcher at one point, earning a spot on a fairly high profile team in Grande Coulee, Wash., in 1954. After his baseball career, he moved to Jasper Place, Alta., to live with an aunt and uncle. The mine closed in 1955 and all of the residents were forced to relocate.
Shaw became an entrepreneur at the tender age of 14. He formed Shaw Agencies and sold watches and jewelry, handled costume rentals, delivered fresh flowers for Mother’s Day and other special occasions, and bought and sold horses, among other things. Later, he worked for Ashdown’s Hardware selling paint (he didn’t paint), selling Black Cat cigarettes (he didn’t smoke), and working for Labatt’s Brewery (he didn’t drink). Eventually, he landed a job selling something he did use and thoroughly enjoyed – he sold televisions and other appliances for Philco. It was no accident that the first hockey team he coached was the Philco Predictas in Jasper Place, the precursor to the Mohawks. Shaw sold Philco a sponsorship for the team name. He was one of the first operators of a hockey team to create a program and sell advertising in it as a way to generate revenue.
Since the Predictas were not an Edmonton-based team, they were not allowed to play in the City of Edmonton’s elite league. So, since they couldn’t play in the city league and realizing he had a group of high-calibre hockey players, Shaw set up the Philcos in exhibition juvenile games wherever he could. They played in the Alberta communities of Stettler, Ponoka, Westlock, Hobbema and Lacombe and even ventured to Uranium City, Sask., in 1960. Those towns eventually made up a highly competitive league that gave the Philo Predicatas accreditation to compete in the provincial juvenile final.
Shaw created the Jasper Place Mohawks from the Predictas and won provincial juvenile A championships in 1962 and 1963. In those days, juvenile hockey was anything but juvenile – it was high level and Shaw used the team’s success and the high quality players that played for him to negotiate an affiliation with the Chicago Blackhawks, thus the name change. The Mohawks traveled to several cities in the United States, including Spokane, Portland, Stockton, Calif., and Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah, in 1963-64.
“To play against increasingly better competition, Brian took his teams to the outlying towns and cities and eventually to the United States,” said his cousin Fred Shaw, who played for Brian on the Mohawks. “We had a lot of the very best talent in the area. I remember the games in Uranium City were against teams with very good senior hockey players. The games were close and well attended.
“There is no doubt that during the trips to the U.S. with the Mohawks, Brian began to realize the potential for hockey in northwestern American cities. That was particularly true in Portland where I remember a very well attended game in 1964 when an-out-of shape coach Brian Shaw decided to put on the pads and play goal. One Portland defenceman had a big slap shot. Brian got very frustrated at his teammates because they weren’t checking, leaving him alone to face the terror. By the end of the first period, his shoulders and chest were badly bruised. Between periods, the goalie-turned-coach chewed us all out and in no uncertain terms ordered us to stand in front of, hook, trip, hold, and (use) any other measure to keep this gunman from firing the puck at him.”
Once he put the pads aside for good, Shaw definitely earned the reputation for letting nothing stand in the way of what he perceived to be a good trade. In fact, anyone who didn’t believe it would only have to be reminded that during his first season of running the Moose Jaw Canucks, Shaw traded his cousin Fred to the Flin Flon Bombers.
And, if it was right for the team, Shaw would reacquire the same player in a later trade. In fact, in his second season in Moose Jaw, he brought back cousin Fred.
One of Shaw’s favorite phrases was: “Never make a trade out of fear, but never fear to make a trade.” Cousin Fred’s hockey journey under Brian was a prime example.
After the Mohawks, Brian invested in a plumbing company in Castro Valley, Calif. Above all else, in hockey and out of hockey, Shaw was a salesman. Although he was anything but a handyman, Shaw successfully sold plumbing supplies and gadgets. He recruited his uncle, now a certified plumber, and his aunt, getting them to move from Jasper Place to Castro Valley to join the business.
But Shaw desperately missed hockey and soon found his way back to the game with the Moose Jaw Canucks, St. Catharine’s Blackhawks, the Oilers, the Oil Kings ... and eventually he wound up in Portland where the Winter Hawks lost their first seven games in 1976-77.
Shaw wheeled and dealed, and sold and sold, overcoming the 0-7 start on the way to seven straight winning seasons. But of all the coal, briquettes, paint, cigarettes, beer, hockey teams and hockey sponsorships he sold during his career, bringing the 1983 Memorial Cup to Portland’s Memorial Coliseum was, without question, his biggest sale ever.

(Part 4 of 7)

Portland and Brian Shaw . . . Part 3

The winds of change are blowing through the Portland Winter Hawks’ organization. . . . Dean (Scooter) Vrooman, who left the Winter Hawks more than a year ago after a lengthy stint as the team’s much-loved play-by-play voice, remembers the legendary Brian Shaw in a story that was prepared a couple of years ago as part of a book project that never got off the ground . . .

PART 3:
The WHL as a whole, and the Portland Winter Hawks in particular, were Brian Shaw’s family. He never married and, although he kept in touch with a sister, Sonia, and other members of his family, he still considered his co-workers and Winter Hawks’ players to be his extended family and Portland to be his home.
His nephew, Brian, nicknamed Bunny, had a terrific career with the Winter Hawks in the early 1980s before playing several years of minor pro hockey. When Bunny retired as a player, he became very involved in the Winter Hawks’ scouting staff and spent quite a bit of time with his uncle, thus, Brian Shaw’s famous nickname, Unkie.
Brian was very social and especially enjoyed being around hockey people. He loved all of the relationships he built through the league and other teams. Some of my favorite memories are the times in Brian’s office, and on the road, when he would have a large group of people around and start telling stories.
He told many stories about McLean, such as when he threw a garbage can onto the ice from the Bruins’ bench to protest a referee’s non-call in New Westminster’s legendary Queen’s Park Arena.
Shaw always laughed when he recalled Seattle governor/general manager Ephraim Steinke actually going on the ice during play to have a very public, extremely hazardous discussion with the referee.
But most of Shaw’s favourite stories were about Brian Shaw, and one of his most lovable characteristics was his ability to laugh at himself. He didn’t let everyone see that side of him, but it was probably my favourite side.
My personal favourite was the one about the cellphone. Brian was always fascinated with new gadgets and when cellphones hit the market, he was among the first to own one. He told the story of taking his new phone to a WHL league meeting to show it off. Brian was an important person in hockey, without question, but perhaps, at times, he wanted his peers to think he was a little more important than he actually was. So, he arranged, in advance, for long-time office manager Jann Boss to call him at just the right time so all the other GMs at the meeting would know that he was important enough to be called on his new phone.
Boss called and the phone rang ... and rang … and rang … and rang … because no one had shown Brian how to answer it!
When he told that story, he would laugh so hard he would cry.
“Another one he told a lot was his pep talk one day at a practice at the old Silver Skate ice arena in Portland,” remembers long-time trainer Innes Mackie. “Hodgie had asked Brian to have a word with the team about their recent poor play. He was into a pretty intense speech in front of the whole team when Wayne Babych started to laugh. That made Unkie even madder and so he wheeled around and asked him what was so funny. Babych told him he was wearing one green shoe and one blue shoe. They were patent leather shoes, too. One green, one blue.”
There was only one thing Brian Shaw enjoyed more than holding court in his office, an arena press room, or a hotel lobby. That was the game of hockey itself. He absolutely loved watching hockey games. He rarely missed a Winter Hawks’ game, but he also realized the importance of traveling to other league and NHL games. He hated days off. I can remember countless times he would pace around the Winter Hawks’ business office grumbling that there was no game that day.
Brian Shaw grew up in humble surroundings in the tiny mining community of Nordegg, Alta. His mother passed away when he was five years old and his father left the coal business to move back to England. As a child, Shaw lived with his grandmother and demonstrated early in his life that he could overcome obstacles. In spite of his mother’s death, he skipped two grades in school because he was very bright. His grandmother passed away when he was 15, so Brian moved in with an aunt and uncle. He was unable to continue school and had to support himself by working in the local coal mine at the Brazeau Collieries briquette plant.
“As a 16-year-old, Brian, who hated driving and was very nervous around firecrackers, was hired to haul dynamite from mine to mine on bumpy, gravel forestry roads,” Ken Hodge says with a laugh. “But he always said he absolutely loved it.”

(Part 3 of 7)

Portland and Brian Shaw . . . Part 2

The winds of change are blowing through the Portland Winter Hawks’ organization. . . . Dean (Scooter) Vrooman, who left the Winter Hawks more than a year ago after a lengthy stint as the team’s much-loved play-by-play voice, remembers the legendary Brian Shaw in a story that was prepared a couple of years ago as part of a book project that never got off the ground . . .

PART 2:
Besides starting a franchise in Portland, Brian Shaw had a lot to do behind the scenes when it came to garnering support for Ed Chynoweth as the league’s president in the mid-1970s. Shaw saw Chynoweth as a man who was strong enough to keep a volatile group of WHL owners in line, something that was necessary in order to solidify the financial stability of existing franchises while, at the same time, exploring expansion. The league had gone through some tough times under some ill-prepared owners in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, but, under Chynoweth, the WHL started to stabilize into a solid 12-team league.
Shaw’s move to Portland opened up Seattle the next year, but that franchise would go through rocky times for years, often kept in business, at least in part, by investments from Shaw and other league owners. There were unsuccessful ventures in other American markets, including Spokane in 1981-82, as well as the Montana cities of Billings and Great Falls in other seasons.
But the current successful legacy of the U.S. Division of the WHL, with five franchises, may never have happened if not for Shaw’s bold move to try it first in Portland. And, it was no accident that the Hawks started their history with seven straight winning seasons.
“Brian was a skilled negotiator and as part of the move to Portland, he was able to secure a territorial area around Edmonton where we had first shot at recruiting hockey players,” Ken Hodge says. “The Edmonton area was one of the best for producing quality hockey players in Western Canada. We also had the only full-time scout in the league and we did make some very significant trades as well. Bringing in players like Larry Playfair, Perry Turnbull, Jim Dobson, Florent Robidoux, Mike Toal and Alfie Turcotte made a big impact in Portland and helped establish junior hockey in a city where we had to compete with a professional franchise in the NBA Portland Trailblazers.”
Shaw was elected chairman of the WHL’s executive board in 1978 and served in that capacity until 1987. He was Chynoweth’s right-hand man during an era in which the WHL expanded and also worked hard at enhancing its reputation. The two worked together to develop the current WHL education plan and to force all teams to toe the line in providing secondary education assistance for all WHL players, should they choose not to sign professional contracts. They also spearheaded an effort to clean up the league’s reputation. Up to that point, the WHL was reputed to feature brawl-filled games -- it was seen as the wild west of hockey, if you will. Under Chynoweth and Shaw, the WHL worked hard at emphasizing speed, skill and scoring.
“With Ed as league president and Brian as chairman of the board, the league enjoyed its most pronounced growth period,” Hodge says. “Brian was asked to carry the mail on numerous occasions when there were new ideas to be brought up and sold to the board of governors as a whole, and to teams individually. He was a very skilled politician and he made sure he had the votes and the support for his position before the topic ever came to the table. They made some great changes in the league and built the foundation that is still in place today.”
Shaw became involved with and concerned about each and every franchise in the league. He knew their problem areas and made suggestions on what needed to be done to solve them. He regularly made recommendations on personnel on behalf of other teams. He spent a lot of his day in consultation with other franchises.
“He kept saying the better they are, the better we are,” Hodge says. “Sometimes I did not feel as comfortable about that as he did. When you are coaching, as I was, my only concern was winning the next hockey game for the Portland Winter Hawks. Brian was very generous with his time and his thoughts with our competition.”
“When Kamloops was in trouble, he got involved financially,” Hodge adds. “When Spokane was in trouble, he got involved financially. When Seattle was in trouble, he helped them financially. When we were in trouble in the early years, Ernie McLean (the controversial general manager/coach of a hated rival, the New Westminster Bruins) was very generous with the Portland Winter Hawks.
“It was a special time in our league back then. Many of these gestures were substantial financial commitments. They were often zero interest loans with no promise of return.”

(Part 2 of 7)

Portland and Brian Shaw . . . Part 1

The winds of change are blowing through the Portland Winter Hawks’ organization. . . . Dean (Scooter) Vrooman, who left the Winter Hawks more than a year ago after a lengthy stint as the team’s much-loved play-by-play voice, remembers the legendary Brian Shaw in a story that was prepared a couple of years ago as part of a book project that never got off the ground . . .

PART 1:
Brian Shaw ruled with an iron hand and a tender heart
For 10 years, I sat behind Portland Winter Hawks’ founder Brian Shaw on the team bus, until he became too ill to travel during his team’s run to the WHL championship series in 1992-93.
Shaw finally lost his long battle with lymphoma, a cancerous brain tumour, on July 27, 1993 at the age of 62. He left a mark on all levels of hockey, but perhaps his greatest legacy is being one of the people responsible for forming the WHL as we know it today.
I will never forget the day I met Brian Shaw. I was shaking, probably the same way many hockey players shook when they were called into his office.
It was September of 1982 and the Winter Hawks’ office was tucked into a small corner of Memorial Coliseum. Recently informed that I had passed my audition to be the next ‘Voice of the Winter Hawks‘, which turned out to be a radio broadcast of a baseball game, I went to the Hawks’ office to gather as much information about the team and the league as I could get my hands on. My predecessor, original Hawks’ broadcaster Cliff Zauner, at 6-foot-6, had decided extended travel on the team bus was just too much. At 5-foot-7, I did not have the courage to ask if my height was the main reason I was hired.
Shaw’s desk was elevated. It always was. He thought it gave him an edge in negotiations or, at the very least, an added element of intimidation, should he choose to use it. It certainly worked on me. I did not have to ask twice who ran the Winter Hawks. He immediately lit one of his patented cigars and started to grill me.
I don’t remember all of his questions or my answers. I only remember thinking by the end of my meeting that I liked the guy.
“Some of what Brian did was show,” says Ken Hodge, the long-time general manager and head coach. “Brian liked impressive cars, nice clothes, great food and enormous cigars, but he never smoked them. And, even though they were big, most of the time the cigars were cheap. Since he didn’t smoke them, he didn’t care how they tasted. He dressed for success and had a distinguished look about him. The cigars needed to be big to fit his image.”
Hodge should know. Their relationship went all the way back to Hodge’s childhood when he was a defenceman on Shaw’s famous Jasper Place Mohawks midget team. The Mohawks were a team like no other in the Edmonton area, or maybe anywhere else in Canada at the midget level. They dressed well off the ice and they looked very good on the ice. Shaw always was a showman and how his teams looked was important to him.
Shaw started to gain a reputation with the Mohawks and eventually was hired to coach the Moose Jaw Canucks in the WHL’s inaugural season, 1966-67. Hodge was the Canucks’ best defenceman. Moose Jaw surprised the powerful Edmonton Oil Kings in the playoffs and went on to win the league’s first championship in a five-game final over Regina.
Hodge’s playing days ended during that 1966-67 season in Moose Jaw when he took a high stick to an eye. He left to coach the major junior team in Sorel, Que., and then moved on and got a taste of coaching pro hockey in the International league in Flint, Mich. At the tender age of 23, Hodge was one of the youngest coaches ever in the IHL; sheesh, most of his players were older than he was.
Meanwhile, Shaw was hired to coach the OHL’s St. Catharine’s Blackhawks, where his best player was Marcel Dionne, who went on to have a legendary career with the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings.
But, through it all, Shaw always wanted to be involved in big-time hockey in the Edmonton area, where he had been raised. He eventually got his chance when was hired to coach the Edmonton Oilers of the World Hockey Association in 1973-74.
Bill Hunter, one of the WHL’s founding fathers, owned the Oilers and the Oil Kings. When asked by Hunter for his opinion, Shaw recommended Hodge to coach the Oil Kings. Hunter eventually fired both Shaw and Hodge, so they put together a group and bought the Oil Kings from Hunter in 1974-75. Shaw used his $50,000 buyout money from his Oilers’ contract when Hunter fired him to become the majority owner of the Oil Kings.
Edmonton was fascinated by the Oilers and the pro game, so it wasn’t long before Shaw and Hodge knew they had to take the Oil Kings elsewhere in order to survive financially.
Few people thought junior hockey could make it in the United States. Shaw, however, didn’t share that belief. After leaning towards moving the Oil Kings to Spokane, he decided instead that Portland would be their destination. And so it was that the Oil Kings moved to Portland over the summer of 1976.
On one of the flights between Portland and Edmonton, Shaw saw a little known movie title ‘Winter Hawk‘. It had a nice tie to Blackhawks. Shaw and Hodge were long-time friends with Tommy Ivan, who just happened to be the vice-president, assistant to the president, and the highest-ranking person without the last name of Wirtz in the entire Chicago Blackhawks organization.
For the first three Winter Hawks’ seasons, Shaw would cut his uniform costs by using recycled sweaters and pants from the Blackhawks. In fact, to keep things afloat, Shaw even flew in an aunt from California to mend the uniforms in order to help get the franchise through another season.
Yes, Shaw was very adept at making the right decisions to save money in order the keep the Winter Hawks afloat while also making good decisions to spend where necessary to market the team.
(Part 1 of 7)

Hall doors open for Ed Chynoweth

Ed Chynoweth, the long-time WHL president, will be inducted posthumously into the Hockey Hall of Fame on Nov. 10 in Toronto. He will be inducted along with former Edmonton Oilers star Glenn Anderson, Russian centre Igor Larionov and longtime NHL linesman Ray Scapinello.

A celebration of life

The hockey community took time out from its various playoffs to celebrate the life of Ed Chynoweth on Monday in Calgary.
And what a celebration it was.
There were tears and there was laughter, and somewhere the late Bill Hunter was looking at Chynoweth and asking why his family hadn’t sold tickets to the event.
Chynoweth, the long-time WHL president and owner of the Kootenay Ice, died April 22 following a 16-month battle with kidney cancer.
More than 2,000 people were in attendance at the First Alliance Church in the city’s south east quadrant and you can bet each one of them went home smiling, which is just the way Chynoweth would have wanted it.
Tribute was paid by WHL president Ron Robison, long-time friend Bill Hay, former Canadian Amateur Hockey Association president Murray Costello and nephews Dale and Don Chynoweth.
They all referenced Chynoweth’s love for family, hockey and life.
“He loved to laugh,” Costello said, “often, fully and loudly.”
The gathering drew a veritable who’s who of the hockey world.
David Branch, the president of the Canadian Hockey League and commissioner of the OHL, and Gilles Courteau, the commissioner of the QMJHL, were among the honourary pallbearers, was was Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson.
All 22 WHL teams were represented, most by far more than one person.
Among the other attendees were former WHL coaches Parry Shockey and John Chapman, along with Wayne Fleming, a veteran coach who spent this season working as a pro scout with the Calgary Flames.
Former Vancouver Canucks GM Dave Nonis was there, as was Canucks centre Trevor Linden, who played for the Medicine Hat Tigers alongside Chynoweth’s son, Dean, in the late 1980s.
John Davidson and Mike Vernon, both former goaltenders who played for Calgary’s WHL franchise, were there, as was veteran scout Frank Bonello and Don Murdoch, the WHL’s rookie of the year with the Tigers in 1974-75.
Doug Sauter, who played and coached in the WHL and now runs the Central league franchise in Oklahoma City, was there, as was former Brandon Wheat Kings owner Bob Cornell, who is up and around after suffering a heart attack last fall while leaving an NFL game in Green Bay. Also in attendance were Byron McCrimmon, who sent two sons into the WHL, and Nashville Predators assistant coach Brent Peterson, who played and coached the Portland Winter Hawks.
Jim Gregory, a long-time NHL team and league official, was there. He and Chynoweth were on the Hockey Hall of Fame selection committee, along with Hay, a Hockey Canada official and a former NHLer who was a great friend.

Brent Sutter, who owns the Red Deer Rebels and coaches the New Jersey Devils, was there, as was forward Jarrett Stoll of the Edmonton Oilers, who played for the Kootenay Ice. Former WHL coach Peter Anholt, who now manages a golf resort in Candle Lake, Sask., was on hand, saying he is getting back into the coaching racket – with his son’s bantam AA team in Prince Albert in the fall. Terry Simpson, one of the most-successful coaches in WHL history, was on hand, as was long-time U of Calgary sports information officer Jack Newman.
Former Calgary sportscaster Gary Arthur, who went on to a successful career as a baseball official and continues to consult, made it in from Sorrento, B.C. Dave (Tiger) Williams was there, as were player agents Dennis Polonich, himself a former WHL player, coach and manager, and Jason Taylor, who played in Brandon and whose father, Ted, once captained the Wheat Kings. Also there was former agent and former Phoenix Coyotes GM Michael Barnett and Stew MacDonald, who cut his teeth in the Regina Pats' office and now is with the Edmonton Oilers.
Les Jackson, the co-general manager of the Dallas Stars, was there, his club having finished off the San Jose Sharks in quadruple overtime the previous night. Jackson was once an assistant coach under the late Dunc McCallum with the Brandon Wheat Kings.
“I have a feeling,” Jackson said, “that Dunc has already been suspended by Eddie.”
Robison, in his tribute, referred to the time when Richard Doerksen, now in his 30^th season with the WHL, had to suspend Dean Chynoweth, then a defenceman with Medicine Hat. Chynoweth, it seems, had bitten an opposing player during an altercation. Robison painted a picture of Ed Chynoweth wanting to fire the referee in question. The laughter told you that everyone could see that picture.
And then there was Hay, who begain his tribute by looking over the crowd and saying: Eddie . . . it’s not quite a sellout. . . . but it’s a big house.”
It was a big house for a big guy, which is just the way it should have been in what really was a celebration of a hockey life.

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 . . .
———
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.”
————
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.”
———
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. . . .”
———
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.”
———
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.”
———
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.”
———
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.

Ed Chynoweth, 1941-2008

From The Daily News of Wednesday, April 23, 2008 . . .

Like a son weeping for his father who has just died, the Western Hockey
League has tears rolling down its cheeks today.
Ed Chynoweth, the WHL’s father, died quietly in his sleep Tuesday morning in
Okotoks, Alta. He had been fighting cancer since it was first diagnosed in a
kidney in 2006. He was 66.
It is true that life goes on, that time waits for no one. But it also is
true that some days are emptier than others. And because Chynoweth is gone,
today is as empty as big oil’s heart.
lll
When the history of the WHL is discussed, Bill Hunter, Scott Munro and Ben
Hatskin are the Big Three. But there was only one Big Ed.
Back in the day, Hunter ran the Edmonton Oil Kings, Munro the Calgary
Centennials and Hatskin the Winnipeg Jr. Jets. They also ran the league.
But in the early 1970s, recognizing that this thing had a chance to be big,
they reached into Saskatchewan and hired a young man away from the Saskatoon
Blades. Chynoweth had spent a year working at the Sheraton Cavalier, a
Saskatoon hotel, before joining the Blades as assistant general manager
under Jack McLeod.
The day Ed Chynoweth was hired as president was the day the WHL wrote its
ticket.
I last spoke with Chynoweth one evening in early February. He tired easily
but that didn’t stop him from reminiscing about his favourite subject — the
WHL — for 45 minutes.
He had begun with the WHL in 1972 as the assistant to Thomas K. Fisher, who
carried the title of executive secretary. Chynoweth was named president at
the league's annual meeting in Saskatoon in June 1973.
“In ’72, when I started, Hunter and Munro were definitely the kingpins,”
Chynoweth said. “They were the full-time guys. Then they finally brought
Benny Hatskin onside. Munro would manufacture the bullets . . . Hunter would
fire them . . . and, when they needed money, they’d go to Benny.
“I think I resigned three times in the first two years and it was because of
the way they tested you. And yet, at the end of it, it was the greatest
training I’ve ever had. . . .
“Scotty used to tell me: Ed, the best government is a dictatorship . . . if
you can find a fair dictator. He believed that. I inherited that. Whether I
deserved it or whether I earned it or what. . . .”
The one thing Chynoweth brought to the WHL was vision. That was his strength
as a leader. He spent his final season as the chairman of the WHL’s board of
governors and he admitted to having concerns about the future.
“The founding fathers, the Hunters and Munros,” he said, “had a vision and
as much as they tested you at the end of the day they would come clean and
it was what was best for the league. I don’t think we have that now.
“We need to sit down and say, ‘Hey, where are we going with this?’ ”
The WHL’s small-market teams never had a better friend than Chynoweth.
Better than anyone, he understood that the WHL wouldn’t be the WHL without
Moose Jaw and Prince Albert and Swift Current and Medicine Hat and
Lethbridge . . .
In that February conversation, Chynoweth said his vision included some form
of revenue sharing and that he felt it was vitally important that the board
of governors hold serious and open discussions on the subject.
Chynoweth went so far as to compare the WHL to the NHL in terms of large and
small markets.
“They expanded and blew the money,” he said. “We expanded and blew the
money. They have revenue sharing with the players; we need revenue sharing
with small markets.
“And now costs continue to go up but we don’t have any added revenue.”
When the Medicine Hat Tigers joined the WHL in 1970, the entry fee was
$2,000. An expansion franchise prior to this season cost the Edmonton Oil
Kings a nifty $4 million.
Aware that major junior hockey will never fall into big TV money and knowing
that the WHL has expanded beyond its available player pool, Chynoweth
expressed concern that revenues are as large as they are going to get. It is
time, he said, for teams to get their expenses under control.
Hearing Chynoweth talk like that should make the board of governors pay
attention. Because Chynoweth is the same guy who first spoke of the need for
teams to market their product, that as consumers were faced with more and
more entertainment options, WHL teams couldn’t simply open their doors and
expect fans to fill their arenas.
History will show, however, that Chynoweth’s greatest legacy was the WHL’s
education policy. In the early years, Chynoweth spent a lot of time talking
to owners about two things: 1. Education; and, 2. Treating people properly.
He understood that the WHL's greatest resource was its players; he also
understood that a very small percentage of them would reach the NHL.
Right now, the education policy is the WHL’s best recruiting tool as it
competes for players with junior A leagues and U.S. college teams.
And make no mistake about it — the WHL’s scholarship plan was Chynoweth’s
baby.
lll
Chynoweth also was honest. Ask a question. Get an answer.
Early in 1976, he was asked why the WHL had increased the number of teams
qualifying for playoffs from eight to10.
"We added the two teams simply for financial reasons," Chynoweth said.
He always was great with the media, too, primarily because he, more than any
WHL league or team executive, understood the role of the press. He never
treated the media with anything less than respect. He always returned phone
calls. If he disagreed with something you had written, you could count on
hearing from him.
He long hoped to land a job as an NHL general manager and came close at
least once, that in the early 1980s with the Philadelphia Flyers. He also is
believed to have been shortlisted by the Quebec Nordiques.
But as he once put it: "My friends in the press don't own any NHL franchises
to do the hiring. Consequently, there haven't been a lot of NHL job offers."
It was that kind of understanding of the press that helped Chynoweth and the
WHL survive the bloody seasons of the mid-1970s, like when, following a
particularly ugly game, Saskatoon City Council voted to padlock the arena
rather than allow the Victoria Cougars and Blades to play.
Still, in March of 1976, Chynoweth decided enough was enough and he offered
to resign.
"It isn't a play for money," he said. "It is simply that there is too much
hassle. It is starting to bother me that all my friends in Saskatoon are
going to the airport to take flights out for winter holidays. I got to the
airport and fly to Flin Flon."
The resignation wasn't accepted.
A year or two before that, World Hockey Association organizers had
approached him about the upstart league's presidency.
"I always say talk is cheap," Chynoweth said, "but until people start laying
money on the table that's all it is."
The WHA people never did show him the colour of their money. They should
have.
lll
The WHL has never been able to replace Chynoweth, who left office in 1996 to
operate the Edmonton/Kootenay Ice. And, to be fair, the WHL, recognizing the
task as being impossible, never really tried to replace him.
"I don't believe anyone is irreplaceable," the late Brian Shaw, who operated
the Portland Winter Hawks, once said, "but, in my opinion, we'll never get
another Ed Chynoweth. We might get an adequate replacement, but never
another Ed Chynoweth."
As it entered into a period when it was dealing a lot with marketing and
broadcasting opportunities, the board of governors felt the WHL needed a
lawyer in charge and Dev Dley, a Kamloops lawyer, was hired to succeed
Chynoweth.
Later, the men who own the franchises changed their tune and decided they
needed someone in office who would help sell their league. Which is when Ron
Robison, the WHL’s present-day commissioner, left Hockey Canada where his
primary responsibilities had been in marketing.
lll
A native of Dodsland, Sask., Chynoweth ruled the WHL, with the exception of
one season, from 1973 through 1995; he spent 1979-80 as general manager of
the Calgary Wranglers.
At that time, the WHL decided it would be best served with an administrator
in the president’s office so hired a gentleman named David Descent, who had
been running the Canadian Amateur Wrestling Association.
Descent didn't finish the season. He lasted until one night in February when
Ernie McLean tossed a garbage can from the New Westminster Bruins’ bench
onto the ice. Chynoweth was back in office before another season arrived.
Under Chynoweth, the WHL grew from a league seen to have a lust for blood to
what it is today. In the early- and mid-1970s, Chynoweth issued a weekly
press release — it came out every Monday — containing nothing more than
fines and suspensions.
Back then, there were people running teams who felt it was the fighting that
sold their game. Chynoweth thought otherwise and was determined to steer a
new course.
At one time in January 1975, Chynoweth suspended Pat Ginnell, then the owner
and head coach of the Victoria Cougars, for three games and fined him $1,000
after his team was involved in bench-clearing brawls in two straight games.
Chynoweth also set a deadline by which time the fine had to be paid or
Victoria would have to forfeit its next game, which just happened to be a
home game.
"Chynoweth has no business threatening me that way," Ginnell said. "Nobody
closes down a business because one employee has done something wrong. That,
in effect, is what Chynoweth wants to do. It becomes a matter of principle.
I'm not going to pay the fine until I can appeal to the board of governors."
Ginnell even threatened to slap Chynoweth with "the quickest injunction in
legal history if he tries to cancel the game."
The league, of course, supported Chynoweth. Ginnell paid the fine. The game
went on. And in a few years the donnybrooks that had occurred so often were
a thing of the past.
“He (had) so much to do with the story of the Western Hockey League becoming
modern,” Moose Jaw Warriors governor Darin Chow told the Regina
Leader-Post’s Rob Vanstone. “With Moose Jaw, for instance, it has gone from
a purchase (price) of $250,000 to a team that’s probably worth $10 million
now.”
Chynoweth said that when he first was president, Edmonton and Calgary may
have had budgets in the area of $150,000. He said Kootenay’s budget this
season approached $1.6 million.
lll
And just because he was no longer president didn’t mean Chynoweth had little
influence in the WHL. He served as chairman of the board from 1996-98 and
began another stint in 2004. When I researched a story that we headlined WHL
Power Poll in our paper of Feb. 15, there never was any question as to who
was the most powerful individual around the WHL.
It was Ed Chynoweth, even in failing health.
It was only fitting, then, that he was the chairman of the board at the time
of his death.
In fact, despite being gravely ill, Chynoweth not only attended a board of
governors’ meeting in February, but he ran the meeting.
It was a special meeting, called to discuss the economics of the WHL. With
his strong views on the subject, there was no way Big Ed was going to miss
that meeting. And if he was at the meeting, you knew he was going to run it.
That was his way.
lll
Ed Chynoweth is survived by Linda, his wife of 45 years, sons Jeff, the
Ice’s vice-president and general manager, and Dean, the Swift Current
Broncos’ general manager and head coach, and their families.
Ed Chynoweth also is survived by a hockey league.

Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is at
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca