1985-86 Whalers have lasting impact in NHL coaching, management ranks

And though the legacy of the Whalers these days is a campy goal song called "Brass Bonanza" and a whale-tail logo that appears to be more popular now than when they played, the members of the mid-1980s Whalers, specifically the 1985-86 team, have made a huge impact on the NHL that is still felt today.That Whalers team included six future NHL coaches, two future NHL general managers, several players who went on to be assistants in the League, and another who became a prominent player agent.Consider that one of their defensemen was Joel Quenneville, who went on to coach the Chicago Blackhawks to three Stanley Cup championships and is the second-winningest coach in NHL history.Their top center was Ron Francis, a Hockey Hall of Famer who would become the Hurricanes general manager and is the first GM of the NHL Seattle expansion team, which will begin play in 2021-22.Another Whalers forward at the time was current Edmonton Oilers coach Dave Tippett, who coached the Dallas Stars and Arizona Coyotes and was a senior adviser for Seattle for about a year before being hired by Edmonton last May.Forward Kevin Dineen coached the Florida Panthers from 2011-13, coached Canada to a gold medal in women's hockey at the 2014 Sochi Olympics and is coach of San Diego of the American Hockey League. He coached the Islanders for the last 40 games in 2005-06.Defenseman Ulf Samuelsson, a former assistant with the New York Rangers, Coyotes and Blackhawks, was coaching Leksands prior to the Swedish Hockey League canceling its season in March due to the coronavirus.Goalie Steve Weeks was an assistant with the Whalers and Thrashers, and a goaltending coach with the Blackhawks.Then there is goalie Mike Liut, who is neither a coach nor team executive but, like several of his former teammates, works with NHL players: He is managing director of Octagon Hockey agency, with clients that include forwards Mikko Rantanen of the Avalanche, Leon Draisaitl of the Oilers and Patrik Laine of the Winnipeg Jets."For me, as a guy who covered them back then, I saw they had a lot of cerebral players," said Chuck Kaiton, the Whalers/Hurricanes radio play-by-play voice from 1979-2018. All these guys had that little something that made you know that, if they wanted to stay in the game, that it would be in a coaching capacity or even in a management capacity."For some of the former Whalers who would carve out such careers after their playing days, it all started with old-school chalkboard sessions with Hartford.Tippett said those discussions usually involved Quenneville, Jarvis, Evason and Liut trying to figure out how to defend Quebec Nordiques forwards Marian, Peter and Anton Stastny or take away Montreal Canadiens forward Guy LaFleur's one-timer."We looked at that and did things, tried to figure out the game, how we were going to win," Tippett said last month on a conference call arranged by the NHL that included Quenneville. He was a kind guy and a coach who all the players respected, and I think he was probably a role model for a lot of those guys."Dineen said he wasn't part of the chalkboard sessions -- "They basically told me, 'Go in front of the net, stay there, take your beating and let everyone else do everything around the outside'" -- but said players appreciated Evans giving them the chance to bring ideas to the table."With Jack it was very simple," Dineen said. We had a good idea what practice would look like and there were some different areas in the game that you'd get a group of guys who think the game and say, 'Hey, let's try different things.' John Anderson, who coached the [Chicago] Wolves for a good 10 years at least, would've been on the power-play side of things. "He may have played that role that he wasn't going to stay in hockey, but there was this natural feel for how the game should be played and playing the right way, and you can see kind of the background that they (Quenneville and Tippett) came from, that they both survived as players and thrived as players by being quality on the defensive side of things. And I think their teams reflect that now, and always have, wherever they coached."Quenneville wasn't known for being fast in his playing days -- during the video call, he joked about how slow he was -- but he defended well."He wasn't a very good pivoter, a very good backward-to-forward skater," Shaw said of Quenneville. That's what a lot of these guys had figured out."Quenneville, Tippett and Shaw each transitioned to coaching as a player/assistant. For me, playing as long as I did (19 NHL seasons), I think there was a natural feel to try to find what you could do to stay in the game."Jarvis said he always wanted to stay in hockey too."I really enjoyed watching the game," said Jarvis, who, upon retiring as a player, became an assistant with the Minnesota North Stars/Dallas Stars from 1989-2003.