Brian Kilrea - They Call Me Killer: Tales from Junior Hockeys Legendary Hall-Of-Fame Coach

TALES FROM

JUNIOR HOCKEYS

LEGENDARY

HALL-OF-FAME

COACH

BRIAN KILREA AND JAMES DUTHIE

To all of the players I have coached, my assistant coaches and trainers who were always in the background, but there for me, and the scouts, who continually supplied the Ottawa 67s with great talent and great kids.

Brian Kilrea

To Mom and Dad for everything. And to Bill Patterson and Brian Smith, who introduced me to Killer and his great stories.

James Duthie

I was sitting in this bar, at the Empire Hotel, in Springfield, Mass. It was 1959. I was two years into my time with Eddie Shore in Springfield, the Siberia of hockey. I was miserable. Shore hated me. I was one of the guys who wouldnt argue with him, or suck up to him. I would just stare at him in my demented way. And he hated that.

So theres this new rookie on the team, and he looks about 13 years old. And he was sitting there in the Empire, saying how great he thought Shore was; how he thought he seemed like a wonderful coach. And I said, If you say Shore is wonderful one more time, your head is going through that wall!

That was the first time I met Brian Kilrea.

Outside of my family, I have had three great friends for my life: Whitey Smith, a paratrooper named Mel Price and Brian Kilrea.

I dont know why we hit it off back in Springfield. I guess we were the same. We were Irish; we liked having the odd drink, and a good time. And we were both rebels, I guess.

We didnt agree on Eddie Shore, thats for sure. Brian will tell you all the stories about that lunatic in this book, but no matter what he says, he loved Shore. I mean, Brian knew he was crazy, but he also thought he was a genius. Brian loved Shore, and Shore loved Brian. He skated and held his stick exactly the way Shore wanted his players to skateknees bent, back straight. It was uncanny. And everything I did was the exact opposite of what Shore wanted!

Brian is the sharpest guy I ever met. Thats why I always knew he was going to make a great coach.

One time, back in the Shore days, we were playing Euchre on the bus. I was always Brians partner, and he carried me. He was the best Euchre player of all time. We were playing against Red Armstrong and Tom McCarthy. We played all the way from Rochester to Hershey, seven hours. We werent foolin around. This was serious stuff, dog eat dog. So we get there, and were not done playin. We say, Well meet you in Vinces Bar for the big showdown for $10.

Now, we got $4 a day in meal money. So think about it, a $10 card game was big money!

When I get there, Brians already been there a while, and hes had two beers. I got really mad at him. I needed him to be sharp with $10 on the line! So were playing for a while, and then Brian says to Red Armstrong, You reneged. You had a heart. Red says, No, I didnt! Brian says, Yes, you did. Third hand back. Count them. And, of course, he was right. He had caught Armstrong, and he wasnt going to say anything about it if we won, but we were losing, so he got him. So much for him not being sharp after the two beers. I yelled, Another beer for Brian!

It was the same with pool. He was so good at pool, when he was 15 (and he looked about 11), this guy would pick him up Saturday mornings and take him to the pool halls to hustle. Hed never lose.

Gerry Cheevers, the Boston Bruins and Rochester goalie, was really good at pool, too. He used to beat everybody. Gerry was a show-off. Hed put cigarettes between his teeth and stuff like that. When he beat you, hed really rub it in. One time, when we were with Rochester, we were just sitting around watching Cheevers show off. I wanted Brian to play him, teach him a lesson. Finally, Cheevers asks him. Brian says, I dont really play too much. Hustlin him. So they play, and he lets Gerry beat him by one shot. Then they put up five bucks, and Brian runs the table! Never missed a shot!

Cheevers was steamin mad. He looked at me, You dirty Because I had set it up, and I was laughing. Brian wouldnt have done that himself, but I wanted him to, just to get Gerry.

Brian was so good at pool that when he was playing junior in Hamilton, he was taking all the other guys money. So Jimmy Skinner, the coach, calls him in and says, What do you wanna be? You wanna be a pool player or a hockey player?

Well, Brian wanted to be a hockey player. And you know what? I never saw him play pool again. And Im telling you, he could have been a professional, he was so good.

He was a good hockey player, too. Never lost a face-off. Never. And he was a magician with the puck. He could dish it. Anyone who played on his line always ended up with 30 or 40 goals.

But he was a better coach. I knew that from the first time I brought him into my hockey schools. He put his heart and soul into it. And he was really tough. He could really give it to guys. People think hes all lovey-dovey because of the way he talks in interviews. Not true. He had no mercy.

One time we were doing the Prospects Game together, and as the guys were ready to come back on the ice, one guy, my first-round pick in Mississauga, went to take a piss, instead of doing it during the intermission like everybody else. Well, Brian just gave it to him! This was a Prospects Game! But he treated it just like any other game. Theres no foolin around.

If you did what you were told with Brian, you were fine. But if you were a wise guy, look out. He had this one guy in Ottawa who came in to see him, and he said, I want to move. I dont like the lady Im living with. So Brian said, Okay, come back this afternoon.

So the kid comes back, and Brian says, Well, I moved you. The kid says, Where?

To Owen Sound.

He traded him!

Brian Kilrea is the best junior hockey coach of all time. And he would have been coach of the year in the NHL, if he had the chance. Just like me.

The other thing hes great at is tellin stories. Brian is a storyteller deluxe. This books a beauty, and I know you are gonna love it.

I met Brian Kilrea on my very first day in this business. He was screaming. More like bellowing, actually.

It was winter, 1989. I was in my final year of journalism at Carleton University, and was starting a one-week work placement at CJOH, the local CTV station in Ottawa. We were supposed to be learning how to do television news that week, but all I really wanted to cover was sports. (I would end up getting hired by the station, and spending the first five years of my career as a news reporter there.) These were the days before TSN and the other sports networks were a big deal, so I had grown up getting my sports fix from Brian Smith and Bill Patterson, the two long-time CJOH sportscasters.

On that first day, which most interns spend fetching coffee for the staff, I begged Bill to let me tag along with him as he went to shoot a story on the Ottawa 67s, Killers team.

I had followed the 67s since I was a kid. Every few Fridays, my Dad would take me down to the Ottawa Civic Centre to watch them. And come playoff time, Id curl up in my captains bed (dont giggle, captains beds were very big when I was nine), listening to their games on the radio. I worshipped a defenceman named Steve Marengere. The team used to sell buttons with the players faces on them. Marengeres mug lived on the collar of my ski jacket for three full winters.