PHOTO: Pat Quinn Way is officially a street in Vancouver
9 years ago
In a pregame ceremony outside Rogers Arena on Tuesday night a part of Abbot Street – the part between Expo and Pacific – was officially unveiled as Pat Quinn way.
“Pat Quinn cared about people and cared about his players,” said Canucks president Trevor Linden at an unveiling ceremony.
“The real reason we’re here today is because Pat Quinn cared about people,” Linden continued.
Quinn was a lion of the Vancouver hockey scene. A former Vancouver Canucks player, Quinn was the general manager and coach of the Vancouver Canucks during a time when the franchise shifted, from a perpetual doormat to something more exciting and respectable.
His shenanigans that resulted in the Canucks landing Pavel Bure with the 113th overall pick at the 1989 NHL entry draft, for example, will go down in history.
Later in life Quinn was an owner and advisor with the Vancouver Giants, and even spoke to this humble hockey blog one time. Here’s the essence of a man, a good man, and a hockey legend:
For me, my motivation, personally, the drive – aside from wanting to win – was to make sure I was someone who could help players be better. I always saw that as my duty to them and I approached it that way. I thought that if I paid attention to that then good things happen from there – that we’ll have a good team, we’ll attract fans to this game, and they’ll fall in love with the franchise.When I came here, there were 7,000 people in the building and we were going out of business. We weren’t out in the community. None of that was happening. We took it upon ourselves, one: to build our hockey team, to make it better and we achieved that. Along with that, we started to get out into the community: we became more involved, started Canuck Place, also educational programs – Read to Succeed – all of those things got started under our regime. But we felt that it was our responsibility, if we were going to ask these people to support our team, we wanted to give back. I think that’s important for teams to always keep in mind. – Pat Quinn, 2012
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