Tributes are pouring in for a towering figure in British Columbia’s hockey community.
Ernie “Punch” McLean, 93, died in a single-vehicle crash near Dease Lake — about 230 kilometres south of the Yukon border — on Friday, CBC News has confirmed.
McLean led the Western Hockey League (WHL) New Westminster Bruins to four consecutive Memorial Cup finals and two championships between 1975-1978.
Patrick Singh, who founded the Ernie Punch McLean Legacy Foundation, met McLean several years when he was writing a song about the coach, and the pair quickly became friends.
He told CBC News that McLean’s record-setting run with the Bruins will always be remembered, it was his “small-town boy” human side that stood out.
“He was able to communicate on a one-to-one level. If you talked to Ernie, you felt like he was talking to you personally,” he said.
“Anyone who walked up and asked questions or asked to get their picture taken with Ernie, Ernie would always make time for them.”
McLean was born in Estevan, Sask., where he served as head coach and co-owner of the Estevan Bruins in the Western Canada Junior Hockey League, which later became the WHL.
In 1971 he moved the club to New Westminster where the team captured the national junior hockey championship Memorial Cup in 1977 and 1978 — and earned a reputation for their rough style of play.
Singh said while McLean faced criticism for that tough style, the coach was actually preparing his squad for the type of hockey played in the NHL of the era.
More than 100 of his players would go on to skate in the NHL.
He holds the record for second-most WHL games coached with 1,067 and was Coach of the Year in 1975 and recipient of the WHL Governor’s Award in 2004, according to the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame.
He also coached the 1978 Canadian World Junior team, which included a young Wayne Gretzky.
McLean’s sudden death comes just days after he was fêted at New Westminster’s Queen’s Park Arena, where the Singh’s foundation kicked off a a campaign to have a statue of the coaching icon erected.
New Westminster Coun. Daniel Fontaine has put a motion to council seeking city support for the initiative, which is slated to be debated in June.
“Punch McLean put New Westminster on the map when it comes to hockey,” Fontaine told CBC News.
“He helped coach so many incredible hockey players over the years, he made Queen’s Park Arena the be the place to be when it came to hockey and winning memorial cups, and he will forever be linked to the city.”
Tributes to McLean have been pouring in from across the hockey world.
TSN broadcaster Farhan Lalji, who was first to report the death, said he was “stunned by the news,” but that he was “happy that he got to hear how people felt about him” at Wednesday’s event.
The Vancouver Canucks called him a “presence in B.C. hockey that can never be replaced, while Al Murdoch, the familiar voice of Rogers Arena, called him a “coaching legend.”
Hockey Canada, the WHL Vancouver Giants and BCHL Coquitlam Express also shared tributes to the former coach.
Hockey wasn’t the only place McLean made headlines.
In 2009 he spent five nights lost in the mountains of northern B.C. without food or supplies after falling in a crevice and getting lost while prospecting for gold.
Punch McLean’s rescue
Incredibly, the then-77-year-old managed to walk about five kilometres out of the bush before being spotted by a helicopter with a search and rescue team.
The cause of the crash that killed McLean remains under investigation, but RCMP say no one else was hurt and no criminality is suspected.
Police say they were called about the crash around noon on Friday, and early information suggests he was alone in his car when it went off the road in and down an embankment in Upper Gnat Pass about 30 kilometres south of Dease Lake.
