(June 16, 1934-June 21, 2003)
Roger Neilson was a Canadian professional ice hockey coach; he coached in the NHL for eight different teams from 1977-2003. He coached the Toronto Maple Leafs, Buffalo Sabres, Vancouver Canucks, Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers, Florida Panthers, Philadelphia Flyers, and the Ottawa Senators. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame under the Builders category on November 4, 2002, along with former NHL players Bernie Federko, Clark Gillies, and Rod Langway. “He was very good at being fired,” wrote the New York Times. “By that, I mean he always took it with grace. He didn’t get mad at anybody or burn any bridges.”
Coaching Career
Nielson earned his coaching stripes as a McMaster University student in Hamilton, Ontario, where he attained a degree in Physical Education in hockey and baseball.
He began his coaching career in 1966 with the Peterborough Petes of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL). He held this position for ten years. During this time, he took on a position at the University of Windsor with a summer hockey camp, which grew to encompass camps from Ontario to as far away as Israel. He would comment years later, seven months before his death at a Hockey Hall of Fame Induction Gala, “When I consider what is happening this evening, I gotta be the luckiest guy in the whole world,” he began in earnest. “I was just a Junior ‘B’ goalie with limited skills. Then I got the chance to coach Peterborough Petes, one of the top junior franchises in the whole country.
Neilson first entered professional coaching in 1976-77 when he accepted a position with the Dallas Black Hawks of the Central Hockey League (CHL).
In 1977 Neilson got his first head coaching job in the NHL, replacing former Leaf’s bench boss Red Kelly. He held his head coaching position with Toronto until being fired on March 1, 1979, by team owner Harold Ballard. The firing came after a loss in Montreal and was particularly embarrassing as Harold Ballard fired Neilson on live T.V. This outraged both fans and players. With Ballard unable to replace Roger Neilson, Ballard was forced to hire Neilson back two days later. Under the condition, Neilson wears a bag over his head before a home game against the Flyers to surprise the fans about who “the mystery coach” would be. Roger refused and coached the next game, business as usual.
After three years in Toronto under the Harold Ballard tyranny, Roger Neilson became the Buffalo Sabre’s head coach. He coached one season in Buffalo before joining the Vancouver Canucks. In Vancouver, Neilson enjoyed his most successful season as head coach when he took over the head coaching reins from Harry Neale, who was suspended after taking part in an altercation with fans in Quebec City in a game against the Quebec Nordiques. After the team went on a seven-game unbeaten streak, Neilson was given the head coaching job permanently. In the 1982 playoffs that year, Neilson led his Canucks all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals, defeating the Calgary Flames 3-0. Los Angeles Kings 4-1 and the Chicago Black Hawks 4-1 before being swept by the New York Islanders in four games.
In Game 2 of the Conference Final against the Black Hawks, Neilson became increasingly frustrated by the officiating. After having a goal disallowed and a perceived non-call, and four consecutive penalties, which led to Denis Savard scoring a goal to make it 4-1 and putting the game out of reach, Neilson took matters into his own hands instead of listening to Tiger Williams and throwing sticks onto the ice, Roger took a white towel and put it on the butt end of a stick which he raised in surrender.
Stan Smyl, Gerry Minor, Williams, and others joined in doing the same, and Nielson was escorted off the ice and kicked out of the game, and given a large fine.
When game three kicked off in Vancouver, fans waved a blizzard of white towels in support of their Canucks.
“When that went down, Myers was calling tons of penalties, and they were suspect calls,” recalled Canucks goaltender Richard Brodeur. “It got really bad in the third, and Roger was pissed off. Then I looked over, and I saw the towel come up, and I thought, ‘what the hell is he doing there?’ Then I thought, ‘oh yeah, that’s cool, I like that.’ Then the other guys put the towels up, and everyone was doing it.
“We lost that game, but in the room afterward, it was like we won the game. The atmosphere was so positive; we were laughing about it a lot. We knew what Roger did there, there was a message to send, and he did.”
Neilson enjoyed successful campaigns in his NHL coaching career; he led the Rangers to the President’s Trophy as the league’s top regular-season team in 1992, and he led the Philadelphia Flyers to the top of the Eastern Conference standings in 2000.
Neilson also had a stint with the Edmonton Oilers as a video analyst during the 1984 Stanley Cup Playoffs, in which the Oilers won their first Stanley Cup championship defeating the New York Islanders 4-1, ending their “Drive for Five” bid to equal the Montreal Canadians five consecutive cup wins of the 1950s. He would later attain employment with the Chicago Blackhawks as an assistant coach under Bob Pulford from 1984-1987, and from 1995-1997 he was an assistant coach for the St. Louis Blues.
Roger Neilson worked briefly from 1987-1989 as a color commentator for hockey coverage on TSN alongside former Washington Capitals head coach Gary Green and play-by-play man Jim Hughson.
Health Issues
In 1999, at the age of 69, Neilson was told he had multiple myeloma, cancer of the bone marrow, and in 2001 he learned he also had malignant melanoma, a skin cancer.
“Doctors told me I should avoid excitement,” he quipped. “So I watch Leaf games.” The crowd roared, including Toronto coach Pat Quinn, sitting in Roger’s sightlines.
Neilson went on medical just before the start of the 2000 playoffs for cancer treatment. When Neilson made it known that he wanted to return to the team, he was informed that Craig Ramsay had permanently replaced him. This was seen by the fans and media as extremely insensitive and lacking class. Flyers GM Bobby Clarke was later quoted as saying, “The Neilson situation – Roger got cancer – that wasn’t our fault,” Clarke said. “We didn’t tell him to go get cancer. It’s too bad that he did. We feel sorry for him, but then he went goofy on us.” Clarke, when asked about Neilson, labeled him “A different Duck .” Over the course of his NHL career, Roger Neilson suffered many indignities, but he never lamented about any of it for very long; he handled it with grace and class. He had a falling out with Scotty Bowman in Buffalo, which resulted in him leaving the team after only one season, and in New York, Mark Messier went over his head to get him fired. The sad part of it all is that he made every team he coached better, but he could never share in the success he left behind. Roger was a player’s coach, and he had no qualms about doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons, and for that, he paid the price.
Legacy
There will never be another Roger Neilson, he was a peculiar individual who had many quirks, but he was one of the most popular and charismatic individuals in the history of the NHL.
Known as “Captain Video,” he had no family and would spend countless late-night hours analyzing opposing teams’ videos in preparation for upcoming games. He was an innovator, always studying the NHL rule book and looking for loopholes in the rules that he could exploit in games.
He was the first to use microphone headsets to communicate with assistant coaches on the bench.
He used every advantage he could think of to win, to the point that the NHL had to revise the rule book to close loopholes that Roger would take advantage of.
He would pull his goaltender if there were three seconds or less in the period and the faceoff was at the end of the opposition. He reasoned that three seconds was not enough time for the opposing team to score but enough time for his team to score.
In 1968 in an OHL game with his Peterborough Petes playing against the Toronto Marlboros, Neilson took advantage of the rules by pulling his goaltender and replacing him with defenseman Ron Stackhouse to face a penalty shot. Neilson knew that this was legal and that the defenseman could skate out to check the puck away from the shooter before he could get the shot off; it worked, LOL. Another time Neilson told his netminder to leave his stick lying in the crease so that when he pulled the goalie for an extra attacker, in the hopes that if the opposing team took a shot on the empty net that it would be deflected away by the abandoned stick. The league changed the rules the following season making this maneuver illegal.
On April 7, 2011, Rogers Arena honored Roger Neilson’s memory and contribution to the Vancouver Canucks and the NHL by erecting a large statue of him in the Rogers Arena courtyard, depicting him holding up the white “Towel Power” that he made famous in the 1982 playoff series against the Chicago Blackhawks.
Keep Your Stick on the Ice.
