Al MacNeil, who coached the Canadiens to the 1971 Stanley Cup championship, died Sunday in Calgary. The native of Sydney, N.S., was 89.
MacNeil’s stint as head coach of the Canadiens was a short one.
The Canadiens fired head coach Claude Ruel in December of 1970 when the team had an 11-8-4 record and replaced him with MacNeil, who had been a player/coach with the Montreal Voyageurs, the Canadiens’ AHL farm club.
“It was a surprise in a way, but not that much,” MacNeil told the late Ian MacDonald of The Gazette about the coaching promotion in a Where Are They Now? article published in 2004. “I felt I was prepared. I’d played in the NHL for seven years (as a defenceman with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Canadiens, Chicago Blackhawks, New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins) and after being player/coach for two years and a bit, there’s nothing that happens in the dressing room that’s going to bother you.
“One thing about being a player/coach, you can’t ask a player to do anything you won’t do yourself,” MacNeil added. “I knew the job. I always believed a team needed a leader. I was ready.”
The Canadiens posted a 31-15-9 record under MacNeil to finish the regular season in third place in the Eastern Conference. Goalie Ken Dryden made his NHL debut, playing six games at the end of the season and posting a 6-0 record with a 1.65 goals-against average and a .957 save percentage.
In the first round of the playoffs the Canadiens were underdogs against the Boston Bruins, who had finished first in the Eastern Conference, 24 points ahead of Montreal. The Canadiens lost Game 1 of that series 3-1 and were trailing the Bruins 5-1 in Game 2 in Boston before battling back to win 7-5. The Canadiens would go on to win the series in seven games.
The Canadiens then beat the Minnesota North Stars in six games in the Stanley Cup semifinals and went on to beat the Chicago Blackhawks in seven games in the final. Dryden won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP after posting a 12-8 record with a 3.01 GAA and a .914 save percentage.
While the Canadiens were able to win the Stanley Cup, MacNeil’s coaching decisions were publicly second-guessed by veteran players Henri Richard and John Ferguson.
A few weeks after winning the Cup, general manager Sam Pollock announced that Scotty Bowman would replace MacNeil as head coach. MacNeil returned to the Voyageurs, who moved to Nova Scotia, and would coach there for six seasons, winning three AHL championships before becoming head coach of the NHL’s Atlanta Flames in 1979.
MacNeil kept that job with the Flames when they moved to Calgary the next year and he stayed with the organization for several years. He was assistant GM when the Flames won the Stanley Cup in 1989 and went back behind the Calgary bench as interim head coach for 11 games during the 2002-03 season.
With Bowman replacing MacNeil behind the Montreal bench, the Canadiens would win the Stanley Cup again in 1973 and then win four straight championships between 1976 and 1979.
MacNeil wasn’t bitter about getting fired as coach of the Canadiens after winning the Stanley Cup.
“Hey, what you learn in life is that things you win can be bittersweet, that there’s always a little downside with everything,” MacNeil said in the 2004 “Where Are They Now?” article. “Those things don’t matter. The satisfaction, excitement and elation of winning a Stanley Cup overshadows all those things.”