CambieKev
Scout. Future Considerations, Dobber Prospects.
- Aug 26, 2019
- 189
- 695
Dryden vs Smith: How Gary "Suitcase" Smith Became a Hero to a Generation - A CambieKev Presentation
By Kevin Wong | Mar 2, 2020, 11:48am PST
Gary Smith was terribly exhausted. He had been in Vancouver for less than a year, but his feelings reflected the chaos occurring within his team’s front office.
In early 1974, the Vancouver Canucks were in a state of crisis. The team’s owner and president, Tom Scallen of Medical Investment Corporation. Ltd. (Medicor), had been charged with the theft of three-million dollars, alleged to have utilized the team’s finances to cover the debt of its parent company.
The franchise’s first-ever National Hockey League coach, Hal Laycoe, was now their general manager, assuming the previous managerial duties of an ailing Bud Poile.
Poile had fallen ill in 1972 — officially diagnosed as “exhaustion” on November 21, 1972 —, but he returned the next season as the assistant manager (“Poile Leaves”). Upon his recovery, he refused to work with Laycoe and feuded with his former subordinate.
Another member of the board, assistant to the vice president Walter “Babe” Pratt, had once publicly criticized Laycoe as a coach in 1972 on a radio broadcast and was now expected to work alongside him (Beddoes). This tense, uncomfortable dynamic infiltrated every corner of the Canucks’ front office.
Meanwhile, the newly-minted, on-ice product was a relative disaster. Wins were scant. The Canucks lacked goaltending depth, and following an injury to starting net-minder Dunc Wilson only a few months prior to Smith’s arrival, the team floundered without an adequate backup (Proudfoot, “No More”).
At one point during the 1972-73 season, the organization offered a tryout to Long John Henderson, a 40-year-old former goaltender who had last played in the NHL in 1956 (Proudfoot, “No More”).
The Canucks’ farm system was barren and the swift decay of the franchise only continued the following season. At the midpoint of the 1973-74 campaign, the Canucks fired Bill McCreary, the third coach in their four-year NHL existence.
Gary Smith arrived in a May 1973 trade between the Canucks and Chicago Blackhawks that sent Dale Tallon, the team’s two-time All-Star representative, the other way. The conduct of their superiors left the players feeling demoralized, and Smith was particularly distressed. His experience with this team had so far been miserable. He commented on the difficulty of working in “such an unbelievably screwed-up atmosphere” (“Canucks’ Hall”).
Interim president Coleman E. Hall, serving while Scallen appealed his sentence, contributed similar thoughts to the press, bluntly stating that “this club should be run as a business but it never has been” (“Canucks’ Hall”). Coach McCreary, following his dismissal and subsequent offering of a new role within the organization, corroborated these reports:
”There has been friction on this team right from the start at [the team’s 1973-74] training camp. The two factions on this team have made it difficult to coach, and staying with the organization may be the wrong thing for me.” - Recently-fired Canucks coach Bill McCreary, January 15, 1974 (“Canucks Fire McCreary”)
Furthermore, Coley Hall was under scrutiny for operating from his winter home in Hawaii rather than in-person. Such an arrangement led to the perception of an absentee ownership situation, which the team’s followers quickly cited as one of the contributing factors to the disarray of the four-year-old franchise (MacLeod).
According to the infamous Toronto-based lawyer and agent Alan Eagleson, upon speaking with Laycoe and Smith: “There’s a lot of problems in Vancouver because of the absentee ownership. Players like Don Lever, Don Tannahill and Andre Boudrias are wondering about their future” (Proudfoot, “Eagleson”).
Gary Smith wondered the same. Numerous roster members required new contracts. The threat of poaching by the World Hockey Association seemed particularly real for the meager Canucks.
Smith was nicknamed “Suitcase” due to his tendency to travel between leagues in the early days of his career, but it seemed now that several other Canucks would be packing their bags.
In Smith’s words, “We had 18 guys in the front office — millions of them, it seemed, and none of them had any power to do anything... nobody from the Canucks was even talking to [the players] about signing new contracts... When Pittsburgh put Bryan Hextall on waivers, we could have used him, but nobody was in a position to exercise our rights to take him” (Proudfoot, “Gary Smith”).
There were too many executives and none had enough authority to effectively accomplish any administrative operations.
...
Read more at Nucks Misconduct: Dryden vs Smith: How Gary "Suitcase" Smith Became a Hero to a Generation - A CambieKev Presentation
