To me the Harry Neale was part of my childhood but things got really exciting when Trevor Linden was drafted and things were shaken up. We know it as the Pat Quinn era but the two main faces of it to me was Trevor Linden and Bob McCammon. This is when I moved to Vancouver and really started to follow the team. You kind of had to living there.
Bob had this plodding coaching technique of hardcore defense where, if you were going to beat his team, you'll wish you had never played it. Bob always played to keep it close to try and win in the third. Bob never quite liked fixed lines - he wanted players to play his system regardless of what line they were on so he regularly mixed them up just to do this. I would think that was something that could be frustrating to players and the chemistry that those lines would develop would be gone when he did that.
Nevertheless, it was effective so long as the team made the playoffs - and they were coached for it. In fact, it seemed to me he spent that whole 1988 season to play Calgary which they did and that was history. They may have went out in the first round but that was clearly the most effective they'd been since the miracle run to the finals in '82 - a liftetime for me at that age - and probably most Canucks fans
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His ouster from the team came from Griffiths Sr. himself - the man who ripped off Krutov under his watch. If Bob didn't win the next game he was gone so the team did everything for him but win piling up 51 shots IIRC.
He was gone and this was a bitter pill for Bob. This was strange for me because Bob went on the radio after every game and in the interviews always half-joking he was surprised he hadn't been fired. Still, something had to be done and we quickly learned that Pat Quinn was a genius as a coach.
As a manager in Philadelphia I remember he had quite the record - better than Pat's. I think he drafted Hextall. If Bob managed the team with Pat as coach I think the results in 95 would have been different.
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One of the fondest memories I have with Bob is when they'd play Calgary, Terry Crisp would come on the radio after the game just to hang out with Bob and talk. Bob would take a backseat to the overblown Crisper and the results were hilarious. Those two were clearly great friends where the results of the game didn't matter to their friendship. Might be the reason Bob took such a bad Canucks team giving the eventual Stanley Cup winners their only really tough series in those playoffs - only losing it to a blown call.