Pat Quinn
Team Canada
General Manager

The 1998 World Hockey Championship is the third major international event that Pat Quinn has been involved with in a key organizational role for the Canadian Hockey Association in the last two years.

In September 1996, Quinn was assistant general manager of Team Canada at the inaugural World Cup of Hockey. That team finished second to Team USA. Last spring, Quinn served as a special advisor to Team Canada at the 1997 World Hockey Championship in Helsinki, Finland, where Canada won the gold medal.

Quinn also has been very much involved with the Canada's hockey grassroots through the CHA's BC Centre of Excellence, which is housed at GM Place in Vancouver, home of the NHL's Canucks. In his role at that time as president and general manger of the Canucks, Quinn was a major force in establishing the BC Centre, which has become a key resource for minor hockey development in the province of British Columbia.

Quinn's tenure as the senior hockey executive (president, GM and alternate governor) of the Canucks ended this season, but his legacy with the Vancouver franchise will be felt for years to come.

When Quinn joined the organization in 1987, he inherited a team that had endured 11 consecutive losing seasons, and in just five years he turned the club around, posting the first 40-win season (1991-92) in franchise history. The Canucks won 40-plus games the following two seasons, as well, and Quinn was named the Hockey News Executive of the Year in 1992, as voted on by the media.

A charter member of the inaugural Vancouver Canucks team, Quinn accepted the position of President and General Manager on Jan. 9, 1987, and officially became the club's seventh general manager on May 1, 1987. Three years later, on January 31, 1991, he added the coaching responsibilities to his portfolio. In 1991-92, Quinn won the Jack Adams Trophy as NHL Coach-of-the-Year for the second time in his career, and is one of only two coaches to win the award with two different teams.

On Quinn's watch in Vancouver, the Canucks developed into a legitimate Stanley Cup contender in the early 1990s. The high point was in 1994 when the Canucks advanced to the Stanley Cup finals, losing in a seven-game series to the New York Rangers.

Quinn previously coached Los Angeles from 1984 to 1987 and Philadelphia from 1978 in 1982. In 1979- 80, his first full season behind the Flyers' bench, he guided the team to a Campbell Conference title and the best record in the NHL at 48-12-20. That season he authored an NHL record 35-game undefeated streak and was named Coach-of-the-Year.