McVie arrived behind hockey benches after a nomadic junior and minor-pro trail, one that took him across the continent between 1954-74 with stops in Toledo, Fort Wayne and Dayton in the International league, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and Phoenix in the Western league and a season with the storied Johnstown Jets, of “Slap Shot” fame, in the EHL.
He truly was a hockey “lifer” given all the jobs he had along the way.
“If I wasn’t coaching hockey, then I’d probably be driving the Zamboni,” McVie told Boston Globe hockey writer Kevin Paul Dupont in October 1992, then a freshly minted assistant coach with the Bruins.
Dupont related how McVie had been using the same piece of Samsonite luggage for 32 years, its owner estimating 750,000 miles on the suitcase in the baggage holds of buses with thousands more travelled by air.
“My first two years of pro hockey, I never had a piece of luggage,” McVie said. “I was playing for Seattle — Keith Allen was the general manager — and I got hurt in Calgary on a trip that was going to Edmonton. Well, they decide to send me home, and Allen takes my meal money; that’s the way it worked — no play, no meal money.
“Like I say, I never had a suitcase. Those first two years, I threw what I needed into a bag with Les Hunt — he played in the Detroit organization. I’ll never forget, I’m standing on this train platform in Calgary, and Les just hands me my clothes. They’re going on, and I’m going home. My clothes, all over the platform. I had to go get a paper bag and throw all my stuff in it.”
McVie would be traded to Portland in 1961, which provided players with monogrammed luggage. He would use that suitcase up to his talk with Dupont in 1992, and quite likely for years beyond that.
“I vowed that day, wherever I go, it goes,” said McVie. “It’s sort of a conversation piece, I guess. In 36 years of pro hockey, I’ll bet that I’ve received 20 sets of luggage, and I’ve given them all away — every one of them.”
In Montreal on Monday, Rick Green was saddened to learn of the death of his first NHL coach, the defenseman having been drafted by McVie’s Capitals No. 1 in 1976 but remembered his bench boss with a few lively stories.
“As a 20-year-old, I didn’t know what to expect at the NHL level, and Tommy McVie, what was he all about,” said Green, whose next NHL stop with the Canadiens would bring him the 1986 Stanley Cup.
“It didn’t take long when he had us on the track and we had to run a 5:40 mile and so many push-up and sit-ups. It was like he was a drill sergeant but that’s the way he was.
“Tommy was quite a character. For what he had to work with, he had to be quite a character … we had some guys who were interesting, and that’s an understatement. He was demanding and he needed to be with the guys we had who were always trying to find ways to take shortcuts.”
Green suggested he was impressed, amused and even a bit fearful of McVie, never quite sure where he stood.
“I was wearing Lange (molded) skates, and I’d forgotten my boot liners at the rink,” he recalled. “We were at our practice rink and I didn’t dare want to go to Tommy and say ‘I forgot my liners, I can’t practice,’ so I put 12 pairs of socks on to work as my liners. I managed to get through practice without him screaming or shooting pucks at me.
“He was to himself mostly, I didn’t spend a lot of time with him away from the rink,” Green added, laughing. “I had enough of him behind the bench, let alone on the ice.
“And Tommy was the first man I ever knew who could put two pucks in his mouth at the same time. That’s a talent. I guess his nickname was ‘The Clown’ back in the day when he played in the International league, so you needed a sense of humor back then.
“Someone told me about the puck trick so I went up to him and told him I didn’t believe it. Tommy just took his teeth out, grabbed two pucks and in they went.”
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