Cliff Fletcher has seen and done just about everything in his long National Hockey League career.

Building a franchise
Is Fletcher's forte
By John McGourty | NHL.com
Nov. 3, 2004

Cliff Fletcher just wants to know where the years have gone. He was once a kids' hockey coach, then he got a job offer from the Montreal Canadiens. That led to a job with an expansion team, the St. Louis Blues, and that, in turn, led to being at the helm in launching an expansion team, the Atlanta Flames.

Later on, the Flames moved to Calgary and he's building a Stanley Cup champion while fending off one of the greatest teams in history, the Edmonton Oilers, in his own division. Next, Fletcher resuscitates the struggling Toronto Maple Leafs, then reorganizes a younger, leaner Phoenix Coyotes organization.

The phone rings and ... he's in the Hockey Hall of Fame!

"It is a tremendous feeling to be entering the Hockey Hall of Fame and not something that during your career you anticipate happening," Fletcher said. "It took a couple weeks for it to sink in after I got the call in June from (NHL VP) Jim Gregory (the chairman of the Hockey Hall of Fame Selection Committee). When you think, years down the road, after you are gone, your grandchildren and great-grandchildren can go to the Hall and say that was my Grandpa or my great-grandfather, well, that's not only an honor, it's a real privilege.

"I look back at my career and think, it's been 48 years that I've been involved with the NHL, where the hell did it all go? It sure has gone by quickly."

Fletcher, the Coyotes' senior executive vice president of hockey operations, took time in his Phoenix office recently to reflect on his upcoming induction into the Builders category of the Hall. Truly, no man could be more deserving, for Fletcher is a master builder of teams.

"I had been coaching a pretty successful Midget team in suburban Montreal and I got a phone call from Sibby Mundey, the former referee in Quebec. He was president of the Verdun Blues, one of the junior teams run by the Canadiens in the Quebec Metropolitan Hockey League. He offered the job as GM in 1956-57. Scotty Bowman's brother, Jack, was my captain. That was the start of what I refer to as a 10-year apprenticeship, strictly at the junior level. In that time, the Canadiens won six Stanley Cups.

"Even though I was on the periphery, seeing how Sam Pollock ran the minor-league system was very instructive. Then, he became the GM. Fortunately for me, some of it rubbed off. Pollock had an unbelievable mind and was clearly a forerunner in the business of hockey. The business of hockey was very important to him at a time when most people filling his position were former players. Sam had a brilliant mind. He knew what he wanted, hired good people and ran a very successful operation.

"It was a great thing, being around all those people. I would have coffee with Toe Blake from time to time and talk hockey in general terms. I was a scout, managing the junior system and he was the NHL coach, so there was a lot of opportunity to talk on a casual basis to not just Toe but guys like Ken Reardon, a great player who became president of the Canadiens. I also had the opportunity to be around great players like Rocket Richard, Bert Olmstead and Doug Harvey. That was something special for a young guy in his 20s. That was a great opportunity for a die-hard Canadiens fan who grew up in Montreal, a great learning experience.

"Lynn Patrick hired me in St. Louis when league expanded from six to 12 teams for the start of the 1967-68 season. We started a full 15 months before going on the ice. We had from June 1966 until the opening of training camp in September 1967. Lynn started as coach and general manager and relinquished the coaching to Scotty after a dozen games. They brought me in to St. Louis in charge of scouting. There weren't many young players available to us because they were tied up by the Original Six teams. We made a trade with the Rangers for Tim Ecclestone before his rookie season, but we had to wait almost four years before any true young fledgling talent was available. By then, I was assistant GM. My first years were spent covering the AHL and looking for players to help the big team in St. Louis.

"Many of the expansion teams made trades with Montreal, obtaining veterans who could provide immediate help in exchange for top draft picks.

"That's where Pollock did a great job for the Montreal organization. He set it up to be successful for a decade more by cashing in fringe assets for futures. He was very adept at doing it and he did a great job for Montreal. St. Louis was a real experience after 10 years in the Montreal junior system. But it was great getting an opportunity to be with a team that started from scratch and to be putting a team together. Relatively speaking, the Blues were very successful in that they got to the Stanley Cup Finals their first three years. They were the best of the expansion teams but getting to the Stanley Cup Finals was very frustrating because you knew it wasn't an even playing field. We lost 12-straight Finals games, but the first year every game was decided by one goal.

"Having served 15 years like that for two teams, when I did get an opportunity to run my own team in Atlanta, I was probably ready for it."

The Blues were successful, in large part, because they had Glenn Hall and Jacques Plante, whom Fletcher will join in the Hall of Fame, in net. Arguably, the two best players on the first Flames team were goalies Phil Myre and Dan Bouchard.

"We knew we would need good goaltending so we made a pre-draft trade with Montreal to get Phil Myre and then we picked up Dan Bouchard. They did a very good job," Fletcher said. "One thing you knew going into the expansion draft was that you weren't going to see a lot of goal scorers. Plus, both the Islanders and we were coming into the NHL in 1972 and that was the first year of the WHA. We had competition in trying to bring in players to our expansion team. Of the players we acquired in the draft, I think they had a total of 60 career NHL goals. It may have been under 50. In those days of the expansion draft, there weren't too many Christmas presents wrapped up for you.

"We did pretty well. We were in the playoff hunt until the middle of February and made the playoffs in our second year. We played the Flyers and they went on to win the Stanley Cup. We had a great rivalry with the Flyers, they were long games. They had a tough team, but we had Pat Quinn, Curt Bennett and Willi Plett."

The Flames struggled financially in Atlanta and were moved to Calgary in 1980.

"What happened in Atlanta, unfortunately, was that the plan was based on economic system with monopoly-league salaries but they started to rise dramatically in 1974 because of the competition from the WHA. The owners started to struggle in Atlanta and as nice as the Omni was, it was probably one of the last buildings put up that didn't have the amenities that brought additional revenue streams. There were no private boxes, It had only 15,000 seats and no standing room. As the cost of operating an NHL team rose dramatically in the mid 1970s, they had a harder and harder time competing. If you can believe this, the Flames got more there for their radio rights than TV. That gives you a pretty good idea of the struggle there back then.

"Then the team was sold and moved to Calgary. Tom Cousins, the principle owner in Atlanta, did pretty well, getting US$16 million. That was a lot of money back then. A year earlier, talking to people in Houston, they weren't talking a fraction of that amount.

"Calgary was a success story from the first day. It was the oil and gas capital of Canada. The city was growing and has continued to grow. I would guess the population has nearly doubled since we moved there.

"We had a great year, the first year. We lost only five home games and caught a lot of teams coming into the Stampede Corral by surprise. It had the illusion of being a small rink because of the high boards. We won two playoff series that year. We beat Chicago and then lost Game 6 of the next series, so we faced Game 7 in Philadelphia. Pat Quinn was coaching the Flyers by then. We upset them at the Spectrum and then lost to the Minnesota North Stars in six games."

The Flames got stronger throughout the 1980s, losing the Stanley Cup to Montreal in 1986 and capturing the Stanley Cup in 1989 in the Montreal Forum. During the same era, the Oilers won Stanley Cups in 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1990. It was a tremendous rivalry, dubbed "the Battle of Alberta," and the passion of head-to-head matches remains undiminished. The team management skills of rivals Fletcher and Edmonton's Glen Sather created one of the greatest epochs in NHL history.

"There was a tough adjustment for a lot of players in moving from Atlanta to Calgary," Fletcher said. "They moved from an atmosphere of very little pressure and criticism to a real hockey market. Everybody, not only the players, but managers and coaches were accountable on a day-to-day basis. We almost had to start over going into the second year. We were looking 180 miles up the road and seeing a dynasty in the making. It was a real challenge, based a lot out of fright! We knew they were going to be damn good. Somehow, we had to find a way to compete with them.

"We started to in 1984. We took them to Game 7 in the second round and then beat them in 1986," Fletcher recalled. In 1988-89, we won back-to-back Presidents' Trophies and the Stanley Cup in 1989.

"It was a challenge for everyone in the organization. It was just a great rivalry, so intense. The big winners were the hockey fans in both cities. They were wide-open, high-scoring games for the most part."

Fletcher thinks back on the names that fueled the rivalry, many of them Hall of Fame-bound or there already: Hakan Loob, Gary Roberts, Joe Nieuwendyk, Lanny MacDonald, Mike Vernon, Grant Fuhr, Kevin Lowe, Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Joel Otto, Glenn Anderson, Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri, Al MacInnis, Gary Suter, Doug Gilmour, Joel Otto and so many others. They all made that struggle to win that 1989 Stanley Cup, won in Fletcher's hometown, a moment hockey won't forget.

After 33 years of working hard, watching and learning in the NHL, Fletcher, guided by his instincts and what he had learned from Hall of Fame executives Pollock and Patrick and others, had built a Stanley Cup-winning team.

"The fact that we won it in Montreal made it very emotional for me," Fletcher said. "We lost Game 3 in double overtime, then won three straight games. The fact that we were the only team to win the Stanley Cup at the Forum, other than the Canadiens, was quite a feat. I remember going out there on the ice afterward and looking up at the roof, the banners, and the fans. They were very gracious fans and they stayed there and watched the proceedings.

"Flashing back to 30 years earlier and my start with the Canadiens was a special feeling."

Fletcher was lured to the Maple Leafs a couple years later. Toronto fans were starved for a winner, not having won the Stanley Cup since 1967, after winning four in that decade alone and thirteen overall. He came so close to delivering.

"I felt that having been with the Flames for 19 years, I was starting to lose that edge a little bit," Fletcher said.

The Maple Leafs' history captivated Fletcher and he sought to recapture the team's traditions. He also shook up the present, adding Gilmour, Jamie Macoun and Ric Nattress in a deal with Calgary, and Dave McIlwain, Rick Walmsley, Ken Baumgartner and Mark Osborne his first year and Dave Andreychuk, John Cullen, Bill Berg and Daren Puppa the next season. The Maple Leafs made two great runs to the Stanley Cup semifinals, losing to the Los Angeles Kings in 1993 and the Vancouver Canucks in 1994. Gilmour was awe inspiring, Felix Potvin was breathtaking, Wendel Clark defined grit and Toronto was the center of the hockey world once again.

"You can't manufacture history and tradition. That was so important to me in going to Toronto," Fletcher said. "The great players of the past had been neglected. There was no alumni association. We got all that together and raised the great players' jerseys to the rafters. We tried to do the things that should be done in a sports organization that was so deep in tradition and history.

"Then, there were the on-ice issues. Fortunately, we were able to do a few things the first half of the first year. We were 15 games under 500 at 10-25-5. We got it turned around and had really good years in 1992-93 and 1993-94. I thought we were going to the Finals in 1993, but Wayne Gretzky had other ideas. But we brought credibility back to the franchise. I loved working with Anders Hedberg, Bill Watters and Darryl Sittler. It was a really enjoyable six years."

Fletcher went into retirement in Florida, but Jacques Demers asked him to lend a hand when he was GM and coach at Tampa Bay. After Demers left, Fletcher signed on with Phoenix.

"I've been here four years and thoroughly enjoyed it," he said. "We've had obstacles we hadn't anticipated, but now we feel we can get it done on the ice. We've made some trades that have made us younger and faster in the past few years. We've signed some great free agents and with Mike Johnson, Ladislav Nagy and David Tanabe coming back off injuries, the Coyotes are at the beginning of a really good era."