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They say old hockey linemates never lose their bond and the Seattle Totems who played as a trio with Tom McVie certainly kept him in their memories despite time and distance.

McVie, who died Sunday at age 89 in his longtime adopted hometown of Camas, Wash., was a member of the very first Totems team to win a Western Hockey League championship in 1958-59 playing on a line with Guyle Fielder and Jim Powers. Both of those surviving linemates on Tuesday said McVie was a man just as memorable off the ice as on it.

“He was a character,” Fielder, 94, pro-hockey’s fourth-highest all-time points-getter, said from his home in Mesa, Ariz. “He’d look to make a joke out of nothing. And he’d play a joke on you if he could.”

Powers, who turns 89 next month and still lives in the Seattle area, agreed McVie helped keep things light when he wasn’t scoring a league-record nine game-winning goals that title season.

“I don’t think there was a joke that he ever forgot,” Powers said. “And he would keep repeating them from time to time.”

That sense of humor and storytelling panache also made McVie one of the NHL’s more colorful and enduring figures of the past half-century -- long after his minor professional playing days ended in 1973.

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He became head coach of the Washington Capitals – who visit Climate Pledge Arena on Thursday night – on Dec. 31, 1975, in the franchise’s second season, taking over from Milt Schmidt.

The Caps that season finished just 11-59-10 and endured a 25-game winless streak. After Washington fired McVie in 1979, he led the Winnipeg Jets to that year’s World Hockey Association title and stayed on as head coach for their inaugural two NHL campaigns.

The second of those seasons for the Jets saw McVie fired midway through after enduring the second 25-game winless streak of his career – both of those losing stretches serving as self-deprecating punchlines for the humor he’d keep employing and perfecting in decades to come.

"I've been fired more times than General Custer's pistol at Little Big Horn,” he once quipped.

McVie later became the second New Jersey Devils coach, replacing Bill MacMillan in 1983-84, then had a second stint behind their bench late in 1990-91 taking over for John Cunniff.

When fired again, he trotted out his old joke about himself with a slight modification.

"I've been fired more times than Clint Eastwood's Magnum."

Along the way, McVie spent most of the 1980s and 1990s coaching in the AHL, racking up 328 wins to sit top-20 in league history.

McVie also got his name on the Stanley Cup in 2011 while serving as an ambassador for the Boston Bruins, an organization he joined in 1992-93 as an assistant to head coach Brian Sutter and remained within scouting and other capacities until his death.

“Tom was a huge part of our Bruins family, having served as coach, scout, and ambassador for more than 30 years,” Bruins president Cam Neely said Monday in a statement. “His hockey mind, colorful personality, gruff voice, and unmatched sense of humor livened up every room he entered, and he will be dearly missed. Our thoughts and prayers are with Tom's family and many loved ones.”

But McVie also became a colorful and important figure in the history of pro hockey in the Pacific Northwest. His initial exploits with the Totems were short-lived, but hugely important in helping secure their first WHL championship with a series win over the Calgary Stampeders.

Seattle and coach Keith Allen – who’d later serve as general manager of the NHL “Broad Street Bullies” Philadelphia Flyers Cup-winning teams – finished second behind Calgary in the regular season, led by Fielder’s career-high 122 points. But McVie’s penchant for scoring in the clutch proved just as valuable ahead of and during a stunning 4-0 sweep of Calgary in the final.

“They had a really good team and they were picked to win the championship going away,’’ McVie said in a 2018 interview about his Totems playing days as Seattle awaited the awarding of the expansion Kraken team. “But wouldn’t you know, we beat them four straight.’’

And though McVie’s exploits were instrumental in the Totems’ title run that season, he admittedly had ample help.

“I told everybody it was because I had the good fortune of playing next to Fielder,’’ he said. “Even I couldn’t mess that one up.’’

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McVie would play two seasons for the Totems, then several more with the Portland Buckaroos before returning for a second Seattle stint from 1969-1972. He finished eighth in franchise scoring with 271 points in 331 games.

And piled up a boatload of memories to fuel his stories for years, especially of his early years with the title-winning Totems team.

“That was just a great time,’’ McVie said, describing how he’d walk to games from his home in Upper Queen Anne. “They didn’t have the money to throw us any parades back then, but we threw a good party. Our winner’s share was $1,450 each and my salary for the entire year was only $3,000. So, that bonus got put to use.’’

McVie liked the Pacific Northwest so much that he stayed here upon retiring as a player, settling in Camas across the river from Portland. He said the choice enabled him to straddle the border of two states that had meant so much to his playing career.

Former Totems linemate Powers got to play with McVie during both his Seattle stints.

“We had a lot of good times and a lot of good laughs,” Powers said. “The 1960s were pretty good in the Western Hockey League and in the American Hockey League.

“As you know, there were only six NHL teams,” he added. “And a lot of the guys sitting on our teams were really good but never got an NHL shot. But they could have made it.”

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Powers kept in touch with McVie over the years and the three linemates were reunited back in 2017 when Fielder – who refuses to fly in airplanes because of a lifelong fear – drove up from Arizona to partake in a tour related to his release of a book about his playing days.

“When my book came out, he was instrumental in getting that tour started in Portland,” Fielder said of McVie. “They had a book signing there and whatnot and it just continued on. I went up to Vancouver (British Columbia) and Seattle and he was quite influential in getting that started.”

Powers fondly recalls their time spent together on the tour.

“I went to Vancouver with him to watch Guyle sign books,” Powers said. “And then we did the same thing here in Kirkland and we met the Seattle Thunderbirds (junior team) together. Those were some good times.”

Times that still feel like yesterday for Powers and Fielder in some ways, even their earliest ones as linemates with McVie some 66 years ago that championship season. But as McVie’s passing confirmed, nothing lasts forever.

“Our minds state ‘Yes’,” Powers said, chuckling. “But our bodies say ‘No’.”

Meaning, they’ll now have to guard their linemate’s bond with McVie through memories alone. Secure in the knowledge that, like their old linemate’s stories and humor, those will always spring eternal.