Pretty much every night for the past couple of years, Tom McVie’s cell phone would ring, the calls arriving with such precision that McVie didn’t need to look at the name on the screen to know who was calling. All he had to do was look at the clock to know it was Pat Conacher on the other end of the line.
The calls were often brief, ending with Conacher saying, “I love you, Coach.”
I know this to be true because it was Tommy who told me so. Tommy and Conacher first worked together in 1985, when McVie was coaching the American Hockey League Maine Mariners and Conacher was a minor-league journeyman trying to get back to the NHL. And yet here they were, all these years later, doing these nightly phone calls. Just as Tommy would tell me he’d often hear from Dale Arnold, who did play-by-play of Mariners games on the radio many years before landing his dream gig as the Bruins’ TV voice on NESN. Andy Brickley, the longtime NESN hockey analyst who also played for McVie in Maine, would frequently call. Same with Steve Tsujiura, who played for McVie in Maine and Utica.
On Monday, as the Bruins were hosting the San Jose Sharks at TD Garden, the team announced McVie had passed away. He was 89. The Bruins were McVie’s last hockey rodeo, as he had worked for the club for more than three decades as an assistant coach, coach of the AHL Providence Bruins, scout and goodwill ambassador. There were many laudatory statements from the Bruins, with team president Cam Neely front and center: “His hockey mind, colorful personality, gruff voice, and unmatched sense of humor livened up every room he entered and will be dearly missed.” Bruins interim coach Joe Sacco told reporters after his team’s 6-3 victory over the Sharks, “Everyone who had a chance to meet him, you’d never forget who he was. He was a great man.”
.@DaleEArnold, @BJaffe, Barry Pederson, & @AndyBrickley share memories and remember the legacy of Tom McVie ❤️ https://t.co/tfpWtQxNq2 pic.twitter.com/6rXGxlXMYx
— NESN (@NESN) January 20, 2025
McVie had a foghorn of a voice and a careworn face that conveyed the fallout of many, many years of bus rides, motels and late-night diners. He possessed an endless array of old hockey stories and quippy retorts to reporters’ questions. And while not a big man, he was jacked; even in his 80’s he still presented himself as someone not to be trifled with. But what was it about McVie that inspired the likes of Pat Conacher and Andy Brickley to make it a mission to stay in touch nearly 40 years after playing for him?
I reached out to Conacher, now 65 and living in Calgary. Here’s a guy who’d played parts of three seasons in the NHL and was even a member of the Edmonton Oilers’ 1983-84 Stanley Cup-winning team, but who by 1985 was playing for his third AHL team in three years. McVie kept telling Conacher he belonged in the NHL, not the AHL. And he’d say the same thing to anyone who’d ask him.
“He was my biggest backer,” Conacher said. “The New Jersey Devils would keep calling Maine, calling guys up, calling guys up, and Tommy would say, ‘You’re calling up the wrong guy. You should be calling up Patty.’ Finally, I got called up and got sent right down again.”
When Conacher returned to Maine, McVie called him into his office. As Conacher remembers it, the exchange went something like this:
McVie: “What are you doing back here?”
Conacher: “I guess they didn’t need me.”
McVie: “You know, Patty, I’m going to tell you this just one time. You have a wife who I love, you have a little kid now, and you’re getting a kick at the can in the NHL. But when you leave here you can’t be doing the same things up there you’re doing down here. You’re playing 25 minutes a night down here. When you go to the NHL you’re going to be a role player. You’re going to be a third- or fourth-line guy. You have to go up there and be the first guy on the ice and the last guy off the ice. Ride the bike. Do the weights. So when you get that chance again, there are no excuses. You’re ready to go all the time.”
It took a while, but Conacher wound up playing six seasons in the NHL with the Devils. He went on to play another four seasons with the Los Angeles Kings and had brief stints with the Calgary Flames and New York Islanders.
“I loved the guy,” Conacher said. “He was like a second father to me. He made me a better player but he also made me a better man.”
Take away all the McVie stories, take away the bark, the bite, the quips, and there emerges a man who never allowed his own limited successes to get in the way of pushing and prodding his players to reach a little higher. McVie played pro hockey from 1956 to 1974 and had some big seasons in the minors — as in 45 goals one year for the Portland Bukaroos in the Western Hockey League — but he never played a game in the NHL. Behind the bench, he did coach the 1978-79 Winnipeg Jets to the Avco Cup championship in the final World Hockey Association season before the merger with the NHL, but his NHL coaching record with the Jets, Devils and Washington Capitals was just 126-263-73.
Yet there never was any bitterness. He never looked down on his players, never dismissed them as not being good enough. And then every once in a while, a Pat Conacher would come along and McVie would help shove him back to the NHL. But even the players who couldn’t quite get there still appreciated McVie’s effort. Tsujiura, a 5-foot-6 sparkplug, played eight seasons in the AHL, netting 31 goals for the 1988-86 Mariners, but he never landed in the NHL. And yet he stayed in touch with McVie over the years.
A couple of years ago, the Bruins flew Tommy in from his home in Washington State to be with the club for the Stanley Cup playoffs. One night, after an opening-round game against the Florida Panthers, he was standing outside the Boston dressing room when Panthers coach Paul Maurice was escorted down the hallway after having just completed the postgame news conference. Maurice was wearing that very stern, official-looking face that’s standard equipment for coaches during the Cup tourney, except that it was all wiped right away when he met eyes with Tommy.
I don’t know how much history the two men shared, since McVie’s coaching career was ending as Maurice’s was beginning. But there was enough history for Maurice to snap out of coach mode and embrace McVie, the two men talking for a few minutes.
It’s as though everyone in hockey knew Tommy. Pretty much everyone knew his wife, the irascible Arlene “The Duke” McVie. For some, like Pat Conacher, the relationship was deep and meaningful. For others, and I’m thinking Paul Maurice here, it may have been no more complicated than two members of the NHL coaching fraternity exchanging pleasantries.
But Joe Sacco had it exactly right: When you met Tommy McVie, you never forgot who he was. And we may never see another like him again.
(Photo: Focus on Sport / Getty Images)
