Craig MacTavish

Canada Craig MacTavish


Date of birth	15th August 1958
place of birth	London , Ontario , Canada
Nickname	MacT
size	185 cm
Weight	88 kg

position	center
Shot hand	Left

Draft

NHL Amateur Draft	1978 , 9th lap, 153rd position Boston Bruins

Career stations

1977-1979	University of Massachusetts Lowell
1979-1985	Boston Bruins
1985-1994	Edmonton Oilers
1994	New York Rangers
1994-1996	Philadelphia Flyers
1996-1997	St. Louis Blues

Craig MacTavish (born August 15, 1958 in London , Ontario ) is a former Canadian ice hockey player , coach and current official who worked for the Boston Bruins , Edmonton Oilers , New York Rangers , Philadelphia Flyers and St. Louis Blues from 1980 to 1996 played in the National Hockey League . He was the last player in the NHL to be exempt from wearing a helmet.

Career

As a junior he played for Lowell University . In the 1978 NHL Amateur Draft , the Boston Bruins selected him in the ninth round as 153rd.

From the 1979/80 season he was used in the NHL with the Bruins. In the first few years he shuttled between the NHL and AHL , where he played for the Binghamton Dusters . The next year with the Bruins, the Springfield Indians were his team in the AHL. Instead of making the breakthrough in the NHL, he spent his third season as a professional mostly with the AHL team of the Erie Blades . It was not until the 1982/83 season that he finally fought for a regular place. After he had caused a car accident under the influence of alcohol in which a woman had died, he was not allowed to play in the 1984/85 season and moved to the Edmonton Oilers after the end of the season .

After two Stanley Cup wins, the Oilers missed defending their title in his first year. It wasn't until 1987 that he won the Cup for the first time with Wayne Gretzky's team. MacTavish has always been known and respected as a combative player. In his ninth season with the Oilers he was in March 1994 in exchange for Todd Marchant from the New York Rangers . Here reunited with Mark Messier , with whom he has already won the Stanley Cup three times in Edmonton, he achieved his fourth cup win. One of his specialties was his strong play at Bully .

His next stop was the Philadelphia Flyers around Eric Lindros . Meanwhile, since he still played without a helmet, he had become a league attraction. In March 1996, the experienced leading player was exchanged for another renowned player. From the St. Louis Blues , Dale Hawerchuk came to the Flyers and MacTavish went the opposite way.

After the end of the 1996/97 season , he ended his career as the last player who had played without a helmet. Since the beginning of the 1980s, players without helmets were only allowed to play if they had already done so before the rule was introduced.

Craig MacTavish (2014)

Immediately after the end of his active career, he worked as an assistant coach for the New York Rangers. In his sophomore year, his former Edmonton teammate, Charlie Huddy , was used as another assistant coach alongside him. For the 1999/2000 season he moved to the Edmonton Oilers as assistant to Kevin Lowe . A year later he took over the post as head coach and caught up with Charlie Huddy as an assistant. In the 2005/06 season he surprisingly led the Oilers into the final games of the Stanley Cup. There, however, his team was defeated by the Carolina Hurricanes . In April 2009 he was released from Edmonton. At the 2010 Ice Hockey World Cup , he was the head coach of the Canadian national team , which finished the tournament in seventh place. On August 1, 2011, he was introduced as the head coach of the Chicago Wolves . After a season he left the post and took a position on the board of directors of the Edmonton Oilers.

MacTavish was General Manager at the Oilers from 2013 to 2015 before being replaced by Peter Chiarelli after the 2014/15 season and then at the Oilers as Vice-President of hockey operations . From May 2019 he was head coach at Lokomotive Yaroslavl from the KHL . After only six points from eight games, he was sacked in September of the same year. At the end of December 2019, he led the Canadian selection to victory at the Spengler Cup . At the end of February 2020 he took up the position of coach at the Swiss first division club Lausanne HC .