Marc Crawford

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CanadaCanada  Marc Crawford Ice hockey player
Marc Crawford
Date of birth February 13, 1961
place of birth Belleville , Ontario , Canada
size 180 cm
Weight 84 kg
position Left wing
number # 25
Shot hand Left
Draft
NHL Entry Draft 1980 , 4th lap, 70th position
Vancouver Canucks
Career stations
1978-1981 Cornwall Royals
1981-1987 Vancouver Canucks
Fredericton Express
1987-1988 Fredericton Express
1988-1989 Milwaukee Admirals

Marc Joseph John Crawford (born February 13, 1961 in Belleville , Ontario ) is a former Canadian ice hockey player and current coach . During his active career, he played almost 200 games for the Vancouver Canucks in the National Hockey League (NHL), but was mostly used in minor leagues . His coaching career turned out to be much more successful, so he was previously in charge of six NHL teams as head coach. He led the Colorado Avalanche to the Stanley Cup in the 1996 playoffs , after being the youngest coach ever to receive the Jack Adams Award as NHL coach of the year. In addition, he already reached the mark of 500 victories in 2010 . Since June 2019 he has been an assistant coach with the Chicago Blackhawks .

Career as a player

Marc Crawford began his career in 1978 with the Cornwall Royals in the Canadian Junior League QMJHL . There he developed into a good scorer and scored 69 points in 70 games in his first season. In his second year Crawford won the QMJHL championship with the Royals and thus qualified for the final round of the Memorial Cup , the most important trophy in Canadian ice hockey for players under the age of 21 that the team was able to win in the end.

Crawford was then selected in the 1980 NHL Entry Draft by the Vancouver Canucks in the fourth round at position 70. He stayed in the QMJHL for another year, was able to defend the Memorial Cup with the Royals and completed his best season with 99 points in 63 games. He also showed with a penalty of 242 minutes that he also mastered the physical game.

From the fall of 1981 he belonged to the organization of the Vancouver Canucks and completed parts of the season in the NHL and with the farm team , the Dallas Black Hawks in the CHL . With the Canucks he took part in the playoffs and was in the final of the Stanley Cup , which the New York Islanders could decide for themselves.

He did not manage to assert himself at the Canucks and for the next few years commuted between Vancouver and Fredericton , where the AHL farm team Fredericton Express was based. As he often traveled by plane between the two cities, he was nicknamed "747".

He had his best NHL season in 1985/86 when he was allowed to complete 54 games for the Canucks and scored 25 points. His last appearance in the NHL was in 1987 and he played exclusively for Fredericton Express in the 1987/88 season . In 1988 he moved to the Milwaukee Admirals in the IHL , where he ended his career in the summer of 1989.

NHL player stats

Seasons Games Gates Assists Points Penalty minutes
Regular season 6th 176 19th 31 50 229
Playoffs 3 20th 1 2 3 44

Career as a coach

CanadaCanada  Marc Crawford
Coaching stations
1989-1991 Cornwall Royals
1991-1994 St. John's Maple Leafs
1994-1995 Québec Nordiques
1995-1998 Colorado Avalanche
1999-2006 Vancouver Canucks
2006-2008 Los Angeles Kings
2009-2011 Dallas Stars
2012-2016 ZSC Lions
2016-2019 Ottawa Senators (Assistant Coach)
2019 Ottawa Senators
2016-2019 Chicago Blackhawks (assistant coach)

Crawford wanted to continue working in ice hockey and decided to become a coach. Only a few months after the end of his playing career, he took over the coaching post in the fall of 1989 with his former junior team Cornwall Royals, which now played in the OHL . But after two unsuccessful years, he left the team.

The management of the Toronto Maple Leafs liked his job despite the failure in the OHL and they wanted to hire him as their future head coach. In 1991 he was named coach of the St. John's Maple Leafs , the Toronto AHL farm team. In his first year he led the team to the final of the Calder Cup , where it lost, however. 1992/93 his team was able to get 41 wins and qualify again for the playoffs. Crawford received the Louis AR Pieri Memorial Award for the AHL's best coach for his work . He coached the team for one more season and rumors circulated that he would soon be taking over the Toronto Maple Leafs.

But in the summer of 1994 he received an offer from the Québec Nordiques of the NHL, which he accepted. Under his leadership, the team finished the regular season in second place in the NHL, but in the playoffs the end came in the first round. Nevertheless, the result was considered a success, as the Nordiques had missed the playoffs six times in the previous seven seasons. Crawford was honored with the Jack Adams Award as the NHL's best coach .

Just a few weeks later, the Nordiques moved to Denver due to financial problems and henceforth called themselves the Colorado Avalanche . The team ended the 1995/96 season again as the second best team in the NHL, but with a clear gap to the Detroit Red Wings , which should be met in the final of the Western Conference. But the Avalanche was the better team and beat the Red Wings in six games. In the Stanley Cup final, the Avalanche had no trouble and defeated the Florida Panthers 4-0. With Crawford as coach, the franchise instantly won the Stanley Cup in its first year in Colorado.

Crawford was expected to lead the team to more Stanley Cup victories and Colorado was one of the dominant teams in the regular seasons, but did not make it to the Stanley Cup final in the playoffs. After a first round off in the 1997/98 season , the management of the Avalanche wanted to extend the contract of Crawford by a year, but the opinion was that he would have deserved a longer-term contract. The separation followed.

In addition to his work at the national level, he was also the head coach of the Canadian national team at the 1998 Winter Olympics , which finished the team in fourth place.

During the 1998/99 season Crawford found a new job with the Vancouver Canucks, for which he was already active as a player. He could not lead the team in the remaining games in the playoffs and won only eight of 37 games. In the following season things went up again and in 2000/01 the Canucks were back in the playoffs. Under his leadership, the team never got past the second round. His tenure ended in April 2006 when the Canucks could not qualify for the playoffs.

In the summer of 2006 he received a contract with the Los Angeles Kings . But things didn't go any better for him there either. The goalkeepers in particular caused problems in the 2006/07 season , as they did not perform as well as they wanted and also suffered injuries. Crawford used a total of five goalkeepers during the season. At the end of the season, only two of the 30 NHL teams were worse than Los Angeles.

The following season was also disappointing for the Kings, whereupon Crawford was fired in the summer of 2008. In the 2009/10 and 2010/11 seasons he was the head coach of the Dallas Stars , with whom he narrowly missed a place in the playoffs. In addition, he recorded his 500 victory as an NHL coach behind the gang of stars . On April 12, 2011, Crawford was relieved of his duties in Dallas. In July 2012, he was appointed as the new head coach of the ZSC Lions of the Swiss National League A presented. He led the team to win the championship in 2014 and to win the cup in 2016, under Crawford the ZSC Lions completed the qualification, i.e. the NLA main round, three times (2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16) as leaders. On March 11, 2016, one day after leaving the 2016 playoffs, the collaboration was ended.

On May 9, 2016, Crawford was introduced to the Ottawa Senators NHL club as a member of the staff of head coach Guy Boucher . He succeeded him on an interim basis in February 2019 when he was released. Beyond the season, however, Crawford was not signed and instead hired DJ Smith . The Chicago Blackhawks then signed him in June 2019 as the new assistant to head coach Jeremy Colliton .

NHL coaching statistics

Status: end of season 2018/19

Seasons Games S. N U OTL Pt
Regular season 16 1169 556 431 103 79 1294
Playoffs 8th 83 43 40 - - -

S = victories; N = defeats; U = tie; OTL = Overtime loss (defeat in overtime)

Special

  • Marc Crawford won the Jack Adams Award for Best Coach in the NHL in 1995. He was the first coach to receive this trophy in his first year as an NHL coach. In addition, at the age of 34, he was the youngest coach to win this award.

Achievements and Awards

As a player

  • Memorial Cup 1980 and 1981
  • Memorial Cup All-Star Team 1981

As a trainer

family

His father Floyd became the 1959 ice hockey world champion . In addition, his brothers managed Bob and Lou Crawford also made it into the NHL.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Crawford to coach team in Zurich. The Sports Network , July 2, 2012, accessed July 2, 2012 .
  2. VADIAN.NET AG: ZSC Lions fire Marc Crawford. In: www.eishockey.ch. Retrieved May 9, 2016 .
  3. Marc Crawford no longer trainer of the ZSC Lions. In: landbote.ch/. Retrieved May 12, 2016 .
  4. Communiqué: Marc Crawford est nommé entraîneur-associé des Sénateurs d'Ottawa. In: senators.nhl.com. Retrieved May 9, 2016 .