MacLean became much more than a Bulldog

There’s no question Pictou County has more than held its own in recent years in getting players into the National Hockey League.
Fans in the area certainly don’t need to be reminded about the achievements of defenceman Colin White, forwards Jon Sim and Derrick Walser and goaltender Joey MacDonald. The four made the county proud.
But if you’re looking to name the most successful NHL personality from northern Nova Scotia right now, you better look a little further to the east – and behind the bench – for the answer.
I’m referring, of course, to Antigonish’s Paul MacLean, who is doing a tremendous job in his first year as head coach of the Ottawa Senators.
Heck, when he was given the job last June, nobody really expected him to make the playoffs in his initial try. The Senators were considered to be one of the weakest teams in the league and many observers couldn’t understand why he even considered leaving the security of an assistant coach’s position with the Detroit Red Wings.
Detroit has one of the premier teams in the NHL and Ottawa, everyone said, was in a rebuilding mode.
Yet when the all-star break rolled around last week, there was MacLean with his club in second place in the Northeast Division, trailing only the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins. The Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens were both in Ottawa’s rear-view mirror.
That’s quite a showing by the guy who grew up in Antigonish where his childhood dream was to play for the hometown Bulldogs.
If he’s doing better than expected behind the Ottawa bench, consider how much more than expected he did as a player. That too wasn’t in the forecasts.
Though MacLean was born in France, where his father was serving with the Canadian Armed Forces, he was only a toddler when the family arrived in the cathedral town. That’s where his hockey began, where he envisioned someday becoming a Bulldog.
Nobody foresaw what he would achieve, what statistics he would rack up as a professional.
His first big break came in 1977-78 when, as an overaged junior, he played for the Hull Olympiques. There he scored 38 times and had 71 points in 66 games.
It was enough for the St. Louis Blues to pick him 109th overall in the NHL draft.
There would be a significant detour on his way to the top, however. He spent 1978-79 with the Dalhousie Tigers in the Atlantic Universities Hockey Conference, helping them win a league championship, something they don’t do often. That year the Tigers reached the national final before bowing to the powerful Alberta Golden Bears. MacLean was a huge reason for Dal’s performance.
MacLean had another big experience when he played for Canada in the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid. Then he spent 1980-81 with the Blues’ farm team in Salt Lake City.
Maybe the real turning point in his career came in July 1981 when a trade sent him to the Winnipeg Jets. It was a pretty lousy Winnipeg squad that he joined. The previous season the Jets won only nine times in 80 games. You don’t get much worse than that.
But, wow, did MacLean ever become a great scorer with the Jets. As a rookie, he had 36 goals. In seven seasons in Winnipeg, three times he went over 40 goals and three other times he had more than 30. His biggest numbers were in 1984-85 when he recorded 41 goals and 101 points, good for 11th place in the scoring race.
He was traded to Detroit and had 36 goals in 1988-89. Then he was back with St. Louis, tallying 34 more markers in 1989-90.
Midway through 1990-91, he suffered a serious rib injury. Without playing another game, he retired.
In 719 games over 10 NHL years, MacLean had 324 goals. How good was that figure? Well, I remember when I started following the NHL as a youngster, Nels Stewart held the all-time goal-scoring lead – with a total of exactly 324 goals. Then came Maurice (Rocket) Richard and Stewart’s mark was history.
So the kid who grew up wanting to be an Antigonish Bulldog did mighty good putting pucks behind NHL netminders.
MacLean’s NHL story gets better.
He turned to coaching when he was hired as bench boss of the Peoria Rivermen in the International Hockey League in 1993. Three years later, he was an assistant with the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes.
There were two more head coaching positions – with the Kansas City Blades in the IHL and the Quad City Mallards in the United Hockey League, before he returned to the NHL as an assistant to Mike Babcock with the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
In 2007-08, Babcock moved to the Red Wings and thought enough of MacLean to take him along to Detroit. That’s where his abilities became obvious, where Ottawa looked last spring when they needed a new head coach.
When the Toronto Maple Leafs aren’t playing and taking all my attention, I turn to Ottawa games and, watching MacLean at work, I marvel at how disciplined he is behind the bench. Everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve heard about him – especially when his own players are talking about him – is positive.
When he was inducted into the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame in 1995, he told a Halifax reporter, “You start out playing sports and you don’t expect anything like (becoming a hall of famer) to happen to yourself. You do it for the love of the game and because you just want to play.”
From the way his Senators are performing right now, he would probably say the same thing about coaching.

Hugh Townsend, a New Glasgow native and Nova Scotia sports journalist for over 55 years, can be reached at 204 – 435 Portland Hills Drive, Dartmouth B2W 0A8.