When hiring Bruce Boudreau, the Vancouver Canucks were dead last in the Pacific Division. The move came Sunday after the Canucks lost their 10th game in the last 13 games. However, since Boudreau took charge of the Canucks, the team has had two straight wins. Boudreau is hailed by the Canucks fans and is certainly off to a great start with his new job.
But Boudreau isn’t precisely new in the game. Boudreau has coached the Washington Capitals, Anaheim Ducks, and Minnesota Wild. He’s coached för almost a thousand gams In the NHL, and there’s a lot of fantastic stories about him.
As Boudreau was appointed by the Canucks, Gord Miller shared his favorite story about Boudreau on Twitter.
”He was coaching Anaheim, and I was doing the game; we’d arranged to have dinner the night before. As it turned out, Wayne Gretzky was in town and invited us to join him,” he writes.
”Boudreau wasn’t sure he wanted to go, he called his wife and she talked him into it. The dinner was amazing, Gretzky had watched Boudreau play junior in Toronto and knew all of his OHL records (he actually broke some of them). Boudreau was amazed and flattered that 99 was a fan.”
”The next morning, Boudreau was regaling the Anaheim players with the story about his dinner with Gretzky the night before. On the bus, Boudreau got a text message from a private number saying how much Wayne had enjoyed the dinner and inviting him to play golf at Gretzky’s club.”
Boudreau was of course happy, but soon had to swallow his laugh.
”Boudreau was over the moon, and replied to Gretzky that he’d love to play golf. Then he heard some muffled laughter coming from the back of the bus. The text messages were coming from Teemu Selanne, who had blocked his number and was impersonating Gretzky. Boudreau was crushed.”
But everything ended up just fine.
”After he was fired by Anaheim, Minnesota called him immediately to interview him, but Boudreau actually DID have a golf game with Gretzky the next day. He told Wild GM Chuck Fletcher it would have to wait a day, because he didn’t want to cancel on Gretzky.”
