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View all postsMarc “Crow” Crawford has spent a good deal of time behind the bench as head coach for some of the best teams in the NHL. He broke into the league in 1995 with the Quebec Nordiques and later that year won the NHL’s Jack Adams Award as coach of the year, the youngest coach in history to win the award. The following year, he won a Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche. After a seven year stint (1998-2006) with the Vancouver Canucks, during which he is credited with rebuilding the team, he continued on to head the LA Kings and the Dallas Stars.
But after the 2011 season, NHL opportunities dried up and he accepted a position in Zurich with the ZSC Lions of the Swiss National League. Not skipping a beat, he led the team to to three NLA regular season championship titles, the 2014 Swiss championship and the 2016 Swiss Cup. Now, after a four year hiatus from the NHL, Crawford accepted a position as an associate coach for the Ottawa Senators where he’ll be for the 2016-17 season.
In this instalment of FROM BEHIND THE BENCH, Crow talks about what he has learned along the way and what it means to be back in the “best league in the world.”
The year I took the position in Switzerland, I’d interviewed quite extensively for jobs in the National Hockey League and I came very close. I did four interviews with Montreal, and a number of interviews with Washington. And when I didn’t get either of those jobs, the one thing I realized was that I really did want to coach.
Marc “Crow” Crawford has spent a good deal of time behind the bench as head coach for some of the best teams in the NHL. He broke into the league in 1995 with the Quebec Nordiques and later that year won the NHL's Jack Adams Award as coach of the year, the youngest coach in history to win the award. The following year, he won a Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche. After a seven year stint (1998-2006) with the Vancouver Canucks, during which he is credited with rebuilding the team, he continued on . . .
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See Also
- FROM BEHIND THE BENCH: The Unconventional Path by Rob Cookson
- FROM BEHIND THE BENCH – Getting the Call by Glen Gulutzan
- Troy Ward – Language of Hockey
