McKenzie: Quinn's death touches most everyone in the hockey world The tributes to and recollections of Pat Quinn will be coming fast and furious today, as they should. As TSN Hockey Insider Bob McKenzie writes, his death touches most everyone in the hockey world because he was, well, most everywhere in the hockey world doing just about everything there was to be done.

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The tributes to and recollections of the Big Irishman will be coming fast and furious today, as they should.

The death of Pat Quinn, at age 71, touches most everyone in the hockey world because he was, well, most everywhere in the hockey world doing just about everything there was to be done.

"He was about the best man I ever met," said former NHL general manager George McPhee, who cut his teeth in the hockey business working for Quinn and the Vancouver Canucks and who named his first son Graham Quinn McPhee in honour of Pat.

"Pat had a gift," McPhee added. "He had this incredible presence. He could walk into a room and take it over, this big, square-jawed Irishman chomping on a cigar who was so intimidating. If you worked for him and went into his office, you had better be prepared and know your stuff. But if you really knew Pat, you knew the real gift he had was his big heart and how much he cared for everyone he came into contact with. For as intimidating as he seemed, Pat had time for everyone, and I mean everyone. Whether it was the Zamboni driver in L.A. or the guy sweeping the floor in Philadelphia, they all wanted to talk to Pat Quinn and Pat Quinn wanted to talk to them. It would be 15 minutes before a game and someone would be sitting with Pat and they'd be having a heart-to-heart conversation. I can't tell you how many times in Vancouver some fan would drop by the PNE just to meet and talk to Pat and Pat would have that fan or season ticket holder come into his office and talk to them like he was their best friend. He had charisma. He had that special something. Pat could talk about anything, it didn't have to be hockey. Politics, history, religion, law, economics, this was a man who really could have done anything in his life, he could have been successful at anything he chose to do. We're just lucky enough it happened to be in hockey."

He was so much to so many.

For a kid growing up in Toronto in the 1960s, he was the Maple Leafs' big man on the blueline, the guy who felled Bobby Orr with the infamous hit in the 1969 Stanley Cup playoffs.

In the 1980s, he became the NHL gold standard for coaching, guiding the Philadelphia Flyers to an NHL record 35-game unbeaten streak that helped propel the Flyers to the 1980 Cup final.

He turned out to be every bit as brainy as brawny, too, leaving the game briefly to get a law degree before returning to go behind the bench of the Los Angeles Kings.

His career wasn't without controversy. He was suspended by the NHL because NHL president John Ziegler believed Quinn was in conflict of interest, trying to go to the Vancouver Canucks while still an employee of the Los Angeles Kings.

But he put all of that behind him, guiding the Canucks to the 1994 Cup final and enhancing his persona as the dapper big Irishman with the larger than life personality.

He presided over a renaissance of sorts for the Toronto Maple Leafs, where as coach and GM in the late 1990s and early 2000s, his team was a perennial playoff performer, never getting to the big dance but making the Leafs relevant again in Toronto.

During that time, of course, he guided Canada to the Olympic gold medal in Salt Lake City, a sign of things to come for him internationally. As Team Canada's coach at the 2006 Olympics in Torino, he failed to win a medal and not long after that, his tenure with the Leafs came to an end. But then Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson leaned on his old pal to come back and coach kids internationally.

He won a gold medal coaching Canada at the 2008 Under-18 World Championship and then won a gold medal at the 2009 World Junior Championship in Ottawa. Canada hasn't won a gold medal at the WJC since then. He was a part owner with the Vancouver Giants of the WHL.

Quinn had a brief fling as head coach of the Edmonton Oilers in 2009, but it was clear his time as an NHL head coach and/or executive was up.

Still, he remained a big presence in the game, becoming chairman of the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2013.

The last time I saw Pat Quinn was last spring, at a function to honour outgoing Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson at the Hall of Fame. He'd lost a lot of weight, he didn't quite physically fill up the room the way he used to when he'd strut in wearing his three-piece suit and cigar clenched between his teeth, but his warmth and caring, asking others there how they were faring and taking an interest in them and how and what they were doing, well, that never changed.

"If your measure of a man is how many lives were impacted by that man, well, Pat impacted more people's lives in hockey than anyone I can think of," McPhee said. "He's a father figure to so many of us in the game."

Pat Quinn was, literally and figuratively, a giant of a man, so many things to so many people.