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It’s fitting for the two lions to be honoured in the local sports hall. As GM of a rising Anaheim Ducks team in 2003, Murray could have stayed there and won a Cup, but chose to return home to coach the Senators (reaching the 2007 Stanley Cup finals against the Ducks), and then manage them. Murray remains arguably the best coach the Senators ever had and plans one more season as GM, and then perhaps an advisory role. Henry, who worked more than three decades in the Ottawa fire department, or roughly as long as Murray’s time in the NHL, turned down multiple hockey offers to leave the region and continues to work on projects for QMJHL president Gilles Courteau. Veteran TSN 1200 broadcaster Dave Schreiber, former Canadian women’s national soccer team regular Kristina Kiss and the 1975 undefeated Vanier Cup-winning University of Ottawa Gee Gees football team fill out the rest of the list of inductees.

Humbly, Henry, once a Gloucester Rangers minor and junior coach, would have you believe he’s a hanger-on to the resume of his fellow hockey inductee.

“I’m looking up to him, and I’m the one that’s thrilled to be going in with Bryan Murray,” Henry says. “This is the biggest thing to happen to me in sport. This gentleman (Murray) is going to be in the Hockey Hall of Fame. In my case, this is the summit. And I’m realistic in that.

“Bryan has done this without looking to put his name up there, and I’m the same way.”

Henry sells himself short. In his run with the Olympiques from 1985 to 2010, Henry’s teams made the playoffs 27 years in a row and won the 1997 Memorial Cup on home ice. Henry was on the cutting edge of recruitment, finding gems who didn’t fit the OHL’s stricter mould (eg. Claude Giroux, Paul Byron); and one of the first to sign a European player (Herbie Hohenberger). Henry hired a string of NHL-bound coaches (Pat Burns, Alain Vigneault, Claude Julien) and had a flair for attracting U.S. stars like Jeremy Roenick.