Born: 5 Dec 1933, Eston SK (d. 2022)
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Regular Season & Playoff Coaching Record (key)
| Regular Season | Playoffs |
| year | team | finish | finish | |||||||||
| 1974-75 | Phoenix | 4-W | QF | |||||||||
| 1975-76 | Phoenix | 2-W | Prelim. | |||||||||
• Winner, Howard Baldwin Trophy (Coach of the Year), 1974-75.
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Excerpts from Pro Hockey, WHA 1975-76 (by Dan Proudfoot)
Nothing magical happened in Phoenix with the Roadrunners last year. It only seemed that way as coach Sandy Hucul employed 15 unknown players who had never appeared before in either the World Hockey Association or the National Hockey League and somehow, made the playoffs in 1974-75. Hucul, of course, was named coach of the year. ...The combination of wily management, sound coaching ond a young lineup means Roadrunners figure to get better and better. Meantime, their first season in the WHA is truly worthy of analysis. They were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, by Quebec Nordiques, but the fact they got as far as they did surprised most knowledgeable hockey people. The secret? Bill MacFarland, the [general] manager, provided coach Hucul with an outstanding group of hustlers. There wasn't a big name in the list of players, but the Roadrunner scouting had been through. Many expected MacFarland to stock his first team with veterans of the Western Hockey League, the now-defunct loop of which he had been president, but he looked elsewhere. "By the end of the season," MacFarland explains, "we only had two players left from the old Phoenix team — the one that had been in the WHL and then the Central League." Hucul, took the group of strangers and made things as simple as possible for them. The Hucul system was straightforward — the purely defensive style with the centers doing the fore-checking and the two wingers always quick to hang back and help the defencemen. The system worked, so well that only two teams ended up with fewer goals against. |
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Excerpts from Zander Hollander Complete Hockey Handbook, 1975-76 (by Reyn Davis) Winner of the Howard Baldwin Award as a WHA Coach of the Year in 1974-75 ... Clobbered his associates, claiming 31 of the 42 first place votes ... Took an expansion team laced with 14 rookies and led it to the playoffs with a 39-31-8 record ... Drilled a disciplined style into his team that reaped great success on the road ... Devoutly religious man who knows the other side of life ... Has precious few words to offer men of the media, but has a stare that says a thousand words ... Conducts himself with dignity behind the bench, rarely yelling and never uttering a profanity of any sort ... Has tremendous strength. |
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