Wren Blair obit

Wren Blair, first North Stars coach, dies at 87

Wren Blair was the amusing GM/coach of the expansion North Stars. 

He was not on the list.

The North Stars hired Wren Blair as their first coach and general manager partially because he was an entertainer.

And Blair delivered.

"He was a character, he really was," former North Stars defenseman Tom Reid said. "The things he used to do on the bench and in the dressing room were crazy. He couldn't skate very well. He was the type of guy who could scream and holler, and be your best friend two minutes later."

Blair -- who died Wednesday at his home in Whitby, Ontario, at age 87 -- was remembered by his former players for his eccentricities.

"Wren was really flamboyant, he was outgoing, he was gregarious, he was demonstrative," said Lou Nanne, who played for Blair and later became the North Stars coach and general manager, too. "He really enjoyed life, and he was wild. He was very unpredictable, and he loved hockey, and his players, and working with the game."

Blair's first claim to fame was finding and signing Bobby Orr, then a 14-year-old phenom, for a Boston Bruins-sponsored team in 1962. Orr is considered one of the greatest defensemen in hockey history and led the Bruins to two Stanley Cup championships.

Blair was general manager of the Minneapolis Bruins, a Central League team that played for two seasons (1963-65), before his jump to the NHL. Walter Bush, a partner in the Bruins and the first North Stars president, hired Blair as GM/coach to put together the expansion North Stars for the 1967-68 season.

Blair had two tenures as coach and remained as GM until 1974, when he was fired and replaced by his coach, Jack Gordon.

"The Bird" was known as a wild man on bench, often climbing on boards to profanely berate officials and his players. He once described a Stars crowd as bunch of "phlegmatic Swedes."

"I had to do something to get some attention," Blair told the Star Tribune in 1991. "The Twins, the Vikings and the Gophers football team owned the town.

"One night, a reporter asked me about the crowd. I said, 'Ah, they are nothing but a bunch of phlegmatic Swedes, sitting up there on their hands like pieces of stone.' [Jim] Klobuchar wrote a column in the Minneapolis Star, saying he was offended because I had ignored all of the phlegmatic Norwegians, Italians, Germans and Irishmen.

"By Christmas time, that building was full."

The North Stars' first season was marred by the only death in NHL history from an on-ice injury, when forward Bill Masterton fell and struck his head on the ice. The Stars were in a division with the five other expansion teams and came within a goal of reaching the Stanley Cup Finals by losing, in overtime, in Game 7 to St. Louis in the conference finals.

In 2009, Blair was quoted in the Star Tribune as saying he wanted his players to think he was unpredictable so they would band together.

"It was part of the plan," Blair said. "They responded pretty good. They played hard that year."

His former players remembered him Friday, as usual, with familiar stories.

"In the early '70s, he got locked in the Pittsburgh dressing room and couldn't get out," Reid said. "None of us knew where he was. He never came in for the pregame speech, but the linesman told us to go to the ice or we'd get a delay-of-game penalty.

"[Goalie] Cesare Maniago wasn't playing, so we told him to coach. Wren was banging on the door until a security guy finally heard him. Seven or eight minutes in, we hear noise behind us and Wren is jumping over seats and over the glass to get to the bench."

Said Nanne: "You never knew what he was going to do. One time he was standing up on the boards yelling at the other team during a game. He slipped and he fell spread eagle right on the boards and hurt himself right where he shouldn't have and lost his breath for like five minutes.

"He was very instrumental in selling the product because he was so colorful and so outrageous that people were captivated by his actions."

Following his North Stars days, Blair served as president of the Pittsburgh Penguins from 1975 to '77, then spent six years as player personnel director for the Los Angeles Kings before staying involved in junior and minor league hockey.

Funeral services will be Friday in Whitby.

Blair was born in Lindsay, Ontario, the son of Audrey and Alvin Blair. The family moved to Oshawa when his father took a job in a dairy. Wren grew up playing hockey on the rink outside Westmount Public School. He was given the nickname "The Bird" and was known for his wild behavior on the bench. This behavior often involved climbing on boards to profanely berate officials and his players.

Blair was founder, coach and General Manager of the Whitby Dunlops, who would win the Allan Cup in 1957 and 1959. In 1959 the team represented Canada in 1958 World Ice Hockey Championships winning the tournament. From 1958–1971, Blair served as the General Manager of the Clinton Comets of the Eastern Hockey League.

From 1963–65, Blair was general manager of the Minneapolis Bruins, of the Central Hockey League, before his jump to the NHL.

In 1960, Blair began negotiations with Boston Bruins president Weston Adams to begin building the new Oshawa Generals, a junior ice hockey team in the Ontario Hockey League. The agreement was made contingent on a new arena being built in Oshawa, Ontario. The Oshawa Civic Auditorium would later open in 1964. The Oshawa Generals were reactivated 1962 as a team playing in the Metro Junior A League. For this year, the team played its home games at Maple Leaf Gardens.

In the fall of 1962, while serving as a scout for the Bruins, he signed Bobby Orr, then a 14-year-old phenom, to the Bruins-sponsored Oshawa Generals. Orr would later score 94 points in 47 games, helping the Generals win the Ontario Hockey Association championship in 1966 before beginning his hall of fame career in the NHL. Blair also coached the Kingston Frontenacs to the final EPHL championship in the 1962–63 season.

He would later go on to own the Saginaw Gears of the International Hockey League, which won two Turner Cups. In 1973 Blair, Al Savill and Otto Frenzel purchased the then-bankrupt Pittsburgh Penguins for $3.8 million. In order to trim the Penguins' payroll, Blair sold minor-league contracts to the Gears. He was also the General Manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins from July 1975 to December 1976.

From 1979 through 1985, Blair, served as the player personnel director for the Los Angeles Kings. In 2002, Wren brought the North Bay Centennials of the Ontario Hockey League to Saginaw, Michigan. The franchise was renamed the Saginaw Spirit, with Blair stayed on as a consultant for the team. He died on January 2, 2013, aged 87, in Oshawa, Ontario.