Bob Pulford
| Bob Pulford | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Hockey Hall of Fame, 1991 | |||
 |
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| Born |
March 31, 1936 Newton Robinson, ON, CAN |
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| Height | 5 ft 11 in (180 cm) | ||
| Weight | 188 lb (85 kg; 13 st 6 lb) | ||
| Position | Left Wing | ||
| Shot | Left | ||
| Played for |
Toronto Maple Leafs Los Angeles Kings |
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| Playing career | 1956–1972 | ||
Robert Jesse Pulford (born March 31, 1936) is a retired Canadian professional ice hockey forward who played for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Los Angeles Kings in the National Hockey League. He has been a coach and executive for the Chicago Blackhawks for the past thirty years.
Pulford and his family lived on King St. in Weston, Ontario from 1940 to 1950, and he attended Memorial School prior to the family move to rural Ontario. Pulford played junior hockey in Weston, then senior hockey for the Marlboros.
Pulford played junior hockey for the Toronto Marlboros for three seasons from 1953 to 1956, winning two Memorial Cups under coach Turk Broda. He moved up to the Maple Leafs for the 1956–57 season and remained with the team for 14 seasons wearing jersey number 20. Pulford was an important member of the Leaf teams that won four Stanley Cups in 1962–1964 and 1967. The Leafs traded him to the Los Angeles Kings on September 3, 1970, where he played two seasons and retired as a player in 1972.
In 1967 Pulford was elected the first president of the National Hockey League Players' Association.
Pulford became head coach of the Kings for the 1972–73 season and led the team for five years before becoming coach and general manager of the Chicago Blackhawks in 1977. As coach of the Kings, he helped Los Angeles go from being one of the worst defensive and penalty killing teams in the NHL to one of the best. He guided the Kings to their first playoff appearance in five years in 1974, and won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year in the NHL in 1975. That season, the Kings amassed 105 points, still a club record through 2013. He also led the Kings to their first playoff series wins since 1969 when they defeated the Atlanta Flames in the first round of both the 1976 and 1977 NHL playoffs. Pulford left the Kings after the 1976–77 season after constant feuding with then owner Jack Kent Cooke. Pulford wanted to become General Manager as well as coach, or at least have a bigger role in player personnel decisions. Cooke however, often meddled in player personnel matters, and in the mid-1970s, reverted to his old habits of trading promising young players and draft picks for veteran, past their prime former stars.
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