Rick Ley
Richard Norman "Rick" Ley ( born November 2, 1948 in Orillia, Ontario ) is a retired Canadian ice hockey player (defender) and coach, from 1968 to 1981 for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Hartford Whalers in the National Hockey League and the New England Whalers played in the World Hockey Association.
Career
Ley played during his junior time together with Derek Sanderson, Jean Pronovost and Tom Webster at the Niagara Falls Flyers in the OHA. The Toronto Maple Leafs selected him in the NHL Amateur Draft 1966 in the third round as the 16th from. 1965 and 1968 he won the Memorial Cup with the Flyers.
After starting in the 1968/69 season with the Tulsa Oilers of the Central Hockey League, he came in the course of the season with the Maple Leafs on his debut in the NHL. Thanks to strong performances he managed soon to draw up a regular place.
For the 1972/73 season he was among the first players who followed the call of the newly formed World Hockey Association. He signed with the New England Whalers. There he met again on Tom Webster, with whom he had already played together as juniors players. In the very first season, he won with his team the Avco World Trophy and steered itself three goals and four assists in the final series at. At the Summit Series in 1974, he represented Canada against the Soviet Union. In the following years he was one of the defensive pillars of the Whalers. In the last two years of the WHA, he was elected team All-Star in 1979 and honored as the best defender of the WHA with the Dennis A. Murphy Trophy. The Maple Leafs also tempted, after dissolution of the WHA retrieve, but the Whalers managed to take him into their NHL team. He was the first captain of the Whalers, but after 16 games in the season 1980/81 he ended his active career.
The Whalers honored him, in which they no longer awarded his jersey number 2. After moving to Carolina, the number was released.
In the season 1981/82 he was assistant coach of the Hartford Whalers and the following year he took over the American Hockey League farm team, the Binghamton Whalers as head coach. In the NHL, he did not return until the 1989/90 season, after four years at the Muskegon Lumberjacks of the International Hockey League, the Hartford Whalers picked him as head coach. There he stayed for two seasons and joined in 1991 as an assistant coach with the Vancouver Canucks. After the team had reached the 1994 Stanley Cup Final series, Quinn handed to season 1994 /95, the position behind the band at Ley. Shortly before the end of the following season Quinn broke him off again. Ley remained for some time as a scout for the Canucks. 1998 obliged the Toronto Maple Leafs Ley as an assistant coach, where he worked until 2006.
Statistics
Sporting successes
- Memorial Cup: 1965 and 1968
- Avco World Trophy: 1973
Personal Awards
- OHA -Jr. First All -Star Team: 1968
- WHA First All -Star Team: 1979
- WHA Second All-Star Team: 1978
- Dennis A. Murphy Trophy: 1979
- Commissioner's Trophy: 1985