Welcome toNHL99,The Athletic’s countdown ofthe best 100 players in modern NHL history. We’re ranking 100 players but calling it 99 because we all know who’s No. 1 — it’s the 99 spots behind No. 99 we have to figure out. Every Monday through Saturday until February we’ll unveil new members of the list.
When Paul Coffey talks about what he’s proudest of in life, he doesn’t start with the back-to-back Norris Trophies he won in 1985 and 1986, or the third one he won in 1995.
He doesn’t go to any of the four Stanley Cup championships (three with the Oilers and one with the Penguins).
He doesn’t look back on his No. 7 being retired by the Oilers, or his 2005 induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
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He doesn’t point to his litany of NHL records, either: most regular-season and playoff goals by a defenseman (455), most goals by a defenseman in a single season (48), most career playoff points by a defenseman (196), most 40-goal (two), 50-assist (14), 60-assist (11) and 80-point (eight) seasons, fastest defenseman to 1,000 points (770 games), only defenseman to be a first team All-Star on three different teams, the list goes on.
Those things, along with sitting second in all-time scoring among defensem*n with 1,531 points in 1,409 games, made him No. 18 on The Athletic’slist of the 100 best players in modern NHL history.
But they aren’t what he’s proudest of.
When he’s done talking about his 28-year marriage to his wife, Stephanie, and his three children, 27-year-old Savannah (who works in marketing with the NHL Alumni Association), 24-year-old Blake (who played Division III college hockey at Hobart College and now works in investment banking) and 19-year-old Christian (who is attending and playing club hockey at the University of Denver), he talks about the two places that shaped him.
November 9, 1:45 p.m.
It’s a sunny afternoon in Malton, Ont., a community Northeast of Mississauga adjacent to the Toronto Pearson International Airport. At the corner of Goreway Drive and Derry Road, apartment complexes, gas stations and retail fronts diverge away from a hockey arena.
The rink’s large parking lot sits mostly empty but for a few adult players who filter toward its front doors with bags over their shoulders for a 2 p.m. pickup game.
On their way in, they wander past a towering, wooden castle play structure and through a pair of automatic sliding doors lined with a poster advertising “OHL hockey starting at $18” with the local Mississauga Steelheads.
Through a second set of doors, they enter a small lobby and peer up at its TV, which directs them to the appropriate dressing room.
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On the wall opposite the TV, two plaques hang. The first, bronze and etched with white lettering, reads “Malton Memorial Recreation Association Incorporated” and honors hundreds of names as “qualified regular and devoted workers.”
Next to it, a brown and bronze plaque welcomes players to Paul Coffey Arena and Park, with a photo of its namesake in a suit and bow tie holding a trophy.
The plaque reads, in part: “Paul grew up in Malton, where he played for the Mississauga Hockey League. An avid athlete, he played lacrosse, soccer and baseball for Malton. He was voted Mississauga’s Professional Athlete of the Year eight times and inducted into the Mississauga Sports Hall of Fame in 2003.”
Through a third set of doors, the rink’s lone pad is occupied by the NHLPA Goals and Dreams’ Ascension Ice Sports Program, and a group of teenagers is on the ice learning to skate, each adorned in a “Be A Player” jersey.
Outside, below clear blue skies, is as expansive a green space as exists in the Greater Toronto Area, also named after its local legend: Paul Coffey Cricket Ground, Paul Coffey Park, Paul Coffey Dog Park.
There are basketball courts, a skatepark, bocce ball tracks, tennis courts, trails, baseball diamonds, sheltered picnic areas, soccer pitches and playgrounds.
The space is so big that it takes 15 minutes to walk from one end to the other, so there are paved narrow one-lane roads throughout.
It’s quiet and extremely well-kept, as pairs of people walk through.
On a phone call a week after my visit, Coffey pauses as he talks about the renaming of what used to be Malton Arena and Wildwood Park.
“That’s one honor that I don’t take lightly,” he says. “I grew up there, Malton has always been my hometown, and I’ve always tried to do whatever I can do for the community in Mississauga when I can do it, so that’s something that I’m proud of. Hopefully it’ll be there forever. It’s great for the kids. And, hey, it’s the arena I started in in 1965 when I first put the blades on. It’s very true to me.”
Then he starts talking about his second place — a very different kind of place, but one he’s proud of just the same.
November 29, 12:50 p.m.
About 20 kilometers straight north of Malton on the drive up Highway 50, just before you reach a pair of signs welcoming you to Bolton and the Township of Caledon, you’re met on your righthand side by a Toyota dealership, a Kia dealership, a car wash and a four-story Access Storage facility.
On the last Tuesday in November, it’s blustery, overcast and cold, with temperatures dropping close to freezing as the seasons change.
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As traffic races down the industrial road, lined mostly with warehouses and gas stations before it enters town, seven red flags flap in the wind trying to catch the eyes of drivers. They read: “BOXES AND MOVING SUPPLIES,” “FIRST 4 WEEKS FREE” and “SELF STORAGE.”
Next to Access Storage, the car wash’s sign promotes itself as open 24 hours a day. At its center, there’s a coin machine displaying wash options. On each side of the machine there are four bays. Despite the cold, half of the eight of them are currently in use.
Past them a little further, different flags wave, advertising Kia Motors’ “pre-owned center.” Between the flags there’s a fleet of used and new cars, the used ones marked by a bright green sticker and a year indicating the car’s age.
Before you enter the dealership, you can’t miss something else above its doors: the words “Paul Coffey” in red.
Coffey bought the seven acres of land underneath all three lots nearly two decades ago after he secured a grant to open the Toyota dealership next door. He has since sold the Toyota dealership, but Paul Coffey’s Bolton Kia, the car wash, and the partnership with Access Storage on their 100,000-square foot facility are his own.
He calls it “arguably the smartest thing I ever did.”
“When I retired in 2001,” Coffey said, “I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I just knew what I didn’t want to do: I didn’t want to jump right into hockey. I had opportunities but it was important for me to be around. At that point we had two kids, we had another one in 2003, and it was just important to me to be around them as much as I could. But I always loved real estate (and) I didn’t have enough money to do nothing.
“I knew I had to work, I knew I had to put the money to work. It doesn’t make me smart, but it has worked out really well.”
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He’s proud of it because, in life after hockey, it has kept him busy and provided an income coming out of a career in which his first contract paid him $60,000 and $70,000 CAD, and in which his highest-paid season in the NHL earned him $3.6 million USD, a far cry from the salaries of today.
Though he and Stephanie now live in Toronto, he’s up at the property in Bolton almost daily when he’s not traveling.
“The car wash doesn’t run by itself. It’s coined so you’ve got to be up there making sure things are tickityboo,” he said. “The car business was an eye opener for me in the business world because that can be a tough business, but you learn a lot.”
About five years ago, Coffey invested in another business that has recently opened its offices in Aurora, Ont., called Environmental 360 Solutions (E360S), dealing in waste management across Canada.
He is also back in hockey, with a talked-about but shrouded-in-mystery new role with the Oilers. When he fielded my call, he was in between a 12-day trip to Normandy and Paris with a group of friends, lunch back in Toronto with Darryl Sittler and Tiger Williams, and a flight to meet the Oilers in New York for their three-game trip against the Devils, Islanders and Rangers.
When I pressed him for specifics on his new role with the team (he previously worked for a time as a team consultant with the Coyotes, an assistant coach with Canada’s 2020 Spengler Cup team, the GM and head coach of the OJHL’s Jr. A Pickering Panthers, and the Oilers as a skills coach), he laughed.
“Everybody wants to know,” he said between chuckles before caving. “I work directly with ownership. I work directly with Daryl (Katz). Wasn’t looking for a job but I’m happy to work. I absolutely love it. (It’s) a little bit bigger, senior position (I took) last year. It gets me back in the game and I find that as much as the game has changed, it’s still the same. It’s exciting for me. I get a high-level view of arguably one of the greatest players of all time (Connor McDavid). The coaches are awesome — very approachable on all fronts. And Kenny Holland’s an easy guy to work with. So I do that and then business interests I got a lot of cool things, a lot of stuff going on. So I’m busy on all fronts, which is great.”
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When Coffey talks about the game — the part about it changing while also remaining the same — he lights up with insight and in doing so gives a glimpse into what his voice might sound like inside the Oilers organization.
“The guys are bigger, stronger, faster, but so are cars. But are they smarter? I hope so. But I see some guys coming around the net and they can’t make a stick-to-stick pass to the winger. So I don’t understand that part of it — the fundamentals — and the good teams work on it every day and still let their teams play,” he says, pointing to Jon Cooper’s Lightning and Rod Brind’Amour’s Hurricanes as examples of teams that give their players freedom but play with fundamentals.
“The teams that win championships, and this will never change, are the ones that are fundamentally strong. But you can never, ever, ever take the game away from the players. The players are the ones that decide. The real good coaches over the years, and there have been lots, are able to communicate that with their players and get their big guys on side believing in what they’re trying to do and not sucking the life out of them. Everybody today keeps saying these kids are different. They’re not different. You just have to talk to them.”
Before he finishes his thought, he adds one more thing: “Write this down,” he says. “Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want the truth. And that is the truth. You’ll see your average guys when the coach comes around the corner, they run and hide. The good players, they need to be told where to be and what to do. But your great players just want the truth: ‘Hey f— man, you had a bad game.’ ‘Yeah I know I did but I’ll be better tomorrow.’ ‘Perfect, see you tomorrow.’ That’s the truth.”
When he talks about McDavid — whom he called one of the all-time greats — he harkens back to his own playing days to find suitable comparisons.
“The beauty of Mario, the beauty of Wayne, the beauty of Stevie Y, and Trottier, and the late Bossy, is that the great players want to be champions. They don’t want to be great players because they know they’re going to be great players. And that’s the beauty of watching Connor McDavid night-in and night-out now is he knows he’s going to be a great player — that part’s written and is going to continue to be written,” he says. “But to be a champion? The true greats know what it’s all about.”
When Coffey looks back on his career, he doesn’t just reminisce about the glory days of the Oilers, either. He speaks fondly of his time in Pittsburgh, and of the Stanley Cup he won there, crediting No. 66 with turning a Steelers town into a hockey destination — and for guiding No. 87.
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“I’m very, very, very proud of what we did in Pittsburgh — and when I say we, I really do mean everybody, led of course by one the greats of all time, Mario,” Coffey said. “I do believe that the Oilers thought that it wasn’t a good place for me to go but I played that summer in the ’87 Canada Cup with Mario and all you had to do was walk into the dressing room and you knew you were in good hands.”
When he talks about his time in Detroit after the Penguins, he says twice how much he loved it there, too.
“Unfortunately, they made a good trade and then they started winning Stanley Cups after I was out of there, but that’s the way it goes. I’m a big boy. I had the chance to play with Stevie in his prime and then getting the chance to play with the Russians when they started, I mean Sergei (Fedorov) was a special talent and Igor (Larionov) came, and Slava (Fetisov) came, and Vladimir (Konstantinov) came, and (Slava) Kozlov, and they’re incredible people,” he says.
After Detroit, as he bounced through Hartford, Philadelphia, Chicago, Carolina and Boston in the twilight of his career, Coffey cherished each stop along the way.
“The last couple of years, did I get tossed around a bit? You’re f—— right I did. But I remember my dad saying, ‘Hey, don’t take it personally son, you’re going to be a hired gun.’ And I never did,” Coffey said. “I told myself that near the end: ‘You’re an old guy hanging around, you’ve got lots to offer to the young guys, so make sure you’re a good leader every single day.’ I never once had any bitterness toward anybody and I won’t. The game is too good. The game has never owed me anything. If anything, I owe everything I have to the game, whether it be my grit, my not willing to back down in business, or just the friends I’ve made along the way.”
But in the end, though he has found his way back into that game, his heart is still with the life he built with his family — and in his two places.
(Top photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
