Throwback Thursday: Bert O’Brien
Photo: John Walsh – Ottawa Citizen
On Friday, August 7, the Ottawa Valley Hockey Oldtimers will honour longtime Ottawa 67’s assistant coach Bert O’Brien at their 45th annual tournament at Hylands Golf Club.
In honour of the exciting occasion, this week’s Throwback Thursday features an article written in 2009 about Bert, his brotherly bond with Brian Kilrea, and his impact on Ottawa and the OHL.
Acclaim Finally Finds 67’s Stalwart O’Brien
OTTAWA – March 4, 2009
As sure as the saying goes that behind every great man is a great woman, so, too, must it be true that every great head coach has a great assistant.
For 22 of the past 23 winters (Brian Kilrea retired for a year in 1994-95), Bert O’Brien has been just that and more.
Friend. Confidant. Travelling companion. Euchre partner. Sounding board. Right arm. The go-to guy in a rift between coach and player. The straight man when it came to joke telling. And golfing buddy.
There are not many places Kilrea has gone over nearly quarter century without O’Brien right there with him.
And when Kilrea finally turns out the lights on his brilliant coaching career this spring for a new career in scouting, O’Brien will be right behind him out the door, leaving the key under the mat for new head coach Chris Byrne.
The end is near, only a playoff series loss away, and the two are starting to think about coming to grips with the “after-life” of coaching, O’Brien in particular.
“People asked me at Christmas about the end coming, and I told them there were too many games to go, that I hadn’t really thought about it,” said O’Brien, who turns 70 in July. “But now, every time you go into a rink, you’re thinking, ‘It’s the last trip in here.’ And you go to the next rink and think, ‘Well it’s the last trip in here.’ Now I start to wonder what I’ll be doing this time next year.
“And I know the guy taking over will do a great, great job. I know because he’s that good. The tradition will continue. It’s just going to be different coming to the rink.”
It will also be different coming to the rink tonight for O’Brien, as the 67’s play host to the Barrie Colts, a potential first-round playoff opponent.
The night is O’Brien’s own, complete with a salute to the longest-tenured assistant coach in 67’s history. O’Brien’s night comes just nine days before the club honours the old man himself on March 15.
It’s sure to be a special night for O’Brien, even though attention is something the quiet and most unassuming assistant never sought, and the applause will surely embarrass him just a little. The betting is that Mayor Larry O’Brien won’t be able to read the proclamation of Bert O’Brien Day fast enough for the proud Irishman.
Even before the ceremony begins, it’s easy to imagine O’Brien, with the crowd cheering, reluctantly raising his head and giving a quick wave as if to say, “Let’s get the game going.”
It’s also a safe bet there isn’t a rink in Ottawa, or the Valley for that matter, that O’Brien hasn’t been at since he volunteered to manage a bantam A team in Gloucester in 1971 with coach Ken Johnston.
“I had no ambition to coach,” said O’Brien, a goalie at St. Pat’s High School in the 1950s who played with the likes of Gerry Kealey, Donnie Redmond and Jackie Gosselin.
“I’d been married three years, we had no kids, and I thought, ‘Who had more time than me to give some time?”
So he hooked up with the Gloucester bantams, where the players included future hockey agent Rolly Hedges and future NHLer John Barrett.
From there he moved south, managing the South Ottawa Canadians midget team for coaches George Barney and Porky Moore.
O’Brien had only heard of Kilrea back then.
Then, in 1973-74, Kilrea got replaced at Ottawa West, and came over to South to replace Barney and Moore.
That’s where the connection between Kilrea and O’Brien began, and the two have been friends ever since.
At the end of that one season, Kilrea began his first go-round with the 67’s and O’Brien replaced him as coach of the midgets.
And looking back on the midgets, O’Brien can’t really remember wins and losses as well as he can remember the personalities, great guys such as future NHLers Jim Peplinski and Stu Gavin, future collegians Danny Makuck and Eddie Small, and standout juniors Jeff Mitchell and Robbie Clouthier.
From midget, he moved on to junior B for a nine-year run, buying the Ottawa 67’s junior B team for $1 with right-hand-man Bill MacAndrew and embarking on a run that included Ottawa District Hockey Association championships on three occasions.
He rarely forgets a former player and oftentimes knows now where they work.
Players such as Jeff Mulcock and Mark Hoople in goal, defencemen like Hughie Mitchener, John Barber and John Poirier, and forwards who played bigger than they really were like Marc Martin, Mike Marta, Eddie Sunstrum, Billy Kilrea, Patty Higgins and captain David McDonell, and all-time favourite John Nevins.
O’Brien’s teams won a ton and had even more fun doing it.
He tried to walk away in 1984 and pass it on to former pro Bob Ellett, only to have Ellett leave and take the head job with the 67’s while Kilrea was with the Islanders on Long Island.
O’Brien had to return and finish the year before packing it in.
“I thought I’d retired permanently then,” O’Brien said. “And (his wife) Cathy was sad when I quit. You have to remember she’s a bigger hockey fan than I am.”
That retirement lasted until the summer of 1986 when, at a stag for former 67’s player Eddie Hospodar, Kilrea leaned over at one point during the festivities and whispered to O’Brien that he wasn’t going back to the National Hockey League’s New York Islanders, where he had been an assistant coach.
Weeks later, Kilrea phoned O’Brien at work on a Monday morning and asked him to be his assistant with the 67’s.
O’Brien told Kilrea he’d have to talk to a couple of people first, namely his boss at Machron Power Systems, and his wife, and he’d get back to him.
Kilrea said, “Well good, the press conference to announce us is at noon.”
And it has been non-stop laughs ever since.
“I still refer to it as the greatest hobby there is, working with young men,” O’Brien said. “Every day, there’s a laugh. Every day is a fun day.”
