Canadian ice hockey coach
Thomas Nathaniel Ivan (January 31, 1911 – June 25, 1999) was a Canadian ice hockey coach and general manager. He served as a National Hockey League (NHL) head coach for the Detroit Red Wings from 1947 to 1954 where he won three Stanley Cups, and was the general manager for the Chicago Black Hawks from 1954 to 1977, winning a Stanley Cup in 1961. He produced an overall record of 288–174–111.
Career.
Ivan was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Macedonian immigrant parents. He never played professional hockey, as a severe facial injury shortened his career while playing in the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association. His junior hockey days in Ontario, on up to his first pro coaching job with the Omaha Knights in the Central Hockey League, were the first steps in a distinguished Hall of Fame career. Ivan was a keen judge of talent that helped discover young prospects like Gordie Howe and several other National Hockey League players that would go on to Hall of Fame careers.
Ivan is one of eleven coaches to have won the Stanley Cup three times as a coach, and he did so on the strength of seven playoff appearances (second least among those coaches, with only Pete Green doing it better). He took the reins as Black Hawks coach-general manager in 1954, after winning six straight regular-season championships with Detroit. At the time the Hawks were a franchise in trouble. Ivan led a rebuilding effort, adding farm teams and stocking the Hawks' farm system with good prospects. He also made key trades that would help fortify the Hawks into a contending team for the next several seasons. Rudy Pilous was hired to coach the Hawks by Tommy Ivan and he would eventually guide the team to the 1961 Stanley Cup. The 1961 Hawks team produced the results that Ivan's rebuilding process began back in 1954. The Black Hawks also reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 1962, 1965, 1971, and 1973. Ivan served 25 years as Black Hawks GM and then served as the Black Hawks' vice-president and alternate governor (NHL Board of Governors) in the years following his GM tenure.
Death.
He died of complications of a kidney ailment in 1999.
References.
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