Quenneville to coach Team Canada

[Weekes Head]

According to TSN.ca:

Quenneville to coach Team Canada

TSN.ca Staff

3/15/2004

Joel Quenneville will coach defending champion Canada at the world hockey championships in Prague next month.

``The challenge is on,'' Quenneville said on the phone from Calgary, where Hockey Canada made the announcement Monday.

Quenneville, most recently a guest analyst with TSN, became the favourite to coach Canada when he was unexpectedly fired by the St. Louis Blues on Feb. 24.

Sources told TSN last week that Quenneville would be a member of the staff, but that his precise role was yet to be finalized.

``It was a difficult process,'' Quenneville said of his shock firing. ``But when I heard this news it brightened up my day for sure. This is a tremendous opportunity and I'm really proud and honoured.''

The 45-year-old native of Windsor, Ont., has long been considered one of the brightest coaches in the game and was an outside candidate to coach Canada at the World Cup of Hockey this summer before Pat Quinn was brought back from the Olympic team.

Under Quenneville, who won the Jack Adams Trophy as NHL coach of the year in 1999-2000, the Blues won 40 or more games five of the six full seasons he was behind the bench.

But his seventh season behind the bench was disappointing.

The Blues, ravaged by injuries, found themselves fighting for their playoff lives in the Western Conference in a year where they were expected to challenge for first place.

Now he gets a chance to do something he's never done before, coach international hockey.

This year's world championships run April 24 to May 9 in the Czech capital. Canada will be in a preliminary round group with Austria, France and Switzerland, opening the tournament April 25 against the Austrians.

Anson Carter's overtime goal gave Canada the gold medal last May in Helsinki in a 3-2 win over Sweden. It was Canada's first medal at the tournament since a gold in 1997.

Andy Murray of the Los Angeles Kings coached that team.

http://tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?id=76486