DU Alum Kevin Dineen Named NHL Head Coach

(above) DU Alum Kevin Dineen will be the new head coach of the Florida Panthers
TSN's Bob McKenzie announced via Twitter today that DU Alum Kevin Dineen will be introduced as the new head coach of the Florida Panthers on Wednesday at 3 PM ET.  

Kevin Dineen, played for DU in the early Eighties, the Canadian Olympic team and scored 760 points in a 19-year NHL career. Dineen is currently the head coach of the AHL's Portland Pirates.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats Dino!

du78 said...

Congrats to Kevin!! I think the last DU alum to be an NHL head coach was Keith Magnuson with the Blackhawks.

dggoddard said...

Pretty exciting day for those DU alums that have Dino programmed on their cell phones.

Guessing there will be some trips down to South Beach this winter.

ScottA said...

Way cool. Kevin was a great DU player. I went to a LA Kings game vs Kevin's Hartford Whalers in the old LA Forum a looooong time ago. As this was before Gretzky's LA tenure, SoCal didn't even know the Kings existed. Bought a ducat in the parking lot for like 5 bucks...seat was 1st row behind Hartford bench. The whole arena (like maybe 800 people) and Kevin heard me yell "Go DU". Kevin was undoubtedly the only other person in the place who knew what I was talking about so we high fived over the glass (much lower in those days). Best of luck Kevin.

Anonymous said...

Didn't Marsh Johnston have a head coaching gig about the same time?

Anonymous said...

@ anon 4:54

Yep. Colorado Rockies, for a season or two.

Anonymous said...

Well, it looks like he was an assistant here for the Rockies and became the interim head coach for about 2/3 of a season, then they moved to Jersey and he returned to being an assistant.

http://hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=2576

Anonymous said...

Great to see Dino get his NHL shot. Perhaps the hardest working DU player I ever saw...

T

Anonymous said...

Kevin made a CC goalie bleed on the ice, without even actually touching him (Marty Wakelyn)...just with the power of his slap shot.

He needn't do anything else on the ice the rest of his life to become a legend...then he captained two NHL teams, was an all-star and scored a lot of goals...grade A in my book...