Tourigny on Jack Quinn
April 17, 2020
By Grant McCagg
I interviewed Ottawa 67’s coach Andre Tourigny earlier this year for an article that I will be publishing on Cobden, ON native Jack Quinn in my next hockey book. Here are Tourigny’s comments:
- “We believed in him so much…we knew the offence was coming. He made good adjustments in his game this year, and it paid off for him. He is super competitive and he is really smart. He wants the puck, he wants to make plays, he is super competitive. We had a lot of discussions in the summer about him getting to the inside, getting to the rebounds, screening the goalie.”
- “Last year he was scoring a lot on the rush but he was not scoring on in-tight plays…he was not inside enough. He always had the grit and character to get inside and battle, so it was just a matter of him making it a habit instead of just looking at it from the logical sense of going to the space that is the shooting area. Sometimes that’s not the primary scoring area…you get a lot of goals in close.”
- “His hockey sense, speed, hands and character are his best strengths. The best thing that can happen for me is if someone hits Quinner early in the game; that’s perfect. You always get some fire from him on the ice when that happens; he’s fun to coach.”
- “Scouts told me at the start of the season that they were concerned about his skating, and I said, ‘No, you are wrong.’ He has always been a good skater. He’s fast. Back in the office we were looking at each other and saying, ‘They say Jack Quinn has a skating problem?’ We couldn’t believe it. He’s always been fast.”
- “Quinn just played four games in four nights because of the top prospects game, and in the fourth game in Oshawa he played 24 minutes. In the third period in a one-goal game, Brett Neumann got the puck on a stetch pass in the neutral zone. Quinn was fifteen feet behind him; he caught him by the blueline, stripped him of the puck to counter attack. Later on he caught (Phil) Tomasino at the blueline on a similar play to strip him. Two unbelievable back checks when he was running on fumes. That game was the best one to describe Jack Quinn. Fourth game in four nights and he had the winning goal, and he made two unbelievable backchecks to help win the game…because he just loves to win.”
- “That showed me three things on those plays. He is a such a competitor that it’s not even funny. He’s a 200-foot player that plays both sides of the puck. And three; he is super fast. He’s not a good skater, he is a great skater. He’s a fast skater.”