His mother, Yvonne Francis, maintained the household during the Depression, and an uncle who played for a senior hockey team taught young Emile the game.Īs Francis told it, he got his nickname in the 1945-46 season, when a sportswriter impressed by his play in goal for the Moose Jaw Canucks of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League wrote that he was “quick as a cat.”įrancis joined the N.H.L.’s Black Hawks midway through the 1946-47 season and played in 73 games with them over two seasons. 13, 1926, in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. “You have to keep pushing, pushing to create desire, to make some guys realize the importance of each game.”Įmile Percy Francis was born on Sept. “Ninety percent of winning is desire,” he told The New York Times in 1967. A plaque he posted in their locker room read, “We Supply Everything but Guts.” So he had no hesitation about haranguing his Rangers when he felt they weren’t playing smart, aggressive hockey. In 19 seasons playing in junior hockey, the minor leagues and the N.H.L., he had broken his nose many times, taken more than 200 stitches and lost numerous teeth. But his only run to the Stanley Cup finals as the Rangers’ coach came in 1972, when the team lost to the Boston Bruins, four games to two.Ī wiry 5-foot-6 and 145 pounds or so, Francis was an intense figure pacing behind the Rangers’ bench, two L-shaped scars on his chin from his goalie days attesting to his toughness.
When he was behind the bench for all or part of nine consecutive seasons, his teams had winning regular-season records and always made the playoffs. “I didn’t have a patent because I didn’t even know what a patent was.”įrancis was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as a “builder” of the game in 1982 and received the Lester Patrick Trophy that year for contributions to hockey in the United States.įrancis coached stars like the goalie Eddie Giacomin, the forwards Jean Ratelle and Rod Gilbert, and the defenseman Brad Park. “The gloves were on the market within a month,” he told NHL.com in a 2016 interview, recalling how manufacturers, including Rawlings, had been able to sell them under their brand name ever since. It snared pucks more easily than the goalies’ customary glove, a regular five-finger hockey model with a small amount of padding, and goalies around the league were soon copying his creation. He first wielded it in goal while in junior hockey and then introduced it to the N.H.L. Having played baseball as a teenager, he took a first baseman’s mitt - a model endorsed by the Yankees’ George McQuinn - and attached a hockey-style cuff to it.
667 mark in his only season with the Rangers, when he coached them to the 1994 Stanley Cup championship.įrancis was also an innovator in the design of goalies’ equipment. His career winning percentage (.602) was bested only by Mike Keenan, who posted a. He set Ranger coaching records that still stand for most games (654) and most victories (342). He was virtually a one-man operation with the Rangers as their general manager from 1964 to 1976 and their coach for most of that time. He found his niche behind the bench and in the front office, with the Rangers, the St. But he played in only 95 National Hockey League games, with the Chicago Black Hawks and the Rangers. When he played junior hockey in Saskatchewan, Francis was known as the Cat for his quick reflexes in goal. The team did not say where Francis died, but he had been living in South Florida. Emile Francis, a battle-scarred goaltender who played sparingly for lowly Rangers teams before rebuilding the franchise as its coach and general manager in a Hall of Fame hockey career spanning half a century, died on Saturday.