Former Blackhawks Head Coach Orval Tessier has passed away

Former Blackhawks Head coach Orval Tessier passed away on Thursday in his home town of Cornwall, Ontario.

Orval Tessier died on August 25 at the age of 89.

He was a professional ice hockey center and coach who played for the Montreal Canadians and Boston Bruins for parts of three seasons between 1954 and 1960.

He played in a total of 59 regular season games. From 1953 to 1965, the rest of his career, he played in the minor leagues, where he was a good offensive player.

He won two scoring titles with the Kingston Frontenacs of the Eastern Professional Hockey League. In 1961–62, the league’s most valuable player and most sportsmanlike player were both chosen by the players.

After retiring from the game, Tessier went on to have a prosperous career as a coach. Tessier led the Cornwall Royals to victory in the junior ice hockey tournament known as the Memorial Cup in the year 1972.

Tessier was the head coach of the Kitchener Rangers when they competed for the Memorial Cup in 1981.

Tessier was hired to be the head coach of the New Brunswick Hawks, who play in the American Hockey League, for the season that followed.

In 1982, under his direction, the Hawks skated to a triumph in the Calder Cup. Tessier was elevated to the position of head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks, a position he held for the subsequent three seasons.

In 1983, the Jack Adams Award was given to Tessier for his outstanding work as a coach in the NHL.

Tessier was quoted as claiming that the Blackhawks players required “heart transplants” during the 1983 Campbell Conference Finals after they lost to the Edmonton Oilers by a score of 2 games to 0 and surrendered 16 goals in the first two games of the series.

The joke did not motivate the Hawks, who lost the last two games of the series at Chicago Stadium, losing in the Campbell Conference championship game for the second year in a row.

Tessier was a scout for the Colorado Avalanche when they won the Stanley Cup in 2001.