CRANBERRY, Pa. -- Welcome to our series on who wore each number best for the Penguins.
The idea is being openly borrowed from our new hockey writer, Cody Tucker, and his project at the Lansing State Journal covering all the uniform numbers worn through Michigan State football history, one that's been well received by their readers and prompted heavy discussion and debate.
Under the organization of Taylor Haase, and following the voting of a big chunk of our staff, we'll publish one new one each day until completion, which should be right around the start of training camp.
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Name: Paul Coffey
Number: 77
Position: Defenseman
Born: June 1, 1961, in Weston, Ontario
Season with Penguins: 1987-92
Statistics with Penguins: 331 games, 108 goals, 332 assists in regular season, 23 games, 4 goals, 22 assists in playoffs
WHY COFFEY?
Phil Bourque once tried to explain to me what made Paul Coffey legitimately unique among skaters in NHL history, and I'm afraid it'll never fully resonate. Maybe that's because the concept of someone being so fast while exerting so little visible effort remains, to this day, something mystical.
Coffey would take one ... it wasn't so much a burst as it was a multiple-churn recoil ... then achieve peak speed in two, at most three smooth strides. His torso would stay tall, his chin way up, so the effort would look that much lesser, but it also helped him become among the best ever at breakout passes. He'd lead a rush as easily as he'd offer a late option. He'd make a slam-dunk pass as easily as he'd slap it home himself, low and compact with the windup to match the ease of the skating.
Maybe it was his famous propensity for squeezing his feet into skates two sizes two small.
Or his equally famous conditioning-freak workouts on the exercise bike.
Or just, as he once put it, "I'd like to say it was all hard work, but I was given a talent for skating."
Not enough superlatives up there?
OK, try this: The day of Nov. 24, 1987, will forever live in the hearts and minds of the Penguins' faithful of that era as the day the franchise truly grew up. Mario Lemieux was in full swing, but he still hadn't played a single playoff game. The team had improved, but it was nowhere near worth taking seriously. But on that day, Eddie Johnston, who's better known for having been on the wrong end of the greatest trade in franchise history three years later -- Ron Francis, Ulf Samuelsson, etc., from Hartford -- took advantage of Coffey's contract dispute in Edmonton to acquire Coffey from the Wayne Gretzky-led Oilers, along with Dave Hunter and Wayne Van Dorp, for Craig Simpson, Dave Hannan, Moe Mantha and Chris Joseph.
By 1991, with Coffey in the fold, albeit out of most of those playoffs with a broken jaw, the Penguins were champions for the first time.
He didn't last in Pittsburgh through the following season, wearing out his welcome here as he did in several stops in large part because the traits he brought, obvious as they were on offense, didn't convince coaches that his subpar defensive coverage was excusable. In the modern game, with advanced analytics emphasizing possession becoming increasingly influential, that might never have been the case.
A video look at a one-of-a-kind career:
WHAT'S HE DOING NOW?
Coffey, now 57, has never really left hockey, serving as coach, GM and currently co-owner of the Ontario Junior Hockey League's Pickering Panthers. He's a regular at the Penguins' various alumni events, and he appeared at the season opener of the ECHL's Johnstown Tomahawks this past October.
IT WAS SPOKEN
"They can't score if we've got the puck." -- Coffey, in 1989
"Pittsburgh, it's a football town. But my first training camp there, which was in ‘88, I was blown away by the amount of people that came out to watch us. You didn't get that in Canada. I said, this is a hockey town. There's real fans here." -- Coffey, in 2010
"I want to play; Bob Johnson is the guy who says 'No.' The doctor advises that it's too risky, which is true, and I respect his opinion. But I'm willing to take the chance." -- Coffey, in 1991 on the broken jaw that kept him from much of the Stanley Cup Final
"I have nothing to be bitter or disappointed about. The game owes me nothing. I don't play for anybody else. I play for myself and the team. I know that the things I'm most proud of in my career aren't individual records, they're the Stanley Cups and the Canada Cups we won. I played against the best in the world and came out on top." -- Coffey, as his career was closing in 1999
"Not me and him. You have the Gretzkys, you have the Lemieuxs. You have Sid, who’s been great for 10 years. Then you get McDavid. Every once in a while these guys do come along." -- Coffey in 2017, asked to compare his skating to that of Connor McDavid
HONORABLE MENT'ION
None
ANY DEBATE?
The only debate into which Coffey should fall as it relates to the Penguins is whether he, Larry Murphy, Sergei Gonchar, Randy Carlyle, Dave Burrows or Kris Letang is the franchise's greatest defenseman. All depends on how the criteria get defined, I suppose.
Next: Chris Bradford has No. 81, of which there actually have been two.
Previously: Richard Park
