Punch Mclean Dies in Friday Single-Vehicle Accident
punch mclean died Friday in a single-vehicle accident, ending the life of one of New Westminster hockey’s defining figures. He was 93 years old and living in Coquitlam when he died.
Patrick Singh, who had hosted McLean and other local dignitaries at Queen’s Park Arena on Wednesday to launch a statue campaign, said, "I lost a true close friend today" and "I’ll cherish the closeness we shared."
Queen’s Park Arena statue campaign
The Wednesday news conference in New Westminster came just two days before McLean’s death. Singh, the director of the Ernie Punch McLean Legacy Foundation and a friend of McLean’s, was among those pushing to put a statue in front of the rink.
That public campaign now lands in a sharper light because McLean was still being honored while he was alive. The attention around Queen’s Park Arena reflected how central he remained to the city’s hockey identity long after his coaching days ended.
New Westminster Bruins years
McLean’s hockey record in New Westminster is the reason his name carried weight. He coached the old New Westminster Bruins to four straight Memorial Cup appearances in the 1970s, and the team won the Memorial Cup in 1977 and 1978 under him.
He guided the Bruins for 14 seasons after moving the Estevan Bruins to New West in 1971. That move made the club the Western Canadian Hockey League’s first west coast franchise, and McLean eventually coached more than 100 players who went on to play in the NHL.
His bench total of 1,067 games is the second most all-time in the Western Hockey League. Before the Bruins years, McLean had earned an invitation to the New York Rangers’ training camp at 17, then joined the Humboldt Indians of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League after not making the Rangers and later became an assistant coach there.
McLean’s long hockey path
McLean’s life in the game stretched far beyond New Westminster. He grew up in Estevan, Saskatchewan, and his path ran from a junior invitation with the Rangers to coaching and ownership in the Western Canadian Hockey League, then to the Bruins’ run of championships and Memorial Cup trips.
There was also a narrower brush with disaster in 2009, when he went missing in the bush for four days and five nights after tumbling into a ravine and getting disoriented while climbing out. A helicopter pilot spotted him from the air as he walked along a trail and helped bring that search to an end.
Barry Beck called McLean the kind of coach who extracted everything from his players, saying, "His key to success was how he managed to get the utmost from every player" and "Every Bruin would have died for Ernie. That’s how much he was loved." Mark Lofthouse said McLean "had a blueprint to winning and each player felt they all had a significant role. He lived his life to the fullest."
