All Your Latest News

The Mighty Quinn’s homecoming turned out to be a not-so mighty performance by his basement-dwelling Edmonton Oilers.

In his first game behind an NHL bench at the Air Canada Centre since he coached his last match for the Toronto Maple Leafs on Apr. 18, 2006, coach Pat Quinn watched his last-place Oilers drop a 6-4 stinker to the Leafs on Saturday.

The ACC crowd of 19,244 gave Quinn an appreciative ovation during the first television timeout, when there was video tribute shown on the arena’s scoreboard to the Mighty Quinn, folk song made well loved by the band Manfred Mann in 1968, written by Bob Dylan a year earlier.

“I didn’t see what was up there,” Quinn said afterwards. “But I could hear the music. This was a terrific place for me both back when I was a player and for the years I was coaching here.

“I have terrific memories and that was a nice touch and I’m quite pleased. As disappointed as I was with how our team went that part added a small satisfaction to it.”

Quinn waved his appreciation to the crowd.

“I reckon I’m an emotional person,” he said. “The gesture was a very nice one. I reckon I had a bit of a like affair with the fans here and they showed that they didn’t mind me, and that was pretty nice.”

There haven’t been many nice moments for Quinn in his first season behind the Oilers bench. While the Leafs, the youngest team in the league, won for the fourth time in five games as their youth battle for jobs for next season, the same can’t be said for the Quinn’s team.

Looking to the draft

The Oilers are the third youngest team in the NHL. But the loss in Toronto nearly ensures that Edmonton will end 30th. As a result the Oilers will have the best shot at landing the first overall selection when the NHL conducts its springtime lottery to determine the order the non-playoff teams will draft.

“It was disappointing for a few guys who seemed lost in our zone,” Quinn said. “We were flying for 10 minutes. But we haven’t played a 10-minute game in a long time. It wasn’t excellent enough. We had a few guys play hard, but not enough.”

With 14 games remaining, the 29th-place Leafs now have a seven-point advantage over the Oilers. Of course, Toronto doesn’t own its first-round selection. The Leafs gave it up in the trade to land Phil Kessel, who scored his 24th and 25th goals of the season in the win.

The Leafs outshot their opponents 47-29 and held a 2-0 lead after the first period and a 5-2 advantage following 40 minutes.

The affair was chippy, highlighted by Edmonton goalie Jeff Deslauriers, who was lifted after the second period after going after Toronto defenceman Dion Phaneuf during a goal-mouth scramble two minutes after the Leafs went up 4-1 in the second period.

Deslauriers had a reputation for such play in the minors.

“He had a few pucks go in on him and his team wasn’t protecting him,” Quinn said. “He got bumped into and I guess he didn’t like it very much.”

Dirty play?

Later, Phaneuf riled the Oilers when he stuck out his behind and knocked down Edmonton forward Ryan Potulny. Quinn accused Phaneuf of kneeing the Oilers forward.

“I reckon he kneed our player there and that shouldn’t be in the game,” Quinn said. “He plays a hard game, I know that. We keep talking about it, that we don’t want that stuff in our game, but certain guys do it and do it often. In that case, it was a terrible play.”

The Tyler Bozak-Nikolai Kulemin-Kessel line was flying for the Maple Leafs early on. Kulemin fired in a shot off a Bozak face-off win over Edmonton’s Ryan Potulny.

Then Bozak made a nifty deke on Edmonton goalie Jeff Deslauriers after Kessel sent his linemate in for the scoring chance. Deslauriers was lifted after two periods in favour of backup Devan Dubnyk. Deslauriers surrendered five goals on 28 shots.

“Things are working for our line,” Bozak said. “We’ve been making a lot of opportunities the last couple weeks and a lot of them haven’t been going in for us but I reckon it’s starting to come around now. Just making excellent plays.”

Kessel scored for a second time during another 5-on-3 advantage in the third period. Jamie Lundmark and Mikhail Grabovski also scored for Toronto. The Leafs checked in for three power-play goals to the Oilers pair in man-advantage situations.

The Oilers line of Andrew Cogliano, who hails from Toronto, Dustin Penner and Gilbert Brulé each scored goals and defenceman Aaron Johnson added a power-play marker in the game’s final minute.

Several people have been killed, dozens are injured and many more could be trapped in an avalanche on a mountain in southeastern B.C.

Hundreds of people watching and participating in the Huge Iron Shootout, an annual snowmobiling event on Boulder Mountain, near Revelstoke, were caught in the slide.

Reports indicate the avalanche struck at about 3 p.m. local time Saturday.

One official told CBC News that three people are dead, two others are in critical condition and more than a dozen others were injured in the slide. It is not clear how many more people are missing.

The mountain has been shut down and a massive rescue operation is underway. Search-and-rescue helicopters and avalanche dogs are working to recover the injured.

“I know that the RCMP are up there with a number of their members doing searches and that they’ve got dog units … and the local search and rescue group,” Revelstoke Mayor David Raven said. “We also have the ski patrol from Revelstoke Mountain Resorts available and going up.”

He said the provincial government has already reached out to offer its support.

“I have been contacted by Kash Heed, the solicitor general, and the province is fully behind all of our efforts and we appreciate all of the help we have now, and it’s another trying event for Revelstoke.”

Raven said he wasn’t sure how many people were in the area at the time of the slide, but he did say the Huge Iron Shootout is an unorganized event “that’s been a problem for years.”

According to the Canadian Avalanche Centre, there have been 10 avalanches in the area since Friday, when the CAC issued an extreme avalanche warning for the area. It advised people to stay away from any defined avalanche terrain and steep slopes.

On Feb. 15, an Alberta man was killed in an avalanche while snowmobiling on Eagle Mountain near Revelstoke. Another Alberta man died in an avalanche while skiing near Rossland, B.C., in early January.

Revelstoke is approximately 300 kilometres west of Calgary, and about 400 kilometres northeast of Vancouver.

With files from The Canadian Press