Hockey: Neilson & Brooks -- Gone but not forgotten

The world of hockey is a much sadder place today.

Two men who were known as innovators in the sport are gone.

Roger Neilson, assistant coach of the Ottawa Senators, and Herb Brooks, director of player personnel for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Neilson and Brooks not only brough a wealth of experience to coaching at the professional and collegiate level, but also on the international level as well.

Neilson was 69 years young and lost his long battle with cancer this past June. Ironically, he died on the day the NHL draft was being held in Nashville.

Neilson, who was inducted into the hockey hall of fame in 2002, was known as "Captain Video," because he was one of the first coaches to use video tape to break down plays and show them to his players at a time when that was unheard of in the NHL coaching ranks.

Now, every hockey team seems to have a video coordinator, and they have N eilson to thank for it.

He had been an NHL coach in Philadelphia, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Buffalo, New York, with the Rangers and Ottawa. This coming NHL season, the Senators will honor Neilson by dedicating their entire season to him, as well as wearing a commemorative patch on their jerseys.

In his last years, Neilson still managed to go to games and practices all while he was battling cancer.

His spirit will live on with the two hockey schools that bear his name -- the Roger Neilson Hockey School and the Roger Neilson Coaches' Clinic.

If one were to look in the dictionary under "USA Hockey," you might find a picture of Herb Brooks.

You might not have been a hockey fan, but you might remember how in 1980 the then coach of the University of Minnesota Gophers coached a group of college kids from Massachusetts and Minnesota to one of the biggest upsets in sports by beating the Soviet Union hockey club, who at that time were the "top dogs" in international hockey supremacy.

At that time, Brooks might have been living out his own Olympic hockey fantasy because in 1960, he was the last player cut from the USA Olympic hockey team at Squaw Valley that also won an Olympic Gold Medal.

Brooks returned to the Olympic stage at the 1998 Olympics by coaching, of all teams, France.

Then at the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, he once again coached the USA team. This time the team was made up of NHL players and they didn't win a Gold Medal. Canada did. But, the USA did bring home a Silver Medal.

Not only was Brooks a coach at the college and Olympic level, he was an NHL coach as well, having coached Minnesota (now Dallas) Stars, the New York Rangers and the New Jersey Devils, before being named the director of player personnel for the Penguins.

He had turned down an offer to coach the Rangers again this season. He wanted to stay near his family in Minnesota.

Brooks was inducted into the USA Hockey Hall of Fame in 1990 for service to hockey in the United States.

The hockey world is a little sadder place today.

While Roger Neilson and Herb Brooks have moved on to that big hockey rink in the sky, these two coaching legends will never be forgotten.