George "Punch" Imlach (March 15, 1918 – December 1, 1987) was a Canadian ice hockey coach and general manager best known for his association with the Toronto Maple Leafs, whom he was with from 1958 to 1969, and again from 1979 to 1981, and the Buffalo Sabres, whom he was with from 1970 to 1978. With Toronto he won the Stanley Cup four times, from 1962 to 1964 and again in 1967. He is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, and the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame.
Born in Toronto, Imlach attended Riverdale Collegiate Institute and played junior hockey in the OHA for the Toronto Young Rangers (1935–38) and senior hockey with the Toronto Goodyears (1938–40) and the Toronto Marlboros (1940–41). He enlisted in the Canadian Army during World War II, where he coached for the first time, with an army team in Cornwall, Ontario. He was invited to training camp by the Detroit Red Wings after being discharged, but felt he had put on too much weight and declined.
Imlach played for the Quebec Aces of the QSHL from 1945 to 1949 and spent 11 seasons with the team, becoming coach and then general manager, and then vice-president and part-owner of the franchise. After the 1956–57 season, Imlach moved to professional hockey, hired by the Boston Bruins as general manager of their Springfield Indians farm team. Before the season ended, Imlach had made himself head coach as well. After the season, team owner Eddie Shore took back control of the team, leaving Imlach without a job, although he was still under contract to the Bruins.
In July 1958, the Toronto Maple Leafs hired Imlach, aged 40, as one of the team's two assistant general managers, along with King Clancy. However, the Leafs did not have a general manager, and Imlach instead reported to a seven-member committee headed by Stafford Smythe which oversaw the team's business operations. In November, Imlach was named general manager—only the third full-time general manager in the team's 40-year history. Only a week after his hiring, he fired head coach Billy Reay; Reay had been offered the general manager's job before Imlach was hired, but turned it down. Initially, Imlach said he was replacing Reay with Bert Olmstead as player-coach, but almost immediately, he changed his mind and made himself head coach.
Imlach was known as a harsh taskmaster who frequently abused his players verbally and physically. He had a preference for older players, many of whom were his strongest supporters as they felt Imlach was giving them their last chance at winning the Stanley Cup. In contrast, many younger players, such as Frank Mahovlich, chafed at Imlach's autocratic coaching style.
Imlach took over a team that had finished last the previous season and was mired in last place again at the time he took over for Reay. However, the team staged a strong run late in the season and finished a point ahead of the New York Rangers for fourth place, allowing them to squeeze into the playoffs. They defeated the favoured Boston Bruins in the first round before losing to the league-leading Montreal Canadiens in five games in the Stanley Cup Final. Three years later, Imlach led the Leafs to their first Stanley Cup championship in 11 years, and followed this title up with additional Stanley Cup wins in 1963, 1964, and 1967.
In February 1964, Imlach traded Dick Duff, Bob Nevin and three young prospects – Rod Seiling, Arnie Brown, and Bill Collins – to the Rangers for Andy Bathgate and Don McKenney. While Bathgate and McKenney were both gone following the next season, Nevin played a major role in the Rangers' late 1960s resurgence and Duff won four more Cups with the Canadiens. In the 1965 intra-league draft, Imlach left Gerry Cheevers, a young goaltending prospect, unprotected. Cheevers was snapped up by the Boston Bruins and went on to a Hall of Fame career.
The Leafs struggled following the NHL's expansion from six teams to 12 for the 1967–68 season, and Imlach responded by pulling off another big trade. In February 1968, he sent Mahovlich, 20-year-old Garry Unger, Pete Stemkowski, and the rights to Carl Brewer to the Detroit Red Wings for Paul Henderson, Norm Ullman, and Floyd Smith. Two months later, Imlach sent 28-year-old Jim Pappin to the Chicago Black Hawks, where he would become one of that team's top scorers.
In December 1968, Stafford Smythe asked Imlach to give the coaching job to John McLellan, but Imlach refused and told Smythe to either fire him or leave him alone. During the season, Mike Walton walked out on the team, refusing to play for Imlach again, but returned about a week later. On April 6, 1969, minutes after an early and embarrassing playoff elimination at the hands of the Bruins, the Leafs fired Imlach. He still had a year remaining on his contract, which paid him about $35,000 a year. In the dressing room after the announcement was made, veteran Leafs Johnny Bower and Tim Horton both said they would leave with Imlach (they both returned the following season, although neither would remain with the team for long). Imlach's assistant, Clancy, had previously said that he would walk away if Imlach was fired, but was persuaded to stay with the team. Jim Gregory was immediately announced as Imlach's replacement as general manager.
After his dismissal from the Leafs, it was expected that Imlach would join the NHL's new Vancouver franchise. Imlach, Joe Crozier, and Foster Hewitt had become partners in the Vancouver Canucks of the Western Hockey League and were in line to become owners of the Vancouver NHL team. But they lacked the financial resources to buy the team, which went to Medical Investment Corporation (Medicor). Medicor bought the WHL Canucks for $2.8 million, with Imlach making a reported gain of more than $250,000. He was offered a job with the NHL Canucks, but instead accepted an offer from the NHL's other expansion team, the Buffalo Sabres, as their first coach and general manager in 1970.
In the team's first draft, it was a foregone conclusion that the first selection would be junior phenom Gilbert Perreault. The first pick would go to the team that won the spin of a roulette wheel. Imlach opted to take numbers 11–20 on the wheel, since 11 was his favourite number. When league president Clarence Campbell spun the wheel, he initially thought the pointer landed on 1. However, while Campbell was congratulating the Vancouver delegation, Imlach asked Campbell to check again. As it turned out, the pointer was actually on 11. Imlach promptly selected Perreault, who would go on to play 17 years with the Sabres and still holds every major offensive record in Sabres history. (Perreault, incidentally, would himself be assigned the number 11 for his entire career in Buffalo - the same number he had worn for his three seasons with the Montreal Jr. Canadiens - a number that has since been retired by the Sabres organization.)
Imlach suffered a heart attack on January 7, 1972, and stepped down as Sabres coach in May after being told by doctors that fatigue would put his health at risk. Joe Crozier filled in as interim coach after Imlach's heart attack and was given the job outright for the 1972–1973 season.
In the 1974 entry draft, Imlach—frustrated with the excessive tedium and length of that year's draft proceedings—deliberately selected an imaginary Japanese centre, Taro Tsujimoto, supposedly of the Tokyo Katanas, in the 11th round (183rd overall). Only after weeks had passed did the league discover that Tsujimoto did not in fact exist. Today, the league officially records the 183rd selection of the 1974 entry draft as an "invalid claim"; the Sabres still list Tsujimoto among the team's alumni.
During the 1974–75 NHL season, the Sabres, coached by one of Imlach's former players, Floyd Smith, made the Stanley Cup finals in only their fifth year of existence. With notable exceptions like Perreault and Rick Martin, many Sabres players feuded with Imlach, particularly Jim Schoenfeld, the team captain from 1974 to 1977, whom Imlach criticized publicly. After being eliminated in the second round of the playoffs in 1978, Imlach promised sweeping changes to the roster, but the changes never came. With the team off to an 8–10–6 record, the Sabres fired Imlach on December 4, 1978, along with coach Marcel Pronovost. Nevertheless, he was one of the inductees in the inaugural class of the Buffalo Sabres Hall of Fame.