TURK: One of the NHL’s Great Coaches—From Summerside to Madison Square Garden

TURK: One of the NHL’s Great Coaches—From Summerside to Madison Square Garden by Fred “Fiddler” MacDonald and Glenna Jenkins is available where books are sold.

Gerard “Turk” Gallant started playing hockey as a young boy in Summerside, PEI. He moved up through minor hockey, playing above his age group and garnering the attention of major junior teams and the NHL. The Detroit Red Wings drafted him as an 18-year-old and he became a rising young star, being selected to an NHL All-Star team the same year he played for Team Canada in the World Championships. When a back injury ended his playing career, Turk applied his talents to coaching.

He began, in 1995, by shaping the Summerside Western Capitals into a winning junior A team. It won the Royal Bank Cup (now the Centennial Cup) in 1997, the first from the Maritimes to win in the tournament’s 26-year history. In the Quebec league, Turk did the same for the Saint John Sea Dogs in 2011, as it became the region’s first major junior team to win the coveted Memorial Cup. Stints coaching at the semi-professional level led to a stellar career in the NHL, where he took two teams, the Vegas Golden Knights, in their inaugural year, and the New York Rangers, an Original 6, to the Stanley Cup finals. In 2021, Team Canada won a gold medal, at the World Championship, under Turk Gallant.

Turk lives in Clinton, PEI, with his wife Pam.