Jan 27, 2010

Where Are They Now: Tim Taylor

Karen’s Print Rite presents an update on former Waterloo Black Hawks forward Tim Taylor.

A regular on the successful Black Hawk teams of the 1960’s, Taylor came to Waterloo after playing for Harvard, where he had been team Captain.  He contributed to four USHL championship teams.  Taylor’s legacy in Waterloo, however, is his work with organized youth hockey, which was in it’s infancy in the community at that time.

After wrapping up his playing career, Taylor became an assistant coach at Harvard, then the Head Coach at Yale for 28 years beginning in 1976.  He helped the Bulldogs to six Ivy League titles.  Interspersed in his time at Yale were stints and an assistant and Head Coach for two U.S. Olympic teams.  Now “retired,” Taylor is helping USA Hockey’s World Junior team and the U.S. National Team Development Program, which competes in the USHL as “Team USA.”  We asked Taylor about being a Black Hawk in the past and the Hawks’ future opponent this weekend in Ann Arbor.

Black Hawks: How did you find your way to the Waterloo Black Hawks of the 1960’s?

Tim Taylor: Well, it’s an interesting story.  I graduated college in ’63 and tried out for the ’64 Olympic team.  We were scheduled to play Rochester, another USHL entry in those days, and it was the weekend of President Kennedy’s assassination.  The assassination, of course, led to the cancelation of the game, and the coach had to make his cuts, so I was let go from the Olympic team on that weekend in November. 

Walter Bush, who was then the General Manager of that ’64 team, said “Would you like to go play in Waterloo?” and I said “All I have to go home to is the draft, so let’s give it a try.”

So I ended up flying from Minneapolis down to Waterloo on that Friday after Kennedy’s assassination and that was the start of it.

BH: What made those Black Hawks teams of the 1960’s so successful, so regularly?

TT: I think we had a lot of good players, and we had an environment there in Waterloo where the townsfolk were really behind us; we had great crowds.  Everybody worked and lived in the community, and a lot a people married Waterloo gals and settled down.  Many of them still live in the area, but we just had a good sense of community and a lot of team spirit.  We were able, with our set up, because we were all there in Waterloo, to practice everyday.  A lot of teams in the league might have practiced two times a week before the weekend games, maybe three times at the most, but we practiced every single day.  I think we were probably the best team in the league [because], although we had a lot of good players, I think we also had the best team make-up year-in and year-out in those successful years.

BH: From the fan’s perspective, how would the “senior” Black Hawks of the 60’s have looked similar or different from junior hockey now?

TT: I think we were obviously older.  Guys like Bill Dobbyn had played an awful lot of hockey before he got to Waterloo.  He played in the American Hockey League.  Paulie Johnson had played pro hockey for a number of years.  We had ex-Olympians.  I think the level of play in terms of poise and experience was a notch above what junior hockey is, and we played in the old McElroy Auditorium, which was a great old barn with a lot of tradition and atmosphere.  We didn’t have the plush confines of the current arena, so it was certainly a different level of hockey, but no more or no less entertaining than what P.K. and crew are putting forth on the ice now.

BH: Are there any specific memories or games from your time with the Hawks that stand out to you?

TT:  I have lots of memories, and it’s better, probably, for me to talk of it collectively.  Those were great years of my life.  I will still aspiring to play an ever-better brand of hockey.  I learned a lot from a lot of the veteran players there who I had a chance to play with.  They were very happy, enjoyable years for me, and we had a lot of success on the ice and a lot of good friendships and camaraderie off the ice.  The fact that we were able to win championships and be successful in the league, I don’t think any athlete would have anything but happy memories from those kinds of successful seasons.  It was just a very enjoyable time in my life.  I spent the ages of 21 to 27 in Waterloo and so they were exciting, fun times.

BH: How did you move from the Black Hawks to coaching in the NCAA?

TT:  One of my jobs in Waterloo was to work with the Park and Recreation Department organizing the youth hockey program in the city.  Essentially, when we, the original Waterloo Black Hawks, came to the town, there was no organized hockey for youth.  To promote the game in the area and get more fans to come to our games we established a youth hockey program, and that’s when I really started to coach.  I worked with a wonderful guy named Kenny Wilson, and I had a little bit of experience because I had done some coaching at the youth level back home.  I ran a hockey school in the summer.  Basically I learned a lot about coaching and organization skills for being a coach, establishing the Waterloo Youth Hockey Organization. 

When I stopped playing and got back home, I got a call from the Park and Recreation Department in the City of Boston to start up a neighborhood youth hockey league for the inner-city kids in Boston, which was really the first real job I had after I was no longer playing.  From there I got a part-time job as an assistant at Harvard and five or six years later I got the Head Coaching job at Yale and that was a 28- or 29-year commitment.

BH: Making that move from Harvard to Yale, where they have a rivalry in sports and beyond sports, was that a little awkward?

TT: It was a hard decision.  When not in Waterloo, I had spent my whole life in the greater Boston area, and Yale was down in New Haven, Connecticut.  It was our archrival, and it was a very difficult decision, but I was a young guy and I wanted to be a Head Coach.  Quite frankly, when I went down to Yale I thought it would be for several years, but not 25 to 30.  It just was a place I never wanted to leave once I got there.  I put my heart and soul into that program so it was a tough day when I left it.  In the coaching racket, you have to make some decisions about where you want to be in order to become a Head Coach.  I had to leave Boston and all my friends up there, and my alma mater Harvard, but I got the opportunity to be Head Coach.

BH: And you had some other significant opportunities with USA Hockey while you were coaching at Yale.  You had the opportunity to be an assistant coach for the 1984 Olympics and the Head Coach in 1994.  How did those two experiences affect your hockey life afterwards?

TT: Those were very exciting years for hockey in our country.  While I was at Yale, and while I was involved in USA Hockey, the blending of the North American game and the European game was happening.  We were sharing a lot of ideas with the Soviet Union and their coaching and the wonderful hockey program they had established.  My dear friend Lou Vairo, who was working with USA Hockey and had been the junior [national team] coach for many years, got the job to coach the 1984 team and asked me to be an assistant with him.  We had shared a lot of ideas over the years while I was at Yale and he was at USA Hockey coaching the junior team, about tactics and philosophy and we were both very willing to learn and accept many of things the Soviets and the Europeans were doing in those days.  This was before there were very many Europeans and Russians in the National Hockey League.  So we were both comfortable with each other’s philosophies.  He got me going and I had the chance to coach a couple of the world men’s senior teams in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and then was fortunate enough to coach the Olympic team in ’94.

BH: Now working with USA Hockey on a full-time basis since you’ve retired from Yale, have you adjusted to working with some of the younger players on the World Junior teams and the National Team Development Program?

TT: There’s not too much of difference in the age groupings I’ve been working with.  At Yale, we had kids coming in there at 17 years of age.  All the kids in Ann Arbor and the National Team Development Program are 16 and 17.  I don’t think it’s been a different approach.  Coaching is coaching, teaching is teaching, and if you’re a coach who likes to teach the game like I do, whether you’re working with ten-year-old kids or 25-year-old men, it’s the same process.  You have to make sure that the kids understand what you want them to do and that you communicate and connect with them and get them to respond to you.  It’s been no problem for me transitioning back to working with younger kids. 

The situation in Ann Arbor is wonderful in terms of being a positive coaching environment.  We have unlimited resources there, we have a great coaching laboratory in which to work.  The kids we get are motivated and talented, and that’s usually a nice combination.

BH: What does it mean for the National Team Development Program to have a chance to play in the USHL this season?

TT: I think it’s going to be a great challenge for our guys, day-in and day-out.  It’s obviously a better league than the North American League, which we were used to playing in, so it’s certainly going to be a challenge for our younger team, the U-17 team.  I think we’ll have to take some lumps as they grow and get stronger as players.  I think our older team, they’ll be ready for the challenge and do quite well in this league, certainly this year when we have a big, strong defense and enough big bodies to contend with the older kids in the league.  I think it’s going to be good for us.  I think everybody has to understand that we do this on purpose.  We kind of play up a level on the ladder to challenge the kids day-in and day-out with the competition.  It would be pretty difficult to play within our own age group nationally, just because there wouldn’t be too many teams nationally that would offer us much resistance.  Playing in an older league and a better league like the USHL will be good for us in the long run as we prepare for the World Championships and our international competitions, which are the most important.

Where Are They Now is presented by Karen’s Print Rite.