While Lester Patrick is the most celebrated of the Patrick clan, there are a number of others from the family who have brought their influence to bear on the game of hockey over the last century. Lester’s younger brother Frank made his first appearance in a Stanley Cup match as a 20-year-old. He didn’t play in the game; he refereed it and later turned pro with the Renfrew Millionaires, a condition of signing his older sibling. He quickly proved he was worth the exorbitant $2,000 guaranteed salary he had been promised.

Moving west, the brothers built Canada’s first two artificial ice rinks, a 10,000 seat arena in Vancouver and one that held 4,200 in Victoria. They then proceeded to fill those rinks and others in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association. Able to offer salaries on a par with those in the eastern leagues, the Patricks enticed many NHA and later NHL stars to move to the west coast.

Frank Patrick wore literally every hat there was to wear in his years in the PCHA. One year he played defense, captained, coached and managed his team and still managed to find time to serve as league president. Patrick was also responsible for numerous innovations that forever changed the way the game was played. Penalty shots, the blue line, forward passes and flopping goaltenders were all fixtures of PCHA play that were later adopted by the NHL.

Frank served as managing director of the NHL for a year and then coached the Boston Bruins for two others before moving on to Montreal, where he was head of business operations. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1958 as a Builder.

Lynn Patrick, son of Lester took the second generation of the family into the professional hockey ranks, spending over 40 years in the game. An excellent all-around athlete who played on the Canadian basketball championship squad in 1933 and also suited up for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League, he spent ten years with the Rangers.

One of the top left wingers of his era, Lynn twice led the Blueshirts in scoring and was a member of the Stanley Cup winning team in 1940, the last Rangers to be immortalized on the cup for over half a century. In 1941-42, his 32 goals led the league. After losing two years to WWII, he returned but couldn’t find the form of his youth, playing a single season with the Rangers.

Turning to coaching, he spent 1949-50 running the Rangers and the next five seasons behind the Bruins bench before moving up to the GM’s job, a position he held until 1965. Hired as coach and GM for the expansion St. Louis Blues, one of his first moves was to remove himself from behind the bench, hiring a promising young coach named Scotty Bowman to replace him.

Lynn Patrick died in 1980, the same year he was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame. His brother Murray, better known as Muzz, also entered the family business. Like Lynn, he played under his father’s orders with the Rangers, also a member of the 1940 Stanley Cup winning Team. A big, tough defenseman who had been Canada’s light-heavyweight boxing champ before turning to hockey, he rarely lost a bout on the ice.

He broke in with the Rangers in ‘37-38, playing a single game that season and stuck around the next fall. After patrolling the blue line for three years, Muzz enlisted in the U.S. Army following the 1940-41 season and was in uniform months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, missing four complete seasons before returning to finish up his NHL time.

After a few minor league years as a player/coach, Muzz was back in the NHL. He coached the Rangers for a year in the early 1950s and moved up to the executive suite the next season, becoming the GM, a job he would hold until 1964.

Craig represents the third generation of the Patrick clan to distinguish himself in the hockey world. Son of Lynn, grandson of Lester, he played for the U.S. national team for two years before beginning his professional career. He appeared in more than 400 NHL games over eight seasons, suiting up for the Seals, Blues, Scouts and Capitals and retired after the 1978-79 campaign. His top offensive year came in 1972-73 when he had the only 20-goal season of his NHL career.

Leaving the NHL, he signed on with the U.S. Olympic program serving as assistant coach and assistant general manger to the U.S. hockey team that won the gold medal in Lake Placid in 1980. Initially hired as head of hockey operations by the Rangers, he became the team’s youngest GM in 1981, remaining in post until 1985 and filling in behind the bench on more than one occasion.

In 1989, Craig Patrick shifted his allegiance to the Pittsburgh Penguins and served as their GM and occasional coach until last spring. Under his watch, the team won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1991 and 1992 as Mario Lemieux became the biggest name in the game. In 2001, Craig joined his father and grandfather in the Hockey Hall of Fame when he was inducted as a builder. The year before he had been awarded the Lester Patrick Trophy, presented for outstanding service to hockey in the United States.