ANAHEIM, Calif. — Joel Quenneville’s 1,000th career victory as an NHL head coach was so dramatic that he almost had to be reminded of the milestone when the clock finally hit zeros on the Anaheim Ducks’ 6-5 comeback win.
When Quenneville stood at center ice with his wife, his daughter and his entire team for a postgame photo moments later Wednesday night, he allowed himself a moment out of the hockey grind to appreciate history.
“I wasn’t prioritizing the number,” Quenneville said after joining Scotty Bowman in the most exclusive hockey coaching club. “I just wanted to play well tonight and find a way to win. That was the motivation, and it turned out to be a very special one as well.”
His Ducks rallied to beat two-time defending conference champion Edmonton in their return from the Olympic break, overcoming a pair of two-goal deficits and another one-goal deficit during their frenetic four-goal third period.
Cutter Gauthier scored the winner with 1:14 to play, and Anaheim hung on for its NHL-leading eighth multigoal comeback win during its first year under Quenneville, whose players all gathered at the bench to mob their coach after the whistle.
“It was an important game for us in a lot of ways,” said Quenneville, who has the second-place Ducks in the Stanley Cup playoff race for the first time since 2018. “They had the puck a lot more than we did, but at the same time, I thought we found a way to win a game. It had other meanings, but to me it was the importance of where it put us in the standings, and coming out of the break, the momentum that we could get off a win like tonight.”
The 67-year-old Quenneville received some fine bottles of wine and cigars among his postgame gifts, but he planned to celebrate just with a beer. Quenneville is well known in Connecticut after playing seven seasons for the Hartford Whalers from 1983-90. A defenseman, in 457 games with the Whalers he scored 25 goals and had 70 assists.
The second member of the 1,000-win club took a long time to join Bowman, who got his 1,000th with the Detroit Red Wings on Feb. 8, 1997 — just a month after Quenneville coached his very first game with the St. Louis Blues.
Quenneville reached the mark in his 1,825th game of a career highlighted by three Stanley Cup championships with the Chicago Blackhawks. Bowman finished his career in 2002 with 1,244 victories in 2,141 regular-season games, also winning nine Stanley Cup titles as a coach.
“He’s from a different league when I look at his company,” Quenneville said about Bowman, who was a senior advisor of hockey operations to his son, general manager Stan Bowman, during the Blackhawks’ successful run under Quenneville.
“I think he’s lonesome up there, the number he’s at,” Quenneville added. “I had Scotty and Stan in Chicago together. We had some great wins, and he’s got a lot of Cups. He’s been very successful in the game. … I’m happy to be getting the opportunity back in the game and be around a team like we’ve got now.”
Quenneville has made a successful return to the NHL this season in Anaheim after a four-year absence from the league following his resignation from the Florida Panthers in late 2021 over his inaction during the Blackhawks’ sexual abuse scandal 11 years earlier.
Quenneville’s NHL ban was lifted in July 2024, and the Ducks hired him one year later to take over a struggling franchise with no playoff appearances in seven consecutive seasons. Anaheim (31-23-3) has vaulted into the thick of the Western Conference playoff race in its first season under Quenneville, who has led his teams to the playoffs in 20 of the 22 NHL seasons he finished behind a bench.
When asked if there were times when he wondered whether he would have a chance to reach 1,000 wins, Quenneville replied: “It’s something that I don’t think about. I think my motivation, my goals were always once you win a Cup one time, you can’t wait to do it again. It’s always been the reason why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
After playing 13 NHL seasons as a sturdy defenseman with the signature bristly mustache he has sported for his entire adult life, Quenneville has been an NHL head coach for parts of 26 seasons, and he has won at every stop.