CORNWALL, Ontario – A Cornwall man who dreamed of playing in the NHL and eventually got there as an executive to infuriate the likes of Don Cherry has passed away.
Ray Miron died early Friday morning at a retirement home near Tulsa, Oklahoma at age 92.
Miron was born and raised in Cornwall’s east end and in 1976, after years of coaching and managing in the minors in the Toronto Maple Leafs organization, first in Canada and then the United States, he was named general manager of the Colorado Rockies.
In 2010 the Denver Post suggested “DNA samples would confirm that Ray Miron is the father of NHL hockey in Denver.”
He hired the inflammatory Cherry as his coach and fired him just one season later. To say the two didn’t get along would be an understatement.
“I remember the Rocky Mountain News had a poll to see if I should be fired. Thirty-seven hundred people voted no and 52 voted to fire me. I said I didn’t know Ray Miron had 52 friends,” Cherry once told The Globe and Mail.
In 1981 Miron parted company with the Rockies but remained in hockey and parlayed his love of the sport into ownership of the Central Hockey League beginning in 1992. After the CHL merged with the competing Western Professional Hockey League, the championship trophy was renamed to the “Ray Miron President’s Cup.”
In 2004, Miron was awarded the Lester Patrick Trophy by the NHL, a recognition he described as his “greatest hockey accomplishment.” The award is presented to an individual for their contribution to hockey south of the border.
Miron’s brother Hubert said Cornwall was never far from his mind.
“He missed Cornwall and a lot of the boys,” said Hubert, referring to Gerry Brown and others that Miron became close with through hockey.
And he has a word or two in defense of his brother when it comes to the aforementioned Cherry.
“Don Cherry should be thanking Ray,” he said. “Cherry has made more money doing five minutes of television than he ever would have coaching hockey.”
Funeral arrangements have not been finalized, though it is believed Miron will be interred at St. Lawrence Valley Union Cemetery west of Cornwall.
