Forty-eight hours later, Pat Quinn was finally settling into being back in the saddle again as a coach in the National Hockey League.
"How many jobs were there?" he said of the number of NHL head coaching jobs available between the time he was fired by the Toronto Maple Leafs three years ago and hired by the Edmonton Oilers.
Thirty-one coaches fired. Thirty-one coaches hired.
"Thirty one? Holy smokes!
"As a coach I missed the playoffs one year in Los Angeles and one year in Toronto. That was it.
"When I lost my job in Toronto, it was my seventh year. In the time I was there, we'd played the second-most playoff games of any team in the league. Then we miss the playoffs by one point and I lose my job." Quinn said in a telephone interview from his home in Vancouver yesterday.
"I had one job offer three weeks after I was fired," he said of a chance to coach the Boston Bruins. "Then nothing.
"I look around and it's funny. Some places you get some extra time. Some guys miss playoffs five of seven years and are still working."
Doesn't matter now.
All of a sudden Quinn is getting ready to rumble again, thinking about all the things you have to think about when it comes to getting on with the job instead of getting the job.
"It's been such a whirlwind," said the 66-year-old, who will be coaching his 1,319th NHL regular-season game come October.
"We hadn't nailed everything down until the weekend. My deadline to accept or not, after a couple of days of negotiations, was Friday night. Then we had to tie in Tom Renney. Both Steve Tambellini and myself agreed he'd be the guy as associate coach if it was possible.
"I was in the desert," he said of his Palm Springs-area other residence. "I flew back to Vancouver late Saturday night and an old friend of mine, a former Atlanta Falcons football player, showed up as a sudden guest. We were up reminiscing until about 4 a.m.
"On Sunday there was a retirement party for a long-time Vancouver sportscaster at the race track. I was worried about going to that with all those media guys there. I know one of them is mad at me for supposedly fibbing to him. I told him I had nothing yet. That night I spoke to Steve Tambellini and we began to take it from being a verbal agreement to a deal with Tom Renney involved and made the press conference plans."
After the press conference, Quinn was hit by something you'd think he would have seen coming.
"You forget what hockey in this country means to a lot of people. I didn't expect the response there was nationally. The friends I've made over the years, the media ..."
Quinn took himself out of play Wednesday to attend a previously planned golf date.
"When it was over I turned on my cellphone and it said it wouldn't accept any more messages. I accidentally hit the wrong button and blew off over 40 messages. And, bang, there were 40 more messages."
Quinn spent yesterday returning calls.
Today he'll start to get to work, he says.
"I'll go to work right away. I'll drag my notes out and get up to snuff. I'll get some video and watch as much as I can. As you know I can't really touch the players until training camp but I intend to talk to as many as I can by phone. I want to ensure the conditioning stuff is in their hands. I want to get started."
MARRIED IN EDMONTON
Quinn says he and his wife, who he married at a Catholic church on 118th Avenue not far from the rink 46 years ago when he was a member of the 1963 Memorial Cup champion Edmonton Oil Kings, lived in a condo in downtown Toronto, would probably looking for something similar in Edmonton.
"Sandra? What's the name of the church we were married in?" he asked his wife, holding the phone away from his mouth.
"She doesn't remember, either. That's good, probably. I was embarrassed I didn't remember. I thought I was going to be in trouble."