And when teams abroad seek help in advancing their puck skills, King has been willing to share his knowledge. Other nations have recognized him behind the bench for Canadian teams at the world junior tournaments, the Winter Olympics, the Spengler Cup playoffs and other events. And he’s been asked and has gone to Japan, Sweden, Germany and Russia to coach their players.

He has also coached in the National Hockey League, spending three years with the Calgary Flames, two as an assistant with the Montreal Canadiens, three with the Columbus Blue Jackets and more recently, as an assistant coach and advisor with the Arizona Coyotes.

The much-travelled coach, now 71, will be inducted into the Saskatoon Sports Hall of Fame on Nov. 2 at TCU Place. It’s an honour which is long overdue, but partly delayed because up until this year, he was always on a coaching assignment.

“It has been an amazing experience wherever I travelled and coached,” said King. “Sometimes language was a barrier. In Sweden and Germany, English was the language in hockey. In Japan and Russia, we needed translators, which slows down the teaching process. In Russia for three seasons, I could pick up some phrases.

“In most countries, my wife, Linda, accompanied me. I always had that person I could share opinions with after the game. She was a great hockey wife. While coaching abroad, you have to get the results. But the beauty of it all is that we learned to fit into the culture of each country, enjoying the life beyond hockey, like sharing the Christmas season in Russia.”

King said his life has been a reflection of what he learned while growing up in Saskatchewan. He was born in North Battleford and spent his learning years in Saskatoon.

“I was so lucky to be coached by men like Joe Zeman in baseball, Jerry Lee in hockey, Alf Bibby in soccer. I became a teacher and was at Aden Bowman Collegiate where I coached football, basketball and track and field. And within the community, I coached the bantam B team in hockey. For me, coaching and teaching were much alike. I knew early that coaching was what I wanted to do.”

When a Western Hockey League team was transferred to Billings, Montana in 1977-78, King was hired as its coach. The good news was that he was working with Bob Strumm, a Saskatoon friend and “a really good hockey man who was ambitious about spending his life in sports.”

The bad news was that the shortest road trip was 404 miles. In spite of the travel, the Bighorns reached the league final in one of his two years there. Then came the opportunity to coach hockey at the University of Saskatchewan, and that brought King back to Saskatoon.

“We went to the national university final three years in a row. We lost once in overtime, once with only minutes left. By the spring of 1983, nobody was going to beat us. We beat Concordia, 6-2. In the final, captain and tournament MVP Willie Desjardins had 11 points in three games.”

Then King was approached about coaching the Canadian national team, which trained in Calgary. He was pleased, because “Father David Bauer and Jackie McLeod had built a great program. We often played more games abroad than at home. It started with a trip to the Olympics in Sarajevo in 1983-84. It ended quite well in 1991- 92. We beat the Czechs to reach the final. We lost to the Russians and took the silver medals, led by players like Eric Lindros, Joe Juneau and Randy Smith.”

King went into the National Hockey League.

“With Calgary, we twice won our division and were second the other year. We went out each year in the first round of the playoffs and I was gone.” He was hired to be an assistant with the Montreal Canadiens, taking a brief sojourn during one season to coach Japan at the Winter Olympics. “In Montreal, you just walked into Bell Centre, you got the feeling of victory. I enjoyed it so much. Mr. (Jean) Beliveau was an ambassador with the team; he had an office and the door was always open if I wanted to talk. Mr. (Maurice) Richard would come to all the games.”

King was hired by Columbus, spent three expansion years where his friend, Strumm, was a scout. Later it was Arizona, which has always been hampered as one of the NHL’s lowest revenue operations.

International teams started to call and he responded. He coached Metallurg Magnitogorsk in Russia in 2006- 07, Aidler Mannheim in Germany for two seasons and not long after, one of the most emotional stories in his life took place.

“Brad McCrimmon, a great player and coach from Saskatchewan, took over Lokomotiv Yaroslav in the Kontinental League. Before he left for Russia, we talked several times.

“He wondered about the challenges of the language, the hotels, the travel and many other things. I told him that the older airplanes made me a little nervous when I was in Russia. Off he went. And then the phone call came on Sept. 7, 2011, that the plane went down and he was dead. It was a real sad day for everyone in hockey,” said King.

A year and a half after the crash, King was asked to join Lokomotiv in mid-season.

“All of the boys in the crash were gone. Most of them had been born, raised and developed in Yaroslav. A big hole had been left. I went over in January. We won all the games we had left on the schedule and grabbed eighth and last playoff spot. We knocked off Moscow Dynamo, by far the best team in the regular season, in seven games. Then we beat St. Petersburg in the second round. It was a terrific experience.

“The Russians have struggled with their lifestyles for years. But they are compassionate, have respect for each other and are wonderful people. I’d go down the street. They would thank me; it wasn’t all my doing. The players did it.

“A wonderful monument to Brad’s team was built next to the rink. And every KHL team that came to town would make an annual visit to the cemetery in memory of the lost players. It was probably the most emotional year I have ever spent in hockey.”

In 2017, King received a phone call from Sean Burke, who was assembling Canada’s 2018 Olympic team without any NHL players. King’s long-time friend, Desjardins, became the head coach.

“We had some first-period letdowns. We battled back and won the bronze-medal game. Getting a medal is still as good as it gets.”

-Ned Powers