How a 9/11 flight change saved the life of Canucks coach Bruce Boudreau

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Destiny seems to have played a part in Bruce Boudreau’s life.

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On September 11, 2001, he was supposed to be on United Airlines Flight 175, which was hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists and flown into the South Tower of New York’s World Trade Center.

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Aboard that plane was Boudreau’s friend and collaborator, Garnet “Ace” Bailey.

Bailey was a scout for the Los Angeles Kings and Boudreau was the coach of their top minor league partner in Manchester, NH

The previous weekend, Boudreau and Bailey were in Lake Placid, NY, along with other Kings employees, for the wedding of the team’s director of human resources, Bill Flaherty.

The Kings training camp was due to open the following weekend and head coach Andy Murray decided he wanted to have a coach’s lunch in LA on Monday night. Monday was September 10th.

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Boudreau was originally scheduled to fly first on Tuesday 9/11, so his flight was rescheduled to accommodate the meeting. Bailey wasn’t needed at the meeting, so his flight wasn’t changed.

“Andy Murray, well… he did it, he saved my life,” Boudreau told Postmedia this week.

“I can tell you how it went minute by minute from 6 AM LA time that morning on the 11th until the end of the day. It was a crazy day.”

His wife and children were then still living in St. Catharines, Ontario.

When it became known that an airliner had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, Boudreau’s wife, Crystal, called him at his Los Angeles hotel to tell him that a tragedy was unfolding.

Boudreau woke his assistant coach, who was down the hall, and the two watched as a second plane crashed into the south tower. They would come to learn that the plane was the flight they were originally booked on. He went deaf thinking of his friend “Ace” and their other colleague, Kings Scout Mark Bavis, who was also on the flight.

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And then word broke that a third plane had crashed into the Pentagon, while a fourth – United Flight 93 – had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

Despite knowing their father had switched flights, Boudreau’s children still panicked.

“They were all at school when they heard the news. And they ran home. It was pretty crazy,” Boudreau said, his voice shaking for a moment. “It still makes me sick to my stomach talking about it now because I can imagine the fear in their eyes and in their voices.”

Others were unaware that Boudreau had switched flights, and calls came in asking Crystal if her husband was on the plane.

“Every year it happens, I think about it. The movie about Flight 93 will be on, I’ll watch it again and again. And you keep thinking about the thoughts that went through your head at the time. And it’s been a crazy, crazy time and I’m a lucky guy.”

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Boudreau has a picture of Bailey at his home in Hershey, Penn.

“I think about Ace all the time. We were stuck like thieves. He lived in Boston, he used to come over and watch our games all the time. Just like when I was a player, he was my great protector. When someone said something bad he went straight after them and he protected me within the organization, when someone said we weren’t doing things right he jumped to my rescue. And I mean it was a great loss for the friendship. You ask everyone, he was loved by everyone,” Boudreau said.

And every year Boudreau returns to doing what he does best, carrying Bailey’s keepsake with him. This year, that means he’s in Vancouver for his first training camp with the Canucks.

“It’s a great city,” he said. “And when you come here, you automatically feel like you’re in hockey mode because you know you’re about to get ready to play.”

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He has visited Burnaby’s Scotia Barn a couple of times since arriving in town last week to meet the latest Russia wingers – Andrey Kuzmenko and Ilya Mikheyev – and greet familiar faces.

But it’s still a long way from the full squad, so he’s not uncomfortable stepping on the ice just yet, he said.

“The closer it gets, the more we want to get going,” he said. “Probably if we go to Penticton (for the Young Stars Classic) at that point, we’re going to be like, ‘Okay, let’s get this thing going.'”

Over the summer he mostly switches out of hockey mode, although not completely. There is plenty of time to put lines and powerplay ideas down on paper.

“You look at your team and you’re constantly thinking, ‘Okay, now that you have a training camp, what are you going to do other than do the spontaneous thing like we did last year,'” he said.

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Not only could he actually plan his season, he had to coordinate two new assistant coaches, with Mike Yeo, who was newly hired, and Trent Cull, who was promoted from the AHL and joined holdover assistant Jason King.

“I would call them up to say, ‘Hey, what do you think of this idea? What do you think about this idea?’ Because you were happy to pass it on to your employees,” Boudreau said.

He hasn’t spent much time looking at spreadsheets but remains open to any ideas and information available to him.

“Deployment cards. Yes. drill cards. Yes. But spreadsheets. No,” he said with a smirk.

“I know who makes what and how much. where is it going Believe me I could probably tell you almost every team because I will be watching CapFriendly (the salary tracking site) all the time.”

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