Billy Reay

Q: When did Billy Reay die?

Billy Reay died on September 23, 2004.

Q: How old was Billy Reay when they died?

Billy Reay was 86 years old at the time of death.

Q: What was Billy Reay's cause of death?

The cause of death of Billy Reay was liver cancer.

William Tulip Reay (August 21, 1918 – September 23, 2004) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player and coach. Reay played ten seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) from 1943 to 1953, winning two Stanley Cups. He then coached from 1957 to 1959 in the NHL and again from 1963 to 1977, primarily with the Chicago Black Hawks, who he coached to the Stanley Cup Final three times. While he did not win a Cup as a coach, Reay won over 500 games as a head coach, and he was the second coach to win 500 games with one team. When he retired, he was second in NHL history in wins, and he currently is one of thirty coaches to have won 500 games.

Career

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Reay started playing hockey from a young age, making the St. Boniface Seals in 1937. The Detroit Red Wings signed him as a free agent in 1939. Reay was named player-coach of the Quebec Aces in the Quebec senior league in 1942 at the age of just 24. He did two seasons as player-coach and made spot appearances with the Red Wings in the NHL. Before the start of the 1945-46 season, Reay was traded for Ray Getliffe and Rolly Rossignol to the Montreal Canadiens. He would play primarily on the second line behind Elmer Lach and recorded a handful of 40-point seasons. He won the Stanley Cup two times, in 1946 and 1953, both with the Montreal Canadiens. In 479 games, he scored 105 goals and 267 points and in 63 playoff games, he scored 13 goals and 29 points, with the 1953 Stanley Cup win being his final NHL game as a player. He was player-coach for the Victoria Cougars of the Western Hockey League from 1953 to 1955 before retiring as a player to become a coach with the Seattle Americans for the 1955-56 season. He then took a job with the first-year Rochester Americans of the American Hockey League, coaching one season. He was then hired as the head coach for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1957, which saw them finish dead-last in the six-team league. Midway through the 1958-59 season, first-year GM Punch Imlach fired Reay. He became a minor league coach in the Chicago Black Hawks system, starting with the Sault Ste. Marie Thunderbirds of the Eastern Professional Hockey League for the 1960-61 season before coaching the AHL Buffalo Bisons from 1961 to 1963, winning the Calder Cup in 1963 before being asked to succeed Rudy Pilous as head coach for Chicago, and he was hired on June 10, 1963.

Reay would stay in the position for the next fourteen years. Although he led the Black Hawks to three Stanley Cup Final (1965, 1971, and 1973), he never won the Cup. In his fourth year, 1966–67, he led the Hawks to the league's best record, the first time they had done so in their 41-year history. On Christmas Eve in 1976, Reay was fired by the team after a slow start, with Reay supposedly being fired via a note left under his door. He is the franchise's all-time leader in wins (516) and years coached (14). When he died, the Chicago Tribune described him as someone who "wasn’t one to polish apples or lick boots, either, and perhaps this is why he has been denied a place in hockey’s Hall of Fame."

Before beginning a career from which he retired with the second most victories in NHL history, Reay was a Canadiens centre who is believed to be the first player to raise his arms and stick to celebrate a goal when he did so after scoring in a game in 1947.

He died of liver cancer in Madison, Wisconsin at the age of 86.