Edmonton Oilers dynasty architect Glen Sather retires after 6 decades in hockey

Hockey Hall of Famer Glen Sather, who built and coached the NHL’s last great dynasty with the Edmonton Oilers in the 1980s and helped resurrect the New York Rangers in the early 2000s, is retiring after six decades in the sport as a player, coach and executive.

The Rangers announced the retirement Wednesday, two days after the NHL season ended with the Florida Panthers beating the Oilers in Game 7 for the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.

Coincidentally, the Panthers knocked off the Rangers to win the Eastern Conference final.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman congratulated Sather on a remarkable career highlighted by five Cup wins in seven years by the Oilers.

“Whether with the dynastic Edmonton Oilers teams of the 1980s, the contending New York Rangers clubs of recent years or various iterations of Team Canada, Sather always showed a keen eye for elite talent and a deft touch for bringing out its best,” Bettman said in a statement.

“As important, he cared deeply about his players as people, sought to develop them as men and supported them through any off-ice challenges,” he added.

Sather, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997 in the builder category, won five Stanley Cups as the Oilers’ general manager.

He was also the head coach for the first four of them, with John Muckler in charge for the last one in 1990.

“Having the opportunity to be associated with the National Hockey League, and specifically the New York Rangers and Edmonton Oilers, has been one of the great privileges of my life,” the 80-year-old Sather said in a statement.

Known to most as “Slats,” Sather is one of two people in hockey history who won at least four Stanley Cups as both a head coach and a general manager. Punch Imlach of the Toronto Maple Leafs is the other.

Sather led Edmonton to Cup championships in 1984, ’85, ’87, ’88 and 1990. He served as a head coach in 932 NHL regular-season games with the Oilers and Rangers, compiling a record of 497-307-121-7.

In 126 Stanley Cup playoff games, Sather had a record of 89-37, and his .706 winning percentage in the playoffs is the best by any head coach in NHL history. He won the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s Coach of the Year in 1985-86.

A feisty third…