X-Reay Tactician: Billy Reay's Hockey Tales

From Doug Moe of The Wisconsin State Journal

Storytelling must run in the family. Bill’s father, Billy Reay, was a natural. Nobody spun better tales around the big breakfast table at the Coventry Village senior community off High Point Road. It was Billy Reay’s last residence. Mornings, he held court while the guys drank coffee.

Reay — who died in Madison in 2004, at 86 — had a deep well of stories that sprang in part from his many years as a player and coach in the rough-and-tumble National Hockey League. As a player, Reay helped the Montreal Canadians win two Stanley Cups. As a coach, he took the Chicago Blackhawks to three Stanley Cup finals.

It was Reay’s legendary hockey career that led the publishers of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books to contact his son, Bill, in Madison earlier this year and ask for a contribution to the latest in the series, just published, titled “Hooked on Hockey: 101 Stories About the Players Who Love the Game and the Families that Cheer Them On.”

Read the full story.