Jos Canale (born Giuseppe Canale; September 21, 1949) is a Canadian former ice hockey coach, commonly known as Joe Canale. He was the 1991 recipient of the Coach of the Year Award in the Canadian Hockey League (CHL), and later coached the Canada men's national junior ice hockey team to a gold medal at the 1994 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships. He served as a head coach for more than 700 games in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL), which included a 1991 Memorial Cup appearance, and twice being chosen to represent his league at the CHL All–Star Challenge. Canale later coached in the Western Hockey League and the Ontario Hockey League, becoming the first person to do so in all three leagues of the CHL. Near the end of his career Canale made headlines for a stick-swinging incident in a QMJHL playoff game. He was later inducted into the Halls of Fame for both Hockey Québec, and the Quebec Midget AAA Hockey League.
Early life
Canale was born on September 21, 1949. He is a native of Laval, Quebec. He played minor ice hockey as a youth, until the midget age group. He graduated from Loyola College in Montreal, studying business administration.
Coaching career
Early coaching career
Canale began coaching ice hockey with midget age level teams in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce area of Montreal. His first opportunity to coach in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) came during the 1977–78 QMJHL season, when he was the second of four head coaches of the Shawinigan Dynamos. Canale's season was cut short on February 20, 1978, when he was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, charged with drug trafficking at a coffeehouse in Montreal, and later pardoned. He had been convicted of trafficking mescaline, and served 18 months in prison.
Canale returned to coaching in the early 1980s, spending four seasons in the Montreal Junior B Hockey League with the Southwest Dukes, Bourassa Angevins, Montreal Canadiens-Bourassa, Richelieu Riverains, and the LaSalle Cyclones. During this time he won a playoff championship, a bronze medal at the 1983 Winter Canada Games, and coached Pierre Turgeon, Stéphane Fiset and Patrice Brisebois.
Chicoutimi Saguenéens
Canale was hired by the Chicoutimi Saguenéens for the 1990–91 QMJHL season, with Richard Martel as his assistant coach. He led Chicoutimi to 43 wins, 92 points, and won the Jean Rougeau Trophy as the first place team in the league. The Saguenéens allowed the fewest goals in the league with 223, while scoring 299 goals. In the playoffs, Chicoutimi defeated the Shawinigan Cataractes in six games, then defeated the Laval Titan in seven games, and swept the Drummondville Voltigeurs in four games in the finals. With the win, Canale led Chicoutimi to its first President's Cup championship.
Chicoutimi and Drummondville both advanced to the 1991 Memorial Cup as champion and runner-up, since the QMJHL was the host league that season. The Quebec teams played on home ice at the Colisée de Québec, and faced the Spokane Chiefs from the Western Hockey League (WHL), and the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds from the Ontario Hockey League (OHL). Canale led Chicoutimi to victory in its first game, in a 2–1 win over the Greyhounds. After the game, the team was fined $250 by Canadian Hockey League president Ed Chynoweth, for a pregame incident. Canale's team lost 7–1 against Spokane, in a game which included eight players ejected, a brawl in the third period, and 226 total penalty minutes. Drummondville won 5–3 over Chicoutimi in the final round-robin game, and the two teams played each other again the semifinal, with Drummondville winning 2–1 in overtime, when Chicoutimi scored an own-goal.
Canale returned for the 1991–92 QMJHL season, and in February he shared the head coaching duties with Ted Nolan for the combined OHL and QMJHL all-stars at the 1992 CHL All-Star Challenge. His Chicoutimi team finished the season third place in the Dilio division. In the playoffs, they were defeated four games to none by the Shawinigan Cataractes in the first round. In the 1992–93 QMJHL season, Canale repeated the third-place finished in the Dilio division, and Chicoutimi were swept in four games in the first round of the playoffs by the Sherbrooke Faucons.