Jacques Demers is lean with hockey memories.

Local coaches saw this first hand while listening to the former Stanley Cup winning coach of the 1993 Montreal Canadiens at Takhini Arena on Saturday.

The point of the meeting was to listen to the coaches as well as relay his own experiences.

"Not to come in a show, because I was a former NHL coach, that I know more than them, I would never do that,” Demers told the Star. "An exchange, I would like to have an exchange with them.

They're coaches, they obviously have some qualities. I'm not going to come here and tell them how to run their stuff and talk big-time hockey because they deserve as much respect.”

Demers stressed the importance of grass-roots level fun and passion for the game to a room of roughly 20 local coaches.

It's O.K. to dream, kids should dream, he said, but there are 700 players in the National Hockey League.

Those aren't great odds.

More important than being pushed too hard by coaches and parents, he added, is that kids enjoy coming to the rink and lacing up the skates.

"It was a wonderful opportunity and a good message,” said John Grant, president of the Whitehorse Minor Hockey League (WMHL).

"It was very inspirational, and I think what he's done is very much reinforce some of the concepts and ideals that Whitehorse Minor tries to promote amongst their coaches. As a Whitehorse Minor board member, I love that.”

Coaches then got the chance to pick the brain of the two-time Jack Adams Award winning coach about such subjects as, among others, the best players he's coached in his career.

Steve Yzerman, Patrick Roy, Adam Oates, Vincent Lecavalier, the list goes on.

"I've been blessed,” Demers said, even recounting a story about coaching Gordie Howe and a young Wayne Gretzky in the 1979 World Hockey Association (WHA) all-star game against HC Moscow Dynamo.

Demers asked Howe before the game if he wanted to play on a line with Gretzky.

You're the coach, you make the call, Howe said. Demers put the two legends on the same line, along with Gordie's son Mark.

The line linked up for seven points in the first game.

Once during the game, when Howe returned to the bench, he said to Demers,

Looks like you made the right call.

Demers said that was an example of the attitudes of great players – they just want to play.

"He's got a real passion for the game, and it sounds like he had that passion when he was in minor hockey,” Midget Mustangs head coach Jim Stephens said after hearing Demers speak. "As a coach, that's probably one of the drivers, when you have a passion for the game, you love the game, you want to pass that passion on to the players.”

Grant agreed.

"We have some excellent coaches in Whitehorse, and the ones that are really successful are the ones that actually follow those ideals,” Grant said. "And it's good to hear it reinforced, particularly from an individual of his stature. Jacque Demers, he's been very successful.”

Aside from coaching the Canadiens to their 24th Stanely Cup, Demers has also coached the St. Louis Blues, the Detroit Red Wings and Tampa Bay Lightning.

Grant added that all he ever asks from his players is to have fun, do your best and be committed.

"I tell them that the score is really secondary; it's the effort and the enjoyment of the game and the commitment they bring,” Grant said.

Stephens said sometimes parents and players lose sight of these key messages.

But for the most part, Whitehorse doesn't suffer from the same problems other minor hockey leagues suffer.

"We're not perfect, but I think the one advantage is we're a small community, whereas when you go down to the lower mainland for example, you don't know each other, so it's a little more aggressive behavior,” Stephens said.

"You play the game because you love it and you want to have fun, I think that was a real key message, even at the pro level I think it's the same thing, you still got to have fun; it's a game and you got to have the passion to play at the very top level, it's got to be fun.”