Once a Champion...

  HARTFORD, Conn. -- You talk about your good days.

  For first year Portland Pirate coach Kevin Dineen, it could scarcely get much better, unless of course his squad should happen to capture the Calder Cup.

  That may or may not come. But this day, Dineen won the AHL's Coach of the Year award, then saw his team win its first ever division championship by downing the Hartford WolfPack, 5-3.

  That this milestone win came in the very city, indeed the very building, that he enjoyed his greatest success of his two-decade long NHL career (the Whalers Forever!) provided this cake with a special cherry topping.

 "My trips to Hartford have been very special," said Dineen, whose Whaler No. 11 was raised to the rafters earlier this season. "This has been the culmination of a very special year for me."

Dineen, who was a special kind of player, has turned out to be a very special kind of coach, in this his rookie season.

 What he has managed to do in very short order is to put his personal stamp on a team, something some coaches try to do for an entire career and never succeed at.

 "Every player in here respects him, tremendously," said rugged center Geoff Peters, who has enjoyed a banner year under Dineen. "For what he's done as a player. For how he's treated us as players. He comes from a long line of family members who have been involved in hockey, and I think he's learned from them. But he brings his style to our style. Hard nosed. Everybody checks. Everybody works hard."

 Defenseman Shane O'Brien echoed the sentiment. Actually he did more than that, by fishing the game puck out of the post game celebrational scrum and handing it to Dineen as they were walking off the ice.

 "Kevin played the game the way it was meant to be played," said O'Brien. "For a long time. We appreciate that a lot more. I saw the puck was there, and I thought it would be a nice thing for Kevin to have."

Dineen's style, as a player, and as a coach, was shaped in large part by his father Bill, who sired five hockey playing sons while coaching the Houston Aeros to two WHA championships, and raising  up two Calder Cup championship banners in Adirondack.

  He was also the AHL coach of the year (twice).

So, too, now, is his son.

"That was the icing on the cake," he said. "That was the first thing I had thought of. I had people mention this (might happen) to me, but I think I have a good ability to tune things out. But when I got the phone call today, I reflected on it. A 20 year span and there's another Dineen (on the trophy). I'm extremely proud, and it makes me enjoy his (career) as much."