By Sarah Mclellan

Star Tribune

Before switching from player to coach, Dean Evason had a teammate whose skates never stopped moving.

He was relentless — “like a dog on a bone,” Evason recalled. Even in practice, he exerted maximum effort, a style that would tick off those sharing the ice with him.

“This is the guy I wanted to look up to,” Evason said. “This is the guy I wanted to emulate every day in practice and the games because he didn’t quit. He just kept going and going.”

After first joining up on a line with the AHL’s Binghamton Whalers during the 1984-85 season, the two later crossed paths amid promotions to the NHL with the Hartford Whalers before both suited up for the San Jose Sharks in their inaugural season in 1991.

They reunited again, in 2012, but not as players.

Evason was a coach, tasked with leading the Nashville Predators’ AHL affiliate and his former linemate was now his boss as general manager of the Milwaukee Admirals.

“He doesn’t quit,” Evason said. “He just keeps working and working and working until he allows himself to have success. That’s what he did as a player, and now that’s obviously what he does as a manager.”

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