He’s been with the Carolina Hurricanes’ franchise since 1972. Now he plans to retire.
The Carolina Hurricanes could soon be losing their longest tenured employee.
Equipment manager Skip Cunningham, who has been with the hockey franchise since 1972, plans to retire, Canes president and general manager Don Waddell said in an interview with The News & Observer Monday.
Cunningham, a Boston native, has been a fixture in the team’s locker room and behind the bench during games, always quick to spot with his silver hair and bushy mustache. He was a part of Hartford Whalers teams that included Gordie Howe and a young Ron Francis, and then Hurricanes teams that had such stars as Francis, Rod Brind’Amour and Eric Staal.
“Skip is very well-respected, very well-liked by everybody throughout the organization,” Waddell said. “What I feel bad about is that Skip never got to work what you would call your normal last games. We’re talking about it right now and our plan will be whenever we do return, he’s had a great career, not only in the National Hockey League and World Hockey League but particularly with our organization, that at the right time we will definitely pay tribute to him.
“I told him he could stay around and there’s lots of work this year when we come back, and we’ll figure all that out. But it’s getting time where you go and enjoy your life a little bit when you still can.”
Skip Cunningham with the Whalers, Stanley Cup
Cunningham, raised off Brookline Avenue in Boston not far from Fenway Park, is a graduate of Northeastern University. He began his work with the franchise soon after graduation, in 1972 when the team was the New England Whalers and played in the World Hockey Association.
Cunningham was with the team when the NHL granted the Whalers admittance in 1979 during the merger with the WHA.
On April 13, 1997, Cunningham was one of those who collected the Whalers’ jerseys for a final time after the game against Tampa Bay at the Hartford Civic Center. He prepared to make the move to North Carolina, to a new city.
John Forslund, the Canes’ former television play-by-play announcer, first met Cunningham in the summer of 1991 and calls him “one of the greatest people I’ve come across in my career.”
“He cared about the game, he treated the players like sons, he had the utmost respect of the coaches,” Forslund said. “I consider myself lucky to work in the same organization for all those years with someone like Skip. I miss dearly our conversations on long plane rides, the best.”
When the Canes won the Stanley Cup in 2006, Cunningham spent his “day with the Cup” in Boston. He carried it up to the Green Monster at Fenway Park. He carried it to three of the arenas in which the Whalers once played — the Boston Garden, Springfield Civic Center and the Hartford Civic Center.
More than 1,400 straight games
Cunningham worked 1,412 consecutive games from 1972 to 1990 before being sidelined following surgery in January 1990. In 1989, the Connecticut Sports Writers Alliance presented him with the Good Guy Award for unselfish dedication to Connecticut sports.
Cunningham was the assistant trainer for Team USA at the World Ice Hockey Championships in 1985 and 1989. He has been selected to work at four All-Star Games: The 1974 and 1976 WHA All-Star Games as well as the 1986 and 2011 NHL All-Star Games.
This story was originally published September 28, 2020 at 4:48 PM.
