from Patrick Reusse of the Star Tribune,

Sonmor was the coach of the North Stars during their near-to-glory days in the early ’80s and the problem he created for newspaper people was this: The locker room door would open, you would spend some time getting quotes from players (perhaps as they smoked a postgame heater) and then you would walk into the adjacent coach’s office to interview Sonmor.

Glen would have a couple of thoughts on the contest, and these thoughts would detour to anecdotes from Sonmor’s decades in the game, and the reporters would be laughing and that 11:45 p.m. deadline would be getting closer.

Even for hockey heathens in the sporting press, attendance was much greater in those Sonmor years than for any local NHL product, before or since. High-scoring, entertaining hockey was partly responsible for this — but Sonmor was Reason 1A.

Glen Robert Sonmor was the greatest storyteller in the 47 years of Twin Cities sports that I have been allowed to cover. He died from pneumonia and other ailments Monday at 86 in Toronto, where he had moved in the spring of 2014 to be closer to sister Jean (Devine) and her family.

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