- Kings scouts Garnet “Ace” Bailey and Mark Bavis died aboard United Flight 175 on Sept. 11, 2001
- Bruce Boudreau held a ticket on that same flight and moved it up a day
- Read below for how the Kings still carry Ace and Mark 25 years later
Hockey lost two of its own on Sept. 11, 2001, and the Los Angeles Kings have never let anyone forget them.
Garnet “Ace” Bailey and Mark Bavis boarded United Airlines Flight 175 at Boston’s Logan Airport that morning, headed home to Los Angeles. Bailey was the Kings’ director of pro scouting. Bavis was a scout in his second year with the club.
They had just been in Manchester, New Hampshire, looking in on the organization’s AHL affiliate. The flight left Boston at 8:14 a.m. and was flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03.
Bailey was 53. Bavis was 31. Neither man’s remains were ever recovered.
Take a look at KTLA’s piece on the two of them, filed a quarter century on:
Bruce Boudreau was supposed to be on that plane.
He coached the Kings’ Manchester affiliate at the time and held the same Tuesday ticket. Kings head coach Andy Murray wanted his coaching staff in Los Angeles a day early for a dinner, so Boudreau moved his flight to Monday.
Driving home from a wedding in Lake Placid, he tried to talk Bailey into doing the same. Changing the ticket ran about $750, which Bailey said was not in the budget. The last thing he told Boudreau was that he would see him Tuesday morning.
Boudreau has described watching the second plane hit from a Los Angeles hotel, standing beside his Manchester assistant Bob Jay.
“That was us, right there,” Boudreau said. “We were on that flight.”
Bailey played 10 NHL seasons for the Bruins, Red Wings, Blues, Capitals and Oilers.
Seven Stanley Cup rings came out of that career, two as a Boston player and five more as an Edmonton scout. He also roomed with Wayne Gretzky and looked after him on the ice, which tells you most of what you need to know about the man.
Bavis was younger and still climbing. He spent four years at Boston University alongside his twin brother Mike, then three more in the AHL and ECHL before he moved into scouting.
The 2001 draft turned out to be his only one with the Kings. He pushed for David Steckel and Michael Cammalleri, and Los Angeles took them in the first and second rounds.
Bavis grew up in Roslindale as the son of a Boston police officer, and the city’s patrolmen’s association remembered him this week:
Kings players still wear a sticker behind the left ear, a crown with Ace arching over it and Mark underneath. The team wore “AM” patches all through the 2001-02 season.
In October 2012, the Kings brought the Stanley Cup to the National September 11 Memorial and set it down on Panel S-3, where both names are cut into the bronze.
The anniversary lands Friday, and the rest of the sport is marking it too. Mark Messier recently revisited the FDNY helmet he wore onto the ice before the Rangers’ first home game after the attacks.
Here is Kings president Luc Robitaille on what the two men meant to that room:
The sticker goes back on every Kings helmet in a few weeks, same spot it has occupied for 25 years.
