Kilburn Dies Of Heart Attack Former Spokane Hockey Pro Was A Fan Favorite In His Career
Colin Kilburn, prominent as a hockey player and coach but best remembered in Spokane as a promoter, died Wednesday in Edmonton of a heart attack.
Kilburn, who would have turned 67 on Dec. 26, was walking to work at the time of his death, his brother, Doug Kilburn, said Friday.
Kilburn scored more than 600 points for Victoria, Edmonton, Vancouver and Spokane of the Western Hockey League, when the WHL was a professional organization.
He was a player-assistant coach with the WHL Spokane Comets, in his 10th year of pro hockey, when he registered his 600th point.
He left Spokane after the ‘62 season only to end a three-year retirement after accepting a three-year contract to manage and play for the 1965-66 Spokane Jets of the senior amateur Western International League.
Kilburn said at the time - he was 37 - that he would play only in spots. “If we have the horses we won’t need the wagon,” he said.
Colorful statements and aggressive play endeared Kilburn to Spokane fans.
In November 1965 the player-coach-general manager suffered a fractured shoulder in a game at Nelson, British Columbia. In January of ‘66 he was suspended five games for his part in a fight at the Coliseum that cut short a Spokane-Nelson game.
By 1968, after three years of rising attendance and success on the ice, Kilburn’s contract was not renewed. A petition signed by 484 fans was circulated, urging the club to retain Kilburn.
In a 1968 Spokesman-Review story he was described as a “year-long promoter” active in the Lilac Festival Association, the Greater Spokane Sports Association and the War Party, a Spokane Indians support group.
He was replaced by Al Rollins, who took the hockey club to a succession of senior amateur championships.
Born in Wilkie, Saskatoon, Kilburn moved with his family to Edmonton, where his hockey career started as a 9-year-old goalie.
He was a 15-year-old goalkeeper in junior hockey with players up to 20 years of age when he remembered 13 goals being “fired past me in two periods.
“I went in and threw off the goalie pads,” he said in a 1966 interview. “I went back out and had two goals and an assist in the third period. I never played goalie again.”
Kilburn came to Spokane in 1959 with the WHL Comets. After two years with the pro team he left hockey for a job in Bakersfield, Calif. He was transferred to Los Angeles before returning to Spokane in ‘65.
He returned to the game in 1969 as a coach in Salem, Va., of the Eastern Hockey League.
Kilburn had three children, Lynne, Barry and Cindy.
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