Tony Hand

Anthony Hand MBE (born 15 August 1967) is a Scottish former ice hockey player and coach.

Hand was born on 15 August 1967 in Edinburgh, the second son to David and Lorraine Hand.

He grew up in the Muirhouse area of the city and attended St Augustine's Catholic School.

He started his ice hockey career with the Edinburgh-based Murrayfield Racers, playing for their junior team the Raiders and working part-time at the rink.

His older brother Paul was also an ice hockey player.

He made his senior debut on 20 September 1981, at the age of fourteen against the Fife Flyers when the Murrayfield Racers had a player shortage.

He gained his first point against the Billingham Bombers on 17 October 1981, with an assist to a Chris Kelland goal.

He finished the 1981/82 season having played 19 games, scoring 4 goals and adding 7 assists for 11 points.

He followed it up the following year with 20 goals and 22 assists, a total of 42 points, in 24 games.

He established himself as a regular first choice player for Murrayfield side that finished 5th in the 1983/84 season, scoring 52 goals and 43 assists in 30 league games after scoring 12 goals and 8 assists in 7 Autumn Cup games.

He reached his first Championship Playoff Final with Murrayfield but despite Hand scoring 10 goals and 5 assists in 6 games, the Racers lost 5–4 to Dundee Rockets.

He went on to represent Great Britain at the World Junior Championships, scoring 6 goals and 3 assists.

In the 1984/85, Hand clocked up his 100th career league goal against Durham Wasps, scoring 72 in the season and broke Roy Halpin's league assists record with 107.

He also scored 44 goals and 50 assists in 14 Autumn Cup and Championship Playoff games.

With Murrayfield, he reached his second successive final after the Racers finished 3rd in the league but again they lost, this time to Fife Flyers.

Representing Great Britain at the Pool C European Championships in Feltre in Italy, he played 3 games and scored 4 points.

He also scored 2 goals while guesting for Dundee in the European Cup.

He was the first British player to be drafted by an NHL team when he was picked by the Edmonton Oilers in 1986.

Nicknamed Two point Tony, he holds several national records, and scored over 4000 points in his career, more than any professional hockey player at any level.

In the 1985/86 season, Hand continued to clock up the points scoring 72 goals and 110 assists from 35 games to help Murrayfield finish 2nd in the League behind Durham, including his 200th goal against Peterborough Pirates on 8 February 1986.

In 15 cup and playoff games, he also scored 35 goals and 36 assists as Murrayfield won both competitions.

They beat Durham 8–5 in the Autumn Cup and Dundee 4–2 at Wembley.

Personally, he was awarded the Young Player of the Year award-winning a couple of weeks attendance at the Calgary Flames training camp to train with NHL players.

Instead of attending the Flames training camp, Hand went to the Edmonton Oilers' training camp after they had selected him in the 12th round (252nd and last overall) of the 1986 NHL entry draft.

There he survived the full fourteen days of camp without being cut, despite breaking his only stick on the first day and having to borrow one from Marty McSorley.

Playing alongside players such as Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier, he impressed coach Glen Sather and was offered a contract to play junior hockey for a year.

Suffering from homesickness, Hand turned it down but agreed to return the following year.

Hand was the first of only three British-born and trained players ever to have been drafted by an NHL team (the second being Colin Shields and the third being Liam Kirk).

Before returning home to Scotland, Hand played briefly for the junior Western Hockey League's Victoria Cougars, with whom he had trained before the Edmonton camp, and scored eight points in only three games.

He returned to Scotland a few months later due to exhaustion from the demands of training, playing and press interest.

Despite the interest of other British clubs, Hand returned to play for the Racers, where he won his first Heineken League Premier title, the Regal Scottish Cup and Scottish League.

He broke the 200-league-point barrier for the first time, scoring 105 goals and 111 assists in 35 games, and scored his 300th career goal against Nottingham Panthers in February 1987.

However, the Racers lost in the play-offs to Durham Wasps.

He also won a bronze medal with the Great Britain Under-21s in Pool C of the World Championships in Denmark.

The following season, Hand went back to Canada to train with the Cougars before heading to Edmonton where he played for the Oilers against Team Canada and assisted a Kevin Lowe goal.

Again he was offered a contract with the Oilers' farm team, the Nova Scotia Oilers, but again turned it down, afraid of being stuck in minor professional hockey earning less than his contract in Edinburgh.

Hand served as the head coach of the Great Britain national team, a position he assumed in 2011 and resigned from in 2013.

Still over a point-per-game scorer deep into his forties, Hand retired after the 2015 EPIHL league finals, after his Manchester Phoenix team lost.

Until the franchise folded in January 2017, he was the coach of the Manchester Phoenix.

In 2017, Hand received the Torriani Award from the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) in 2017, and inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame.