Ron Kennedy was a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 ice hockey

Ice hockey

Ice hockey, often referred to as hockey, is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard rubber puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams of six players each. Five members of each team skate up and down the ice trying to take...

 player and trainer

Athletic trainer

An athletic trainer is a certified, health care professional who practices in the field of sports medicine. Athletic training has been recognized by the American Medical Association as an allied health care profession since 1990....

.

Career

Kennedy had played minor-league hockey in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 before moving to coaching.

Coaching career

His last position was coaching for Innsbruck of the Austrian Hockey League.

His coaching career included:

• Medicine Hat Tigers
  Medicine Hat Tigers
  The Medicine Hat Tigers are a junior ice hockey team in the Western Hockey League who play out of Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. Established in 1970, the team has won two national Memorial Cups, five WHL League Championships and seven Division Titles. The Tigers play at the Medicine Hat Arena....
  
   (Western Hockey League
  Western Hockey League
  The Western Hockey League is a major junior ice hockey league based in Western Canada and the Northwestern United States. The WHL is one of three leagues that constitute the Canadian Hockey League as the highest level of junior hockey in Canada...
  
  )
• Villach, Austria - won the Austrian championship in his first year (1992–1994)
• New York Islanders
  New York Islanders
  The New York Islanders are a professional ice hockey team based in Uniondale, New York. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League...
  
   assistant coach
• EC Hannover
  EC Hannover
  The Hannover Indians are a professional German ice hockey team and public limited company from Hanover in Lower Saxony which was renamed in 2006 from the Kleefelder Eissportverein to the EC Hannover Indians. Since 2002 the team had played in the Oberliga and was promoted in the 2008 2009 season to...
  
  , Eisbären Berlin
  Eisbären Berlin
  ' are a professional ice hockey team based in Berlin, Germany. The team competes in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga , the highest level of play in professional German ice hockey and is also one of the league's founding members...
  
   and ERC Ingolstadt
  ERC Ingolstadt
  The ERC Ingolstadt are a member of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga. Commonly known as the Panthers, they play their games in Ingolstadt, Germany at the Saturn Arena. During the 2004–05 NHL lockout, Ingolstadt signed NHLers Marco Sturm, Andy McDonald, Jamie Langenbrunner and Aaron Ward...
  
   (Deutsche Eishockey Liga)
• Head coach of the Austrian national team (1996–2002)
• Villach, Austria (second time)
• Innsbruck (Austria) and Bolzano (Italy)
• Canadian national team coach for the 2006 Deutschland Cup

Death

Ron Kennedy resigned after his December 2008 diagnosis of brain cancer, from which he died, aged 56, in Klagenfurt

Klagenfurt

-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

.