Lafleur reflects on Canadiens’ season
‘You can’t win if you don’t score goals,’ irrepressible Canadiens legend says
The Guy Lafleur Awards are an annual opportunity to honour outstanding student athletes and to catch up with the Hall of Fame winger who can always be counted on to say something interesting, if not outrageous.
After weighing in on the Canadiens’ season — “It’s too bad they didn’t go further in the playoffs but you can’t win if you don’t score goals” — Lafleur suggested the Canadiens weren’t willing to pay the price necessary to win in the post-season.
Lafleur knows a little something about paying the price because he was the target of a full-on assault by the Boston Bruins in the 1978 final, which the Canadiens won in six games.
And he knows a little something about scoring. He’s the Canadiens’ all-time leading scorer and said scoring wasn’t a problem for the Canadiens in the glory days of the 1970s.
“If one guy wasn’t scoring, there was someone else to pick up the slack,” said Lafleur, who was surrounded by Steve Shutt, Yvan Cournoyer, the Mahovlich brothers, Jacques Lemaire and Henri Richard.
As part of the NHL’s centennial, the 1977 Canadiens Stanley Cup team was named the third-best Cup winner in history.
“We only lost eight games that season and we heard from (general manager) Sam Pollock after every one of them,” Lafleur recalled.
Lafleur is watching this year’s final with interest and noted that Nashville defenceman P.K. Subban seems to be getting into the heads of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Lafleur said he enjoys watching Subban, but he understood why things didn’t work out for him in Montreal.
“He was different from his teammates, but he’s a good fit in Nashville,” said Lafleur. “There weren’t any guys like him when I was playing. If we had a guy like that, Serge Savard, (Bob) Gainey or The Pocket (Richard) would be all over him.”
The big winners Monday were McGill defenceman Nathan Chiarlitti and Baie-Comeau goaltender Antoine Samuel. They each received the Guy Lafleur Excellence Award, which carries a $6,000 scholarship over three years. Philippe Forcier, a defenceman with Collège Laflèche in TroisRivières in the Quebec College League, received an award of merit worth $1,000.
It was the second major award this spring for Chiarlitti. The 25-year-old native of Maple, Ont., also won the Dr. Randy Gregg Award, which goes to the university player who best combines hockey ability with academic achievement and community involvement. Chiarlitti is pursuing a master’s degree in kinesiology after graduating from St. Francis Xavier University and carries a 3.91 average out of 4.
Samuel was honoured as the top student-athlete in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. A native of Lac-Etchemin, he has an 85 per cent in human sciences at CEGEP Baie Comeau. Samuel was invited to the Anaheim Ducks camp last summer as an undrafted free agent.
Forcier, a Drummondville native, has maintained a 94.5 per cent average in natural sciences at Collège Laflèche and set a league record for defencemen with 28 points (three goals and 25 assists).
In other news, the Canadiens signed forward Andreas Martinsen to a one-year, one-way contract worth $675,000. The 26-year-old Norwegian was acquired from Colorado at the trading deadline in a deal for Sven Andrighetto.