HENRI RICHARD
Private funeral in Laval
A private funeral service was held Monday in Laval for former Canadiens captain Henri Richard, who died on March 6 at age 84 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
The Richard family announced last week that the service would be a private affair with no media or the general public allowed on the site because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The family thanked everyone concerned for understanding the situation and added that a private message could be sent to the family via the Alfred Dallaire funeral website, memoria.ca.
Richard won a record 11 Stanley Cups as a player during his 20 years with the Canadiens — the last four as captain after Jean Béliveau retired. Richard’s 11 Stanley Cups are two fewer than the Toronto Maple Leafs have won as a team and the same number as the Detroit Red Wings, who rank second and third behind the Canadiens with 24.
Former Canadien Chris Nilan attended the funeral along with Réjean Houle and Mario Tremblay, who both played with Richard. Nilan started his NHL career with the Canadiens during the 1979-80 season, five years after Richard retired.
“He came in the room and stuff back in the day,” Nilan said Monday afternoon after attending Richard’s funeral. “He was very friendly and very nice like all the ex-canadiens were, from Rocket (Maurice Richard), to Dickie Moore, to Jean- Guy Talbot to Jean Béliveau. Every one of them, they were all very friendly and nice to us.
“He was always friendly to me when I saw him in the alumni room after I had retired and we’d talk,” Nilan added. “He was nice and respectful. Just a fun guy to be around and certainly a legend. Eleven Stanley Cups, it’s incredible.”
Nilan recalled that his first season playing for the Canadiens alumni team after he retired was Richard’s last before he hung up his skates for good.
“I remember he came off after the game, took his jersey off and hung it up on the hanger behind him,” Nilan recalled about his first game with the alumni team. “He went over to the cooler, grabbed a Molson Ex, sat down and he held the beer up and looked at it like it was a gorgeous girl. He twisted the top off and then took this real long draw on that bottle of Molson Ex — probably drank more than half of it in one swig — and then just sat back and went: ‘Aaaah!’ That was my first interaction with him, other than seeing him in the locker-room in the early days.”
In 2005, when the late Red Fisher wrote a feature series for the Montreal Gazette ranking the top 10 Canadiens players he had covered over a 50-year span, Richard was ranked No. 5, behind Jean Béliveau, Maurice Richard, Guy
Lafleur and Doug Harvey.
Fisher recalled once asking former Canadiens general manager Frank Selke Sr, whose teams won five consecutive Stanley Cups, to comment on Richard.
“I have been blessed with some of the greatest players in NHL history,” Selke said, “but game in, game out, Henri Richard may have been the most valuable player I’ve ever had.”
Richard leaves behind his wife, Lise Villiard, children Michèle, Gilles (Noëline Poirier), Denis (Line Therriault), Marie-france (Yves-albert Desjardins) and Nathalie (Daniel Goulet); his grandchildren Mathieu, Simon, Catherine, Geneviève, Nancy, Tanya, Julie, Jason, Louis-philippe and Thalina, and four great grandchildren.
“It was a nice ceremony,” Nilan said about the funeral. “They had a loop tape going of pictures of his family all together and another loop on another wall with some of his hockey stuff. It was really nice.
“The whole family was there and they are the sweetest, nicest, humble people,” Nilan added. “He and Lise really did one hell of a job with his family. I’m telling you, that’s impressive to see how he brought that family up with his wife. It’s incredible.”