‘Pocket Rocket’ a fierce competitor
Montreal legend won record 11 Stanley Cups
MONTREAL• Former Montreal Canadiens captain Henri Richard, whose 11 Stanley Cup championships stand as an NHL record that likely never will be broken, died on Friday at age 84.
Richard passed away in a care home in Laval, Que., where he had lived for the past few years as his battle with Alzheimer’s disease worsened.
He is survived by Lise, his wife of 63 years, children Michèle, Gilles, Denis, Marie- France and Nathalie, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
The lion- hearted Hall of Fame centreman, born in Montreal on Feb. 29, 1936, was nicknamed the Pocket Rocket since his teens, unfairly best- known his entire life as being the younger brother of Canadiens legend Maurice ( Rocket) Richard, who died on May 27, 2000, at age 78.
But Henri Richard was a great deal more than that. He was a quiet leader of towering proportions with soaring, hard- nosed talent that belied his 5- foot-7, 165-pound frame.
He led by example on the ice and in the dressing room during a 20- year career that saw him play 1,256 regular-season games. All of those games, and 180 more in the playoffs, were skated wearing the Canadiens jersey, still a club record for service in the bleu-blanc-rouge.
“He was an incredibly important player for this organization,” the late, legendary Jean Béliveau said of Richard in a 2008 Canadiens Magazine feature, Le Gros Bill having won all 10 of his own Stanley Cups with Henri as a teammate.
“It’s a credit to him to have accomplished all that he did with such big shoes to fill. His brother was a tough act to follow, to say the least.”
For his first five NHL seasons, from 1955- 56 through 1959- 60, Henri Richard lived largely in the shadow of the incandescent Maurice. Indeed, Henri was almost an asterisk on the roster beside his sibling during those five seasons, during which the Canadiens won their historic five- consecutive Stanley Cups.
It was Maurice who walked Henri into Canadiens general manager Frank Selke’s Montreal Forum office in 1955 with the younger Richard, then 19, about to sign his first professional contract. It would pay him $ 7,000 his first season, $8,000 his second.
Henri skated in his first Canadiens training camp at age 16, impressing team brass from the beginning.
“We had to sign him,” coach Toe Blake once remarked. “He took the puck at camp and nobody could take it away from him. He was too good not to sign.”
Richard skated his first professional shift on the wing of centreman Béliveau with fiery Bert Olmstead on the other side.
“Bert would give me (hell) if I didn’t do like he told me,” he recalled. “I had my head between my legs the whole time.”
To say that Henri Richard said little early in his career is to vastly understate the truth. An American repor
I’M NOT SURE THAT HENRI EVEN SPEAKS FRENCH. HE JUST DOESN’T SPEAK.
ter seeking an interview once asked Blake whether Richard spoke English, to which Blake replied, “I’m not sure that Henri even speaks French. He just doesn’ t speak.”
But this skating keg of dynamite would speak very loudly with his game for two decades as a pro, and for years before that on outdoor school rinks and in the ranks of junior.
His remarkable work ethic, produced his unique brand of leadership and his tremendous playmaking skills that would see him elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1979.
For five years on the Canadiens, and until the Rocket’s passing in 2000, people mistook the outwardly cool relationship between Henri and Maurice as a feud or a falling out of some kind.
The fact is, they were separated by 15 years, and Maurice moved from the family home when Henri was just 6 years old. But it was when Maurice retired in 1960 that
Henri truly began to make a name for himself.
He scored 19 goals and assisted 21 times in his outstanding 1955-56 rookie season, starting a career that would produce 358 goals and 688 assists.
Richard captained the Canadiens for the final four seasons of his career, the 17th man to wear the ‘ C’, beginning with Béliveau’s retirement in 1971 until he hung up his own skates in 1975, turning the captaincy over to Yvan Cournoyer.
In 1966, Richard had scored his firs t of two Cup-winners,
Seven years later, at 36, Richard won his 11th Stanley Cup, passing Béliveau and Cournoyer for the most championships captured by an NHL player. Richard’s No. 16 jersey was retired by the Canadiens in a Forum ceremony on Dec. 10, 1975.