Canadiens legend Jean Béliveau dies at 83
Jean Béliveau, the legendary, brilliant Montreal Canadiens centreman whose grace and leadership on and off the ice transcended hockey for more than six decades, has died. He was 83.
Béliveau leaves his wife and soulmate of 61 years, Élise, the couple’s daughter, Hélène, and granddaughters Mylène and Magalie.
They are joined in mourning by the hockey universe and countless people around the world whose lives have been indelibly touched and profoundly enriched by the man who affectionately was nicknamed Le Gros Bill, for his likeness to a movie actor of the 1950s.
Béliveau had been in delicate health in recent months, having fought pneumonia from August into September not long after having fractured a hip in a fall at home.
He had suffered strokes in 2010 and 2012, a decade after having waged a difficult battle with cancer in 2000.
“I knocked on the door,” Béliveau philosophically said two years ago, in conversation while recovering at home from his second stroke. “But it seems they weren’t ready for me.”
The richly decorated Hall of Famer compiled athletic achievements that were the gold standard, matched only by his elegance and his lifelong charity and humanitarian work off the ice.
Béliveau’s dazzling statistics installed him in the hockey shrine in 1972.
Béliveau won 10 Stanley Cups during his 18 seasons with the Canadiens, having arrived from Quebec City in 1953 from the semi-professional senior-league Quebec Aces as a long-courted superstar-in-themaking.
He was signed on Oct. 3, 1953 to a five-year, $105,000 contract, at the time the most generous pact in the National Hockey League.
“It was simple, really,” Canadiens general manager Frank Selke said that day. “All I did was open the Forum vault and say, ‘Jean, take what you think is right.’ ?
Given what the Canadiens would get in return, Béliveau was an absolute steal.
The world welcomed Jean Béliveau on Aug. 31, 1931, in Trois-Rivières, the first of eight children born to his parents, Arthur and Laurette.
The family moved to Plessisville when Béliveau was 3, then settled in Victoriaville when he was 6.
The young centreman would leave home in 1949 at the age of 18 to play for the junior-league Quebec Citadels, having started in organized hockey as a 12-year-old before moving up at age 15 to the intermediate Victoriaville wPanthers.
Béliveau would graduate to play for the senior Quebec Aces from 1951-53 before Canadiens GM Frank Selke finally convinced him, after much negotiation and a couple of impressive call-ups, that his place was in Montreal.
“He’s great,” Canadiens superstar Maurice (Rocket) Richard said in lavish praise of Béliveau following the latter’s second call-up. “He’s got the greatest shot I’ve ever seen in hockey and he’s a fine man. He could help this team plenty and I wish he would change his mind.”
And so Béliveau did, finally, moving to the big city down the St. Lawrence River in October 1953. He then was four months the husband of Élise Couture, a young woman from Quebec City whom he’d met at a social event in Lac Beauport two years earlier.
It’s no wonder that it took much work for the stubborn Selke to lure his gilt-edged prospect to Montreal. Earning in Quebec a wage that would have been princely in the National Hockey League, adored by the provincial capital which lay at his feet, Béliveau was also heeding the advice of his father.
“Loyalty is another form of responsibility,” Arthur Béliveau had often told his son, related in the superstar’s 1994 autobiography, My Life In Hockey.
Béliveau’s offence: 586 goals and 809 assists in 1,287 regular-season and playoff games, every one for the Canadiens, most played during the NHL’s undiluted pre-expansion era.
The 6-foot-3, 205-pound centreman missed the playoffs just once in his 18 seasons, his second-last year in the NHL, and appeared in 13 All-Star Games. His name appears on the Stanley Cup a record 17 times, having won seven championships during 22 post-playing years as the Canadiens’ senior vice-president of corporate affairs.