Taking on Habs legend Jacques Plante in the summer of ’65
Legendary goalie played one game in goal in Quebec lacrosse league
I recently came across a scrapbook from 1965. That summer I played lacrosse in the Quebec Senior Lacrosse League for the Sorel Titans.
I was taking summer courses at Loyola College, then part of the University of Montreal, which later became Concordia University.
Sorel, now called Sorel-Tracy, is a city of about 40,000 on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, about halfway between Montreal and Quebec City.
The Quebec league would be Sr. B calibre, but was not part of the Canadian Lacrosse Association, which declared it to be an outlaw league. That was an apt description of most of the games in the league. Rosters were fluid, players were dropped and added at the whim of the coaches, officiating was inconsistent and there were plenty of fights.
The coach of the Titans was then-Montreal Canadiens hockey star and resident tough guy John Ferguson. His notoriety preceded him at every game. Kids would line up to get his autograph and adults would wait after the game to shake his hand. Even the referees would make an excuse to come over to the bench to speak with him.
Two of the teams, the Caughnawaga Indians and the Ville St. Pierre Saints, played their home games out of the Montreal Forum, the home of the NHL Montreal Canadiens. They would regularly hold doubleheader games.
The Forum put a wooden floor down for lacrosse. It was an illfitted affair that had many gaps and uneven sections. Goalies had to contend with weird bounce shots and players had to be cognizant of the floor moving about.
The other three teams in the league were Drummondville, Ottawa-Hull and Valleyfield.
The Titans and Saints ended up tied for last spot in the regular season standings. Sorel drew the defending champions, Caughnawaga, in the first round of the playoffs. The Titans won the first two games of the series.
When we showed up to the third game in the Montreal Forum,
the Indians had a new player in their lineup. Dressed to play goal was former Montreal Canadiens all-star goalie Jacques Plante. He had not played a game all year, but was allowed to sign.
Coach Ferguson was quite vocal about his appearance until he and the Sorel players saw Plante in warm-up. Regardless of their feelings of him as a great hockey goaltender, it was evident his Hall of Fame hockey skills in the net were not transferring to the lacrosse floor.
The next day Baz O’Meara, columnist for the Montreal Gazette, wrote of the game. His lead stated, “Jacques Plante was bombed out of the Indians’ net last night, as Sorel won another lacrosse playoff victory in the pulse-tingling game.”
Apparently, Plante had played some lacrosse goal, but looked completely out of place. He moved out like a hockey goalie to cut down the angles, but experienced lacrosse players just held onto the ball and dropped it over his shoulder.
Plante never appeared again in the series, as Sorel defeated the Indians in four straight games.
It was certainly a thrill to shoot on a Hall of Fame hockey goalie in a playoff game in the Montreal Forum, albeit with a lacrosse stick.
In the next series, the two lastplace teams played in the semifinals.
Ville St. Pierre, a suburb of Montreal, and Sorel went to a fifth game in the best-of-five series before the Saints prevailed.
Two years later, I again played in the league. This time with the Montreal Cougars.
In this year of Expo 67, we played to scant crowds out of the Paul Sauve Arena in Montreal’s east end. The Cougars ended up in last place, losing the last 15 games of the season.
But I saw plenty of Expo, as well as attending Loyola.
Don Barrie is a retired teacher, former Buffalo Sabres scout and a member of the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame and the Peterborough and District Sports Hall of Fame. His column appears each Saturday in
The Examiner.