Sharing the ice with Guy Lafleur
Saltwire Network journalist remembers late, great NHL Hall of Famer
It's game night, you're the leading scorer on your hometown senior AAA hockey team and the rink you grew up playing in is jammed to the rafters. But no one — and that includes family — is there to see you play.
That was the case for me on Feb. 16, 1988. But, make no mistake, despite being on the ice, I was like the rest of the fans at Colchester Legion Stadium in Truro that night, when Guy Lafleur skated
Montreal alongside his longtime Canadiens linemate
Steve Shutt, as part of the NHL Rammers — a team of recently retired players who travelled across North America for exhibition games.
Sadly, the Hall of Fame winger, affectionally known as “Flower,” who was instrumental in the Habs' four Stanley Cups from 1976-79, died on on Friday, April 22, at the age of 70.
As a long-time Bruins fan, I rooted against those Montreal teams and, especially, Lafleur since, being the star he was, always seemed to play his best in the biggest games. And Montreal versus Boston was always a big game. Case in point, it was his tying goal, on a trademark slapshot from the wing that beat Boston goalie Gilles Gilbert and sent Game 7 into overtime in the fabled 1979 playoff semifinal.
I don't know of any hockey fan of that era who cannot distinctly remember the great Danny Gallivan's call of the goal and the image of a defeated Gilbert laying helpless on the ice while the Montreal Forum crowd erupted. Like Gilbert, I lay stunned on our living floor with the dreaded thought that Boston was not going to recover and, sure enough, Yvon Lambert scored in overtime, and Montreal would go on to win the Stanley Cup that year over the New York Rangers.
In those days, Lafleur and the Canadiens were, to steal the Marvel movie line, “inevitable.”
But in 1988, my first year in senior hockey, as I watched Lafleur glide on the Truro ice during warmup, my Bruins' despise of all things Canadiens drained away. If there was even a drip left in the tank, it dried up as Lafleur tapped each of us in the starting lineup on the shinpads, while flashing a wide smile that said, ‘let's have some fun.' How could we not?
We were about to share the ice with a legend.
“Guy, Guy, Guy,' the more than 2,000-strong Truro crowd chanted before and after the game, and literally every time he touched the puck.
“It was without a doubt the
biggest hockey memory for me and, probably, everyone on our team,” said my teammate Ed Longaphy, a defenceman who had recently joined our Truro-Shubie Colonels team from the rival Halifax Blues.
“To see Steve Shutt hit Guy with a cross-ice pass on the tape, with Guy's flow going as he passed by our bench, and then to see Guy unleashing that slapshot over goalie Kendall's (Nowe) shoulder — wow! I looked down the bench and asked, ‘did that just happen?' It was as if we were watching Hockey Night in Canada.”
Our captain with the Colonels that season was Truro native Don Cameron.
“It was a thrill to just be on the same ice surface as Lafleur, a real superstar that I admired as a kid,” Cameron told me when I called him and asked him to share his thoughts.
Sterling Mingo, another local defenceman, called it one of those, “once in a lifetime opportunities.”
“It's just something you never forget,” Mingo said.
The game was an absolute blast. We somehow won 10-9, even with the Rammers firing close to 70 shots at Nowe and our other goaltender, Kevin Pellerine.
What nobody knew at the time was that the then 36-year-old Lafleur wasn't actually retired but simply on a timeout from his all-star NHL career. He returned to the NHL the following season with the Rangers and then spent two more with the Quebec Nordiques. Each season, putting up admirable numbers for a player in his late 30s.
Our general manager at that time, Larry Anthony, who was instrumental in making that game happen as well as one the following season where we played against the likes of Darryl Sittler and Dave ‘Tiger' Willams of Maple Leafs' lore, and Clark Gillies and Bob Bourne from the Islanders' dynasty.
“The best part of those games was that the players weren't old, retired guys who had been away from the game for a long time,” Anthony said. “They were only a couple of years retired and, of course, Lafleur went back to the NHL after we played against him.”
And I can add this about the best part of those players from getting to chat and hang around them a bit after the game, that time was just as enjoyable as sharing the ice because they were gracious and genuine. Lafeur stood out in that regards too. The main attraction at the first reception, he made time for everyone and shared that same smile from just before puck drop.
An NHL superstar and a true gentleman. RIP.