Nice 7-minute tribute vid on rds.ca. I'm crying here. I've sharedd this story before. Growing up in Sherbrooke, we moved next door to some Bostonian transplants who were vehemently anti-French and anti-CH. The year was 1977 and I'd just turned eight. The Begin family's love of all things and sports Boston became a defining moment for me as the Expos were coming on and the Flower and Dryden, Big Bird and Savard were of course, owning the whole hockey world. I sometimes pay less attention, but I have never stopped loving the Habs, and Guy Lafleur in defense of all my fellow Québecois(e)s/Quebeckers in all our quirks before the elephant of American hegemony. The Flower was our biggest hero, proof that we mattered and could frustrate rivals with speed and creativity. Fuck cancer! We will miss you forever, Guy. Thank you for lifting us all up. Merci, pour toujours. R.I.P.
We knew this day was coming based on some internet rumblings. We have lost 2 of the 4 greatest right wingers in hockey history in the last week. When I started following hockey and the Montreal Canadiens, Yvan Cournoyer was my favourite player. Loved his speed and his blistering slap shot. Then, in 1971 along came a highly touted prospect, the next hero in a long line of heroes. It took him a couple years to get going but when he did, he left everyone in his dust. Rest in Peace Guy, you became my No. 1 all time favourite and a Bruin killer.
This is not true. Not already, Guy. Certainly, we apprehended this very sad news while selfishly wishing never to have to deprive ourselves of your colossal presence. Given your impenetrable strength of nature, we wanted to be able to keep you with us for a long time to come. In the most wonderful scenario, we imagined seeing your exit from the doctor's office without any trace of this damn cancer, triumphing as you were when you were, the duvet in the wind and the skates on the buttocks, your team and all of Quebec towards a Stanley Cup.
Today, this Quebec that you have so often inflamed is orphaned. He is crying for you. He is in pain. I admit, I hurt too. I reread all these games on the bridge when I stopped writing every time to better enjoy your presence on the ice. I think of all the beautiful stories that the sports press has been able to write thanks to your talent as a gifted and your innate flair for the show. Thanks also to your legendary generosity to people you sometimes knew neither Eve nor Adam.
When you were needed to breathe courage into those who were struggling in the disease, and who would have let go if you had not made a short but warm incursion into their lives, you were always there. By your presence alone, by your magnetism and your bonhommy, you cheered them up in less than two. If you have comforted many in their end of life, it has been returned to you in recent months.
It is Quebec, Canada and all these places where hockey is essential that have accompanied you in your own ordeal. You have never been alone. Every day, we heard from you. We prayed for you because we couldn't imagine life without an athlete of your presence among us.
You were not just an exciting skater. You were not just a virtuoso with agile hands who could twirl from left to right without ever escaping the puck. You were like the artist who keeps his audience in suspense. You were Guy Lafleur. As if the simple evocation of your name were synonymous with grandiose moments.
You offered people what they expected from an honest athlete. When you jumped on the ice, there was always some hope. With your departure, it's as if there were no more great stories to tell. By your repeated prowess, you could best tell us about them.
When teammates were better paid than you, at a time when you were the league's first attraction card, it never stopped you from going hard so that the Canadiens continued to sit at the top. Without any embarrassment, you were poorly paid. To remedy this, you even had to force the hands of the bosses by becoming the only Glorious to threaten the organization of a strike. Did they have to turn a deaf ear to you for you to get there?
During the 1976 series, after a 56-goal campaign, you played under police escort because a mysterious group threatened to kidnap you and demand a ransom of $1 million. Far from panicking, you had this trait of mind towards those who were planning this bad blow: "I have some respect for these people," you said, with a mocking eye. They value me more dear than the Canadian."
You were never a captain, even if you were faithfully at the controls of the ship. Despite everything, you were made to do the most embarrassing of outings. How can you explain that you played barely 14 seasons in this uniform that you loved so much when you still had energy in the tank when you returned four years later? Of course, you were offered an office on the second floor of the dilapidated Forum. You naively believed that you would be consulted on hockey files, but you were not asked anything.
In the role of ambassador, which you held until your last breath, you did not accept defeat much better. You spoke loudly some days. You criticized the inertia of management when nothing moved for pain. You didn't hesitate to give admonitions to players who were not bleeding from the nose for the team. You remained upright like an oak because you have never been anything other than a being of great integrity. You looked life in the face, as you looked your interlocutors straight in the eyes when you spoke to them.
Of course, you haven't always led a tidy life. At 27 or 28, after realizing that you had not had a childhood like that of young people your age and even less a teenager, after being subjected to rigid discipline in order to become the best of all, you began to offer yourself freedoms. Your nightlife has been well documented. It allowed you to evacuate all the pressure that gripped you. A pressure that forced you to always be better to win a team crowded with super talented teammates.
Despite everything, in these moments of misguidance, you answered present the next day. You were not always as fresh as a rose in training, but you nevertheless left all your energies there. And at the time of the games, we never wondered if you had feasted the day before. We didn't have to wonder about it because nothing seemed there.
You have been forgiven a lot, Guy, because you have always given us everything. You loved the world. You have never made garden trips to avoid scribbleing an autograph. I remember a dinner for the poor organized by a church in Longueuil a few days before Christmas. Together with several sports personalities, you served meals to these people. Once the evening was over, the personalities left. You sat at a table in the entrance hall of the building to sign autographs until the last admirer was served. These loyal fans had probably never gone to the Forum. They couldn't afford it, but they all knew who you were, Guy. They called you by your first name, as if they had always frequented you.
These people, by fiddling with the piece of paper you signed to them that evening, mourn you today.
Michael Farber, the poet who recognized Guy's poetry on ice, knew only Greek gods would be appropo. Nice video tribute here: https://www.tsn.ca/video/~2427179
I've somewhat ripped Geoff Molson to do things. I've never lost respect for him. I'm happy he is in charge as the owner of the most important hockey franchise in the world.
...
What an incredible, powerful, heartfelt presser Geoff just gave in honouring Guy Lafleur.
Us Gen Xers all got a taste of greatness through the Flower that really connected us with past generations who had The Rocket and Béliveau. Guy carried the torch for us. His loss is hitting me way harder than I prepared myself for.
If you can stomach SN, Brunt has a good writeup on Guy too. What stuck out immediately about the Habs of the late 70s was this:
Guy Lafleur, whose death was announced by the Canadiens on Friday, was, arguably, the greatest player on the greatest team in NHL history. During the Montreal Canadiens’ last dynasty — in the process of winning consecutive Stanley Cups from 1976 to 1979, they lost a total of just 46 regular-season and 10 playoff games — Lafleur won the scoring title three times and twice won the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player.
The current team has lost 47 in regulation. 58 overall.
It seems silly, but I feel sad that this was the last Habs team he got to watch.
My heart goes out to Chantal. She has lost her idol and now has the immense responsibility to planning the honouring of him. There’s no better person to do this.
I'm pretty sure that putrid ron mclame will have something nonsensical to say on the leaf channel tomorrow night. I won't be around to see or hear it, it's date night for the Maritimers, going to a comedy show at the Imperial Theater headlined by transplanted Brit James Mullinger. I'll be here for the game against the broonz Sunday!
I was out to Mrs Pads bff's 60th last night. Bff is pretty accurate, there are 3 of them that have been besties since they were 11. Pretty cool but man I've heard the same old stories WAY too many times😬. They had fun though and over imbibed for the first time in a long time. I drove.
My hip issue is worse than ever. Always hurts, can barely stand on it. Lucky if I get a few hours of sleep. Trying some different physio this week. Hope to hell it works. Tried some CBD cream on it to no avail. Woe is me.
Oh yeah I recorded the game but saw the score so just FFd through it to the goals, hits, fights etc. Price didn't look good again but the defence was absolutely shite. And it's like they let that little Shitzle get to them and they acted like a bunch of boneheads and did nothing good with it. That, from the little I saw of the game is my synopsis. Maybe I'll read a report to see if that's fair or not.
Like to give this a read every once in a while.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.espn.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/080421
RIP Guy
Go Habs
Habs playing the broons Sunday at home.
DeleteSometimes history just writes itself.
Great read! Thanks for sharing, CHester.
DeleteYep good read. If you recall, that game 7 he was about to watch was all about (O)(O) and (o)(o) I believe.
DeleteBill Simmons wrote/writes well. Good read.
DeleteNice 7-minute tribute vid on rds.ca. I'm crying here. I've sharedd this story before. Growing up in Sherbrooke, we moved next door to some Bostonian transplants who were vehemently anti-French and anti-CH. The year was 1977 and I'd just turned eight. The Begin family's love of all things and sports Boston became a defining moment for me as the Expos were coming on and the Flower and Dryden, Big Bird and Savard were of course, owning the whole hockey world. I sometimes pay less attention, but I have never stopped loving the Habs, and Guy Lafleur in defense of all my fellow Québecois(e)s/Quebeckers in all our quirks before the elephant of American hegemony. The Flower was our biggest hero, proof that we mattered and could frustrate rivals with speed and creativity. Fuck cancer! We will miss you forever, Guy. Thank you for lifting us all up. Merci, pour toujours. R.I.P.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Say hi to my uncle, Robert S. Murray. He was a huge fan and he's been waiting for you since '87.
DeleteGood stuff.
DeleteWe saw so much Guy Guy Guy hockey that this one is really hard to accept.
We knew this day was coming based on some internet rumblings. We have lost 2 of the 4 greatest right wingers in hockey history in the last week. When I started following hockey and the Montreal Canadiens, Yvan Cournoyer was my favourite player. Loved his speed and his blistering slap shot. Then, in 1971 along came a highly touted prospect, the next hero in a long line of heroes. It took him a couple years to get going but when he did, he left everyone in his dust. Rest in Peace Guy, you became my No. 1 all time favourite and a Bruin killer.
ReplyDeleteThe most exciting player, took our breathes away almost every time he touched the puck.
DeleteMay 10, 1979 was my 10th birthday. I knew I was destined to be a FHFan as well as a Flower fan that day.
DeleteGoing to keep this thread up top until Sunday's game.
ReplyDelete😢
ReplyDeleteQuebec is an orphan -- Bertrand Raymond
ReplyDeleterds.ca/canadiens/le-quebec-est-orphelin-1.15691295
Not a big fan of Raymond but this is well written ...
DeleteTranslated in Safari ...
Delete~ ~ ~
This is not true. Not already, Guy. Certainly, we apprehended this very sad news while selfishly wishing never to have to deprive ourselves of your colossal presence. Given your impenetrable strength of nature, we wanted to be able to keep you with us for a long time to come. In the most wonderful scenario, we imagined seeing your exit from the doctor's office without any trace of this damn cancer, triumphing as you were when you were, the duvet in the wind and the skates on the buttocks, your team and all of Quebec towards a Stanley Cup.
Today, this Quebec that you have so often inflamed is orphaned. He is crying for you. He is in pain. I admit, I hurt too. I reread all these games on the bridge when I stopped writing every time to better enjoy your presence on the ice. I think of all the beautiful stories that the sports press has been able to write thanks to your talent as a gifted and your innate flair for the show. Thanks also to your legendary generosity to people you sometimes knew neither Eve nor Adam.
When you were needed to breathe courage into those who were struggling in the disease, and who would have let go if you had not made a short but warm incursion into their lives, you were always there. By your presence alone, by your magnetism and your bonhommy, you cheered them up in less than two. If you have comforted many in their end of life, it has been returned to you in recent months.
It is Quebec, Canada and all these places where hockey is essential that have accompanied you in your own ordeal. You have never been alone. Every day, we heard from you. We prayed for you because we couldn't imagine life without an athlete of your presence among us.
You were not just an exciting skater. You were not just a virtuoso with agile hands who could twirl from left to right without ever escaping the puck. You were like the artist who keeps his audience in suspense. You were Guy Lafleur. As if the simple evocation of your name were synonymous with grandiose moments.
You offered people what they expected from an honest athlete. When you jumped on the ice, there was always some hope. With your departure, it's as if there were no more great stories to tell. By your repeated prowess, you could best tell us about them.
When teammates were better paid than you, at a time when you were the league's first attraction card, it never stopped you from going hard so that the Canadiens continued to sit at the top. Without any embarrassment, you were poorly paid. To remedy this, you even had to force the hands of the bosses by becoming the only Glorious to threaten the organization of a strike. Did they have to turn a deaf ear to you for you to get there?
During the 1976 series, after a 56-goal campaign, you played under police escort because a mysterious group threatened to kidnap you and demand a ransom of $1 million. Far from panicking, you had this trait of mind towards those who were planning this bad blow: "I have some respect for these people," you said, with a mocking eye. They value me more dear than the Canadian."
You were never a captain, even if you were faithfully at the controls of the ship. Despite everything, you were made to do the most embarrassing of outings. How can you explain that you played barely 14 seasons in this uniform that you loved so much when you still had energy in the tank when you returned four years later? Of course, you were offered an office on the second floor of the dilapidated Forum. You naively believed that you would be consulted on hockey files, but you were not asked anything.
DeleteIn the role of ambassador, which you held until your last breath, you did not accept defeat much better. You spoke loudly some days. You criticized the inertia of management when nothing moved for pain. You didn't hesitate to give admonitions to players who were not bleeding from the nose for the team. You remained upright like an oak because you have never been anything other than a being of great integrity. You looked life in the face, as you looked your interlocutors straight in the eyes when you spoke to them.
Of course, you haven't always led a tidy life. At 27 or 28, after realizing that you had not had a childhood like that of young people your age and even less a teenager, after being subjected to rigid discipline in order to become the best of all, you began to offer yourself freedoms. Your nightlife has been well documented. It allowed you to evacuate all the pressure that gripped you. A pressure that forced you to always be better to win a team crowded with super talented teammates.
Despite everything, in these moments of misguidance, you answered present the next day. You were not always as fresh as a rose in training, but you nevertheless left all your energies there. And at the time of the games, we never wondered if you had feasted the day before. We didn't have to wonder about it because nothing seemed there.
You have been forgiven a lot, Guy, because you have always given us everything. You loved the world. You have never made garden trips to avoid scribbleing an autograph. I remember a dinner for the poor organized by a church in Longueuil a few days before Christmas. Together with several sports personalities, you served meals to these people. Once the evening was over, the personalities left. You sat at a table in the entrance hall of the building to sign autographs until the last admirer was served. These loyal fans had probably never gone to the Forum. They couldn't afford it, but they all knew who you were, Guy. They called you by your first name, as if they had always frequented you.
These people, by fiddling with the piece of paper you signed to them that evening, mourn you today.
We all mourn you, Flower.
RIP Guy, we where blessed to share your prime when we where old enough to remember it.
ReplyDeleteMichael Farber, the poet who recognized
ReplyDeleteGuy's poetry on ice, knew only Greek gods would be appropo. Nice video tribute here:
https://www.tsn.ca/video/~2427179
Farber is a beauty. Got me a bit choked up here.
DeleteRIP Guy.
I've somewhat ripped Geoff Molson to do things.
ReplyDeleteI've never lost respect for him.
I'm happy he is in charge as the owner of the most important hockey franchise in the world.
...
What an incredible, powerful, heartfelt presser Geoff just gave in honouring Guy Lafleur.
Us Gen Xers all got a taste of greatness through the Flower that really connected us with past generations who had The Rocket and Béliveau. Guy carried the torch for us. His loss is hitting me way harder than I prepared myself for.
DeleteI hear you, hitting me hard as I see, read and hear stories.
DeleteRenaming highway 50, which passes through Thurso, for Guy Lafleur is a great idea.
ReplyDeleteIf you can stomach SN, Brunt has a good writeup on Guy too. What stuck out immediately about the Habs of the late 70s was this:
ReplyDeleteGuy Lafleur, whose death was announced by the Canadiens on Friday, was, arguably, the greatest player on the greatest team in NHL history. During the Montreal Canadiens’ last dynasty — in the process of winning consecutive Stanley Cups from 1976 to 1979, they lost a total of just 46 regular-season and 10 playoff games — Lafleur won the scoring title three times and twice won the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player.
The current team has lost 47 in regulation. 58 overall.
It seems silly, but I feel sad that this was the last Habs team he got to watch.
Brunt is a good one.
DeleteMy heart goes out to Chantal. She has lost her idol and now has the immense responsibility to planning the honouring of him. There’s no better person to do this.
ReplyDeleteThis is well worth posting here, truth from a Toronto journalist who has nothing to do with the tv SFUckers:
ReplyDeleteMike Zeisberger
@Zeisberger
As kids in Toronto we watched Guy crush, destroy, obliterate #leafs year after year.
Yet there was never any shortage of guys saying "I'll be Lafleur" in our daily Scarboro road hockey games.
Because, well, he was GUY!
Whether you were a #Habs fan or not, he was 1 of our heroes.
I'm pretty sure that putrid ron mclame will have something nonsensical to say on the leaf channel tomorrow night. I won't be around to see or hear it, it's date night for the Maritimers, going to a comedy show at the Imperial Theater headlined by transplanted Brit James Mullinger. I'll be here for the game against the broonz Sunday!
ReplyDeleteWe had hockey, we had Guy, we had movies in the theatre, we did not need anything more, that was perfection in my life.
ReplyDeleteNo one commenting tonight? Is it that bad?
ReplyDeleteI was out to Mrs Pads bff's 60th last night. Bff is pretty accurate, there are 3 of them that have been besties since they were 11. Pretty cool but man I've heard the same old stories WAY too many times😬. They had fun though and over imbibed for the first time in a long time. I drove.
ReplyDeleteMy hip issue is worse than ever. Always hurts, can barely stand on it. Lucky if I get a few hours of sleep. Trying some different physio this week. Hope to hell it works. Tried some CBD cream on it to no avail. Woe is me.
Oh yeah I recorded the game but saw the score so just FFd through it to the goals, hits, fights etc. Price didn't look good again but the defence was absolutely shite. And it's like they let that little Shitzle get to them and they acted like a bunch of boneheads and did nothing good with it. That, from the little I saw of the game is my synopsis. Maybe I'll read a report to see if that's fair or not.
Silver lining. Yotes got a point last night so Habs sit dead last with 3 to play.
ReplyDeleteBruins, Rags, Cats left. they may not get another point.
Not sure how losing the last 10 in a row impacts MSL's future. Or Price's.
https://fourhockeyfans.blogspot.com/2022/04/guy-guy-guy.html
ReplyDelete