Jean Béliveau

bob cole, 1933—2024

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He’ll be missed — oh, baby, will he. So sorry to hear that Bob Cole died last night in his hometown, St. John’s, Newfoundland, aged 90. The inimitable Hockey Night In Canada play-by-play man worked his last NHL game in 2019 from Montreal’s Bell Centre, with the Canadiens host the Toronto Maple Leafs. His very first call? That was 55 years ago yesterday when, on Thursday, April 24, 1969, he was in voice in a CBC radio broadcast booth as Montreal beat the hometown Boston Bruins 2-1 in double overtime. Jean Béliveau scored the winner (the only overtime goal of his career) to wrap-up a Stanley Cup semi-final in six games.

 

paul masnick, 1931—2024

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The farm system seeded by Canadiens GM Frank Selke in the later 1940s began to bear fruit in the early 1950s. In 1953, it yielded a Stanley Cup, the first of six he’d win with Montreal. Today’s sad news is that the last surviving member of that ’53 Montreal team died earlier this week: the former centre Paul Masnick, pictured above on the left, was 92.

Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1931, he played junior for his hometown Pats before joining Montreal in 1950. That’s Selke pictured here, above, sitting in a grove of his recruits in a photograph dating to (at a reasonable guess) the start of that championship ’52-’53 season, which would put all four players at 21 or 22. Arrayed here with Masnick are fellow centremen Reg Abbott and Jean Béliveau with left winger Dickie Moore rounding out the group. Selke, Masnick and Moore got their names etched on the Cup that year; Abbott and Béliveau weren’t so fortunate. Each of those two skated in three regular-season games but neither one saw any ice in the playoffs. Abbott’s statistics were and remain blanks — he failed register a goal or assist, incurred no penalty minutes — and he never played another NHL game. For his part, Béliveau, scored five goals in his three games, launching a career that nobody has to be reminded to celebrate. Masnick played in half of Montreal’s 12 playoff games that year, scoring a single goal against the Boston Bruins in game three of the Final, a 3-0 Montreal win.

Masnick played in parts of five seasons for Montreal. His best offensive numbers came in the regular season of 1953-54, when he scored five goals and 26 points, which was one more than Elmer Lach got that year, and eight behind Béliveau. Masnick went on to play for the Chicago Black Hawks and Toronto Maple Leafs. After playing his last NHL game in 1958, he continued on in the WHL and IHL, skating for the Saskatoon Quakers, Victoria Cougars, and St. Paul Fighting Saints, among other teams.

(Image: Weekend Magazine/ Louis Jaques/ Library and Archives Canada/ e002505710)

pocket watch

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Cup Captains; A birthday today for Henri Richard, who made his debut in Montreal on a leap-year Saturday of this date in 1936. He was 15 years younger than his brother Maurice, who had been starring for the Montreal Canadiens for more than a decade when Henri arrived on the Forum scene in 1955. Henri won 11 Stanley Cup championships with the Habs in his 20-year career, including in 1971, which is where we find ourselves here, as natty Jean Béliveau and Henri pose with the Cup at Montreal’s Hôtel de Ville. Richard succeeded Béliveau as captain the following year and won his final Cup in 1973. Montreal retired his number 16 in 1975; he was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1979. (Image: Archives de la Ville de Montréal)

rocket richard, 1957: grounded in toronto

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Injuries bit the Montreal Canadiens hard through the 1957-58 NHL season. Jean Béliveau missed 15 of 70 regular-season games with a painful cartilage injury he suffered in December of ’57 in a collision with Dave Creighton of the New York Rangers. The following February, Bernie Geoffrion went down in practice after what seemed like an innocuous bump with teammate Andre Pronovost resulted in a ruptured bowel. “I don’t think I was ever so close to death,” Geoffrion said from Herbert Reddy Memorial Hospital after surgery set him back on the road to recovery. He missed 28 games.

Captain Maurice Richard fell in November of ’57, victim of an accidental slicing from a skate worn by Toronto Maple Leaf defenceman Marc Reaume that nearly severed his right Achilles tendon. That’s 36-year-old Richard here in the Montreal dressing room at Maple Leaf Gardens with Canadiens trainer Hector Dubois. Richard ended up missing 42 games.

To say that Montreal still prospered that season is … well, that’s just fact. This was the 1950s, after all, and the Canadiens were defending champions x 2. Another Montreal forward, Dickie Moore, ended up winning the NHL scoring title that season, despite having played for much of the year with a broken wrist. Béliveau, Geoffrion, and Richard were all back for the playoffs as Montreal overturned the Boston Bruins in the Final. Richard scored the overtime winner to wrap up Game 5 of the series, while Geoffrion scored the winning goal in Game Six to clinch a third straight Stanley Cup for Montreal.

street-skating man

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Out And About: A young would-be Jean Béliveau was tromping the streets of Quebec City in the 1950s, presumably, when photographer Rosemary Eaton paused him for a portrait. The Christmas-coloured Quebec Aces of the QSHL were, of course, Béliveau’s team in the early ’50, before he joined the Montreal Canadiens for the 1953-54 NHL season.  (Image: Rosemary Gilliat Eaton, Library and Archives Canada)

gilles gilbert, 1949—2023

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Sorry to see the news tonight reporting Gilles Gilbert’s death at the age of 74. Born in Saint-Esprit, Quebec, in 1949, he started his NHL career in 1970 at the age of 20 with the Minnesota North Stars. He got his first win in the fall of that year at the Montreal Forum, beating the mighty Canadiens 3-1. That’s him here, above, on that night, celebrating with teammates Bobby Rousseau (left) and Walt McKechnie. Later that same season, Gilbert was on hand for another Montreal milestone, this time as the goaltender of record when 39-year-old Jean Béliveau scored the 500th goal of his illustrious career.

After four seasons in Minnesota, Gilbert was traded, in May of 1973, to Boston (Fred Stanfield went the other way), replacing Eddie Johnston as the Bruins’ starter. Gilbert helped the team get all the way to the Stanley Cup finals the following year, though the Bruins lost there in six ganes to the Philadelphia Flyers.

In 1979, Gilbert was back in net at the Forum in Montreal for what turned out to be an infamous night in Bruins’ history: in game 7 of the Stanley Cup semi-final against the Canadiens that year, Boston (you may remember) took a penalty in the last minutes of the game, whereupon Guy Lafleur tied the score to send the game to overtime, where Yvon Lambert decided the issue.

The Bruins traded Gilbert to the Detroit for Rogie Vachon in July of 1980. He played three seasons with the Red Wings before his playing career ended in 1983.

 

(Top image: Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

bless this bruin

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NBCSN beatifies Bergeron, circa 2016.

The farewell that Patrice Bergeron deserves is a fond one: for 19 NHL seasons, he plied his trade as a centreman for the Boston Bruins with a combination of skill, determination, and grace that was positively Béliveau-esque. (And, of course, that’s the farewell he’s getting.) You didn’t need to be a black-and-gold evangelist to admire Bergeron’s composure, leadership, and ability to change the course of a game, or indeed to approve his many successes. He was one of those players, rare enough, who seemed to elevate the game he excels at, confirming its dignity even as he was lifting you, too, as you watched him, to a vantage from which it seemed like he was choreographing the way the game could and ought to be played.

Bergeron, who’s 38, and a son of the western Quebec City suburb of L’Ancienne-Lorette, announced his retirement this morning. “As hard as it is to write,” he said in a statement, “I also write it knowing how blessed and lucky I feel to have had the career that I have had, and that I have the opportunity to leave the game I love on my terms. It wasn’t a decision that I came to lightly. But after listening to my body, and talking with my family, I know in my heart that this is the right time to step away from playing the game I love.”

Bergeron, of course, played his entire NHL career with Boston. After a junior stint in the QMJHL with the Acadie–Bathurst Titan, he was plucked by the Bruins, 45th overall, in the 2003 NHL Entry Draft. The long list of his (approved) successes features a Stanley Cup championship, in 2011, as well as a constellation of international gold medals won playing for Canada, including at the Olympics in 2010 and 2014. No-one has claimed the Frank J. Selke Trophy, which honours the NHL’s best defensive forward, more than Bergeron, who’s won it six times, including for the past two seasons; not Bob Gainey (he won it four times), not Pavel Datsyuk (three times). How did Bergeron never win the Lady Byng? Too many penalty minutes to his name, I suppose, but then Jean Béliveau never won a Byng, either.

Bergeron was named captain of the Bruins in January of 2021. Regular readers of this digest might suspect that there’s be something further to be said on that subject, and there is, but because it’s more of a Bruins thing than a Bergeron, let’s leave that for a separate follow-up post.

It’s here, if you’re interested.

Done and Done: After 19 NHL seasons, Bergeron announced his retirement this morning.

double boom

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Boom + Boom: Bernie Geoffrion died of stomach cancer on a Saturday of this date in 2006. He was 75. That very night at Montreal’s Bell Centre, the Canadiens retired Geoffrion’s number 5 in a previously scheduled ceremony. On yet another Saturday, March 11, this one in 1961, Geoffrion scored his 47th and 48th goals of the season on Boston goaltender Bruce Gamble. Geoffrion would win the Art Ross Trophy that year as the NHL’s leading scorer, finishing the regular season with 50 goals and 95 points, five points clear of teammate Jean Béliveau. (Image: Tex Coulter)

books that hockey players read: jean béliveau, françoise sagan, and leo tolstoy, too

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A painful injury rib-cartilage injury kept Jean Béliveau out of the Montreal Canadiens’ line-up in 1957 and on into early ’58, but at least he got some quality reading in at home while he convalesced. A close study of the paperback consuming his bedtime attention here, above, suggests that he was well into Françoise Sagan’s 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse, a tale of teenaged angst, desire, and Riviera tragedy that Sagan published at the age of 18. In 1958, Otto Preminger adapted it for movie screens in a version that starred David Niven and Deborah Kerr. No word on whether Béliveau saw that.

He was a serious reader, we know, as this Yale Joel portrait from 1952, below, substantiates. Béliveau was with the QMHL Quebec Aces that year. With superstardom in the NHL still ahead of him, he found time to kick back with a cigar and a tale of marital angst, betrayal, and Imperial Russian upheaval: Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

 

(Top image: Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

day-to-day

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On The Mend: When last we saw our hero, here, it was December of 1958 and Jean Béliveau had suffered a ruptured tendon in a finger on his right hand, and then surgery to repair it. Here he poses with Canadiens coach Toe Blake late that same month, not long before he returned to the Montreal line-up, on December 18, for a 4-1 Montreal win over the Toronto Maple Leafs at the Forum. (Images: Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

hockey players in hospital beds: jean béliveau, 1958

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Aftermath, top, and beforemath, below. Jean Béliveau saw out November of 1958 by scoring a hat-trick as the Montreal Canadiens bamboozled the Detroit Red Wings by a score of 6-2. The win was a costly one for Montreal, as winger Claude Provost suffered torn ligaments between his hip and his ribs. Béliveau, 27, went down, too, victim of a third-period hit by Red Wings defenceman Pete Goegan. Béliveau, apparently, had a finger of his right hand extended as Goegan ran him into the boards, and that resulted in a rupturing of a tendon in the finger. That’s Le Gros Bill below, surveying the damage with Canadiens’ vice-president Ken Reardon. Detroit’s Gordie Howe went to hospital, too, with an injured neck from a hit by Doug Harvey, but Howe was okay, it seems, returning to the ice later in the game.

While Béliveau headed for surgery in a Montreal hospital, his teammates went to Detroit for a return date with the Red Wings the following night. That one finished up 7-0 for Montreal, with Bernie Geoffrion scoring a hat-trick and Henri Richard and Dickie Moore contributing two goals apiece. Jacques Plante got the shutout; Terry Sawchuk didn’t.

Béliveau missed six games while he recovered, returning to the line-up in mid-December. The Canadiens missed him, of course — they just decided not to lose in his absence. Then again, that’s what Montreal could do and did in those years. Béliveau finished the year with 45 goals, the most he’d score in a single season, and the most points, too, 91.  By the time it was over in the spring of 1959, he and his Canadiens teammates had collected their fourth consecutive Stanley Cup championship.

(Images: Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)