Save The Date: Born in Quebec City on a Saturday of this date in 1926, Gerry McNeil stood up to the Boston Bruins this week in 1953, along with the rest of the Montreal Canadiens, to win the team’s seventh Stanley Cup. Having stopped a shot of Maurice Richard’s in practice earlier that April, McNeil played the final couple of games with his right ankle novocained and tightly taped. In the Montreal dressing room after Elmer Lach’s overtime goal clinched the Cup, coach Dick Irvin shook hands with all his players and then sat down next to McNeil. “Well, we finally put it on ice,” the Canadian Press reported him telling his goaltender. Columnist Dink Carroll was on hand, too. “Apparently tired now that the series has ended,” he wrote, “Irvin, who not long ago raised racing pigeons, puffed: ‘Coaching is strictly for the birds; I don’t want any more of it.’ Then he laughed and quickly changed the subject.” The ’53 win was the last of the four Cups Irvin won as a coach, though he did continue for two more years behind the bench in Montreal before taking on the Chicago Black Hawks for a final season, 1955-56.