I didn’t really love the player, I hated the tricolor flannel on his uniform. And then in hockey I like the toreadors, the chromes of the palette, which are in the embellishment and the embellishment, I like Bobby Orr and Mario Lemieux. The sober genius of Lafleur (like that of Gretzky) moves me little.
Posted at 8:08
PHOTO LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES NATION
Page 6 of the sports book of The Press of March 31, 1991.
As for the fascination it exerts on people and the enormous place it holds in our emotional folklore, this is only the ordinary part of our mythology, the usual notoriety that our society reserves for hockey players. , to a few artists and politicians, to a few imbeciles and to several slight morons…
All this to tell you that if I had never met Guy Lafleur I wouldn’t have a tear to add to his departure. Not an obligatory courtesy. Hi idol. Following !…
But I met Guy Lafleur, not very long ago, and I can testify here to some very rare particularities among people of his race, gifted slap shots.
First, when we walk with Guy Lafleur, his statue of a national hero does not follow us, step by step. The man is without capital letters, nor halo, nor particular genius. A modest citizen, like you and me… I remember one morning of an interview, in his Jeep, he was going to train, he said to me: “You can’t know how happy I am go practice…” This was after he returned. It had taken him all these years to realize how lucky he was to do a job he loved. Which makes me say that he has no more genius than you and me: he learned the important things in life very slowly.
We adored him for a long time for trivialities, his slap shot, his overflows off the wing (frankly!), today that he is leaving, I would like to congratulate Guy Lafleur for becoming, despite his slap shot , despite its excesses outside the wing, to have become, I said, its own masterpiece.
By far his finest achievement.