Posted at 8:04 a.m.
The finest, the least fucked by fame, is Guy Lafleur.
Pierre Foglia (The Press1988)
Guy Lafleur loved people. People loved Guy Lafleur.
Yes, because he helped the Canadiens win five Stanley Cups. But above all, because he looked like us. Unlike modern hockey players, often isolated in another stratosphere, Guy Lafleur breathed the same air as us. He ate at Mikes. He was losing his hair. He praised the small Yoplait yogurts. He smoked cigarettes between periods.
He was approachable.
So much so that almost everyone over 40 I know has come across it at least once. In an arena. In a restaurant. In a mall. At a gas station. At a corporate event. In my souvenir boxes, I found half a dozen of his autographs, collected in a softball game, in a book launch, in an exhibition of sports cards…
His biographer, Georges-Hébert Germain, had well described this fusional relationship between Guy Lafleur and the people of Quebec. “One thing that fascinated me a lot about Guy Lafleur, he wrote, is that he is never alone. Wherever he goes, there is always someone to approach him, admiring, familiar, possessive, “hello, my Ti-Guy”, and to sit with him or follow in his footsteps. Lafleur is a magnet. »
Guy Lafleur also possessed magnetism on the ice. He was the pole of attraction around which the others gravitated. His teammates, who were looking to pass the puck to him. His adversaries, who were trying to stop him. When the latter failed, they clung to him. Or they wanted to beat him up, like Mike Milbury and John Wensink of the Boston Bruins.
“Lafleur better have eyes in the back of his head, because I’m going to cut off his ears,” Wensink threatened.
Luckily, Lafleur did have eyes all the way around his head. A beef forehead. Magic hands. A lightning shot. And an extraordinary kick. His superpowers have taken him to the top of his sport. Even Don Cherry, head coach of the Bruins, felt in the late 1970s that Lafleur was “the best hockey player in the world. Full stop”. The statistics prove it:
- six consecutive seasons of more than 50 goals;
- six consecutive seasons of more than 119 points;
- six straight First Team All-Star selections;
- three scoring championships;
- from 1974 to 1980, differentials of + 53, + 67, + 89, + 73, + 55, + 40!
Guy Lafleur was a superhero. But he also had gray areas. Vices. Fails that made him human. Like us.
For a long time, he lived his life at 220 km/h. Literally. One evening, to join his lover Lise, he traveled from Montreal to Quebec in an hour and a half. A few years later, he insisted on driving after a drunken night out. He fell asleep at the wheel on Highway 20. His car hit a beam. He stayed four days in the hospital. He then faced a poaching trial, which he won. After his career, he was arrested and charged for offering contradictory testimony in a criminal case involving his son.
His course errors were not held against him. On the contrary. His imperfections even seem to have brought him closer to the public, remarked Réjean Tremblay in these pages, nearly 30 years ago.
“The weak loved his weakness when it was Ti-Guy’s weakness. The loser loved his loss when it was Lafleur’s loss. The naive loved his naivety when it was Flower’s naivety. The sinner loved his sins when it was the sins of the blond Demon. »
This humanity and this authenticity were underlined by all those who knew him. In 1988, my colleague Pierre Foglia went to join him in New York to document his return to the game, with the Rangers – the sentence that caps this text is taken from this report. “You want superlatives?, he wrote. There are some who don’t force me for a second: the nicest, the most charming, the simplest, the finest, it’s him. »
Two years later, on the occasion of Lafleur’s last match at the Forum, Foglia added: “When we walk with Guy Lafleur, his statue of 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. »
This is the image I retain of Guy Lafleur. That of the neighbor superhero. A proud, talented athlete, who could have lived alone on his cloud, but who remained down-to-earth. A warm man. Listening to others, but also to himself. Which – we agree – has never been precisely the norm in the hockey world.
Unless I’m mistaken, he is also the only Canadian player whose poem has been published in the artistic pages of The Press. It was in 1971. At the very beginning of his career. A short text on friendship, modesty and generosity. Three values that will have definitely marked his career.
“A little joy brought
To others cause more satisfaction
How many presents received
Forgive the indiscreet house
Who during your absence
Came to leaf through this notebook
It’s not to write there
A poem, flirtatious
But just to leave it there
The mark of a memory…”