(Pittsburgh) There was Lafleur. There was Lucien DeBlois. We talked about Bergeron. Lucien said: “It’s extraordinary the impact it has had in Quebec. Me, it was my mother-in-law who called me, she said to me: “Would you believe, Lucien, that the dismissal of Bergeron, in the newspapers here, is almost as strong as death? by René Lévesque…”
Posted at 8:00 a.m.
Lafleur, he said that the other morning, just before leaving for Pittsburgh, he went to wake up Michel at his home in Rye. “He was still sleeping. He was pissed off the little one! Oh how hard he takes it! Note that it’s not funny either, especially since he was waiting for the series with such a rush. He had all sorts of plans in his head…”
— Is the team still very shaken?
– A little … It’s coming back little by little, but there are still adjustments. For us. For the coach too. It’s been a while since Phil had done that job… If we ever lose tonight (it was before the second game) it won’t be fun. That would be four losses in a row for Phil…
“If you lose tonight,” I added innocently, “if you lose tonight, all you have to do is change instructors again.” Why not you, Guy? …
Right next to it, there was Normand Rochefort on his crutches, completely in agreement with my suggestion. “It’s true, you would make a very good instructor, Guy! »
Lafleur ran over his Du Maurier. He crossed his arms and whispered, no doubt so that the readers of The Press do not hear, he said:
– Never. You can shove it up your ass, your job as a coach…
It’s not pretty, it’s true. But it came so much from the heart…
I said there was Lafleur and also Lucien DeBlois. It was finally with him that I spoke the longest. From Mario Lemieux that he doesn’t let go of an inch during the matches, from what they say to each other on the edge of the boards (a few words, a few coronations, but all in French, for example), from how things are going at the Rangers (so-so), from Bergeron who he still loves a lot, we talked about life. At times he freaked out, “You’re not going to write that? »
I would write it, I swear, but I don’t remember… I was really enjoying the conversation, for real. More precisely, all to the surprise of the conversation. For real. In my time, it was not the same. Hockey players didn’t say much to reporters they didn’t know. Yes. No. Fuck off. That was about all…
All in all, they are nicely less tatas today. Not all of them, I know. There are still a few happy Mongolians, but never like when I started as a sports journalist…
I remember certain evenings in the Canadian’s locker room, not only could we hear the flies flying, but when the journalists came in, we heard them belching and farting, that’s to tell you if they were flying low, the flies…
I said there was Lafleur, DeBlois. A little further down the hall, deep in conversation with Tom Lapointe, there was also Marcel Dionne. I apologized for interrupting them:
“Marcel, do you know that people have written horrible things about you recently in Quebec?”
I thought Tom was whitening a bit, but I’m not sure. In any case, Dionne took it philosophically:
— In Quebec, it’s in Quebec…
What did that mean? I’m not sure, but you know what Lafleur said earlier about the job of coach? I think Dionne has Quebec in about the same place…