Among the few of the greatest hockey players of all time, Guy Lafleur will have counted a lot.
Among the few of the greatest hockey players of all time, Guy Lafleur will have counted a lot. Already consecrated monument during his lifetime, the right winger passed the weapon on the left in the absence of having been able to thwart the cancer. For months, all of Quebec had been kept informed of the progress of his state of health, as it had been during his dazzling sports career.
Even if the man who was nicknamed the Blond Demon also played as a professional with the Quebec Nordiques and the New York Rangers, his name remains first and foremost associated with the national feeling that borders the existence of the Montreal Canadiens. For the hockey fan, Lafleur was at the heart of winning five Stanley Cups. A symbol of success on a collective level, he also embodied, on an individual level, the easy-to-reach “good guy”.
Professor at the University of Montreal Benoit Melançon, passionate about cultural representations of hockey, recalls that Lafleur belongs to the first generation of pre-programmed stars. “In the 1960s, for the first time, we now know when a great player is coming. In the case of Lafleur, we know that he can follow Jean Béliveau”, his idol. Lafleur is already the huge star of the minor leagues. Within the Quebec Remparts, he enjoys the title of best junior player in the country. At the end of the 1969-1970 season, he accumulated 103 goals. The following season, it will be 130! Everyone is waiting for his transition to the professional league. We find ourselves following her on her trail, in all spheres of her life.
The general manager of the Canadian, Sam Pollock, prepared the ground for his coming to the professionals. He multiplied the exchanges of players beforehand. On June 10, 1971, he was able to announce that he had chosen Guy Lafleur first in the amateur draft. Captain of the Quebec Remparts, Lafleur was already well known when he donned the tricolor jersey for his first professional season. Everyone is convinced that hockey is in danger of experiencing a revolution. The red carpet is rolled out in front of him. Jean Béliveau even goes so far as to offer him to wear his famous number 4. Lafleur refuses, out of modesty. He will be number 10.
However, success does not come quite as quickly as hoped. So much so that amateurs are a little reluctant in the face of results that are slow to appear.
Lafleur is looking for himself. In 1971, he took to writing poetry to escape boredom. “In the magazine Outlook, Victor-Lévy Beaulieu had presented the poems of Lafleur, considered as a proletarian, as an ordinary guy”, recalls Benoit Melançon. In 1973, Lafleur married Lise Barré, a flight attendant who lived in the same building as him.
His career flourished only from the 1974-1975 season. In each regular season, until 1980, he got into the habit of scoring more than 50 goals, which then constituted unparalleled heights. Lafleur soon accumulated, as a pillar of his team, five Stanley Cups, while crystallizing the attention of the public. The “Blonde Demon”, as he is nicknamed, is considered the most electrifying player on the professional circuit.
After playing with a helmet while obtaining rather disappointing results, it was a new Lafleur, hair in the wind, who appeared triumphant on the ice. Is this new image the source of its success? “In a world as superstitious as hockey, it was primarily for this reason that Lafleur no longer wore a helmet,” maintains Benoit Melançon.
An exception
His success is due primarily to an exceptional physical constitution. At rest, this athlete’s heart beats at a rate of less than 40 beats per minute. He already belongs, in this respect, to the small rank of exceptional athletes. Lafleur can afford misbehavior that would seem unthinkable today. So he willingly smokes between periods. “I’ve always smoked,” he explains. And he gladly celebrates, even occasionally making headlines. Thus he narrowly escaped death in 1981, aboard his huge Cadillac, when he fell asleep at the wheel following a drunken evening.
Retirement ?
In 1984, after a few games, Lafleur surprised everyone by announcing that he was retiring. Is it all over? There are some to believe it. His enthusiasm is no longer the same. In truth, the athlete has trouble with Jacques Lemaire, his trainer. Lafleur doesn’t get enough time on the rink, he says. And a monument like him, attached to a single team since its inception, cannot consider changing uniforms. What is the use of persisting in continuing under these conditions? At 33, he quit. In the bank, in addition to a few million dollars, he has 518 goals to his credit in the regular season, which ranks him second in scoring for the team, just behind Maurice Richard’s 544 goals.
It is against all odds that Lafleur will be resurrected. After chomping at the bit at home, here he is again putting on his skates, after four years spent outside the professional circuit. It will first be a year spent in the New York Rangers uniform. When he returned to the Montreal Forum on February 4, 1989, he received an unprecedented ovation. At the end of the night, Lafleur collected two goals and cheers like never before. The spectators exult. Lafleur will play the next two seasons with the Quebec Nordiques, at a time when the rivalry between Montreal and Quebec is served boiling on the ice.
The right to vote
Like many athletes, Guy Lafleur will be used for political purposes. He was presented to the public in 1992 as being in favor of the so-called Charlottetown Accord, which aimed to modify the Canadian constitution. Why ? He explains it painfully on the radio, at the microphone of the host Robert Gillet. The host asks him to explain what this right of veto is, which Lafleur considers to be a gain for Quebec. A silence of four seconds, which is very long on the radio, greets this question. After this embarrassed silence, the hockey player replies in a very uncertain voice that “it gives you the opportunity to vote, to represent Quebec…” The right of veto actually allows a province to evade a modification general.
Lucien Bouchard will then say that Guy Lafleur can certainly talk about hockey with full authority but that his skills in constitutional matters appear to be very thin to say the least. Stung to the quick, the hockey player immediately put an end to his political involvement, not without having first hinted that the referendum of October 26, 1992 was a step towards “Quebec independence”, another political blunder since it is a consultation on the renewal of the constitution.
Thurso, in Outaouais, where the hockey player was born in 1951, erected a bronze monument in his honor and advertises itself as “the city of Guy Lafleur”. But the independence of Quebec, asserted Lafleur, could encourage him to leave his native land. “If business were so bad that there were no more opportunities for my family and me, I would definitely consider leaving Quebec. Unlike other hockey players, like Maurice Richard, who openly campaigned for Duplessis’ National Union, Lafleur never committed himself directly to a political party. On the other hand, he will endorse a number of consumer products.
Forelock
Guy Lafleur’s image is one of the most used in Quebec, during and after his career, to market all kinds of products, from hair extensions to foot massagers, not to mention yogurts, sausages, sliced bread, poker machines, beer or gin. His real life often appears out of step with the objects supposed to benefit from his aura. Thus Lafleur announces, in the 1970s, an American car for the general public while he drives, in his everyday life, behind the wheel of a gleaming Ferrari, even admitting to having already traveled the distance between Montreal and Quebec in 55 minutes. , which assumes driving at around 240 km/h. Lafleur will then drive, more gently, at the wheel of a Rolls-Royce, while being passionate about piloting his helicopter.
In many television commercials, the hockey player gives the impression of being uncomfortable in front of the camera, notes Benoit Melançon. “The only commercial where he seems to have really been in his place is the one he shot for the CHUM, when he was already very ill. There, we know that he is talking about something he knows. And he speaks with a dignity he’s never had in advertising before. »
For the new year 1983, the manufacturer of hockey sticks Sher-Wood, then owned by his friend Léo Drolet from Cookshire, had a calendar printed with a photograph of Lafleur showing him next to a large white-tailed deer shot in a pen. of private breeding, on November 27, 1982. The hunting season ends that year on November 7. Moreover, Lafleur is not in possession of a hunting license. And the person in charge of this hunting trip told the media that the animal was killed in Maine. A judge ended up acquitting Lafleur in this embarrassing story for the athlete, taking into account his good faith.
The legal cases of Mark Lafleur, his son, will also reflect on him. His son is accused several times for stories related to narcotics. He is also sentenced for beating, kidnapping and threatening a girlfriend. In the aftermath, Guy Lafleur is accused of having given contradictory testimony before the court.
The disappearance of Lafleur, after that of Maurice Richard and Jean Béliveau, seals the hockey tomb of the great years of the Montreal Canadiens. Few athletes in the land of maples have had a career that has placed them to such an extent, from an early age, in the limelight. In 2019, Guy Lafleur had undergone a quadruple coronary bypass. Since then, he had been battling lung cancer. He died on April 22 at the age of 70.