Posted at 7:00 a.m.
Shortly after being named 14e coach in the history of the Montreal Canadiens, on June 10, 1968, Claude Ruel made a promise to himself. If the team wins the regular season championship, Ruel and his wife Claudette Frappier will take steps to adopt a boy.
Less than a year later, in May 1969, Ruel not only won his bet, but the team got their hands on the 16e Stanley Cup in its history. The one affectionately called Piton could not have dreamed of a better scenario.
On the plane that brings back the team from Saint-Louis with the Stanley Cup, Ruel, happy and voluble, pours out. According to what The Press, he declares: “I said to myself: thank you my God. I hope I have accomplished my task. But I know that I did my best. I couldn’t ask for more for my first season. The Prince of Wales trophy was my first goal. The Stanley Cup just tops off this great season. »
To journalists, Ruel evokes his desire and that of his wife to become parents. The couple is preparing to undertake official adoption procedures. The promise Ruel made to himself will be fulfilled.
But before that, another surprise awaits the young coach. To show him their gratitude, the CH players contribute and offer him… a horse!
The four-year-old pacer is called Mr. Paul. The animal was presented to Ruel, a great fan of harness racing, by Jean Béliveau, Serge Savard and John Ferguson at the Blue Bonnets racecourse.
At the beginning of August 1969, the corridors of the Montreal Forum were once again buzzing with the return to work of members of the management and administrative staff of the Canadian. To the journalists who meet him, Ruel confides that the adoption file is progressing. Everything materializes in November, between two CH matches. Adopted at the crèche, little Jean, three months old, arrives in the family home to the delight of his parents.
Jean, in honor of Jean Béliveau. Claude Ruel makes no mystery about the choice of first name, having the greatest admiration for his captain, whom he calls “an idol of [s]we childhood”.
The holder of jersey number 4 is “deeply honored” by this attention. “This gesture pleases me as much as the conquest of any trophy that I have been able to win since the beginning of my career”, replies Béliveau with all the elegance that we know from him.
“I hope he will become a fan of sports and especially hockey, baseball and horse racing,” adds Ruel of the toddler.
Dick Irvin: Birds in the Pullman
To be so passionate about birds is an activity that requires time and money. Dick Irvin devotes himself to it all year round. This includes the long months of the hockey season. In fact, he sometimes takes advantage of his team’s train trips to other NHL cities to return to Montreal with cages of precious birds in his luggage. Ditto for Frank Selke. A habit that obviously provided one or two tasty anecdotes.
At the time, journeys were long between Montreal and Detroit or Chicago, aboard trains with the legendary Pullman sleeping cars. When Irvin leaves his wagon door open, players must be quiet. When the same door is closed, they are more free to move and can have a beer.
It’s unclear whether the door was open or closed, but one day, or rather one night, as the team returns from another game and everyone is taking a rest, a sleepless rookie player has the very bad idea to go see the cages more closely. Curious and naive, he opens the doors of these, leaving the way clear to the birds too happy to be able to stretch their wings!
Gérard Champagne, a journalist with the Sports Book of The Press who covered the Canadian at length, tells the story in a memorabilia article: “The pigeons of Messrs. Irvin and Selke flew in all directions of the train. All of the players woken with a start then witnessed the spectacle of a furious Dick Irvin lecturing the rookie while chasing the birds,” he wrote.
Champagne adds that this kind of comicality had the gift of making everyone laugh, especially when the team had lost the meeting and the return home dragged on.
In his autobiography sport is my life, the journalist Jacques Beauchamp affirms that this event in fact occurred on the return from a defeat of the Habs in Detroit and that the culprit was the player before Fernand Majeau. The latter played 56 regular season games with the Canadiens (his only presence in the NHL) from 1943 to 1945, with a respectable record of 22 goals and 24 assists.