When Wayne Cashman is asked to talk about his most vivid memory of Guy Lafleur, he bursts out laughing on the other end of the line. “Because the most striking memory that I have of Guy, I have been trying to forget since 1979! “, he says, laughing very hard.
Posted at 8:25 a.m.
Ah, 1979. A simple year, numbers, a moment frozen in time. But for the Bruins and their fans, 1979 is all that and more. For them, 1979 remains a year to forget… even after all this time.
Wayne Cashman talks about 1979, but he could just as well have talked about 1978 or 1977. Because there was a time when Guy Lafleur had his own tradition every spring: humiliating the Boston Bruins.
Himself ? No, not quite. “At the end of the 70s, the Canadiens had six top defensemen, a top goaltender… and the Canadiens had Guy,” summarizes John Wensink, who played with the Bruins for four seasons, from 1976 to 1980.
PHOTO PIERRE CÔTÉ, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
First game of the Stanley Cup final between the Boston Bruins and the Canadiens at the Forum in 1977.
Even before going to terrorize the Bruins, Lafleur already had a certain reputation in the eyes of Wensink, a robust forward from Cornwall, Ont., who had once met him in minor hockey arenas.
Among other things, I remember a tournament in the corner of Guy’s house, in Thurso… Guy must have been 12 years old. At one point, he threw from the center of the rink… and he broke the goalie’s stick!
John Wensink, former Bruins player
The two rivals saw each other again in the world of junior hockey, where Lafleur shone with the Quebec Remparts, then in the NHL. Lafleur arrived in Montreal in 1971, but it wasn’t until a few years later, starting in 1977, really, that he started to be the Bruins’ tormentor. That year, he earned the Conn-Smythe Trophy as playoff most valuable player, and the Bruins saw why: in four Grand Finals games against them, he tallied nine points!
This had also led to some legendary clashes with Wensink, who would have declared, among other things, during the final, that Lafleur was not going to leave Boston Garden alive.
“Except I never said that,” Wensink says today. They said I said that, that’s the difference. »
Cashman: “Anyway, whether John said that or not, it wouldn’t have mattered. Guy, there’s nothing bothering him. »
The following season, in the spring of 1978, it was the same two teams in the grand final, with the same result, and a victory for the Canadiens in six games, during which Lafleur would collect three goals and two assists.
And then there was 1979.
PHOTO ROBERT NADON, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
After trailing 3-1, the Canadiens won the seventh game in overtime to advance to the Stanley Cup Grand Final in Montreal on May 10, 1979.
This match of May 10, 1979 in Montreal was one of those that marked, and that marked for a long time. They mark those who were there in the stands, those who were there in front of their TV, and those who were there, really there, on the ice.
It was that the winner would get a place in the grand final, and the Bruins, after the failures of the previous two springs, finally had the Canadian in the cables during this seventh game. Among other things, the players in black and yellow had a 3-1 lead in the middle of the Forum, and then finally, the hour of revenge was about to come.
Nope ? No.
“The thing with Guy is that every time he had the puck on his paddle, you knew something was going to happen,” Cashman added.
As captain of the Bruins, Cashman knew very well that Lafleur should never be counted out, and this time, late in the game, he was reminded of it in a very painful way.
So, with just 2:34 to go on the clock and the Bruins up 4-3, the Boston club received a very costly penalty for having too many players on the ice, and to this day, in Boston, the words “too many men” remain painful words, which must only very rarely be pronounced.
This end of the match has already been very famous for a long time. Lafleur, mane in the wind, who starts from behind his own net, who skates a little, and who hands the puck to Jacques Lemaire up front. Lemaire gives it back to him, and then… “and then Guy made a perfect shot”, adds John Wensink.
The shot was perfect, indeed, and the puck found itself in the back of the net in the time to say it, thwarting a Gilles Gilbert, who was in a state of grace that evening. But the images of a defeated Gilbert sitting helplessly on the ice summed it all up. Years later, in an interview with Sun in February 2019, the former Bruins goalie described this Lafleur shot as follows: “Have you ever caught a .22 caliber rifle bullet? Nope ? Well neither do I. »
In Boston, there are several who have never been able to recover from 1979, and in this rather exhaustive list, there is the name of coach Don Cherry, who lost his job.
“I see him again on the ice, his long hair in the wind, he wrote in an email sent to The Press. Other than maybe Bobby Orr, he was the best skater I’ve seen. »
PHOTO ARCHIVES PRESS
Don Cherry, Bruins
When he got his momentum to shoot in that seventh game (in 1979), I knew he was going to score, and only Guy could have put the puck in the corner of the net like that to tie the score. I take my hat off to him…even if it cost me my job!
Don Cherry, former Bruins coach
It’s a bit of all that that marked the Bruins players during the great years of this rivalry between Boston and Montreal: Guy, of course, but in addition, the man and the human, very simple, who was hiding behind shooting and hair.
“I can tell you that he was quite a hockey player… but he was even better as a human being,” adds Wayne Cashman.