Guy Lafleur 1951-2022 | The unlikely return of 1988

Guy Lafleur has been retired for four years now in 1988.

The divorce with the Canadian, which occurred in November 1984, was painful. He was marked by a cold war with his former center turned head coach, Jacques Lemaire.

The blond Demon left hockey too early, at 33. He had however obtained 70 points, including 30 goals, in 80 games the previous season, in 1983-1984.

Lafleur contacted a few teams in the wake of his departure from Montreal, the Los Angeles Kings, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the New York Rangers, but the interest in him does not seem to be there.

Team president Ronald Corey filed a second divorce a few months later while Lafleur was working for the organization as an ambassador.

Ants in the legs

The years go by. Lafleur has ants in his legs. In the summer of 1988, he got back into shape by training in boxing and skating with National League rookies.

Michel Bergeron has just been named head coach of the New York Rangers. One of his best friends, Richard Morency, saw Lafleur in action during the summer in NHL alumni games. Lafleur flies over the rink. Morency tells Bergeron what he saw, but things stop there.

No one, not even Michel Bergeron, can suspect that the former glory of the Canadian is aiming for a return to play.

Lafleur’s advisor and good friend, Yves Tremblay, makes a new approach to the Los Angeles Kings. We don’t seem very open. Tremblay also calls Bergeron. The Tiger, as he is nicknamed, is both incredulous and excited on the phone. He hangs up and makes a phone call to his general manager Phil Esposito.

“We invited Guy to meet us in New York,” says Michel Bergeron on the phone. richard [Morency] told me about it, but I still believed it more or less. Did it look good because it was garage league or something? But it hit me when I went to pick him up at the airport. He was swarthy and in extraordinary shape. He looked like a 25-year-old hockey player. I think he had trained seriously for the first time in his career. There, I started to get excited…”

Esposito agrees to invite the former glory of CH to training camp. Chance does things well, this camp must take place in… Trois-Rivières. The Rangers made no commitment to Lafleur, it was up to him to earn a contract through his play in training.

“Guy hadn’t slept all night at the Le Baron motel in Trois-Rivières,” relates Michel Bergeron. I said to him: “You come with me to the arena.” At 7 a.m., there was a line from the baseball stadium to the Coliseum! It filled to capacity! All the journalists from Quebec were there with those from New York. There were even some in North America. »

The Rangers coach makes a funny face when he sees the venerable columnist of the Boston Globe, Francis Rosa.

“What are you doing here?”

– Flower is back, answers this journalist member of the Hall of Fame.

Michel Bergeron composes his lines for the simulated matches. He places Lafleur with the team’s best prospect, Tony Granato.

Lafleur gets a one-year contract at the end of training camp. He will sometimes play on the third line, sometimes on the fourth, will occasionally participate in numerical superiority. There are even evenings when Michel Bergeron, heartbroken, will strike him out of training.

Another Quebec legend plays for the Rangers, Marcel Dionne, the second choice in the NHL Draft behind Lafleur in 1971. Between them, they total almost 3000 career points!

“At one point in the season, Guy is in a lethargy, he has been four or five games without scoring, says Michel Bergeron. Marcel asked me to make him play with Flower. It didn’t take long. In the next game, on the power play, he made a perfect pass to him in the slot and Guy scored. But they were both 38 and sometimes I had to choose between the two in my training. My biggest regret was not guiding them to the peak of their careers. »

His return to the Montreal Forum will be memorable. The Canadian wins 5-4, but Lafleur scores two goals. The crowd is jubilant!

“Guy had arrived at the Forum at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, relates his former coach At New York. He was nervous. He was smoking. But the most nervous of all was behind the Canadian bench, [le président] Ronald Corey, with everything that had happened in recent years in Montreal. I can tell you that he was disheveled! »

At the end of the season, Lafleur has an impressive record for a 37-year-old player who has been absent for so long: 67 games, 45 points, 18 goals.

Bergeron is fired on the eve of the playoffs. Lafleur is without a contract after the dry elimination of the Rangers in the first round.

The Tigre agrees to return with the Nordiques de Québec even if the next few years promise to be extremely difficult for this club in reconstruction.

“Marcel [Aubut] asked me if Guy could help us. He had trouble selling season tickets. I answered yes, on a fourth line. »

After his first day at training camp, Michel Bergeron returns home demoralized. His wife, Michèle, inquires about his condition.

– You do not seem very enthusiastic?

– Nope. Guy Lafleur is my best right winger and in New York he was playing on my fourth line…

It will indeed be a season of misery. The Nordiques won only 12 games. The team’s all-time leading scorer, Michel Goulet, will be traded over the winter, with general manager Martin Madden fired after the holidays.

But Lafleur doesn’t disappoint with 34 points in 39 games. “He was good with young people, especially with Joe Sakic, underlines Michel Bergeron. And with Sergei Mylnikov, our Russian goalkeeper. Mylnikov even went to bring him a bottle of champagne on December 24. »

Guy Lafleur will play a final season the following year. The Nordiques won just four more games, this time with Dave Chambers behind the bench. He has 28 points in 59 games.

His last lap is memorable. He plays his penultimate match at the Montreal Forum, and the last at the Coliseum. At the Forum, the ovation lasts several minutes, a manifestation of love never seen before. The supporters of the Colisée de Québec, where he had a career as a junior, also gave him a moving welcome.

This return to the game will have allowed him to complete the loop of his career on his terms. And what a career…