I didn’t know much about Guy Lafleur, the hockey player. My memories of his supremacy on the rinks are diffuse and it’s not just because I only saw him play in black and white on a small TV with an unstable image. I was simply a little too young to appreciate his exploits at their fair value.
Posted yesterday at 12:00 p.m.
I’m more of the Saku Koivu era, with all that entails in terms of dashed hopes and suppressed patriotism. What I know of his sporting exploits therefore boils down to a few montages of highlights and his record on the Hockey DB statistics site. It’s crazy how simply consulting these figures can make the post-modern Canadian fan dream.
Despite everything, I always knew that Lafleur was larger than life. When I was young, my uncle had two heroes to whom he would inevitably steer a conversation: Elvis and Guy Lafleur (no, I’m not Réjean Tremblay’s nephew).
Even though I hadn’t seen him in action when he was at the top of his game, I knew what he stood for. He was on par with a rock-and-roll pioneer, that was no small thing.
In his biography of the Blond Demon, it is rather to the main character of George Orwell in 1984 that Georges Hébert-Germain compares Lafleur. At one time, our hero had to put aside his emancipatory impulses to comply with the directives of the Big Brothers of hockey. I did not know this resigned Guy Lafleur. Similarly, on the radio in 2010, the legendary Pierre Trudel confirmed to me that when he started out, Guy Lafleur was a young man of few words: “Embarrassed like that, it was not possible, he was monosyllabic. He added, however, that Lafleur had changed over time: “When the tongue loosened, he didn’t stop talking and he still talks today. There’s this with more reserved people: when they finally speak up, you tend to listen to them. It is rather this Guy Lafleur that I knew. A man who was very good “without the puck” when it came time to make headlines with a rant.
The sports media form a kind of parallel world where the shortcomings of society are amplified. Between two online casino advertisements, we are presented with the exploits of our heroes interspersed with interviews in which prevails a jargon that has nothing to envy to that of Justin Trudeau. As Jean Perron might say, the commentators try to spare the hand that feeds them with bread and games and we take very seriously events that are not at all serious. A trade between two fifth-line players, an injury to the right anterior hamstring (if it exists) or an undetected pass with the hand. This is not a reproach. I love this parallel world, even if it sometimes imposes limits.
Limits that Guy Lafleur cared little about when shooting a spike. He granted his interviews “with no” headphones, at the risk of having to break his head because he will have displeased the established order.
I’ve been collecting funny sports quotes for several years and rereading those of Guy Lafleur, I realized that I hadn’t necessarily noted them down because they were comical as much as because they were surprising in this ecosystem where, at least in the not-so-distant era, criticizing could hurt your access to free hot dogs from any lodge.
It also appeared to me that these clear statements were mostly punctuated by a few coronations. Whether it was when he prescribed the “superactive” PK Subban Ritalin and a little tap behind the head “‘sti”, or when he compared the NHL to a garage league “‘sti” during the lockout in 2005, Lafleur presented the situation as he saw it, in the vernacular.
We are rightly concerned about the rise of populism, but it is mainly because populist politicians pretend to be close to the people. Guy Lafleur was genuinely one.
He adapted his language neither for the media nor to appeal to a certain audience and echoed the exasperation of the supporters because, like them, he had this team at heart. Simply.
I have a slight tendency to judge people who pay tribute to the deceased on social networks by testifying to the memories they inspire, but here, the abundance of these tributes, just as much as their diversity, commands respect. Guy Lafleur was a kind of social lubricant that could unite my uncle who adores Elvis and my father who adores Jethro Tull (all tastes are in nature). We live in a time where like comes together in bubbles that are a little too hermetic. We can only be nostalgic to have all been able to gather around this kind of hero. I apologize in advance for concluding with a pun, but to mend the social flannel, we need to grow more Guy Lafleurs.