A look back at the life of a hockey legend in ten key dates.
1951: Birth of Guy Damien Lafleur in the small municipality of Thurso in Outaouais. At the age of 14, the young hockey player moved to Quebec to play on a Junior B team. He spent six years boarding with a family in the Limoilou district.
1971: Lafleur won the Memorial Cup in a Quebec Remparts uniform after finishing the regular season at the top of the scoring championship with 209 points in 62 games.
1971: The Montreal Canadiens select the captain of the Remparts first in the NHL Draft ahead of Marcel Dionne. The pressure is strong on Lafleur who is seen as the successor to his childhood idol, Jean Béliveau.
1975: After leaving his helmet, the blond Demon crosses the bar of fifty goals in one season. He repeated this performance over the next five years on the trio completed by Jacques Lemaire and Steve Shutt.
1979: The number 10 of the Canadian wins the fifth and last Stanley Cup of his career in the tricolor uniform. His goal scored in Game 7 of the semi-final against the Boston Bruins remains the highlight of his career.
1984: At odds with his coach and ex-teammate Jacques Lemaire, Guy Lafleur suddenly retired from professional hockey at the age of 33. His number was hoisted to the heights of the Montreal Forum the following year.
1988: The young retiree returns to the game in the uniform of the New York Rangers. He moved to the Quebec Nordiques the following year before retiring permanently in 1991 with a total of 1,353 points spread over 17 seasons in the NHL.
1992: Guy Lafleur takes a stand in favor of the Charlottetown accord aimed at modifying the Canadian constitution. His clumsy intervention raises discontent within the Quebec sovereignty movement.
2010: The Quebec Court of Appeal acquits the former hockey player of having given contradictory testimony in the context of legal proceedings brought three years earlier against his son Mark.
2022: Guy Lafleur dies of lung cancer at the age of 70. “It’s a whole people who are in mourning,” said Quebec Premier François Legault.
To see in video