Guy Lafleur (1952-2022)

The Game Room
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In the first hockey game I remember, the Canadiens beat the Maple Leafs 5-0. This had a profound effect on my future hockey team preferences. Some of those goals were scored by stalwart star Guy Lafleur.

I was saddened to read just now of his death at the age of seventy. He was a class act, and names like Larry Robinson, Guy Lapointe, Ken Dryden, Serge Savard and Guy Lafleur meant a lot to me, d’autrefois, as well as to millions of my fellow Canadians. Thanks for the memories, mon ami. Two minutes for looking so good!

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“He was the first NHL player to record six consecutive seasons of 50 goals or more and 100 points or more.”

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Godspeed, M. LaFleur.

When I was first getting into sports, in the late '70s, LaFleur was one of the NHL’s biggest stars. I remember buying a copy of Hockey Digest (a small monthly magazine, which largely reprinted articles from local papers) – Guy was on the cover, and there was a nice profile on him in that issue.

I think that this might have been the issue:

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Bruins fan here. Boy do I remember that “too many men on the ice” game.

And that blond hair flying down the ice.

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Semi digression, because I have been avoiding Hockey threads here lately.

I was thinking about him a lot recently when I heard that Mike Bossy had died. I always thought that Bossy got a raw deal because he was a quiet worker setting records in the Shadow of Lefleur who was such a presence on the ice(just so attention grabbing streaming as he took Ten foot Frankenstein strides down the ice), and Gretzky (Nothing needs to be said there acomplishmentwise).

But for some reason Bossy always took shit for scoring and not being physical, but Gretzky got a full pass for being bodyguarded his whole career.

RIP Mike Bossy
RIP Guy Lafleur

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Hockey Digest, man does that ever hit my nostalgia bone.

I am a Bobby Orr guy, but Lafleur was really something special.

mmm

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Bossy was a great player and personality. Said to be the life of every party. Those brash New Yorkers, including others like Trottier were serious players who also deserve their spots on hockey’s Olympus. But they weren’t my team, and their talent was frustrating.

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Well, Gretzky was Gretzky. As great as Bossy was, Gretzky was inhuman, a star above anyone else who’s ever played the game.

Bossy is definitely underrated historically, especially if one compares him to the wildly popular Lafleur, in part because he played for the Islanders, a team that even as great as it became is kind of a weird franchise started out in the sticks that exists basically because there happened to be an arena there. 90% of hockey fans likely cannot name the “city” they play in now.

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And he did it in a shorter season than today, I believe! (Wellz, not shorter than 2020)

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Not much shorter; it was 78 games when he first came up and went to 80 a few years into his career.

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Huh. I’m sure you’re right; for some reason I thought it was in the 60s back then. I was wrong. Thanks.