Special Moments With Guy Lafleur

How being in the sports media gave one writer & broadcaster the opportunity to interview sports personalities he never imagined he’d even meet in places he never imagined he’d be. These will be his stories about their stories — or just about them — from the pages of his past, while working out of Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver in the 60s and 70s.

When I see Guy Lafleur watching the Canadiens in the playoff, it brings back a flood of memories that have nothing to do with the flowing locks, booming shot and speedy skates that made him famous.

Memories like the first time we met, in a Vancouver hotel coffee shop during his rookie season; also my rookie season covering the NHL. He was heralded as the “next Jean Beliveau” and he wasn’t ready for that degree of expectation.

Like the time he was at a Yoplait yogurt promotion up on Mount Royal in Montreal and he signed the cast on the elbow of a little boy coming off surgery, making that kid a fan for life (my son is now 46).

Like the time he and I sat in a popular restaurant, The Texan, across the street from The Forum, for an interview that I tried conducting in French — Lafleur managed to suppress his laughter.

Like the time the phone rang (phones did once ring) early one Wednesday morning at the radio station where I worked, with a report he’d been in a car accident overnight and nobody knew how bad it was…and I was calling the Canadiens’ Managing Director Irving Grundman at 5 a.m. to find out.

That became my most vivid Lafleur memory.

He went silent after the accident and for three days nobody saw him. On Friday evening, I drove cautiously to his house and knocked on the door. His wife, Lise, opened it. He was sleeping, she said. I asked when he might be available. “He’s skating on Sunday at the Forum.”

Reporters live for things like this. The most popular sports figure in a media-rich city had knocked on death’s door and nobody — nobody — had been able to ask him about it. The Canadiens were in Quebec City. On Sunday at The Forum, I walked past a security guard who’d seen me enough not to evict me, and Pierre Mondou, who was also injured.

I had Lafleur to myself.

“I was very lucky,” he said.

A fence post had smashed through the windshield and cut his ear badly enough to require surgery. He had fallen asleep, for “two or three” seconds.

“The plate [on the post] came through the glass first, and I started to move to the door. If the post had come first, I don’t think I would have had time to move. Maybe it’s a message. It’s a funny feeling after it happened…why didn’t you get killed?”

Thankfully he is here, watching hockey, 40 years later.