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Man Lafleur, the dynamic, freewheeling proper wing who helped lead the dynastic Montreal Canadiens to 5 Stanley Cup championships within the Nineteen Seventies, together with 4 in a row, died on Friday in a suburb of Montreal. He was 70.
The Nationwide Hockey League stated that the trigger was most cancers and that Lafleur had died in a palliative care heart. A longtime cigarette smoker, he had been recognized with lung most cancers and had quadruple bypass surgical procedure in 2019.
Lafleur, recognized to followers as “the Flower,” was a magician on the ice, a artistic power who may deftly cut up defenses and whose offensive rushes prompted Montreal followers to chant, “Man! Man! Man!”
He was the primary participant in N.H.L. historical past to attain at the least 50 objectives and 100 factors in six consecutive seasons — a streak that was topped by the 136 factors (56 objectives and 80 assists) he totaled within the 1976-77 season.
“He liked to shoot excessive on the glove aspect, and it was a harmful shot, downright scary,” John Davidson, a former goalie for the New York Rangers, stated in a cellphone interview on Friday. “When he obtained the puck on the blue line on the outdated Montreal Discussion board and headed up the ice, you could possibly really feel the push. You’d really feel the folks make noise, and that noise would get louder and louder, and the folks would stand, whether or not he scored or not.”
Lafleur amassed 560 objectives and 793 assists over 17 seasons, 14 of them with the Canadiens, one with the Rangers and two with the Quebec Nordiques. Within the playoffs, he had 58 extra objectives and 76 assists.
He received the Artwork Ross Trophy for main the league in scoring thrice, and the Hart Memorial Trophy twice, because the N.H.L.’s Most worthy participant. He was inducted into the Hockey Corridor of Fame in 1988.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada wrote on Twitter that Lafleur “was not like anybody else on the ice,” including, “His velocity, ability and scoring had been arduous to consider.”
Lafleur’s loss of life comes per week after that of one other nice scorer, Mike Bossy of the New York Islanders.
Man Damien Lafleur was born on Sept. 20, 1951, in Thurso, Quebec, to Rejean and Pierette Lafleur. He was so enthralled with hockey as a boy that he would sneak into a neighborhood enviornment on weekday mornings and early on Sundays to get ice time when nobody else was round, in keeping with his Hockey Corridor of Fame biography.
“Once I was a child, all we noticed on TV was the Canadiens, and all I needed to be was Béliveau,” he informed the Corridor, referring to the longtime Canadiens star Jean Béliveau. He dreamed that the Canadiens would draft him.
He was spectacular in top-tier junior hockey, scoring 103 and 130 objectives for the Quebec Ramparts within the 1969-70 and 1970-71 seasons, and the Canadiens chosen him with the No. 1 total choose within the N.H.L. beginner draft. Lafleur stated that if that they had not chosen him, he would have signed with the Nordiques, which had been then within the rival World Hockey Affiliation.
Lafleur joined a Montreal workforce that had received the Stanley Cup the season earlier than however that had misplaced Béliveau to retirement and had employed a brand new coach, Scotty Bowman. Lafleur began comparatively slowly, scoring 29, 28 and 21 objectives in his first three seasons earlier than he broke out with 53 within the 1974-75 season.
Along with his blond hair flowing within the days earlier than gamers routinely wore helmets, Lafleur turned a star for a storied Montreal franchise, an innovator with a stick in his arms.
“He’s not the simplest participant to play with as a result of he’s all around the ice,” his teammate Steve Shutt as soon as stated. “He doesn’t know what he’s going to do, so how can I do know?”
Lafleur’s most electrical seasons as a scorer, from 1974-75 to 1979-80, virtually paralleled the 4 consecutive years that the Canadiens received the Stanley Cup, from 1976 to 1979. Throughout the 1976 playoffs, he was the topic of an alleged kidnap risk and guarded by safety.
Within the 1978 Stanley Cup last, the Boston Bruins’ head coach, Don Cherry, ordered his gamers to boost their sticks up towards Lafleur in an effort to discourage him. They slashed him, main him to play together with his head coated in bandages, in keeping with an article on The Hockey Writers web site. Lafleur nonetheless scored three objectives and two assists, and the Canadiens received in six video games.
After Lafleur scored 125 factors within the 1979-80 season, his manufacturing started falling off. Nineteen video games into the 1984-85 season, he abruptly retired after having scored solely two objectives and three assists. He was not getting together with the coach, Jacques Lemaire, who repeatedly benched him, or the overall supervisor, Serge Savard.
Lafleur stayed retired for the remainder of that season and for 3 extra, however simply weeks after being inducted into the Corridor of Fame in September 1988, he signed to play for the Rangers. On the time, he informed The New York Occasions that his final days with the Canadiens had been “the worst time of my life.”
“I had a selection of ulcers at 33 or retiring,” he stated.
After one season in New York, he signed with the Nordiques, who had joined the N.H.L. in 1979.
“It was a pleasing yr in exile in New York,” Lafleur informed reporters when he introduced his transfer to the Nordiques. “However now I’d like to finish my profession in Quebec, the place it started.”
He performed two years with the Nordiques, with modest outcomes, earlier than retiring for good. He later returned to the Canadiens as a workforce ambassador.
He’s survived by his spouse, Lise; his mom; his sons, Martin and Mark; 4 sisters; and a granddaughter.
In 2008, 4 bronze statues of nice Canadiens — Lafleur, Béliveau, Howie Morenz and Maurice (Rocket) Richard — had been unveiled on the Bell Centre, the workforce’s dwelling.
“I’d slightly nonetheless be enjoying,” Lafleur stated with amusing, “than have a statue.”
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