Was Jacques Demers Voodooed?

I was recently reading on the time of Patrick Roy's run in with Mario Tremblay during the "Habs Game From Hell" back in December of 1995, and it reminded me of a very funny and totally strange anecdote involving Tremblay's predecessor at the time, Jacques Demers.

This is one little tale that I'm certain Habs fandom knows little of. It played out like an omen, completely weird when taken in the context of what occured with the Canadiens only mere weeks later.

To set it up, for starters, it occured during a historic game between the Canadiens and the Colorado Avalanche, in of all places, my hometown of Cornwall, Ontario. It was historic because it was the very first game, an exhibition, in Avalanche history.

It was being played it Cornwall, because Avs coach Marc Crawford had suggested it playing here. He had ties to the city, having played and coached junior here, also marrying a school friend from St. Lawrence High. Two seasons prior, Crawford had taken the St. Johns Maple Leafs on an extended road excursion, playing a "home game" in Cornwall, due to an arena workers strike that put the team on the road for weeks. St. Johns played the Fredericton Canadiens in town, and this Avs - Habs game was Crawford's way of saying thanks for the gate receipts and helping him rise to the NHL in record coaching time.













Those are simply events that transpired to bring the Habs to town - with Crawford and the Avalanche seemingly on the periphery of the nights excitement. I say seemingly, if one doesn't have a thing for voodoo.

The excitement was ample on many fronts. The Avs were the so called home team on this night, and there was a justifyable buzz among the four thousand strong crowd that packed the Civic Complex. A young Owen Nolan, a former Cornwall Royal still had a sizeable following in town, and was greeted with a loud ovation when introduced as a starter.

Cornwall was pretty much split down middle between Habs die hards and Leafs fans, then as today, but these were the recently skyhooked Quebec Nordiques being billed as the team to cheer for. It was a dazed look that greeted the brand spanking new Colorado jerseys - I liked them, hardly missing the fleur de lys much.

The game was a typical training camp match - no Roy, Damphousse, Sakic or Forsberg to cheer on. Rookies made up a sizeable chunk of both rosters. It was go Recchi! Go Mats Sundin!

Even the Habs coach, Jacques Demers didn't partake. Assistant Charles Thiffault ran the bench for this pre-season run through. A thought crossed - could he have been fired and I'd not heard about it? The Canadiens did miss the playoffs in 1994-95, a first in 25 years - who knows?

Nah! Everyone would be talking about it, I rationed.

The game started, and Colorado soon stormed out to a quick lead as Montreal seemed to have little cohesion. Midway in the game, it was 4-1 Avs, but the Habs came back to win it 6-5.

During the first intermission, an acquaintance walking the arena halls mentioned that he'd seen Serge Savard and Pierre Lacroix chatting on the overhead firewalk somewhere. I hadn't seen any famous faces, and was disappointed that the press box behind me was filled with unfamiliar ones.













I was sitting in the last row at the top of the stands, only able to see the heads of those sitting there. I hadn't looked behind until the second period, when that same acquaintance, who was sitting three rows below me yelled out my name and pointed over my head.

I turned back expecting to see Savard, but I was stunned to see Demers, hands and fingers cupped as if praying, literally breathing down my neck from the box.

"Bonjours, Jacques", was all this surprised fan could muster.

"Salut, mon ami", came the genteel coaches reply.

As the game was on, and the Habs were mounting a comeback, I figured I'd wait a few minutes for the second intermission and strike up a conversion.

My first question was going to be, "Jacques, can I see your Stanley Cup ring?"

Other questions running through my mind would have been, "Can I try it on, can I keep it, and can I run fast enough past security without being slammed into Complex's concrete walls?"

Demers seemed jovial, and in good spirits - the Habs had just tied the game!

Great, I thought. He'll be chatty!

As the seconds ticked down at the periods end, a scrum of autograph seekers beat me to the coach. He'd moved to the right of me a few feet, and I was in the second seat from the aisle, unable to move freely towards him.

One after the other, upraised arms were thrust towards the coach, scraps of paper in hand for autograph seekers. There were possibly a quick dozen fans sardine-canned into a slight opening awaiting this little brush with fame. One prepared fan even had a Pro Set card of Demers ready for the scribbling. As I was noticing that, came a loud bellow from Demers' chest.

He was roaring!

"Where'd you get that?", I heard him ask.

"I made it", said a man in his thirties.

"That's so funny...I don't know what to say!", he said, enlightened, "I've never seen anything like that!"

There was a little shoving to see what the commotion was, when Demers grabbed the item and hoisted it, saying "Boys, look at this!"

Then I saw it. A foot from my eyes - a woodcarved Montreal Canadiens casket with Demers resting horizontally inside. The detail, from the rimmed glasses to the moustache, was incredibly accurate. Draped with a Habs logo, and red, white, and blue trim, it was about 10 inches long and maybe four wide and high. Demers couldn't take his eyes off it!

Laughter shrouded the group, and the coach was just silly over the sight of it.

He leaned right into the casket's creator, quizzing his motives. It's not everyday one gets a glimpse of oneself, resting in peace!

The creator explained it, and as best as I could make out, the idea behind it was a friendly lark from a Leafs fan to the coach.

Demers erupted with laughter again, when the sculpter suggested...."figured a coach who misses the playoffs in Montreal is as good as dead".

The coach put everybody in stiches once more, saying, "the worst part is I want to keep it!"
"You can", said the owner, "I made it for you!"

"But I couldn't possibly, you must have put so much work into it", the coach graciously offered, looking around nervously at those laughing with him, some at him.

"But I want you to have it, I have a second one I made, but this one was the better one. It's for you!"

Demers shook his head, still disbelieving. "It's okay then?", he said, bemused.

"Yes, yes. Keep it!"

With that, the coaches arm lunged out in handshake gesture, in what I have to say what the oddest meeting I'd ever witnessed between the Habs and Leafs nations.

Just steps away from Demers, giggling as if his shoulders were in a perpetual rumbleseat on a gravel road, was one Mario Tremblay, on hand as a radio color man that night.

I managed a Demers autograph on a scrap on a program insert. Sadly, it has gone misplaced for years now. I didn't get to say more than "thanks" amidst all the commotion and hilarity going on.

I've thought quite alot about that casket moment in the decade plus since it happened. It seems so voodooish looking back on it.

Was the gift a curse? I don't believe in that stuff much, but it sure seems crazy when one considers that many partipants in that evening game were displacing in a major way before the hockey season was out.

Demers would lose his first five starts with the Canadiens that season. He would be fired along with the GM who refused to axe him a month into the year. He would be replaced, of course, by Tremblay, who was almost in tears as Demers accepted the "gift".

Inevitably, Demers moving on trickled down to the Patrick Roy trading, two months later. That debacle would seal this casket moment in infamy, for me. I often wonder what Demers did with what the thing. Does he even remember receiving it. I'd love to know!

The Guy Lafleur Urban Legend

This is the one of the funniest hockey story I've ever heard! Funny, in many, many ways.

It is one of those, "It gets better with time" tales, and has to do with Habs legend Guy Lafleur.

I've been told it over and over again and have often repeated it myself. It goes back over 20 years ago, and has almost gained an urban legend status. The final line of the story is just precious, but might well be made up from partial truths and a certain amount of myth.

I'm posting this on the site a second time, edited, because I keep hearing the story over, with new added twists to it each time.

The person who was most recently putting a newer spin to this tale, is a well known person in my small town, so he remains without a name here. He swore up and down that his take on it was all 100% true, which made it even funnier.

The man's well known as a harmless bullsh*tter of sorts, always entertaining as his "truths" get a little skewered with time.

Another gentleman who was sitting at my table, works at a local arena, and unintentionally helped out with the added twist. He had his own Lafleur tidbit to share, centered around the arena, which I'll get to in a bit. It was upon hearing what he'd found, that the "embellisher" hijacked the details, and rolled them into his own twisted revisionist tale.

First I'll share the story here, as I've always heard it and was telling it to the guys.

It's about a near fatal car accident that occured somewhere around 1980. At the time Lafleur had an endorsement deal with General Motors and was often seen in TV ads hocking Chevrolets. It is told he received a brand new Caprice each year of the deal.



















(This ain't no Caprice - it's Lafleur behind the wheel of Gilles Villeneuve's Formula 1 car.)

It was a well known fact that Lafleur's partying ways caught up to him one night in an almost fatal car crash. He'd often be out late, having a couple too many and then he'd proceed home via a Quebec backroad highway to get home. He was often stopped by the QPP, but never ticketed or charged. More than once, he actually recieved police escorts home, so I've heard.

At this particular time, Lafleur's fame and game were at a peak. Having 6 consecutive 50 goals seasons buys you some favor in your home province.

On this night, Lafleur was pretty hammered as he headed home, so much so, that he nodded off to sleep behind the wheel. Soon enough, his Chevy veered off the road and took out some fencing before smashing into a lamp post.

Police were quick to the scene and spotted the accident. Getting out of their vehicles, it's been told that one of the officers recognized Lafleur's car, running to it in fear the provincial hero was badly hurt.

As he approached the car window, he could see a post had penetrated the windshield and sat up against Lafleur's right shoulder. Lafleur's head was tilted to the left, his jaw slung open some, with no sign of blood other than small cuts from the shattered glass.

He was unconscious. Or dead!

The officer panicked and began shaking Lafleur's shoulder hoping in fright that he'd not left the world for good.

"Guy, Guy, wake up, wake up", he said, jostling him lightly.

To his surprise Lafleur, while totally dazed, came out of it straight away.

He raised his head to look at the officer bleary eyed, and asked in all innocent liquored sincerety, "Did I score?"

"No", replied the cop, "You hit the post!"

That was the way I'd always heard it told, and told it myself, until now.

The new wrinkle in it, played its way into the conversation from the arena worker, and led to the other friend, he of the wild imagination, claiming the "Did I Score?" line had to do with Lafleur getting knocked out cold during a game in his youth - just as he scored!

"This oughtta be good!", I thought to myself.

























While I can recall hearing about a goal something similar to that years ago, I'd never heard the "Did I Score?" line attached to that extension of it. The story of the crash has been told as Lafleur folklore and is mentioned in certain bios, though his drunken question has never been substantiated. At least, not in the two autobiographies I've read.

I have my doubts that such a line could attributed to a goal that Lafleur scored in his youth.

Especially considering that this particular goal, that my story shallacking buddy is making reference to, is attributed to a 1965 Pee Wee contest, a good fifteen years prior to the crash.

thinking he's got these two tales confused pretty colorfully at best!

The way he is now telling it, puts a hometown tilt to it, as well. It's also where the manure starts to permeate his take on the tale.





















Rink Rat had worked at local arena for years since his youth, driving the Zamboni and doing odds and ends.In the mid 1960's, Lafleur played a few contests here in Cornwall, usually in the context of Atom, Pee Wee or Bantam tournaments.

Lafleur's coming out party was the Quebec Pee Wee Tournament, which is to this day still, a huge event. Lafleur single handedly tore up the scoresheet with twenty-something goals in five games. National attention was soon to follow. It was not long after that event that Lafleur played here in Cornwall.

At one of the two arena's in town, the Bob Turner ( no relation to the former Habs defenseman ) Memorial Center, the boys minor hockey league was run by the same group of people for close to 25 years. In the arena, the stands on one side stretch about 15 rows high, and beneath them are rooms that had not been used for decades due to a renovation project around 1970.

Under these stands, in a type of concierge store room, were broken down skate sharpening machines and lots of collected junk. The room was a type of long corridor that stretched almost the length of the ice, and had several sections to it. Electrical wire was strung all over from renovations past. The place was so littered with old junk that no one dared to venture into the dark and dusty, not to mention dangerous, area. It soon became a forgotten dungeon of disarray and broken old hockey sticks.

One day, in the late 1990's, the house league president got curious. As he was prepared to finish up his career in the rink, he decided to check out under the stands to see what he could find. It had been itching at him for years. He'd been told that the trophies that no longer had a place in the arena's main showcases were once stored there. Forgotten there!

















(The Water Street Arena, now known as the Si Miller Arena)

But it was such an unsightly mess, he got Rink Rat on the job of cleaning it up.

Armed with a searchlight and hundreds of feet of extension cord, he threw on an old jacket and a hardhat, ready to star in Indiana Jones and the Lost Hockey Relics.

After spending a good two hours coughing up dust, he landed a half dozen old trophies. Once out of the rubble, he got to cleaning them off and discovered that one of the trophies had been awarded to Guy Lafleur.

Lafleur's name was the last plaqued MVP name on a half filled Cornwall Pee Wee Tournament piece of hardware.

The trophy was no masterpiece of creation. The wood had rotted badly and the metal plates were rusting, damaged and bending from time in the cold.

To him, finding it was priceless. He's kept the league from knowing about it for years and promised to let me see it one day, but there was no way he was going to sell it off.

I still have yet to see it.

As Rink Rat was finishing this bit of storytelling, our conversation partner was looking slightly agitated, as if he had something to add that could not remain inside of him for very long.

We listened with BS detectors on alert, and let him chime in.

This tale started out totally fact based, I'll give him that much!

He was telling us about a game played at what was once called the Water Street Arena in the 1960's. The WSA is a 70 yr old structure that leaks from the roof today and is one good winter storm from being condemmed. It's where the Cornwall Colts presently call home.

Lafleur was there in the mid sixties with a team from Rockland and their tournament opponants were a team from the Ottawa area. The Ottawa team was a hapless bunch made much better by a forward / defenseman named Larry Robinson. The "Big Bird", as he was yet to be known, was doubleshifted most of the game at both positions.

















(Lafleur is in the second row, fourth player from the left)

The game in question has been mentioned in both the Lafleur books I've read, as well as the "Robinson For The Defense" autobiography. Mentions were made of the game, merely in passing, as they were on that day, each teams best player, and it didn't really connect with the two stars until both were playing for the Montreal Canadiens almost a decade later.

Not surprisingly, neither book refers to what my storytelling friend was to allude to next.

During the game, which he says he was at, (oh yeah, let's see a ticket stub!), Robinson was nothing but a mere goon put on the ice to run Lafleur down. He said that Robinson's skating was rough, but his long legs allowed him a certain speed. Catching a youthful Lafleur was in his dreams.



















Towards the games end, which Thurso won handily, Robinson, I am told, nailed Lafleur with a shoulder to the head, as he stood creaseside poking at a rebound.

The hit supposedly knocked Lafleur cold ( ! ) and it is upon him opening his eyes that he supposedly uttered the infamous "Did I Score?" line.

That would be too good a story not to tell - if it were true, and I suggested as much to my unfazed, tale stretching friend - but no book I've read in my lifetime ( yes, lots of 'em ) makes mention of this. Then again, the man has a huge nose!










Sometimes it's a fine line between legend and fact, myth and truth. It gets finer as stories blur, get stretched, forgotten and generally more detailed with age.

Still today, I know of only two things concerning the Lafleur crash story. One, he did smash his Caprice into a lampole, surviving with just small injuries. Two, the whole mess still makes a helluva good joke going on thirty years.

Now I have a magazine photocopy, from a rock star memorabilia auction, of Bruce Springsteen's California drivers licence. Next time I enjoy a coffee with this fellow, I just gotta tell him the one about the time the Boss and I drag raced for pink slips!

Nah!

Cornwall Is Hockeyville - No Kidding!

From "Newsy" to Chad, Orval to Lori, Cornwall has the Hockey credentials covered, now give us that Hockeyville prize!









With news that the city of Cornwall has reached the top 5 in the Kraft Hockeyville competition, I thought I'd bring some historical perspective on the game's history in our town.

As all Cornwallite hockey fans must know, the roots of the game run deep here. While we may no longer have an OHL hockey club to boast of, our love of hockey manifests itself it many different and positive ways for ciitizens of all ages.

The one thing that always strikes me is how involved the youth in our city are in the game.







For a small region of roughly 50,000 in population, our boys and girls simply eat the sport up.

We have the largest percentage, per capita of children registered in hockey via the CMHA for boys, and the Kinsmen sponsored CGHA for girls. Compared to other cities our size, our hockey playing population dwarfs all challengers in numbers. Add in the fact that the Huron Hockey School has been entrenched in the players development for decades, and one can plainly understand why we not only have the numbers, but we are darn good at the game as well.

The city presently in the grip of Hockeyville fever, also has the Royal Bank Cup on the horizon for 2008, in which the Cornwall Colts will act as the host team for the national Junior A tournament.






























The Hockeyville competition is indeed aptly timed, as Cornwall's mayor, Bob Kilger former NHL referee and Memorial Cup winning coach, is of course, the father of Toronto Maple Leafs forward Chad Kilger.

Local sportswriter Todd Hambleton made mention in his column yesterday that Cornwall also boasts one heck of good shinny team.Todd writes that "Other Cornwall Hockeyville angles perhaps got left on the cutting room floor, (of the Hockeyville promo clip), like our flourishing girls' hockey association, or the fact that we have one of the world's best shinny teams. The Cornwall Six-Shooters - Mike Lamarche, Scott Barnes, Harry Marsolais, Rod Lemieux, Yvon Besner and Chris Villeneuve - almost beat the world champs from Boston at last year's international semifinal in New Brunswick."























Just this past month, the Six-Shooters won the inaugural Canadian National Masters Championships in Muskoka, Ontario, with a 9-0 record. The men who not only have the right to claim the first-ever Canadian National Masters Championship Cup, but also the spirit of the Championship. After enduring the true Pond Hockey Challenge - 4 games in just over 4 hours - the Six-Shooters defeated The Jokers 33-13 in a gunslinging final.

A pond hockey championship should be worth 100,000 bonus votes in the Hockeyville competition.

Our city's passion for the sticks whacking pucks on ice likely stretches farther back in time than recorded history allows us to view. Going as far back as the early 1900's, the city had a team in the Federal Amateur Hockey League. Two of Cornwall's more reknowned players from the era were Edouard "Newsy" Lalonde and Cy Denneny.

Through the years, many teams calling Cornwall home, played before thousands of fans, providing the thrills that have lined our heritage. There have been, in no particular order, the Cornwall Flyers, the Chevy's, the Aces, the Victorias, the Comets, the Colts, and most proudly, our 3 time Memorial Cup Champion Cornwall Royals.










Cornwall has helped launch the careers of many great players,coaches, and hockey executives into the big leagues.

Famous names of those born or passing through the Seaway City on the road to larger dreams include Lalonde, Denneny, Doug Gilmour, Billy Smith, Orval Tessier, Ray Miron, Dale Hawerchuk, Ron Ward, Alain Chevrier, Doug Carpenter, Mathieu Schneider, Owen Nolan, and current NHLer Chad Kilger.

Surely, from the multitudes, some names are passing me by.

And that's just the boys!

On the girls side of hockey greatness, Cornwall's Olympian Gold medalist Laurie Dupuis has many former and present Typhoons girls in line to assume the mantle of Cornwall's best ever female hockey player.




























Kilger, who is home grown and bred, carries the current Cornwall torch in the NHL. A highly skilled and useful defensive forward for the Maple Leafs, Kilger has also played for Cornwall's other favorite NHL franchise, the Canadiens. He recently made national headlines by registering the hardest shot on record, 106.1 mph, at a Leafs charity event. Chad was also clocked as the fastest skater on the Buds - no surprise to some of the local boys who go up against him in the off season.






















Lalonde, with the Montreal Canadiens, and Denneny with the Ottawa Senators of the day, were not mere participants in the early times of the NHL, but two of the fledgling league's brightest stars. Their accomplishments passed through league records, legendary on ice battles, Stanley Cup wins, to now reside in the history books and the Hockey Hall Of fame for all to be proud of.

Lalonde was a leading scorer for the Canadiens for six years, he served as captain from 1915 to 1921. The tenacious forward with a gift for scoring was a member of the first Montreal Canadiens team to win the Stanley Cup in 1916. Lalonde was scoring champion five times in the NHA, the PCHA and NHL, an unprecedented feat in the major professional ranks and unsurpassed until Gordie Howe's sixth scoring title in 1963.

























Sportswriter Dick Beddoes once called Lalonde "a survivor of a truly permissive age when hockey was genuinely a mug's racket, mottled with roughnecks who prefered to drink an opponants blood at body temperature."

In six NHL seasons covering 99 games, Lalonde hit for an astounding 124 goals, an accomplishment that can never truly be diminished by time.

From 1910 to 1954, he held the record for the most goals scored by a major league hockey player, including his pre-NHL totals -- 441 goals, a record later broken by Maurice Richard.

In 1950, he was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, and the Canadian Lacrosse Hall Of Fame also inducted him in 1965. The Sports Hall of Fame of Canada, in Toronto, acknowledged Lalonde by having him light the torch upon their opening ceremonies in 1955.

In 1998, 71 years after his last game and 76 years after initial retirement, he was ranked number 32 on The Hockey New's list of the 100 Greatest Hockey Players, making him the highest-ranking player on the list who had played in a professional league before the founding of the NHL.









Cyril "Cy" Denneny, nicknamed the "Cornwall Colt" was born in nearby Farrow's Point in 1894. As a left winger with the 1920's era Ottawa Senators, he topped the 20 goal plateau eight times. Joined by brother Corb, Cy won four Stanley Cups with the Senators before capping off his career with a fifth, in a Bruins uniform in 1929.

Denneny ranked as the NHL's all time leading goal scorer from 1919 to 1934, having been only briefly surpassed by Joe Malone in 1923. In NHA and NHL play, he combined to score 279 goals in 368 games. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall Of Fame in 1959.

To the growing number of voices proclaiming Cornwall is Hockeyville, it can be added that Cornwall has in fact been Hockeyville going on a hundred years now.

For those who have seen the Cornwall Hockeyville clip, you'll notice that the last scene shows children in a grade 6 classroom shouting "Cornwall Is Hockeyville!" That class is from Immaculate Conception school, and the teacher, dressed as a referee is Joy Martel, who had a film crew come in and shoot the kids cheer.

My daughter Crystal, who is part of Mrs. Martel's class, was asked to help gather some hockey jerseys for the filming. She borrowed a few of mine including a Canadiens jersey she is wearing, and Detroit and San Jose duds that you might spot in the . I was lucky enough to get into class that morning and catch this little bit of fun with the digicam.



Cornwall also has it's share of very well known hockey fanatics. Witness the picture below of a gentleman with a collection of memorabilia so impressive, a former NHL'er stopped by to check it out.

Only in Hockeyville!