BELOVED MONTREAL CANADIENS LEGEND JEAN BELIVEAU DIES IN MONTREAL
Jean Beliveau, the legendary, brilliant Montreal Canadiens centreman whose grace and leadership on and off the ice transcended hockey for more than six decades, has died. He was 83. Beliveau leaves his wife of 61 years, Elise, the couple’s daughter Helene, and granddaughters Mylene and Magalie.
They are joined in mourning by the hockey universe and countless people around the world whose lives have been indelibly touched and profoundly enriched by the man who affectionately was nicknamed Le Gros Bill, for his likeness to a movie actor of the 1950s.
Beliveau had been in delicate health in recent months, having fought pneumonia from August into September not long after having fractured a hip in a fall at home.
He had suffered strokes in 2010 and 2012, a decade after having waged a difficult battle with cancer in 2000.
“I knocked on the door,” Beliveau said two years ago while recovering at home from his second stroke. “But it seems they weren’t ready for me.”
Beliveau’s dazzling statistics installed him in the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1972 alongside his great friend and rival Gordie Howe of the Detroit Red Wings.
Beliveau won 10 Stanley Cups during his 18 seasons with the Canadiens, having arrived from Quebec City in 1953 from the semi- professional senior- league Quebec Aces as a long- courted superstar- in- the- making.
He was signed on Oct. 3, 1953, to a five- year $ 105,000 contract, at the time the most generous pact in the National Hockey League.
“It was simple, really,” Canadiens general manager Frank Selke said that day. “All I did was open the Forum vault and say, ‘ Jean, take what you think is right.’”
The world welcomed Jean Beliveau on Aug. 31, 1931 in Trois- Rivieres, Que., the first of eight children born to his parents, Arthur and Laurette.
The family moved to Plessisville, Que., when Beliveau was 3, then settled in Victoriaville, Que., when he was 6.
The young centreman would leave home in 1949 at the age of 18 to play for the juniorleague Quebec Citadels, having started in organized hockey as a 12- year- old before moving up at age 15 to the intermediate Victoriaville Panthers.
Beliveau would graduate to play for the senior Quebec Aces from 1951- 53 before Selke finally convinced him, after much negotiation and a couple of impressive call- ups, that his place was in Montreal.
“He’s great,” Canadiens superstar Maurice ( Rocket) Richard said in lavish praise of Beliveau following the latter’s second call- up. “He’s got the greatest shot I’ve ever seen in hockey and he’s a fine man. He could help this team plenty and I wish he would change his mind.”
And so Beliveau did, finally, moving to the big city down the St. Lawrence River in October 1953. He then was four months the husband of Elise Couture, a young woman from Quebec City whom he’d met at a social event in Lac Beauport two years earlier.
It’s no wonder that it took much work for the stubborn Selke to lure his gilt- edged prospect to Montreal.
“Loyalty is another form of responsibility,” Arthur Beliveau had often told his son, according to the superstar’s 1994 autobiography, My Life In Hockey.
Finally arriving with the Canadiens in 1953- 54, head coach Dick Irvin put Beliveau under the wing of Hall of Fame- bound Elmer Lach for mentoring in faceoffs and passing, elements of the game that would become Beliveau hallmarks.
He would win the Hart Trophy in 1956 and again in 1964 as the NHL’s most valuable player. In 1956, he captured the Art Ross Trophy as the league’s top points- getter, and in 1965 he was awarded the inaugural Conn Smythe Trophy, presented to the MVP of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
His offence: 586 goals and 809 assists in 1,287 regular season and playoff games, every one for the Canadiens, most played during the NHL’s pre- expansion era.
The six- foot- three 205- pound centre missed the playoffs just once in his 18 seasons, his secondlast year in the NHL, and appeared in 13 all- star games. His name appears on the Stanley Cup a record 17 times, having won seven championships during 22 post- playing years as the Canadiens’ senior vicepresident of corporate affairs.
Beliveau stepped down from his Habs family for a second time on Aug. 31, 1993, leaving the front office on his 62nd birthday.
Beliveau captained the Canadiens from 1961 until his retirement in 1971, making him the longest- serving captain in franchise history.
Henri Richard, the younger brother of the Rocket, followed Beliveau as captain, yielding the C upon retirement in 1975 to Yvan Cournoyer.
“I had a chance to room a lot on the road with Jean,” said Cournoyer, who like Beliveau won 10 Stanley Cups, one fewer than the record 11 of Henri Richard.
“I learned a lot from him on and off the ice. Jean was a guy who was glad when I arrived ( in the mid- 1960s) because I had young legs. He was a little bit later in his career.
“He always said, ‘ Come from behind, Yvan. Come from behind.’ Sometimes after warm- up I’d tell him, ‘ Jean, I think tonight to come from behind, I’m going to need a parachute. I feel very good — I have my tailwind tonight,’” Cournoyer added, laughing. “I just had to put my stick on the ice and the puck arrived right on it from Jean. It was very easy for me.”
His No. 4 jersey was retired on Oct. 9, 1971, his banner raised to the rafters of the Montreal Forum, four months to the day that he had announced his retirement.
It wasn’t an easy life for Beliveau. He had battled health issues almost from the day he joined the Canadiens from Quebec City, doctors soon discovering that his puzzling fatigue and sluggishness were the result of his having a heart that was inefficient for his enormous body.
The years that followed saw him hospitalized for a precipitous drop in blood pressure, surgery to repair abdominal aneurysms, his cancer that required 36 sessions of chemotherapy, and two strokes.
Finally, in recent years, he slowed his pace.
In his autobiography published 20 years ago, the radiant star of hockey’s golden era wrote of how he wished to be remembered:
“Everything I achieved throughout my career, and all the rewards that followed, came as the results of team effort. If they say anything about me when I’m gone, let them say that I was a team man. To me, there is no higher compliment.”