Lafleur was born to wear the CH

[Habsfan84]

#1
Guy Lafleur: Taken No. 1 overall by Montreal in the 1971 amateur draft, a choice acquired the previous season from the Oakland Seals for Ernie Hicke and the Canadiens' first-round choice in 1970.
The Canadiens also got defenceman François Lacombe and cash in the deal on May 22, 1970 The buzz about Guy Lafleur started when he was barely halfway into his teens. At 16, in his first season with the junior Quebec Aces, he scored 30 goals. The next year, 50 goals and 60 assists in 43 games. At 18, this boy from a pulp-and-paper town (Thurso) scored 103 goals and 67 assists in 56 games with his team - now called the Remparts.

His final junior season in 1970-71 produced 130 goals and 79 assists in 62 games.
Quebec City had never seen anything like him ... not even when the matchless Jean Béliveau was delivering his magic in that city two decades earlier.
The young Lafleur was one of those rare talents who was a man even while he was a boy. His speed, his quickness, his shot and matinée-idol good looks had a deeply rooted French flavour to them. Night after night, game after game, he would electrify audiences everywhere. He was junior hockey's royalty, its sweet prince. Every NHL team wanted him, but it appeared that the mediocre Los Angeles Kings, who were to finish dead last in the 12-team NHL with a 14-52-10 record in 1970, were virtual certainties to get Lafleur in the 1971 amateur draft.
Canadiens GM Sam Pollock had other ideas.
One year before Lafleur was eligible for the draft, Pollock somehow managed to convince Oakland Seals management - whose team had finished fourth in the West Division, 20 points ahead of the Kings - to agree to a trade.
Pollock sent fringe forward Ernie Hicke and the Canadiens' first-round choice in 1970 (Chris Oddliefson) to the Seals in exchange for defenceman François Lacombe, cash and the Seals' first-round pick in 1971.
Pollock didn't stop there. On Jan. 26, 1971, he sent his talented centreman Ralph Backstrom to the struggling Kings for Gord Labossière and Ray Fortin with only one idea in mind: to strengthen the Kings sufficiently so that they would at least finish ahead of the Seals in Lafleur's draft year.
That was Pollock: always looking ahead. Los Angeles, with Backstrom, was an improved team. California finished last with a meagre 45 points in what had become a 14-team league. The Canadiens had Lafleur.
The rest you know.
At his best - in 961 regular-season and 124 playoff games with the Canadiens - Lafleur was to become hockey's finest and most exciting player. He was its artist ... its sculptor. His speed and shot produced 518 regular-season goals. He transformed ordinary games into things of beauty.
He won the scoring title three times. He was the NHL's most valuable player twice. He won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP once, and was on the NHL's first all-star team six times. He scored 50 goals or more in six consecutive seasons. He was the best of his time.
He was born to wear the CH. It was written in the stars ... to continue the line of pre-eminent French-Canadian superstars.
When he gathered his legs beneath him deep in his zone for the start of one of his rink-length rushes, Lafleur conjured up visions of the best and most exciting players in NHL history. Nobody handled the puck as well. When he danced into the opposition's zone and released his marvellous shot, he was a composite of all the great shooters who had ever worn the Canadiens sweater.
He was uniquely Lafleur. The Flower. Delicate, yet indestructible. He pulled people out of their seats more often than any forward of his time.
He was speed. He was the game-breaker who scored the winning goal in regulation time and overtime. Lafleur wasn't merely the most exciting Canadiens player of his time; he was right for the time, for the team and for the game.

On the ice, he was the player who showed us new and greater moves after we thought we'd seen them all.
Lafleur's world started to fall apart on Nov. 24, 1984, after scoring only twice in the season's first 19 games. His relations with former teammate and now head coach Jacques Lemaire were strained. And so it was, that after a game at home on a Saturday against the Detroit Red Wings, Lafleur wasn't among the Canadiens who travelled to Boston for a game the following night. (They lost 7-4.) Groin injury, the Canadiens announced.
Groin injury? Bah! Humbug! Lafleur was on the ice two minutes before the end of the game and skating faster coming off it after a long shift than most of the Canadiens starting one.
"Is Lafleur hurt?" I asked Lemaire the next day.
"Check it out," Lemaire said with a broad smile. "You could have a hell of a story."
Everything about the way he suggested that Lafleur's absence be "checked out" raised all kinds of red flags.
Nobody answered the telephone at Lafleur's home.
The next day, The Gazette carried my column saying that Lafleur had played his last game with the Canadiens - which promptly raised a firestorm of derision from radio outlets. The hoots and hollers continued until early afternoon when the Canadiens announced a major news conference at 4 p.m.
Lafleur entered the room with GM Serge Savard and president Ronald Corey. He walked over to me and said quietly:
"My wife cried when she read your column this morning. I think I cried a little, too."