On Sunday, under a cloudless sky, Lafleur welcomed the Stanley Cup to his home in the suburbs west of Montreal, and never had hockey’s holy grail meant more to him.
Every three weeks since January, the 69-year-old Canadiens legend has arrived at a Montreal hospital for a round of cancer treatment, 10 minutes of chemotherapy followed by 30 minutes of immunotherapy.
For a time, he was getting radiation therapy, cancer having metastasized from his lungs to his ribs.
Early on, he’d be flattened by it, needing to sleep 18 or 20 hours the following day.
It’s been a tremendously challenging road since September 2019, when a routine checkup revealed that Lafleur had four almost fully blocked coronary arteries.
Lafleur was on the road back a few months later, slowly returning to his public life, when his cancer reappeared last October.
With a compromised immune system during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lafleur was very careful being out in public during the early days of his treatment.
“I miss doing what I do best — promotions, meeting fans, going to banquets, different charity events to raise money for others,” he said of following in the enormous footsteps of his late friend and idol Jean Beliveau, the Canadiens’ greatest captain.
In 1978, while the Canadiens celebrated their third of four consecutive championships , Lafleur hatched an elaborate plan to kidnap the trophy from the trunk of the car of public relations director Claude Mouton, parked outside the downtown Montreal tavern of team legend Henri Richard.
Lafleur was offered a day with the Cup in the summer of 2005, when the 2004-05 NHL season was canceled because of a lockout.
Linked to the visit, after the Stanley Cup’s time at Lafleur’s home, would be two hours at a nearby Mercedes-Benz dealership.
1, the Dilawri Group of Companies is aiming to donate between $50,000 and $100,000 to the fund, tied to the sale of new cars at its 10 dealerships in Quebec.
Well aware that superstitious teams can’t bear to have the Cup in their city during the playoffs, Pritchard and Hall of Fame colleague Mario Della-Savia had the trophy in its case and across the border back in Ontario, bound for Toronto by car, 90 minutes before face-off.
Lafleur’s appearance on the arena scoreboard raised the roof, 2,500 fans among the countless number who worship him 36 years after he played his final game for the Canadiens.
An offensive marvel in major junior for the Quebec Remparts, Lafleur was chosen No.
He then scored 107 points for the New York Rangers and Quebec Nordiques from 1988-91, having returned to the NHL following a nearly four-year retirement and his 1988 Hall of Fame enshrinement.
Lafleur remains justifiably proud of his playful 1978 “theft” of the Cup.
Never, Lafleur said, no matter how often he’s seen it, does he tire of being in its sterling company.
Guy Lafleur in his hometown of Thurso, Quebec in late May 1978, having “stolen” the Stanley Cup.
“When you have a chance to be with the Cup, it brings back so many memories, the pain you had to go through to win it,” he said.
He grows deeply introspective when he thinks aloud about how his own situation has brought him into view of others, about how many, of all ages, he sees courageously staring down the disease.
… I’m always wondering, we go to the moon and to Mars, at some point will they find a cure for cancer? The research is so important.
I remember doing work on behalf of leukemia research when I started with the Canadiens.
I’ve done video calls with people, made telephone calls — not through the Canadiens, but with people who know me or find me.
I have to give back because these people were my bread and butter when I played, my energy.
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