The Stanley Cup meant so much to Georges Vezina that on March 30, 1916, the night the Canadiens won their first Cup and the night his second son was born and only a few hours old, Georges named the baby Marcel Stanley. His older son, Jean-Jules, had been the first baby to have his picture taken while sitting in the Cup. Today, just about every guy with a baby does it. I might have done it too if I’d thought of it.
Vezina grew up in Chicoutimi, a small, very beautiful French-Canadian town of about 6,000 people, two hours straight north of Quebec City in the middle of the northern wilderness. It’s very close to the town of Péribonka, where my 1984 Canada Cup linemate Michel Goulet grew up.
In February 1910, the Canadiens were on the road and stopped at Chicoutimi to play a group of locals from the Price Brothers Pulp Mill. Everyone thought it would be an easy win, but the Canadiens couldn’t get the puck past the goalie—a guy named Georges Vezina. At twenty-three years old he wasn’t a very big guy, only 5’6” and 165 pounds. And he’d been skating for only five years. He learned to play hockey in his boots.
When they returned home, Montreal’s goalie, Joe Cattarinich, convinced the team to give Vezina a tryout. By December they had signed Georges for $800 a year.
Georges Vezina was the first goalie to record an NHL shutout. He did it against the Toronto Blueshirts on February 18, 1918. He led the league in wins that year.
At that time, Montreal was the unhealthiest city in Canada. More than 85 percent of the people rented their homes, many of them in sprawling slums. The only healthcare and welfare available were through religious charities. The death rate from tuberculosis alone was more than 200 per 100,000. There were about 618,500 people living in the metropolitan area. That means more than 1,200 men, women, and children died from TB each year. Somewhere along the way, Georges Vezina contracted the disease, but he kept it to himself and kept playing.
Rangers legend Frank Boucher said that Vezina was “pale” and “frail-looking” but “remarkably good with his stick.” “He’d pick off more shots with it than he did with his glove. He stood upright in the net and scarcely ever left his feet. He always wore a toque—a small, knitted hat with no brim in Montreal colors—bleu, blanc et rouge.” That toque was so famous that Canadiens goalie Jose Theodore wore one over his mask for the 2003 Heritage Classic as a tribute.
Goalies are all different. Vezina was one of the calm ones. Boucher remembered him “as the coolest man I ever saw.” He stayed so unruffled in the net that the newspapers called him the “Chicoutimi Cucumber.” His teammates said that before a game, he’d sit by himself in the locker room smoking his pipe and reading the paper.
Grant Fuhr was like that. He had that same cool demeanor. If Grant said three words in a sentence it was a busy day. When he was in net, Grant didn’t do much talking. Once in a while he’d bark, “Arrgh!” or holler out, “Hey!” But he was always steady and calm under fire.
A calm goalie has an incredible effect on a team. I remember, in the 1987 finals, we lost Game Six 3–2 in Philadelphia. We had two days to get ready for Game Seven. We had a light skate on the second day, then everyone went their own way. After morning skate on game day, one of the reporters asked Grant what he had done to prepare for the big game. He surprised everyone by telling the group that he had played golf.
“How many holes?” someone asked.
“Thirty-six,” was his answer.
Someone asked why, suggesting that two rounds of golf was a bit much before a big game.
“Because it was getting too dark to play fifty-four,” was his reply. And the guys loved it. That sense of calm was just what we needed to hear. And we weren’t disappointed. He stood on his head in a 3–1 win.
That fall, I was sitting on the bench at the Canada Cup in the second game against the Soviets. It was 5–5 late in the third, and Grant was in net. The guy beside me on the bench (Dale Hawerchuk) wasn’t an Oiler, so I turned to reassure him. “They’ve got five,” I told him. “But we could play another seven periods and they wouldn’t get another.” And they didn’t.
Grant was probably the greatest athlete I ever played with. He’s the tenth winningest goalie in regular season—third in playoff wins in NHL history. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think I’d have four championship rings.
In Georges Vezina’s whole career, from 1910 to 1925, he never missed a game. He made 328 consecutive starts in the regular season and 39 more in the playoffs.
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By November 28, 1925, Vezina had lost thirty-five pounds since training camp. The Canadiens were playing the Pittsburgh Pirates, a new team in the NHL, and that night Vezina showed up paler and more haggard-looking than usual. He stopped shots in the first period but left the ice coughing up blood. He stayed in the dressing room with only his pads off hoping he’d feel good enough to go out again. But he was having a tough time breathing, and with a temperature of 102 he could barely move. The next day he saw his doctor. Tuberculosis was the diagnosis.
Vezina came back one more time to pick up his sweater. Léo Dandurand told reporters that Vezina had “tears running down his cheeks,” and so did everyone else who was there. He returned to Chicoutimi and died the next spring on March 27, 1926. It was a sad day for hockey.
At the start of the next season, the team owners, Léo Dandurand, Louis Letourneau, and Joseph Cattarinich, honored their goalie by donating the Vezina Trophy to the NHL. It is awarded to the goalie who lets in the fewest goals. (Today the league’s GMs vote to select the season’s best goalie.)
In 1987–88, Grant Fuhr played all nine Canada Cup games. We beat the Soviets to win the tournament, and then he played seventy-five regular-season and nineteen playoff games to win the Stanley Cup against the Bruins. That year, Grant won the Vezina.