Jack Todd: Where have all the Quebec hockey superstars gone?

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Everyone has a story.

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A white yarmulke autographed by Jean Béliveau, Rocket Richard and Guy Lafleur.

A piano bar on St-Charles Blvd. in Kirkland that may or may not have been called Le Médoc, where Lafleur would go sit for an hour or two, smoking his cigar, sipping a brandy and listening to the piano man because it was a quiet place where he would be left alone.

A youngster gazing at Lafleur until he offered an autograph because the kid was too shy to ask.

Then there was the disco album. I hadn’t heard of it until my friend, supreme guitarist Howard Forman, posted about it on Facebook. “Around 1978-79 Guy Lafleur made a disco album (no giggling, it sold 250K copies in both official languages). He didn’t sing, only imparted technique and hockey philosophy over pulsating tracks.

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“I got to do the guitar parts and met him when he stopped by the studio… Most impressive was the way he took time for everyone there, to acknowledge them individually and treat them to some up-close hero worship. A real class act.”

Le Demon Blond, a disco hero?

In the wake of Lafleur’s death on Friday at age 70, the tributes and memories keep pouring in. Even the Boston Bruins, burned more than any other team by the streaking comet that was Lafleur, offered a classy tribute from Beantown ahead of their visit to the Bell Center Sunday evening and the Canadiens own massive salute to Lafleur.

Like Béliveau, the Flower seems to have touched the lives of everyone living in Quebec, in the past five decades but especially the 1970s. The stories are all different and yet all the same — tributes to both the humility and charisma of a player like no other.

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Sports broadcaster Dick Irvin Jr., who saw them all and knew Lafleur as well as anyone, said he was the most exciting player ever to don the uniform. I would concur, but admittedly I never saw the Rocket play except in a grainy black-and-white video of his glory years.

With the death of Mike Bossy a week earlier, a gaping hole has been left in Quebec hockey culture, and there are few likely candidates around to fill it — which is why it’s so important that the Canadiens were able to bring Martin St. Louis and Vincent Lecavalier back to the fold.

In the legends category, there’s also Mario Lemieux, but Lemieux is a savvy and very wealthy Pittsburgh businessman now, far from his Ville-Émard roots.

Martin Brodeur has an arena named after him in St-Léonard, but he’s an executive vice-president and hockey operations adviser for the New Jersey Devils.

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And there’s Patrick Roy, as unique a figure as Lafleur but as divisive as he is charismatic.

If anything, the deaths of Bossy and Lafleur highlight the absence of fresh Quebec-born or French-Canadian stars in today’s game. Where are the future Québec superstars?

Last week, a grandstanding Bloc MP chose this time to attack Carey Price for not speaking French. Price might have asked in turn: “This was my country long before it was yours. Why can’t you speak the Dakelh language of the Ulkatcho people?”

In truth, however, the attention-seeking politician might have done better asking why the Quebec system that once produced so many NHL superstars has dried up.

For decades, French-Canadian stars were everywhere: Gilbert Perreault and Richard Martin with the Sabers, Jean Ratelle and Rod Gilbert with the Rangers, Ray Bourque and Patrice Bergeron in Boston, Marcel Dionne and Luc Robitaille in Los Angeles, Denis Savard in Chicago and a list as long as your memory here in Montreal.

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Among Quebec-born players in the NHL today, only one is anywhere near the scoring lead: Jonathan Huberdeau of St-Jérome, who is battling Connor McDavid, Johnny Gaudreau and Leon Draisaitl for the Art Ross and, quite possibly, the Hart Trophy.

Huberdeau is a dandy who is just now hitting his stride, but he’s the only Quebec player in the top 50 scorers in the league. Expand that to the top 100, and you’ll find only Jonathan Marchessault, Kris Letang, Pierre-Luc Dubois, Patrice Bergeron, Anthony Duclair and David Perron on the list.

By coincidence, the last French-Canadian player to win the Art Ross Trophy was St. Louis himself, who won it in 2004 and 2013. Mario Lemieux won it six times back in the era when he and Wayne Gretzky were swapping the trophy back and forth. Lafleur won it three times, Dionne once and Béliveau, strangely, only once in 1956.

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The story is not different among goaltenders. Quebec was once a goaltending factory as young athletes sought to imitate Patrick Roy or Martin Brodeur, but today only 37-year-old Marc-André Fleury cracks the top 50 in goals-against or save percentage.

Perhaps the death of two of the most charismatic athletes this province has ever produced will spark a resurgence of the game at the minor league level in Quebec. Or perhaps we’ll be left with just the beautiful memories.

Heroes: Guy Lafleur.

Zeros: Vladimir Putin, Alexander Ovechkin, Claude Brochu, David Samson &&&& last but not least, Jeffrey Loria.

Now and forever.

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