Scotty Bowman helped Guy Lafleur blossom with Canadiens

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Scotty Bowman and Guy Lafleur both joined the Montreal Canadiens for the 1971-72 NHL season.

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Bowman had coached the St-Louis Blues for the previous four seasons, while Lafleur was the No. 1 overall pick at the 1971 NHL Draft after posting 130-79-209 totals in 62 games with the QMJHL’s Quebec Remparts.

Together, they would win five Stanley Cups over the next eight seasons with the Canadiens — but it was a slow start to stardom for Lafleur.

As a rookie, Lafleur posted 29-35-64 totals in 73 games.

“There were a lot of expectations for him, and I think a lot of the expectations were unfair,” Bowman recalled Friday following the news Lafleur had died at age 70 following a battle with lung cancer. “I didn’t think he had a bad season, but some other people did. He had 28 or 29 goals and 60 points, but he didn’t have the ice time of some other players.”

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During Lafleur’s rookie season, Bowman decided to move him from center to right wing.

“It was too much for him to try to play centre,” Bowman recalled. “We already had Pete Mahovlich and Jacques Lemaire, who were well-established guys at center and who had played on the Stanley Cup team in 1971. So it was tough to play as a second-fiddle center, and I think moving him to the wing gave him a chance to play more, get on the power play a little bit.”

But Lafleur was still behind right-winger Yvan Cournoyer on the Canadiens’s depth chart.

During his second season, Lafleur had 28-27-55 totals and won his first Stanley Cup. Cournoyer had 40-39-79 totals that season. During his third season, Lafleur had 21-35-56 totals, while Cournoyer had 40-33-73.

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It was in Lafleur’s fourth season that he exploded after being put on a line with center Mahovlich and left-winger Steve Shutt. Lafleur finished the season with 53-66-119 totals. It would be his first of six straight seasons with at least 50 goals.

“He liked to practice, and he worked hard in practice,” Bowman said about Lafleur. “He never took a day off in practice. I have loved to get on the ice before the rest of the team. I used to go on about 20 minutes earlier. I never had to do much with Guy. I just let him play. He didn’t need anyone to produce him. I just needed an opportunity to play.”

Lafleur got rid of his helmet in his fourth season at the suggestion of Cournoyer and captain Henri Richard. That allowed Lafleur’s hair to flow while skating with the puck, eventually earning him the nickname Le Démon Blond.

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“I didn’t suggest it,” Bowman said about the helmet. “You don’t do those things as a coach. But there was something that triggered it. I don’t know if that was it. But wearing a helmet when everybody wasn’t might have made him sort of a target. Taking off the helmet allowed people to see his hair flowing in the back, and that’s what people remember about him. He had a special knack for gaining speed quickly. It could have done something to him, but it wasn’t an automatic switch where you said: ‘Well, now he can play.’ That’s not what happened.

“I don’t feel I did as much for him as he did for himself, and that’s the type of player he was,” Bowman added. “I did n’t double his ice time from him. He just evolved into the player he was because he had it in himself.”

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