Every time he was introduced or described, it was with the same word. It’s not something that can be aspired to to be achieved. It is what a good life sometimes, but rarely, bestows. Jean Béliveau had class.
He was my first roommate with the Canadiens. I was his last. He was 39; I was 23. I had been called up only a few weeks before, and on the verge of our Stanley Cup opening round series against the defending champion, Boston Bruins, with Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito, Jean had been told something I didn’t know. I would be the team’s starting goalie.
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The Canadiens, at the time, stayed together as a team through the entire playoffs. On the road, we were in hotels; at home, at La Sapiniere, a resort in the Laurentians, about 100 km north of the Forum. Jean had been assigned by the team’s coach, Al MacNeil, and by its general manager, Sam Pollock, to keep an eye on the kid — something I also didn’t know. Jean was already a nine-time Stanley Cup winner and captain of the team (he got the room’s double bed; I got the single).
But I was a teammate. He wouldn’t assume a problem, and wouldn’t intrude unless necessary. He let me be, and watched. And I watched him. Through our shocking, up-and-down ride to the Cup that spring, if he could hold it together, what right had I not to?
I read later where he said that of all his Stanley Cups, this was his favourite. The others had come so frequently as to become expected, until suddenly in 1971, with the team having been out of the playoffs the year before and his retirement looming, almost certainly there would be no other. This one had been a gift. He was no longer a great star, but in his last days as a player he was what he would remain the rest of his life, a great presence.
Strange though it seems, it is easy now to understate his playing career. A very few ever become superstars. Many fewer become stars of all-time. In old clips, most of us look dated. Jean, so big, so graceful and forceful, looks timeless, as at home in today’s game as he was in his prime — a bigger, more forceful Jonathan Toews, perhaps.
He is linked inevitably with the team’s greatest star, Maurice Richard. The Rocket, bull-shouldered, explosive, with a will that intimidated his opponents. Jean played in cool control of the action. For fans in Quebec, the Rocket was just like them. He did what they could do, if only in their dreams. Jean was beyond them; out of reach. One evoked deep love; the other deep admiration. Yet as different as they were, with some great coaches and managers, and some outstanding players around them, they were the making of the Canadiens.
It is easy to forget that the Canadiens were not always legendary. When Jean played his first full season in 1955, the team had won only seven Stanley Cups in its 46-year history. Detroit, too, had won seven. The º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøMaple Leafs had also won seven; but with Cups also won by the Arenas and St. Pats, the Leafs’ earlier names, º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøhad really won nine.
A year later, the Canadiens would win the first of five straight championships. In the 19 years that followed, they won nine more times, leaving every other team, in record and in reputation, in their ice chips. With the Rocket, the Canadiens began their greatness; with Jean, they hit their dominant stride.
Yet it was after he retired in 1971 that Jean became truly special.
He became an ambassador for the Canadiens, but one like no other. He was proud of being a Montreal Canadien and proud of his sport. He was proud of being a Victoriavillois and a Montrealer, proud of being a Quebecker, proud of being a Canadian. He believed in all of them, and he represented all of them wherever he went. No place was too small or remote because no fan, no person was too unimportant.
He was the great Jean Béliveau, tall, handsome, graceful and gracious, with his warm dignity and friendly smile, yet there he was. He treated everyone with such respect. He said the right things, and in the right way — in French and in English — because that is what he believed, and that’s how he was. He made every occasion better. He made everyone who attended feel that their town, their organization, their province, their country, their event mattered. That they mattered. Appealing to their best selves, he reminded them of the best that was in them.
It’s how he had been as a player. Unlike most other great stars, his presence didn’t diminish others. He made others better.
He had other skills. He might have done other things. But he understood, probably by early in his life, that his greatest impact wouldn’t be as corporate or political leader, but as Jean Béliveau, in doing what he did, in being who he was.
A true, all-time hockey great, an ambassador extraordinaire for all he believed in, Jean’s greatest achievement, in fact, may have been that he was a very nice man.
Ken Dryden is a Hockey Hall of Fame goalie who spent his entire NHL career with the Montreal Canadiens.
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