'Savour Every Moment': Cournoyer recalls first NHL goal with Canadiens

An NHL career is defined by many events, players present and past cherishing a single snapshot, a game or a broader body of work. Eight players reflect in our weekly eight-part series "Savour Every Moment" presented by Olymel, sharing a personal slice of what makes hockey a special part of their lives. Today: In the second part of the series, Class of 1982 Hockey Hall of Famer Yvan Cournoyer, who won the Stanley Cup 10 times with the Montreal Canadiens, discusses his NHL debut.

For as long as he can remember, Yvan Cournoyer dreamed of playing for the Montreal Canadiens. Nearly 60 years after the fact, he recalls the finest details of his first game for them.
As a boy in Drummondville, Quebec, about 65 miles east of Montreal, Cournoyer would take a regular Saturday night walk down a short hill from the family home to a TV shop in town, the Canadiens game playing in black and white in the store window. It's here that he'd be entranced, his family not yet owning its own set.
Cournoyer would watch one period before returning home, Saturday games at the Montreal Forum in the early 1950s beginning at 8:30 p.m. ET.
One of the NHL's greatest champions savors the memories of those cold nights, his first steps toward a Hall of Fame Canadiens career that would see him win the Stanley Cup 10 times, be the Montreal captain his final four seasons, and lead to his No. 12 being retired to the Bell Centre rafters in 2005.
"If you'd told me when I arrived in Detroit in 1963 for my first NHL game that I would achieve all of that, I'd probably have quit right then and there. I'd never have believed you," Cournoyer said.
But this powerful locomotive on skates, a man so explosively fast that a New York sports writer would nickname him Roadrunner, would achieve so much more, his path set in Drummondville.
His love of hockey was born when he received his first pair of skates, a gift from his uncle Jean, for his seventh birthday in November 1950. Cournoyer was the second oldest of Paul and Simone Cournoyer's five children -- three daughters and two sons. His father, a machinist, built a rink on the property, and Yvan practically lived on it.

To get more ice time, as a preteen he took a job at the local arena.
"The rink's walls were steel. It was colder inside than it was outside," the 78-year-old joked. "I've liked to work all my life. I worked at a flower shop, did odd jobs. I never asked my parents for money. Working at the rink, I had more chance to skate. Maybe shoveling the ice helped me to get stronger legs."
Paul Cournoyer bought a machine shop in Montreal when Yvan was 13 and moved his family to the big city. Soon his hockey-mad son was flying up and down the left wing for the junior Lachine Maroons, not yet having taken his left-hand shot to the right side.
And he was developing his legendary wrist strength by practicing for endless hours in the basement with heavy steel pucks his father made for him. It's a trade that Cournoyer considered in the event hockey didn't pan out; he took a machinist course during long hours on the bus with the major-junior Montreal Junior Canadiens, playing three seasons for them from 1961-64.

Yvan Cournoyer, in his second full season with the Canadiens, featured on the cover of the Montreal Forum program Feb. 6, 1965, and as an alternate captain in the mid-1970s.
He scored 111 points (63 goals, 48 assists) in 1963-64, his final season with the Junior Canadiens, getting his first taste of the NHL that season when he was summoned by the Canadiens for what would serve as a five-game tryout.
Center Henri Richard was out with a groin injury. In Montreal, five days past his 20th birthday and preparing for the Nov. 28, 1963, Forum game with the Junior Canadiens, Cournoyer was told by the parent team that he'd instead fly with veteran forward Gilles Tremblay for that night's game at the Detroit Red Wings.
"I always like Gilles, the way he skated," Cournoyer said. "When I met him the first time, I asked him if skating was an effort for him because he made it seem so natural."
As nervous as he was, there was a bit of familiarity, Cournoyer often watching the Canadiens practice at the Forum after the juniors had skated and mingling when he could.

"I saw Henri Richard on the hotel steps when I arrived in Detroit and I told him, 'I'm here to help you,'" he said with a laugh. "Henri just looked at me and said, 'I don't know about that.' My first NHL game and I'm playing against (future Hall of Famers) Gordie Howe, Alex Delvecchio, Bill Gadsby and Terry Sawchuk."
Cournoyer played a regular shift with Tremblay on the other wing and Bobby Rousseau at center, taking four shots and scoring his maiden NHL goal, the Canadiens' seventh in a 7-3 win. It came against goalie Harrison Gray, who relieved the injured Sawchuk for the start of the second period.
Cournoyer jokes to this day that his goal, the first of 428 he would score during his NHL career, was the game-winner.
"When (coach) Toe Blake touched me on the back to go on the ice for my first shift, I wasn't sure," he said. "I turned around and said to Toe, 'Are you OK?'"

Cournoyer kept his first-goal puck, a precious Red Wings-crested souvenir.
"I slept with it beside me that night," he said. "I thought, 'Well, if I don't make it, I've at least scored a goal for the Canadiens.'"
Cournoyer played four more games for Montreal that season, scoring once at the Chicago Black Hawks on Jan. 26 and twice against the Red Wings at the Forum on Feb. 1.
He was back with the Canadiens the following season, detoured for seven games to Quebec of the American Hockey League.
"I took a slap shot off my ankle in practice but didn't want to tell anybody that I was hurt," he said. "I sat in a recliner all night with my leg up but I could hardly skate the next day. Toe asked me what was wrong and I confessed."

The Canadiens sent him to Quebec for conditioning, the last he'd ever see of the minors. Cournoyer was back for the Stanley Cup Playoffs and his first of 10 championships, his first of four he would win during his first five full seasons.
His 10 equal those of late Canadiens legend Jean Beliveau, one fewer than the NHL-record 11 of the late Richard.
"Ask me if I remember all the years I won the Stanley Cup and I'll say no," Cournoyer says. "But I remember the year we lost in 1967 (upset by the Toronto Maple Leafs in six games of the seven-game Stanley Cup Final). That maybe helped me to win more Cups after that because it taught me to better respect the other team in the playoffs."
Cournoyer would have a front-row seat to the greatest goal in his country's hockey history, assisting on Paul Henderson's last-gasp winner for Canada in Game 8 of the landmark 1972 Summit Series pitting a team of NHL stars against a select squad from the Soviet Union.

Yvan Cournoyer in a painting collage by Michel Lapensée upon his 2005 Canadiens jersey retirement, and representing Canada in the 1972 Summit Series.
After playing five NHL games in 1963-64, Cournoyer was deemed ineligible to represent Canada in the 1964 Innsbruck Olympics.
"But I look at the Summit Series as my Olympics, my first time as a pro representing any team other than the Canadiens," he says. "For me, I never had a chance to go to the Olympics, but I think 1972 gave me a chance to know what they feel like, representing all of Canada. I look at the Olympics now and say, 'I was almost there.'"
Cournoyer was elected Canadiens captain for the 1975-76 season, succeeding Richard, who had retired. He helped the magnificent 1970s dynasty to four consecutive Stanley Cup titles (1976 through 1979), Nos. 19-22 of the Canadiens' 24, his career ultimately ended by back surgeries to repair damage caused by his rugged style of play.

Cournoyer remains a hugely popular ambassador for the Canadiens, greeting countless fans who flock to his side. He shares many stories, occasionally memories of his first NHL game for the team he worshipped as a boy, and watching their games on the set in a Drummondville TV shop window.
"The way we dressed in wool sweaters and socks, the players in the room," Cournoyer said. "It's amazing when I think about it. I dreamed of playing for the Montreal Canadiens and winning maybe one Stanley Cup. That was it."
Photos: Yvan Cournoyer collection; Montreal Canadiens; Hockey Hall of Fame; Getty Images; Montreal General Hospital Foundation