Remembering Hockey Hall of Fame class of 1984 on 40th anniversary

It was 40 years ago this night that Jacques Lemaire, Phil Esposito and Bernie Parent were inducted as players in the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Class of 1984.

So, considering three brilliant careers that produced a combined 12 Stanley Cup championships and 13 individual trophies, the first question to all was an obvious one:

“At your induction ceremony, was your tuxedo your own, or a rental?”

Lemaire: “A rental. And I had to have it back the next day.”

Esposito: “How the (heck) would I know? Was I wearing a tux?”

Parent: “If it looked good, it was mine. If it didn’t look good, it was a rental.”

Jacques Lemaire makes his Hockey Hall of Fame acceptance speech on Sept. 25, 1984

Lemaire, Esposito and Parent were joined in the Class of 1984 by two Builders: coach and general manager Punch Imlach, a four-time Stanley Cup winner with the 1960s Toronto Maple Leafs, and Jake Milford, a minor professional player in the 1940s who later would become an important presence managing the Los Angeles Kings and Vancouver Canucks.

The three players were among the greatest talents of a fiercely competitive era, their careers spanning the mid-1960s through the end of the 1970s; in Esposito’s case, into the 1980-81 season, from the Chicago Black Hawks to the Boston Bruins to the New York Rangers.

Lemaire, a magnificent two-way center, won the Stanley Cup eight times between 1968-79 with the Montreal Canadiens, for whom he played his entire 12-season career. He would add another in 1995, as coach of the New Jersey Devils.

Esposito, a center, won the championship in 1970 and 1972 with the Bruins; Parent, a goalie, did likewise with the Philadelphia Flyers in 1974 and 1975.

Phil Esposito in action with the Boston Bruins during a 1970s game

One of the most electrifying goal-scorers of all time, Esposito captured the Art Ross Trophy five times, and the Hart Trophy and Lester B. Pearson Award (now the Ted Lindsay Award) twice each. In both of his championship seasons, anchoring the Flyers’ much-feared “Broad Street Bullies,” Parent also won the Vezina and Conn Smythe trophies.

“The memories I have are very simple,” Lemaire said from his home in Florida. “I was being inducted with Phil and Bernie, honored to be among the top players in the League in those days. It was something special for me, there’s no doubt.”

Lemaire was in his first full season as an NHL coach, with the Canadiens, when he learned in June 1984 of his election. On Sept. 25, at a ceremony in a Toronto hotel ballroom, he was enshrined as his team practiced back home in Montreal. The next night, he was in Hershey, Pennsylvania, for the Canadiens’ 5-5 preseason tie against the Flyers.

“I’ll take your word for that,” he said with a laugh, not willing to guess at his line combinations.

Jacques Lemaire pauses before taking a face-off with the Montreal Canadiens during a 1970s game

“I remember I was at the ceremony with my wife and kids,” Lemaire said. “I had a little speech prepared but when I got to the podium, I thought, ‘This is not me, I have to talk about my feelings, not read something.’

“So I thanked my wife, the kids, all the people I played with, and said how proud I was to be there with Phil and Bernie and every other Hall of Famer.”

If Lemaire had never felt lost on a hockey rink, he was without direction as he returned to his table.

“There were very bright lights on the stage, at the podium, and when I stepped down, I had no idea where I was,” he said, laughing again. “The people were directing me to my table, saying, ‘No, you’re way over there.’ I started to walk that way and another guy said, ‘No, you’re over there.’ I couldn’t see a thing.”

Forty years later, now a special assignments coach for the New York Islanders, Lemaire considers his place in the game with typically quiet pride. Where there were many newspaper stories from the ceremony quoting Esposito and Parent, Lemaire was almost invisible. And he finds that funny, too.

Hockey Hall of Fame Class of 1984 builders Punch Imlach (left) and Jake Milford

“I think it might have been (then-NHL President) John Ziegler who called me that June to tell me I’d been elected,” he said. “I have no idea where I was, probably at the Montreal Forum, working toward the season.

“To me, it was a shock in a good way. I never expected this. I’d just wanted to play. I loved the game, I wanted to have fun, enjoy the people I played with and the people around the game, that’s all that I wanted. I haven’t been to the Hall of Fame in seven, eight years but when I see the names of those elected every year, I have some very good flashbacks.”

Last month, Class of 1986 Hall of Famer Serge Savard gathered 12 teammates and coach Scotty Bowman for his charity golf tournament north of Montreal, bringing together the 14 men still alive from the Canadiens’ 1976-79 run of four consecutive championships. Combined, they were the winners of 99 Stanley Cup titles.

“We sure had the heaviest team in the NHL that day,” Lemaire roared with laughter.

Jacques Lemaire on a Florida golf course in February 2022 and last month in a remarkable photo of the 14 men still alive from the Canadiens’ 1976-79 run of four consecutive Stanley Cup wins. Clockwise from the bottom: coach Scotty Bowman, Rick Chartraw, Mario Tremblay, Doug Risebrough, Steve Shutt, Yvan Cournoyer, Larry Robinson, Serge Savard, Guy Lapointe, Ken Dryden, Lemaire, Bob Gainey, Yvon Lambert, Doug Jarvis

Esposito, the co-founder of the Tampa Bay Lightning who again this season will analyze home games on the team’s radio broadcasts, has mostly vague memories of his induction, saying that 1984 in no way compares with the flashy production of today’s ceremonies.

“Back in those years, in my estimation, if you played for Montreal or Toronto and had a half-decent career, you were almost destined to get into the Hall of Fame. But you had to play for those teams,” Esposito said in conversation from Tampa.

“I didn’t pay much attention to my being elected. I have no memory of how I found out. God gave me talent, I know that. I exploited that talent, and I know that, too. I deserve to be in the Hall of Fame as a player.

“But I think I deserve to be in the Hall a lot more as a builder than as a player. I had no talent to do what I did in Tampa (as team co-founder), but I got it done. It was a lot more important what I did with the Tampa franchise.”

Esposito listens to a quote, words attributed to him in a wire-service story upon his induction, almost melancholy thoughts about his enshrinement being a bittersweet final chapter in his hockey life.

Phil Esposito accepts the 1972 Lou Marsh Award as Canada’s athlete of the year at the Hockey Hall of Fame, then on the site of Toronto’s Canadian National Exhibition (left), and during his 2014 Hockey Hall of Fame acceptance speech at a Toronto hotel.

“Does that sound like something I’d have said? I don’t think so,” he said, a few salty words spicing his view now.

Twelve years before his induction, Esposito led his native country in the landmark 1972 Summit Series between an NHL team representing Canada and a Soviet all-star squad, four games in Canada and four in Moscow through September 1972 whose political importance massively outweighed the final score on the ice.

The undisputed leader and emotional heartbeat of his team, Esposito’s two-goal, two-assist performance in Game 8, pushing Canada to a last-minute series victory, is widely regarded as the greatest single game played by anyone, ever.

“It feels like two centuries ago,” he says today of the series, having spoken of that and much more on his induction night. “But I’m very proud of that series and of having joined Jacques and Bernie in the Hall 40 years ago.”

Parent still seems a little thunderstruck by his own enshrinement, spreading the credit liberally among all who played a role in helping him live a dream from which he still hasn’t fully awakened.

Philadelphia Flyers goalie Bernie Parent makes a save during a 1970s game against Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens

Today, still hugely popular in the City of Brotherly Love, fans flock to him on the street and at motivational speaking engagements, his two Stanley Cup rings a vital part of almost every photo in which he grins.

“This is the first time in 40 years that I’m having a conversation about the Hall of Fame,” Parent said from his home in the Philadelphia area, the unexpected subject stirring his emotions.

In June 1984, five years retired, his career prematurely ended by an errant stick through his mask that badly injured an eye, he was in Toronto for the NHL Awards to present the Vezina Trophy to Tom Barrasso, the Buffalo Sabres’ Calder Trophy-winning goalie.

The next day, Parent took a phone call in his hotel room from Hall of Fame curator Lefty Reid, telling him he’d just been elected to the shrine.

“When I heard the news, it brought a tear to my eye,” he told reporters. “I never really gave this honor any thought because I always believed that team honors were more important than individual ones. But this is not just for me. It reflects on those Flyers teams, on the coaching staff, on owner Ed Snider, and on the incredible fans.”

Bernie Parent strikes a pose in the net at Philadelphia’s Laura Sims Skate House in late February 2019, soon to be joined by a large group of youngsters enrolled in the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation.

Forty years later, Parent takes stock of his body of work and how it has largely defined his life.

“My philosophy has always been the same: to thank the good Lord that I could have played,” he said. “To receive an honor like this, you have to perform. But at the same time, you have to be with the right group, the right people and team, to accomplish something like this. It’s like winning the Stanley Cup. You have to be part of a good team to succeed in life, that’s what I tell kids all the time.”

Parent considers his three NHL teams – the Bruins, for whom his career began; the Maple Leafs, playing in Toronto with Jacques Plante, his boyhood hero; and the Flyers.

“When I look back at my career, I’m very, very grateful for everything that happened, and to have joined the Hall of Fame with Phil and Jacques,” he said. “With good players in Boston and Toronto and Philly, with the great fans in Philly, that gives you the whole picture.

“I’m very grateful to have been born with the talent to play, then to have been on a great team in Philadelphia to accomplish the beautiful thing that we did, twice.”

Top photo: Punch Imlach takes a playful jab at Phil Esposito (left) and Bernie Parent during a 1984 Hockey Hall of Fame event in Toronto