the following is from the Montreal Gazette:
Canadiens mourn loss of wartime Canadiens forward Bob Fillion, a two-time Stanley Cup champion who died Thursday at age 95, was more than a decent two-way checking winger.
He was a terrific talent scout.
Fillion was skating in the Verdun juniors training camp in 1939, the roster almost complete. Coach Arthur Therrien called over Fillion, defenceman Émile Bouchard and goaltender Paul Bibeault and asked the three whom they liked best of the players who hadn’t yet been selected.
“(Therrien) had room for one more guy on the last day of camp,” Fillion related to Dick Irvin Jr. in the latter’s 1991 book The Habs: An Oral History of the Montreal Canadiens“We were watching this guy who had an Esso sweater on, with three stars on the front,” he continued, the NHL’s three-star promotion having been spawned a few years earlier by a sponsorship with Imperial Oil’s Three-Star gasoline.
“He was skating very good and I asked Butch Bouchard what he thought of him. We didn’t know his name, you see. Butch agreed with me that the guy was a good skater. So after five minutes or so we went to Arthur Therrien and asked him what he thought about the guy with the sweater with the stars.
“So (Therrien) said okay and he called him over and told him he would be the last guy picked to be on the team. Then we found out his name, and it was Maurice Richard.”
Add this to Fillion’s lore: it was the native of Thetford Mines who gave Bouchard, the hulking defenceman who would become the Canadiens’ captain, the nickname Butch.
“I always wondered what would have happened if we hadn’t mentioned Maurice Richard to Arthur Therrien,” Fillion told Irvin Jr. “Maybe he would have quit hockey. … I think that was a very important day in the career of Maurice.”
At age 95, Fillion was the oldest living Canadien, having assumed the mantle with the deaths earlier this year of Elmer Lach and John Mahaffy.
The team says that 91-year-old Gerry Plamondon, the veteran of 74 games between 1945-51, is now the oldest former Habs player.
Virtually every source lists Fillion’s birthdate as July 12, 1921, which is wrong by one year.
“Somewhere, someone on a team my father played for lied on a form about his year of birth to have him eligible to play one more year of junior,” Bob Fillion Jr. said Thursday.
“When he turned 50, our family had to contact the Quebec government to get confirmation that he was born in 1920, not 1921 (as is listed almost everywhere).”
Former Canadiens Guy Lafleur (left) and Bob Fillion pose with new wax statue of Maurice (Rocket) Richard at the Montreal Canadiens Hall of Fame on April 10, 2014 at the Bell Centre.
A high-scoring junior whose NHL career was delayed one season when he served in the Army, Fillion would arrive with coach Dick Irvin’s Canadiens in 1943-44.
Cast as a checker, playing as did many in the Rocket’s long shadow, he scored seven goals for the Habs during the same season that Richard scored his historic 50 goals in 50 games.
Fillion learned the NHL’s interesting ropes from his first training camp.
“We were all having lunch together when a woman came into the room looking for one of the players,” Fillion told Irvin Jr. “He was a guy who had a good chance to make the team. When she saw him, she threw an egg at him and was yelling and causing quite a fuss.
“The boys figured he owed her some money or something. Dick (Irvin) jumped up and got the whole story from both of them. The next day, the guy was traded to the New York Rangers.”
Fillion thrived in his role as a defensive forward, the Bob Gainey or Guy Carbonneau of his day. He has recalled shadowing Gordie Howe the first few years of the Detroit legend’s career and marvelling at Mr. Hockey’s strength and positional play.
“I knew right away he was going to be a good player,” Fillion said, an understatement right up there with his having graded the Rocket as a promising talent.
Fillion won his first of two career Stanley Cups in his rookie year, adding 23 assists to his seven goals, and his second championship in 1945-46, scoring four goals in nine playoff games that year after having notched his NHL high-water 10 goals in 50 games.
Listed at 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds during his playing days, he would skate 327 NHL games before he retired in 1950, scoring 42 goals with 61 assists, taking just 84 minutes in penalties.
The Fillions were indeed a hockey family, all seven brothers — Bob, Marcel, Dennis, Georges, Nelson, Fernand and Jean-Marie — playing professionally or at the senior level. Marcel Fillion played a single game for the Boston Bruins in 1944-45.
Canadiens alumni president Réjean Houle visited Bob Fillion in the hospital on his 95th birthday last month, presenting him with a couple of gifts from the team including a framed 1940s team photo of Fillion with the Rocket wrapped in Hudson’s Bay blankets.
Fillion retired from the Canadiens to manage a mine in his hometown of Thetford Mines, most recently living on Montreal’s South Shore.
He was a regular fixture at Canadiens games right to the end of his days, Houle and Bob Fillion Jr. often squiring him into the team’s alumni lounge to renew acquaintances with old friends. But the veteran would hear nothing of sitting in the comfortable lounge to watch the games there, where he’d be waited on hand and foot. Fillion always took a seat in the bowl of the Bell Centre.
He was predeceased in 1987 by his wife, Gilberthe, and is survived by four children: son Bob Jr. and daughters Louise, Johanne and Denise.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
No comments:
Post a Comment