Gilles Lupien, the ex-Montreal defenseman who succumbed to cancer at age 67 on Wednesday, held but a brief role in the rich, emotionally charged Canadiens-Bruins playoff rivalry that for decades seemed to play out nearly every spring.
Winter had not officially surrendered its grip around here, and we paid little attention to the tulips sprouting in the Public Garden, until the Habs and Bruins hunkered down to trade shifts, shots, and punches in April or May.
Up until 1988, the outcome of those series across nearly a half-century was agonizing for the Bruins and their fans. But it was typically and undeniably compelling theater. Much of Boston fandom lived for the matchups, as it did Red Sox-Yankees and Celtics-Lakers. The tribalism of it all framed each season, if not the reason to be a fan.
The stringy, 6-foot-6-inch Lupien, by the standards of famed defensemen Serge Savard, Larry Robinson, and Guy Lapointe, was a bit of a curiosity along that celebrated Habs blue line, After hammering his way through three-plus seasons as an AHL strongman/enforcer, he landed full-time work with Montreal in 1977-78, smack in the middle of its last great dynasty (four consecutive Stanley Cup titles, 1976-79).
Lupien was front and center that gory May 21, 1978, night at the Garden, Game 4 of the Cup Final, when Bruins winger Stan Jonathan chopped Pierre Bouchard’s face into a bloody stew with a series of punches.
“And we have blood all over the ice inside the blue line!” exhorted the legendary Dan Kelly from his broadcast perch that hung all but 30 feet above Garden ice.
Lupien, just turned 24, tangled in an adjacent tug of war with Bruins ruffian John Wensink, a.k.a. “Wire.” It wasn’t nearly the bloodbath of the Jonathan-Bouchard main card, but the two big men wrapped up one another and wrestled while the Garden crowd hooted and hollered. Once pried apart from Lupien by the linesmen, Wensink raised both arms as if he were the newly crowned heavyweight champion of the old West End.
By today’s standards it sounds primitive, ugly, and lawless. It was all of that. And we loved it.
Lupien, his name engraved on the Cup for Canadiens championships in 1978 and ’79, played only 226 NHL games. He stayed connected to the game for far longer as a player agent. The Habs traded him to the Penguins prior to the 1980-81 season, and his final NHL skate came with the Whalers in October 1981.
By no stretch was Lupien considered among the key Flying Frenchmen of his era. But he was unquestionably a valued role player in their success, a Quebec-born kid who played for three teams in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, and then had the will and gumption and muscle to force his way onto one of the sport’s greatest rosters of all time. A reminder, once again, that perseverance is a skill set all its own.
“He had a nice career for a guy who didn’t have the skill set of those top three guys in Montreal,” recalled Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy, who was a young teen when Lupien cracked the Habs’ lineup. “I still believe there are guys who can find a way to contribute [in today’s NHL] with that style of play.”
Exhibit “A” by today’s standards, noted Cassidy, is Bruins defenseman Kevan Miller, who signed with Boston as a raw, undrafted wannabe out of the University of Vermont. Miller didn’t punch his way into the NHL, as Lupien did, but he established his toughness early on when playing for Cassidy’s AHL Providence Bruins. He also saw a chance to improve his overall skill set, particularly his skating, and let nothing deter him.
“He played hard, killed penalties, was tough, and had a bit of that mind-set, ‘I’m going to make this team through sheer will and effort and physicality,’ ” said Cassidy.
That was Lupien to a T. In three consecutive AHL seasons, he logged more than 100 penalty minutes, and then did the same in his first three seasons with the Habs. Again, he was a spare part, a third-pairing backliner, but the NHL of the late ’70s and into the ’90s offered steady work to guys who could grind, punch, twist and shout, even if their offensive output was next to nothing. Let the record show that Lupien finished with 30 career points and 416 PIMs.
That’s not where the NHL is today. For the most part, the warp speed of the game has minimized, if not eliminated, the chance for a guy with Lupien’s skill set to find any work, never mind an honest paycheck into his late 20s. It’s all speed and skill now, with dustups such as May 21, 1978, relegated to YouTube playback and the memories of old-timers yelling on their front lawns, their preferred footwear white socks and sandals.
The Bruins, for instance, in recent years watched AHL prospects Tyler Randell and Bobby Robins try to find a muscle path into the league. Robins averaged more than 200 PIMs in one three-season AHL stretch (2011-14). Decades ago, that kind of courage and determination routinely found a home in an NHL city.
“It’s different now,” offered Cassidy, who was the coach in Providence when Randell and Robins flexed their muscles and dreams. “There’s just not as much opportunity for them. In the old days, just that younger, small, skilled defenseman, there wasn’t room for him. There was maybe one on a team, if you were lucky. Now you’re seeing probably up to three. Back then you had the bigger bodies and they had an easier time cracking the lineup. Now it’s the opposite.”
Without question, the NHL in 2021 is highly skilled, faster, and more demanding than the one Joseph Leonard Gilles Lupien cracked 43 years ago. Those with his dream and determination must take stock, recalibrate their path to the show, and hope that their legs will deliver with the same punch of a fighter’s fists.
“That’s just the evolution of the game,” said Cassidy, “and people can argue about it all day long.”
For a relatively itsy-bitsy place on the map, the metro area of Halifax, Nova Scotia (approximate population: 400,000) delivers some gigantic NHL stars, including Brad Marchand, Sidney Crosby, and Nathan MacKinnnon.
MacKinnon, at 25 the youngest of the stellar trio, as of Friday morning led postseason scoring with a 5-2—7 line in two games (both Avalanche wins over the Blues).
Going back to MacKinnon’s rookie season, 2013-14, the three Halifax standouts rank among the league’s top 10 regular-season scorers: 2. Crosby, Pittsburgh (660 points); 4. Marchand, Boston (582); 10. MacKinnon, Colorado (560).
Forget slimming down the goalie equipment to increase scoring. Just send us more of those Halifax homeboys.
“I think we just love hockey up there,” said Marchand, asked Friday morning about Nova Scotia’s secret sauce. “You kind of live and breathe it at a young age. Over the years, we’ve produced some good players — obviously Sid and Nate are two of the best in the world.” And Marchand makes three.
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During Bruins off nights during the postseason, Marchand is a committed playoff TV viewer. He gets extra enjoyment when seeing his fellow Halifax natives succeed.
“But that’s with all the guys … it’s fun to watch guys you know in the league,” Marchand said. “It adds more to the games when you know somebody in it. It makes it a little more exciting, a little more interesting. I’m definitely watching their games and they’re both doing really well — that’s part of it all.”
Reaching out with a text at this time of the year, though, is not part of the brotherhood.
“No, playoffs are a different animal,” said Marchand. “At different times of the year, we’ll text if there is something worth noting, but not this time of year.”
Rick Middleton (retired Bruins No. 16) was in the lineup the night of the Stan Jonathan-Pierre Bouchard skirmish and figured something was cooking when coach Don Cherry sent Jonathan, the pugnacious left winger, out for a draw in the Montreal end.
“Trust me, I remember it all … clearly!” recalled Middleton in a telephone conversation on Friday, the 43rd anniversary of the battle.
Cherry initially had Peter McNab on the ice, flanked by Terry O’Reilly and John Wensink. Canadiens coach Scotty Bowman had just sent out a defense pairing of Gilles Lupien and Bouchard, the latter of whom, as Middleton recalled, had yet to skate a shift that night.
“So Grapes [Cherry] took Peter off and put Stan out there to take the faceoff,” said Middleton, his laugh about it all still robust 43 years later. “And Grapes never took just one guy off — if he didn’t like something, he’d swap out a whole line or defense pairing. But as soon as that happened, we were like, ‘OK, here we go!’ ”
Seconds after the draw, a whistle to stop play proved to be the opening bell for the mayhem.
“Wensink and Lupien had a brawl the [game] before,” recalled Middleton. “That’s what precipitated that one — John wanted to get back at him. John got him down — Lupien was a big guy, 6-6 or 6-7 — and was giving it to him pretty good.”
