–
–
Everything is relative, of course, and there are always those who argue that Lafleur is not a model of emotional balance. But I insist, if we refer to the time when Lafleur arrived at the Forum, which was then a colossal factory of zombies on skates, we can say that it is almost a miracle that he got away with it. in good mental health…
Still, before last Sunday, it had been 10 years, if not more, that I had met Lafleur. What I was saying, therefore, was a little dated. Maybe he had changed as he got older, maybe he wasn’t so sharp anymore? … The latest news was not very good. I’m one of those who shrugged my shoulders when he announced his return. Why a return? Not able to draw a line, to move on? Also, when I was asked to broadcast the big Saturday reports by going to meet Lafleur in New York, I said yes for New York. But for Lafleur, I was afraid. I’ll tell you straight away: I was wrong.
Lafleur is even finer than before. Want superlatives? There are some who don’t force me for a second: the nicest, the most charming, the simplest, the finest, it’s him. The happiest too. Lafleur happy to play. Lafleur happy in New York. Flower loves NY… The other thing I have to tell you right away is why this madness is back, at 37, in the National League. But you will be disappointed, I believe. However, this is the best excuse you can ever have for committing a madness: to want to do it madly…
The coffee shop of a Ramada Inn in the greater suburbs of New York, at breakfast. It has just been reported to Lafleur that someone on TV predicted that he would no longer be with the Rangers by Christmas. Lafleur, who was spreading a muffin, stays for a second with his knife in the air…
“Can say what they want, I’ll still be here in May. Who knows, maybe even in June. And maybe even in September for the start of another season… Whether I have 8 goals or 12 or 23, it’s not very important. I’m not here to impress anyone. What matters is that I have my place in this team. And I know I have it. Did you see the game? »
I saw. It was the night before at Madison Square Garden.
From Dionne behind the net to Lafleur up front. And count. His first goal in four years less a few days.
And again in the second half. From Mullen to Lafleur. And miss. A bit of nothing.
And again in third. The opposite this time. From Lafleur to Dionne who is robbed by the goalkeeper, a certain goal.
And again on Leetch’s goal, passes from Mullen and Lafleur.
But then, are you going to say, he is still on the ice?
That no. Only for five-man attacks, plus one or two regular rounds per period. And again, never more than a minute at a time. Except that each time he embarks, he provokes something. He “creates” something… That evening, Lafleur, one goal one assist, could have ended his evening with two goals and two assists…
But then, you will say, is it the Lafleur of the great years that has come back to life in New York, just to piss off the Forum?
At all. It’s not the big Lafleur. That’s about two-thirds. As an average of course, Lafleur cannot be a fraction of anything.
For twenty seconds it’s the great Lafleur as before, the flight, the skating, the pass, the maneuver behind the net, the timing before…
But there are also five seconds of panic. An energetic face-to-face, the opponent who pushes with the puck, and Lafleur who rows behind, saves who can the little old man.
Take the average of the two. It gives about two-thirds of the Lafleur of yesteryear. But if you remember how big he was, you see that even two-thirds is still bigger than many whole others…
“Flower? He’s one of my best offensive players,” said Michel Bergeron after the game. “Not to mention his enthusiasm on the bench and during practices, he adds, one of the most pleasant players I have ever coached. What Bergeron does not say is his early season anxieties:
“How are you going to take it if I don’t dress you for a game?”
“If you don’t let me know at the last minute, everything will be fine,” Lafleur promised.
We guess that between the two a complicity has developed which is a little that of language, a lot that of age… The other evening, on the five-man attacks, Bergeron had asked Lafleur to go immediately post at the opponent’s blue line, and wait there, in ambush, for the game to develop towards him…
— I felt like a nice tata behind the opposing defenders while my teammates were struggling to get the puck out of our zone. I went to tell Michel that I understood his strategy (it was Mario Lemieux who started that in Pittsburgh), but that the role didn’t suit me. He said OK to me, and he put another one in my place. It’s just about talking…
— Can’t wait to play against the Canadiens?
— Yes and no… Yes for the feeling, yes for the public. It will necessarily be a somewhat special match for me… Not for any revenge as everyone thinks. I don’t have the Canadian in mind. It’s over, all that. “They” had their faults, I had mine, the page is turned… I’m enjoying playing at the moment as I never thought possible to still have them on an ice rink. I’m happy to be in New York as I never imagined I could be in this city that I hated when I came to play there. I am happy. So revenge for what? … The only regret that sometimes mingles with my fun is to have stupidly wasted four years of that fun…
Basically, it’s simple, the story of Lafleur. This is the story of a heartbreak. Four years ago, the Forum squealed it there and it didn’t take it. As no one is able to take this kind of thing. Remember when your girlfriend is gone, it hurts and lasts for months, full of despair. The bitch, you swear to take revenge, to annoy him until the end of his days…
And then one fine morning, a year or two later, you wake up and youppi, it’s over. Your old blonde has less of an effect on you than a lawn mower. You don’t remember why you hated him. You are no longer in love. And while waiting for it to take you back, life has never been so beautiful…
Lafleur is exactly there. In love with life four years after the Forum forced him into a retirement he didn’t want. Happy as he no longer remembers having been.
Happy, like that guy on the poster advertising Jump shoes in the New York subway, he jumps so high you can see the soles of his shoes, and the caption says: “The only way to get higher is illegal”…
New York is doing well in Lafleur. As far as New York is concerned, quite a bit in the end.
We say the New York Rangers, in fact, you should know that when the Rangers play “at home”, they live for the day at the Southgate Hotel, close to Madison Square Garden, like ordinary tourists…
We say the New York Rangers, in fact, we should rather say the Rye Rangers, a bourgeois little town by the sea, on the Connecticut border where all the players live (except Greschner). It’s a chic suburb-countryside, very neat, houses of wood or old stones, and surrounding wooded valleys where gentlemen hunt with hounds and bows… Sunday night, when Lafleur returned to the motel where he lives for a month, four deer had been waiting for him in the parking lot. It’s hard to imagine that the Bronx is only half an hour away…
On the day of the interview, Lafleur had an appointment to rent a house in the area:
– Buy, do not think about it. Crazy prices, a million for a very ordinary cabin. Like this one, well, what would it be worth here? $350,000? …
Since he was early for practice, he took us on a city tour in his jeep.
– Rent either, it is not given. It’s $4000 per month minimum. But it’s beautiful, quiet… Much softer than at home. Look, fall is just getting started here… I hope my family is going to enjoy it. I just called home. Mark, the youngest (he’s 4, I call him my “retirement gift”), said to me: “Hey dad, did you score a goal yesterday? You’re like a hurricane on the ice”… Hurricane, you speak. A 37-year-old hurricane. I don’t know where he got that. According to Lise, he’s seeing hurricanes everywhere right now…
The Rye Arena where the Rangers train is in a children’s amusement park, deserted at this time of year. The brightly painted rides and the sea right next to it give the impression of vacationing somewhere in a New England seaside village.
Lafleur will say, moreover, as if he had followed my thought:
— No wonder I rediscovered the pleasure of playing here.
Emphasizing “play”. To make it clear that he was talking about the “game” of children…
But I was saying that New York is doing well in Lafleur. Because, despite everything, the Rangers are still a bit New York. If only after games at Madison Square Garden. We have to go to dinner…
The other night, Lafleur, after the game against the Canucks, gathered at the Canal Bar with Greschner and his wife. What’s funny about it, beyond the “gossip”, is that the Canal Bar has nothing to do, but then nothing at all, with the kind of chrome holes (steak restaurants and filet disco cute) where hockey players usually hang out. The Canal Bar is tucked away in a warehouse district, just off Greenwich village. Brasserie of very trendy artists where the last thing that could happen to Lafleur would be to be asked for an autograph. For that he would have to come across some tourist from Drummondville lost there by a very improbable chance…
Come to think of it, there isn’t a restaurant in Manhattan, in or not, where Lafleur couldn’t dine in peace with his wife, without his neighbor at the table suspecting for a second who he was and would he suspect that it probably wouldn’t make a wrinkle in his stomach. Not a bar in SoHo where Lafleur couldn’t have a glass of wine and smoke his quiet little Du Maurier without the whole town whispering the next day that he was packed and if it’s not unfortunate that such a great athlete smokes like a chimney…
New York is doing well in Lafleur. Of the two, New York is the star. New York the glutton of glory. But that’s good, at 37, Lafleur was just wondering what to do with his own, which weighed a little on him…
Was just wondering where to hang it, time to have a little fun.
–
Related
–
–
Everything is relative, of course, and there are always those who argue that Lafleur is not a model of emotional balance. But I insist, if we refer to the time when Lafleur arrived at the Forum, which was then a colossal factory of zombies on skates, we can say that it is almost a miracle that he got away with it. in good mental health…
Still, before last Sunday, it had been 10 years, if not more, that I had met Lafleur. What I was saying, therefore, was a little dated. Maybe he had changed as he got older, maybe he wasn’t so sharp anymore? … The latest news was not very good. I’m one of those who shrugged my shoulders when he announced his return. Why a return? Not able to draw a line, to move on? Also, when I was asked to broadcast the big Saturday reports by going to meet Lafleur in New York, I said yes for New York. But for Lafleur, I was afraid. I’ll tell you straight away: I was wrong.
Lafleur is even finer than before. Want superlatives? There are some who don’t force me for a second: the nicest, the most charming, the simplest, the finest, it’s him. The happiest too. Lafleur happy to play. Lafleur happy in New York. Flower loves NY… The other thing I have to tell you right away is why this madness is back, at 37, in the National League. But you will be disappointed, I believe. However, this is the best excuse you can ever have for committing a madness: to want to do it madly…
The coffee shop of a Ramada Inn in the greater suburbs of New York, at breakfast. It has just been reported to Lafleur that someone on TV predicted that he would no longer be with the Rangers by Christmas. Lafleur, who was spreading a muffin, stays for a second with his knife in the air…
“Can say what they want, I’ll still be here in May. Who knows, maybe even in June. And maybe even in September for the start of another season… Whether I have 8 goals or 12 or 23, it’s not very important. I’m not here to impress anyone. What matters is that I have my place in this team. And I know I have it. Did you see the game? »
I saw. It was the night before at Madison Square Garden.
From Dionne behind the net to Lafleur up front. And count. His first goal in four years less a few days.
And again in the second half. From Mullen to Lafleur. And miss. A bit of nothing.
And again in third. The opposite this time. From Lafleur to Dionne who is robbed by the goalkeeper, a certain goal.
And again on Leetch’s goal, passes from Mullen and Lafleur.
But then, are you going to say, he is still on the ice?
That no. Only for five-man attacks, plus one or two regular rounds per period. And again, never more than a minute at a time. Except that each time he embarks, he provokes something. He “creates” something… That evening, Lafleur, one goal one assist, could have ended his evening with two goals and two assists…
But then, you will say, is it the Lafleur of the great years that has come back to life in New York, just to piss off the Forum?
At all. It’s not the big Lafleur. That’s about two-thirds. As an average of course, Lafleur cannot be a fraction of anything.
For twenty seconds it’s the great Lafleur as before, the flight, the skating, the pass, the maneuver behind the net, the timing before…
But there are also five seconds of panic. An energetic face-to-face, the opponent who pushes with the puck, and Lafleur who rows behind, saves who can the little old man.
Take the average of the two. It gives about two-thirds of the Lafleur of yesteryear. But if you remember how big he was, you see that even two-thirds is still bigger than many whole others…
“Flower? He’s one of my best offensive players,” said Michel Bergeron after the game. “Not to mention his enthusiasm on the bench and during practices, he adds, one of the most pleasant players I have ever coached. What Bergeron does not say is his early season anxieties:
“How are you going to take it if I don’t dress you for a game?”
“If you don’t let me know at the last minute, everything will be fine,” Lafleur promised.
We guess that between the two a complicity has developed which is a little that of language, a lot that of age… The other evening, on the five-man attacks, Bergeron had asked Lafleur to go immediately post at the opponent’s blue line, and wait there, in ambush, for the game to develop towards him…
— I felt like a nice tata behind the opposing defenders while my teammates were struggling to get the puck out of our zone. I went to tell Michel that I understood his strategy (it was Mario Lemieux who started that in Pittsburgh), but that the role didn’t suit me. He said OK to me, and he put another one in my place. It’s just about talking…
— Can’t wait to play against the Canadiens?
— Yes and no… Yes for the feeling, yes for the public. It will necessarily be a somewhat special match for me… Not for any revenge as everyone thinks. I don’t have the Canadian in mind. It’s over, all that. “They” had their faults, I had mine, the page is turned… I’m enjoying playing at the moment as I never thought possible to still have them on an ice rink. I’m happy to be in New York as I never imagined I could be in this city that I hated when I came to play there. I am happy. So revenge for what? … The only regret that sometimes mingles with my fun is to have stupidly wasted four years of that fun…
Basically, it’s simple, the story of Lafleur. This is the story of a heartbreak. Four years ago, the Forum squealed it there and it didn’t take it. As no one is able to take this kind of thing. Remember when your girlfriend is gone, it hurts and lasts for months, full of despair. The bitch, you swear to take revenge, to annoy him until the end of his days…
And then one fine morning, a year or two later, you wake up and youppi, it’s over. Your old blonde has less of an effect on you than a lawn mower. You don’t remember why you hated him. You are no longer in love. And while waiting for it to take you back, life has never been so beautiful…
Lafleur is exactly there. In love with life four years after the Forum forced him into a retirement he didn’t want. Happy as he no longer remembers having been.
Happy, like that guy on the poster advertising Jump shoes in the New York subway, he jumps so high you can see the soles of his shoes, and the caption says: “The only way to get higher is illegal”…
New York is doing well in Lafleur. As far as New York is concerned, quite a bit in the end.
We say the New York Rangers, in fact, you should know that when the Rangers play “at home”, they live for the day at the Southgate Hotel, close to Madison Square Garden, like ordinary tourists…
We say the New York Rangers, in fact, we should rather say the Rye Rangers, a bourgeois little town by the sea, on the Connecticut border where all the players live (except Greschner). It’s a chic suburb-countryside, very neat, houses of wood or old stones, and surrounding wooded valleys where gentlemen hunt with hounds and bows… Sunday night, when Lafleur returned to the motel where he lives for a month, four deer had been waiting for him in the parking lot. It’s hard to imagine that the Bronx is only half an hour away…
On the day of the interview, Lafleur had an appointment to rent a house in the area:
– Buy, do not think about it. Crazy prices, a million for a very ordinary cabin. Like this one, well, what would it be worth here? $350,000? …
Since he was early for practice, he took us on a city tour in his jeep.
– Rent either, it is not given. It’s $4000 per month minimum. But it’s beautiful, quiet… Much softer than at home. Look, fall is just getting started here… I hope my family is going to enjoy it. I just called home. Mark, the youngest (he’s 4, I call him my “retirement gift”), said to me: “Hey dad, did you score a goal yesterday? You’re like a hurricane on the ice”… Hurricane, you speak. A 37-year-old hurricane. I don’t know where he got that. According to Lise, he’s seeing hurricanes everywhere right now…
The Rye Arena where the Rangers train is in a children’s amusement park, deserted at this time of year. The brightly painted rides and the sea right next to it give the impression of vacationing somewhere in a New England seaside village.
Lafleur will say, moreover, as if he had followed my thought:
— No wonder I rediscovered the pleasure of playing here.
Emphasizing “play”. To make it clear that he was talking about the “game” of children…
But I was saying that New York is doing well in Lafleur. Because, despite everything, the Rangers are still a bit New York. If only after games at Madison Square Garden. We have to go to dinner…
The other night, Lafleur, after the game against the Canucks, gathered at the Canal Bar with Greschner and his wife. What’s funny about it, beyond the “gossip”, is that the Canal Bar has nothing to do, but then nothing at all, with the kind of chrome holes (steak restaurants and filet disco cute) where hockey players usually hang out. The Canal Bar is tucked away in a warehouse district, just off Greenwich village. Brasserie of very trendy artists where the last thing that could happen to Lafleur would be to be asked for an autograph. For that he would have to come across some tourist from Drummondville lost there by a very improbable chance…
Come to think of it, there isn’t a restaurant in Manhattan, in or not, where Lafleur couldn’t dine in peace with his wife, without his neighbor at the table suspecting for a second who he was and would he suspect that it probably wouldn’t make a wrinkle in his stomach. Not a bar in SoHo where Lafleur couldn’t have a glass of wine and smoke his quiet little Du Maurier without the whole town whispering the next day that he was packed and if it’s not unfortunate that such a great athlete smokes like a chimney…
New York is doing well in Lafleur. Of the two, New York is the star. New York the glutton of glory. But that’s good, at 37, Lafleur was just wondering what to do with his own, which weighed a little on him…
Was just wondering where to hang it, time to have a little fun.
–
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