TORONTO– Who was the only player who had your number? What was your welcome moment to the NHL? Who took you under their wing and helped you as a rookie? Who did you hate playing against?
All these questions and more got the five former players inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the class of 2023 to think, remember and talk. All were interviewed by fans who traveled to Toronto this weekend from New York, Colorado, Ohio and even the Netherlands.
Henrik Lundqvist, Mike Vernon, Tom Barrasso, Pierre Turgeon and Caroline Ouellette participated in the exclusive annual question-and-answer session on Saturday during the Inductee Fan Forum in the Great Hall of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
It was an hour filled with stories, memories, tributes and laughter, lots of laughter.
“We’re two weeks into training camp, we’re going with the team and I think we were down to 30 players and four goalies, so I wasn’t sure if I’d make the team.” , Lundqvist said. “We check in at West Point (the US Military Academy) and I look at the room list and it says ‘Lundqvist-Jagr’. I’m like, are you kidding me, I’ve been here two weeks and I’m sharing the room with Jaromir Jagr. I couldn’t believe it. It was my welcome to the NHL moment.
The audience laughed. Lundqvist too. It was the kind of light, conversational atmosphere that has been a staple of Hall of Fame induction weekend since 1999, when Wayne Gretzky came up with the idea of speaking with fans during his induction.
Many questions were asked by people identifying as being from New York and fans of Lundqvist and the New York Rangers. They all thanked Lundqvist.
A Colorado fan said he inspired him to become a goalie. Another from New York joked that Lundqvist, because of his looks, even turned his girlfriend into a Rangers fan. Someone from Seattle thanked him on behalf of his wife.
“I’ll tell my wife you said hello,” he said.
“Please do it,” Lundqvist responded.
A fan who identified herself as Danielle asked the former Rangers goaltender what it was like to put on the Washington Capitals jersey, telling her it broke her heart.
Lundqvist signed a one-year, $1.5 million contract with the Capitals after the Rangers bought out the final year of his contract following the 2019-20 season. But he never played for Washington, but was forced to retire due to a heart problem.
“Well, I never made it to camp, did I, so I never really put it on,” Lundqvist said. “But that summer, it was 15 years in New York and I thought it was time to retire because I didn’t really see myself playing anywhere else. I couldn’t and I struggled with it for a month, a month and a half. Then I started going to the rink and I realized how much I loved the game. I loved it so much that I realized I had to try it.
Lundqvist said he and his wife, Therese, made a list of 10 teams and ranked them according to a point system for which team had the best coach, the best chance to win and the best trip for their family. Washington had the highest score, he said.
Danielle asked him if the New York Islanders were on the list.
“No,” Lundqvist replied.
The crowd applauded. Not surprising.
Al Robinson of Buckhorn, Ont., asked the five inductees to reveal the player who wore their number and whom they hated playing against.
“Half the NHL,” Vernon said with a laugh.
Vernon clarified that these were two players: Claude Lemieux, “because he was always running after me,” and Luc Robitaille, because “he could score goals sitting on his butt while shouting out loud, and it drove me crazy.”
Turgeon said it was Nicklas Lidstrom and Ray Bourque because they took away his time and space to play. Ouellette named the Lamoureux twins, Monique and Jocelyne, frequent adversaries when she and Canada played the United States.
Lundqvist said everyone he knew very well knew how to reach him.
“I remember a match of Henrik Zetterberg, a good friend of mine, we had dinner the day before talking about all these different things, and the match the next day at (Madison Square) Garden, of course, it marks the first goal of the match,” Lundqvist said. “The puck went through so many players, and I look up and see his face skating past me smiling like, ‘I got you.’ That really pissed me off.”
Barrasso said it was Michel Goulet, a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, whom he had encountered Friday evening.
“He said, ‘I remember scoring my 450th goal against you,’” Barrasso said. “I said, ‘You probably scored more than that.’ What he should do is come back and apologize for making me look like an idiot.”
The Netherlands fan asked each inductee who took them under their wing when they were new to the NHL or, in Ouellette’s case, to Canada’s women’s national team.
Ouellette said it was France St.-Louis, one of the first Canadians to play on the international stage. She said St. Louis taught her fitness and work ethic, and that talent alone wouldn’t be enough for her.
Ouellette said St. Louis inspired her to step up her efforts years later and become a mentor to Marie-Philip Poulin, the current captain of Canada’s women’s team. She said she made sure Poulin would stay with her at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, the first of four in which Poulin competed.
“Last night she said that I was late in my career and I was in my last (IIHF Women’s) World Championship and I had the honor of giving her the ‘C’, the title of captain of Team Canada. It’s one of the most special moments for me because no one deserved it more.”
Responding to the same question, Turgeon mentioned Jacques Cloutier, a goaltender for the Buffalo Sabers when he was a rookie in 1987-88. They lived across the street from each other, Cloutier with his family and Turgeon with a host family. Cloutier was sometimes his translator.
“I didn’t speak a word of English, zero,” Turgeon said. “‘How are you doing?’ No idea. I called Jacques to tell him: “How do you say: ‘I’m hungry?'”.
Lundqvist responded with Darius Kasparaitis, who he lived with for the first two months of his NHL career with the Rangers. Barrasso named Bob Sauvé, the Sabres’ other goaltender when they entered the league in 1983-84. Vernon said Réjean Lemelin, his goalie partner with the Calgary Flames from 1982 to 1987.
“I basically took his position and he kind of got kicked out, but he was still saying, ‘Mike, it’s not your fault, you keep going, you keep playing well, it’s okay,'” Vernon said. “I really appreciated these comments.”
It went on like this for an hour, five legends recalling some of the greatest moments of their careers, memories forced out of hibernation by fans who idolized them then and still do today.
“It’s perfect,” Hockey Hall of Fame President Lanny McDonald told the audience. “It’s my favorite event of the whole weekend, where it’s just them.”
