Former Montreal Canadiens Jean-Guy Talbot, pictured in Ottawa on June 1, 2007, is one of 12 former team members to win five consecutive Stanley Cups between 1956 and 1960.Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press
Jean-Guy Talbot’s name has been engraved on the Stanley Cup seven times.
The steady defenceman helped anchor a Montreal Canadiens dynasty that won a record five consecutive Stanley Cups in the 1950s.
Mr. Talbot, who has died at 91, was overshadowed by blueline teammates such as Doug Harvey and Tom Johnson early in his career, and by Jacques Laperrière later.
The only full-time defenceman in National Hockey League history with more Cup championships is Serge Savard, also of the Canadiens, with eight.
Only one other player, former teammate Claude Provost, has won more championships, nine, without being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
With a reputation as a fine skater and a smooth passer, Mr. Talbot carefully rushed the puck out of his own zone before passing to one of Montreal’s high-flying forwards. He never scored more than eight goals in a season, though he did once record 42 assists.
For all his success on the ice, Mr. Talbot is perhaps best remembered for a notorious play in his junior career when he uncharacteristically clubbed an opponent in the head with his stick.
With 30 seconds left in a playoff game in which his team was trailing 5-1, the defenceman slashed at the bare head of an opponent. The player, who suffered a gash that would need 14 stitches to close, got up from the ice then collapsed before being taken to hospital on a stretcher. His attacker was assessed a misconduct and a match penalty for deliberate attempt to injure.
“Skull splitters and skate kickers have no place in the game,” columnist Baz O’Meara wrote in the Montreal Star. Mr. Talbot, he added, “doesn’t deserve any sympathy.”
The young player was suspended from organized hockey for one year by the Quebec Amateur Hockey Association. He was reinstated after nine months, by which time he was too old to play junior hockey. He then spent two seasons with the Quebec Aces and one with the Shawinigan Falls Cataracts.
The player he injured, Scotty Bowman, returned to the ice two weeks later wearing a helmet. He did not need surgery, though he later said he suffered from dizziness, nausea and depression. In hockey mythology, the injury immediately ended the prospect’s playing career, though Mr. Bowman put in two more seasons of junior hockey before retiring as a player on his way to becoming the greatest coach in NHL history.
Joseph Auseline Jean-Guy Talbot was born on July 11, 1932, at Cap-de-la-Madeleine, now part of Trois-Rivières, Que. He was an only child for the former Rose Emma Sauvageau and Willie Talbot, a steamfitter at a paper mill.
The boy started off as a goalie until his elementary school team lost a game by 22-1. He told his coach he was hanging up his goalie pads. “I don’t remember what he said to me,” the player told hockey writer Dick Bacon years later, “but he didn’t try to talk me out of it.”
The young skater, who grew up idolizing Canadiens star Maurice (Rocket) Richard and defenceman Émile (Butch) Bouchard, joined both as a teammate at the start of the 1955-56 season. It was an auspicious time to skate for the Canadiens, as the team won the Stanley Cup in each of Mr. Talbot’s first five seasons. He won two more, in 1965 and 1966, by which time he was serving as the team’s alternate captain behind Jean Béliveau.
While he never won an individual trophy in his NHL career, Mr. Talbot was named to the NHL’s First All-Star team in 1962 and to the Second All-Star team in 1963.
The 5-foot-11, 170-pound defenceman also saw spot duty on left wing and as a penalty killer.
After 12 seasons, he was left unprotected by the Canadiens in the 1967 expansion draft. He was selected in the sixth round, 32nd overall by the Minnesota North Stars, one of six new teams stocking their rosters with rejects and castoffs. Mr. Talbot was named team captain only to be traded to Detroit after the North Stars went winless (two losses, two ties) in their first four games.
After 32 games with the Red Wings, the defenceman was claimed on waivers by the St. Louis Blues, whose head coach and soon-to-be general manager was Mr. Bowman, the player Mr. Talbot had once injured. The two got along well.
Mr. Talbot’s teams made the playoffs for 15 consecutive seasons – 12 with Montreal and three with the St. Louis Blues.
He ended his playing career with the Buffalo Sabres in their inaugural 1970-71 campaign.
In 1,056 NHL games, the defenceman scored 43 goals with 242 assists and 1,006 penalty minutes.
Mr. Talbot spent six seasons as a coach, including two with St. Louis and one with the New York Rangers, where he wore a sweatsuit instead of a business suit while working behind the bench. He also spent part of a season as coach and general manager of the Denver Spurs of the World Hockey Association, an NHL rival, as the troubled franchise moved to Ottawa as the Civics before folding in 1976.
Mr. Talbot died on Feb. 22. He leaves his wife of 72 years, the former Pierrette Cormier. He also leaves a daughter and two sons.
His death leaves Don Marshall, who turns 92 on March 23, as the last survivor of the dozen Canadiens who played on all five consecutive Stanley Cup championship teams.
Mr. Talbot played a central, though unhappy, role in Bobby Orr’s memorable Stanley Cup-winning goal in 1970. After taking a pass from Derek Sanderson parked behind the St. Louis goal, Mr. Orr fired the puck past Glenn Hall to win the championship. As he lifted his arms in celebration, Mr. Orr was tripped by frustrated Blues defenceman Noel Picard. The image of the exultant Mr. Orr celebrating while parallel to the ice as though in flight became famous, and a bronze statue of the moment was unveiled outside Boston’s arena in 2010.
In highlights of the goal, a helmeted Blues defenceman can be seen futilely trying to stick check Mr. Orr, failing to prevent the pass to Mr. Sanderson, and once again failing to intercept the pass back to Mr. Orr. As Boston’s players piled atop Mr. Orr in giddy celebration of their first Stanley Cup triumph, Mr. Talbot, who knew well the joy of victory, skated slowly to the St. Louis bench. As it turned out, he had just played his 150th and final NHL playoff game.
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