Jean Beliveau died on December 2, 2014, at the age of 83. Two days later Don Cherry sat down and typed out a seven-part tribute on Twitter, and the first thing he reached for was a story somebody had told him at a Montreal Canadiens training camp.
A rookie had thrown his sweater on the dressing room floor after a game and left it there.
“Jean Beliveau picked up the sweater, got a hanger, hung it up and turned to the rookie and said, never let this sweater hit the floor again,” Cherry wrote.
Nothing about it was a complaint regarding tidiness. The Canadiens sweater carries more history than any garment in the sport, and the rookie had treated his like a towel.
Jean Beliveau with the Canadiens:
| Seasons | Cups as a player | Cups as an executive | Hall of Fame |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | 10 | 7 | 1972 |
How many Stanley Cups did Jean Beliveau win?
Ten of them came as a player, across twenty seasons in Montreal between 1950 and 1971. Seven more arrived after he retired and moved into the Canadiens front office, which gives him seventeen in total and more than any other person in the history of the sport.
Cherry’s thread had a second story in it, about something far smaller.
“Have you seen Jean Beliveau’s autograph? Or Bobby Orr’s, Wayne Gretzky’s, Bobby Hull’s, Guy Lafleur’s? You can read it,” Cherry wrote. “One day while signing autographs, Jean looked over at another guy scribbling his name and asked, do you have no pride in your name? He was a class guy.”
He had a habit of handling young players the right way. When Guy Lafleur arrived in Montreal in 1971, Beliveau first offered him his own No. 4, then thought better of it.
“Don’t try to be a second Jean Beliveau. Be the first Guy Lafleur,” he told him. “Take a number and make it your own.”
Mario Lemieux used the same word as everybody else when the news broke.
“Class personified,” Lemieux said, calling Beliveau a hero to generations of French Canadians and hockey fans everywhere.
Cherry, who spent most of his career finding something to argue about, didn’t bother this time.
“In the dictionary, beside the word class, you would find Jean Beliveau’s picture,” he wrote.
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