Jean Béliveau

Jean Béliveau: The Man Montreal Bought a League For

In 1953 the Montreal Canadiens wanted a centre from Quebec City badly enough that they purchased his entire league. The Canadian Arena Company bought the Quebec Senior Hockey League outright and converted it from amateur to professional, which meant that Jean Béliveau — who had been perfectly happy in Quebec, earning more than most NHL players — was now a professional, and an old agreement obliged him to sign with Montreal. It is the most extravagant recruitment in the history of North American sport, and it was a bargain.

Victoriaville

Joseph Arthur Jean Béliveau was born on 31 August 1931 in Trois-Rivières, the eldest of eight children of Arthur Béliveau, an electrician with Shawinigan Water and Power, and Lorette Dubé. The family moved to Plessisville when he was three and to Victoriaville when he was six, which is where he got his first skates and where he played on the backyard rink his father flooded each winter. He entered organised hockey at twelve.

He was a good enough baseball player that a minor-league contract was offered when he was fifteen; his family turned it down. That same year the Canadiens' general manager Frank Selke found him and pressed an NHL "C-form" on him. His father objected to the terms, and the boy signed a "B-form" instead — a lighter commitment binding him to Montreal only if he ever turned professional. Nobody imagined it would take seven years and the purchase of a league to collect on it.

The House That Béliveau Built

He played junior for the Victoriaville Tigres and then, from 1949, for the Quebec Citadelles, finishing second in league scoring behind Bernard Geoffrion. The journalist Roland Sabourin gave him the name that stuck: "Le Gros Bill," after a 1949 Quebec film.

In 1951 he joined the senior Quebec Aces and became, briefly, the most famous athlete in the province. Crowds filled the new Colisée de Québec to watch him — the building was nicknamed the House that Béliveau Built — and between salary and endorsements he was earning around $20,000 a year, which was serious money in the era of the six-team NHL. Montreal called him up twice, in 1950–51 and 1952–53, for the maximum games an amateur was allowed. He led the QSHL in scoring in 1953 and still showed no interest in turning professional.

Hence the league purchase. Béliveau signed a five-year contract worth $105,000, the first multi-year deal Montreal had ever handed a newcomer.

The Captain

He was 6'3" and 205 pounds at a time when that made him a giant, and he combined it with real speed, delicate stickhandling and a wrist shot that goaltenders remembered. Bobby Hull's observation was that opponents came at him with visible respect. By his second full NHL season he was among the league's top three scorers.

In 1956 he took both the Art Ross Trophy as leading scorer and the Hart Trophy as most valuable player; he won the Hart again in 1964. He finished second in Hart voting four more times and third once, second for the Art Ross twice and third four times. In 1965 he won the first Conn Smythe Trophy ever awarded, as playoff MVP.

His teammates elected him captain in 1961, and he held the office for a decade. He was the fourth player in history to score 500 goals and the second to reach 1,000 points. He finished with 507 goals and 712 assists — 1,219 points in 1,125 regular-season games — plus 176 points in 162 playoff games, and retired in 1971 as the Canadiens' all-time leading scorer and the NHL's leading playoff scorer. His number 4 was raised to the rafters on 9 October 1971, and the Hall of Fame waived its waiting period to induct him in 1972.

Seventeen Cups

He won ten Stanley Cups as a player. Then he became the Canadiens' vice-president and director of public relations, a job he held for twenty-two seasons, and won seven more — 1973, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1986 and 1993. Seventeen championships is the most any individual has won in the sport, and matches Frankie Crosetti's record across all North American professional sport.

The Man Who Said No

Brian Mulroney twice offered him a seat in the Senate in the early 1990s. Béliveau declined, on the grounds that legislators ought to be elected. In 1994 Jean Chrétien offered him the Governor Generalship of Canada, the first time a professional hockey player had ever been asked. He turned that down too, in order to stay near his daughter Hélène and his two granddaughters, whose father had died by suicide.

He founded the Jean Béliveau Foundation for disadvantaged children when he retired in 1971 and handed it to the Society for Disabled Children in 1993. He was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1998 and a Grand Officer of the National Order of Quebec in 2010. He threatened to resign from the Hockey Hall of Fame if Alan Eagleson's membership survived his fraud conviction.

Why Jean Is Called a Genius

Béliveau's reputation rests on two things, only one of which is a cognitive claim. The cognitive part is real: he was a playmaking centre whose assists (712) comfortably exceeded his goals (507) — the fingerprint of a player who saw the developing play before anyone else and moved the puck to where a teammate was going to be. Combined with an unusual body, 6'3" and 205 pounds in a league where that was enormous, this produced a player his own teammate Dollard St. Laurent described by saying, "There ought to be two leagues: one for the pros and one for Jean." Conn Smythe, not a sentimental man and not a Montreal partisan, called him "the greatest thing that could have happened to the modern game."

The second thing is character, and it is where the word gets stretched. His authority was moral as much as athletic; his own formulation was that "your good name is your greatest asset," and Michael Farber's summary — "Jean Beliveau was Canada's best self" — is about a nation's self-image, not a man's intelligence. The counter-case follows. He played for the most dominant dynasty hockey has assembled, and ten Cups is a team's achievement before a player's. In two decades he won one scoring title and two MVP awards. The Hockey News ranked him seventh among all NHL players in 1998 — extraordinary, and not first. What Béliveau had, precisely, was anticipation and an almost total absence of ego about using it.

Legacy

His later years were hard: a cardiac hospitalisation in 1996, a neck tumour in 2000, strokes in 2010 and 2012, and cancer. He died at Longueuil on 2 December 2014, aged eighty-three. Thousands filed past his coffin at the Bell Centre and three prime ministers attended the public funeral at Mary Queen of the World Cathedral. Canada Post put him on a stamp, Canadian Pacific named a station after him, the Canadiens created a trophy in his name for community service, and he was honorary captain of the national team at the 2010 Olympics. He had already declined to be head of state, which is the more telling honour.

Achievements

• Order of Hockey in Canada
• Stanley Cup
• Hockey Hall of Fame
• Canada's Sports Hall of Fame
• Quebec Sports Hall of Fame
• Knight of the National Order of Quebec
• Grand Officer of the National Order of Quebec
• Officer of the National Order of Quebec