Jan 12/85: Montreal announces their 75th anniversary All-Star team

[reckoning]

This is probably my favourite pre-game ceremony ever. I remember watching it at the time, and was pleasantly surprised to notice recently that the game is on YouTube. To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the franchise, the Montreal Canadiens named their all-time starting All-Star team.

The ceremony starts at about the 10:50 mark of the video




If this happened today, the main board would be having a heart attack that the retired players were allowed to skate around without helmets, or that Joliat fell twice, but he was clearly enjoying the experience.

Sadly, this would have been the last season it would be possible to have that group together. Frank Selke passed away later that year, and Jacques Plante the following year.

Click to read more...

 

[The Panther]

Thanks, I was looking for the Joliat footage on YouTube a while ago and it seemed to have been taken down, so this is great!

You're right; people would lose their minds if this happened nowadays.

Awesome stuff!

 

[Staniowski]

It was a very memorable ceremony. Joliat, especially. Many fans watching had only heard a little about Joliat's career before this, and many more had never heard of him at all, so it was great to have him there. And he obviously enjoyed it.

I don't think Doug had been seen much for a long time either.

 

[Sentinel]

Great stuff. Thank you!

 

[McGarnagle]

The only person who came over to help Joliat when he fell the first time was Dave Maloney of the Sabres, which is just of sad. You can even see Maloney try to give him an arm to hold onto but Joliat pretty much waved him off and went off on his own again before tripping over the red carpet.

The modern equivalent to letting him skate would be if the Bruins put Phil Esposito on skates for one of their anniversary celebrations. That would never happen today for liability reasons.

 

[The Panther]

I love these things that bring the distant past to life, though. Like, from today's perspective, the 1920s seems like ancient history. (I teach The Great Gatsby and other stories to freshman students in Tokyo, so that decade is often on my mind.) But I can remember the 1985-86 season a bit, and there's Aurele Joliat out on the ice, skating at his beloved Montreal Forum (at which he played in the first-ever game). It's like in the 1981 Canada Cup final game (where Canada got clobbered), they interview Pierre Trudeau (whose son is the current P.M. of Canada) and he talks about seeing Howie Morenz and Joliat play when he was a kid (he was born in 1919).