Earlier this week, Gilles Léger, who had gone to Bratislava with Marcel Aubut to lure brothers Peter and Anton Stastny to Quebec passed away. He was not one for the spotlight, in fact, plenty of people have no idea of the things he’s accomplished, but the people of Quebec should certainly be grateful for what he did for the Quebec Nordiques.
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Speaking to Pat Laprade on BPM Sports today, former Nordiques head coach Michel Bergeron recalled how the brothers came to Quebec:
It would have been hard to bring the Stastny over without Gilles Léger. He has his contacts, he went with Marcel Aubut with a suitcase full of cash. Let’s just say Peter and Anton knew how to count.
Montreal Canadiens fans should also be grateful, the Canadiens-Nordiques was and will probably forever remain one of the best rivalry in sports. To have a rivalry though, you need great players and for Quebec, for years, it was Peter Stastny. In seven of his first eight years in the NHL, he gathered over 100 points and was a real thorn in the Canadiens’ sides.
The only two players who had 1000 points in the 1980s. Peter Šťastný had 1024. Wayne Gretzky had 1,864.
1,864 in one decade. pic.twitter.com/7EH926NpvK
— The Hockey Samurai 侍 (@hockey_samurai) August 10, 2024
Throughout his tenure in Quebec, Peter played 68 games against the Canadiens and picked up 71 points in the process.
Hockey fans who were around in the 1980s will recall that after Wayne Gretzky, Quebec’s number 26 was the forward who picked up the most points. They will also have tales of the epic battles between the Nordiques’ star and Canadiens’ defensive ace Guy Carbonneau. Montreal feared him so much that when he was on the ice, they couldn’t put their best offensive players on, it had to be Carbo. Bergeron had even told Stastny he could stay on the ice as long as he wanted against Montreal.
Marián Šťastný averaged .91 points per game in his NHL career. He defected from Czechoslovakia when he was 28 years old. I often wonder what kind of numbers he would have put up if he had spent his entire career in the NHL.🤔 (Peter too, of course) pic.twitter.com/nEG2kxpu0E
— The Hockey Samurai 侍 (@hockey_samurai) August 19, 2023
A year after the pair of brothers arrival, their eldest brother Marian made the jump to the NHL as well and featured in the Montreal-Quebec rivalry for four years.
Léger died at 83 on August 6 following a bout of pneumonia, but he will forever be remembered by the hockey world. Back in the 1980s, during the cold war he used to go around with his trench coat and his cigar which had earned him the nickname Columbo.
Over the years, he acted as an assistant GM for the Edmonton Oilers, as an assistant governor for the Nordiques, was the Birmingham Bulls GM in the World Hockey Association at one point, he was a jack of all trades.
A hockey man until the end, he worked as a scout for the Rangers before he had to call time on his career as his health was declining. He had fought off a cancer, had received a lung graft, when he finally decided to call it a day,
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