Here’s what Lou Lamoriello had to say about Claude Lemieux, a player he traded for twice, leading to Stanley Cup titles

Before Lou Lamoriello would begin an NHL front office career that landed him in the Hockey Hall of Fame, before he would leave his beloved Providence College and turn a bottom-dwelling Devils franchise into a three-time Stanley Cup winner, he was a fixture on the New England hockey scene.

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He coached his alma mater Friars before taking over as the school’s athletic director, and he helped change the face of the local game as one of the founders (and first commissioner) of Hockey East.

So when Lamoriello talks about his final year at Providence and watching the 1986 Stanley Cup playoff series between the Bruins and eventual champion Canadiens, when he singles out a certain rookie for making such an impression with the way he played, it’s worth noting. When Lamoriello twice trades for that same player while working in New Jersey, both times to championship success, it says everything about that player’s ability.

That player was Claude Lemieux.

“That’s where I first really recognized him,” Lamoriello recalled in a conversation over the weekend. “He played all out. He was a rookie, but it didn’t matter who he hit, it didn’t matter how he played, he wanted to make a difference. He had that chippiness and sort of threaded the needle that way. I thought he was exceptional.”

Like the rest of the hockey community and sports world at large, Lamoriello was stunned and heartbroken to learn of Lemieux’s death last week, by his own hand. Lamoriello was driving in New York (he still advises the Islanders after serving as their general manager following his Devils years) when he got a text with the sad news. Taking a glance when traffic stopped, his first thought was hope against hope it was an AI mistake. But when the phone started its nonstop buzzing, he had to pull over.

“It was the outpouring from his teammates,” Lamoriello said. “You just never know. These men are teammates for life, especially when you go through playoffs for the length we did. It’s in other sports, too. There’s a bond there that’s just special.”

And a grief that stops them all in their tracks. The questions that keep them all up at night. How bad must it have been for Lemieux, seen only days prior to his death with a dazzling smile and in a Canadiens jersey as he carried the torch for a Montreal playoff game, to have made such a permanent, final decision? With news that the Lemieux family decided to donate Claude’s brain to Boston University’s CTE Center, maybe there will eventually be some answers. But those only return us to the questions about the cost of repeated head trauma in professional sports, and to the enduring need to remember that care and attention for these athletes cannot end when they hang up their skates.

Hockey is unique in a way that perhaps more than any other sport we watch, it can show one version of a player on the ice that is almost the complete opposite of how that person is off the ice. Think Brad Marchand. Where Marchand is beloved in Bruins history for the way he could antagonize opponents, Lemieux, himself a legendary agitator, was an avowed Bruins enemy, his 1995 high-stick of Cam Neely still able to make Boston blood boil. But as Lamoriello agreed, they are of a similar profile. Antagonistic, but also highly skilled and talented on the ice. And off it, well-liked and respected community members.

“We all know what type of player Claude was, he was an agitator. No question, he could stir up anything quick,” Lamoriello said. “He was just a tremendous teammate in every way whatsoever. He had that ability to raise his game when it came playoff time. Put aside the antics or his intimidation or whatever his style was; he performed. He had success. He finished. He scored. He was the type of player you would hate to play against. He even did some things that upset us at different times. But he had that in him.

“He also had a tremendous softness about him, internally, that came out in different ways and certainly came out after he retired.”

Yet here we are, once again reminded that we never truly know another person’s internal battle, that even those who appear the strongest are fighting their own wars. Amid the time we take to honor Lemieux’s life, there is space to try to take a lesson from his death.

“Claude deserves all the accolades,” Lamoriello said. “He was so strong physically, just built strong. He was somebody who could look at weights and get strong, he had that physique. He had that hockey strength. He was a man when he was young.

“When you see something like this transpire with him, it’s a message to everybody. Ask somebody how they’re doing, go out of your way and do it … why not?”

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