Claude Lemieux has died at 60, and the Montreal Canadiens announced his death on Thursday, bringing an abrupt end to the career of one of hockey’s most decorated and most polarizing postseason players. The team said little about the circumstances, and no cause of death was given.
The timing made the news land even harder in Montreal. Lemieux had been back in the building on Monday as the Canadiens’ Bell Centre torchbearer for Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Final against the Carolina Hurricanes, a night the visitors won 3-2 in overtime. For fans who saw him then, the announcement turned a ceremonial homecoming into a final public appearance.
Lemieux spent 21 seasons in the NHL and won four Stanley Cup championships, first with the Canadiens in 1986, then with the New Jersey Devils in 1995, the Colorado Avalanche in 1996 and the Devils again in 2000. He was drafted by Montreal in the second round, No. 26, of the 1983 NHL Draft and became a major postseason force almost immediately, scoring 10 goals and six assists during the Canadiens’ 20-game run to the 1986 title. Two of those playoff goals came in overtime.
His best seasons followed quickly. Lemieux scored 27 goals in 1986-87, then 31 the next year and 29 in 1988-89. By the time he won the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1995, he had built a reputation that cut both ways: a tremendous clutch performer when the games mattered most, and an irritant who made plenty of enemies around the league. He scored 13 goals in 20 postseason games for New Jersey that spring.
That mix of production and edge defined the rest of his career. Lemieux’s teams reached the playoffs in 15 straight seasons, he played 234 career postseason games and his 80 playoff goals rank ninth in NHL history. In recent years, he worked as a player agent representing top NHL stars, and Gary Bettman said the league sent condolences to his wife, Deborah, and their four children, Brendan, Claudia, Michael and Christopher. The unanswered question now is the simplest one: what took him away so suddenly?
