Jean Beliveau built legacy impossible to replicate
Jean Beliveau built a legacy that will be impossible to replicate over his NHL career.
In an age of instant video, statistics and information, there’s less and less room for imagination in sports. When the imagination goes, in a lot of ways, the magic – so often associated with the legends of bygone eras – goes with it. We have been all too coldly reminded of that with the passing of Montreal Canadiens legend Jean Beliveau.
“Le Gros Bill” is one of those legends of sport that has always carried that mystique. For many of us of younger generations, his smooth glide down the ice and gentlemanly demeanor off it only exists in books or through stories of those who crossed paths with him or got to see him play.
While our parents and grandparents can visualize their memories of the greats with what they saw and heard with their own eyes and ears, the rest of us are left only with the stories they told, what the great scribes of the time wrote and a few stray video clips that made their way to YouTube.
There has been a flood of memorials for Beliveau from various media outlets across North America, and primarily in Canada where Beliveau spent his entire hockey-playing life. They come from those who saw him play the game and those that may have met him later in life.
Invariably, they will detail the gentleman that Beliveau was, the effortlessness with which he played and the success he had on the ice as part of 10 Stanley Cup-winning teams in Montreal. But for the growing generation of sports fans that never had those same opportunities to see him play or meet the man, Beliveau is no less a giant to anyone that has followed hockey at some point in their lives.
There’s something different about Beliveau in particular. He’s not the most famous of NHL legends, even though most would agree he probably belongs in the top 10 of all-time greats. But you always hear about Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr and Gordie Howe. Beliveau seems to be mentioned much less frequently, unless you’re in Montreal.
Yet after his death, any conversation about the modern-day NHL dropped Wednesday. It was all about Beliveau. Part of that is because of how he endeared himself to fans during his time as a player and post-career. His contributions to the game are innumerable.
There’s more to it than that, though. When we lose our legends, we lose another physical link to the past. We lose another link to that magical time. It leaves only still photographs, excerpts from old articles, maybe a video clip or two, but really it’s left to our imagination to rebuild that link.
Perhaps that’s why the athletes of the days of old become giants. Of course, their legend was built on what actually happened, but they become larger than life in our minds.
That doesn’t happen anymore, though. Perhaps it's hard to believe, but when you really stop to think about it, Wayne Gretzky probably will not be lionized the way Beliveau and his contemporaries have been.
Of course he will be remembered as perhaps the greatest to ever play the game, but so many of us saw it happen. Even though there are plenty of kids growing up today that didn’t see Gretzky play, they know everything about him. It seems that each of Gretzky’s accomplishments is available on YouTube and was so tightly documented that even as his accomplishments seem surreal, they’ve already been seen and heard thousands of times by millions of people.
Even if Gretzky is considered by many to be the greatest of all time, legends like Jean Beliveau and Gordie Howe and Maurice Richard may always stand atop a different, higher pillar in hockey history. They made Gretzky possible. They made all of this possible.
It is those stars that made hockey work on both sides of the border and helped hockey grow. When there were only six teams in the NHL, the only way the sports fan thousands of miles away knew about hockey was because of the remarkable accomplishments of those individuals. Beliveau’s Canadiens transcended hockey because they built an awe-striking dynasty that forced people to pay attention and marvel.
For that, we owe them as much a debt of gratitude as we do our admiration for what they did while playing the game. The league was built on their backs and the success today isn’t possible without their success.
There's some sadness in the belief that we'll never have legends like Beliveau again, but maybe that’s okay .
When Sidney Crosby scores a goal, it only takes about five minutes before it is available on our phones. A player’s ability can be broken down into many different numbers now to compare to his peers. We have more information about everything and that helps us stay more informed about the sport. As great as all of that is, it leaves less room for the imagination and mystique players like Beliveau helped create.
However, it is also that imagination that will keep Beliveau alive for future generations of hockey fans. There will never be another one like Jean Beliveau, but there may never have to be. The original was more than enough.
