Rousseau dies at 85, 4-time Stanley Cup winner with Canadiens

MONTREAL -- Bobby Rousseau, a four-time Stanley Cup champion with the Montreal Canadiens between 1965-69 and winner of the 1962 Calder Trophy, voted as NHL rookie of the year, died Saturday at a hospital in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, his family at his side.

Rousseau was 85, having battled Alzheimer’s disease for several years.

He played 942 regular season games, the first 643 for the Canadiens from 1960-70, then 63 with the 1970-71 Minnesota North Stars and finally 236 more with the New York Rangers from 1971-74.

A fast, creative skater with a hard shot, Rousseau had 703 points (245 goals, 458 assists) in his 15 NHL seasons. His most memorable game was Feb. 1, 1964, when it seemed he couldn’t miss, scoring five goals on nine shots against Detroit Red Wings goalie Roger Crozier in a 9-3 Montreal Forum victory.

A statue of Bobby Rousseau, with the Memorial Cup he won with the Hull-Ottawa Canadiens in 1957-58, at his Louiseville Golf Club; Rousseau with his wife, Huguette, and their grandson, William, a pro goalie who won the Memorial Cup in 2022-23 with the major-junior Quebec Remparts. Rousseau’s older brother, Roland, gave the family a Memorial Cup hat trick, winning the championship in 1949 with the Montreal Royals.

A native of Montreal-district St. Henri who was raised in Sainte-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Rousseau had never before scored more than twice in a game, and he gave credit to some reading -- he consumed “The Power of Positive Thinking,” a book by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.

“I’ve always been a pessimist and looked on the dark side of things, even when I was doing well,” Rousseau said after his milestone game, his first of four career hat tricks. “This book has convinced me took at the bright side of life.”

Rousseau is one of nine Canadiens players to score at least five goals in a game, Newsy Lalonde at the top of the list with the six he scored Jan. 10, 1920 against the Toronto St. Patricks (the future Maple Leafs).

Lalonde scored at least five three times, as did Joe Malone in 1917 and 1918. The others: Maurice Richard, 1944; Howie Morenz, 1930; Pit Lepine, 1929; Ray Getliffe, 1943; Bernie Geoffrion, 1955; and Yvan Cournoyer, 1975.

Montreal's Bobby Rousseau (15), teammate Gilles Tremblay behind him, with (from left) Toronto's Tim Horton, George Armstrong, David Keon, goalie Johnny Bower and defenseman Allan Stanley during Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Semifinal on April 4, 1963 at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Two of Rousseau’s older brothers, Roland and Guy, had tried to make careers in the NHL but didn’t catch on. Roland played two games with the Canadiens in 1952-53 and Guy four between 1954-57, earning the second assist on Richard’s 400th regular-season goal on Dec. 18, 1954 against the Black Hawks in Chicago.

But it seemed that Bobby Rousseau was destined to play for the Canadiens.

As a 12-year-old, the 10th of Oscar and Eliane Rousseau's 13 children, he was presented with a trophy for his baseball excellence by budding Canadiens star Bernard “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion. The Boomer would be photographed with Rousseau again 12 years after that, stacking five pucks in the latter’s hands after his five-goal game.

Rousseau scored 53 goals in 44 games with St-Jean of the Montreal Metropolitan Junior Hockey League in 1955-56, and won the Memorial Cup with Hull-Ottawa of the Eastern Ontario Hockey League in 1958.

Bobby Rousseau poses for a portrait as a member of the Canada Olympic team during the 1959-60 season; taping his stick in the Canadiens’ Montreal Forum dressing room during the 1965-66 season.

The Canadiens, who owned Rousseau’s NHL rights, loaned him to Kitchener-Waterloo, a senior team, to represent Canada at the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics. Rousseau had nine points (five goals, four assists) in seven games, Canada winning silver to the gold of Team USA.

Rousseau joined Hull-Ottawa of the Eastern Professional Hockey League for the 1960-61 season, with 34 goals in 38 games, and played his first 15 NHL games with the Canadiens.

His first NHL goale came in his seventh game, on Nov. 11, 1960, on New York Rangers' United States native Jack McCartan, whom he’d faced at the Olympics. Assists went to Jean Beliveau and, naturally, Geoffrion.

The Calder Trophy came the following year for his 21-goal, 24-assist season and his NHL career unfolded, Stanley Cup championships on the way in 1965, 1966, 1968 and 1969; he led the Canadiens in scoring in 1965-66 and 1966-67, both times finishing in the NHL’s top 10.

Bobby Rousseau skates up Montreal Forum ice from behind his own net as a member of the New York Rangers; Rousseau gets his stick up with Toronto goalie Johnny Bower at Maple Leaf Gardens.

But with the Canadiens missing the 1970 playoffs and young players like Rejean Houle and Phil Roberto on the way in, Rousseau was deemed expendable and was traded to the Minnesota North Stars on June 10, 1970, former Canadien Claude Larose returning in the deal.

Minnesota wasn’t a good fit that season and on June 8, 1971, Rousseau was traded to the Rangers, where he’d finish his career. He was with New York for the 1972 playoffs, in which the Rangers made it to the Final before being defeated by the Boston Bruins.

Rousseau played eight games for the Rangers in 1974-75, by then almost exclusively a power-play specialist, before undergoing mid-December spinal fusion surgery to repair a lateral displacement he’d had since his teens. The operation would bring about his August 1975 retirement.

Rousseau had broken into the NHL with a $7,000 contract handwritten on a sheet of lined paper by then Canadiens general manager Frank Selke Sr.

Bobby Rousseau tests St. Louis Blues goalie Glenn Hall, Dick Duff awaiting a rebound, during a late 1960s Montreal Forum game.

“According to the amount of time I was on the ice in that first year with the Canadiens, I was making $12.48 a minute,” he joked. “In my last two years with the Rangers, when I was making $100,000 a year, it worked out to $128.46 a minute.”

Another memorable moment with Montreal: Rousseau scored on a penalty shot against the Bruins’ Bruce Gamble on Feb. 15, 1962, the Canadiens’ ninth goal in a 9-1 Forum win, his slap shot from just inside the blue line beating the surprised goalie.

He asked Beliveau, his captain, for advice before the shot and was told: “Just shoot, don’t try to deke him.”

“I stopped when I got to the blue line and swung like a golfer,” Rousseau told Journal de Montreal writer Pierre Durocher. "I remember there was a moment of silence, then the crowd exploded with joy when they saw the red light go on. …

“When I came back to the bench, (Canadiens forward) Dickie Moore said to me: ‘You were lucky, kid.’ That was true, I would have looked bad if I’d missed my shot.”

Bobby Rousseau (c.) with Johnny Bower (l.) and Dollard St. Laurent at a March 29, 2007 Bell Centre gala which raised $1 million for Montreal children’s hospitals in the name of Canadiens legend Jean Beliveau.

Beliveau laughed. "I told you to shoot, Bobby, but not from that far out."

Rousseau’s most cherished moment in hockey was his first of four Cup titles in 1965, when he had 13 points (five goals, eight assists) in 13 postseason games.

“The next year, I had the honor of riding in a convertible alongside Jean Beliveau during our Stanley Cup parade,” he said. “It was magical. I had a lot of fun on a line with Jean and Gilles Tremblay. (Coach) Toe Blake liked to use me on the point during power plays.

"And I will never forgot our long train trips to Chicago. We often arrived just in time, and the police had to escort our bus to Chicago Stadium. No meals were served on the train, so we had to buy sandwiches at the corner store not far from the train station in Montreal. Times have changed.”

Bobby Rousseau (r.) and captain Jean Beliveau ride in the Canadiens’ 1966 Stanley Cup parade through the streets of Montreal.

Having hung up his skates in 1975, Rousseau would devote himself to golf, his second love, a superb player who competed professionally.

He held the posts of pro and assistant pro at four Quebec courses until 1986, when he purchased and began operating the 6,600-yard, par-72 Louiseville layout about 70 miles northeast of Montreal, running that course and another in Grand-Mere, Quebec with his sons, Richard and Pierre, and daughter, Anne.

Pierre and Richard had in recent years been promoting that their father is worthy of Hockey Hall of Fame election, his statistics comparing favorably to many of his contemporaries, very much hoping it might happen while Rousseau was still alive.

The 1965-66 Montreal Canadiens, winners of the Stanley Cup and Prince of Wales Trophy as the NHL’s best team of the regular season. Bottom row, from left: Charlie Hodge, coach Toe Blake, chairman Hartland de Montarville Molson, Jean Beliveau, president David Molson, GM Sam Pollock, Gump Worsley. Second row: Jean-Guy Talbot, J.C. Tremblay, Terry Harper, Ted Harris, Jacques Laperriere, John Ferguson, Gilles Tremblay. Third row: Dick Duff, Ralph Backstrom, Claude Provost, Claude Larose, Bobby Rousseau, Henri Richard. Top row: trainer Eddy Palchak, Yvan Cournoyer, Dave Balon, Leon Rochefort, Noel Price, Jimmy Roberts, trainer Larry Aubut.

In his final years, Rousseau lived at home in Louiseville with his wife, Huguette. In the grip of Alzheimer’s, he enjoyed a love of painting he had discovered and the couple’s eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

For many Canadiens fans of a certain age, or those with a love of the team’s history, Rousseau will forever be remembered for his remarkable five-goal game. What they should also know is that he was unfailingly modest and forever put the team before any individual accomplishment.

“What I remember is that my famous game was on a Saturday night and it might have been the first time TV was showing replays,” he recalled years later. “Some of my friends were playing cards and they had the game on in the background.

“The next time I saw them, they thought I’d scored 10. All night long, all they heard was ‘Rousseau scores! Rousseau scores!’ ”

Top photo: Helmeted Bobby Rousseau with the puck behind Toronto’s net during a 1967 game at Maple Leaf Gardens. Others, from left: ahead of teammates David Keon, Yvan Cournoyer, Tim Horton, Dick Duff, goalie Johnny Bower and Darryl Sly and Allan Stanley.