St. Laurent, 5-time Stanley Cup winner, earned 90 cents in final paycheck

MONTREAL -- It's little secret that players in the so-called "Original Six" NHL often had trouble making ends meet. The 120 players on the six NHL teams between 1942-67 played much more for the love of the game than for the meagre pay they would take home.

Even at that, it's unlikely there's a more remarkable uncashed check than that made out to late five-time Stanley Cup champion Dollard St. Laurent in his final season of pro hockey, playing defenseman for the 1962-63 Quebec Aces of the American Hockey League.

Zero dollars and 90 cents, dated April 14, 1963, the pay stub reading, in French, "Adjustment to Salary."

There's no record of why St. Laurent was paid this dollar less a dime, the check co-signed by two Aces officials. Happily for the player, there was no tax withheld on the sum.

Dollard St. Laurent's final paycheck as a professional player -- 90 cents paid to him by the American Hockey League's Quebec Aces on April 14, 1963.

Dollard St. Laurent's final paycheck as a professional player -- 90 cents paid to him by the American Hockey League's Quebec Aces on April 14, 1963.

St. Laurent died at age 85 on April 6, 2015. He had been in delicate health for a few years, having triple-bypass surgery at age 78 following a cardiac complication of 20 years earlier that was treated with medication.

His passing was the most recent blow of many suffered by the Canadiens family in what was a tremendously hard year.

Four months earlier, the Canadiens lost iconic captain Jean Beliveau; less than two days before St. Laurent's death, 97-year-old "Punch Line" center Elmer Lach had slipped away, predeceased by defenseman Carol Vadnais, industrious forward Gilles Tremblay and former coach Claude Ruel.

Patrick St. Laurent, one of Dollard's sons, shared the uncashed check last week, a gem he discovered when he sifted through boxes containing some of the bits and pieces of his father's career. With it was an invitation to the civic-ceremony dedication of an arena in LaSalle, just west of Montreal, on Aug. 31, 2001, that would carry Dollard St. Laurent's name.

Dollard St. Laurent in a 1950s photo taken at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens.

St. Laurent was a classic "stay-at-home" defenseman of his era. He arrived with the Canadiens for three games beginning March 1, 1951, having skated to the NHL through a farm system that included the Montreal Junior Canadiens and the senior-league and semipro Montreal Royals.

His NHL career lasted 12 seasons, a member of the Stanley Cup-champion Canadiens in 1953, 1956, 1957 and 1958, then the Chicago Black Hawks in 1961.

"Dolly" wasn't exactly a scoring threat. He had 162 points (29 goals, 133 assists) in 652 regular-season NHL games -- 19 goals for the Canadiens over eight seasons, 10 more for Chicago over four more. That's one goal for every 22 1/2 games.

In 92 playoff games, 80 for the Canadiens and 12 more with the Black Hawks, he scored twice with 22 assists.

The puck at his feet, Dollard St. Laurent pins Toronto's Harry Watson to goalie Jacques Plante's net, referee Red Storey blowing the play dead, during a 1954-55 game at Maple Leaf Gardens.

But he more than made up for his economical offense with his outstanding defensive play. This was a 5-foot-11, 205-pound wrecking ball who was unfailingly dependable, a freight train on skates who was as solid as a boxcar.

Today's NHL players owe St. Laurent a debt of thanks for his involvement in the early days of the formation of the NHL Players' Association. He did so at personal sacrifice, traded from his hometown Canadiens to Chicago on June 3, 1958, for cash and future considerations because of Montreal's unhappiness with his union work -- no matter what team management said at the time.

In 2007, a month after his bypass surgery, the native of Montreal-district Verdun joked of his heart plumbing having been a flesh wound, relatively speaking, then flipped through his catalog of "the real stuff."

Dollard St. Laurent (r.) and fellow defenseman Elmer "Moose" Vasko as members of the Chicago Black Hawks during the 1960-61 NHL season.

At various times, St. Laurent played with a fractured jaw, broken fingers and a shattered clavicle, and he took uncounted hundreds of stitches.

"Maybe I didn't need all of the stitches," he said with a laugh, almost in confession. "When you needed, say, three, you'd tell (Canadiens) trainer Bill Head, 'Gimme seven or eight,' because the insurance paid you 10 bucks per stitch."

In 1955, St. Laurent didn't miss a single playoff game despite spending off days in the hospital being treated for boils on his thighs that left him almost unable to walk, but those were all hiccups next to the best/worst of all sustained during the 1962-63 season with the Aces.

From left, Al Arbour, goalie Glenn Hall, Garry Edmundson, referee Lou Farelli, Dollard St. Laurent and Tod Sloan on Jan. 27, 1960, action at Maple Leaf Gardens between Toronto and the Chicago Black Hawks.

"We were in Pittsburgh when I hit a guy at the blue line," he recalled. "It hurt, so I taped it up over my sock. Probably between periods."

It was when St. Laurent couldn't walk after the game that he finally told coach Floyd Curry, a Canadiens teammate for their four Stanley Cup wins, that he was feeling a little discomfort.

"Floyd looked down," St. Laurent remembered, "and said, 'It might have something to do with the fact you have a bone sticking out the back of your leg. Why don't you take a bus back to Montreal and have it looked at?'"

With that, he boarded the cramped motorcoach and rolled home from Pittsburgh to get treatment, having played that night with a bone shearing through his skin, a wool stocking and a roll of adhesive tape wound around the limb in a crude bid to hold it together.

The 1952-53 Stanley Cup-champion Montreal Canadiens. Bottom row, from left: Jacques Plante, Maurice Richard, Elmer Lach, Bert OImstead, coach Dick Irvin, GM Frank Selke, Bernie Geoffrion, Billy Reay, Gerry McNeil. Middle row: PR manager Camil Desroches, Calum Mackay, Dickie Moore, Dick Gamble, Ken Mosdell, Floyd Curry, Lorne Davis, Paul Masnick, PR assistant Frank Selke Jr. Top row: Trainer Hec Dubois, Doug Harvey, Johnny McCormack, Eddie Mazur, Bud MacPherson, Butch Bouchard, Tom Johnson, Dollard St. Laurent, trainer Gaston Bettez.

St. Laurent wound up in Quebec after being sold to the Aces by the Black Hawks on Sept. 7, 1962. He balked at the minor-league salary he was offered and even faced the threat of suspension for failing to report.

"His only reaction was to reach for his golf clubs," Montreal Star columnist Red Fisher wrote of how St. Laurent viewed the sale, for undisclosed cash. "It started last season when the people brayed at him from the Chicago Stadium balconies. An athlete accepts this kind of treatment because the people pay for the privilege of heaping scorn on the actors.

"It means trouble, though, when a coach listens to the screeching. Suddenly, a man who has played many good years finds himself on the bench and shadows start to lengthen."

In the end, St. Laurent arrived in the provincial capital for his final pro season, a rock-solid presence on defense and a hugely popular figure among fans who knew him well from his NHL days and loved that he left many opposing forwards as smudges on the boards.

Chicago Black Hawks defensemen Al Arbour (l.), Dollard St. Laurent (c.) and Pierre Pilote pose for a training-camp photo on Oct. 6, 1959.

He enjoyed his season in Quebec, no matter that the protruding bone brought down the curtain on his playing days. His time with the Aces was a perfect springboard into post-hockey business, sending him into a career in insurance sales with his brother.

When he left Chicago in 1962, St. Laurent joked -- maybe -- to Black Hawks superstars Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita and Glenn Hall that his exit would jinx the team and that they'd ever again win the Stanley Cup.

The "St. Laurent Curse" held fast for a half-century, until the Blackhawks ended their drought in 2010. When that Stanley Cup Final began, St. Laurent told a visitor to his Montreal-area home that he was ready to lift his curse, pulling for the Blackhawks against the Philadelphia Flyers. He was predicting Chicago in six games.

Dollard St. Laurent (r.), Montreal Canadiens teammate Jean-Guy Talbot and an employee of Toronto's Royal York Hotel peruse the Jan. 21, 1958, edition of the Toronto Daily Star. The Canadiens defeated the Maple Leafs 2-0 the following night, St. Laurent earning an assist on Jean Beliveau's insurance goal.

Despite having the Canadiens' CH tattooed on his heart, he tugged on a white road Blackhawks jersey that day for a photo and clenched his ham-size fists to flash two big rings that were almost as bright as his grin: a diamond-encrusted 1961 Chicago Stanley Cup tribute ring on his left ring finger, his smaller Canadiens' tribute ring, commemorating four wins with Montreal, on his right pinky.

He spoke fondly of his 1960-61 Blackhawks, a team that was hardly dominant through the regular season, their 29-24-17 record ranking them third in the six-team NHL. That was 17 points inferior to the League-leading 41-19-10 Canadiens, whom they'd face in the first round of the playoffs.

Chicago pulled a stunning upset of Montreal in a six-game semifinal, ending the Canadiens' run of five consecutive championships, before defeating the fourth-seeded Detroit Red Wings in a six-game Final to win the Stanley Cup.

"At a certain point, we wouldn't lose to anybody," Dolly said that day. "The guys realized we had a good team and if we played together, we could really go far."

Two weeks after the 2010 talk on his balcony, St. Laurent was on the phone with great happiness in his voice.

"What'd I tell you?" he crowed. "Curse lifted!"

Chicago won in six, a victory to this former champion that was worth 90 cents and a great deal more.

Top photo: Dollard St. Laurent in a 1950s Montreal Canadiens portrait, and a Sept. 7, 1962, Montreal Gazette report of his sale by the Chicago Black Hawks to the Quebec Aces of the American Hockey League.