Francis lived by family, faith, devotion to hockey until death at age 95

It is impossible to rank the stories that Emile Francis had filed in his scrapbooks but mostly between his ears, each one beautifully layered and deliciously rich.

But one tale that "The Cat" loved to tell was about his days as an altar boy, before hockey consumed his life.

A pioneer on and off the ice in the minor pros and the NHL, Francis died Saturday. He was 95, one year for each of the games he played in an NHL net.

From 1965-89, Francis coached and/or managed the New York Rangers, St. Louis Blues and finally the Hartford Whalers, most famously building the Rangers into a 1970s powerhouse with his scouting prowess and skills as a coach.

New York had qualified for the Stanley Cup Playoffs four times from 1951-64, never winning a series. With Francis in the general manager's office as architect (and often behind the bench as coach) before his dismissal midway through the 1975-76 season, the Rangers made the playoffs every season from 1966-67 through 1974-75. They advanced to the 1972 Stanley Cup Final but were without Jean Ratelle , their star center, who had been sidelined with a broken ankle late in the regular season. The Boston Bruins, led by Bobby Orr, won the championship in six games.

It's as close as Francis, a 5-foot-6, 145-pound proudly short-fused keg of dynamite, came to winning professional hockey's ultimate prize.

Emile Francis during his 12-plus years with the New York Rangers.

"We did it all that year except win the Stanley Cup," he would say. Francis worked tirelessly to grow the game of hockey in New York from the grassroots, as an organizer, speaker and motivator. In 1982, he was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in the Builders category and honored that year by the NHL and USA Hockey with the Lester Patrick Trophy "for outstanding service to hockey in the United States."

In 1989, he was elected to the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame, the honor from his native province as important a tribute in his eyes as any of the others. But as remarkable as Francis' career was in the NHL, it didn't even scratch the surface of his grand journey through the game he loved.

Emile Percy Francis, born Sept. 13, 1926 in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, learned the value of a dollar early in life, raised on the Canadian prairies during the Great Depression. A grade-school altar boy, he was told after a few months that he'd be working both a wedding and a funeral.

Emile Francis has a glove prepared by a Chicago Black Hawks trainer in 1947-48, and on the ice with (from left) Ralph Nattrass, coach Charlie Conacher, Bill Gadsby and John Mariucci.

"I'd get a whole dollar for the funeral, 50 cents for the wedding," Francis recalled at his Florida home in 2016, retracing his life's path. "Nobody told me the Bible would be much bigger for a funeral." He dropped that heavy Bible working his first funeral, toppling three candles onto the casket and into a pew of sobbing mourners.

"I go back to school and the nun is waiting for me," Francis said. "She told me, 'You will not be doing a funeral for some time.' I told her I understood, and all I could see was the dollar bill flying out the window."

It was at age 8 a few years earlier, having just lost his father, now largely raised by an uncle, when the lure of hockey proved too strong to resist. Without the 25 cents he needed for a ticket, Francis convinced Flin Flon Bombers defenseman Butch Stahan to smuggle him into the North Battleford arena beneath the player's overcoat for a game against the hometown Beavers. He would never look back, least of all at the ushers who were in futile pursuit.

Emile Francis with the 1947-48 Kansas City Pla-Mors and the 1950-51 New York Rangers.

Francis played hockey and baseball for his school, putting himself in goal to play the full 60 minutes, squeezing full value from the nickel it cost him for his share of ice rental. Later, a commercial team offered his modest pay in a paper bag, which his widowed mother opened to discover a chicken and a dozen eggs, priceless during the Depression. As a junior goalie, he was called "Cat" by a Saskatchewan sportswriter, a nod to his quick reflexes, and the nickname stuck forever.

Francis would be scouted by retired Bruins goalie Tiny Thompson, landing with the sad-sack Chicago Black Hawks for 73 games from 1946-48. As a 13-year-old, with a Bee Hive Golden Corn Syrup photo of Toronto Maple Leafs star Charlie Conacher taped on his bedroom wall, Francis dreamt of playing for Chicago. When he arrived with the Black Hawks, Conacher was his coach.

Francis was traded to the Rangers on Oct. 7, 1948 with forward Alex Kaleta for goalie Sugar Jim Henry. The Cat played 22 games for New York from 1948-52, a four-player trade July 20, 1953 with Cleveland of the American Hockey League bringing future goaltending legend Johnny Bower to the Rangers to begin his NHL career.

Emile Francis with the 1950-51 American Hockey League's Cincinnati Mohawks.

But Francis never lacked for work, playing 923 games continent-wide in senior and minor-pro hockey from 1945-60.
He lost eight teeth with a single puck while with New Haven in the late 1940s and had a shoulder dislocated so badly another time, he remembered "that when I was hit, I went down but my arm stayed up over the crossbar."

He considered himself lucky that he had his nose broken "only" eight times, with 200 stitches sewn into his unmasked face while shoulder, hip and knee surgeries were performed along the way.

His skills as an inventor revolutionized goaltending. As a junior, Francis modified a New York Yankees, George McQuinn-model first-baseman's mitt by having a shoemaker sew a leather cuff onto the webbed baseball glove. It was a colossal improvement over what was standard: a large, soggy, inflexible pad with fingers.

Emile Francis defends the Chicago Black Hawks goal in 1948 against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

It wasn't long after he had brought the crudely crafted trapper into the NHL that the game's best pros were wearing similar models made by C.C.M. and Rawlings. Francis didn't see a penny for the invention, not having secured a patent -- not that he knew, he joked, what a patent was.

Detroit Red Wings GM Jack Adams protested when the Cat wore it with Chicago, claiming an unfair advantage. Francis was ordered to present the glove for the authorization of NHL president Clarence Campbell, who signed off on it.

Francis retired as a player in 1960 and returned to his native Saskatchewan, coaching and managing baseball's North Battleford Beavers. Under his rule, the team won six Western Canada championships and represented Canada in the Global World Series in Milwaukee. But Francis missed hockey terribly. His coaching and managerial skills on the diamond didn't go unnoticed, a tug-of-war for his services quickly developing.

New York Rangers general manager Emile Francis with Bernie Geoffrion, the team's coach in 1968-69.

He finally chose the Rangers, running their junior operation in Guelph, Ontario, nurturing some of the organization's greatest young talents including Ratelle and the late Rod Gilbert, before being brought to New York as assistant to GM Muzz Patrick, taking the reins himself in the fall of 1964.

As important as hockey was to Francis, his family forever was his bedrock. He met Emma Lungal in Saskatchewan while she was studying to become a nurse; they would be married for 68 years, until her death Sept. 25, 2020.

Francis' devotion to Emma was such that after she took ill in 2008, only three times over 12 years did he spend a night away from home, and even then, reluctantly, once in December 2015 to accept the Wayne Gretzky International Award from the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame for his contributions to the sport in America, and then for the February and December 2018 Madison Square Garden jersey retirements of Ratelle and Vic Hadfield.

"I would never be able to do the things I did without Emma, believe me," Francis said. "While I worked around the clock to build my teams, she took the station wagon and transported our sons, Rick and Bob, to baseball, football, hockey. ... Our boys both ended up with hockey scholarships because of her. All I knew was where I lived, Madison Square Garden and the airport. But Emma knew New York, and she knew it like the back of her hand."

Emile Francis speaks during the Feb. 25, 2018 Madison Square Garden ceremony to retire the No. 19 of New York Rangers legend Jean Ratelle, who stands behind him. From left: Rod Gilbert, Ed Giacomin, Mike Richter, Mark Messier, Brian Leetch.

The couple's home near West Palm Beach was a museum, showcasing plaques, trophies, carvings, certificates, photos and a Rangers jacket and jersey. In his lived-in, book-lined office was a framed, autographed piece of art by the late, legendary expressionist LeRoy Neiman, who sketched Francis behind the Rangers' bench Dec. 26, 1965. On another wall hung a photo of himself shaking hands with former President of the United States Ronald Reagan.But none of the material souvenirs could hold a candle to what a long-ago altar boy held most dear.

"The three most important things have been my family, my faith, which I needed, and my friends," the Cat said when approaching his 90th birthday. "Because of them, and because of that, I was allowed to take part in what I think is the greatest game in the world."

Photos: Dave Stubbs; Turofsky, Le Studio du Hockey, Hockey Hall of Fame; Getty Images; Emile Francis Collection