Brad Park, the best defenseman of his generation not named Bobby Orr, played 13 seasons with Ratelle, first with the Rangers, then the Bruins after the two were famously traded together on Nov. 7, 1975 in exchange for forward Phil Esposito and defensemen Carol Vadnais and Joe Zanussi.
Emile Francis, the former Rangers general manager who traded the pair, strongly believes that Park's No. 2 should now be retired and hung alongside Ratelle's No. 19 at the Garden.
Ratelle was coming into his prime in 1968-69, having played 259 games for the Rangers when Park broke into the NHL with New York at age 20.
"Watching Jean day in and day out in practices and the games, he basically taught me the game," Park said. "It was just amazing. And because of him, my practices were harder than the games.
"Jean was the consummate professional. One thing that always stood out in my mind was that whatever the play dictated is where the puck went. He could be playing with somebody he hated, it didn't matter. If that was the play, that's where the puck went. You'd see him on lines where one guy was a shooter and the other guy an enforcer. If the play called for the puck to go to the enforcer, that's where it went. Everything was on the money."
Former Bruins forward Stan Jonathan laughed when told that Ratelle didn't have a single fighting major in his 1,403 NHL games, regular season and Stanley Cup Playoffs.
"I would have given him a few of mine," Jonathan joked recently in Boston, where he was a teammate of Ratelle for six seasons. "We had a few injuries in 1977-78 and I got to play on his line. If someone bothered him or took a run at him, I was there for him.
"Jean showed me little things to help my skating that year and I wound up with 27 goals, believe it or not. Jean told me, 'Just keep moving, don't stop and I'll get it to you.' I was 22, he was 38, and I couldn't keep up to him. When he retired in 1981, he came up to me, shook my hand, gave me a hug and said, 'Thank you for giving me an extra couple of years in the League.' He's a classy, classy man. It was an honor to call him a teammate."