Price, Canadiens set to reside at Toronto hotel Plante scorned

Legendary Montreal Canadiens coach Toe Blake would envy Claude Julien, who will lead his team into their Stanley Cup Qualifier against the Pittsburgh Penguins beginning Saturday in Toronto.

Canadiens goalie Carey Price will stay with his teammates at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, something that the late
Jacques Plante
more than once chose not to do with Blake's teams of the late 1950s and early 1960s -- driving his coach around the bend with distraction and frustration.
The Canadiens and five other Eastern Conference teams will live at the historic Royal York in a Secure Zone -- a bubble, in effect -- a couple blocks up Bay Street from Scotiabank Arena. The Canadiens (31-31-9, .500 points percentage) enter the Qualifiers as the No. 12 seed; they will play Pittsburgh, the No. 5 seed (40-23-6, .623), with the winner advancing to the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
For decades, the stately Royal York was the road address of every Original Six team visiting Toronto. Opened in 1929, the Royal York is just across Front Street from Union Station, the sprawling railway hub where trains transporting teams would arrive and depart, often overnight. Better yet for team management of that era, the hotel was a five-minute subway ride to Maple Leaf Gardens.
Canadiens coach Toe Blake and Jacques Plante on the ice at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens.
Of course, the 24 teams playing in the Qualifiers -- 12 each in Toronto and Edmonton -- won't be riding public transit; they'll be shuttled in a bubble by the NHL through the Secure Zone. Julien won't be seeing Price coming out of Toronto's subway, having spent the night not at the Royal York but up Yonge Street at a Courtyard by Marriott, which was the Westbury Hotel when it opened in 1957.
Plante was a six-time Stanley Cup champion with the Canadiens, including five in a row from 1956-60. He won the Vezina Trophy seven times, six with the Canadiens and once more with the St. Louis Blues in tandem with
Glenn Hall
in 1968-69.
He also was a goaltending pioneer who, like many innovators, marched to his own drummer. Plante introduced the mask to the NHL mid-game on Nov. 1, 1959, against Blake's wishes. In time, the facial protection would be adopted by every goalie in the League. He constantly railed against hockey injustices, real and perceived. Plante barked instructions at his defensemen, boldly wandered behind his net to cut off the puck and rushed it unlike any goalie before him; those tendencies, and other eyebrow-arching idiosyncrasies that were bizarre even by today's standards of quirky goalie behavior, drove Blake almost into therapy.

Goalie Jacques Plante watches Canadiens defenseman Jean-Guy Talbot chase Toronto's Dave Keon behind a Maple Leaf Gardens net during an early 1960s game.
"As soon as I got in the [Royal York] hotel, I'd seize up," Plante said, quoted in "The Jacques Plante Story," a 1972 biography by Andy O'Brien. "It was probably due to a disinfectant they used there. Maybe my idea grew to something mostly mental, but all I know is I couldn't breathe."
His distaste for the Royal York especially riled his coach. Asthmatic since his youth, Plante told Blake that his condition in Toronto was irritated to the point that he couldn't play. Plante also knew he had Blake boxed into a corner; the Canadiens' only backup for a game at Maple Leaf Gardens was a porous substitute provided by their bitter rival.
So the coach reluctantly allowed Plante to stay at the Westbury, a much newer hotel almost across the street from Maple Leaf Gardens. Further getting under Blake's skin was that Plante, famously careful with a dollar, would make his way down to the Royal York, often covering the mile and a half by foot to avoid subway fare and join his teammates for the Canadiens' free pregame team meal -- without ill effect.

Canadiens goalie Carey Price with Michel Plante, the late legend's son, in March 2019. Price holds a Plante action figure, Plante holds a replica of his father's first game-worn mask.
Plante's asthma was very real, even if it grew to mythical proportions. Then-Canadiens physiotherapist Bill Head regularly treated the goalie in the Montreal Forum clinic, saying Plante's issue "was about 75 percent physical." However, Head said before a playoff game in Boston that the goalie needed injections to curb the asthma "that had become 90 percent emotional. After the game, there wasn't a thing the matter with him."
Plante once told Blake in Toronto that his asthma had kicked up so badly that he'd be unable to play. Reminded by Blake that the goalie had stayed the night before at the Westbury, Plante replied, "But I dreamed I was sleeping in the Royal York."
Wrote O'Brien: "All that prima donna jazz could pass off with a chuckle or two as long as the team was winning."
When Plante was shipped to the New York Rangers in June 1963 for fellow goalie
Gump Worsley
as part of a blockbuster trade, his welcome finally worn out with the Canadiens front office, Rangers general manager Muzz Patrick told reporters that Plante wouldn't be required to go anywhere near the Royal York, even for team meetings or meals.

Toronto's Fairmont Royal York Hotel has been a part of the NHL for decades. Here, an accordionist prepares to entertain a ballroom luncheon on the day of the 1949 NHL All-Star Game, officially the League's third.
"If he wishes, we'll book a flight that lands in Toronto two hours before face-off time. In that way, he'll arrive at Maple Leaf Gardens full of vim and oxygen," Patrick said.
On March 12, 2019, Price passed Plante for all-time regular-season victories by a Canadiens goalie with his 315th. The previous April 3, Price had passed the Montreal icon for most regular-season games played in franchise history with his 557th.
Price is preparing to settle into the Royal York for Phase 4 of this surreal NHL season. It is more than four decades since the 1978 Hall of Fame induction of Plante, who was enshrined alongside forward
Andy Bathgate
and defenseman
Marcel Pronovost
. The Hall of Fame banquet was held that September in the ballroom of the Royal York. Plante accepted the honor in perfect health, though it's unclear whether he spent the night at the hotel.
What is known is that former NHL President Clarence Campbell, who had served in the NHL's top job from 1946-77, missed an induction ceremony for the first time since they had first been held more than 30 years earlier.
Campbell was back home in Montreal, recovering from a bout of asthma.
Photos: HHoF Images / Montreal Canadiens / Getty Images / Dave Stubbs