Goyette remembered for clean living on, off ice

MONTREAL -- The late Phil Goyette was assessed only 123 penalty minutes during his 940-game NHL career that spanned 16 seasons between 1957-72.

There’s probably a good reason for that -- Goyette would have had a difficult time in confession, having played his first serious hockey as a teenager for the junior- and senior-league Resurrection parish teams in the Montreal-suburban Lachine Church League.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have been in the sin bin.”

A four-time Stanley Cup champion with the Montreal Canadiens, winning in each of his first four NHL seasons, Goyette died Saturday at age 92. He had been in delicate health in recent months, in an assisted-living home not far from his hometown of Lachine.

Goyette was the second-oldest living Canadiens player, behind only Reg Abbott, 95, who skated his three NHL games for Montreal in 1952-53.

Phil Goyette (r.) with Montreal Canadiens teammate Claude Provost photographed during the 1960 Stanley Cup Final. It would be Goyette’s fourth championship win, coming in his fourth NHL season.

The 5-foot-11, 170-pound center -- nicknamed The Professor, Thin Man and the Splendid Splinter -- played on the last four of the five championships the Canadiens dynasty won from 1956-60. None are left among the 12 men who played on all five Cup winners; only Andre Pronovost, 89, remains among those who won four straight between 1957-60.

Goyette would finish his NHL career with 674 points (207 goals, 467 assists), with another 94 playoff games yielding 46 points (17 goals, 29 assists).

His travels took him from the Canadiens to the New York Rangers from 1963-69, the St. Louis Blues in 1969-70, the Buffalo Sabres from 1970 through 37 games in 1971-72, then back to the Rangers for his final eight games.

It was with coach Scotty Bowman’s Blues that Goyette was voted winner of the Lady Byng Trophy in 1970, awarded annually “to the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability.”

Phil Goyette in a dressing-room portrait taken at Toronto Maple Leaf Gardens during the late 1950s.

The silky playmaker graduated from church hockey to four years of junior -- two each with the Montreal Nationale and Montreal Junior Canadiens, captain of the latter for coach Bowman in 1953-54 -- then to his pro debut with Cincinnati of the International Hockey League, winning IHL MVP honors with the Canadiens farm team for his 92 points (41 goals, 51 assists) in 57 games in 1954-55.

Goyette was brought north to the senior Montreal Royals of the Quebec Hockey League, a pipeline to the Canadiens, moving up to the big team for his NHL debut on Feb. 21, 1957. He played 14 regular-season games and all 10 in the postseason, earning his first Stanley Cup victory.

The bonus money for the playoffs was of huge value; Goyette stretched to make ends meet on his $7,500 base salary.

The 1959-60 Stanley Cup-champion Montreal Canadiens. Phil Goyette is seen in the bottom row, second from left.

He would be an important role player for coach Toe Blake’s Canadiens, offensive skills taking a back seat to his checking assignment with Pronovost and Claude Provost on teams that were rich in centers; Jean Beliveau, Henri Richard and Donnie Marshall were ahead of him on the depth chart.

“I was pretty good with the puck,” Goyette said of his playmaking skills. “I just tried to control the play, then feed my wingers.”

Quietly effective, a key cog in Montreal's championship gears, his largest headlines came on June 4, 1963 when he was part of a seven-player blockbuster trade between the Canadiens and Rangers.

Montreal Star coverage of the June 4, 1963 trade between the Canadiens and Rangers, sending Phil Goyette to New York as part of a seven-player deal that exchanged future Hall of Fame goalies Jacques Plante and Gump Worsley.

Goyette was packaged with pioneer goalie Jacques Plante and fellow center Marshall in exchange for goalie Gump Worsley and forwards Dave Balon, Leon Rochefort and Len Ronson.

He’d be on the move again in 1969, having just won the Lady Byng, traded to the Blues on June 10 for the Rangers’ first pick (Andre “Moose” Dupont) in the 1969 NHL Draft.

The Sabres claimed Goyette a year to the day later in the NHL Expansion Draft, Buffalo his home until he was sold to the Rangers on March 5, 1972.

New York Rangers’ Phil Goyette in 1964 Madison Square Garden action against Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Johnny Bower and defenseman Red Kelly.

He’d already been contemplating retirement at the turn of 1972, having played his final game with the Sabres on Dec. 29, 1971, but gave it one last go with the Rangers when his contract was sold.

“Hockey has been very good to me, but I just can’t take it anymore,” he told a Canadian Press writer in January 1972. “I just don’t feel the get up and go. I don’t have the enthusiasm. There’s no use trying to force things after that.”

He joked that coaching probably wasn’t in his future, his perfect 1-0 record behind the bench established when Sabres coach Punch Imlach gave him the reins for one game, sidelined with injury, and he won 6-3 at the Pittsburgh Penguins.

But the expansion New York Islanders came calling with a steep hockey challenge that ultimately would prove insurmountable. Goyette’s Islanders went 6-38 with four ties to start the 1972-73 season before he was replaced by Earl Ingarfield.

Rangers’ Phil Goyette stays close to Boston Bruins rookie Bobby Orr during a 1966-67 game at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

His post-hockey life would be anything but quiet. During the offseason of his playing days, he worked a summer job with a family customs brokerage, sliding into that fulltime in retirement for more than four decades.

And his days out of skates gave him more opportunity to pursue golf, a second love. He and fellow former Canadiens Elmer Lach and Dollard St. Laurent were practically brothers on local fairways and greens in the Montreal area, Goyette and Lach having had a deep hockey connection.

Lach coached Goyette with the 1956-57 Montreal Royals, the latter brightly recalling at a 2007 charity breakfast the Royals playing out west at altitude, in thin air.

“Elmer kept asking me, ‘Are you OK for one more shift?’” Goyette said. “He figured I must have needed more sugar, so he just kept stuffing gum in my mouth. ‘One more shift? One more shift?’

“I finally told him, ‘Yes Elmer, but only if you stop shoving gum into me because I can’t breathe,’ ” Goyette’s cheeks bulged by an imaginary wad.

Best friends Dollard St. Laurent (l.), Elmer Lach (c.) and Phil Goyette in 1950s Montreal Canadiens portraits.

That story, and many others, flowed freely as they posed for photos and signed autographs for dozens of young fans who knew them only because of the CH crest they wore at breakfast, playfully pulling on modern jerseys to recreate 1950s black-and-white portrait poses.

Together, Lach, St. Laurent and Goyette happily worked the banquet circuit, attending fundraisers, barbeques and golf tournaments, spreading goodwill among fans and strengthening a bond of friendship that went back more than a half-century.

“We’ve stuck together for this long because the Canadiens were always like family,” Goyette said that day. “That’s why you won so much. We helped each other out every which way.”

Lach and St. Laurent died two days apart in April 2015. There’s a good chance they’re booking tee times now for a threesome that’s reunited once more.

Goyette was predeceased by his wife, Ginette, and a son, Stephen. His daughters, Lianne and Suzanne, have planned a memorial service for Feb. 27 in Montreal-suburban Dorval.

Top photo: Phil Goyette with an eight-stitch cut on his chin following his three-goal performance at the Montreal Forum on Jan. 22, 1960, and as captain of coach Scotty Bowman’s Montreal Junior Canadiens during the 1953-54 season.