"Finally, Vic got knocked out of the game and he said, 'I'm off, see you guys later,'" Park said.
About 10 minutes later, the hotel manager comes down and throws the players out of the room for cheating him out of quarters. According to Park, Hadfield previously told the manager about the napkins.
For all the laughs that will be shared this weekend, Hadfield's teammates know that the man being honored will be profoundly emotional when his number is raised to the rafters.
"Last year, Vic was sitting next to me and Jean at the Saturday dinner the night before Jean's number was retired," Gilbert said. "I said, 'Vic, if you'd been a little bit nicer to us, learned a couple of French words, we could have brought you up to the rafters with us. But you know, you weren't too nice about it, telling us, 'Speak English.'' I said, 'We can't do that because we're talking about you.'
"The next night on the ice at the Garden, I announced that his number was going to be retired and my God, was he excited. We set him up pretty good."
For Gilbert, it was a bit of sweet payback for Hadfield having soured a rookie's date in Detroit more than half a century ago.