Lambert displaying resilience on road back following hip, femur fractures

MONTREAL -- Yvon Lambert was a battleship on skates, one of the most durable, nearly indestructible players on the Montreal Canadiens’ 1970s dynasty.

His cuts were sewn shut with 300 or so stitches; he still has the scar on a shin from a slap shot that punctured his shin pad, that wound only discovered when he peeled off his equipment after the game.

So on Friday, Lambert, 76, was talking with a shrug from his Lakeshore General Hospital bed in the suburbs of Montreal, not quite four days after having undergone surgery for a fractured left femur -- the large weight-bearing thigh bone that runs from the hip to the knee -- and left hip.

Winner of the Stanley Cup four consecutive years with the Canadiens from 1976-79 and the author of one of the most memorable goals in franchise history, Lambert took a tumble in a friend’s home last Saturday, missing a step that he never saw.

Canadiens alumnus Yvon Lambert salutes Bell Centre fans during a pregame ceremony against the New York Rangers on Oct. 22, 2024.

“I just fell very hard on my left side,” Lambert told a hospital visitor. “I tried to get up but there was no way. Not by myself, and not with the boys who tried to help. So we called the ambulance, and here I am.”

Lambert arrived in the emergency ward of the hospital, which was strangely quiet on a Saturday nearing 10 p.m. A triage nurse noticed his ring that commemorates his four Stanley Cup victories – “Did you used to play hockey?” she asked him.

Taking a blood-thinning medication, Lambert couldn’t immediately be X-rayed. That was done on Sunday and Dr. Sevan Ortaaslan, the hospital’s chief surgeon, had Lambert on the table for a two-hour operation Monday afternoon.

“He knows his hockey,” Lambert joked of his surgeon. “When he came in to see me (Thursday), he said, ‘I know you. We’ve met. One of my nephews is a good friend of one of Serge Savard’s kids,’” referencing the Canadiens’ Hall of Fame defenseman and Lambert teammate.

Yvon Lambert (r.) and Serge Savard at the Canadiens’ Montreal Forum bench after Lambert’s overtime goal eliminated the Boston Bruins on May 10, 1979.

Lambert’s hero status in his native Quebec was forever cemented 9:33 into overtime on May 10, 1979, the left wing burying a perfect cross-ice pass from Mario Tremblay behind Boston Bruins goalie Gilles Gilbert.

That goal, still celebrated by many in this city more than 47 years after the fact, climaxed the famous “too many men” Stanley Cup semifinal game, Canadiens sniper Guy Lafleur having forced overtime with a power-play goal at 18:46 of the third period, coach Don Cherry’s Bruins penalized for having a sixth skater on Montreal Forum ice.

The 5-4 Game 7 victory eliminated Boston, sending the Canadiens to a five-game Stanley Cup Final breeze against the New York Rangers for their fourth straight championship.

Lambert scored 206 goals in his 683 regular-season NHL games, another 27 in 90 postseason games, but it’s his sensational 1979 overtime clincher against the Bruins that’s on the radar of every fan he meets. He deserves credit, too, for his overtime goal the following season that eliminated the Hartford Whalers from the preliminary round.

Montreal Canadiens alumni pose during the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs in front of the team’s Bell Centre showcase of 24 Stanley Cup miniatures. From left: Guy Carbonneau, Rejean Houle, Yvan Cournoyer, Serge Savard, Yvon Lambert, Patrice Brisebois and Gilbert Dionne.

A happy presence at almost every Canadiens home game, Lambert is a massively popular unofficial team ambassador, fans flocking to him with their memories of his dramatic goal against the Bruins.

In his hospital bed, Lambert spoke of his wife, Danielle Caron, having spent virtually the entire previous day fielding and returning calls and messages that were coming from well beyond the Canadiens’ tight family.

Mario Tremblay had been a visitor the day before; former teammates were draining the battery of his phone. Messages were arriving from Canada’s Atlantic provinces, from throughout Quebec and from far beyond.

At Lambert’s bedside was a Post-it Note with just a name and the year 1998.

Former Canadiens players Steve Begin (l.) and Yvon Lambert prepare to meet fans outside Bell Centre before Game Four of the 2026 Eastern Conference Final between the Carolina Hurricanes and Canadiens.

“This gentleman called the hospital -- he didn’t ask for me -- just to say, ‘Yvon signed an autograph for me in 1998,’ ” he said, shaking his head. “I’m afraid I don’t remember that autograph. I haven’t been signing in the hospital but I’ve been taking pictures.”

A gem on his wife’s phone taken Thursday is one of Lambert with Dr. Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, the retired Kansas City Chiefs guard who in 2020 won the NFL’s Super Bowl. The McGill University Faculty of Medicine graduate was spending at least part of the week at the Lakeshore General.

I’d brought Lambert an assortment of 1970s hockey magazines and two paperbacks of French hockey poetry to help him pass the time. He grinned at the sight of legendary Canadiens defenseman Larry Robinson – “Ahh, Big Bird!” – on the March 1977 Hockey Illustrated cover.

The last time I’d been at this hospital to visit a former Canadiens player mending from a broken hip was in 2011, Hall of Fame Punch Line center Elmer Lach having taken a fall at home. I took a photo that day of Lach’s stepdaughter, Denise, giving him a shave, to match a 1945 shot of a Montreal barber razoring him after his broken cheekbone was anchored with a steel “birdcage” device.

Montreal Canadiens Punch Line center Elmer Lach, nursing a broken cheekbone in 1945, is shaved in Montreal Western Hospital by barber Johnny Scocco; and Lach, with a broken hip in 2011, is shaved by his stepdaughter, Denise Morel, at Lakeshore General Hospital.

“I think I’m ready for a shave, too,” Lambert said, studying the photos of Lach while rubbing his whiskered chin.

In uniform, the native of Drummondville, Quebec was nearly bulletproof. He played 60 of the Canadiens’ 80 games in 1973-74, often a healthy scratch with the team deep at left wing, but he’d play all 80 the following season, missing only 15 games the next six seasons, scoring 32 goals in 1974-75 and 1975-76. He played 77 of 80 games with Buffalo in 1981-82, claimed by the Sabres in the October 1981 NHL waiver draft, to finish his career.

Lambert played an aggressive, rugged style, wearing bruises and suture scars as a reward. The fractured hip and femur, he said, was much more painful than anything he suffered as a player.

“I had a tough injury at age 19 in my final year of junior, taking a stick in the eye,” he recalled. “I was in the hospital for three days without being able to move. But once I came up and started playing with Mario (Tremblay) and Doug Risebrough, I was a regular for seven years.

From left, friends and teammates Mario Tremblay, Doug Risebrough and Yvon Lambert celebrate winning the Stanley Cup against the 1978 Boston Bruins at Boston Garden.

“I was tough on myself. When I fell down, I always tried to get up. I remember (New York Islanders defenseman) Denis Potvin, he’s the kid who hurt me the most. He’d cross-check me high on the arm, I’d get his stick on the wrists and ankles. I’d skate to the bench not showing anything, even if I couldn’t feel my hand or arm. I didn’t want them to see I was in pain.”

The shattered shin pad was courtesy of late, opposing defenseman Carol Vadnais.

“I stopped Carol’s slap shot right in the middle of my shin,” Lambert said. “After the game, my pad was full of blood and there was a hole in the plastic. All my stitches I got 'cold.' I’d tell the doc, ‘Go ahead, just do it, I have to get back out there.’ But this one, when he put the needle in the shin bone, (French expletive), I told the doc, ‘Please freeze it.’ For three little stitches.”

Lambert hopes to be discharged from the hospital this weekend and return, if briefly, to his home about a half-hour east, nearer Montreal. He expects to soon head to a rehabilitation facility to continue his recovery and rebuild his strength.

Yvon Lambert carries the puck in front of Canadiens defenseman Larry Robinson during an early 1970s game at the Montreal Forum.

Gone now is a cruise to Norway scheduled from Sept. 12-24. He was booked to coach four games of recreational hockey for participants while touring Norway’s fjords and several cities, Lambert and his wife having been popular regulars on similar trips for years.

“When I look back now, I was kind of lucky to have just fractured the femur and hip,” he said. “I could have hit my head on the way down. There was no damage to my shoulder or elbow, just a bit to my ankle. Who knows what could have happened?”

Then, with a grin, Lambert always finding the bright side.

“When I go home, there are only nine steps to the house. I’ll stay on the ground floor. We’ll see how strong Danielle is. And this morning, I walked down the hallway.”

Top photo: Yvon Lambert in a 1970s Montreal Canadiens portrait, and with his wife, Danielle Caron, in his Lakeshore General Hospital room on Aug. 21, 2026.