Canadiens forward Marcel Bonin shone in one unforgettable playoff series

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On a team of hockey legends, Marcel Bonin was a mere role player, except for one unforgettable playoff series.

Mr. Bonin, who has died at 93, was an aggressive checking forward whose nickname was Popeye for his muscular physique.

Sportswriters called the digger a “human buzzsaw in the corners,” while his ungraceful skating was compared to a “black squirrel scampering up a tree.” He was known for scoring garbage goals, shovelling home a rebound or deflecting a shot off his body from a more skilled player.

Beloved by his Montreal Canadiens teammates for his off-ice antics, which included such carnival stunts as chewing glass, piercing his skin with hat pins and walking on his hands, Mr. Bonin also had a reputation among hockey players for once having wrestled a bear.

In the 1959 Stanley Cup playoffs, the left-winger emerged as an unlikely hero on a roster including eight future members of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

In the semi-finals against Chicago, Montreal’s Maurice (Rocket) Richard was sidelined with an injury, so the Blackhawks decided to closely check Montreal’s top two scorers.

“We were out to stop Dickie Moore and Jean Béliveau,” Chicago coach Billy Reay said after losing the opening game by 4-2. “Unfortunately, we let Marcel Bonin get away. But that’s the way it is with a team like Canadiens. When you stop a couple of them, you spring a leak somewhere else.”

The scrappy winger scored the eventual winner, as well as an insurance goal. Mr. Bonin had not scored a goal in 25 previous NHL playoff games.

“I was wearing the Rocket’s gloves,” Mr. Bonin said, “and I guess they bring me luck.”

He continued using the borrowed gear as the Canadiens defeated Chicago in six games before knocking off the Toronto Maple Leafs in five games to claim the Stanley Cup. Mr. Bonin scored the winning goal in the final game, giving him an astonishing 10 goals in 11 playoff games.

He quipped that he became a scorer because he needed the championship bonus money to finance the building of a new home.

Joseph Jacques Marcel Bonin was born in Montreal in 1931 to the former Imelda Mondor and Lorenzo Bonin, a bus driver. (His baptismal certificate gives the date of Sept. 8, while Mr. Bonin gave his birthdate as Sept. 12.) When the boy was seven, his father drowned in the Bayonne River, near Berthierville, Que. His mother moved the family to Joliette, about 75 kilometres northeast of Montreal.

Young Marcel lived in an orphanage for two years and was boarding at a school run by the Sisters of Providence when he started playing hockey at age 10. He dropped out in Grade 7.

A travelling troupe with a wrestling bear came through Joliette one summer when he was a teenager. They offered $1,000 for anyone who could wrestle the 272-kilogram (600-pound) bruin into submission. Mr. Bonin punched his ursine opponent in the face, only to be taunted by the emcee that the four-legged mauler was a wrestler, not a boxer. The muzzled bear with clipped claws did not submit, but young Mr. Bonin put on enough of a show that he was paid to join the troupe for a few stops. Sitting in the stands, he would volunteer to fight the bear if no locals were up to the challenge. In later tellings, Mr. Bonin said the great boxer Joe Louis refereed the matches, though that seems more likely a colourful exaggeration.

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The winger began his junior career with the Trois-Rivières Reds in 1950-51, scoring 30 goals in 44 games to earn rookie-of-the-year honours in the Quebec Junior Hockey League. He moved up to major senior hockey the following season with the Quebec Aces, who won the Alexander Cup national championship.

The NHL’s Detroit Red Wings bought his rights, sending him to their St. Louis farm club before calling him up in late December 1952 to replace Lou Jankowski for a game against the Canadiens at the Forum in Montreal. Mr. Bonin recorded an assist in a 2-2 draw. The game is best known today as the NHL debut for goaltender Glenn Hall, who minded Detroit’s goal.

To compensate for not sharing a language, Mr. Bonin entertained teammates with skills learned on his short stint on the carnival circuit and from watching vaudeville acts.

“I couldn’t speak English at all,” he once told the author Frank Pagnucco, “but on the ice you don’t have to talk.”

The NHL guide listed the forward as several inches taller and a dozen pounds heavier than his 5-foot-7, 164-pound frame.

His lean stature hid a strongman’s build. Mr. Bonin was frequently the target of roughhousing in the minors. He had a long-running feud with Wally Clune, which lasted over several seasons and two different leagues on either side of the country. When angered, Mr. Bonin could be a ferocious opponent. In a game in Victoria, B.C., he broke the jaw and nose of defenceman Tony Schneider with two punches during a fight.

The forward fought less often when he came to the NHL. It was said he once was about to wade into an on-ice donnybrook when the referee warned him that if he did so, he would be fined. Mr. Bonin dropped his hands to his sides before bowing to the referee. “Fifty dollars, I no got,” he explained.

He first got his name engraved on the Stanley Cup with the Red Wings in 1955, though he managed just two assists in 11 playoff games. Seven weeks later, he was part of a nine-player trade with the Boston Bruins.

The Canadiens got his rights in 1957. He won three consecutive Stanley Cup championships with Montreal.

An operation for a slipped disc after colliding with Detroit’s Pete Goegan ended his career at age 29 in 1961. He had to wear a special corset for years afterwards. He retired with 97 goals and 175 assists in 454 NHL games.

Mr. Bonin worked for the police force in Joliette, where he was a shooting instructor.

He had only just been sworn in as a constable when he helped end a dramatic standoff with an armed man who had shot a police officer. More than 50 officers took cover during three hours of shooting by a gunman who barricaded himself in a hardware store. The incident ended after Mr. Bonin fetched the crazed man’s brother to make an appeal to surrender over a loudspeaker.

Mr. Bonin later served as a truant officer and an anti-drug advocate in area schools.

Though he had little formal education, Mr. Bonin amassed a large library of books in English and French focusing on the history of Quebec and New France.

In recent years, he was resident of a care home in Saint-Charles-Barromée, near Joliette.

Mr. Bonin died on Jan. 19. He was predeceased by his wife of 58 years, the former Simone Hétu, who died in 2013, aged 85. He leaves their four children: Richard, France, Manon and Michel. He also leaves three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Though he was far from a superstar, Mr. Bonin was beloved by residents of Joliette, where the hockey arena carries his name. The city held a day to honour him in 1958, including a luncheon, a parade, a golf tournament, a civic reception, and a dinner and dance. He was presented such gifts as a refrigerator, a fishing boat, and a washer and dryer. Mr. Bonin made a point of visiting the children in the orphanage he had once called home.

The Canadiens held a Marcel Bonin Night in 1962. Standing on a red carpet, he was presented gifts as well as $6,000 in cheques (more than $60,000 in today’s money). “I feel lost out here at centre ice,” he told the crowd at the Forum. “I’d feel more at home in the corners.”

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