Elmer Lach was 61 years into his retirement from the NHL, and about three-quarters of the way through his breakfast when I met him inside his nursing home in Beaconsfield, QC.
It was January 21, 2015. The day before Lach’s ninety-seventh and last birthday. He smiled as I sat down at his breakfast table, then took another bite of toast and began looking for someone to top up his orange juice.
His stepdaughter had warned me he never liked to talk during meals, but he let me ramble as he ate. He was among new friends he’d made in the nursing home. Men who’d spent parts of the 1940s and 50s sitting in the stands of the Montreal Forum, watching Lach lead the charge up centre-ice for the Canadiens. They counted themselves fortunate to now eat with him every morning.
I told Lach that I’d come to meet him because he was the oldest living NHL player and I wanted to spend some time with him on and around his birthday. He listened quietly until I explained that I’d arrived via Boston, where I’d just been visiting his old rival and friend, Milt Schmidt.
Lach looked up from his coffee with wide eyes and an excited grin. “Milt Schmidt!” he said.
I’d spent the previous two days chatting with Schmidt who was the oldest living Boston Bruin and the second oldest NHL player. I told Lach how Schmidt had reminisced about the days when Eddie Shore used to terrorize a depression-era NHL or the time Rocket Richard cross-checked him in the teeth. Lach chuckled at that last memory, as if recalling the incident.
Lach said he had some stories about Schmidt, and was ready to share them—“Milt was one of the best,” he said—but I stopped him.
He looked surprised when I told him I was hoping to talk more about himself. Seated in his wheelchair, he smiled and then went quiet again.
There was a humility to Lach that I’d already learned from the dozens of stories I’d read about him before this visit.
Lach was the centreman who’d anchored the famous Punch Line, scoring 215 goals while also feeding passes to the Rocket and Toe Blake. A former league MVP who played for the Canadiens from 1940 until 1954 he won three Stanley Cups, led the NHL in scoring twice and retired with more career points than any other player at the time. Yet he somehow didn’t earn the same degree of lasting appreciation as his line mates.
In retirement he lent Henri Richard the number off his sweater and didn’t seem bothered when the Canadiens later retired it in the Pocket Rocket’s honour.
Lach was a Hall of Famer, one of the team’s all-time greats, who’d scored the Cup winning goal in overtime back in 1953. But he’d never been one to brag about any of it and now here he was, going quiet when I started asking him questions about himself.
“He doesn’t talk much about his playing days,” his friend and neighbour at the residence, Ronald Gilbert said. “I ask him all the time: ‘Elmer, how did you feel when you won that Cup?’ But he does not really say.”
Then Lach, listening and smiling, piped in: “That was a long time ago.”
Born in Nokomis, Saskatchewan, just a few months after the NHL was formed and a few more before the end of World War I, Lach joined the Canadiens via the Moose Jaw Millers hockey club for the start of the 1940 season, arriving in the big city by train from the Prairies.
He remembered that first day in Montreal fondly and could still quote from the strangers who were surprised when he told them his luggage—which consisted of a toothbrush and a handkerchief—was in his back pocket.
Though the memories of his playing days were fading, he remembered the pain of the game—“I was hurt a lot,” he said, nodding as I enquired about the time he was rushed to hospital with a fractured skull or when doctors rewired his jaw.
He spoke of his first skates, which he said he borrowed from a neighbour. He had fond memories of skating on a pond back in Nokomis. Then he told me of his mother, whom he said he could no longer picture, but who he remembered saying: “Don’t get hurt” every time he slipped his feet into his skates.
“I never laced them up,” he said, of those first skates and every other pair he ever owned. “I used to just kick them off after the game.”
I was fascinated by the things he remembered most.
“What about that goal?” I asked. “The one that won you your last Cup?”
Lach’s reticence to reminisce with us about that particular goal was painful because his friends and I really wanted to know exactly how it felt as he threw his arms up in the air while Richard leapt into them, breaking Lach’s nose in the process.
Lach nodded as Gilbert recounted his own memories of following that game as a fan.
Nicknamed Elegant Elmer, his style of play wasn’t actually considered that elegant. Lach was an aggressive forward who often outshone even the Rocket. The two built a lasting friendship on the ice, which they carried into old age.
“What’s your fondest memory about the Rocket?” Gilbert asked him.
Lach paused for a moment, pondering the question, then smiled and said: “Fishing. We used to fish together in the summers.”
Lach, Gilbert and I continued chatting for a few hours exploring his memories from the game, looking through old photographs from his life, talking about his wife who’d passed away just a few months earlier, discussing his affinity for warm beer and his thoughts on the current Canadiens—Lach was now a fan like Gilbert, and enjoyed watching the team play on the TV by his bed.
Then Lach grew tired and said he was looking forward to nodding off in his chair, informing us that his favourite part of the day was the end when he got to close his eyes and fall asleep without a care.
I returned the next morning bearing a gift that I’d been entrusted with in Boston. It was a birthday card from Schmidt.
Lach was back at his breakfast table. He welcomed me and lit up again when I handed him the card, which featured a young Schmidt in full Bruins gear. Then he flipped it over and read the message. “To Elmer. One of the greatest. Wishing you the best.”
Lach held it for a long while in his hand, before saying: “That’s a nice card.”
Soon we retired to the lounge outside his room for a birthday gathering of family and friends. That’s where I left him, sipping on a warm Molson Canadian and listening peacefully as those who loved him regaled him with their own memories of his glorious past.
***
Elmer Lach died on April 4, 2015. He was 97 years old. With Lach’s passing, Milt Schmidt of the Boston Bruins has become the oldest living NHL player.
