It was the enormity of Claude Lemieux that first pulled Ron Filion in. It was impossible to avoid. The boy was a giant. Not by measure alone, but presence — a dynamic force that others orbited.
And so, before all else — before he was “Pepe,” or a Conn Smythe winner, a pest, a villain, a playoff star, a four-time champion — before it all, Lemieux was “Le Gros.”
“The Big,” said Filion, who first gave Lemieux the nickname when they played together on the same AAA minor hockey team when they were 15. “He was always so big.”
The texts rolled on the first report. Filion did not believe it, could not believe it. A life so large doesn’t just go away.
“A joke,” he thought. A fleeting hope.
Lemieux had looked good just days before, walking through fans parting in the Bell Centre concourse. Lines by his eyes, a crease off his smile, shadowy grey hair, trimmed neat — but a well-aged man at 60, skin kissed by the Florida sun. In his red and blue Canadiens sweater, No. 32, Lemieux smiled and carried a flame toward a darkened rink.
Just days before. That was Monday. The Canadiens were about to play the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference final.
The Canadiens reached out to Lemieux during the team’s series against the Buffalo Sabres, asking him to bear the torch if they advanced.
As a rookie, Lemieux scored one of the most famous goals in Habs history in Game 7 of the second round of the 1986 playoffs, backhanding the puck in the top corner, over the glove of Hartford Whalers goalie Mike Liut. Lemieux galloped across the Forum, diving as his teammates embraced him.
Lemieux, who had transitioned to working as an NHL agent after his playing career ended, checked with Hurricanes goalie Frederik Andersen, his client, before accepting the Canadiens’ request. He was excited to go.
But now it was Thursday.
Filion called Jocelyn Lemieux, Claude’s younger brother, who confirmed his death.
“It’s a tough day,” said Filion. His voice fell: “We go way back.”
As texts and calls followed news reports, the NHL community grappled with the loss of one of that era’s most respected and notorious players.
Since his rookie season, Lemieux was known as “Pepe” — a reference to Pepé Le Pew, the dashing but putrid cartoon skunk.
“A strong, powerful player,” said Liut, who Lemieux often ribbed for allowing the Game 7 winner. “He played with a tremendous amount of force.”
Lemieux grew up in Mont-Laurier, a small town in western Quebec, pretending to be Larry Robinson and Guy Lafleur as he played street hockey. A few weeks after scoring the Game 7 winner, Lemieux played in the Stanley Cup Final, alongside an aging Robinson and a group of rookies, such as Patrick Roy. During a pile-on brawl near the end of Game 4 against the Calgary Flames, Lemieux bit Jim Peplinski’s finger — launching his reputation as one of the game’s dirtiest players.
“He was a bulldog,” said Doug Gilmour, remembering Lemieux’s imposing force in the 1989 Stanley Cup Final, when the Calgary Flames beat the Habs. “A pain in the ass to play against, you want him on your team.”
Michael Farber, who covered Lemieux for the Montreal Gazette and later with Sports Illustrated, saw him as a player who broke rules tactically.
“He believed that he didn’t have to monitor his own behavior. He thought that was the referee’s job,” Farber said. “He was not immoral — he was amoral. And that’s an important distinction.”
Lemieux was known for diving on the ice, embellishments that drew the anger of opponents, Farber said, and often his own teammates. But in interviews, Lemieux never apologized for the way he played the game.
“That’s one of the things I appreciated about him,” Farber said. “He was remarkably self-aware.”
There was always a clear distinction between the morally ambiguous, hyper-competitive player on the ice and the person he was off the ice.
After the New Jersey Devils lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 1993 playoffs, the team went out for drinks to commiserate. Lemieux, who had a few, asked teetotaling rookie Scott Niedermayer to drive him home. When they arrived in the early morning hours, Lemieux told the 20-year-old defenseman to take the bedroom. The eight-year veteran crashed on his own couch.
“A big crier. A big softie,” said Brendan Shanahan, who headlined the Detroit Red Wings through a bloody rivalry with the Colorado Avalanche in the late ’90s, which was sparked by Lemieux hitting Kris Draper with his head down in Game 6 of the 1996 Western Conference final. Lemieux left Draper with a fractured jaw, broken cheekbone and a broken nose.
To those who knew him, Lemieux could be surprisingly vulnerable, Shanahan said, noting the friendship Lemieux forged with Red Wings enforcer Darren McCarty despite multiple fights in their careers.
“Sort of hidden behind that reputation on the ice, he was a very sweet and sensitive man.”
When he was younger, Lemieux was often heard singing songs by Ginette Reno, the popular French-Canadian artist known for her emotional ballads. On road trips, if there was a microphone in a piano bar, Lemieux would find it.
“He was not a shy guy in any regard,” said Niedermayer. “He loved being in the spotlight.”
On the ice, Lemieux had a special knack for finding that light, especially in the playoffs. While descriptors such as “pesky,” “agitator” and “dirty” led headlines throughout his career, Lemieux was also one of the NHL’s best playoff performers.
“He was a winner,” said Daniel Briere, who played alongside Lemieux with the Phoenix Coyotes near the end of his career. “If you needed to find a way to win, he would go through hoops to do anything possible to win that game.”
In more than two decades in the NHL, Lemieux won the Stanley Cup four times — with the Canadiens, Avalanche and twice with the Devils. He was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1995. He scored 80 playoff goals, ninth most in NHL history, before retiring for the first time in 2003.
Lemieux always stayed close to the game. In the mid-2000s, Lemieux and Filion, his minor hockey teammate, reunited in Phoenix, where they launched a hockey school. Lemieux had three sons and a daughter; his youngest son, Brendan, was a high-level player, and Lemieux coached him, alongside a rising star named Auston Matthews.
Lemieux made a brief NHL comeback in 2009, at 43, with the San Jose Sharks — before finally retiring for good. But the showman never really hung up his skates. Later that year, Lemieux dazzled fans as a contestant on CBC’s “Battle of the Blades,” ice dancing alongside figure skater Shae-Lynn Bourne. During the competition, Lemieux recorded a version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” His voice fell across a silent rink as Lemieux and Bourne twirled in the spotlight.
Later, Lemieux became an NHL agent, representing Andersen and other current players such as Hampus Lindholm and Moritz Seider. He also represented his son Brendan, who played seven seasons in the NHL, emulating his father’s reputation as an agitator.
“I love you dad!,” Brendan wrote in an Instagram post, with a photo on the ice with his father, holding his infant son. “My son’s favorite person is going to watch from above for a while. We will see you.”
On Thursday, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office told The Athletic that deputies responded early to a suicide attempt at a furniture showroom, which state records show is in Lake Park, Fla., and is owned by Lemieux and his wife, Deborah.
The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s Office later confirmed Lemieux’s death but declined to release any records, citing a Florida statute exempting suicide cases from public records requirements.
Lemieux’s former NHL colleagues shared disbelief at the reports.
“It hurts,” Niedermayer said. “I don’t even know if I believe it yet.”
Filion’s calls with his old friend grew more sporadic in recent years, after Lemieux moved to Florida. But it was never too long before they’d reconnect, he said — and never a thought they wouldn’t get the chance.
“He was just the same guy,” Filion said of their final call.
The last time Filion saw Lemieux was on the screen, ahead of Game 3, walking through a dark tunnel at the Bell Centre.
Lemieux entered the bowl, roars stirring like a restless sea. A hero’s welcome, a villain’s tribute. He raised both his arms, as though he’d just scored an overtime winner. Torch held high, Lemieux smiled, seeming as large as he’d ever been.
If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
— Chris Johnston, Michael Russo and Arpon Basu contributed to this report.
