With Canadiens’ Gump Worsley pulled on a delayed Rangers penalty, Giacomin saw his opening. The puck he fired rink-length was stopped only by the thick snow in Worsley’s abandoned crease.
When he reminisced in 2008, Giacomin was dividing his time between Michigan and a cottage in Sudbury while doting on his grandchildren.
He had kept only the catching glove from his playing days. Giacomin’s 1987 Hall of Fame ring was out there somewhere; he believed it was lost at a border crossing years earlier. He hadn’t gone to auction with his memorabilia, like many contemporaries, having donated virtually all of it to the Toronto shrine.
As the Canadiens prepared to honor his old team, Giacomin said he might be considering his great, successful rival when he looked at his bare finger.
“I can’t get over it,” he said, chuckling. “We worked so hard to win a Stanley Cup ring that never came, and they just get rid of theirs.”
As for Cournoyer, who won 10 championships? Giacomin met his nemesis in 2007 in Montreal, at a Bell Centre gala honoring Canadiens icon Jean Beliveau, and greeted him warmly.
“I said to Yvan, ‘You’re the pain in the [behind] who gave me the most fits,’ ” he said, laughing.
“I worried an awful lot about Bobby Hull’s shot, and Bobby Orr took a Stanley Cup away from us (in 1972). But year after year, I’d regret hearing the voice say, ‘Canadiens goal scored by Yvan Cournoyer…’ knowing it probably was on another breakaway.”