{"id":148887,"date":"2025-09-17T03:56:36","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T03:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/148887\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T03:56:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T03:56:36","slug":"late-hall-of-famer-giacomin-became-icon-through-personality-flamboyance-in-goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/148887\/","title":{"rendered":"Late Hall of Famer Giacomin became icon through personality, flamboyance in goal"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Canadiens\u2019 Gump Worsley<\/a> 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\u2019s abandoned crease.<\/p>\n

When he reminisced in 2008, Giacomin was dividing his time between Michigan and a cottage in Sudbury while doting on his grandchildren.<\/p>\n

He had kept only the catching glove from his playing days. Giacomin\u2019s 1987 Hall of Fame ring was out there somewhere; he believed it was lost at a border crossing years earlier. He hadn\u2019t gone to auction with his memorabilia, like many contemporaries, having donated virtually all of it to the Toronto shrine.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t get over it,\u201d he said, chuckling. \u201cWe worked so hard to win a Stanley Cup ring that never came, and they just get rid of theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said to Yvan, \u2018You\u2019re the pain in the [behind] who gave me the most fits,\u2019 \u201d he said, laughing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worried an awful lot about Bobby Hull<\/a>\u2019s shot, and Bobby Orr<\/a> took a Stanley Cup away from us (in 1972). But year after year, I\u2019d regret hearing the voice say, \u2018Canadiens goal scored by Yvan Cournoyer\u2026\u2019 knowing it probably was on another breakaway.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Canadiens\u2019 Gump Worsley pulled on a delayed Rangers penalty, Giacomin saw his opening. The puck he fired…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-148887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}