from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

If you think that Connor McDavid, Artemi Panarin, Trevor Zegras, Jack Hughes and the like are electrifying, then you should have seen Guy Lafleur, because there has never quite been anything like it and there’s never been anyone quite like Le Démon Blond.

That was part of Lafleur’s magnetism and dynamism. His long blonde hair waving in the wind, racing up the right side with the puck on his stick until he would unleash that lethal slap shot of his that would, as often as not, hit the back of the net.

You don’t have that anymore. The players wear helmets and there aren’t the wide open spaces of the 1970s on the ice. More’s the pity. And you can’t even quite fully experience the Lafleur Sensation by watching YouTube clips of the Habs’ beloved No. 10, because you cannot quite share the communal excitement and anticipatory buzz that built in one arena after another accompanying those rushes.

That is what they were, and that is what Lafleur provided: a rush.

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