Gilbert Perreault: The Forgotten Frenchman

The Russians stayed in game shape year-round and worked out all the time. The NHL players had a comparatively relaxed training camp and tended to play themselves into shape during the NHL season. The concept of dry land training was foreign to them. They were skaters not runners.

Desperation set in as another hockey humiliation seemed on the way.

Team Canada coach Harry Sinden made a bevy of substitutions for game two. He changed the goalies, Tony Esposito for Ken Dryden, and he also took out some of the slower skating veterans for younger, faster players who could hopefully keep up with the speedy Russians. He benched the Ratelle-Gilbert-Hadfield line. Don Awrey came out; Serge Savard went in. Substitutions became the order of the day after every game.

Perreault finally got a chance to play in Game Four. He scored a beautiful individual effort goal but the Canadians lost the game 5-3 and were booed off the ice in Vancouver.

The players then travelled to Sweden to play two exhibition games to prepare for the final four games in Moscow. Rats started to desert the sinking ship as Vic Hadfield, Rick Martin, and Jocelyn Guevrement chose to return to Canada and “prepare” for the regular season.

Perreault played again in Game Five, getting an assist, but Canada lost again to the Russians, giving up a 4-1 lead in the third period.

It was then that Perreault, a young, young man, made a decision that I believe marked his career from then on. He chose to follow teammate Martin back to Buffalo. Sinden says in his book Hockey Showdown that he begged Perrault to stay. The others hadn’t and weren’t going to play because their style or ability wouldn’t let them compete with this Russian team.

Marcel Dionne never played and yet received kudos for his willingness to stay, skate with the team, practice with them, and support them in Russia as one of the black aces.

Perreault, Sinden said, was one of the few players he had on the roster like Cournoyer, like Henderson, who could skate with this Russian team.

After Perreault left, Canada managed an unlikely comeback and won the Summit Series, winning the last three games in Moscow. They won the final game on a goal with 34 seconds left after trailing by two going into the third period. The players who left, including Perreault, were pilloried in the Canadian Press and certainly in Sinden’s book on the series. The players who stayed and won were lionized.

I’m not sure if I’d have wanted to be on that team if they’d lost, especially if they were swept in Russia, rather than winning those last three one goal games. But they didn’t lose; they won, and very few people ever forgot the players who abandoned their country’s national team in their moment of crisis.

Perreault came back from the '72 series with a tarnished reputation, but he leapt into the season. On the French Connection line with Richard Martin and Rene Robert he had 88 points in 78 games, leading the Sabres to their first playoff appearance in his third season.

In six playoff games he had 10 points, but the Sabres were ousted by the eventual champion Montreal Canadiens. Perreault was the star of his team, while Lafleur was an under-performing checker with 55 points in 73 games, and eight in 17 in the playoffs.

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