In memory of Claude Lemieux, a ‘bulldog’ and ‘softie’ whose death leaves the NHL reeling

It was the enormity of Claude Lemieux that first attracted Ron Filion. It was impossible to avoid. The boy was a giant. Not just by measure, but by presence – a dynamic force around which others revolved.

And so, before anything else – before he was “Pepe,” or a Conn Smythe winner, a pest, a villain, a playoff star, a four-time champion – 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 at 15. “He was always so big.”

The texts rolled on the first report. Filion didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it. A life this great doesn’t just pass away.

A joke, he thought. A fleeting hope.

Lemieux had looked good a few days earlier as he walked among fans saying goodbye in the Bell Center concourse. Wrinkles around his eyes, a crease in his smile, dark gray hair, neatly cut – but a middle-aged man of 60, with skin kissed by the Florida sun. Wearing his red and blue Canadiens jersey, No. 32, Lemieux smiled and carried a flame to a dark rink.

That was Monday. The Canadiens were about to play the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals.

The Canadiens contacted Lemieux during the team’s series against the Buffalo Sabers and asked him to carry 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, handing the puck backwards over the glove of Hartford Whalers goaltender Mike Liut in the top corner. Lemieux galloped across the Forum and dove as his teammates hugged him.

Lemieux, who had transitioned to working as an NHL agent after his playing career ended, contacted Hurricanes goaltender 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,” Filion said. His voice rang out: “We go back a long way.”

As texts and phone calls followed the news reports, the NHL community grappled with the loss of one of the most respected and infamous players of that era.

Since his rookie season, Lemieux was known as “Pepe” – a reference to Pepé Le Pew, the rambunctious but rotten cartoon skunk.

“A strong, powerful player,” said Liut, who often chided Lemieux for allowing the Game 7 winner. “He played with tremendous power.”

Lemieux grew up in Mont-Laurier, a small town in western Quebec, and pretended to be Larry Robinson and Guy Lafleur while playing street hockey. A few weeks after scoring the Game 7 winner, Lemieux played in the Stanley Cup Final, along with an aging Robinson and a group of rookies like Patrick Roy. During a 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 nastiest players.

“He was a bulldog,” said Doug Gilmour, recalling Lemieux’s imposing power in the 1989 Stanley Cup final when the Calgary Flames defeated the Habs. “A pain in the ass to play against, you want him in your team.”

Michael Farber, who covered Lemieux for the Montreal Gazette and later at Sports Illustrated, saw him as a player who tactically broke the rules.

“He believed he didn’t have to control his own behavior. He thought that was the referee’s job,” Farber said. “He wasn’t immoral – he was amoral. And that’s an important distinction.”

Lemieux was known for his dives onto the ice, digs that drew the ire 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 teetotaler 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 collapsed on his own couch.

“A big shouter. A big softie,” said Brendan Shanahan, who headlined the Detroit Red Wings in the late ’90s during a bruising rivalry with the Colorado Avalanche that was sparked when Lemieux knocked Kris Draper head-first in Game 6 of the 1996 Western Conference finals. Lemieux left Draper with a broken jaw, broken cheekbone and a broken nose.

To those who knew him, Lemieux could be surprisingly vulnerable, Shanahan said, pointing to the friendship Lemieux forged with Red Wings enforcer Darren McCarty despite multiple fights in their careers.

“Somewhat 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. If there was a microphone in a piano bar on road trips, Lemieux would find it.

“He was not a shy man by any means,” Niedermayer said. “He loved being in the spotlight.”

On the ice, Lemieux had a special talent for finding that light, especially in the playoffs. Although descriptions like “annoying,” “agitator” and “dirty” made 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 toward the end of his career. “If you had to find a way to win, he would go through hoops to do everything he could 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 received 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, along with a rising star named Auston Matthews.

Lemieux made a brief NHL comeback with the San Jose Sharks in 2009 at the age of 43 – before eventually retiring for good. But the showman never really hung up his skates. Later that year, Lemieux wowed fans as a participant in 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 rang out across a silent ice 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 and emulated his father’s reputation as an agitator.

“I love you daddy!” Brendan wrote in an Instagram postwith a photo on the ice with his father, holding his son. “My son’s favorite person is going to take a look from above. We’ll see you.”

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office made the announcement Thursday The Athletics that officers responded early to a suicide attempt at a furniture showroom, which state records show is located in Lake Park, Florida, and 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 data, citing a Florida statute that exempts suicide cases from public records requirements.

Lemieux’s former NHL colleagues shared their disbelief at the reports.

“It hurts,” Niedermayer said. “I don’t even know if I believe it yet.”

Filion’s phone calls to his old friend became increasingly sporadic in recent years after Lemieux moved to Florida. But it never took long for them to reconnect, he said — and never thought they wouldn’t get the chance.

“He was just the same guy,” Filion said of their last phone call.

The last time Filion saw Lemieux on screen, prior to Game 3, he was walking through a dark tunnel at the Bell Center.

Lemieux entered the bowl, roaring like a restless sea. A hero’s welcome, a tribute to a villain. He raised both his arms as if he had just scored an extra-time winner. With his torch raised, Lemieux smiled and looked as tall as he had 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.