The road to LA's Stanley Cup glory began 57 years ago tonight in Hamilton, Ont.
Ask a fan of the Los Angeles Kings who Real Lemieux was, and you’ll likely get a blank stare in response.
Mario Lemieux, they’ve probably heard of. Maybe even Claude Lemieux. But Real Lemieux? Not likely.
A diehard fan of the Kings probably should know who he was, though, because it was on this date, September 18, in 1967 that he scored the first goal in franchise history.
The feat wouldn’t necessarily show up in the record books, because it happened during an exhibition game. The Kings, who were entering the NHL as part of the massive 1967 expansion that doubled the size of the league, adding six new teams to the so-called Original Six, visited the Minnesota North Stars for their first preseason contest in Hamilton, Ont.
It was a homecoming of sorts for Lemieux, a left winger who had played two seasons of Junior A with the Hamilton Red Wings, scoring 48 goals in 48 games during the 1964-65 season. Playing on a line with right winger Bill Flett and centre Eddie Joyal, it seemed like a happy homecoming when Lemieux scored at 15:37 of the first period to tie the score at 1-1. Leo Thiffault had scored a couple of minutes earlier for the North Stars, another new team who were playing their third exhibition game in as many nights.
Unfortunately, Lemieux’s goal was one of very few bright moments that evening for the Kings, who were described by Hamilton Spectator sportswriter Joe Watkins as “disorganized.” The North Stars won 7-3 on the strength of two goals by Thiffault and one each from Dave Balon, Wayne Connelly, Bill Collins, Bill Goldsworthy, and Parker MacDonald. Brian Smith and Bill White also scored for Los Angeles.
“They have a young team,” Minnesota coach/general manager Wren Blair said of the Kings. “They got some good young players in the draft . . . I think they’ll be as good as California in a month or so.”
Blair and the North Stars had seen the California Seals, yet another expansion cousin, the previous night in Port Huron, Mich. Minnesota won that game 3-1, one night after dropping their first exhibition contest to the Memphis South Stars of the Central Professional Hockey League. The South Stars, formerly the Wings, were to be the North Stars’ top minor league affiliate but defeated their parent team 3-1 in Haliburton, Ont. Ray Cullen scored Minnesota’s first goal in competition.
But playing a third game in three nights in three different towns didn’t seem to have a negative impact on the North Stars when they met the Kings in Hamilton. “Minnesota worked and skated harder than my guys,” Red Kelly, the Kings’ coach, told Watkins. “I think some of my guys could have put a little more effort into it tonight.”
Los Angeles did play better when the 1967-68 season started for real. The Kings finished a close second in the NHL’s new West Division, compiling a 31-33-10 record and 72 points, only one point back of the first-place Philadelphia Flyers. Minnesota was not far behind in a tight race, finishing fourth with 69 points. The Kings and the North Stars then met in a quarter-final playoff series that went the limit before Minnesota prevailed in the seventh game.
Real Lemieux had a moderately successful season too. A veteran of only one NHL contest prior to being drafted by the Kings, he played in all 74 of the team’s games in 1967-68, scoring 12 goals and adding 23 assists for 35 points. Traded to the New York Rangers for Leon Rochefort and Dennis Hextall in the summer of 1969, he returned to Los Angeles the following February in another trade that sent Ted Irvine to Broadway.
Dealt back to the Rangers and then to the Buffalo Sabres during the 1973-74 season, Lemieux retired after failing to make the Sabres at training camp in October 1974. The native of Victoriaville, Que. was only 30 years old when he died a year later in Montreal after suffering a blood clot in his brain.
Lemieux’s first goal in a Los Angeles Kings jersey doesn’t register in franchise history the way other historic goals have, like Wayne Gretzky’s record-breaking 802nd career tally in 1994, or Alec Martinez’s Stanley Cup winner in 2014. But it deserves to be remembered as the one that started it all for the Kings when they made their debut 57 years ago tonight.