National Perspective: Hockey greats share thoughts on retiring

MONTREAL — Listen carefully at the most storied corner in Canada, right here where Atwater Avenue meets Saint-Catherine Street. Every hockey fan knows the intersection once was the site of the old Montreal Forum, the Wimbledon of the winter sport, 31 times the site of the Stanley Cup Final, the place where for 44 years the home team dressed beneath the words of the Canadian poet John McCrae: “To you from failing hands we throw the torch/Be yours to hold it high.”

Listen carefully and you might hear the echo of the thunderous cheers that greeted Canadiens stars from Maurice Richard to Patrick Roy — or maybe the profound silence that met the procession of 10,000 to view the casket, placed lovingly on wooden boards at center ice in 1937, after the great Howie Morenz, the first true NHL star, died as a result of an injury in a brutal game against the Chicago Black Hawks.