Remembering Marcel Dionne’s glory days as a St. Catharines Black Hawk

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Published May 26, 2022 at 4:06 pm

A young Marcel Dionne, shown in his St. Catharines Black Hawk uniform.

While he would go onto a stellar 18-year NHL career, eventually landing in the Hockey Hall of Fame, Marcel Dionne spend most of his Junior career as a St. Catharines Black Hawk and with that came some turbulent times.

Now 70 years old and living in Niagara Falls, Dionne earned the oddball nickname of “Little Beaver” in Junior Hockey though it’s doubtful that carried through to the NHL stage as most hockey-watching old-timers have never heard of it.

Dionne spent three memorial years in St. Catharines, twice the Ontario Hockey Association’s leading scorer by a wide margin. His future in the NHL was secured and in 1971, he was drafted second over-all behind late superstar Guy Lafleur.

But there were some interesting Junior days for him. His first junior season was in 1968 for the Drummondville Ranger of the former Quebec Junior Hockey League, where he scored over two goals a game in Drummondville’s losing effort in the Memorial Cup playoffs.

However, by the next year, the QJHL folded and was replaced by Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. Feeling the calibre of play was better in the OHA, Dionne bolted to St. Catharines to play for the Chicago Black Hawks’s farm team.

When he landed in St. Catharines, his numbers exploded. In the 1968-69, he racked up 100 points in 48 games and added another 35 points in 18 playoff games.

It only got better. In the 1969-70, he scored 55 goals in 54 games and finished with 132 point. Then 10 playoff games saw him him net 32 points.

Finally, in his last year of Junior eligibility, he scored a stunning 62 goals in 46 games, adding 81 assists for 143 point. He added 55 points in just 15 playoff games.

But it was the fight for the 1971 Richardson Cup, which was the Eastern Canadian championship at the time, that old-timers will remember for its violence, underlaid by French-English tensions at the time.

Featuring both Lafleur and Dionne in their respective Quebec Remparts and Black Hawks jersey, their brilliant play became secondary to the controversy around the series.  The squad split the first two game and before long, things would get out of hand.

Game 3 saw 102 penalty minutes called – 77 of those against the Black Hawks. a Black Hawk would be suspended for one game after confronting a linesman.

Game 4, also played in Quebec got even uglier. The Remparts won handily 6–1 but as the game wore on, more and more fights broke out on the ice, involving players leaving the penalty box to join the fray.

The St. Catharines players were escorted off the ice by police amidst the hurling of debris from Quebec fans. After the game, an angry mob surrounded the St. Catharines team bus on its way to the motel and had to be given a police escort to safety. The mob circled the motel until the early hours of the morning.

Game 5 was played on neutral ice at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, which the Black Hawks won 6–3 to narrow the series 3-2 for Quebec. That was the last game played.

The parents of the St. Catharines players refused to send their children back to Quebec City for fear of the violence that occurred after game four. The Remparts refused to play anywhere else but their home rink, including any neutral ice in the province of Quebec.

So the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association had little choice but to declare the series over when no further compromise could be reached. As a result, the Remparts went on to compete for the Memorial Cup by default, which they won, defeating the Edmonton Oil Kings.

As is well-documented, Dionne went on to play a Hall-of-Fame career with Detroit, Los Angeles and the New York Rangers.

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