When you read about a goalie who won four Stanley Cups in his career, you think, Wow, this guy must have been something.

But If you read on you won't....because he wasn't.

Larocque wasn't famous for a save a moment or a team so much as for a teammeate: He was the nightly, monthly, yearly backup goalie behind Ken Dryden. But that wasn't Dryden's fault. In fact the starting job was Larocque's for the taking. Dryden's career might have turned out quite differently had Larocque been a first-rate NHL goalie.

Dryden left our Habs in 1973 in a contract dispute disguised as a law career, and that same year's training camp happened to be Larocque's second with the team. He had spent ALL of the previous season in the minors, so the chance was his. He played well, but not spectacularly, and when Dryden returned after a years absence, the law degree taking a back seat to a fine, new contract. Larocque was condemed to the end of the bench in seeming perpetuity. Yes, he was on the team that won 4 Stanley Cups in a row, but in those years he played exactly 20 minutes of playoff hockey.

Here's just how bad Larocque's situation was: Those 20 minutes constituted the final period of a 4-1 loss in game one of the 1979 fianls against the Rangers. Coach Scotty Bowman called on Bunny to start game two, his first start after watching Dryden take the previous 64 playoff games!

In the warmup though, Larocque took a shot off his helmet, and when the game began he went to the hospital having X-Rays taken while Dryden was in the net.

Larocque eventually got a much needed trade but he never made an impact anywhere else. In his one season as a starter, '81-'82 in Toronto, he played on a weak team and allowed almost five goals a game.

After retiring, he became vice-president of the QMJHL , but in May 1992 doctors discovered he had brain cancer. After three weeks of radiation therapy, he died of the disese in a hospital in Hull.

Bunny was 40 years old.

...A Hab Fans Moment.