SPORTS FLASHBACK 2017: Rest easy, Jean Guy Tetrault

A La Broquerie hockey legend lost a lengthy and courageous battle with cancer New Year’s Day, 2017.

Anybody who ever played hockey with Jean Guy Tetrault remembers him well. Anybody who ever played hockey against Jean Guy Tetrault remembers him even better.

A gentle man off the ice, a tough guy on the ice, and a hockey idol for two generations of La Broquerie Habs hockey fans, Jean Guy Tetrault passed away in the early hours of January 1, surrounded by his family.

He came by his hockey reputation honestly and early in his career. As the story goes, hockey players learned to take a wide berth around young Jean Guy when he first stepped on the ice at St Boniface College as a young student there.

Apparently, the boys from the country were teased a lot by their city cousins when they first arrived on campus. The favorite taunt was “LaBroke, LaBreeze”. Roughly translated, LaBrize refers to the tear one gets in one’s jeans while attempting to crawl through a barb-wire fence in the wilderness around La Broquerie.

“LaBroke, LaBreeze” disappeared from the St Boniface campus vocabulary after the first hockey practise.

For the better part of the two decades, tales of Jean Guy’s bone-crushing checks were very much a part of postgame hockey talk around tables in the local pub and in coffee shops the day after any Habs game. In fact, some oldtimers claim, to this day, they can still feel the aches and pains when they think of long ago run-ins with Jean Guy on the ice.

The first time I saw Jean Guy, he was holding a trophy. Kind of holding a trophy, I must add. Actually, most every time I saw Jean Guy close up, while I was working as a sports reporter for The Carillon, there was some kind of a trophy in the immediate vicinity.

Hanover Tache Hockey League championship, Manitoba Eastern Hockey League championship, Most Valuable Player, Most Valuable Defenceman and others too numerous to mention. About the only trophy Jean Guy didn’t win was the Lady Byng and he probably would not have accepted it if he had.

But the picture of Jean Guy with a trophy I remember best dates back to the hockey season a year before I landed the job with the newspaper.

It was in the visitors’ dressing room in Steinbach after a Habs’ victory over the Huskies in the Manitoba Eastern Hockey League finals. The Habs had beaten the Huskies and my friend Wilf Curtis, who was the Huskies “equipment manager” (mostly in charge of refreshments for the team) sent over a few complimentary bubblies as a sportsmanlike gesture to the victors.

An exhausted, but jubilant, Habs defenceman was sitting on the floor of the dressing room with the championship trophy resting in his lap. Surrounded by teammates, Jean Guy was hoisting a celebratory beer.

Years later, when Jean Guy and I knew each other a lot better, and perhaps had even become friends, the La Broquerie hockey star accused The Carillon of doctoring that picture.

That beer bottle could not have been in his hand, he claimed. He would, of course, not deny that on occasion, over the years, he had enjoyed a postgame beer or two in the dressing room. But he was adamant; this had not been one of those occasions. And how did he know that?

“You never would have caught me drinking a White Seal.”

I’m sorry I missed the festivities when Club Sportif at La Broquerie honored Jean Guy prior to a Habs game against the Ste. Anne Aces in 2008.

In a fitting tribute to this community leader, who played for the Habs for 20 years and coached minor hockey teams in La Broquerie for over 40, Jean Guy was presented with a framed Habs jersey for permanent display at the arena.

Jean Guy will be remembered. Jean Guy will be missed. Rest easy, Jean Guy.