Claude Lemieux, a four-time Stanley Cup champion whose hockey career was built on playing on the edge with ferocity and physicality, has died. He was 60.
The NHL Alumni Association announced Lemieux’s death in a post on social media. A cause of death was not immediately available, nor was it clear where Lemieux was when he died.
Lemieux was the Montreal Canadiens’ torchbearer Monday night before Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Final at Bell Centre.
As a player, Lemieux was a mix of skill and abrasiveness, not afraid to cross the line in the name of competition.
He won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP for his role in helping the New Jersey Devils win their first championship in 1995. A year later with the Colorado Avalanche, he was suspended for two games for a hit from behind on Detroit’s Kris Draper on the way to them hoisting the Stanley Cup for the first time in their first season since moving from his native Quebec.
Lemieux also won the Cup with Montreal in 1986 and returned to the Devils to be a part of their title run in 2000. He played 1,449 regular-season and playoff games with six different teams from 1983 to 2009.
Lemieux had become an agent in the years since his playing career ended and represented Carolina’s Frederik Andersen, New Jersey’s Timo Meier, Detroit’s Moritz Seider and Boston’s Hampus Lindholm among more than a dozen clients in the NHL.
