Retired NHL star Claude Lemieux died of a damaged coronary heart, in keeping with individuals who knew him.
Throughout his two-decade profession, he led the Montreal Canadiens, New Jersey Devils and Colorado Avalanche to a complete of 4 Stanley Cups and was the ninth finest playoff scorer of all time — however he was by no means inducted into the Hockey Corridor of Fame after he hung up his skates in 2009.
Lemieux, a “robust man” on the ice who was identified to be deeply delicate to rejection, by no means obtained over being handed over for the highest honor, in keeping with his buddies.
“He all the time lived this as an injustice, a heavy burden to bear,” Rejean Tremblay, a longtime Montreal hockey columnist and insider who knew Lemieux for 30 years, instructed The Submit.
“The sense of rejection ran deeper than one may need imagined. He took it very laborious.”
The hockey legend hanged himself within the warehouse of his household’s furnishings enterprise in Palm Seashore, FL. His physique was discovered shortly after 3:30 a.m. Thursday.
The long-lasting hockey crew the place he broke in as an 18-year-old rookie from Gatineau, Quebec, introduced him again this previous Monday to hold the torch on the Bell Centre – a crew custom – earlier than Recreation 3 of the NHL convention finals in opposition to the Carolina Hurricanes. He was all smiles, as an adoring crowd of 21,000 folks cheered him on.
“It’s attainable that surge of affection, that wave of affection on Monday night, triggered an emotion that was too intense,” Tremblay stated, citing NHL mates near Lemieux.
“It may need reawakened outdated pains, outdated struggling.”
Lemieux, who died at 60, additionally went some 10 years with out chatting with his youngsters, in keeping with sources — one other emotional load that weighed heavy on his coronary heart within the years after his retirement.
“It damage him tremendously,” stated Tremblay.
He had been depressed main as much as his suicide, in keeping with his household, however they’d no thought he was planning to take his personal life.
“They didn’t anticipate that in any respect, they by no means noticed it coming” Colombe Lacroix, a detailed household good friend who was on the scene with the household Thursday, instructed The Submit. “He’s been going via a tough time, he was depressed.”
“It’s so devastating, everyone seems to be the other way up,” she stated in tears. “Brendan is totally destroyed,” she stated of Lemieux’s 30-year-old hockey participant son who discovered his dad’s physique.
She stated Claude Lemieux noticed his personal mother and father for the final time when he was in Montreal this week, and likewise made some extent of bringing his two oldest sons from his first marriage, Michael and Christopher, on the journey.
Lacroix, the widow of former Colorado Avalanche basic supervisor and hockey legend Pierre Lacroix, turned shut with Lemieux and his spouse Deborah when Lemieux performed for the crew between 1995 and 1999. The 2 {couples} lived in the identical Denver suburb of Columbine, made notorious by the 1999 highschool bloodbath.
She had simply moved to Florida, and lived 40 minutes away from the Lemieuxs.
“I held Claude in my arms, and I stated thanks for being there for me,” she recounted of the final time she noticed her good good friend.
“He left our world too quickly and I hope he’s in a greater place and that he’s joyful.”
