September 7 NHL History
1945: Jacques Lemaire, an 11-time Stanley Cup champion as a player, coach and executive, is born in LaSalle, Quebec.
Lemaire wins eight championships as a player with the Montreal Canadiens, the first as a rookie in 1968. The last one comes in 1979, when he scores the second Cup-clinching goal of his career to lift the Canadiens to their fourth consecutive championship and then retires. Lemaire finishes his NHL career with 835 points (366 goals, 469 assists) in 853 games, scoring at least 20 goals in each of his 12 seasons. He is inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1984.
Lemaire wins the Cup in 1986 and 1993 as an executive with the Canadiens, then gets No. 11 in 1995 when he coaches the New Jersey Devils to the first championship in their history. His coaching career ends after the 2010-11 season; he finishes 617-458-63 with 124 ties in 1,262 games with the Canadiens, Devils and Minnesota Wild.
1988: The Hockey Hall of Fame inducts goaltender Tony Esposito, defenseman Brad Park, forward Guy Lafleur and center Buddy O’Connor as players, longtime Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed Snider as a builder and George Hayes as an official.
2011: A plane carrying the players and coaching staff of Kontinental Hockey League team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl crashes near Tunoshna Airport shortly after takeoff, killing 43 of the 45 people on board (another later dies from his injuries). Among those killed are coach Brad McCrimmon, assistants (and former NHL players) Alexander Karpovtsev and Igor Korolev, and longtime NHL players Pavol Demitra, Ruslan Salei, Karlis Skrastins and Josef Vasicek.
