Reading List: Remembering Jean Beliveau

The hockey world lost a legend late Tuesday night with the passing of Montreal Canadiens great Jean Beliveau. He was 83 years old.

Many around the hockey community remembered the Hall of Famer, who won 10 Stanley Cups during 18 seasons with the Canadiens, recording 586 goals and 809 assists in 1,287 regular season and playoff games.

Dave Stubbs of the Montreal Gazette delivered a wonderful retrospective of the Canadiens legend:

When people speak of Jean Béliveau, his glorious statistics and on-ice achievements often are discussed almost parenthetically. For he brought much more to the game than an effortless, smooth stride that devoured the ice, crafty stickhandling that bamboozled opponents and butter-soft hands around the net that ventilated goalies.

Stubbs tweeted the following photo.

Pierre LeBrun wrote about how Beliveau won on the ice and in life for ESPN.com:

No classier human being has ever laced them up in the 97-year history of the NHL. His talent was all-world, but it was his humble demeanor that will forever be remembered.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman pointed back to the joy of dreams made into reality:

No record book can capture, no image can depict, no statue can convey the grandeur of the remarkable Jean Beliveau, whose elegance and skill on the ice earned the admiration of the hockey world while his humility and humanity away from the rink earned the love of fans everywhere.

... For all the accomplishments he achieved and all the accolades he received, Jean Beliveau was always the epitome of the boy whose only dream was to play for the Montreal Canadiens. Hockey is better because that dream was realized.

Gare Joyce opined about the kind of humility that separated Beliveau from his peers for Sportsnet:

Ten Stanley Cup championships as a player, three Hart Trophies, an Art Ross, a Conn Smythe, fixture status on all-star teams: These were measures of what he did. Ultimately, though, what separated Beliveau from other greats was how he did it.

Canadiens defenseman P.K. Subban wrote how Beliveau embodied the team motto, borrowed from the poem "In Flanders Fields": To you from failing hands we throw the torch. Be yours to hold it high.