The Montreal Canadiens have gone through many ups and downs over the past 60 years.
Some of those years saw the greatest team in NHL history on the ice with Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson, Serge Savard and Ken Dryden leading the way. Stanley Cup wins were an annual tradition for those teams.
There was also the three consecutive years outside the playoffs in the early 2000’s and the 2000-01 season where Oleg Petrov led the team in scoring with 47 points. The team reached the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, like finishing last in the NHL standings in the 2021-22 season after a miserable, disappointing 82 game schedule that followed a Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2021.
Jean Beliveau, Boom Boom Geoffrion, Henri Richard, Lafleur, Steve Shutt, The Big Three, Dryden, Mats Naslund, Chris Chelios, Patrick Roy, Kirk Muller, Saku Koivu, Alex Kovalev, Carey Price, Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki. One man was there to cover all of these Canadiens and that was Yvon Pedneault.
Sadly, he passed away at the age of 77 after covering the Canadiens and the Montreal sports scene for nearly 60 years. He had been diagnosed with cancer about a month ago.
Pedneault’s career began in 1965 and he covered the Canadiens with Progres-Dimanche and also worked at Montreal-Matin and La Presse. He also worked for the Journal de Montreal in the 1980’s before moving on to the television side of things.
Pedneault would go on to work at RDS as an analyst for Canadiens games as well as stints with Radio-Canada and TQS. He was most recently working at TVA Sports as an analyst and commentator on Canadiens games.
He was awarded the Elmer Ferguson Award in 1998 for his achievements in covering the game of hockey. He was also inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as well as being recognized with the Elmer Ferguson Award.
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