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A close friend of Claude Lemieux claims the late NHL legend carried an alleged “injustice” prior to his untimely death.
“He always lived this as an injustice, a heavy burden to bear,” Réjean Tremblay, Montreal hockey columnist and friend who knew Lemieux for 30 years, told The New York Post in an interview published on Saturday, May 30, claiming that the late hockey star was “deeply sensitive to rejection” and, as a result, never got over the fact that he wasn’t inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame following his 2009 retirement.
“The sense of rejection ran deeper than one might have imagined,” Tremblay further claimed. “He took it very hard.”
The NHL legend was found dead on Thursday, May 28, by one of his three sons. He was 60. His death was later ruled a suicide.
“The National Hockey League mourns the passing of Claude Lemieux, a four-time Stanley Cup champion and one of the greatest big-game Players in hockey history,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said in a statement. Lemieux — who played for 21 seasons in the NHL between 1983 and 2009 — is survived by his wife, Deborah, daughter Claudia, and sons Brendan, Christopher and Michael.
“I love you dad! My son [Luc’s] favorite person is going to watch from above for a while,” Lemieux’s son Brendan wrote via Instagram, breaking his silence in the wake of his father’s shocking death. “We will see you.”
The NHL star’s death came just three days after he made an emotional appearance at Game 3 of the NHL’s Eastern Conference Finals between the Montreal Canadiens and the Carolina Hurricanes on Monday, May 25. Lemieux acted as a torchbearer prior to the game. (Lemieux played for the Canadiens from 1983 to 1990.)
“It’s possible that surge of love, that wave of love on Monday evening, triggered an emotion that was too intense,” Tremblay claimed to The New York Post, citing other friends of Lemieux, per the outlet. “It might have reawakened old pains, old suffering.”
Colombe Lacroix, another close friend of the hockey star who was reportedly at the scene with the surviving family on Thursday, per The New York Post, told the outlet that Lemieux had been “going through a difficult time” and was allegedly “depressed” prior to his death.
“They didn’t expect that at all,” she added of the player’s death by suicide. “They never saw it coming. It’s so devastating, everyone is upside down.”
The widow of former Colorado Avalanche general manager Pierre Lacroix, who became close with Lemieux and his wife when Lemieux played for the Avalanche from 1995 to 1999, then recalled the last time she visited with the famed hockey player.
“I held Claude in my arms, and I said thank you for being there for me,” she told The New York Post on Saturday. “He left our world too soon and I hope he’s in a better palace and that he’s happy.”
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