Canadiens, Rangers set to meet up in latest chapter of historic rivalry

MONTREAL -- The ghosts of Jacques Plante and Lorne “Gump" Worsley will be floating above the nets of the Montreal Canadiens and New York Rangers at Bell Centre on Saturday (7 p.m. ET, TVAS, CITY, SNE, MSG), legendary goalies for both teams present in spirit two weeks before Halloween.

The Canadiens (4-1-0) are riding a four-game winning streak following their 3-2 overtime victory here against the Nashville Predators on Thursday. The Rangers (2-3-1) have dropped three straight (0-2-1) after a 2-1 overtime loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday.

New York's visit to Montreal will be the 718th time the teams have met in regular season and Stanley Cup Playoff action, the Canadiens holding a 344-202-94-4 record in 644 scheduled games, 38-33-2 in 73 playoff games.

Plante and Worsley, two giant Hall of Fame-bound personalities, famously changed wool sweaters on June 4, 1963, packaged in a blockbusting seven-player trade that sent Plante and forwards Phil Goyette and Don Marshall to the Rangers for Worsley and forwards Dave Balon, Leon Rochefort and Len Ronson.

The Montreal Star reports the blockbuster June 4, 1963, trade between the Montreal Canadiens and New York Rangers.

Plante won the Stanley Cup with the Canadiens in 1953, then five times consecutively from 1956-60. He won the Vezina Trophy six times in Montreal, one more to come with stablemate Glenn Hall on the 1968-69 St. Louis Blues.

Worsley, who with the Rangers won the 1952-53 Calder Trophy as the NHL’s best rookie, arrived in his hometown of Montreal shell-shocked from too many nights backstopping his defense-challenged Rangers, once, while still with New York, joking that the team which gave him the most trouble was the Rangers.

The Gumper would win the Stanley Cup with the Canadiens in 1965, 1966, 1968 and 1969, sharing the 1965-66 Vezina with Charlie Hodge, then with Rogie Vachon two seasons later.

Plante’s history with the Rangers preceded his arrival with the Broadway Blueshirts.

Rangers goalie Jacques Plante with defenseman Doug Harvey and Maple Leafs forward David Keon follow the puck during a 6-4 Toronto win on Oct. 26, 1963 at Maple Leaf Gardens.

With the Canadiens, his bare face was split open on Nov. 1, 1959, by a shot from Rangers’ Andy Bathgate. While he was stitched in the Madison Square Garden clinic, the game paused, Plante told Canadiens coach Toe Blake that he’d return only if he wore the fiberglass mask he’d been experimenting with in practice.

Blake grudgingly conceded, the Canadiens won 3-1 and then went the next nine games undefeated with Plante in the net; the goaltending pioneer never again played without a mask, changing the face of netminding forever.

For 25 years, between 1942-67, every game in every NHL arena was an “Original Six” matchup, the Canadiens and five other teams making up the League.

Original Six was a nice label, no matter that only the Canadiens and Maple Leafs were charter members of the League that was established in 1917. The Bruins would join for the 1924-25 season, two years before the arrival of the Rangers, Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Cougars (to be rebranded the Falcons before they became the Red Wings in 1932-33).

Gump Worsley moves to smother a loose puck in the New York Rangers crease, with defenseman Harry Howell and Toronto’s Bob Pulford at left. On this Nov. 1, 1959, night, at New York’s Madison Square Garden, Jacques Plante would wear a mask into an NHL game for the first time.

Expansions have grown the NHL to its current 32 teams, but there remains a special buzz on a Saturday night in Montreal when one of those five opponents comes to visit.

In the first month of the season, the Canadiens will have played four of their five Original Six foes, having lost 5-2 in Toronto in the season-opener for both teams, then won 5-1 in Detroit and 3-2 in Chicago. They will host the Bruins on Nov. 15.

There has been plenty of crossover between the Canadiens and Rangers through the decades, 121 skaters and 10 goalies having played for both teams.

Plante and Worsley are joined by five other Hall of Famers who played for Montreal and New York:

Forward Howie Morenz, one of the NHL’s first true superstars, played 505 games with the Canadiens from the 1920s into the 1930s, then wore the Rangers sweater for 18 more in 1935-36.

Howie Morenz poses for an action portrait with the New York Rangers during the 1935-36 NHL season at Madison Square Garden.

Doug Harvey, the NHL’s best defenseman until Bobby Orr, played 1,013 games for the Canadiens from 1947-61 before 161 more for the Rangers from 1961-63.

Forward Dick Duff was with New York for 43 games spanning two seasons in 1964, then 365 with Montreal from 1964-69.

Bernie “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion played 893 games for the Canadiens from 1951-64, then 122 for the Rangers from 1966-68. The Boomer coached New York for 43 games in 1968-69.

And forward Guy Lafleur played 1,085 games for Montreal from 1971-85, then came out of retirement in 1988 to play 71 for New York in 1988-89.

Then there’s this Montreal connection to the Rangers: Jeff Gorton, the Canadiens’ president of hockey operations, served as Rangers GM from 2015-2021 and was a part of that organization from 2007-2021. And Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis, who for the Rangers played the final 93 of his 1,134 regular-season games and final 44 of his 107 career playoff games, including helping New York defeat Montreal in the 2014 Eastern Conference Final.

The change of address to New York for the skaters caused a stir, no question, but the 1963 goalie trade of Plante for Worsley was an earthquake in Montreal.

If fans were stunned by the deal, consummated at the NHL’s annual June meeting in Montreal, Plante shrugged it off.

A moment of silence is held in honor of Guy Lafleur prior to the game between the New York Rangers and Montreal Canadiens at Madison Square Garden on April 27, 2022.

“I wasn’t too surprised,” the goalie told reporters upon hearing the news, then mildly contradicted himself when he said, “I was told I was staying here so I was a little shocked when someone told me just like that, ‘You’re going to New York.’

“I’ll tell you this,” he said to Montreal Star columnist Red Fisher. “I’m reserving a pair of playoff tickets for you in New York for next season. That’s how I feel about going there.”

Hopefully, Plante didn’t have to pay for those tickets; the 1963-64 Rangers finished out of the playoffs, their fifth-place 54 points leaving them 17 back of Detroit, the fourth and final postseason qualifier.

After 556 regular-season and 90 playoff games, Plante had worn out his welcome with Canadiens management, especially Blake, his flustered coach. The goalie’s asthma and assorted bugs sometimes left him unable to play, with little notice, and the impatient Canadiens suggested that Plante was plagued by phantom ailments.

Jacques Plante gloves a flying puck in front of Toronto’s Dick Duff, Canadiens defenseman Doug Harvey close by during this Oct. 29, 1958, game at Maple Leaf Gardens. Plante shut out the home team 5-0.

Bridges would be mended in time, and the late Plante’s No. 1 would be retired to rafters of the Forum 30 years ago this month, taken out of circulation on Oct. 7, 1995.

The Canadiens, meanwhile, were thrilled with the acquisition of Worsley, general manager Frank Selke Sr. quipping, “Nobody knows if Gump will go as well in victory as he did in defeat.”

For Worsley, who for the Rangers had played 582 games and 20 more in the playoffs, it was an overnight upgrade from the basement to the penthouse.

“It was sort of a surprise, and it will be different,” he admitted of suddenly finding himself on a perennial Stanley Cup challenger. “It will be strange at first playing for Montreal but if I do my job right, it won’t be any different.”

The Star’s Fisher was among many stumped by the deal.

Gump Worsley in 1960s action for the Canadiens at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

“The view is that Canadiens were taken like a green hand trying to outwit a table of card-sharps and frankly, it’s difficult to argue with the notion,” he wrote the day after the trade went down. “Canadiens gave away their key man and two other players for what amounts to a slightly overworked and frequently overweight goalie of some talent and a trio of nobodies. …

“Executives have been known to make mistakes, and it could be that a blunder of monumental proportions has been committed in this case. … Worsley can square the rap all by himself with the goaltending of which his admirers feel he’s capable. But he has a king-size job ahead of him trying to fill the position of a man who was the unchallenged peer of the league’s best goaltenders for so many seasons.”

The Gumper would play only eight games in 1963-64, spending most of the season with Quebec of the American Hockey League, Charlie Hodge playing 62 games for Montreal. But he would get important work during his Canadiens tenure, playing 172 games and 39 more in the postseason until his contract was bought by the Minnesota North Stars on Feb. 27, 1970.

In Montreal, Worsley went 90-41-24 with a 2.40 average, .914 save percentage and 16 shutouts. In the playoffs: a brilliant 29-7, 1.92, .932 with four shutouts.

In 98 games during his two years with the Rangers, before his career took him to St. Louis, Toronto and finally Boston, Plante went 32-53-12 with a 3.38 average, .908 percentage and five shutouts. He saw no playoff action with New York.

Bernie “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion’s playing career spanned the Canadiens to the Rangers, before he coached New York for 43 games in 1968-69.

The Canadiens were stoked at the Forum for their season-opener on Oct. 12, 1963, the first time Worsley and Plante faced each other in their new sweaters.

“The Canadiens are on the way down while the Rangers are going up,” Plante needled his former team in the lead-up. “Gump Worsley is just where he belongs, with a team that won’t make the playoffs.”

And then he set his sights on three of the Canadiens’ greatest players: “Jean Beliveau isn’t half as good as he used to be. ‘Boom-Boom’ Geoffrion can’t shoot very hard anymore and Henri Richard always ends up in the corners.”

Fifty-nine shots later, Montreal was a 6-2 winner, Worsley having stopped 29 of 31 Rangers shots. It could have been a lot worse had Plante not stood on his head all night long, doing his best New York Gumper impression.

“Will you put your first shot past Plante’s ear?” Geoffrion was asked before the game, in which he’d score twice on his seven shots, with two assists.

“No, not past his ear,” the Boomer replied. “Just into the net, where it belongs.”

Top photo: Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis speaks to the media after his team’s game on April 5, 2025 in Montreal, and as a member of the New York Rangers on March 15, 2015 at Madison Square Garden.