Vintage Athlete Of The Month: Normand Leveille

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Joe Gill

Normand Leveille

BST&N has chosen former Bruins forward Normand Leveille as the Vintage Athlete Of The Month. The story of Leveille is one of lost opportunity and tragedy.

Norman Levielle was born January 10, 1963 in Montreal, Quebec. Levielle was highly touted prospect coming out of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. He broke the century point mark with 101 in his last year with Chicoutimi Saguenéens. The 18 year old scored 55 goals and tallied 46 assists in 72 games.

The Boston Bruins chose the gifted teenage in first round, 14^th overall of the 1981 NHL Entry Draft. Levielle had a very promising start to his professional hockey career. As a rookie with Boston, Normand had 33 points in 66 games with a plus 16 +/- ratio. The sky was the limit for the talented winger from Montreal.

“Norm Levielle was a star in the making” said hockey broadcaster and writer, Stan Fischler.

Levielle’s star dimmed prematurely. Just nine games into his sophomore season, a the Bruins budding star was hit into the boards by Vancouver’s Marc Crawford. During the first intermission, Levielle who still was learning English told Jean Ratelle that he felt dizzy. The Bruins team therapist and the Canucks doctor took a look at the youngster. They noticed something was very wrong.

Levielle was rushed to surgery. It was discovered that he had a defective blood vessel since birth. This defect was a time bomb that went off because of the thunderous hit. The nineteen year old suffered a major stroke, putting him in a coma for three weeks.

The stroke/coma caused major brain and motor function damage. His bright hockey career ended before it began.

“He was destined to be a really, really great player” said Bruins GM Harry Sinden who drafted Leveille.

The Bruins made it all the way to the Wales Conference Finals in 1983 and many thought their run was fueled by Levielle.

Normand Levielle has remained part of the Boston Bruins family. He attended the “Last Hurrah” at the Boston Garden in 1995. There was not a dry eye in the house as Bruins greats Terry O’Reilly and Ray Bourque helped Normand skate on the old Garden ice one more time.

“100 Things Bruins Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die” By Matt Kalman was a resource used for this article.

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BST&N Looks Back....

Vintage Athlete Of The Month: Andy Brickley
April 21, 2012 | 11:06 am

Andy Brickley

Andy Brickley’s voice is familiar throughout New England and to those of us out-of-market fans who get the NESN broadcasts via the NHL’s Center Ice package. Brickley is the top TV analyst for Boston Bruins’ hockey games. Most fans know he was a part of Boston’s 1989-90 teams that reached the Stanley Cup Finals. What many fans may not know is how hard Brickley has had to work for everything in his career. To pay tribute to his effort and to acknowledge his tremendous contributions to the culture of Boston Bruins hockey is why he is BST&N’s Vintage Athlete Of The Month for April.

The need to prove himself to skeptics started right away in college. Brickley went to school at New Hampshire, but had to walk on the hockey team. He made the squad and played all four years, from 1979-82. By the end of his career he had made first-team All-American and led New Hampshire to the Frozen Four in his senior year.

Two years into his college career he was selected in the NHL Entry Draft, but by the skin of his teeth—Brickley was the final player chosen in a 210-player draft, going to the Philadelphia Flyers. He began his pro career there in the fall of 1982, but a year later he was traded to Pittsburgh, as part of a package involving multiple players and draft picks.

By rights, this should have been the point when his career took off. He scored 18 goals in 50 games, the highest goal output of his career and also had 12 assists. But he ended up demoted to the minor leagues for the egregious sin of breaking curfew. To put the early 1980s in perspective, this was a time when frequent reports of players’ cocaine addictions were becoming public—in all sports. Seen in that light, the idea of demoting Brickley because he broke curfew seems absurd beyond belief.

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