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Canadiens icon Elmer Lach, the nearly indestructible centreman for Maurice (Rocket) Richard and Toe Blake on his team’s magnificent 1940s Punch Line, died Saturday morning at the West Island Palliative Care Residence in Kirkland following a stroke suffered last Saturday, March 28 at his Beaconsfield care home.

Lach was two months past his 97th birthday, at the time of his death the oldest living member of the Canadiens and senior-most member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

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Lach’s passing was the second enormous loss to the Canadiens and the team’s extended family in four months, legendary former captain Jean Béliveau having died on Dec. 2 following a lengthy illness.

Born Jan. 22, 1918 in tiny Nokomis, Sask., just 57 days after the creation of the National Hockey League, Lach was the least well-known and the last surviving member of the legendary Punch Line.

The trio was put together on a hunch in the early 1940s by Canadiens head coach Dick Irvin and quickly terrorized the opposition as the most fearsome line of the decade until a broken ankle forced Blake’s retirement in 1948.