"Paul Masnick, who had been the oldest surviving member of a Montreal Canadiens/ 1953 championship team, died March 23 in Barrie, Ontario, the city he had called home for years.
He was 92.
Masnick skated on coach Dick Irvin Sr.'s 1952-53 Canadiens, who won the Stanley Cup against the Boston Bruins with Elmer Lach's 1-0 Game 5 goal 1:22 into overtime.
It was Masnick's only championship and the last of four won by Irvin Sr. as a coach, one with the Toronto Maple Leafs, three more with the Canadiens.
Masnick, a native of tiny Wakaw, Saskatchewan, 65 miles northeast of Saskatoon, played through the 1950s for the Canadiens, Chicago Black Hawks and Maple Leafs, a utility forward who scored 59 points (18 goals, 41 assists) in his 232 NHL games.
He added nine points (four goals, five assists) in 33 postseason games, including most famously his overtime goal in Game 6 of the 1951 Semifinal in Boston. That goal forced a seventh game in Montreal that the Canadiens would win before they were swept in the Final by the powerhouse Detroit Red Wings.
Masnick became the Canadiens' oldest living member of the 1953 Stanley championship team with the 2019 death of Paul Meger, a dear friend and fellow Saskatchewan native who died at age 90.
The two were also Canadiens teammates in 1950-51, the Stanley Cup Final historically going into overtime in all five games before it was won by Toronto on Bill Barilko's clincher at Maple Leaf Gardens."
