What might have been...

On this day in 1971, hockey player Michel Brière died from injuries sustained in a car-crash that had occurred almost a year beforehand. He was only 21 years old.

After just one season in the NHL with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Brière was marked for great things by all hockey pundits. A nimble skater and puck-handler, he'd come to the Penguins a highly prized commodity, a superstar in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League with the Shawingan Bruins. After Pittsburgh selected him in the 1969 amateur draft, he made the team as a 20-year-old rookie, notching 44 points and being named the Pens' rookie of the year. Everyone who saw him seemed instantly to know that they were watching a future star in his professional infancy.

That awesome potential was never realized. On May 15, 1970, driving with two friends to make preparations for his upcoming wedding, Brière was involved in an automobile accident in Malarctic, Quebec. While his friends were severely injured, suffering multiple fractures, Brière was by far the worst off of the trio. He spent the seven weeks after the accident in a coma. Over the ensuing 10 months he drifted in and out of consciousness before dying on this day 26 years ago, his young life and brilliant future cut brutally short.

The Penguins immediately retired Brière's #21, the only number retired by the franchise until a certain #66 was retired in 1997. And today Brière has two Memorial trophies named after him - the trophy awarded to the most valuable player in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and the trophy awarded by the Penguins to their annual rookie of the year.