|Quiz-of these 12 Montreal Junior players born around 1960, 9 made the NHL - which ones?

Clues: three of these guys were born on the same day in the same part of Montreal, three others went on to play together on Montreal's top rival, one was a journeyman backstop, one was a mean kid born in Europe who grew up in the West Island and another lasted over 400 games in the NHL without doing anything much special. Another one had a cup o'coffee in the Queen city.
Answer - (complete with touchy linguistic questions at the end). They all played at least a few games in the NHL except 2, 8 and 9.

#1 is the tiny perfect Steve Kasper who starred on the Verdun Blackhawks before turning into a defensive specialist for the Boston Bruins where he won a trophy for his efforts.
#2 Gilles Leduc, a 6 th round draft St. Louis draft choice whose career ended after the juniors, never getting a sniff at the pros.
#3 Denis Cyr, one of the three Denis - all from the same part of Verdun, all with the first name and all born on the same day, apparently with the same moustache. Cyr was drafted in the first round by Calgary and was eventually reunited with Denis Savard on Chicago but was a letdown.
#4 Mark Hardy, the Swiss-born, West Island-raised bruising defenseman who had a long career, mostly with the LA Kings.
#5 Marco Baron, goaltender whose career mainly consisted of a half season between the pipes of the Boston Bruins.
#6 Normand Aubin played a bit for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
#7 Mike Krushelnyski, the pride of Point St. Charles, played for the Bruins and then went to Edmonton where Wayne Gretzky helped him score more goals than expected.
#8 Denis Tremblay, the other Denis from Les Trois Denis. He never made the NHL or pro of any sort in spite of impressive numbers in junior.
#9 Dino Castelli, a defence 'fro-bro on Verdun, never got a sniff at the NHL.
#10 Raymond Bourque, who went onto a fantastic career as an NHL defenseman, mainly for Boston.
#11 Denis Savard, the Hall of Famer who starred for Chicago before coming to Montreal.
#12 Sean McKenna, born in Asbestos, stuck around in the bigs for over 400 games for a variety of teams.
The trend, based on the guys from those two teams is that the francophone players had a lower percentage of making the NHL than the anglos.
On the Verdun Blackhawks there were 17 French Quebecois guys, one, - Raymond Bourque - of them made to the show. On the same team there were 4 anglo/allo guys and 2 of them made it. (Kasper and Brian Johnson, a black kid who played 3 games for the Red Wings).
For the Montreal Juniors 3 of 14 Quebecois guys (Baron, and two of the Denis) 3 of the 8 allo/anglos (Krushelnyski, McKenna and Hardy) made the NHL.
This unscientific study suggests that the allo/anglos might have had better luck making the NHL than the francophone Quebecers. Was there a bias against francos from that time?
Or was it the reverse- perhaps you had to be better as a non-franco to earn a spot on a junior team back then?
Hard to say, but perhaps there's legs to the notion that the franco Quebecers weren't given a fair shake. For example, in the 1979 NHL draft Bourque was chosen 8th overall and Michel Goulet 20 th. Both enjoyed careers that far surpassed all other first-rounders except Mike Gartner. Tough guy ankle-skaters like Jimmy Mann and Duane Sutter were chosen ahead of Goulet who went on to net 548 NHL goals.