Lafleur Still Miffed at Montreal : Hockey: Hall-of-Fame winger feels Canadiens’ president used him to settle an old score.

Six seasons after he retired from the Montreal Canadiens, the Quebec Nordiques’ Guy Lafleur still resents the way he was treated by his former team and its president.

Lafleur contends that Ron Corey reveled in his messy departure from the Montreal organization in 1985 because he had rejected approaches by Corey, then a player agent, to represent him 14 years earlier.

“I slammed the door and he came back another time and I said, ‘Don’t bug me because I don’t need you as an agent,’ ” Lafleur said Thursday. “He didn’t forget about that.”

Lafleur joined the Canadiens for the 1971-72 season and blossomed into one of the NHL’s top stars.

The freewheeling right wing with the flowing hair was the NHL’s top scorer three times. He won the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player in 1977 and 1978 and was the top gun on the Canadiens teams that won four consecutive Stanley Cups beginning in 1976.

In 1984, Lafleur was being used sparingly by Canadiens Coach Jacques Lemaire. Lafleur was having sleepless nights about his limited role and went to Lemaire and General Manager Serge Savard about it. When nothing changed, he retired.

Lafleur later accepted a lifetime front-office job, but wasn’t impressed with his duties as a goodwill ambassador. He asked that his salary be doubled to $150,000, but Corey refused.

“Corey told me there was no office clerk getting paid that kind of money at The Forum, and I said, ‘You think I am an office clerk. At least put me in an office.”’

Lafleur, who parted company with the Canadiens in 1985, said the organization put its image above everything.

“For them, they think differently. It is their image first, and the players after. If the player hurts their image, they will get rid of him. It doesn’t matter who it is.”

“They traded (Chris) Chelios (to Chicago) because they said he had problems off the ice. If the guy shows up every night to play the game, off the ice shouldn’t matter.”

Lafleur was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in September, 1988, and left after the ceremony to begin a comeback with the New York Rangers. He played one season for the Rangers before signing with Quebec as a free agent in July, 1989.

Lafleur, in Toronto to promote his new book, “Overtime: The Legend of Guy Lafleur,” said this will be his last NHL season and that he’s looking forward to moving smoothly into a front-office job with the Nordiques.