Canadian hockey legend Guy Lafleur will be honored with a state funeral in Montreal, Quebec premier Francois Legault announced Sunday.

Lafleur died Friday at age 70. He was a native of Quebec and played 16 of his 17 NHL seasons in the province.

Legault said Lafleur’s family agreed to the state funeral, which will be held May 3 at 11 a.m. at the Marie-Reine-du-Monde Cathedral in downtown Montreal. Prior to the funeral, Lafleur will lie in state at the Bell Centre, with visitation on May 1 from noon to 8 p.m. and May 2 from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Nicknamed “The Flower,” Lafleur was a five-time Stanley Cup champion for the Montreal Canadiens (1973, 1976-79) and twice won the Hart Trophy as NHL MVP (1976-77, 1977-78). He also won the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1977 as MVP of the playoffs.

After 14 seasons with the Canadiens, he played one season with the New York Rangers and two with the Quebec Nordiques before retiring in 1991.

A Hockey Hall of Fame member, Lafleur had been battling lung cancer, and other ailments, since 2019.

Fellow former Canadiens stars Maurice Richard and Jean Beliveau also had state funerals in 2000 and 2014, respectively.

–Field Level Media

Four points out of the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference with just four games remaining, the Vegas Golden Knights have little margin for error entering their final home game of the season on Sunday night against the San Jose Sharks.

Vegas (42-31-5, 89 points) could close to within two points of the Nashville Predators (44-29-5, 93 points) and Dallas Stars (44-30-5, 93 points) by the end of the day. The Predators will host the Minnesota Wild on Sunday, while the Stars’ next game is against the visiting Golden Knights on Tuesday.

Vegas coach Peter DeBoer knows his team can’t afford another stumble, like the one it absorbed in a 3-2 setback to the New Jersey Devils on Monday. The Golden Knights also have road games left vs. the Chicago Blackhawks on Wednesday and the St. Louis Blues on Friday.

“I think we’re going to come out and play our best hockey this week,” DeBoer said following practice on Saturday. “I like our group and I like our mindset.”

“You don’t want a team like us to show up in the playoffs,” center Jonathan Marchessault said.

“Energy is good in the locker room,” defenseman Alex Pietrangelo added. “We like the challenge. These three days (off) have been good for us. Kind of reset and take a mental break. It’s a big week for us, especially going on the road.

“If we do get in and we win these four games, we’re playing at an elite level here. We’re going to have to play our best hockey to get in. We play some good teams. Obviously the game with Dallas is going to be big, but we have to win every single game.”

The big question for the Golden Knights is who will be in goal for them?

Published reports said starter Robin Lehner would miss the remainder of the season because he needed season-ending knee surgery. That would mean rookie Logan Thompson would take over in net. But DeBoer, who replaced Lehner after one period in the team’s 4-3 overtime win over Washington on Wednesday, denied those reports.

Adding intrigue is the fact that Lehner missed the team’s practices on both Friday and Saturday for what were termed “maintenance days.” DeBoer, who said on Friday he expected Lehner to be dressed on Sunday and that he would be available “to help our team any way he can,” wouldn’t answer further questions about Lehner’s status on Saturday. Instead, the team issued a press release saying, “We are hopeful (Lehner) will be available for Sunday night’s game.”

San Jose (31-35-12, 79 points) comes in off a 4-1 victory over visiting Chicago on Saturday night. Timo Meier scored his career-best 34th goal of the season and also had an assist to lead the Sharks, while Kaapo Kahkonen made 27 saves to win his second consecutive start.

Meier provided a little bulletin-board material afterward.

“I still want to do well in those last couple of games,” he said. “Especially (Sunday), biggest game of the year against Vegas. We can maybe knock them out of the playoffs. We obviously have a rivalry against them, so we’ve got to play hard (Sunday) and focus on those last couple of games.”

–Field Level Media

An Anaheim Ducks era will come to an end Sunday when longtime captain Ryan Getzlaf plays his farewell game on home ice with the St. Louis Blues in town.

Getzlaf, 36, announced his retirement on April 5. He has spent his entire career with the Ducks, starting with the 2005-06 season, and he became captain in 2010.

“Seventeen years here,” Ducks forward Trevor Zegras told NHL.com. “He is the Anaheim Ducks to me. Through everything, new GMs, new coaches, he’s been here through everything. All of us young guys look up to him as the Anaheim Duck. It’s very cool in my opinion to say we got to play with him.”

The Ducks will honor Getzlaf during pregame ceremonies at Honda Center.

“It’s hard for me to put into words what Ryan Getzlaf has meant to this organization, what he means to this organization and what he means to me,” Ducks coach Dallas Eakins told NHL.com. “It’s more of a feeling when you think about him as a person and a player. People are never going to remember what you said or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.”

The Ducks (30-35-14, 74 points) are playing out the string after a difficult season. They lost to the Los Angeles Kings 4-2 Saturday night to fall to 3-13-5 in their last 21 games.

Meanwhile the Blues (48-20-11, 107 points) are riding a 15-game point streak (13-0-2) after their 5-4 overtime victory over the Arizona Coyotes Saturday night. After blowing a 4-1 third-period lead, the Blues won in overtime on Justin Faulk’s second goal of the game.

“We just kind of let our foot off the gas,” Faulk said. “There’s no reason and there’s no excuse for it.”

St. Louis pulled even with the Minnesota Wild for second place in the Central Division. Minnesota has played one less game in the race for home-ice advantage in their first-round playoff series.

Blues coach Craig Berube gave goaltender Jordan Binnington his second straight start Saturday, so he will likely will come back with Ville Husso (24-6-6, 2.46 goals-against average) in this game.

“Just going down the stretch here, I don’t want one goalie not playing in a certain amount of time, so it works out that way for us,” Berube said.

The Ducks won the previous two games against the Blues this season, 4-1 at home on Nov. 7 and 3-2 in overtime on Dec. 12 in St. Louis. Goaltender John Gibson won the first game for the Ducks and Anthony Stolarz won the second.

Stolarz faced the Kings Saturday, so Gibson (18-25-11, 3.16 GAA) is likely to start Sunday.

Blues forward Brayden Schenn and defenseman Torey Krug were sidelined Saturday with day-to-day upper-body injuries. The Ducks got defenseman Urho Vaakanainen (non-COVID illness) back in the lineup Saturday, but forward Sam Carrick (lower-body injury) remained out.

–Field Level Media

The Nashville Predators still reside in the Western Conference’s first wild-card spot, but they are sputtering in their bid toward punching a ticket to the playoffs.

The Predators (44-29-5, 93 points) have a 3-4-1 record in their past eight games heading into Sunday’s clash against the visiting Minnesota Wild (50-21-7, 107 points).

Nashville’s struggles continued with a 6-2 loss to the defending Stanley Cup-champion Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday, a game in which they managed only four shots on goal in the third period.

“We weren’t good enough, frankly, in several different areas,” said coach John Hynes, whose team has four games remaining. The Predators also face a pair of division champs in the Calgary Flames and Colorado Avalanche before they visit the last-place Arizona Coyotes.

On a positive note, captain Roman Josi scored on Saturday to become only the ninth defenseman in league history — and first since 1994 — to record a 90-point season. He joined Paul Coffey, Bobby Orr, Ray Bourque, Denis Potvin, Al MacInnis, Brian Leetch, Phil Housley and Gary Suter.

It’s a huge achievement, but he pushed it aside.

“We’ve got to have a playoff mindset,” Josi said. “We lost the game, but we play again (Sunday) and we can’t have this game carry over. It’s a new game, it’s a new day, so we’ve got to make sure we turn the page real quick. … After that we have to have a playoff mindset right now. It doesn’t matter what happened last game. The next game is the most important one.”

The Wild arrive in the Music City on a tear. A 6-3 win over the Seattle Kraken has Minnesota riding a four-game winning streak and a 7-0-1 run overall.

Minnesota is battling the St. Louis Blues for home-ice advantage when they meet in the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Wild hold the edge right now, although the Blues will own the first tiebreaker — regulation wins — if it comes down to that.

The Wild, who have 50 wins in a season for the first time in franchise history, already have posted a franchise record 107 points.

Kirill Kaprizov became the first player in franchise history to reach the 100-point mark.

“Early in the season, there were a couple of games where I wasn’t producing and thank God the team was still winning and the rest of the team was playing well,” Kaprizov said. “For me, obviously it’s a huge accomplishment and I’m so thankful … but at the end of the day, we need to focus. We have playoffs coming up.”

More of a surprise is the breakout campaign by Kevin Fiala, who is coming off a career-best five-assist performance. He has recorded nine goals and 21 points during a nine-game streak. Fiala has posted four consecutive multi-point games and six in his past seven outings.

“If you’re a player and you think about the points stuff, the points are not coming,” said Fiala, who started his career with Nashville before being traded to Minnesota in February 2019. “I just come here, have fun with the guys, try to play the game like in the present, you know, instinct, and everything settles.”

The Wild will be without forward Mats Zuccarello due to a lower-body injury suffered against Seattle.

–Field Level Media