An NHL camera at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit caught the moment on March 24, 2016: a 79-year-old man in the stands, tears running down his face, as his grandson scored his first NHL goal. André Pronovost, the four-time Stanley Cup champion who helped build the Montreal Canadiens' dynasty of the late 1950s, died on September 8, 2026, at 90.

Pronovost was born July 9, 1936, in Shawinigan Falls, Quebec. He broke into the NHL with the Canadiens in the 1956-57 season and won the Stanley Cup in each of his first four years in the league, 1957 through 1960, playing left wing on rosters anchored by Jean Beliveau and Maurice Richard. He stayed in the league for a decade after that first run of titles, moving on to the Boston Bruins, then to the Detroit Red Wings from 1962 to 1965, and finishing his major-league career with the expansion Minnesota North Stars, who took him in the 1967 NHL Expansion Draft. Across 556 regular-season games he scored 94 goals and added 104 assists for 198 points, then added 22 points in 70 playoff games, according to hockeydb.com.

He did not stop playing when the NHL was finished with him. Pronovost spent several more seasons in the minors and kept lacing up skates into his mid-thirties, closing out the 1969-70 season with 107 points for the Muskegon Mohawks of the International Hockey League before finishing his playing days in 1971-72 with a club in the Eastern Hockey League that happened to share a name with the franchise his grandson would one day join in the NHL: the Jersey Devils.

That grandson, Anthony Mantha, signed with the New Jersey Devils in July 2026. A decade earlier, as a Detroit rookie, Mantha gave Pronovost the moment NHL.com captured on camera: grandfather in the stands, wiping away tears as his grandson's first NHL goal went in. Mantha later described what Pronovost meant to him on the Caps This Morning podcast: "Back then they didn't really have a draft, so he kind of lived his own draft through me. It was pretty cool," he said, according to NBC Sports Washington. Of that night at Joe Louis Arena, Mantha added: "First off, my whole family was there, friends, you just can't ask for better."

Announcing his death, the Montreal Canadiens said that at 90, Pronovost had been the sixth-oldest member of the club's alumni association, according to Daily Faceoff.

What persists from Pronovost's career is a name on four Stanley Cup rosters from a Montreal Canadiens dynasty still studied by the sport, a decade of NHL games played across four franchises, and a family hockey line that runs straight through him, from a left winger who turned pro before the draft existed to a grandson now playing in the league he helped shape.