Roger Letourneau
Induction Year: 2017
Birthday: September 15, 1947
City/Town: Coaticook, Quebec, Canada
Roger Letourneau moved to Berlin as a teenager and went on to have a standout career as a high-scoring forward for the Berlin Maroons, Concord Eastern Olympics and Concord Budmen in the 1960s and ‘70s.
A native of the province of Quebec, Letourneau enrolled at Berlin High School as a junior in the fall of 1965 and made an immediate impact once he was cleared to play on the school’s hockey team the following February. He played in a total of 12 games, including the state tournament (won by BHS) and the New England tourney at the Boston Garden. In those 12 games, he scored 14 goals and added five assists for 19 points, and was selected the MVP of the state tourney.
As a senior in 1966-67, he scored 42 goals and managed 74 points for a Berlin team that went 20-5, and won the state and New England tournaments.
He was the MVP of the New England tourney, tallying both goals in a 2-1 win over Rhode Island champion Cranston East, and
scoring the tying goal and playing the final 10 minutes in a 3-2 win over Maine champion St. Dominic in the final.
After playing part of a season in New Prep in Cambridge, Mass., Letourneau returned to Berlin and joined the Berlin Maroons for the latter half of the 1967-68 season. In 16 games, including playoffs, he had 34 goals and 12 assists, and the team won the National AHA Senior Championship.
He would play for the Maroons for four seasons. In those years he totaled 117 goals and 76 assists for a total of 193 points.
In the spring of 1970, Letourneau was invited, along with teammates Carl Langlais and Roland Lavigne, to participate on a USA Senior All-Star team that played against the U.S. Olympic Team in a weekend tourney in Lake Placid, N.Y. A year later, he was invited to attend the training camp of the Boston Braves and, in 1972, he earned an invitation to training camp with the Hartford Whalers.
Letourneau continued playing amateur hockey, for the Eastern Olympics starting in 1971-72 until the New England Hockey League was disbanded. He played in 136 games for the team, scoring 112 goals and adding 96 assists for 208 total points, good for ninth place on the all-time list of the Olympics’ scorers.
When the Olympics folded, he played for the Concord Budmen in its inaugural season of 1975-76 season. In September of 1976, he returned to Quebec, making his home first in Lennoxville and later Sherbrooke.