Hillary Menard

Hillary Gilbert Menard was born on 15 January 1934 in Timmins, Ontario, Canada. He left home at the age of fifteen to play hockey. In the Ontario Hockey Association junior series he played for the Barrie Flyers in 1951 to 1952, scoring 20 goals, and for the Galt Black Hawks in 1952 to 1953, when he added 11 goals in 10 playoff games. In 1953 to 1954 he split the season between Galt, the Hamilton Tiger Cubs and the Guelph Biltmores.

During the 1953 to 1954 season Menard played one game in the National Hockey League for the Chicago Black Hawks, which placed him on the list of players whose NHL career lasted a single game.

After time with the Pembroke Lumber Kings and the Val d'Or Miners in northern Ontario, he joined the Belleville McFarlands of the OHA Senior A League. He scored 50 goals in 51 games in 1956 to 1957. In 1957 to 1958 Belleville won the J. Ross Robertson Cup and then the 1958 Allan Cup, defeating the Kelowna Packers in seven games, and Menard scored nine goals in 14 Allan Cup playoff games. He played one more season with the McFarlands, the club that represented Canada at the 1959 World Championship.

He then played in the United States for the New York Rovers of the Eastern Hockey League, the Omaha Knights of the International Hockey League and the Des Moines Oak Leafs. Hockeydb lists him as head coach of the Oak Leafs from 1963 to 1966; in 1964 to 1965 the team reached the IHL final. He ended his career with the Belleville Mohawks in 1968, having played professionally for fourteen years in six leagues.

Menard was the older brother of Howie Menard, also from Timmins, who played 151 games in the NHL for the Detroit Red Wings, Los Angeles Kings, Chicago Black Hawks and Oakland Seals. Elite Prospects also lists the former NHL goaltender Darren Eliot as a relative by marriage. Menard settled in Iowa, where he had played and coached for the Des Moines Oak Leafs, and lived in Clive, near Des Moines.

Hillary Menard died on 7 November 2026 at the age of 92. His obituary was published by Dignity Memorial, with arrangements in the care of McLaren's Resthaven Chapel and Mortuary and Resthaven Cemetery in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Menard's career is a record of the depth of professional and senior hockey in the 1950s and 1960s, when the six team NHL had room for few players and many gifted forwards built long careers elsewhere. He is remembered as an Allan Cup champion with the Belleville McFarlands, a fifty goal scorer in Ontario senior hockey, a scorer and coach in the IHL, and one of the players to have appeared in exactly one NHL game.