Jules (Ceasar) Desrosiers
Sport: Lacrosse: Year Inducted: 1971
Jules “Ceasar” Desrosiers, born 1920, joined the local OCOT sports club in 1930 at the age of 10.
In 1934 and 1935, Jules was chosen All-Star goaltender for the Cornwall Midget lacrosse team, in the All-Ontario Championships; the team was beaten out by Toronto on both occasions.
In 1936, Jules was again selected All-Star lacrosse goaltender for the powerful Junior League Champions: the Strathconas.
In 1937, at the age of 17, he was promoted to sub-goalie for the Cornwall Senior Team; he was allowed to play in part of the Mann Cup playdowns at the Montreal Forum.
Although a tremendous athlete and competitor Jules will always be remembered as the stats guy. He was statistician with the Cornwall Royals for about fifteen years starting in the late sixties. He was instrumental in being probably the first person to develop the plus/minus system now a modern stat given to hockey players indicating when they were on the ice for a goal for or against. He had developed a system on a sheet of paper which depicted a hockey rink. If a goal was scored by the Royals he put the players number on the area of the ice they were at when the goal was scored. Equally he would put the players number on the area of ice they were at when they were scored against. At the end of the period he would run down to the dressing room, and provide the sheet to the coach who would be able to see where his players were stationed on the ice. As Jules would say “You really had to have eyes all around your head.” All stats were compiled on a game by game basis and he would then give them percentages such as face offs won, in the offensive zone or defensive zone by every player who took a faceoff. Coach Orval Tessier was so impressed with this system, that when Jules couldn’t make a road game at times they had someone trained to do it. Orval would go as far as having the team bus drop off the stats to Jules at his residence prior to the team getting off the bus upon returning home from a road trip. Coach Ron Racette loved Jules system as well. Jules was the statistician up to the year the Royals won their last Memorial Cup out west. They appreciated his hard work so much that he was also presented with a Memorial Cup ring.
Jules also coached minor baseball and minor hockey for over ten years between 1960 and 1970, and further coached in the city’s Junior “B” hockey league.