The Game (18 page)

• A bus ride from Boston’s Logan Airport, the quotes of Bruins goalie Eddie Johnston in the
Boston Globe
, saying that his friends in Montreal had told him I was good. Rereading his words later at the hotel, never thinking it might be pre-playoff puffery, I took him seriously and felt better.

• Surviving the first game and feeling an immense satisfaction I couldn’t subdue, though we had lost 3-1.

• Game 2. In the dressing room after the second period, behind 5-2, believing what he was about to say but almost embarrassed to say it, coach Al MacNeil telling us that the Bruins were too loose, that our chances would come, that the game was still unwon—then going out and scoring five goals in the third period and winning 7-5.

• Seeing Johnny McKenzie, the Bruins’ feisty winger, both his eyes blackened, a cut across his nose, and wondering how it had happened; finding out I had done it with my stick in a goal-mouth scramble.

• Early in the second period of the fourth game, ahead 1-0, after I had made several improbable saves, I remember moving out of my net to knock away a loose puck, and instead watched as it looped off my stick and into the air. I saw Orr angle quickly to the boards after it, then reach up with his stick, swinging at it backhand. Frozen to the ice, I could only stand and watch the rest—as the puck flipped through the air, hit in front of the crease, and rolled into the empty net. Moments later, staring at the ice, waiting for the center-ice faceoff, I knew with deadening certainty what thirty-seven players, eighteen thousand Forum fans, and several million TV viewers knew with the same certainty—that my bubble had burst. A 5-2 loss.

• The heat in Boston Garden for the fifth game, the ice that felt like sandpaper, losing 7-3, and feeling confused by the mood of reporters afterwards; a series only three hours before tied 2-2 and considered a toss-up was now finally and unwinnably over.

• A goal, then suddenly hearing my name announced for an unde-served assist. Trying to follow the puck as it went into the Bruins’(z)one, slowly I became aware that people in the Forum were getting to their feet and cheering. Still following the puck, not sure what else to do, I was too busy, too shocked, to enjoy the only standing ovation I ever got.

• In our hotel near Boston, the eve of the seventh game, turning on a TV to “Bruins’ Highlights” to watch in a relaxed way what had not been relaxed the first time. Then watching fifteen Bruins goals on fifteen Bruins shots and shutting it off.

• An anguished night’s sleep, then being awakened by an early morning phone call for tickets from a Cornell friend whose name I didn’t recognize.

• Walking in back of the hotel, finding a small stream, sitting down on a bench beside it, waiting for the game.

• Hodge’s goal, Bucyk’s goal, and in between, four exciting goals for us by players I don’t remember.

• A burning/freezing feeling. In my back, in my arms and neck, slow at first, then surging through my body. Hearing a referee’s whistle, and looking at the clock—“0:32”—then at Orr, his stick across his knees, bent double, squeezing out the breath he couldn’t find; at Esposito, sweat cascading down his face, his eyes, his cheeks and mouth drooping in weary sadness; then at our bench, standing, jumping, hugging each other, and
knowing
, for the first time, knowing it was over. Then it happened—seven games of feelings, too busy, too afraid to feel before, were suddenly released and swept over me, and for thirty-two seconds I got a rare and precious gift: I felt victory
while
it was happening.

• Noise, interviews, pictures that the next day showed me smiling more than I ever smile, then walking onto an almost-full team bus and hearing teammates clap, as if they didn’t know me.

That’s all. I remember nothing more, except that now when someone mentions that series, I get the same burning/freezing feeling through my body.

By the time I get back to the hotel, it is almost noon and the lobby has begun to fill again. Seminar groups and conventioneers spill noisily out of meeting rooms, businessmen who left alone return with others, disappearing quickly to the mezzanine for lunch. With only a few upholstered benches scattered around its edges, we are comfortable on railings and stairs, against pillars and walls, unnoticed, but unmistakably a team. We are younger and broader, in vibrant checked jackets and open-neck shirts; there is a look of youthful decadence about us. Many of us are unshaven, some have facial cuts or bruises, most have had their noses thickened, flattened, or bent in some way by years of elbows and high-sticks. But though we are widely dispersed in the lobby, it is a group that connects: passing around newspapers, talking, laughing across wide stretches of floor as if no one was in between, moving easily among ourselves, comfortable, uninhibited, used to being in crowds and ignoring them.

But while ostensibly doing other things, it is a group waiting: Houle with a two-day-old
Wall Street Journal
he brought from home; Savard marking his
Racing Form
; Lapointe and Ruel arguing loudly over his shoulder; a few read newspapers, some have cottage thrillers, well-curled and folded in their hands, others just sit and watch. Shutt jabbers with Lafleur, then gets up, says something to Jarvis and Risebrough, laughs his quick laugh, walks to the front window, walks back, picks up a discarded newspaper, leafs through its sections, and finding no sports section puts it down, and sits beside Lafleur again.

Out of an elevator, looking swollen and rumpled, Chartraw, the last to know, asks who won the Islanders game. The rest watch their watches, those without them often asking the time, passing the news along to others. Then, a minute or two before 12 noon, Lemaire moves.

Those around him jump, and together they move up the escalator to the first-floor banquet room.

I come along a few minutes later. The tables are almost set but there is no food, and I find a seat between Shutt and Lapointe. With others at the table, they’re talking about Bowman. Lapointe is angry.

“
Tabernac
,” he growls, “did ya hear him last night? ‘Pretty good effort, gang.’ Pretty good effort!” he repeats, getting angrier at the thought. “We were horseshit.”

Drinking their water, the team at the table murmur agreement.

“Those two goals they got near the end,” Robinson adds, shaking his head, “
câlisse
, that used to drive him crazy.”

Lapointe continues, still angry, “How the hell we gonna win this way?” he snaps. “He’s gotta start givin’ us some shit out there,” and we nod again.

Shutt has been waiting for an opening; he jumps in with the clincher. “Hell, in practice the other day,” he chirps, “I’m skatin’(a)round, he calls me over, ‘How’re ya feelin’, Steve?”’ His eyes widen, as ours do. “What kinda question’s that?” he complains. “I tell ya he’s losin’ his marbles.”

More murmurs.

It has been a curious season for Bowman. Since Pollock’s departure and Grundman’s appointment, he has often seemed passive and indifferent. We allow “unimportant” goals near the end of an easy win, we arrive at practice a little later and leave a little sooner, we do what we seldom did before, what we were afraid to do, then brace ourselves for the outrage we know is coming, and none comes. Now, late in the season, the pattern we knew would quickly change has not changed, and we’re worried. He’s mellowing, we say to ourselves, or he’s having a bad year, or he’s leaving next year and doesn’t care any more, or maybe he just wants to make Grundman look bad. But Bowman, being Bowman, never explains. Except there are two things he said earlier this season that are beginning to make sense to me. I remember them now only because I am looking for an explanation myself. In a strangely sympathetic tone, he told a reporter that it wasn’t easy playing on a team like ours. That winning three straight Stanley Cups, expected to win each year and every game, we had been under enormous pressure for a long time. Then, a few weeks later, talking to us about team rules and fines, as an aside he said that rules or not, a team must really discipline itself.

A team that knows it’s the best, that proves it’s the best, gradually stops listening. It knows best, and if it doesn’t, it must find that out for itself. This season, we weren’t ready to be perfect all the time. We didn’t want to feel the need to win every game we played, or to win a special way every time we did. We wanted to be like everyone else, to know that if we won, everyone would be happy; and if sometimes we lost, to know that everyone—coaches, management, press, and fans included—would pretend to survive the experience. We wanted to relax a bit, to enjoy ourselves. We didn’t want Bowman’s smothering heavy hand any more, and clear from our attitude was that if he tried to lay it on us, we would throw it off as best we could.

Mostly we have gotten what we wanted. Bowman has eased off, we have been far from perfect, losing more often, rarely showing any special flair when we win. Everyone—coaches, management, press, and fans—has shown remarkable patience and restraint, each reminding himself often that to win four consecutive Cups is difficult, that no one can win all the time, and that the season is far from over. And for a time, we did the same. But no longer. We have discovered that we aren’t very good at being like everyone else. We’ve tried to be happy whenever we won, and not so unhappy whenever we lost, but we can’t do it. We’ve tried to relax and enjoy ourselves, but not playing the way we want to play, the way we can play, far from relaxed, we have found we can’t enjoy ourselves at all.

Now nearing the playoffs, an important game with the Islanders a few days away, we try to tighten up our game, to give it the consistency and direction we know it needs. When we can’t quite do it, those who complained most about Bowman’s heavy hand now complain loudest at its absence. After most of a season having it our way, we are finally ready for Bowman. Yet still he does nothing. What is he waiting for?

Eaten with more energy than appetite, lunch is over in its usual twenty minutes, and noisily we disperse: some to the lobby, taking up positions that were left only minutes before, some browsing in the newsstand or in hotel shops; others leave for movies across the street or on walks in various directions, but all of us at some time return to our rooms for game shows or soaps, for cards or backgammon, but mostly to sleep or read.

It is six hours and forty-five minutes to game time and counting, but slowly.

I go up to the room and call Lynda: “Hi, how’re ya doin’? You’re kidding! How long’s he been—not the flu? Brother! Sarah’s okay? On the steps again! Oh no, how’s she feelin’? Mmm, um, hmm—well, um, what’ve you been doin’—no, no, no, I know. I mean what else have ya been—since Tuesday night? Did Luc shovel the driveway? Brother!

Huh? Oh, fine, er, not too bad. It was really cold in Toronto. You wouldn’t have believed how cold—huh? In Boston? Oh, um, not too bad. A bit windy. Huh? Oh, nothing much. Just um, oh, not much really. Oh, I dunno, probably just more of the same….”

I lie down and take a nap.

Late in the afternoon, bored with napping and reading, I go down to the lobby for something to do. Outside, through its tall, patchwork windows I see several players in the parking lot in front, bent over, huddling around something, arguing, pointing here and there, crouching lower, still arguing and pointing, then straightening up, some of them laughing, a few still arguing, and walking back to a white line painted on the pavement. The laughing and arguing continue, then one by one they turn and approach the line, pause, and flip quarters against the curb several feet away. I go outside and watch. Loud and mocking, the happy banter keeps up. Yet as each player steps to the line, his mood changes. Brows knit, lips draw tight across teeth, smiles disappear. Quarters arc through the air, hit, bounce, and stop; faces turn anxious, then hopeful, then angry or jubilant: hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year men’, many-time Stanley Cup winners, playing a game and wanting to win.

Lapointe and Shutt have their quarters near the curb; only Cam Connor and Lemaire are left. As Connor winds up, like Meadowlark Lemon at a foul shot, Lapointe walks in front of him, excuses himself, and walks back. Several more times, he pretends to do the same and Connor stutters and stops each time. At the side, Shutt makes rude comments. With each aborted try, the tension builds. Connor has gone in the hotel several times for change, and down to his last quarter, he tries again. Lapointe and Shutt stay (more or less) quiet and still; Connor’s left foot starts ahead, his right arm moves back in a pendulum swing, then smoothly forward, until just before the moment of release his thumb twitches and the quarter skitters noisily across the pavement, stopping halfway to the curb. There are screams of laughter and more rude comments. Connor, not completely surprised, borrows some money from Robinson and goes for more change.

It is down to Lemaire. The heckling increases as he steps to the line and grins into the sun. Short , balding, like the Pillsbury dough-boy all round and not very firm, his soft, wide face a sea of crinkles when he smiles, his laugh a tickled squeal he can’t control, he looks far from formidable. But don’t be fooled.

Last summer, we played a softball game at Quebec’s giant James Bay hydro-electric development. One of about ten such games we play each summer, they are strictly good-time, beer-on-the-bus, run-the-bases-the-wrong-way stuff. But this night, through forty feet of twilight, we faced a hot pitcher. Lemaire, “Co” as he is called, was our lead-off batter. As he stepped to the plate, the chatter on the bench began:

“C’mon Co, get us started.”

“He throws’em like you shoot’em, Co. No sweat out there.”

Hah hah hah.

Lemaire swung and missed at the first pitch.

“Oooh, close Co, close,” someone yelled. “Try a little more to the right.”

“Yeah, and about six seconds sooner.”

Hah hah hah.

Looking into the remaining light, we could see Lemaire’s eyes twinkle and his mouth in a grin and we knew he was enjoying this as much as we were. Two balls, then one more swinging strike.

“Hey, that’s better, Co,” another voice shouted, “at least you’re on the same pitch.”