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I didn't have any excuse not to go because Picard had given the team Sunday off. But I said that if we were going to church we should go to Notre-Dame. “It's a nice day. We can walk there and stop for breakfast on the way back.”

We got to Notre-Dame about fifteen minutes before Mass. I told Faith about my fantasy of playing Wiffle ball in the cathedral. I explained all of my rules. This sent her into a giggle fit that lasted most of the way through the Gospel, which was in French so neither of us knew what the priest was saying anyway.

After Mass we walked west along Notre-Dame, then north toward Mont Royal, away from the downtown office buildings and into neighborhoods of elegant old homes. On a shaded side street I saw six kids playing road hockey with a dirty tennis ball. “Got to see this,” I said to Faith, and led her down the street.

The boys, all about ten or eleven years old, were talking in French, but every so often I caught a familiar name. “
Le but
Joe Latendresse,” a boy in a Canadiens jersey yelled after he'd fired the muddy tennis ball into the netting of one of the small aluminum-framed goals. He held his stick aloft with his left hand and bumped his gloved right fist against the fists of his two teammates as they'd seen NHL players do on TV.

“In the States we called it street hockey. In Canada it's road hockey,” I explained to Faith just as a car turned down the small street, forcing the boys to carry both goals out of the way to let the car pass. As soon as the car was gone the boys put the goals back in the middle of the street. The game continued. It was the same game that has been played for a century on streets in Toronto, Winnipeg, Minneapolis, Boston, or anywhere kids love hockey and don't have—or can't afford—the ice to play on. Faith laughed when one of the kids stood in goal, grasping his hockey stick as if it were a goal stick and declaring himself “
le gardien de but
—
Jean Pierre SAVAARD…”

“In league games we were always ourselves but in street hockey we were our heroes,” I said to Faith.

“Who were you?” she asked.

“Patrick Roy,” I said.

“Why him?”

“He was a cocky guy. Played with a lot of confidence. I think we pick our heroes because they have something we wish we had.” We continued down the street, leaving the hockey game behind us.

As we walked, Faith put her left hand under my right arm and pulled me closer to her. “How many kids are we having?”

“Well, you're Irish and I'm French so … let's see, that would mean ten or twelve kids.”

She laughed. “I think two would be a good number,” she said.

“Yeah. You have three and life is an odd-man rush,” I said.

The rest of the day was like one of those soft-focus movie montages where the lovers roam around old Montreal, walking among the columns of Marché Bonsecours, the city's original town hall, now a public market, then climbing to the top of Mont Royal, the hill overlooking the city.

“I was born over there,” I said, pointing east in the general direction of the Plateau section of Montreal.

“You want to take a walk there? Find your old home?” Faith said.

“No. I probably couldn't find it. And wouldn't want to even if I could. I just remember it was a dark place.”

“I know, Jean Pierre. I know and I'm sorry. But it's over. It was over a long time ago. You won.”

I didn't say anything, because I felt a sudden surge of almost primal sadness and was afraid my voice would break. We walked back toward the hotel, stopping for lunch at a restaurant near the Musée de Beaux-Arts. Faith said she'd take a morning flight back to Boston. “I wish you didn't have to leave,” I said. I suggested she drive my car to Boston. “I don't need a car in Montreal. And if you don't have to go to the airport then maybe you can stay another half day?”

“Deal,” she said, reaching for the lunch check. “You get a free lunch, I get a Ferrari.”

“You should be an agent.”

“You've got Boston twice this week,” she said.

“Thursday there, Saturday here. Even if we split, it should be enough to clinch the division.”

*   *   *

The Bruins went 1–3 on their road trip. They were ten points behind us in the standings and thoroughly banged up. Gaston was still playing with bruised ribs, Kevin Quigley was hobbling around on a gimpy ankle, and Rinky Higgins had a bruised catching hand. Picard told us about Rinky's sore hand and told us to blast away with high shots, glove side. Maybe that sounds cruel to some people but it sounded practical to us.

Cam and I snuck out for lunch Wednesday in Boston. We went to a private club his father got us into because neither of us wanted to be seen fraternizing with the so-called enemy the day before a big game.

“Lindsey's grounded,” he said.

“For how long?”

“Probably until she goes to college,” Cam said. “Tamara's really pissed.”

“What happened?”

“The day you got traded Lindsey took her goalie stick and beat the stuffing out of that huge teddy bear my parents gave her for Christmas. Said the bear was Madison Hattigan and she was going to kill him. Beat the shit out of the thing, teddy bear stuffing all over the room. Fucking massacre. Then she called my father and told him to fire Hattigan. Dad had to explain that he couldn't fire Hattigan because he didn't own the team. So Lindsey told him to buy the team. And, you know my father and Linds; he told her he'd think about it.”

“I'll call Lindsey. Tell her I'm OK up here. And that Faith and I are engaged and scouting around for flower girls.

“How's Rinky playing?” I said.

“Just well enough to lose. Trading you was stupid. And trading you within our division was beyond stupid. The Boston columnists are all over Hattigan. Lynne Abbott ripped him in her Sunday column. Even called him the Mad Hatter.”

“I wish we weren't looking at each other down the gun barrels tomorrow night,” I said.

“Me, too. No way we each get our name on the Cup.”

“Maybe neither of us will.”

“Good luck anyway,” Cam said.

“You, too.”

*   *   *

We destroyed Boston. Beat them 8–1. Rinky Higgins was on the bench and Kent Wilson was in the Boston goal after the first two periods, which had us leading 6–0. Our first two goals beat Rinky on his glove side.

I lost the shutout to Rex Conway of all goddamn people. I think he one-timed a pass from his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Or maybe it was from Flipside Palmer like the PA announcer said.

The win wrapped up the Northeast Division title for us.

Alvin “Captain Baritone” Crouch of TV-8 caught me in the runway after the game. “Tonight's win sets up a big game in Montreal Saturday, J. P. Savard. The Bruins will be desperate.”

I had to explain to Captain Baritone and his misinformed viewers that our win put us twelve points up on Boston with only five games to play and that the race was over. Not that he heard or understood a word I said.

“OK, you heard it live on TV-8 from ex-Bruins goalie J. P. Savard. Our next telecast Saturday night, seven thirty, live from Moan-RAY-ALL,” he said.

“EIGHT o'clock,” I yelled, hoping Captain Baritone's microphone was still live. I was trying to save a few hundred thousand TV viewers from suffering through an insipid half-hour pregame show.

We chartered back to Montreal after the game, so I got to see Faith only briefly outside the dressing room. She said she'd got the Modern Automotive Grand Slam with the Ferrari—speeding tickets in Quebec, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.

I also saw Denny Moran, who just happened to be with my mother, who just happened to be wearing a couple of gold-and-diamond earrings only slightly less dazzling than the chandeliers in the Copley Plaza. She must have seen me looking at them.

“A birthday gift from Dennis,” she said.

“Oh my God, Mom, I'm sorry,” I said. In the midst of the trade, the move to Montreal, and my engagement to Faith I'd forgotten my mother's birthday. “I owe you big-time on this one.”

“You do not,” she said, and laughed in a way that told me she meant it. “Win that Cup and bring it home. That would be the best present.” Then she leaned over and whispered, “Your agent's a pretty nice present. So far.”

Time was when that statement might have bothered me but that time belonged to a fast-fading past.

We beat Boston 3–2 Saturday in Montreal in a lackluster game I'll remember only because Cam scored on me. He whistled a shot from the right point that kissed in off of the left post. It was his one hundredth NHL goal—not a lot for a guy who's been in the league ten years—but he skated to my net to claim the puck as a keepsake.

“I hope Caitlin shoots it into the fireplace,” I said as Cam picked up the puck.

“Just warming up for the second season, JP. The money games,” Cam said.

I knew how much Cam wanted to win his first Cup in his last year. And I knew how much I wanted to win it, which was more than I did when the season started. But only three things could happen. He'd win. I'd win. Or we'd both lose.

It was April and we were about to find out.

Ten

The noise shook the building and me.

We'd come into our dressing room after warm-ups. I was sitting in front of my locker running down my mental checklist of where Boston players like to shoot when I first noticed the noise. You can always hear the dull murmur of a crowd from inside a dressing room but this sound rose above normal fan enthusiasm to become a visceral roar pouring from twenty-one thousand throats. We didn't only hear it, we felt it.

“Lost in the past,” Tim Harcourt said. He told me that before a home playoff game the arena darkens and old photographs of Canadiens immortals—Aurel Joliat … Georges Vezina … Boom Boom Geoffrion—are projected onto the ice ten or twelve at a time. The sight of these Montreal Hall of Famers whips the crowd into a nostalgic frenzy. But that's only prelude. The frenzy rises when, one by one, photos of the Canadiens Holy Trinity are projected the full length of the ice. First, Guy Lafleur in full stride, the puck on his stick, his hair flying, the consummate Flying Frenchman. Then Jean Beliveau, Le Gros Bill, the big handsome graceful center with the C on his shoulder, captain for life and forever in the hearts of Montrealers.

The cheers accompanying those two photos are like storm waves breaking ever higher against a seawall. But with the projection of the last photo, the wave goes over the top and unbridled emotion floods the arena. The final picture—taken on the night the team closed the old Montreal Forum—is of Rocket Richard holding a flaming torch. Even in his seventies the Rocket's face was dominated by those piercing angry brown eyes. Angry at what? Opponents who routinely hacked and slashed him? Affronts to the French people? Both? I suppose fans could see whatever they were looking for. Whatever it was, the roar told me that playing hockey in Montreal was different from playing any sport anywhere else in North America.

“
Tabernac.
Got to have this one, boys,” Joe Latendresse yelled, standing up and banging his stick on the dressing-room table, thus toppling two pyramids of tape and twenty half-filled paper cups of Gatorade, this to the annoyance of assistant trainer Marc Wilson. “
Tabernac
your fucking self, Joe,” said Wilson, who had to clean up the mess. When you're an NHL player there's always someone to clean up after you.

*   *   *

With only two minutes to go before the clock in the dressing room ticked down to 0:00 and we headed for the ice, I knew my nerves were OK. I felt more resolve than anxiety. Maybe it had to do with what Faith told me before I left the hotel. I'd been my usual anxious pregame self, worrying out loud about everything from bad bounces to shaky officiating, when Faith cut me off midlitany: “Take it from an old gym rat, JP—you can only play the next shot, not the whole tournament.”

After beating Boston 3–2 in the final regular-season game between us, we'd gone on to win our last four games and wrap up first place in the Northeast Division and in the Eastern Conference. Philly won the Atlantic Division and Carolina took the Southeast Division, so those were the top three seeds for the playoffs. Boston also won its last four games—with Rinky playing well in goal—to take second place in our division and get fourth seed for the first round of the playoffs. The way the playoffs work is that the number one seed plays the number eight seed, number two plays number seven, and so on. So the matchups were: Montreal versus Tampa; Philly versus the New York Rangers; Carolina versus New Jersey; and Boston versus Ottawa. The Bruins had by far the toughest opponent so I and a lot of other people were shocked when Boston won in a four-game sweep. And I was equally surprised when it took us six games to eliminate Tampa, partly because playing hockey in Florida in April is like skating on Italian slush in Naples. “I've seen better ice in my driveway,” Justin Pelletier told the media after we'd lost Games 3 and 4 in Tampa. Justin, one of our defensemen, is from Trois-Rivières.

Philadelphia bounced the Rangers in five games with Serge “the Weasel” Balon scoring five goals, picking up three assists, and instigating a near riot. It happened in Game 4 in New York when a Ranger fan threw a dead fish at Flyers goalie Jeff Fishbane after the Rangers scored. Serge put the butt end of his stick in the fish's mouth, then used his stick to sling the fish eighteen rows into the stands, where it hit an ice-cream vendor, knocking him down in an aisle. Some Rangers fans started toward the Flyers bench but—this being New York—they stopped long enough to steal the vendor's ice cream, thus giving the cops extra time to move into the area.

We lucked out in the second round. Because the New Jersey Devils had upset Carolina we played the Devils, while the Bruins had to face the much tougher Flyers.