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“THAT'S GOOD!” the ref yelled, pointing at the puck repeatedly with his right hand as though he were killing a snake with a six-shooter. The ref was in perfect position to see the puck roll across the goal line an instant before I scooped it out with my glove. The red light blinked on and a loud collective groan filled the arena except at the far end, where a thousand or so Boston fans screamed and hugged each other.

For a second or two I felt nothing. It was just another goal among the thousands I'd let in since I was a kid. But reality hit quickly. There was nothing I could do. Nothing I could say. I watched the Boston players vaulting over the boards and swarming Quigley. The hardest part of losing isn't your own unhappiness; it's having to watch the other team's joy.

I wouldn't have seen any of this in a regular-season game, because I would've bolted straight to the dressing room. But in a Stanley Cup elimination game you have to hang around to go through the handshake line. It felt strange to be shaking hands with guys who had been my teammates for almost all of my time in the NHL.

Flipside Palmer was first in line and was already singing, “We are the champions. My friend.”

Gaston didn't say anything—he just grabbed my right hand and with his left hand pointed to the shot stats on the scoreboard. I'd made forty-one saves in two regulation and two OT periods.

Quigley leaned over and said: “Glad I got it. Wish it wasn't on you, JP.” I didn't have the presence of mind to say it, but in retrospect, if someone had to beat me I'm glad it was Quig, a good guy coming off a tough year. Not to mention a tough life.

Just as I came to Cam the PA guy announced the game's three stars: Kevin Quigley was first, I was second, and Cam—who had about fifty minutes of ice time and dealt out more hits than the Mob—was third. “I hope you bet my half million dollars on Boston,” I said.

“Much better investment than that. I'll tell you after we beat San Jose,” Cam said, giving me a punch on the shoulder the jolt from which went straight to my still-throbbing head.

*   *   *

I lingered in the shower longer than usual, partly to take the edge off of my headache but also because I wasn't all that eager to talk to the media. I've never been one to duck reporters after a loss, but this was an especially painful loss and I didn't want to talk about it. Eventually I put on a robe and went out and told the few remaining writers that Boston is a great team and I wished them well in the finals. Lynne Abbott asked if Tim Harcourt had screened me on the last goal. “Quigley made a perfect shot,” I lied.

Faith was waiting for me outside the dressing room. “How's the head?”

“Hurts like hell. But I'm glad I played. Thank you.”

We walked toward the Boston dressing room because I wanted to wish the guys well. When I came out of the Boston room I saw Cam's wife, Tamara, and daughters, Lindsey and Caitlin, standing in the corridor waiting for Cam. A tired Caitlin hung on her mother's arm while Lindsey studied the game stat sheet a PR aide had given her. “You were screened on that goal, weren't you, Mr. Savard,” Lindsey said, looking up from the stat sheet.

“I saw the puck,” I said. But then I thought I should answer the larger question: “Hey, Linds. We're goalies. We make saves, not excuses.”

I asked Tamara if she happened to know what her husband had done with the half million dollars I'd given him.

“Sure. I know,” she said.

“Well?”

“He made a great investment with it,” Tamara said, drawing an imaginary zipper across her lips.

*   *   *

Boston won the Cup, beating San Jose in five games. The Bruins took the first two games in Boston 5–4 and 6–5, lost Game 3, 6–2, in San Jose partly because the Sharks were desperate to save face in front of their fans and partly because Rinky Higgins had another in a series of off nights. Boston won Game 4, 6–4, and the series moved back to Boston.

Faith and I were at the Garden for Game 5. A Boston win would give them the Cup; a loss would send the series back to San Jose. “No way we're doing the Dionne Warwick,” Flipside told a TV reporter, then whistled a few bars from “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?”

“You OK with this if Boston wins?” Faith asked as we took our seats seven rows off the ice to the left of the Boston goal.

“Sort of,” I said. “I want the guys to win, but it'll be hard not being part of it.”

The game was tied 2–2 after the first period and 4–4 after the second. The third period opened with a Sharks goal that Rinky should have stopped. You could feel the air go out of the building. That's when Cam and Quig stepped up and for the next five minutes carried the Bruins on their broad backs. Cam blocked three shots—“What? You think I was going to let Rinky do it?” he told me later—and Quig bulled through two defenders to jam a shot into the San Jose net and tie the game 5–5. The game and the series turned on a play that came two minutes later. Boston was on a power play when Cam took the puck at the right point and did what I'd seen him do about nine thousand times: faked a slapper to freeze the D, then looked to dish the puck to JB at the top of the left face-off circle. The trouble was that Clint Dwyer, the defender on Cam, didn't buy the fake and skated right at Cam. I thought Dwyer was going to steal the puck off of Cam's stick and have himself a breakaway and maybe a shorthanded goal. Instead Cam pulled a spin-o-rama, whirling counterclockwise and dumping the puck off the boards into the right corner, where Luther Brown collected it and threaded a pass to JB, who one-timed it as he curled off the top of the circle.

“Goal,” I said to Faith, grabbing her arm just as the puck went into the net and the Garden crowd exploded.

Boston held on for the final five minutes—Cam was on the ice for four of them—while everyone in the building stood and cheered continuously. The crowd counted down the final ten seconds … “
Three … Two
”
 …
I couldn't even hear them yell “
One
.” Pandemonium swept the building and I think it was only the netting, the high glass, and the appearance of a few dozen Boston cops that kept the crowd from spilling onto the ice. The guys mobbed J.-B. Desjardin and then gave the obligatory hugs to Rinky Higgins. It hurt to watch it and not be part of it.

After the teams went through the handshake ritual—is that a great tradition or what?—ushers wheeled a table onto the ice, and the NHL commissioner handed the big silver Cup to Cam Carter, who hoisted it high and spun around once before he started a slow, stately parade around the rink. Cam passed the Cup to Jean-Baptiste Desjardin, who passed it to Flipside Palmer, who handed it to Kevin Quigley, who got by far the biggest ovation. Eventually everyone on the team got to carry the Cup.

“How you doing with this?” Faith asked me about halfway through the celebration.

“Better than I thought I'd be,” I said. Truth is I was jealous. I wanted to be part of it and wasn't sure I ever would be.

I skipped the dressing-room portion of the festivities—champagne spray really stings your eyes—and drove to Faith's house, stopping briefly in Cleveland Circle to pick up a pizza at Pino's.

“What now?” Faith asked after she'd set the pizza on the kitchen table and poured two beers.

“Wait for offers, I guess,” I said. “What about you?”

“I have to close on that house I found in Essex Junction. And I still have to sell this place. And, oh yeah,” she said with mock surprise. “Don't we have a wedding to plan?”

“Whatever you and your family want is OK with me,” I said.

“You're not into weddings?”

“Marriages count. Weddings don't,” I said. “A wedding is the last exhibition game before the regular season. It's mainly for the fans. All you want to do in a wedding is get out without getting your starters hurt.”

She shrugged and laughed. “Let's get married in September. Next year I'll pull the goalie,” she said.

“Pull the goalie?”

“Yeah. No more birth control.”

In the next three weeks Faith sold her house but not her basketball hoop. We bought the house in Vermont, then celebrated by slipping away to the Château Frontenac in Quebec City for a few days. On our second day we were in the early stages of what promised to be a memorable afternoon delight when Cam called.

“Nice timing,” I said.

Cam told me that he and Gaston Deveau had prevailed on the NHL to let them have the Stanley Cup for an extra day so they could bring it to our alma mater, the University of Vermont. “We've got it until noon on Friday, when some guy from the Hockey Hall of Fame has to fly it to Vancouver so Taki can have his day with it.

“We're having an open house for the Cup at the old Carter rink,” Cam said. “We want you there.” I told Cam that I'd checked the papers and that he and Gaston—not I—had won the Cup. It wasn't so much that I still felt jealous as that I thought Cam and Gaston might be inviting me because they felt sorry for me.

“Yeah, but we're alumni and old teammates. You belong there. And save time for lunch. My dad's coming up. Wants to talk to you.”

I said I'd be there. Faith said she wanted to go too, which I thought was unusual. “Hey, I'm an alumna. I can go,” she said.

“You're a what?”

“An alumna. It's the Latin feminine singular. Alumnus, alumni, alumna, alumnae.”

Nothing kills sex deader than a Latin lesson.

*   *   *

We extended our stay at the Frontenac and on Thursday drove directly to Burlington, Vermont. We were at the Carter rink at ten o'clock Thursday morning when Cam, Gaston, and Paul Fentross from the Hockey Hall of Fame pulled in with the Stanley Cup. Fentross has a cool job. He's one of two guys who accompany the Cup everywhere it goes. He put on a special pair of jeweler's gloves to lift the Cup from its case onto a draped display table. There's a tradition among players that if you haven't won the Cup you can't touch it. So Gaston and Cam were the only ones who could touch the trophy with their bare hands. That I couldn't touch it didn't make me feel any better. Mostly I felt like a fifth wheel all morning, and I was glad when Fentross repacked the Cup and took off for the airport. “Where we having lunch?” I asked Cam.

“Champlain Medical Center,” he said. “They're breaking ground for that new hostel where parents of sick kids—mostly cancer patients—can stay overnight. My parents and the company kicked in a lot of dough for it.”

Great, I thought. I'd just had a two-hour reminder that I'd played ten years in the NHL and never won the Stanley Cup. Now I had to go eat finger food, sip soda, and listen to speeches at a ceremonial groundbreaking. “This sucks,” I said to Faith as we drove the few minutes to the medical center.

*   *   *

When we arrived at the site of the new building we saw three dozen folding chairs arranged on a flat lawn in front of a podium. Two easels shrouded in white linen stood to the right of the podium. “I admire Cam's parents for funding the thing but I hope they wrap this up fast,” I whispered to Faith as we took our seats in one of the back rows beside Rudy Evanston and his parents. “Wish they had one of these when I was a patient here,” Rudy said. “My parents lived close but other kids' parents were traveling long distances. Like you don't have enough to do when your kid is sick.”

I knew Cam's parents would be there but I was surprised when they arrived in the company of my mother and Denny Moran. I was about to get up and talk to them but the ceremony started on time, which I thought was a bigger upset than the USA beating the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics.

Chadwick Thayer III, chairman of the board of the hospital, talked for a few minutes about the importance of “keeping parents close to their children during arduous medical treatments, especially chemotherapy.” Then he said he was pleased to announce the naming of the new building. He lifted the shroud off of the first easel to reveal an engraved marble nameplate—“The Carter-Quinn Family Hostel” it read. Below it were oil paintings of Cam's parents and, to my surprise, of Lisa in her nurse's uniform.

“That's where your half mil went, hon,” Faith said just as Cam turned around in his seat a few rows in front of us and mouthed the words: “You want your money back?”

I smiled and shook my head. No. I was as over Lisa's death as I'd ever be but I was glad to see her work remembered.

After a phony ceremonial groundbreaking, Chadwick Thayer III went back to the podium to talk about the hospital's tight budget and how projects like the Carter-Quinn Hostel were possible only through private donations. He then pulled another little rope, releasing the shroud covering the second easel and revealing a large oak panel carved with the names of the major donors to the building. There were six names beside the heading that read:
“Founders:
Cameron and Diana Carter Jr., Cam and Tamara Carter, Faith McNeil, M.D., Jean Pierre Lucien Savard.” Cam told me later that founding donors had given gifts of a half million dollars and up and that his parents kicked in five million. “I think my father hit the Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont,” he said.

Beneath the founders' names was a lengthy list of other individual and corporate donors. I scanned it for names I knew. There was Serge “the Weasel” Balon—“said he wouldn't make the pledge if we didn't include his nickname,” Cam said—Kevin James Quigley, Nancy O'Brien, LICSW, and all of the Bruins players and coaches. There were contributions from Le Club de Hockey Canadien; Dennis Moran; Jacqueline Savard; Dolph and Mary Evanston; and Harry Flask of Masks by Flask. The names were carved on separate sections of oak to allow for the listing of future donors. Near the top of the listing was a blank space where one of the glued-on panels had apparently fallen away. “Should use screws to attach those names,” I said to Cam. “It looks tacky when a panel falls out.”