Fever Season (13 page)
It surprised a lot of people how well Hall and Newsy got along as teammates, but the Bad Man of hockey still had his temper. At a game in Toronto during the season Hall got into a stick-swinging duel with one of their players. It was so bad that the police charged them after the game and they had to go to court.
“Boy, my bruder hated that guy! Jacques always said he'd love to get Bad Joe into da ring and show him a thing or two.” J-P smiled at the memory. “My bruder was a wrestler. He was a lot bigger than me and used to fight on da cards Mr. Kennedy promoted at da Athletic Club before da war.
“Even though Mr. Kennedy was running da Canadiens, too, Jacques and I always sneaked into da Arena to see them play. Dere was a window above da maintenance room that was almost always open. Usually, we'd have to wait till da end of da first period when da workers were shovelling snow off da ice. Jacques boosted me up to have a look. If dere wasn't anyone inside, I'd climb in and open da door for him. Then we'd blend into the standing room section and watch da last two periods free!”
J-P glanced over at David, and a sly smile spread across his lips. “You're kind of small, aren't you? If dere's a window like that at da Jubilee, I bet I could boost you up to it.”
The new hockey season was scheduled to start on Saturday night, December 21, 1918. The Canadiens would be at home to the Ottawa Senators. J-P hadn't said anything more about trying to sneak into games, but as the season approached, there were certainly more and more hockey stories to read in the newspapers.
“They've introduced some new rules this season,” J-P told David after reading about them in one of his French newspapers. “From now on when a player gets a penalty his team won't be able to replace him with someone else. They'll have to play a man short till da penalty's over.”
David nodded. “Makes sense.” It really hadn't hurt the team much before when a player got a penalty. Now the other team would get a real advantage. “What's the other rule?”
“Forward passing,” J-P said. “Dey're finally gonna allow it. Dey're gonna paint two blue lines on da ice twenty feet eider side of centre. When you're inside da lines, you can pass da puck forward to any other player inside the lines, too. They say it'll speed up da game.”
Both new rules had already been used out west in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association. The PCHA was a rival league with teams in British Columbia and the western United States. For several years their champion had been meeting the NHA or NHL champion after the season to battle for the Stanley Cup. The series was played in the east one year, and out west the next. Throughout the war years, people had wondered if the two leagues should have kept on playing. Attendance everywhere had fallen way off. Both the NHL and the PCHA had been reduced to three teams each, but now that the war was over it seemed as if everyone was a hockey fan again. J-P's newspaper made that very clear on the day of the game between the Canadiens and Ottawa:
CE SOIR, L'OUVERTURE DU HOCKEY PROFESSIONEL Ã MONTRÃAL
.
The headline was written in French, so J-P translated for David:
TONIGHT, THE OPENING OF PROFESSIONAL HOCKEY IN MONTREAL
. David could probably have figured that out, but the language in the rest of the article was much too difficult for him.
“It says,” J-P told David, “that fans have been waiting for da game feverishly because this is da first time in four years they can take pleasure at a hockey game with no worries or unhappiness. It says in da past da war put heavy conditions on sports, and no one was sure of da future. But now sports are normal again.”
J-P read on a bit more before translating. “Basically, it says that sports are getting back to normal all over da world and Canada can't lag behind. It says da boom in sports is real and must be felt in every soul.”
The French newspaper made it sound as if it was everyone's duty to cheer for the Canadiens. But it wasn't so easy to follow the team. Only about three thousand fans could jam into Jubilee Rink, and if you weren't at the game, it was pretty hard to find out what happened. For big games out of town, newspapers often made arrangements to provide fans with special bulletins. People could wait outside a newspaper office and hear reports read off the telegraph wires. Sometimes they even reserved hotel ballrooms or theatres so that people could wait inside to get the reports. But it was rare that anyone went to those extremes for home games. Now that telephones were more popular, you could call the newspaper and ask for the score. David had never done that before, and he certainly wasn't going to be able to do it from the Home. For one thing, the office with the telephone was closed well before games ended around ten o'clock at night. And even if it wasn't, lights out for David's group was earlier than that, anyway.
So David went to bed on Saturday night with no idea how the Canadiens had done against the Senators. Although word around the Home the next morning was that the Habs had lost, none of the major Montreal newspapers printed a Sunday edition, so David still didn't have any details about the game until Monday.
School was closed now for the Christmas break, and the Home didn't empty out as usual after breakfast. David hadn't really made any friends among the other orphans yet, so he was still happy to spend time helping J-P in the pantry, especially since he knew J-P would have a newspaper handy. In fact, the newspaper was lying on the table in the pantry, open to the sports news on page six, when David got there. He saw the headline right away:
LE CANADIEN PERD SAMEDI. MANQUANT DE FORME ET JOUANT SUR UNE GLACE MOLLE ET PESANTE, L'ÃQUIPE EST BATTUE PAR LES OTTAWA PAR
5â2.
He knew what some of it meant. The Canadiens had lost on Saturday. He also recognized that the score was 5â2. But that was about it.
“What does it say?” David asked.
J-P translated. “âOut of shape and on soft, heavy ice, da team was beaten by Ottawa.' Da whole story pretty much goes on like that. It says da team isn't in proper condition yet and that they would've won if they were in better shape. Still, it says it was an exciting game â âone of da best in Montreal in many years.' It was only 3â2 Ottawa until da last few minutes, but da Canadiens ran out of steam at da end.”
David picked up the paper and glanced at the summary. The Canadiens had scored first one minute into the game, but Ottawa had tied it a few seconds later. It was 2â1 Ottawa after one and 3â1 early in the second period before Newsy Lalonde cut the lead to 3â2.
“Da newspaper says Newsy played well,” J-P told him. “He proved he's still da team's star. Vézina was good, too. He faced a lot of shots and didn't have a chance on most of da goals.”
David spotted the cartoon of Georges Vézina beside the story. It showed him standing tall, towering over the net behind him.
“Le Roi des goalers,”
the caption read.
“King of da Goalies,” J-P translated.
Another cartoon revealed a Canadiens player being flattened by a large weight with Ottawa and the number five written on it. There was also an illustration depicting Ottawa's goalie and defencemen putting up a brick wall across their end of the ice.
“They play again in Toronto tonight,” J-P said. “Hopefully, they'll do better.”
And they did. In the newspaper on Tuesday, David and J-P learned all about the Canadiens' 4â3 win over the Arenas. The Toronto team seemed to have the game in hand with a 3â1 lead after two periods, but the Canadiens rallied for three goals in the third. Newsy Lalonde got the winner with only a couple of minutes left.
“Lalonde et Vézina ont brillé,”
the words beneath the headline said.
“They were brilliant?” David asked.
“They âshined,' actually,” J-P said. “But I guess it's really da same thing.” Then he smiled. “You know, my sister, Marie, and her husband live out near da Jubilee. I'm going to spend Christmas with them. I figure I'll take a walk by da rink while I'm dere. The Canadiens are back home against Toronto on Saturday. If I like what I see, I think we should go to that game.”
Being a Jewish orphanage, the Montefiore Home didn't celebrate Christmas. David was glad not to have to think about it. His family had never made a big fuss over holidays, but his mother always cooked a special meal for Christmas, and there were usually a few presents. Mostly, it was something practical like new boots for the winter. Still, it would have been hard to celebrate his first Christmas in an orphanage so soon after losing his family. The fact that the Home didn't do anything for Hanukkah, either, made it even easier to act as if there wasn't any Christmas at all.
Really, the only thing that was any different than normal around the Home was that J-P was away for a couple of days. While he was gone, David wondered what he would find at Jubilee Rink. Would there be a window J-P could boost him up to? The thought of sneaking in to see a game was pretty exciting, but it made David a little nervous, as well. What would happen if they got caught?
“Don't worry about that,” J-P told David when he got back on Friday morning. “They'll just kick us out if they catch us. It's not like they send you to jail or anything.”
“So we're going?”
“We're going!”
J-P had to make special arrangements to take David out of the Home on Saturday evening. With the sun setting so early in December, the Jewish Sabbath was officially over a little after five o'clock, so that was no problem. J-P and David could leave the Home any time after supper. However, the hockey game wouldn't end until about ten o'clock. It would take at least forty-five minutes to get back to the Home on the streetcar and that would make it well after lights out. None of the children were allowed in or out of the Home after bedtime. So David and J-P were going to spend the night at his sister's house. David had to pack a small bag with some overnight things.
“We'll drop off your things at Marie's first, so you won't have to carry them with you to da game,” J-P explained. “Da game starts at 8:15, so da first period will end around a quarter to nine. It's about a fifteen-minute walk from my sister's house, so if we leave dere by 8:30 we'll be fine. We should leave here by 7:15, so we have plenty of time.”
The weather was nice for late December, but it would get cold during their long evening, so David was bundled up in his warmest clothes when he met J-P in front of the Home. They made the short trip down Jeanne-Mance Street to Mount Royal Avenue. A streetcar ran across Mount Royal, but it was only four blocks along the avenue, across Saint Urbain, to Saint Lawrence Boulevard, so they walked to catch the streetcar there. When it arrived, David looked for the trolley car number just as he'd always done when he was a little boy. It was number 129. He and J-P got on and rode the streetcar all the way into the heart of downtown. They got off at Saint Catherine Street and waited for the streetcar that would take them out to the east end.
Streetcars from several different routes used the long stretch of Saint Catherine. “Which one do we want?” David asked.
“Whichever comes first,” J-P told him. “Any one of them will get us out dere. Da streetcar offices are a couple of blocks from da Jubilee.”
After a few minutes, the 3A streetcar screeched to a stop. David spotted the number 767 as they got on.
The ride along Saint Catherine out to Jubilee Rink was nearly twice as long as the journey into downtown. As they got farther from the Home, David felt safe to ask J-P something he'd been wondering about. “What happens to the kids in the orphanage after they turn sixteen?”
“They have to go. It's da rule.”
David remembered that his mother had left the orphanage she grew up in to work in the rooming house when she was sixteen. “But how do they know where they can go?”
“How old are you?” J-P asked.
“I'm thirteen. I'll be fourteen pretty soon, though.”
“So you're in grade eight?”
David nodded.
“Most kids at da Home get jobs after they turn fourteen,” J-P told him. “It costs money for high school, and most don't have any, so they start working after grade eight. Da Home makes it so when dey're sixteen they'll have a few dollars saved up. That way, if they've got family, they can move in with them and earn their keep. Otherwise someone from da Home helps them find a place to live.”
