Fever Season (17 page)

David followed Al into the dressing room. Considering how plain Jubilee Rink was, the Canadiens' dressing room was pretty nice. The man who had owned the Montreal Wanderers at the time had built the Jubilee back in 1909. He had intended for his team to play there — which it did for a while — so he had made sure the home dressing room was a good one. It had a wooden floor that wouldn't dull skate blades too much, and wooden stalls for the players around the wall.

In each of the stalls were pegs and a hanger. Beside each one was a skinny metal locker for clothes. There was a wooden chair in front of each one for the player to sit on. Above each stall was a slate board with a player's name and number written neatly in chalk. David looked around and spotted them all:

1. Vézina

2. Corbeau

3. Hall

4. Lalonde

5. Pitre

6. Cleghorn

7. Malone

8. Berlinquette

9. Couture

10. McDonald

It was hard to believe that within the next hour or so they would all be in there, talking and joking and getting ready for the game.

“First thing we gotta do,” Al said, jerking his thumb at a door on the far wall, “is get all the gear out of the back.” David followed him across the dressing room. “The smell can be a little hard to take at first,” Al warned as he opened the door and led David through.

David winced as the tangy odour of stale sweat hit his nose hard enough to make his eyes water.

Al laughed. “Just breathe through your mouth a bit. You'll get used to it soon enough.”

The smell came from the players' uniforms and equipment, which hung from cords strung like clotheslines.

“Everything's organized by the players' numbers. You gotta make sure you keep it all together or it's too hard to tell whose is whose. And believe me, the players will get angry if you mix it up. They all got their patterns and superstitions, and they get plenty cheesed off if you mess them up. So we always do everything the same way. The sweaters and socks get hung on the hanger inside the stalls. The underwear and other stuff go on hooks in the lockers. Pile the pads on the chairs and put the skates on the floor inside the stalls. Sticks get lined up on the wall by the door. And don't get any of them crossed! The guys think it's bad luck. Cleghorn goes crazy if he sees crossed sticks. Of course, it doesn't take much to make him go crazy. He's not as bad as his brother, though. Those Cleghorns both got a temper like Joe Hall at his worst.”

Odie Cleghorn was new to the team this year, but he'd been a top player since 1910. For years he and his brother, Sprague, had starred together with the Montreal Wanderers. The war had kept Odie out of action during the first year of the NHL, and now that the Wanderers were gone, Odie was scoring goals for the Canadiens while Sprague was anchoring the defence in Ottawa. They'd be battling against each other in the playoffs. Sprague was the real wild one, but Odie could mix it up, too. Still, it was Joe Hall who had led the NHL in penalty minutes two years in a row.

As David carried the equipment into the dressing room, he realized he'd never given much thought to what the players wore for protection. It was amazing how little there was! Skinny leather pads lined with felt to cover their knees and shins. Pants made of canvas with wooden dowels sewn in to protect their thighs and butt. Nothing but extra layers of felt sewn into their undershirts to protect their shoulders and elbows. How did they hit each other so hard with equipment as flimsy as that? Only their leather gloves seemed sturdy enough to give decent protection. The sticks were solid and sturdy, too … yet they hit each other over the head with them and nobody wore a helmet!

When David was finished getting all the equipment, Al told him that if he got the job, one of his responsibilities would be to maintain the fire in the coal stove that kept the dressing room warm.

“It's only gotta be warm enough to take the chill off,” Al said. “You make it too hot, and it's trouble. The last thing you want is for the guys to work up a sweat getting their gear on in the dressing room and then have their muscles freeze up when they go out into the cold. Guys can get hurt when that happens. Or catch pneumonia or something. You know how to work a coal-burning stove?”

David hesitated. Should he say that he did? But then he decided it would be worse to lie. He shook his head.

“There's nothing to it, really. You start it up with some paper and kindling, then throw a few logs in. Once they really get going, you just add the coal. When you do, you gotta make sure the draft's fully open. Afterward you can shut it down some. But you know what? I'll usually be the one to start it. You'll be the one who has to come in a few times during the game to throw a bit more coal on so it doesn't burn out. Then, when the game's nearly over, you can toss in a whole bunch and really heat it up in here. I'll do it with you tonight, so you know how much to use. But after the game's over — and after you've hung up all the equipment in the back room and the players have left — you'll be the one to shovel the ash out from the bottom. Coal makes ten times as much ash compared to wood.”

By 6:30 the players had all begun to arrive. As at practice the day before, Georges Vézina was the first to show up. He nodded at Al as he entered the dressing room, then looked David up and down. It was hard to read anything in his expression. Vézina peered into his stall, and when he saw that everything seemed to be in order, he slowly undressed and put on his long underwear.

“Never known anyone as quiet as he is,” Al whispered to David as the goalie did a few leisurely stretches. “I'm pretty sure he understands English, but I've never heard him speak it. As far as I know, he only speaks French. And it's got to be something pretty important before he'll even speak that!”

The dressing room got noisier once the other players showed up. They all seemed to like joking around.

“Big game tonight, Joe,” Bert Corbeau said. “You ready, old man?”

At thirty-six Joe Hall was one of the oldest players in hockey. “Readier than you'll ever be,” he said to Corbeau, his twenty-four-year-old defence partner.

“Hey, Odie,” Bert said, “give us some dirt on your brother. What can we say to get him really riled up?”

“You don't want to get him riled,” Odie Cleghorn said. “He gets better when he gets angry.”

“Unlike you. You just get stupider!”

Things got more serious as game time approached. Newsy Lalonde was the coach of the team as well as the captain, and he had a few words for his teammates before they faced the Senators.

“These guys beat us 7–0 last week, and they beat Toronto 9–3 a couple of days ago. They won seven of their last eight games, and we've only won three. They think they're better than we are, and if we let them beat us again tonight, it's going to be even tougher for us to stop them when we go to Ottawa for the next one. We gotta show them we mean business. We gotta beat 'em tonight, and beat 'em bad!”

C
HAPTER
16

Newsy Lalonde had the skill to back up his words with actions. He scored three goals, and the Canadiens shook off their late-season slump by blasting the Senators 8–4. Odie Cleghorn scored three in the next game at Ottawa, and the Canadiens won 5–3. Back at the Jubilee for game three, Lalonde scored five times. The Canadiens won 6–3 and took a three-games-to-nothing lead. The series seemed to be in the bag now, but the Senators weren't going down without a fight. They staved off elimination with a 6–3 win of their own in game four, and the series went back to Montreal. At home for game five Lalonde set the tone with an early goal. The Canadiens went on to a 4–2 victory that wrapped up the series.

Although Al had told him he'd done good work, the Canadiens didn't take David with them for the games in Ottawa. They let him come back for the home games, however, and he was there when they wrapped up the series on a Thursday night. The newspapers on Friday morning all reported that the Canadiens would leave for the West Coast on Monday, which would be March 10. They'd be on a train to Vancouver, but nobody knew for sure if that was where they'd wind up. Vancouver and Seattle were the teams that had made the PCHA playoffs, but their series wasn't over yet. It wouldn't end until a few days after the Canadiens left Montreal. So not only did David have to wait a bit longer to find out if Mr. Kennedy would let him go, there was still a chance that even if he did go, he wouldn't make it to Seattle.

As Mr. Kennedy had told him, taking David on the trip would cost the team more money. It wasn't really a matter of being able to afford it. It was more a problem that the extra expenses would have to come out of what the team earned on their trip. Gate receipts from the Stanley Cup games were supposed to cover all their expenses and also provide the players with some bonus money. Any extra expenses meant that each player would wind up getting a smaller bonus, and it wasn't as if any of them earned very much money to begin with. NHL salaries only ranged from about $500 to $1,500. Winning the Stanley Cup could mean an extra $300 or so to each player. Even the loser's share would be about $200.

Mr. Kennedy knew the bonus money meant a lot to the players, so he thought it was only fair they be the ones to decide if David could come or not. The team was going to meet at two o'clock on Saturday afternoon to discuss the trip. That was when they'd make up their minds.

Instead of getting together at the rink, the meeting was at the Athletic Club that Mr. Kennedy owned downtown. He had organized the Club Athlétique Canadien in 1908 before there even was a Montreal Canadiens hockey team. Although Mr. Kennedy was actually an Irish Canadian, his club was mostly for French Canadians.

George Kennedy had been one of Canada's best wrestlers in the early 1900s, but his family was never happy that he took up the sport. His real name was actually George Kendall, but he changed his surname to Kennedy because of his family's disapproval. In 1903 Mr. Kennedy gave up going into the ring and started training and promoting other wrestlers instead. Wrestling was the main interest when the Athletic Club started in 1908, but soon Mr. Kennedy got involved in other sports, too.

By 1910 the Club had constructed a four-storey building on Saint Catherine Street a few blocks east of Saint Lawrence. It had a fancy gymnasium with all sorts of exercise equipment and room to hold two thousand fans to watch boxing or wrestling matches. There was also a billiards parlour filled with pool tables, a bowling alley with automatic pin-setting machines, a handball court, showers, a sauna, and a massage room. There was even a reading room stocked with newspapers and sports magazines from all across Canada and the United States.

Mr. Kennedy told David to be at the club at three o'clock. The meeting would be just about over by then, and that was when the players would make their decision.

David took the Saint Lawrence streetcar to Saint Catherine Street, then walked for about ten minutes to the block past Saint Hubert Street where the club was located.
Rue San t-Hubear,
the French people said. This was the French part of downtown.

When he got there, David was sent upstairs to where Mr. Kennedy had his office. His secretary was there, and she told him to go in.

The door to the office was big and heavy, but almost silent on its hinges as David pushed it open. Mr. Kennedy was sitting behind a large desk that faced the door. A few of the players were seated in chairs in front of him. Most of them were standing.

Getting up from his seat when he saw David come in, Mr. Kennedy said, “Ah, good, you're here.” He motioned for David to join him at the front of the room. “There's one more thing we need to discuss,” he told the players. “And this kid is it. I'm sure you all recognize him. He's been helping out in the dressing room lately, and Al tells me he's been doing a find job. Kid's name is David Saifert. And here's the situation …”

Mr. Kennedy sat on the edge of his desk before he continued. “Some of you guys will probably remember a fellow named Jacques Montagne who used to wrestle for me.” There were a few nods and murmurs of agreement. “You probably heard that Jacques got killed fighting in Belgium. Well, David's a friend of Jacques's brother, and he's lost some people, too. His father got killed in the war, as well, and his mother and sister died from the flu. He's got no family left in Montreal.”