Fever Season (22 page)

Manager Kennedy was well pleased with his men after the game and predicted they would carry off the big honors now that they have tasted victory.

But once again Mr. Kennedy had spoken too soon. On Monday night it was all Seattle just as in game one. They whipped the Canadiens 7–2. That made it a do-or-die game for the team when they faced the Mets in game four on Wednesday night.

The Canadiens had tried to play it rough in game three. Joe was really throwing his weight around and swinging his stick a little too wildly. It hadn't worked. True, the Mets were getting pretty banged up, but nobody was hurt as badly as Bert Corbeau. He got the worst of it after hitting a Seattle player early in the first period. Corbeau went into him awkwardly and suffered a sprained shoulder. He didn't play at all after that. Billy Couture and Odie Cleghorn, who usually played forward, took turns filling in for him. Joe didn't get any rest at all and had to play the full sixty minutes — except for the two times he took a seat in the penalty box. Newsy Lalonde and Didier Pitre had played the whole game, too.

David had to set up the dressing room pretty much by himself on Wednesday. Al was too busy massaging the players' sore muscles. Everyone had their aches and pains, but only Corbeau's injury was serious. Nobody was sure if he'd be good to go in game four. The newspapers said he probably wouldn't.

“How's he look, Al?” Newsy Lalonde asked as game time approached.

Al made a waggling “so-so” gesture with his hand.

“I'm playing,” Corbeau announced. “Don't try and stop me!”

That was what Newsy wanted to hear. “Good. Then Bert's starting on defence with Joe.” But Newsy knew he couldn't really count on Corbeau. He'd hoped to start Odie Cleghorn at left wing, but decided he'd better keep Louis Berlinquette there. “Louis will start up front with Didier and me. We'll get you up on the line if we can Odie, but I need you ready to go on defence.”

Cleghorn nodded. He'd do whatever was best for the team.

“Okay, boys,” Newsy said. “No one needs any fancy words from me. We didn't come three thousand miles to lose to these guys again. Let's show 'em what we're made of!”

Lalonde lined up for the opening faceoff against Frank Foyston. In his striped Seattle sweater, the speedy Mets forward had looked like a blur of red, white, and green so far in the series. He'd scored three of Seattle's seven goals in the first game, gotten one in the 4–2 loss, and then equalled Newsy with four goals of his own in game three. Now he beat Lalonde to the draw in game four, and Seattle went on the attack.

In each of their two lopsided losses, Vézina had given up an early goal. In game three Foyston had beaten him just a little more than a minute after the opening faceoff. Now Seattle was pressing early again, but Vézina looked more like his usual self.

“Atta boy, Georges!” Cleghorn shouted from the bench as the Canadiens' goalie turned aside a dangerous drive. Jack McDonald and Billy Couture thumped their sticks against the inside of the boards appreciatively. Because the rink was packed with Seattle fans hoping to see their team clinch the Stanley Cup, David and Al were sitting right there on the Canadiens' bench. It was easy for David to see and hear what the players were doing.

Soon Lalonde and Berlinquette had chances for the Canadiens, but Hap Holmes appeared sharp once again in the Seattle net.

“Be nice to get the first one tonight,” Cleghorn said.

It turned out that Odie was the first one to get a real good chance.

As play raced from end to end in the opening minutes, it became obvious Corbeau was favouring his shoulder. Newsy sent him off and put Cleghorn on instead. Soon after he got on the ice, Odie rushed forward from the defence and found himself in the clear out front.

Pitre had the puck behind the Mets net, but a Seattle defenceman was on his tail.

“Over here!” Cleghorn shouted.

Pitre spotted him and made a nice pass. Cleghorn snapped his wrists as soon as the puck was on his stick and launched a hard drive that seemed destined for the net … but Holmes got a glove on the puck and knocked it aside.

Later in the period Lalonde and Pitre fired bullet drives again and again, but Holmes stopped them all. Vézina was matching him save for save in this one, and for the first time all series the game was scoreless after twenty minutes.

David passed out towels in the dressing room so the players could wipe off their sweat. They weren't used to the warm temperatures inside Seattle Arena, and this had been part of their problem during the series. One advantage the Canadiens had over the Mets was that they had three spare players in their lineup and Seattle only had two. Lalonde decided he needed to use the extra player to better benefit.

“We're going to switch up a lot more from now on,” he told his teammates during the intermission.

In the second period he kept on swapping Cleghorn and Corbeau. Sometimes he used Cleghorn on the forward line, too. Couture and McDonald saw action, as well, so that Berlinquette and Pitre could get some rest. Through two periods only Newsy had played the full forty minutes. Yet the Canadiens couldn't put the puck past Holmes. At least the Mets hadn't beaten Vézina, either. The game was still scoreless. Despite the Canadiens' continued line juggling, it remained scoreless through the third period, too.

There was no intermission before the overtime. The break lasted only as long as it took the goalies to change ends. Vézina stopped by the bench for a drink of water and to rinse some of the sweat out of his toque. Although any shot that beat him now would cost his team the Stanley Cup, the Silent Habitant looked as calm as ever. He even winked at David when the boy passed him a towel.

“Continue comme ça, mon Georges!”
Newsy said, whacking the goalie on the pads with his stick as he skated for the far end of the rink.

Both teams were tired when they lined up to start overtime. Seattle looked worse, but the Canadiens were showing the strain, too. It didn't appear likely that either team had the stamina to put up much of a defence.

A quick goal seemed inevitable, and the crowd of four thousand was on its feet.

Just as when the game began, Seattle's Frank Foyston won the faceoff and the Mets sped to the attack. Foyston fed the puck to his right winger, Cully Wilson, who shot immediately, but Vézina stopped it. Newsy scooped up the rebound and went end to end with it. He had a good chance, too, but Holmes refused to be beaten.

The teams couldn't keep up such a fast pace, and soon everyone was launching their shots from a long way out. Like tennis players, the goalies kept whacking the puck back and then waiting to see what their opponent could do.

The teams played ten minutes of scoreless overtime hockey, then the goalies switched ends and play started up again. When the timer's whistle blew after ten more minutes had passed, players on both teams collapsed in sheer exhaustion. There was still no score, so it was decided the game should end in a 0–0 tie.

The next day's newspaper summed everything up best:

DRAMATIC CLIMAX TO BATTLE
WHEN MEN DROP TO THE ICE
AFTER FINISH
by ROYAL BROUGHAM

They may be playing for hockey championships for the next thousand years, but they'll never stage a greater struggle than that which held the spectators spellbound last night through the longest scoreless contest in the history of the game.

With both teams struggling until their tongues were hanging out, the throng cheered wildly when some Met skater dashed down the ice on a goal-getting assault and held its breath when Newsy Lalonde or some other Frenchman initiated a charge on the Seattle net.

The crowd waited patiently when the officials were deciding whether the play should continue or not, and when the decision was announced the fans went home perfectly satisfied that they had witnessed a great struggle.

But for all its drama, it was almost as if the game had never happened. It wouldn't have any effect on the series … except for the fact that it had worn people out. Seattle was still a win away from the Stanley Cup, while the Canadiens needed a victory to stay alive. If they got it, the five-game series would have to go to a sixth game.

C
HAPTER
23

Neither team went back on the ice during the two days off before Saturday's game. After their marathon struggle on Wednesday, rest was more important than practice. Royal Brougham wrote about all the injuries the teams had suffered in his column on Friday:

THE CASUALTY LIST
by ROYAL BROUGHAM

Here is the list of injured players after the struggle on Wednesday night:

• Jack Walker, Seattle forward, two stitches above eye.

• Louis Berlinquette, Montreal forward, three stitches in lip.

• Frank Foyston, Seattle forward, badly sprained thigh.

• Roy Rickey, Seattle defense, cut across ankle.

• Bobby Rowe, Seattle defense, sprained ankle.

• Bert Corbeau, Montreal defenseman, strained shoulder.

Every other man on both clubs was nursing from one to a half-dozen minor bruises, sprains, and cuts.

The Seattle men were a sorry-looking lot yesterday morning. Several of them did not get out of bed until late in the day and all of them were sore from head to toe.

The Frenchmen, while in better shape, knew they were in a hockey game and several bore marks of the struggle. All of the visitors were dead tired and spent the day resting.

Al was kept busy on Thursday and Friday changing bandages on cuts and massaging muscles. For David there were holes to repair in the elbows of sweaters and knees of socks. But fixing them didn't take all of his time. Although it was often raining, David went out when the weather wasn't too bad. He walked the streets and peered at men's faces, still hoping to spot a man who looked like him. On Friday he visited Mr. Embree's office again, but Miss Carter told him that none of the other families had been able to provide any information. On Saturday morning David went across the street to see Mrs. Bailey at the newspaper office.

“We've been getting telephone calls and letters,”

she told him, “but they're mostly from people who just want to wish you good luck. Several callers claimed to be your uncle.” Mrs. Bailey saw the flash of excitement in David's eyes. “But they couldn't even answer the simplest questions based on the things you were able to tell me.”

David slumped in his seat.

“Still, there was one call that seems promising. I wasn't going to tell you about it until I had a chance to find out more, but there was a gentleman who called to say that he rents a room from a man named Daniel Williams. He has no idea if Mr. Williams was an orphan, but he said they'd been talking about the Stanley Cup series and Mr. Williams mentioned he had grown up in Montreal and moved west with his parents as a young man.”

David sat up straight. There was excitement in his eyes again, but then a look of doubt. “So why didn't
he
call?”

“Well, the gentleman explained that Mr. Williams and his wife were called out of town last Saturday morning. They never saw the Sunday paper. They've been in Portland all this week, where Mrs. Williams's mother has taken ill. However, they're due back in town on the late train this evening. Our telephone caller has promised to speak with him when he sees him tomorrow and to call the newspaper office on Monday to let us know.”

But if the Canadiens lost on Saturday night, they'd be leaving Seattle to go to Victoria at nine o'clock on Monday morning.

Mrs. Bailey promised David that she'd send a telegram to him at the team's hotel in Victoria if they'd already left before she heard anything. So as if he needed any more reasons, this was another good one for hoping the Canadiens could pull off a win that evening. But the team got off to another bad start.