Hockey Dreams (2 page)

However, he could understand one thing. He could understand
why
I wanted to watch it. It was only a shock initially because I was watching it in
his
house.

Once I explained why that had to be, he was satisfied. Although, he did not offer me a beer.

Later, I even got to talk about my feelings on the game. How there are two
theirs
in the game, and how
our
game doesn’t seem to count anymore. How one
their
is the product of business interests in the States — how we think it is
their
game; and how the second
their
is one that is strangely joined to the first
their
. The second
their
is the European
their
. How European ice hockey is supposedly more
moral
and
refined
then
our game
is. How we need European ice hockey to teach us a lesson. And that both of these
theirs
are linked in trying to defeat the
our
in hockey.

How probably this has already been done. How the huge arenas in the States and the lack of hockey in Hamilton attest to this, more than any of the false promises, or our pretence of still controlling our game does.

Maybe he didn’t understand what I said. But he probably did. He probably already knew all of what I was saying before I said it. He understood Henderson’s goal and what it meant. He understood when I spoke about my childhood friends, Michael and Tobias, and Stafford, and the game we played on the river in 1961. Because he himself had played those games too.

And of course I always spoke of Stafford Foley when I spoke of hockey. I thought of him on September 28, 1972. I thought of him twenty years later to the day.

September 28, 1992, I was at home in Saint John watching the news when they announced the anniversary of Henderson’s
goal. It put the hosts at a loss. They did not know how to approach it — as a human interest story or a noteworthy date in history. Finally it seemed that the best way to acknowledge to their audience that it was an anniversary of perhaps the most famous goal ever scored by a Canadian was to be whimsical and remote about its significance.

They laughed as if they didn’t want to be known as the ones to credit this as serious historical information. What relevance would Canadians attach to it “now”? one of the announcers asked. And then added that her sport was baseball. You see, she was only pretending to be indifferent. But no one is indifferent to hockey in our country, and so it was a self congratulatory indifference — one that looked out at her audience and said, “I have risen above the game you wish me to celebrate as mine.”

Without a doubt in my mind, the franchises in the United States need this reaction from us to exist. If they did not have it — if it was for one moment decided that the game was ours — there would be no lights on in St. Louis before there were lights on at Copps Colosseum. Winnipeg would not be going the way of Quebec.

It was 1984 and I was writer-in-residence at a university in New Brunswick. The Canada Cup was on. The night before, Team Canada had beaten the Russians in overtime to advance to the finals.

In the former Soviet Union, the game against the Russians
was on tape delay. All night, all day long, the phone was ringing at the Canadian Embassy in Moscow to ask what the final score was, who won the game. I knew who had won the game. I had watched it live. I wanted to celebrate. I wanted to talk about how exciting it was. I knew no one in Fredericton, however, except for certain English professors. And, as admirable as English professors tend to be, they were a different breed than I.

I went into the common room and poured myself a coffee and sat down — waiting for the arrival of someone to talk to. A young female professor from Newcastle Creek entered the room. She was a nice lady, and had met me once at the president’s house. She’d once made the remark that she didn’t see how anyone would be able to live without reading Henry James.

As she sat there I glanced at her.
Go on
, I said to myself,
Ask her — she’s from Newcastle Creek — Newcastle Creek for God’s sake. She’d have cut her teeth on hockey
.

I made a stab at my coffee with a stir-stick and looked about. Twice I went to the door and looked down the hall to see if anyone else was coming.

Finally I could stand it no longer. Turning to her I ventured, “Did you see the game last night?”

“Pardon?”

“Did you see the hockey game?”

“We don’t have a television,” she said.

“Oh, what’s wrong?” I said. “Is it broken?”

Then I thought that maybe she and her husband had a fight over a program and someone had thrown the television through the wall — I know people who do that, so I thought — well she was from Newcastle Creek, so I’d better be discreet.

“We don’t approve of television,” she said.

There was an awkward silence.

I looked about, mumbled something to myself. “Right in front of the net — they score.”

I too was from New Brunswick, I too had cut my teeth on hockey. I too remember sitting in front of an ancient black-and-white television watching the small figures of men gliding up and down the ice. I remembered the Richard riot, and how even then I thought it was ugly.

But I had entered, for the first time, another realm, where a woman from Newcastle Creek who may or may not have grown up on salt cod and moose meat could tell me that she disapproved of television and not be a fundamentalist. Could tell me that I wasn’t alive until I read Henry James and believe it.

“My husband was up early — to listen to the radio so he could hear the score,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. I smiled. I had misjudged her. Forever I would be sorry for it.

“Yes,” I said. “Did he find out?”

“Yes — he’s heartbroken.”

“No,” I said, “not heartbroken — we won — Canada won 3–2.”

She looked at me, as if I really was such a country bumpkin. And I suppose when considering it, I have been looked at like this almost all my life over something or other.

“But we were going for the Russians,” she said.

“No,” I said.

I had the same tone as a man might who had just learned that the
Titanic
had sunk or Passchendaele had cost us thousands of men for 50 yards of mud.

Hearing my tone, the tone of a person bleeding, maybe she felt as if she had won a moral victory.

“Well, we both hate Gretzky you see.” Her accent now turned slightly British.

“Why?”

“Oh, he’s just such a Canadian.” She smiled.

“You hate greatness or just Canadian greatness?” I asked.

In a way, Canadians have been asking this question all of their lives. And while asking this question they have been running to outsiders for the answer.

In a way my learned friend’s stance embodies the notion of the intelligentsia that hockey is a part of what is wrong with our country.

Of course I know this about my country. I have known it since Stafford Foley used to debate the merits of Alex Delvecchio in a room at the tavern, as if he could turn back the clock and make, with the original six, everything right with the world again and with himself.

It was, by some rascals, rather smart-alecky to cheer for the Russians. I remember this all too well.

It was December 31, 1975 — all day I waited. Red Army was playing Montreal. I was in Victoria with an acquaintance. He was extremely adept (or he thought he was) at taking the opposite position — the educated, therefore contrived, outrageous part. And so he “wished” to cheer for the Russians. He felt
no one else
would be doing this. (He would only have to listen to one CBC commentary to realize how Canadians bent over backwards to kiss the Russian behinds in order to be fair.)

I shouted at him, told him if he had only known the dozens of minutes of unrecognizable penalties that were given to our amateurs in Sweden and Czechoslovakia over the years he’d feel different. Or if he had only known the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Hockey Canada had given to the Russians to help their sport, he may change his mind.

He stared at me, as if I had not just said something wrong. It went well beyond this. It was as if I had demonstrated the kind of unfair sportsmanship he was ridiculing. “My Good God man — get a hold of yourself; it’s only a game — you’re frightening the house guests.”

What was under attack was simply fear of a lack of Canadian identity. And he, a learned man whose father was a poet, connected to a university, did not wish to have anything to do with the sport that could make us feel — even manhandle us into feeling — Canadian. It was supposed to be done another way; I suppose a more
civilized
way. (Also it
was the elitist idea that the ideal of Soviet life was one that hinged on working-class fairness.)

For most people who talk this polemic against hockey as a point of identity there is a certain degree of cant, of wrong-headedness. Besides, part of this kind of conceit hinges on the identity crisis itself. Because some of us continue to believe that Canadians are famous for nothing except hockey. Therefore they argue that Canadians must be greater than what they are famous for.

My answer to that has always been yes and no. And hockey, when you know what it says about us as a people, proves it.

So we sat in silence, he and I, in a little room on that long ago New Year’s Eve. Montreal did not win that game as we all know. They tied Red Army 3–3, after outplaying them and outshooting them by a margin of 4–1 Tretiak, who the Czechs always seemed mystified by our inability to score against, saved them — and Dryden was in net for us.

Dryden never played that well against the Soviets, but all in all, well enough.

I remember at one point during that game Guy Lafleur stickhandling at centre ice, and mystifying three Russian players. It comes back to me time and again when I am lectured, usually by university professors, on how the Europeans taught us finesse, and how shameful I am not to record that. I will and do record the Russians’ greatness. But, my son, they did not teach us finesse.

Finesse in the age of Orr and Lafleur?

Finesse in the age of Lemieux and Gretzky? In the age of Savard (Denis) or a hundred others?

I was in Australia in 1993, at a literary festival. It is a wonderful country and has a rugby league and Australian rules. In some way (this is exaggerated) the difference between these two kinds of rugby is the same as the difference between ice hockey and hockey.

I was sitting with a writer from the Czech Republic and a woman who worked for Penguin Books. The writer from the Czech Republic and I had an interesting conversation about Australia and how it compared to our countries. All of a sudden he gave a start, and he said, “Oh — you are
Canadian —
I thought you were an American — so mister Canadianman tell me — who is the greatest hockey player in the world today?”

“Gretzky or Lemieux — I’m not sure which,” I replied.

“Gretzky or Lemieux — Gretzky or Lemieux — bahhh! What about Jagr —?”

“Who?” the young woman from Penguin asked.

“Jagr — Jagr — the greatest to ever exist.”

“Great, no doubt,” I said. “Definitely a great asset to the Penguins — but not the greatest who ever lived — he isn’t even the greatest of his era — he isn’t even the greatest for the Penguins.”

“Pardon me?” the woman from Penguin said.

“The Penguins would be nothing without him,” my Czech acquaintance said.

“I agree — he is great — but Lemieux is far greater — anyway the Penguins might get rid of them both within the next few years. I am very cynical about it.”

“Who are they?” the woman from Penguin said.

She made a stab. “So what do you think of Kundera?” she said to the Czech gentleman after a moment’s silence.

“Kundera — what team does he play for?” the Czech writer asked, and winked my way.

The sales representive from Penguin excused herself and did not come back to the table. Her meal got cold. This is true, and I feel badly about this now (a little).

Earlier that day in Melbourne, I needed a pair of shoes for this particular dinner. I went with my wife and son to a shoe store near our hotel. In this store one of the salesmen was a young Russian immigrant. He was fairly new to his job, and new to Australia.

He told me that the one thing he missed was hockey. He mentioned Larionov and Fetisov — he asked me if Fetisov had retired. I was never a big fan of Fetisov (except when he got punched in the head by Clarke) but I understood that his hockey talk was more than a sales pitch. And even if it were only a sales pitch
it worked
. For how many customers could he have used it on in Melbourne?

Years before, in my home town I got drunk one night with a boxer off a Russian ship. We liked each other very much. We talked two things — hockey and boxing. The only thing I can
say is that all through the evening this partisan Russian who lived fifteen miles from Leningrad never once mentioned hockey as “ice hockey.”

Ah but the game is lost boys, the game is lost. To go on about it, at times, is like a farm boy kicking a dead horse to get up out of a puddle.

But still, some horses are worth a kick or two. And if it is good and even noble to have sport, and if hockey is
our
sport, and if we can make the claim that we play hockey better than any other country — if we can make that claim, without having to listen to apologies about why we made it — then who speaks for
us
, as a HOCKEY nation, when three-quarters of our NHL teams are in the states, and 324 of our players as well?

It is not America’s fault, maybe not even ours. Perhaps it is just the nature of the economic beast. And a few years back — in the dark age of Mulroney, when we spoke about selling out our culture, what great ballet were we thinking of — what great ballet had we already let go?

I remember an American friend laughing when she asked where Canada got its baseball players. It was the year Toronto lost to Kansas City and it had put a scare into many Americans. In fact, this lady’s hair stood on end the entire time I spoke to her.