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“Well, good luck up there, JP. Hope it works out for you.”

“Thanks again, Marco. Nice of you to call. I've been a little mixed up for the last couple of days,” I said, but by then Indinacci had hung up.

*   *   *

We took a cab to Les Remparts in the predominantly French east side of the city. At dinner Faith asked me if I'd be distracted knowing my father was going to be at the games.

“I can block out anything once they drop the puck. I'll shut down my heart if I have to.”

“You really hate him, don't you?”

“With good reason.”

“No doubt about that. Do you think you'll ever let it go? I mean what he did. Or in your case didn't do?”

“No. I can't.”

“You can. But you choose not to,” Faith said.

I didn't have an answer for that. For the rest of the meal we talked about the logistics of my move to Montreal, of Faith's move to Burlington, of cars, insurance, the sale of our homes, and all the little things that can suck the life out of a love affair.

*   *   *

The press conference was easier than I'd expected. I had a little fun with a young reporter from
La Presse Canadienne.
The kid asked if my goaltending style was butterfly or stand-up. “It's a combination. I call it the butter-up,” I said. There were a few snickers throughout the room. But, sure enough, my so-called butter-up style appeared in several of the next day's papers.

*   *   *

Practice was short and up-tempo with a lot of skating and puck movement and a few hundred shots for me. I felt good playing goal again, feeling the dull thud of pucks off of my leg pads, the
thwack
as they hit the broad blade of my stick, and the sharp tug as it disappeared into the webbing of my glove. Being in goal gave me a sense of control. Even the sweat and fatigue felt good. And there were no headhunters on the Canadiens. Nobody blasting close-in shots up high the way Rex Conway would sometimes do in Boston. Or at least the way he did until a few years ago when he hit me on the side of the helmet when I wasn't even looking. I threw my goal stick at his head and chased him around the rink. I've heard of goalies getting in fights with headhunters. When a reporter for the
Hockey News
asked me what I'd do if I were NHL commissioner for a day I said that any idiot who goes head hunting in practice should have to play goal for fifteen minutes.

Tim Harcourt told me that Picard gradually reduced the length of practice as the season wore on. “We come here, skate hard for maybe forty-five minutes, and we're done. This is a good place to play. As long as we win,” he said. Tim also told me that the buzz among Montreal players and front-office people was that Madison Hattigan's job with the Bruins was on the line. Few GMs ever make a major trade within their own division, because that GM is toast if the guy he traded comes back to beat him. “If we beat Boston in the playoffs Hattigan is archives,” Tim said.

Tim and a couple of other players invited me to lunch after practice but I told them I had to do some shopping for Faith.

“Your wife?” Tim said.

“Girlfriend,” I said.

“Plenty of those in Montreal,” he said. “No need to import.”

*   *   *

Arriving at the hotel, I ducked into one of those expensive boutiques on the first floor, made a purchase, then took the elevator to my room.

I gave Faith the diamond ring a few hours later during dinner at Les Halles on Crescent Street. “This is for you, whether we get married or not,” I said. “But I hope we do.”

“Jean Pierre Lucien Savard, that's an odd way of asking me to marry you.”

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes. Of course. Thank you.” Faith was never one for gushy scenes but when she slipped the ring on her finger she spontaneously held it up to the view of the young couple dining at the table next to ours. I guess they'd had a few drinks, because they immediately raised their wineglasses to us, and the woman, laughing, took Faith's hand and held it up for the entire restaurant to see. This set off a sudden joyful commotion as other diners broke into applause and toasts. A smiling Faith was the center of attention until a man at a nearby table recognized me. “Hey, J. P. Savard.
Bienvenue au
Montreal,” he said, pointing to me and setting off another round of cheering. The maître d' sent a split of champagne to our table. “To love and hockey,” I said, clinking my glass against Faith's.

“Love I understand,” Faith said, setting her glass on the table. “But hockey?”

“The game brings people together,” I said. “Very important.”

“Why?”

“Because everyone is lonely.”

*   *   *

Back at the hotel we slipped into those white Turkish towel robes with the Fairmont Hotels logo. I don't know what it is about those robes—maybe the easy access they offer—but it wasn't long before we were making love as we had on that autumn Sunday at Faith's house so many months ago.

The digital clock read 2:11 a.m. when I woke up. Faith was asleep on her stomach. I starting rubbing the small of her back as I felt my need for her rising again.

“Ernie Banks,” Faith murmurred out of a half sleep.

“Huh?”

“Let's play two,” she said, repeating the mantra of the old Chicago Cubs infielder as she turned over and slipped her arms around me. Faith is a gamer.

*   *   *

I don't think my trade to Montreal truly hit home until our Saturday-morning game-day skate. There, hanging in my locker, was the
bleu, blanc, rouge
Montreal Canadiens game shirt with the number 31 on the back and sleeves and “
SAVARD
” sewn onto the back above the number. It's the most storied uniform in the history of hockey and one of the most respected in the world of sport. My grandmother would have liked to see me in this jersey, I thought as I pulled it on over my chest and arm protector.

I don't usually think a lot at practice. I find it best to let my body react instinctively with the moves so long embedded in muscle memory. But as I skated to the Montreal goal for the first time I couldn't help but think that I was the latest link in a chain of Canadiens goalies stretching from me to Patrick Roy, Ken Dryden, Jacques Plante, Gerry McNeil … all the way back to George Hainsworth and Georges Vezina. It's an honor to play goal for Club de Hockey Canadien. Which is all the more reason I shouldn't have tossed my shirt toward the laundry cart after practice. I missed. The sweaty shirt hit the side of the cart and fell to the floor, where a tall silver-haired gentleman in a dark impeccably tailored suit picked it up and walked over to where I was sitting. “We don't do that here, Jean Pierre. Our colors don't hit the floor,” the man said, taking my shirt and placing it on a hanger in my locker, then brushing the CH logo with his hand as if to knock off any dirt it may have picked up. The man introduced himself but he didn't have to. He was Jean Provost, a team vice president but, a generation ago, the first-line center and captain of the Canadiens. He helped Montreal win ten Stanley Cups and, since Rocket Richard's death, had become the public persona of the Canadiens—Gallicly elegant in his dress and deportment, seethingly passionate in his love for the game and the team.

“You got off easy,” Tim Harcourt told me after Provost left. “The old-timers tell me that when Big Jean was in his first year as captain a rookie took off his game shirt and dropped it on the floor. Jean grabbed the kid around the throat. Took four or five guys to pull him off.”

When I came out of the shower Louis St. Martin, the team's GM, was waiting by my locker. “Welcome to Montreal, Jean Pierre. Come upstairs for a minute when you're through,” he said. “But before you get out of here I am sure a lot of reporters will want to know the intricacies of, what did you call it? The butter-up style of goaltending.”

Twenty minutes and a dozen media questions later, St. Martin and I sat in overstuffed chairs pulled up to a glass coffee table in an office big enough to have its own area code. “Your father is one of our luxury suite owners. You know this?” St. Martin said.

“You know my father?”

“I know all our corporate partners,” he said. “And I should tell you I'm the one who let him pass through security when he talked to you a few weeks ago.”

I didn't know what St. Martin was probing for so I went for the conversational delay of game. “OK. It's your building.”

“He told me the whole story. Said he wanted to tell you he was sorry. Which, by the way, I know he is.”

“Sorry finished out of the money,” I said.

“I understand. I only want you to know that I don't think he will try to see you again. And if he does it will not be with my help.”

“He won't be a distraction to me, if that's what you're asking,” I said.

“I suppose it is. Or was. We need you, Jean Pierre. We could win the whole thing. Again. For the twenty-fifth time.”

“You won't even win tonight if I don't get lunch and a nap,” I said, getting up to leave.

*   *   *

I ate toast and soup for lunch and tried to nap, something I'm usually good at. But I was troubled by Lou St. Martin's bringing me one degree of separation from my father. Too close. I tossed and turned for an hour before finally falling asleep at about 3:30, a half hour before I'd told Faith to wake me up, which she did by putting her cold hand down my Tommy Hilfiger boxers.

“Hey, I have a game tonight … and not THAT kind of game,” I said, removing her hand.

“Have a good sleep?” she asked.

“Not enough. Doesn't matter. I like to be a little logy when I get to the rink. The nerves kick in fast enough.”

We were playing the Toronto Maple Leafs and the game would be televised on
Hockey Night in Canada,
the most popular television program in Canadian history. In homes across the country the Saturday-night national telecast of a hockey game turns a TV set into a kind of a family hearth with sometimes two and three generations gathering to watch. And when the matchup is Montreal-Toronto the game takes on undertones people don't like to talk about. “To be blunt,” I told Faith, “Montreal versus Toronto is French versus English; Catholic versus Protestant; working class versus ruling class. That's oversimplified and is less true now than it was a generation ago. But it's still more true than false.”

“You make it sound like the Crusades,” she said.

“Nah. Way more important.”

*   *   *

I got to the rink at five o'clock, three hours before game time. Besides Tim Harcourt I also knew Tim's defensive partner Reggie Harper, first-line center Joe Latendresse, and a couple of other guys I'd met at Serge Balon's golf tournament. Latendresse was with Boston five seasons ago. The Mad Hatter traded him on the day Joe and his wife, Renee, closed on a house. I'd introduced myself to the rest of the guys at practice. It's easy for a traded player to go into a city and have twenty ready-made friends. The burden of a trade falls on wives, girlfriends, and children, who enter their new neighborhoods and schools as strangers. There are huge rewards that come with making it to the NHL. But there's a big price, too. It starts with our parents driving us to frigid rinks on frigid mornings. And, for a pro player with a family, the price can include a scared child in a new school and a wife wondering how long it will be before her husband gets traded, sent down, or released and the family has to move again.

*   *   *

“Take 'em out, JP,” Picard said as the clock in the dressing room ticked down to game time. I stood up and walked down the curtained runway toward the bright lights beyond. I heard the PA guy begin his announcement
“Bonsoir mesdames et messieurs…”
but that was all I heard before I skated into a wall of noise made by twenty-one thousand fans. The TV lights were so bright I could see the marks of skate blades under the newly resurfaced ice and could almost feel the collective stare of the crowd. I kept my head down and skated directly to my net, where I roughed up the crease, using my skates to shave the too-slippery new surface so there would be no sudden slippage of my blades.

The game was a joy. Toronto's Ian Manchester got a breakaway in the first minute. He went high to my glove side. My left hand shot up and grabbed the puck. I was peripherally aware of the fans cheering. I'm told they were also standing but I wouldn't know that because I didn't look up. More important than the ovation was that my new team seemed to calm down. Joe Latendresse gave us a 1–0 lead at the end of the first period and we were up 5–0 late in the third when the only question was whether or not I'd hang on for the shutout. I have a theory that a goalie working on a shutout needs one lucky break late in the game. Mine came when a shot broke off of my left pad and spun half over the goal line before a diving Reggie Harper swept it away with his stick.

We won 5–0 and the media voted me first star of the game. The three stars of the game have to stay in the tunnel briefly until being introduced to the crowd, beginning with the number three star. While waiting I glanced up for the first time and saw the out-of-town scoreboard showing that Boston had lost to Florida 6–1. Maybe I should have felt sorry for my old team. But I didn't. In this game friendship lasts, allegiance doesn't. I was a Montreal Canadien now.

*   *   *

I woke up Sunday morning when Faith pulled back the drapes and light flooded our room. She was staring out of the west-facing window. “What's that huge church?”

“Mary Queen of the World Basilica,” I said. “Why?”

“I was thinking maybe we could go to Mass. You know, like we did when we were kids.”

“You're not throwing your repentent self back into the arms of Mother Church are you?”

“No. It's more of a nostalgia thing. I can't explain it. I'd just like to go to church with you.”