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That schedule had to be Packy's doing. The Mad Hatter usually arranges our itinerary so we play more back-to-back road games than any other team in the league. On a back-to-backer we charter out right after the first road game, check into our hotel at some ungodly hour of the morning, play the second game that night, and charter home after the game. It saves a few bucks on hotels and cuts down on the chance of a player hitting for the cycle—getting drunk, drugged, laid, and arrested. But it beats the hell out of you over the course of an eighty-two-game season. It also makes us feel like children.

*   *   *

We beat the Isles 3–2 Saturday night and Packy canceled Sunday's practice so he, the assistant coaches, and Madison Hattigan could trim the roster from thirty players to twenty-five. I suppose that's when the Mad Hatter surprised everyone by announcing he was
adding
a player. The player was Cole Danielson, a mouthy twenty-year-old punk who wore his orange-dyed hair in a mullet, stood a well-muscled six-three, 225, had the acne and nasty temper of a steroid user, and carried a reputation as being some kind of fistic hell for the Johnstown Chiefs of the East Coast Hockey League. The ECHL is two steps below the NHL, and the only reason a roided-up moron like Danielson was within a hundred miles of an NHL camp was to audition as a goon. Well, that and to help the Hatter put pressure on Kevin Quigley.

Quigley was in the last year of a three-year deal that paid him $575,000 a season, which is light money in this league. But Danielson—like dozens of other marginally talented hit men—would come even cheaper. And rumor has it that Hattigan gets to pocket 10 percent of the difference between the NHL salary cap and our team's actual payroll, always a few million dollars under the cap. So Quigley is a guy forever on the bubble, only as good as his last fight.

A fighter is like a nuclear weapon—you don't have to use it but you'd better have it. Or as Packy said when we signed Quig five years ago after we'd been pushed around by Philly in the playoffs, “We should've bought the dog before the house got robbed.”

Today's tough guys have to be more than brawlers. They have to be able to play. Quig takes a regular shift on our second line.

*   *   *

There was no undercard that Monday at practice. We went right to the main event. I was skating around lazily before the coaches came on the ice when I saw Danielson come up behind Quigley and tap him on the left shoulder. “Hey, Quigley, just so ya know, I don't start nothin' I don't finish,” Danielson said.

“You asking me to dance?” Quigley said real loud, so we all turned our attention to him. Quig slowed to a stop behind one of the goals and dropped his stick, helmet, and gloves on the ice, a silent invitation to Danielson to do the same. The rookie dropped his gloves and stick and then slowly—reluctantly, I thought—took off his helmet.

There was no sparring. Quigley, who's at least four inches shorter than Danielson but built like a mailbox, bull-rushed the rookie, pushing him backward across the ice and slamming him into the doors to the Zamboni entrance. The unlocked doors swung open and Quigley and Danielson went rolling down the ramp and onto the concourse, where they toppled a pretzel kiosk, knocked over a stack of empty beer kegs, and flailed at each other—Quigley getting all the better of it—until they slammed against a large blue trash bin labeled “
RECYCLABLES—INTERMINGLE.
” The truck-sized garbage can overflowed with plastic bottles and aluminum cans. By now Quigley had committed an assortment of atrocities on an overmatched Danielson. The fight should've been over except that Kevin doesn't fight like Cam. Cam fights for tactical reasons, to redress legitimate grievances and to right miscarriages of justice. Kevin fights to hurt people.

In an attempt at a grand finale, Quigley tried to throw Danielson into the recyclables bin, but the bin tipped over, spilling hundreds of cans and bottles onto the combatants. So Quigley grabbed Danielson by the shoulder pads and flung him into the now half-empty, sticky-wet, smelly container, emphatically ending pugilistic competition for the morning.

“Sorry about the recyclables,” Kevin said to the three janitors surveying the wreckage they'd have to clean up. “He should go out with the regular trash. He's not recyclable.”

By now Packy and the coaches were on the ice and everyone was gathered at the Zamboni entrance when Kevin returned.

“The hell was that all about?” Packy asked.

“Punk asked me to dance,” Quigley said.

“Good thing he didn't ask you to fight,” Packy said.

Kevin Quigley went to get his skates sharpened. Cole Danielson went to Johnstown.

*   *   *

Wednesday morning we boarded the charter for Burlington at ten o'clock and I took my usual bulkhead window seat at the left front of the coach cabin. Cam sat beside me, which is unusual. He normally sits in the back.

“Saw Faith McNeil at my father's office yesterday. We manage her investments,” he said. “She told me to say hi. And to ask if your rehab's ever going to end.”

“About the same time she's worked her way through the top half of the Forbes 400,” I said. I'd run into Faith at parties and charity events three or four times a year in the three years since our dinner at Cam and Tam's. For the first two years Faith was always with that cardiologist Sherman Wolfe. Of course he'd prefer it if you and I and everyone on earth called him
Doctor
Wolfe, but I liked to call him Sherm because I knew it annoyed him and he couldn't say anything about it without sounding like a jerk. Faith dumped him last year. “There was a quarterback controversy” was how she described it to me, adding, “Either I start or I don't play.” Since then, whenever she and I met, she'd be introducing me to a CEO or a Wall Street heavyweight and I'd be introducing her to a Sheri the Equestrienne or a Missy Taylor the New England Patriots Dance Team Coordinator.

“Faith's going to be at the Meet the Bruins deal next Tuesday,” Cam said. Meet the Bruins Night is our annual preseason dinner for premium seat holders and corporate sponsors. It's a fund-raiser, with the proceeds—after the Mad Hatter deducts everything but the cost of air-conditioning—going to one of the Bruins' favorite charities, the Greater Boston Boys and Girls Club, of which Faith and Tamara are trustees.

“Who's she going with?” I asked.

“You'll be surprised,” Cam said.

“Christ, does high school ever end?” I said. “OK. I'll bite. Who?”

“No one,” he said, standing up and heading for the back of the plane.

*   *   *

We were to play the Rangers in the new 10,000-seat SportsPlex on the UVM campus, the one that recently replaced the old 4,035-seat Carter Field House that Cam and I had played in and that Cam's grandfather donated. The Cart was one of the great old barns in college hockey. The university was going to tear it down but it's still standing because of something Cam's father said to the university trustees. Cam's dad—who refused to give any money to the SportsPlex—said that if they pulled down Carter Field House he would personally go to the new library wing he and Diana had donated “and tear it down brick by brick until you have to find a goddamn welfare hotel to store all those volumes of Shakespeare and that mither-ficking Chaucer.” I thought the Olde English was a nice touch.

The Cart is shaped like a blimp hangar with this big curved roof. The walls of the concourses are covered with framed photographs of former teams and players. We found a picture of Cam blocking a shot in a game against St. Lawrence and a photo of me robbing Paschal Fleming on that breakaway in the BC game the night I got tickets for Lisa. There I was holding the puck in my glove in front of the goal line with the rest of me sprawled in the net. I'd embellished the save by holding the pose longer than was necessary, something I used to do in college when I got carried away with the crowd and the band and the general mayhem and maybe with an inflated sense of my own importance.

Cam and I walked from the Cart to the SportsPlex, one of those new places with private suites, a souvenir shop, wide concourses, huge concession stands, and restrooms big enough to hold a barn dance. “Great place to eat and take a leak,” Cam said. The new arena is used for basketball and hockey. Men's and women's hoops are big at Vermont, bigger than when Cam and I were there. We came across a display case with photos of former UVM women's basketball greats. There was Faith McNeil, number 31, hair in a ponytail, high cheekbones and squinty gunfighter eyes adding a menacing intensity to her even then regal features. The photo showed her launching a jumper from the corner. “She wasn't afraid to jack it up,” I said. “Even with the game on the line.”

“Especially with the game on the line,” Cam said. “Girl had brass ovaries. Still has 'em. You should see her portfolio. Faith's not exactly risk averse.”

The caption under the photo read:
“Faith McNeil: America East Rookie of the Year … Two-Time America East Second All-Star … One-Time First All
–
Star and All–New England … Four-Time Academic All-America.”
She was an alpha female even then.

We had a light skate midafternoon on Wednesday just before the Vermont varsity's regular practice. I'd showered and dressed and was sitting on the UVM bench watching the players—the goaltenders mainly—and waiting for Cam, who was doing an interview with the
Burlington Free Press.
As soon as I sat down, the goalie on my right skated out of his net toward me. “Excuse me, you're J. P. Savard, right?”

“What's left of him,” I said.

“I'm Rudy Evanston. I met you when I was a kid. I was one of Lisa Quinn's patients. I heard about you and Lisa from Coach Indinacci. I'm sorry about, uh … what happened.”

I was so shocked all I said was, “Holy Moly. Rudy Evanston. I remember you. Jeez, you've come a long way.” I didn't want to say that when I first met him in the cancer ward I thought he was a dead boy walking.

“Been cancer-free for nine years,” he said. “Scary waiting for the test results every six months. Beats the alternative though.” He told me he was in his senior year but he'd redshirted his freshman year, so he had two seasons of eligibility left and he thought he had a shot to start or at least split the job with a freshman Indinacci had recruited.

“How's Coach Marco treating you?” I asked.

“Coach sure knows some horny women tutors in the Academic Support Group,” he said.

“Hey, Rudy, don't talk to this guy. He'll wreck your game.” It was Marco Indinacci skating toward us. “Don't set foot on the ice, JP. If the NCAA catches a pro on the ice with these kids they'll launch an investigation. It'll be death by committee meeting.… Rudy, get in the net.”

I shook hands with Rudy and wished him luck. “Luck doesn't have much to do with it,” he said. “Got to work at it.”

“Kid's got one of the greatest attitudes I've ever seen,” said Indinacci as soon as Rudy was out of earshot. “Sat on the bench most of the last two years. Never complained. Worked his ass off in practice. I think he's my starter.”

“How much longer you going to coach?”

“I don't know. This year and next will give me twenty-five. Maybe that's enough. Maybe not. I still like it. Beats working.… Hey, JP, I gotta go run this circus. I'll be at your game tomorrow.”

I was still watching practice when Cam slipped up behind me. “Remember when we thought this was good hockey?” he said. “Now it looks like they're moving in slow motion.”

Speed is the main difference between college hockey and the NHL. Not so much individual player speed but the quickness with which players make decisions and move the puck. Speed kills. And there's nothing it kills faster than false hope of an NHL career.

Cam showed up and we boarded the bus for the hotel. I made a mental note to tell the Bruins' scouts to check out Rudy Evanston. And to bring along the Grit-O-Meter or whatever scouts use to measure the size and depth of a kid's heart.

*   *   *

There was no team dinner Wednesday, so while most of the guys headed for downtown Burlington restaurants—and some tried their luck trolling for college chicks—Cam and I took a cab to the Inn at Essex, where the New England Culinary Institute runs a gourmet restaurant.

A lot of players cheat on their wives and girlfriends on the road. Hell, a few of them cheat when we're home. Cam isn't one of them. And not to sound self-righteous, but I wasn't either in the years I was married. Even now I don't go looking, but I'm not one to pass up an empty net. I had a pretty good night with that lady caddy Serge Balon hooked me up with at his golf tournament. “She'll regrip your irons,” as Serge put it. Then last January there was Deirdre the TV sideline reporter in Ottawa. I wasn't starting that game and the team bench was crowded so I sat in a folding chair in the runway where Deirdre did her stand-ups. Stand-ups are live reports from ice level where the reporter gives injury updates and stuff while fans behind her wave like fools at the camera and the people in front stick pens up their nose trying to make the reporter laugh on air. Deirdre did good stand-ups. But not as good as the one we combined on after the game under the five-speed shower at the Château Laurier. I suspected Sheri the Equestrienne and Missy Taylor the Patriots Dance Team Coordinator played by the same rules. But by hanging out with Cam I cut down on what the priests in my parish used to call “occasions of sin.”

At dinner we talked about the team and whether or not we had enough talent and grit—grit is a blend of passion and courage; it's what supports talent—to make a serious run at winning Boston's first Cup since 1972 and the days of Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito. We figured we had a good core group and that winning it all would come down to our top guys staying healthy and playing like top guys. That and goaltending.