The Game (29 page)

I see an opening, not as large as I would like, but cutting sharply for it, I drop the puck. Eager skaters dart after it—I shoot. The puck wobbles badly, but strikes where it must. Feeling a tiny surge of pleasure, I skate around mindlessly.

Round and round, and each lap the clock is eighteen seconds closer to zero. Over the glass, fans shout, reaching pens and programs toward me, but looking down at the ice, readying myself to play, I pretend not to hear. I glimpse usherettes, ushers, photographers; Eddie, behind the penalty box, a small, shy, older man who once a year gives me a wrinkled brown bag containing pajamas for Sarah and Michael that he made at work; Lennie, in the same corner where Pete Mahovlich, reaching his stick over the glass, would regularly sprinkle him with snow, laughing, grateful, with hundreds of fans as his witness, a
friend
of the team.

Tonight Lennie stands in the exit talking, waiting.

Round and round we go. Gainey stops, the team stops and turns the other way. Larocque goes in net. I keep skating, glancing at the clock, aware of nothing else. At 15:00, 1 stop in front of the penalty box for stretches; at 10:10, my mask is in place; at 10:00, I skate to the net.

Like skippers in a fast-turning rope, Larocque jumps out, I jump in, the rhythm uninterrupted. But I am cold and unready, the pace is too fast, and shot after shot goes in. Before I can worry, Robinson skates to the middle of the ice, motioning everyone to the blueline.

Facing only a single shooter, gradually I gain control. At Cornell, I tried to stop every shot in the warm-up; each one I didn’t stop represented a goal I would allow in the game. With faster, better shooters, I have no chance, so I changed the game. Now I must stop only enough shots that the ones I don’t stop disturb neither me nor the team. Like every other part of my game day, unworried, untired, uninjured, I want only that the warm-up come and go without trace.

With about three minutes left, I begin to think about
it
. Since I was young, a practice couldn’t end until I had stopped
the last shot
. It was someone else’s ritual first, probably my brother Dave’s, but for every practice and warm-up since, as the proper end to something and the base on which to build something else, it has been mine. But sometime during twenty-five years, the ritual got complicated. It remains unchanged for practice, but for a warm-up
I must catch cleanly (no juggling or trapping) a shot from a player unaware his shot must be caught (no
gratuitous flips). And then I must leave the net. If I don’t, I will play poorly
.

It is not so easy as it seems. Undefended shooters come in close and try to score, and I must stay in net long enough to get warmed up. Yet I have help, at least I think I do—Robinson. We have been teammates for more than four hundred games, and Robinson seems to understand.

I have never told him, nor has he ever asked, nor have I told anyone.

But as the clock flashes down, as I dance about my crease anxiously, he seems always to get the puck, and with it to take a shot I can catch.

With less than a minute remaining, as Robinson moves slowly into position, I catch Lapointe’s shot and leave the net.

Tremblay rips off a skate, “Eddy! Eddy!” he yells. “
Câlisse
, I’m slidin’(a)ll over the place.”

“Good warm-up, guys,” says a voice coming through the door.

“Good warm-up.”

A few steps behind, another, “
Câlisse
, we gotta be sharper than that. We’re dead out there!”

It’s quieter than before. Ready or not, we have fifteen minutes.

Nothing can be put off any longer. Skates, some sweaters, shoulder pads, and elbow pads come off, sticks are re-examined and taped, helmets adjusted, bodies slouch back against cool concrete block walls.

An ice pack behind my head, now and then I sip at a Coke, looking at the program, putting Wings’ names to numbers and faces I didn’t recognize in the warm-up. Three seats away, Shutt does the same.

Everything is slow, almost peaceful, each of us unconnected one from another, preparing in our own separate ways; as the game approaches, we reconnect. Against the Islanders or the Bruins, the room can be quiet or loud, it makes no difference. We know we are ready. Tonight, we aren’t so sure, about each other, about ourselves. So sometimes we’re quiet, and sometimes we make ourselves loud.

“C’mon, big gang,” Houle exhorts, breaking the silence, “an early goal and they’ll pack it in.”

“Yessir, guys, they don’t want any part of it.” But again nothing.

“
Câlisse
, where’s the life?” Robinson yells. “We’re dead in here.

C’mon, c’mon….”

Houle looks at Lapointe taping his wrists, turns and shouts in the direction of the toilets, “Hey Pointu, you in the shitter?” Then louder, “Can’t hear ya, Pointu. Can’t hear ya.”

Lapointe looks up, then down again, saying nothing.

Lemaire, who, with Cournoyer injured, is the senior player on the team, tapes a stick, minding his own business. “C’mon, Co,” Savard interrupts pleasantly, “this might be your last game. Never know, Co, at your age you might die out there.”

Another routine begins. Lemaire giggles convulsively. Tremblay shrugs, “Who’d notice?” and there’s loud laughter. But set to jump in, Shutt stops himself, then Robinson, and suddenly it ends.

“C’mon, c’mon, we’re not ready!” a voice shouts. There is a pause, a change of tone, then another shout, more pleading this time.

“Hey, c’mon, let’s be good homers, guys.” Nothing. With a deep breath, Robinson tries something different.

“Hey, c’mon guys,” he says casually, “gotta play it, might as well win it.”

We know why we want to win. We know how a win can make us feel; we know how we feel when we lose. We know that we are better than the Wings, that we’re expected to win, that we expect ourselves to win; that we
should
win. Still, before every game we worry that this isn’t enough, that reasons unchanging from game to game have become wearied and cliched, so we try others: seasonal reasons—

“Let’s start [finish] the season [the second half] off right, guys”; “Two points now is the same as two in April”; pride—“Need it for the division [Conference, overall], gang”; money—“Forecheck, backcheck, paycheck, guys”; “C’mon, might mean fifteen Gs [two Gs]”; home reasons—“Let’s be homers, guys”; road reasons—“Let’s not be homers, guys”; “Let’s start [finish] the trip off right”; practical reasons—“It’s a four-pointer, guys”; “C’mon, they’ve been hot [cold](l)ately”; “Two points against these guys [Wings, Canucks, Capitals] is the same as two against the Islanders [Bruins, Flyers]”; “Let’s not give 'em [Bowman/Ruel, the fans, the press] anything to give us shit about”; others—“Hey, let’s win this one for — [an injured player].”

The reasons interchangeable, the logic and emotion invariable, it is usually to no effect. Still, every so often, something is said that reminds us of something we believe in, that is important to us. At the start or end of a season, when I hear, “Let’s start [finish] the season off right,” it means something to me. Before a game on the way to the West Coast, already dreaming of the peace and freedom a win and the weather can give, when I hear, “Let’s start the trip off right,” it pumps me up a little.

Others have different things they react to, and in filling quiet times this way, occasionally we say the right thing for someone who needs it.

The mood is beginning to change. Programs are down, ice packs, Cokes put away; equipment is taped up, snapped up, laced up; bodies are twitching, coming off walls, eyes narrowing, tightening; moods, still separate, are building, and coming together. It’s like a scream about to happen. Suddenly, it all comes crashing down.
Whaack
.

Lafleur is back. With heads down retying our skates, we didn’t see him enter, slamming his stick on the table in the center of the room. Tape, gum, laces, ammonia sniffers, eighteen shocked and angry bodies bounce violently in the air.

“
Maudit tabernac
, Lafleur!”

“Wake up,
câlisse
,” he laughs, and is gone again.

At 7:53, Palchak walks over to Lapointe, Lapointe looks at the clock, and a little upset tells him he’s early and should come back in four minutes, when he’s supposed to. Watching the clock another minute, at 7:54, Lapointe goes to the toilet. A minute later, he’s back.

Two minutes later Palchak arrives to stone first his right skate, then his left. Finished, he does the same to Robinson’s and Engblom’s skates.

It began with Cournoyer a few years ago—“the magic stone.”

Four minutes remain. All day, bodies and minds have been fighting for control, and now, finally, bodies have won. Metabolisms in slow idle scream louder, and higher. Words grunt from mouths unable to hold them, and crush up against each other.

“Need it! Need it, gang.”

“On that McCourt, guys.”

“Nedomansky too.”

“Don’t let Polonich get ’em goin’.”

“Gotta have it! Gotta have it!”

“Who’s got the first goal?”

“I got it!”

“I got it!”

“That’s it! That’s it!”

The buzzer sounds three times—three minutes to go.

“Wake-up call! Wake-up call!”

“Three minutes to post-time, gang.”

Mondou gets up, walks around the room slowly, stopping in front of each of us, tapping both our leg pads with his stick.

“Gotta have it! Gotta have it!”

“They’re hot, guys!”

“C’mon, put ’em down! Put ’em down!”

“Gotta watch Larson!”

“Good start! Good start!”

“Get on Woods, guys!”

“Skate ’em! Skate ’em!”

“Four-pointer, guys. Four-pointer!”

One by one, we’re standing. Pacing, slapping pads, kicking kinks away, revving up.

Bowman enters. He starts to talk, but we’ve nothing left to hear.

The buzzer sounds again, once. It’s time.

“Okay, let’s go,” Bowman says, and with a shout we break for the door.

I go first, then Larocque, then Lapointe. Lafleur, to the right of the door, taps my left pad, then my right, with his stick, jabbing me lightly on the right shoulder with his gloved right hand. He does the same for Larocque and Lapointe, then squeezes into line, ahead of Robinson.

One by one the tight-faced line continues, to Napier, second to last, and Lambert, last. As we come into view, the noise begins and builds.

“
Accueillons,
” the announcer shouts, “let’s welcome,
nos Canadiens
, our Canadiens!”

The organ rumbles, the crowd lets out a surging roar. I swivel past the players’ bench; my padded legs shuffle in single file through the narrow open door—
don’t fall
, I think to myself—and I jump onto the ice. The others burst past me. Round and round and round they go. Eyes down, staring at a series of imaginary spots always twenty feet in front, I glide to the net. I clutch the top bar with my bare left hand.

I scrape away the near-frictionless glare ice of my crease. From goal-line to crease-line, my skates like plows, left to right, right to left, sideways eight to ten inches at a time, I clear the ice.

The clock blinks to zero; the horn sounds, the whistle blows, the players spasm faster.
…gloves in front, stick to the side, watch for Lemaire, don’t forget
Robinson….

They file past.

“Let’s go, Sharty, Bo, Mario,” I roll-call the names as they go, my pads tapped, slapped in return. Lapointe approaches slowly, his stick in his right hand, tapping the left post, both my pads, then the right.

Risebrough slashes hard at my left pad. At a distance Lemaire winks, then taps my blocker. Circling slowly, waiting for the others to go, Robinson, stick in his right hand, taps the left post, both my pads, then the right.
Don’t change the luck.

“
Mesdames et messieurs
, ladies and gentlemen,
les hymnes nationaux
, the national anthems.”

A cherubic silver-haired man steps onto the ice—Roger Doucet, his tuxedoed chest puffed like a pigeon’s. I stiffen, then drift in and out as he sings; between anthems I shift my skates so as not to wear ridges in the ice. When he finishes, there is loud applause, the mood two anthems closer to the game.

I take a deep breath. My chin tucked to my chest, my eyebrows like awnings hooded over my eyes, I put on my mask. Referee Wally Harris, turning to his right, holds his right arm in the air, the goal judge to his right flipping on his red goal-light. Turning to his left, Harris does the same. I don’t see him. Years ago, I decided that if I saw a red light before a game or before any period, I would see many more behind me during the game. So I look away, earlier, longer, than I need to, just to be sure. Then slowly I peek upwards—to the faceoff circles, to Robinson’s legs and Savard’s, to Jarvis’s, McCourt’s, and Harris’s legs at the center-ice circle. They are bent, set in faceoff position. I look up.

With a rhetorical nod, Harris asks Vachon if he’s ready; Vachon nods back. Harris turns to me, and nods.

I’ve made it—through a purposely uneventful day, mostly unworried, unbothered, uninjured, undistracted by me or the game, ready to play.

Others may sit in darkened rooms staring at an image—of opponents, of themselves—rehearsing movements or strategies, rehearsing hatreds; I keep moving, physically, intellectually, to keep moving emotionally. For if I let myself stop, I wonder, and if I wonder, I worry, and gradually grow afraid. But fear, like a landscape seen from a passing train, blurs with speed and proximity, becoming nonrepresentational, and unrecognized.

So each year I move a little faster, until now, moving so fast for so long, I find that I can almost forget fear, unaware even of the ingrained superstitions, rituals, newspapers, naps, and walks that let me forget. Finally, they are just natural, unnoticed parts of my gameday routine.

I nod back.

Montreal
Part II

For us, this is just another game in a long schedule. It is one of about fifty or sixty such games a season, anticipated with routine emotion, played routinely to an almost certain result. It brings with it no special feeling, and except for the player who scores two goals or more, it will leave nothing special when it ends. Because we are the best, because a long, numbing season rarely permits one team to set an emotional trap for another, our games reduce almost to formula: physical readiness plus emotional readiness equals victory. Only rarely, when everything and everyone feels
right
, when nothing else seems to matter, does the game ever become pure fun.