The Game (28 page)

Houle asks, doing his best to see that he doesn’t. Before it can go any further, Lapointe steps in. “Hey, c’mon, let’s be fair,” he says, sounding suspiciously fair. “When has Bird ever had a fight?”

There is silence.

Happily back into something he started, Tremblay repeats the question, “When
has
Bird ever had a fight? Anybody remember?” We look blankly at each other. “Anybody?”

Robinson can’t hold himself back any longer. “
Câlisse
, listen to that,” he snaps with pretended outrage. “You guys’re pretty brave startin’ something, but ya sure disappear fast.”

Suddenly contrite, Tremblay hangs his head. “Yeah, you’re right, Bird. You
do
help us a lot,” he says almost apologetically. “I mean, the way you stand up to ’em, threatenin’ ’em, pointin’ that finger of yours at ’em,” and, standing up, hunching up his shoulders, he glowers at an imaginary face inches beneath him, his right index finger jabbing frighteningly at the air.

“Hey, don’t do that to my buddy,” Tremblay warns in a not quite deep voice, “don’t ever do that. If I catch you breakin’ his jaw again,
point point point
,” he says, jabbing three more times. Pausing as if something further has happened, he goes on, this time more excited: “Hey wait a minute. Wait a minute!” he shouts, his voice pitching higher. “Ya did it again. I told ya not to do it, didn’t l? Didn’t I?” he repeats, now really excited. “Jesus, now ya got me mad. I can’t believe how mad I am.

Boy, am I mad,” and finally pushed to the limit, anger exploding out of him, “and if you ever ever do that again,
point point point
…”

There is loud laughter.

Gradually, hearing each other laugh, we become scared and quickly stop. “C’mon, we’re too loose. We got a game tonight,” a voice shouts. Then another.

“That’s right, that’s right. Gotta pick it up, guys.”

But with the slightest pause, the spasm breaks. Savard turns to Lambert. It happens at almost the same time each time we play the Wings. “Hey, Lambert,” he taunts liltingly, “you should be mad, Lambert,” and with that, and knowing the rest, Lambert begins to laugh. He had been drafted originally by the Wings, a year later left unprotected and claimed by the Canadiens. “They didn’t want you, Lambert,” Savard needles with great delight. “They just shit on ya.

Come on, Lambert. Get mad. Get mad.”

And when Savard finishes, Robinson, Gainey, or one of several others starts in on him, “You too, Sarge,” the voice will say, and with that we begin to laugh. Nine years ago, the Wings, already in the playoffs, eased through the final game of the season, losing 9-5 to the Rangers, putting the Rangers in a tie with the Canadiens, and, after the Canadlens lost to Chicago, into the playoffs on total goals; the Canadiens, Savard, Cournoyer, and Lemaire included, were eliminated. “Come on,” the voice taunts, “they quit on ya. They made ya look like assholes, Sarge. You owe ’em something. Get mad, Sarge. Get mad.” And with that, as abruptly as the subjects came up, they go away until the next Wings game.

Ten minutes. I strap on my right pad. Preoccupied with time and equipment and not yet the game, the room is quieter, if no more serious. Too quiet. Uneasy, thinking of Cournoyer, the team’s captain, at home, his distinguished career probably over, Lapointe says, “Hey, let’s win this one for Yvan,” and instantly the room picks up. “Poor little guy,” he continues, “his back all busted up, probably just lyin’ at home…” and as he pauses as if to let his words sink in, Shutt and Houle jump in before anyone else can. “(h)avin’ a little wine…”

“…a little Caesar salad…”

“…poor little bastard,” Lapointe muses sadly, and we all laugh.

I’m not sure what I thought the Canadiens’ dressing room would be like before a game, though in me there was certainly a lingering image and a Marty Glickman-like voice that went with it:

“Here we are inside the dressing room of pro sports’ greatest franchise, the Montreal Canadiens. See and hear the majestic Béliveau, the lion-hearted Richard, the enigmatic Mahovlich. Watch as a team of proud, aging veterans readies itself for one more crack at hockey’s top prize, the coveted Stanley Cup.”

The first time was almost eight years ago, in Pittsburgh before my first NHL game. I remember being surprised, even disappointed, that it seemed so much like every other dressing room I had been in: players undressing, dressing, no special words spoken, no mood of a different quality, no solemn rituals that set it apart. Then about ten minutes before the warm-up, it changed. The powder sock appeared.

An ordinary sweat sock filled with talcum powder and taped shut at its open end, though uncommon today, it was used by many at the time to turn tacky black stick-tape a more pleasing shade of gray. This time, it appeared for a different reason.

“Hey, nobody get Fergie’s new suit,” a voice shouted, and before the fractious Ferguson could move, the powder sock splattered against his dark blue jacket, leaving it a not-so-pleasing powder blue. Amid laughter, a sympathetic voice cried, “Oh Fergie, that’s terrible. Here, lemme help.” The helper rubbed at the powder with a large ball of cotton, plastering it over with a thick cotton mat. Furious, laughing, Ferguson grabbed the sock; others, their skate laces dragging, ran from the room with their clothes, the sock pinballing here and there after them. When it disappeared about five minutes later, five minutes before the warm-up to my first game, a heavy talcum cloud filled the room.

I can never sense the mood in the room before a game. Noisy, or quiet, each can be read a different way; both can mean the same. Some players use noise like exciting mood Muzak, riding it, building with it until game time; others need noise to blurt out the oppressive tension they feel, others to comfort themselves that all is well. I used to worry at the one-liners and frequent laughter before a game. Not my way, not a goalie’s way, it seemed an incompatible distraction from what we were doing. But now I worry less. For a one-liner, a burst of encouraging chatter (“C’mon
this
’’ or “C’mon
that
”), an earnest gem of information, even a powder sock, can come from the same state of mind, depending on the way a player deals with pressure. Only for important regular season and playoff games does the room sound different: a little more quiet, a little less laughter, as if noise is unneeded, laughter too easily misunderstood.

With only a few minutes left, Shutt suddenly remembers and looks across at Lupien. “Hey Loopie,” he says with an unconcealed grin, “(y)ou and Mousse [Mondou] gonna get Woods?”

We begin to laugh, then laugh even harder thinking of what’s coming next.

A chorus of mocking, adolescent-high voices fills the room.

“Hiya Woodsie. How are ya Woodsie?”

“…How’re the wife and kids, Woodsie?”

“…Hey Woodsie, I got a new boat. It’s a real beauty.”

Laughing at first, Tremblay looks at Lupien. “Hey, Lupien,” he snarls, “why don’t ya give him a kiss?” Lupien sets his chin, then smiles. The routine is done.

“
Tabernac
,” growls Robinson, breaking a skate lace. “Eddy, Eddy, I need a lace!” he shouts.

“Left or right?” a voice asks.

“Ri—,” he starts, then stops angrily. “Eddy!” he tries again,

“Boomer! Gaetan! Peter!” No one appears and he’s run out of names.

“Oh Ed-dy, Boo-mer, you can come out now.” Nothing. A moment later, Lafleur appears. He’s been at the Forum since 4:30 p.m., was fully dressed at 7 when I first noticed and probably long before that. He’s been in the room at times, other places other times, and now he’s back—his hair greased flat to the sides of his head, combed straight up in front, his teeth out, a toothbrush in his hand, brushing furiously at his gums. Lemaire sees him first.

“
Ta-berr-nac
…” he exclaims.

We look up; amid laughter, as if reading from a newspaper, a voice intones, “…he waits as if in a trance, his only thought the game still four hours away….”

“
Câlisse
, you got
them
fooled, Flower,” Savard laughs.

“Hey Shutty,” Lapointe taunts, “there’s your meal ticket.”

Shutt, who has made a career feasting off his linemate’s rebounds, is typically nonplussed. “Ah, that’s the way I like to see him,” he says, “(r)eady, but not too ready. There’ll be rebounds tonight.”

Five minutes.

“Good warm-up, guys. Good warm-up.”

Laces get tied, straps tightened, last-minute shoulder pads slapped into place. The clock eases forward with each anxious glance: two minutes, a minute, thirty seconds.

“Here we go, guys. Here we go.”

Messages get shorter, louder, more urgent, and are unheard.

Risebrough and Tremblay pace the room, then Mondou, Napier, Hughes, and one by one several more. Palchak hands me the game puck. Everyone’s standing; we’re ready.

Bowman enters.

“Okay, let’s go,” he says quietly, and with a shout we spring for the door.

The Forum is almost empty. A few hundred fans cheer as they see us in the corridor to the ice, but with no support from 16,000(v)acant seats around them, suddenly self-conscious, they go quiet.

Grim-faced, my eyes on a spot always a few feet in front of me, when I hear their fragile sound I look up, and, remembering this is the warm-up, I look down again. The Wings are on the ice. I skate around, glancing back to look for Vachon, but, out of sync, when I’m at center he’s a hundred feet away circling his net. Skating faster, cutting each corner as I come to it, a few laps later I pass him at center, and we smile and nod as goalies do. Gilles Gilbert winks, Tony Esposito and Chico Resch skate by as if preoccupied with other things, Bernie Parent hovers near the centerline, reluctant to be anywhere else until the ritual is done. A few times, eyeing each other up opposite sides of the ice and certain to pass at center, I looked suddenly away just to make him wait. But each time it bothered me more than it did him, and a few laps later, smiling and nodding I would play out my part.

I used to look for Joyce. A Forum usherette behind the visiting team’s bench, Joyce met me on the street one day, and we stopped to talk like old friends. A few days later at the Forum, when I skated by in warm-up, we smiled and nodded to each other. We won; and I played well. From then on in each warm-up, skating counterclockwise so I had the width of the ice to get ready, I would smile and nod to Joyce. Then last year, losing more often and playing poorly in the Forum, I stopped, and haven’t said hello to Joyce since.

I still have the puck that Palchak gave me. Free of the dressing room, the team dances and cuts happily by me, but without a puck for nearly a minute, they’re getting impatient. When I was seven or eight years old, the Toronto Marlboros, then a junior farm team of the Leafs, had a goalie I liked named Johnny Albani. Small, with a short black crew-cut, when Albani led his team onto the Gardens ice he would drop the puck he held in his catching glove and shoot it off the protective glass to the right of his net.
Clink
. It was a sound we heard only at the Gardens, for at the time only the Gardens had protective glass, and a sound more special because a goalie, using his awkward paddle-like stick, had made it. So when I got home, grabbing my goalie stick and puck I would go out to the backyard and try to emulate Albani. There, time after time, I would draw the puck back, pivot, and power forward, at the critical moment of release feeling my wrists roll over, my arms and stick slam into slow motion, the puck slither-ing away in an arc, never leaving the ground.

Years later, wrists firmed up, hours of practice behind me, Albani-like I would lead my team onto the ice with a shot off the glass, but too often it was an unsatisfying shot off the boards, sometimes one that never left the ice. So, in time I tried something else. Turning joy and achievement to humorless superstition,
before each game, I must take the
first shot; it must strike the boards to the right of my net between the protective glass and the ice. If it doesn’t, I will play poorly
. So, as the team waits anxiously, I look for an opening, fifteen to twenty feet of uncrowded space to take my important shot.

It’s one of many superstitions I’ve come to burden myself with. I don’t tell anyone about them, I’m not proud I have them, I know I should be strong enough to decide one morning, any morning, no longer to be prisoner to them. Yet I seem helpless to do anything about it.

Sports is fertile ground for superstition; crossed hockey sticks, lucky suits, magic stones, and things more bizarre, it comes from the mystery of athletic performance—the unskilled bat that goes 4-for-4, a goalpost, a bad hop, a
move
, brilliant and unconceived, that
happens
, and never happens again.
Luck
, we call it, and coming as it does without explanation, leaving the same way, when it comes we desperately try to hold onto it, isolating it, examining its parts and patterns, if never quite to understand them, at least to repeat them by rote. What did I do yesterday different from other days? What did I eat? What did I wear?

Where did I go? Who did I talk to? and each answer becomes our clue, not a serious clue, of course (of course!), but still the best we have. So we use them—don’t change the luck.

But I use superstition in another way. I don’t want Joyce or the first shot to be the reason I play well. It may be “better to be lucky than good,” as we’re often reminded (for a loser can be good, but only a winner is lucky), but I want to feel connected to what I do, I want the feelings a game gives unshared, undiminished by something separate from me. So, instead, I use it as a focus for the fear I feel. Afraid of a bad game each game I play, I use Joyce and the first shot to distract me from the fear of a bad game, which I can’t control, to the superstition, which I can. I have turned it into a straw game, one with no other opponent, with standards and requirements I set, which I know I can meet. So when I do meet them, when I successfully smile and nod to Joyce, when my first shot hits the boards to the right of the net, I give myself reason not to fear a bad game. If things change, if Joyce quits or turns away when I look at her, if my shooting deteriorates, I simply change the game and set new,
achievable
standards. For me it’s a way of controlling the fear I can’t eliminate, a way to blank my mind and keep it blank when other ways fail. Off the ice, there are no lucky horse-shoes, no four-leaf clovers, I need no superstitions; on the ice, older and more insecure, I need more each fearful year.