The Game (40 page)

But even more than this, the NHL was Canadian in attitude, approach, perspective, in its understandings and ethic, in its being, and in its bones. This was something beyond superiority, where comparison isn’t even contemplated; something unquestioned and undeniable, for now and forever. For the U.S., this was deeper than inferiority. The U.S. player wasn’t good enough, and never would be. And in a fight you can’t win, it’s better to pretend you don’t care even if you might.

The U.S. needed to get out from under Canada’s oppressive hockey shadow. The Soviets gave them that chance. If there was another way hockey could be played well, maybe there was another way still. If there was another country who could do it, why not a third? For the 2002-03 NHL season, of the League’s seven hundred and fourteen players, 54 percent were Canadian, 13 percent were American, 8.3(p)ercent Czech, 6.9 percent Russian, 6.2 percent Swedish, 5 percent Finnish and 2.9 percent Slovak. Now ninety-three players were American, including some of the best in the League: Mike Modano, Chris Chelios, Brett Hull, Brian Leetch, Jeremy Roenick, Bill Guerin, Keith Tkachuk, Derion Hatcher, and John LeClair. Some of the best coaches and managers were also American, including Lou Lamoriello, Craig Patrick, Larry Pleau, and Bobby Francis. In the NHL’s 2002(d)raft, of the two hundred and ninety players taken, one hundred and seven were from Canada, but sixty were from the U.S. Russia was a distant third with thirty-three. In the first round Canada had eleven picks, the U.S. was second with six. Players from seven different countries were chosen in that first round, from sixteen different countries in the entire draft. The details from other recent drafts are much the same. In 2003, two hundred and ninety-two players from fifteen countries were selected, one hundred and twenty-nine of them from Canada, fifty-nine from the U.S.; Russia was again a distant third with twenty-nine. Again, players from seven different countries were taken in the first round, nineteen from Canada, seven from the U.S.; no other country had more than one. In terms of kids playing minor hockey, Canada naturally has the highest number (532,000) but again the U.S. is second (425,000), then, far behind, Sweden (63,000), Czech Republic (50,000), Finland (45,000), and Russia (40,000). The U.S. has become a major hockey nation.

The Soviets and Gretzky changed the NHL game. Off-ice, off-season training left the players in better shape. They could physically do more on the ice, so coaches gave them more to do. They told them to move without the puck and, shortening their shifts, left them no excuse to stop. The game opened up. For five seasons between 1982(a)nd 1986, the Edmonton Oilers averaged four hundred and twenty-three goals a year, when no team in one season had ever scored four hundred goals before. Gretzky himself averaged two hundred and seven points, when no player in a single season had ever gone higher than one hundred and fifty-two. In the past, defenders and teams had learned to devise strategies to stop opponents with the puck. Without the puck, that was interference. But now, if players without the puck skated just as hard, but faster, dodged and darted to open ice just as determinedly, but more effectively, as those with the puck, how did you shut them down? Goalies had learned to devise strategies to stop shooters with big slapshots coming down the wing. Wearing equipment that barely protected their bodies and left much of the net exposed, they couldn’t move far enough fast enough. So they moved out of their nets to cut down the angle, so they didn’t have to move at all. But now if that big slapshooter did not shoot, and instead passed the puck to a teammate across the ice, how did the goalie prepare to stop both? It took defenders, teams, and goalies some time to learn.

Defenders were in just as good condition as their offensive opponents. Neither was held back by the puck. Defenders could stay just close enough, within arm’s length or stick-length, so that if necessary they could reach out and tug just a little, hold back just a little. Not quite enough for a penalty, it seemed; entirely enough to do the job. It didn’t seem like much, just more borderline infractions in a game already heavily laden with them. It was the beginning of what years later in epidemic form became known as “obstruction.” All this was made easier as teams, knowing that defense was easier and more certain to play than offense, implemented playing systems that brought their players to retreat into the center zone to slow down and clog up the action. Unable to take on a defensive and offensive position at the same time, the defenders, having neutralized the attackers, then couldn’t do much on offense. Further, during the last twenty years the players have gotten bigger. Not much taller, on average, only one inch in height (from six feet, to six feet one inch), but much wider, on average, going from one hundred and eighty-eight pounds to two hundred and four pounds. Just enough to make the players strong enough to hook and hold more effectively. The result? In the mid-1980s, routinely two-thirds of the teams scored more than three hundred goals a season. Since 1997, with the NHL’s schedule two games longer, not one team has scored three hundred goals; fewer than four teams a year, on average, have scored even two hundred and fifty.

Goalies too have adapted. How do you cover a net that is bigger than you are, when a puck can be shot faster than you can move, and when a shooter might be on one side of the ice, or, after a pass an instant later, on the other side? You do what you could have done a few years earlier, but didn’t, because you didn’t have to. But now you do.

You make your equipment bigger. Not your leg pads, there are rules against that, but your gloves, and most particularly your arm and torso pads. You couldn’t really do that effectively a few years earlier. The protective padding was made mostly of felt, deer hair, and leather, so adding more size also added prohibitively more weight. But by using lightweight nylon, plastic, and foam, goalies could have size and mobil-ity, too. There weren’t really rules to stop them, and the principle on which equipment had been introduced in sports in the first place years before had been forgotten. Once, equipment had been understood as something to protect the body and allow it to do what a game asked it to do. So, if in rushing up the ice and trying to score, or defend, a puck might incidentally strike you in the shins, why not be able to wear shin guards, so you can continue to skate and play as if undistracted by what really isn’t important? The same for incidental blows to your hands.

Why not wear protective gloves? And for the goalie, for whom stopping the puck is not incidental, why not more protective leg pads and gloves? The principle, so universally understood as to require no discussion, was that equipment was to protect the body. If that meant, coincidentally, the protected body also covered a little more of the net, that was OK. Anything more was unthinkable.

But if by protecting your body, equipment also made you a better goalie, over time it might seem that the real purpose of goalie equipment was to make you a better goalie. And if part of the goalie’s approach to preventing goals meant catching pucks, using a modified glove like forwards wore seemed pretty stupid. Why not a modified first baseman’s glove? And if later, those quick, European, change-of-direction passes for a goalie meant the need to move less but block just as much, if the goalie had to take away space to shoot at, he needed to take up more space himself. Besides, shot at one hundred miles per hour, even with a well-protected goalie, even one with equipment that sticks well out from the body, the puck hurts. So to a goalie, anything new that he adds to his equipment is arguably for protection. And to a League administrator, a former forward or defenceman, who wouldn’t be caught dead playing goal, who doesn’t understand goalies, and who by now is so confused by all this, it all seems allowable. In the last ten years, goalies have gone from Gumby-like stick figures to net-protecting objects as big as a house. The principle that the purpose of equipment is to protect the body, not the net, has been forgotten. Who says goalies are crazy?

All of these changes have come about because of the impact of the Soviet player. This has brought with it to the NHL the proliferation of the European player; the breaking of the Canadian monopoly on the ice, behind the bench, in the front offices, and in the public mind; the rise of the U.S. and Gretzky. It has led to off-ice and off-season training, playing without the puck, the open-ice game, hooking, holding, and obstruction, and the massing of the goalie. The other great thread of change in the last twenty-five years has been money.

Travel back to 1979, knowing what we know today. Find a hockey fan and ask him about money.

“Money,” he’ll say. “Isn’t it outrageous what these guys are making? They play this little boys’ game that they’ve played all their lives for nothing, now they get all this money, and they’re complainin’. ‘We wanna play where we wanna play. We’re like slaves,’ they say. Yeah, right.” Our fan is sputtering. “The Rocket never made more than $25,000 a year, and Howe, in Detroit, not much more than that. And now, what’s the average salary? $110,000 Canadian? Give me a break!

They’re ruinin’ the game. These guys and their agents.”

Then tell that fan about 2003.

“Well actually,” you say, beginning slowly, not quite sure how to get to the rest, “I’ve been living in the year 2003 and it did last. In fact, it got worse.”

The fan raises his eyebrows at your first bit of news, even higher at the second.

“Yeah, the average salary in 2003 for an NHL player is about $1.7(m)illion U.S.”

The fan’s eyebrows are stuck.

“Really, it’s worse than that because in 2003 the Canadian dollar is worth a lot less. So it’s about $2.3 million Canadian. And that’s for thirty teams. The real superstars get about $10 million U.S. or so.

That’s about $14 million Canadian.”

The fan starts to say something, but words don’t come. Then he can’t hold back any longer. “Who are you?” he accuses. “There’s, there’s no way. $2.3 million for an average player? Come off it.” He starts laughing.

You’re not even smiling.

He stops laughing. “That’s nuts. I mean it can’t be. I mean you take the richest team, the Canadiens, the Leafs, the Rangers. There’s no way. Nobody could afford it. They’d go broke. How could they pay that? $14 million for a superstar! The Rocket never made more than $25,000.”

Now you interrupt him. “Oh, there’s one other thing. The fan in 2003,” you continue, “he’s paying about a hundred bucks a ticket.

Some are paying more than that. But there are video boards and mas-cots and....”

The fan explodes. “Now I know you’re crazy. There’s no way. I mean, no way. A hun-dred bucks,” he drags out his words just to hear them himself. “We pay twelve. Twelve bucks for the best seat in the house, and that’s outrageous. I mean payin’ twelve bucks for a hockey game. It’s nuts. Payin’ a hun-dred? Come off it! Nobody could afford it.” He shakes his head. He wants to laugh but he can’t. It can’t be right, he thinks to himself. It just can’t be.

Now, you stop him. “Did you say twelve bucks a ticket?”

His world still spinning, the fan seems not to hear you.

“You didn’t say twelve bucks a ticket? For the best seat in the house?”

The fan nods.

“There’s no way,” you say accusingly. “No way. I mean twelve bucks a ticket! In the ’30s maybe. Maybe during the war. In 1979? No chance.” You know you are right because you lived through that time yourself. Yet you’re so distant from it now, so conditioned to something else that any memory you might have can’t be right; you remember something else. You remember twenty-five bucks, thirty, maybe. But twelve? It can’t be right, you think to yourself. It just can’t be.

It is right, all of it—the $110,000, the $2.3 million, the twelve bucks and the one hundred bucks. It seems we couldn’t have gone from where we were to where we are, but we did. It happened, in part, because of Gretzky.

When the WHA disappeared in 1979, the players lost their lever-age. There was no free agency within the NHL; the players had no place else to go. Salaries flattened out. There was no reason for the owners to pay more. Except for Gretzky. When the next great superstar comes along, he is always some close variation of the superstar before.

So, on the salary scale, he gets slotted in roughly where his predecessor had been. But Gretzky wasn’t a close variation. He was a lot better.

Certainly, he would get paid more. It would be unconscionable if he wasn’t. But how much more? The goodness of an owner’s heart may not generate the same result as a gun to his head. And Gretzky had no gun.

Unconscionability is one thing; business is another. Still, he got more money, maybe a
lot
more, but not a lot more.

The impact on the rest of the League, however, was modest.

Gretzky was Gretzky. Nobody compared with him on the ice.

Nobody’s contract could compare to his off the ice. Then came Mario Lemieux. He wasn’t Gretzky, but he was close enough to Gretzky that he could be compared to him and for his contract to reflect that. Then what about Mark Messier? He wasn’t Gretzky, but maybe he was a little like Lemieux, and maybe Jari Kurri was like Messier, and maybe Brett Hull and Cam Neely were like Kurri. With his unprecedented play, Gretzky had created a Neverland beyond the oceans, but it was too far away, inaccessible to anyone else. It took Lemieux to build the bridge to it, making it possible for the rest of the League to follow.

There was another major money development. In December, 1991, Alan Eagleson was deposed as the head of the NHL Players Association. He had led the NHLPA since it began in 1967. Eagleson had a lantern jaw, his chin butting forward as if always ready for a fight.

And he loved to fight. Tell Alan Eagleson he can’t do something, and that’s how you get his attention. Whatever the “something” was almost didn’t matter. It was a fundamental test of his character. Of his family.

Of his country. “You say I can’t do that? Just watch me.” But sharper with his mind than his fists, and sharper with his tongue than with both, he was no mindless brawler. He picked his spots. He chose his ground. He liked to win. He was the agitator, the instigator, the guy at the center of everything. Except, when the mess began, he’d be on the sidelines taking bets while the others rearranged their noses. As they walked off binding their wounds, he walked off with the dough.