The Game

by Ken Dryden

  Recently, a friend asked me to speak to his college seminar. Near the end of two hours, we began to talk about many of these same questions.

  A girl raised her hand. She said that a year or two earlier on the Academy Awards, she had seen Charlton Heston receive a special award for his “humanitarian” work. Heston had made the same point, the girl said, that thousands of volunteers had done far more than he, and that they deserved the award, that in fact his own contribution was quite small. I asked her, then the class, what the story had told them about Heston. Several hands went up; that he’s even modest, they decided. A few of the students laughed; then one by one others did the same.

  * * *

  SATURDAY

  “O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

  —W. B. Yeats, “Among School Children”

  Montreal Part I

  The talk has localized and quieted. On our wide gray bench, on the floor, in identical white longjohns shrunk identically up our calves and forearms, we sit or lie and wait for Bowman. At 6:31 p.m. he enters.

  Instinctively we straighten, our heads turning as one, following him across the room. Short, with bull-like shoulders and neck, his head tipped back, his prominent jaw thrust ahead of him as both lance and shield, he strides purposefully to a small blue chalkboard. We wait quietly. With his back to us, he looks to one side of the board, then to the other, turns, turns again, and screams,

  “Eddy! Pierre! Where’s the chalk?”

  We blink; the mood breaks. There is surprised laughter all around.

  Bowman writes the Detroit Red Wings’ line-up on the board, grouping defense pairs and forward lines together, adding three or four unconnected names at the bottom. Turning, he looks at us briefly, then throws out his jaw, his eyes jerked upward to a row of white cement blocks directly above our heads, where they remain. He’s ready.

  “We had a guy watch [the Wings] in Boston last week,” he begins quietly, “and these are the lines they went with,” reading off what he’s just written. “But they’ve had a lot of guys in and out of the line-up, so there may be some changes.”

  His tone is calm and conversational, even subdued, and while he often begins this way, we’re never quite prepared for it.

  “What we gotta do is work on some of these guys,” he continues slowly. “McCourt,” he says, pointing to center Dale McCourt’s name, “(t)his is a real key guy. He likes to hold onto the puck and make plays, a lot like Mikita.” His voice picks up speed as if he is suddenly interested in what he’s saying. “If ya give him the blueline, he can hurt ya.”

  Then it slows and deepens to a rich baritone, in his eyes a look that wasn’t there before. “We gotta get on this guy!” he blares, his right palm hammering the point into his open left hand. “Right on him!”

  Then, just as suddenly quiet again, “We gotta skate him,” he says gently, still talking about McCourt. “This guy doesn’t like to skate,” and as that thought triggers another, his lips curl and tighten over his teeth. “We gotta make him skate!” he roars.

  With only the slightest pause but with another change in tone, he discusses Vaclav Nedomansky, the former great Czechoslovak player (“He handles the puck well, but he’ll give it up,” Bowman says flatly, “(s)pecially in his own zone”), hard-shooting defenseman Reed Larson (“We gotta play him like Park or Potvin,” he insists. “You left-wingers, play him tight”), Errol Thompson, Willie Huber, penalties and power plays, the Wings’ defense, on and on like a never-ending sentence; and my attention span collapses. I look around and see bodies dancing on the benches from buttock to buttock, eyes ricocheting around walls, off ceiling and floor—Bowman’s lost us. Then something he says reminds him of something else, and he gets us back again, “…and for crissake,” he shrieks, his voice a sudden falsetto, “somebody do something about that squirt Polonich,” referring to the Wings’ pesky little goon Dennis Polonich. “I’m tired of him running around thinkin’ he runs the show.” Then more slowly again, his voice an angry baritone,

  “Put that guy down! ” But before his last message can completely register, he quickly mentions Dan Labraaten’s speed, interrupting himself to talk about Thompson’s shot, then Jean Hamel and Nick Libett. He loses us again.

  It’s as if his mind is so fertile and alive that each thought acts as a probe, striking new parts of his brain, spilling out thoughts he is helpless to control, each with its own emotion. A transcript might read garbled, frustratingly short of uninterrupted thoughts, but his message is clear. It is attitude more than information. And though he drones on about the Wings, the message is about us. For the Wings, nearly a last-place team, are irrelevant if we play well, and Bowman won’t pretend otherwise. So every few seconds, triggered by nothing in particular, he throws out a new thought, in an angry, insistent tone, and gets our attention back.

  Some nights he talks only ten minutes; a few times, to our wound-up agony, twenty-five minutes or more. When he finishes, we mock what he says for most of an hour after he says it, until just before game time. Then as we panic to cram in all the last-minute thoughts and emotions we suddenly feel we need, we throw back at each other what he told us an hour before, this time in his tone.

  Restless, bored out of our own private daydreams, we discover each other. Under cover of hanging clothes, we make jungle sounds, stick fingers up our noses, laughing wildly, silently, Bowman continuing as if unaware. Lapointe, his face loose and denture-free, stares at Lemaire innocently fingering the tape on his stick. Knowing what’s coming next, we watch one, then the other: Lemaire looks up; Lapointe grins dementedly. Grabbing a towel, Lemaire buries his giggle and covers up. Then, like a slap in the face, Bowman interrupts himself and gets us back. “…and that Woods,” he says, referring to Paul Woods, a small, quick center, who once played with the Voyageurs, “is there some reason we can’t touch that guy?” he asks pleasantly. Then angrily, “Is there? For crissake, I see Lupien pattin’(h)im on the ass,” and before he can go on, we start to laugh. Startled, at first he seems not to understand the laughter; then, enjoying it, he begins to camp it up, “And Mondou,” he continues, hunching over, wrinkling his nose, “sniffin’ around him, ‘Hiya Woodsie. How are ya, Woodsie?’ and the guy’s zippin’ around havin’ a helluva time.” Unable to hold back, we scream with laughter. We’re with him now. Then the look in his eyes changes. The joke’s over. “You’re not playin’ with him!” he roars. “Hit him!”

  He has been going nearly fifteen minutes. The periods of calm now longer, the emotional bursts more infrequent, he has just one left.

  Telling us to tighten up defensively, particularly the Lemaire line, he reminds himself of something very familiar: “And when we got the puck in their zone,” he yells, “for crissake, don’t just dump it out in front blind. That’s the worst play in hockey.” Mouthing the last few words with him, we look at each other and smile.

  He pauses for a breath, and his tone changes one last time. Calm and conversational, as he was when he started, Bowman sums up:

  “Look, don’t take this team lightly. They’ve had their problems, but they’ve had injuries and they’re getting some of their guys back. And now they’re comin’ on a bit. They’ve only lost one of their last three, so we gotta be ready for a good game. We gotta think of our division first. This is a four-pointer, and we got ’em back in Detroit next week.

  Let’s put ’em down now and we won’t have to think about ’em the rest of the year.”

  His eyes leave the row of blocks above our heads and move to the floor in front of him, “Okay, that’s all,” he says quietly.

  We leap up clapping and shouting. When he’s out the door, the room goes quieter. Leaning back, Shutt carefully folds his arms. “Scott was very good tonight,” he offers cheerily. Then, looking at the clock,

  “Cut in on my backgammon time though. That’s gonna cost me some bucks.” Standing, he looks over a room now busily in motion, “Okay, who’s my pigeon
?” he asks. Several heads pop up, then, seeing who it is, turn away, ignoring him. He tries again, “C’mon, who’ll it be?”

  Seated beside him, as if tugging on his master’s pant-leg, Lafleur mutters a half-hearted challenge. Though he beats him less often than he likes to admit, Shutt, a look of disdain on his face, turns and pleads,

  “Come on, Flower, give it a rest. Think what you do to my conscience,” and looking around, he asks again. Nothing. His point now made, “All right, Flower,” he sighs theatrically, “let’s go,” and with a grin and a board under his arm, he walks from the room, Lafleur shaking his head behind him.

  With Robinson and Tremblay, I go to the weight room. Nearly as big as the dressing room, a few years ago when the Soviets showed they were good enough on the ice to make what they did off it seem important, the room was renovated and packed tight with weight equipment to encourage off-ice training. But since we have won so often without it (“don’t change the luck”), the equipment has been forgotten or ignored by all but a few. Instead, we use the room in other ways: after games, Lafleur and his pack of interviewers come here to unburden the clutter of the dressing room; before games, it is a place to go when the game is far enough away it can still be escaped, when a roomful of players with nothing to do, anxious and uneasy, builds up the mood of a game before it wants to.

  Lafleur and Shutt set their board on a bench. I lie on the carpeted floor near Risebrough, easing into some exercises. Across the room, eyes extruded, Engblom reddens from the weight of a bench press, Lambert reads a newspaper, Robinson glances at some mail, Chartraw here and there bangs at the heavy bag, Houle and Tremblay, half seated on a pop cooler, stir their coffee and talk. It is like a Sunday afternoon at the club—easy, unconcerned, the game still far away.

  Lying on my back and barely conscious, I stretch through old, well-worn routines, nothing new, nothing unexpected, counting holes in ceiling tiles until the holes and tiles disappear, nothing to jar me into remembering where I am and what I’m doing it for, moving only enough to blank my mind.

  Some minutes later, aware of a sound, I stir. “Seven o’clock!” a voice cries again. “Everybody in the room.” It is trainer Meilleur, and hearing him this time, I look up, and everyone is gone.

  I walk back to the room, the game inescapable.

  Shin pads, shoulder pads, socks, pants, and sweaters cover the floor.

  The random movement in and out of the room has stopped. Voices that can’t shut up rebound from its walls—the build-up has begun.

  “Need this one, guys. Gotta have it.”

  “Yessir gang, gotta be ours.”

  “Big one out there. Big one.”

  But still twenty-two minutes until the warm-up, it’s too serious, too soon, and, feeling uncomfortable, we back off. The mood changes.

  “It’s a four-pointer, gang,” Houle reminds us, unaware of the change.

  “You’re right, Reggie,” Savard says absently. “If they beat us they’re only forty-seven points behind us.”

  “Yeah, then we gotta think about ’em the rest of the year,” mocks Shutt, and there’s loud laughter.

  Risebrough looks across at Chartraw: “Hey Sharty, you think about ’em?” There’s no answer. Chartraw, lying on the floor, a towel over his head, didn’t hear the question. Risebrough asks again. The towel moves. “Who?” Chartraw asks.

  “The Wings,” he is told.

  “The Wings,” he repeats, and says nothing more.

  Feeling the mood swing too far, something in all of us becomes panicky.

  “Hey, c’mon guys, gotta be ready.”

  “Goddamn right, guys. These guys are playin’ well.”

  “That’s right, that’s right. They only lost one of their last three.”

  But still too early, again it breaks.

  “Yup, only one of their last three, only eleven of their last thirteen,” chirps Shutt, and there’s more laughter.

  “I hope you were listening, Tremblay,” Robinson shouts, thinking of something else. “Ya don’t just dump it out in front blind. You heard him, ‘It’s the worst play in hockey.”’

  Gainey looks at Lapointe. “Hey Pointu, what number we up to now?” he asks.

  Lapointe, who knows such things, shrivels his eyes. “Uh, lemme see,” he says, thinking aloud, “‘the worst play in hockey,’ number one hundred and seventeen, 1 think,” then, more sure of himself, “Yeah, one hundred and seventeen.”

  “Hey, what was one hundred and sixteen?” someone asks.

  “Shootin’ it in your own net,” a voice shouts, and there’s more laughter.

  Every practice, every game, more than one hundred and fifty times a year, every year, I put on my equipment the same way—inner jock first, then longjohns, sweat socks (the left ones first), outer jock, garter belt, hockey socks (the left one first), pants (left leg first), skates and pads (left ones first), arm vest, and finally sweater (left arm first).

  Dressing in layers as we do, the order can’t vary much, but when it does, when I put on my right skate before my left, it doesn’t feel right and I take it off again. It isn’t superstition, it’s simply habit and what feels right.

  When I put on my equipment, it must go on at a steady, preoccu-pying pace: by 7:07, pants; 7:12, skates; 7:17, pads; 7:20, arm vest and sweater. After each is put on, as if reaching a checkpoint, I look back at the clock behind me: too fast, and with time and nothing to do I think about the game or whatever else crosses my mind; too slow, and I rush, and by rushing wonder if somehow I’ve affected how I will play. Not wanting to wonder, not wanting to think about the game or something other than the game, I keep rigidly to schedule. After a somnolent day of newspapers, naps, walks, TV, ceiling holes, and hypnotic exercises, I want to arrive at game time undistracted, my mind blank, my emotions under control. I know that if I can, the rest of me is ready.

  It never quite happens, of course, and after this long I know that when a game begins, none of it matters anyway. Still, to keep worried, nagging voices under control, it is a routine I won’t give up.

  Suddenly remembering something he’s heard, Shutt blurts, “Hey, ya hear Pit [Pete Mahovlich] got into a fight at a Penguins team party?

  Yeah, some guy knocked him down.”

  He gets murmurs of interest, but no surprise.

  “Hell, doesn’t take much to knock Pit down at a party,” a voice mumbles.

  “Or anywhere else.”

  “Poor old Pit,” Robinson laughs, shaking his head, “no wins, eighty-four losses.”

  Waiting his chance, Tremblay jumps in before he is ready. “That’s like you, Robinson,” he growls, and, startled, we look up. Houle stifles a grin.

  “Ooh Larry, that’s a shot. You’re not gonna take that, are ya?”

  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 excit
ed: “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.