by Ken Dryden
Meanwhile, hockey continued to change. The Russians had arrived in full force. Not only as solo acts—Sergei Makarov in Calgary, Alexander Mogilny in Buffalo, Pavel Bure in Vancouver—but also, in Detroit, the “Russian Five”—Sergei Fedorov, Igor Larionov, Vyacheslav Kozlov, Vladimir Konstantinov, Viacheslav Fetisov. This was a whole five-man unit that had grown up with passing, where players without the puck were more important than the player with it, where greater and greater speed could be realized. There the future was on display on NHL ice surfaces for players, coaches, fans, and the media to see—giving players and coaches the opportunity to do the same and to experience all of its possibilities themselves. That regular season, the Red Wings won an NHL record sixty-two games.
The speed of the game was picking up. Shifts got even shorter—about forty-five seconds long—and the game got faster still. Even the language of hockey changed. Goal calls changed: “He shoots, he scores!” became “Shoots, scores!” or just “Scores!” There was no time to say more. Phrases like “ragging the puck” and “second wind” all but disappeared. With so many players chasing the puck carrier, there was no time to “rag” it, and players, moving at a sprint, had to get off the ice before their first wind expired. A new phrase appeared in the mainstream hockey lexicon: “finishing your check.” After a puck carrier makes a pass, a checker continues towards him and runs into him, finishing the check. The phrase didn’t even exist in the 1950s—nor even during much of the 1960s. The players, still playing two-minute shifts, coasting, circling, weren’t close enough to each other to finish their checks.
And one telltale story from the 1940s: of the great Bill Durnan, hockey’s first and only ambidextrous goalie. On a play coming at him from an angle, he liked to hold his stick on the short side, the side nearest to the shooter, to enable him to catch shots with his other hand to the long side. The game moved slowly enough that when the puck was passed from side to side, he had time to switch his stick from hand to hand.
Fighters also changed. The heavyweights arrived—Bob Probert, Mike Peluso, Stu Grimson, Gino Odjick, Todd Ewen, Donald Brashear, Krzysztof Oliwa, Georges Laraque. Even fighters shorter in stature—Tie Domi, Rob Ray, Kelly Chase, Paul Laus (who had thirty-nine fights in the 1996–97 season)—were heavyweights. Most still tried to contribute fully as players, to get more ice time, to help their teammates in other ways, and after practice and in the summer they worked to build up their skills. But they also trained to become better fighters. By the 1990s, it was hard to pretend anymore that fights were the inevitable result of a game that moved superhumanly fast inside an enclosed ice surface, where collisions were unavoidable, where anger resulted, where wrongs had to be righted, where a fight was a release of potentially dangerous pent-up emotion.
For why were these fighters so angry? Because their team was behind and they needed to go out and “change the temperature of the game”? Because their talented teammates were angry at being hit, and as fighters they were angry on their behalf? These fighters weren’t on the ice long enough to be angry for any other reason. Fighting wasn’t a release of emotion for them—it was exactly the opposite. It was a fighter’s chance to add emotion to the game. But since fewer fighters fought more fights, since it was becoming undeniable their role was to be a goon, their role would need to be romanticized. If you weren’t fighting to right your own wrongs, you had to be fighting for your team, for your teammates. Literally. Risking life and limb for them. Literally. Fighters now mostly fought those who had committed the wrong to someone else, or fought other fighters. There was a code. If fighting wasn’t about anger, it had to be about honour.
Fighters of the 1950s and 1960s couldn’t lose a fight, because then they would have to prove themselves again and again, and fight more often. If they won routinely and devastatingly on the rare occasions they fought, they earned a reputation and others stayed away. Nobody, after all, wanted to mess with Gordie Howe. In the 1970s, the Flyers changed that. Dave Schultz didn’t win all of his fights, he just kept coming back at his opponents until they weren’t willing to fight anymore. It was the same with Bob Kelly, Don Saleski, Jack McIlhargey, and whoever the newest and toughest on Philadelphia’s roster was. But by the 1990s, a fighter had to win every fight again. There weren’t many fighters, and they were all very good at what they did. They could do serious damage, and be seriously hurt. It was gunfighter against gunfighter: a showdown. The fights weren’t emotional; they were circumstantial—if your team was behind by two goals but there was still time for a comeback, you fought; if your team was behind by more than two goals and the game was lost, you fought; if a star teammate was hit and that wrong needed to be righted, you fought—this was about pride, justice, or changing the tone of the game. For a fighter, if his team is down two goals and he is put on the ice, what is he going to do to help? Score two goals? Fighters fight and dancers dance. By the 1990s, fighters couldn’t lose, because winning fights was what they did.
For the fighter, everything continued to escalate too. He played less often; he had to make his mark faster and with more certainty; he had only one way to keep his place on the team. He had to fight guys as big and tough as he was. Six-foot-four, 230 pounds. Bare knuckles. Fighting hurt more than before. No matter the injury or fear or pain, a fighter had to be ready. He had twenty seconds to prove himself. Painkillers and anti-anxiety medications became parts of his life.
The names of former player-fighters who showed symptoms of brain injury, sometimes before, sometimes after retiring have started to appear—Bob Probert, Wade Belak, Derek Boogaard, Mike Peluso, Marc Potvin, Stu Grimson, Gino Odjick, Todd Ewen. Fewer concussions were reported in earlier decades. There were fewer doctors around a team to diagnose them. Players and coaches were less aware. Players continued to play because that’s what players do. But with the game moving more slowly in those days, with fewer collisions and collisions of less force, with fewer fights—maybe fewer concussions had been reported because there were fewer concussions.
Bettman wasn’t a hockey guy, so he depended on his hockey guys—who saw the much faster, more exciting, more dangerous present through the prism of a very different past. Through a past of legend and lore; through their own memories, like generals who fight the next war using the last war’s strategies, employing war horses against machine guns. Bettman had grown more confident about his upcoming collective bargaining agreement (CBA) showdown in 2004 with the players over a salary cap; but he was no more confident about the feel he needed for the game on the ice. When Bettman is not sure of himself, he retreats into his lawyer’s self. He listens to his critics to pick holes in their arguments; to create doubt, to keep them at bay, to avoid the larger issue about which he is less certain. A salary cap was where he should put his attention, he knew. It was the one big issue that would determine so many others—for the future operations of the game and for himself.
Other aspects of the game were becoming crucial, too. Players always give everything, and they will give whatever the everything is at any moment. Commitment, time, training off-ice and off-season, more hours, more months, shorter shifts, skating faster, colliding harder and more often, fighting more punishingly, blocking more shots, playing with more injury and more pain—whatever it takes. By the early 2000s, everything was a lot more than it used to be.
It was in this ever-escalating game, in this NHL, that Steve would play his career.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was September 2000. Steve packed his gear, piled it into the back of his new pickup truck, and hit the road for Saint John, the home of Calgary’s AHL affiliate. The kid who had almost always been the youngest, who had never been the best, who had gone undrafted, was now a professional hockey player at twenty years old.
He spent the first night of the journey in Montreal. It was at Paul’s suggestion, and Steve had agreed. The next morning, Steve met with Gisele Bourgeois, a psychologist and performance coach who had worked with some senior executives at Johnson & Johnson. Stev
e and Gisele also met that evening and the morning after, for two or more hours each time.
Gisele was different from Steve’s other coaches. She didn’t tell him what to do, nor think of him in the context of a team. She wanted him to think of himself as being at his own centre. She wanted to help him understand what he wanted, what he needed, what he hoped for. He had played hockey since he was three. Hockey had filled most of his days and weeks, most of his doing and dreaming, year after year since then. He was good at hockey. But did he play hockey because he loved it, Gisele wanted to know, or because hockey was just what he did? She wanted to hear Steve answer questions like this because she wanted him to hear his own answers. She wanted him to reinforce the certainty he already felt, that he had demonstrated through his actions all of his life, because what he was about to undertake and wanted to achieve would require an immense commitment. She wanted him to know—and for him to say out loud: “I am at the wheel driving to Saint John to play for the Flames because I want to. This is my choice. This is my life.”
Steve was excited and fearful in their first session, Gisele recalls. Her first impression was of “someone who at a young age had made up his mind that this is what he wanted to do, and who, when he makes a decision, is all in.” He had fears, but they weren’t about living up to the expectations of others or about living up to past successes. They were about what was ahead. He wasn’t a superstar. He had never been able to shape his environment to his own wants and personality. He’d had to adapt to every new team he played on. How will I fit in now? he wondered. What will my new coach be like? Can I do it?
Gisele noticed that Steve was very aware of his impact on others, especially his teammates. He wanted to make other people happy. This wasn’t to get validation from others, she believed, but rather a simple “why wouldn’t I?” Isn’t that how any team, how any family, works? Your purpose is them; their purpose is you.
Steve had played in front of lots of people in his life, and had been written about and treated as special. But “I don’t think he ever felt special,” Gisele says. “He had an ego like every young man, [but] he knew that he wasn’t the best player on the ice. He wasn’t the most talented, and every time he was on the ice he knew he had to earn the right to be out there again. But he was okay with being one of the supporting cast. He knew that was important. He knew that he could make that significant, and he knew that early on. It gave him a certain humility, and kept him always searching for new ways to contribute to the team.”
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“It was maybe a quarter to twelve,” Jim Playfair recalls, “just before noon, and Monty walks in.” Playfair was then the head coach of the Saint John Flames. That night, October 13, 2000, the Flames were playing their opening game at home. The morning practice was over; Playfair had posted the team’s starting lineup for the game. Steve, who had made the roster as the seventh defenceman—managing to avoid being sent to their East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) affiliate in Johnstown, Pennsylvania—would not dress. “I had this really small office in the rink,” Playfair says. “Monty sits down and says, ‘I think you are making a mistake.’ I said, ‘About what?’ He said, ‘The lineup. I think I’m better than a couple of the guys that you’ve got playing tonight.’ I said, ‘You do?’ He said, ‘Nothing against anybody, and I realize you’re probably playing them because they were drafted and I’m a free agent, but I think I can bring more to our team.’” Playfair thought for a moment. “I said to him, ‘Why don’t you do this—go home and get a bite to eat, and come back tonight for the warm-up.’” Steve left Playfair’s office. “Ronnie Wilson, my assistant coach, looks at me and says, ‘I’d send him down to Johnstown. Who does he think he is, coming in here?’ I said, ‘Tell the trainer to get him a jersey, because anybody who has the courage to walk into a coach’s office and tell him he’s made a mistake deserves a chance to play.’ After the warm-up that night, I decided to put him in the lineup.”
To Playfair, that moment defined Steve. The self-confidence, the trust he had in himself, his willingness to put himself on the line. Steve had told him how to fix his mistake before he’d even made it. And he did it without bad-mouthing anybody. “He made it seem that it wasn’t about him, that it was about the team, because he thought it was, because it was,” says Playfair.
“That was an important moment for Monty, but it was for me, too,” says Playfair. “I think I became a better coach when I became a father.” He had three young sons at the time. “As parents, we all want our kids to be more self-confident, more trusting of themselves, more committed to whatever strengths they have. We strive to instill these qualities in them. As coaches, we want the same in our players. A team is about the players. It’s not about my ego, about me saying, ‘I made the decision. I’m right.’ If I listen to the players, their voices get stronger. They get stronger. Maybe that was one of my finest coaching moments, putting Monty in. I learned something that day.”
Maybe Gisele had an impact sooner than she ever imagined.
Before the season began, the players and coaches each filled out “goal setting” forms—the players about themselves, the coaches about each player. Under the category of “major strengths,” Steve wrote: “my competitiveness and determination; my skating and passing.” The coaches wrote: “physical play, energy, competes; puck movement.” As things he needed to work on, Steve mentioned “strong defensive play; one-on-ones; gap control; physical play.” The coaches wrote: “defender who competes hard consistently.”
“We had a different group of players that season,” Playfair says. Three-quarters of them were in their third professional season. Their entry-level contracts were expiring; they were trying to earn new ones and had something to prove. The Flames had two former first-round picks, Rico Fata and Daniel Tkaczuk, who had played minor hockey with Steve in Toronto; some mid-round picks; and some free agents, like Steve. Not long before, these draft picks had been judged by the managers and scouts of the Calgary Flames to be among the best players in the world for their age. Yet at the moment they were chosen, none of them, except for a few prodigies, were good enough to make the NHL. First-round pick, ninth-round pick, undrafted free agent—it is the player who improves the most from that moment who will make it. It still matters to these players and coaches who was drafted and who wasn’t—but it won’t for much longer. Their draft status will be their identity until something else is. The draft pick who doesn’t live up to expectations will carry around with him a stigma of disappointment that rarely goes away. The undrafted player who makes it will be surrounded by admiration. He will be the guy who worked and made himself into a player. Early in the season, Playfair had a message for his players: “For all of you, drafted or just signed, what being here really means is that you have now committed yourself to work harder than you have ever worked in your life. Because now there is another level you have to get to.”
Of all the players on the team, Daniel Tkaczuk knew Steve best. They had grown up in neighbouring parts of Mississauga, had played on the Marlies, and had gone to the Quebec peewee tournament together. They had both moved to the Mississauga Senators, beaten the Marlies, and won the GTHL championship together. Their mothers, who had driven them to the rink, watched them play, and feared and hoped together, were good friends. Daniel and Steve had also played against each other for three years in the OHL; when Steve stayed on for an overage year in Peterborough, Daniel had begun his pro career in Saint John, co-leading the Flames in scoring. Now their hockey lives had intersected again.
Seven years had passed since that season together with the Marlies, but not much was different, Daniel recalls. Steve was still a high-energy guy, charismatic, hard-working, loud, popular, always having to do something; some nights he was the best player on the ice, some nights the wheels of his wagon were falling off. But “his effort was always there,” Daniel stresses. Daniel was still quiet, shy, serious, an observer, a thinker; “a hockey sense guy,” as he describes himself, someone who aimed before h
e fired, when sometimes Steve did not.
Daniel remembers Steve with some surprise and a lot of admiration. Steve always had to “play through stuff,” he recalls. “He was never seen as a top defenceman in our age group. He was never considered for Team Ontario or for the world junior team. Even to play AAA hockey, to play for the Marlies and the Senators, at times seemed a stretch.” He was never not on the margins. “Playing through stuff” means playing through whatever circumstance arises, team or personal—whenever it arises—and doing whatever you’re asked to do. “You know how hard you’ve worked just to get to that point,” Daniel explains, “to be so close, that you’re going to push it no matter what.” On every team he played for, Steve was looked to for “the physical element,” as Daniel puts it. “You can’t be soft. You can’t say, ‘I can’t take any more of these hits. I’m not going to fight. It just doesn’t feel good anymore.’” Your teammates depend on you. Your coaches and managers trust you. They believe in you—that’s why they signed you. And you know that there’s not much difference between you and the guy who is the seventh defenceman and not on the ice—or the guys who are eighth, ninth, and tenth, and not playing in the league. The biggest difference may be simply that you are physically able to play and they’re not. Or they are able to play and you’re not. And when you are asked to play, you play because you don’t know when, or if, you’re going to be asked again. Very few players now know the story of Wally Pipp, but every player knows the lesson of Wally Pipp in their bones. As the myth goes, mostly apocryphal, Pipp was the first baseman for the New York Yankees in 1925 when, because of a headache, he was given the day off. The next time his replacement, Lou Gehrig, was out of the lineup was fourteen years and 2,130 games later. By that time, Pipp was forty-six years old and living in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
