by Jack Falla
“My girlfriend graduates from med school this year,” I said. “She might intern here.”
“If she’s lucky,” Wynn said. “We’re highly selective.”
“So’s Faith McNeil,” I said, heading for the elevator.
* * *
I didn’t want to drive because of the headache and blurred vision, so I called Faith and invited her to my place. “Bring your little black doctor’s bag,” I said. “I need a second opinion on this alleged concussion.”
“I could’ve made that diagnosis off of TV and this phone call,” she said. “You’ve got blurred vision, you were throwing up, and you still have a headache. Textbook concussion.”
“I’m sure it’ll feel better if you come over and rub my head.”
“Ha! Which one?” she said.
I tried for a quick nap after I’d talked to Faith but the phone rang. It was Denny calling to tell me that the Mad Hatter had rescheduled the meeting to discuss my contract. Hattigan wouldn’t meet with Denny for another two weeks. “You get hurt. The meeting gets delayed. All part of the negotiations game, JP.”
“I think we might be losing the game,” I said.
“Haven’t lost one yet,” Denny said. That was true. Denny had always negotiated good deals for Cam and me. But I was getting a bad feeling about this one. Denny also told me he was taking my mother to dinner in Portland. I suggested Pat’s Café on Stevens Avenue, a restaurant I’d come to know on trips to Portland during my days in the AHL. “Great food and a lot of tables set in little nooks and corners. Good place to talk, which is all you’re going to be doing,” I said.
* * *
I watched on TV as we beat the Islanders 4–3 in one of those new tie-breaking shootouts where three players from each team take turns skating in alone on the goaltender just as they would on a penalty shot. Rinky stopped one of the Isles’ three shooters, and Jean-Baptiste, Gaston, and Taki scored for us. I began to wonder if Rinky was at the point where he could be a number one goalie. My thinking went like this: He’s good, he’s younger than I am, and he’d come cheaper. And at this point in his career he’s either going to have to win my job outright, resign himself to being a career backup, ask for a trade, or wait until his contract expires next season and become a free agent. I think his first choice would be to win my job. My getting hurt gave him a good chance to do that.
* * *
A lot of injured players like to watch the game on the dressing-room TV or to see it live by standing in the runway near our bench. They think that if they go up to the press box they’ll be fair game for writers and broadcasters. But I don’t mind talking to the media. I know whom to avoid (most of the writers in New York, a few in Toronto, and any gossip columnist) and whom I can trust. I see writers as a link to the fans and not as people looking for dirt to dish. Most of them are as professional about their jobs as I am about mine.
Before I went to the press box I stopped by our dressing room. I told Rinky to keep track of the ’Canes big center Ned Croutty, who likes to one-time the puck from the slot and who’s strong and determined enough to take the beating routinely handed out to guys who like to hang in front of the goal.
It’s true in all professional sports that when you’re hurt, you don’t feel as though you’re part of the team. So as soon as the guys went out for warm-ups I took the elevator to the press box and started walking to the players’ seats. I didn’t get far. A Channel 3 TV producer asked me if I would do an interview between the first and second period, and our radio analyst, Spence Evans, asked me to go on air with him between the second and third periods. I said yes to both. I don’t worry about broadcast interviews. The questions are usually softballs. But if Spence Evans is a belt-high marshmallow over the heart of the plate—“I’ll bet you’re eager to get back out there, JP,” is a typical Evans nonquestion—the print journalists, especially Lynne Abbott, are tougher. As soon as she saw me, Lynne said: “Excuse me, JP, but why is Kevin Quigley playing like a wuss?”
“I haven’t noticed he is,” I said, lying to protect Quig.
“I don’t know what it looks like from down there but from up here he looks like Disney’s Princesses on Ice.”
“Quig will be there when we need him,” I said.
Lynne said that was what she’d thought at first “but he’s been playing soft for more than a month.” I didn’t know what to say so it was lucky that Lynn changed the subject and asked about my concussion. I said the headaches were gone and that I’d probably miss only one or two more games.
* * *
I sat at the end of the press box with a couple of guys up from Providence, both of whom were healthy scratches. The main thing I noticed watching from a press box was that you have a fraction of a second more than you think you have when you’re on the ice. I think that’s the difference between good players and great players; great players have a higher panic point; they use that extra millisecond. And the immortal players—Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Gordie Howe—seemed to have no panic point. If an opponent did X they did Y. Sort of like the talking cobra in Kipling’s The Jungle Book: “If you move I strike. And if you don’t move I strike.”
The other thing I noticed was that Kevin Quigley was in fact playing like a wuss.
“Jesus, Quig, you’ve got to drill him on that play,” I said to myself as Quigley took a curving route into the Hurricanes’ left corner and tried to stick-check the puck from a Carolina defenseman. The play there is to staple the defenseman to the boards and either take the puck or leave it loose for a teammate to swoop in and pick up. Instead the defenseman kept possession and skated a few strides before sending a home run pass up the middle to Ned Croutty, who skated in alone and slid the puck under Rinky for a 1–0 Carolina lead in a game they’d win 6–2. Packy benched Quig for two shifts but that didn’t do any good. Even when Kev came back he still played softer than cashmere.
“See what I mean,” Lynne said as I walked past her on my way to the broadcast booth for my TV interview.
For the rest of the game Quigley played so poorly I was embarrassed for him. I wanted to talk with him but it would’ve been easier scheduling talks with the North Korean government. He’d been a different guy ever since he hooked up with Nan O’Brien.
“Cam’s the captain. Can’t you get him to talk to Kevin?” Faith asked me as we drove back to my place after the game.
“We’ve tried setting up a lunch, we even invited him to a couple of Celtics games, but he’s always got some reason he can’t go. And that reason is usually Nan O’Brien. Was she at the game?”
“Saw her in the Family Room,” Faith said, using the new, politically sanitized title for what used to be the Wives’ Room. “She’s at all the home games.”
A light snow fell as I pulled Boss Scags into the tiny garage behind my condo. I was looking forward to catching the NHL highlights on TV while enjoying some postgame pasta and a glass or two of wine, a nice overture to what I hoped would be some relaxing late-night sex. That hope lasted until we took off our coats and Faith hit me with the buzz kill: “I’ve decided on my internship,” she said. “I’m going to Vermont.”
Hurt
I knew what it was as soon as I felt it. It happened in December of my first season with Vermont. It was early in the first period of a game at Northeastern. I was on my knees and off balance at the left post with a Northeastern forward about twenty feet in front of me looking at a mostly empty net. He shot and I stuck out my right leg in a desperate move. The pain was as if someone had strung a hot wire high on the back of my leg from below the butt to above the knee. Hamstring. I made the save but that was it for the night. Our trainer, Bobby Breyer, helped me to the dressing room.
I was on the trainer’s table when the guys came into the room after the first period.
Coach Indinacci glanced at me but talked only to Bobby. “How long’s he out for?”
“Hard to say. I’ll have a better idea tomorrow,” Bobby said.
Coach walked away.
On the trip back to Vermont I sat on the left side of the bus with my right leg stretched across the aisle and resting on a right-side seat. About ninety minutes into the trip one of the assistant coaches had to use the bathroom at the back of the bus.
“Excuse me, JP,” was all he said as he stepped high over my outstretched leg. On his way back to his seat he didn’t say anything.
You spend more time at the rink when you’re hurt than when you’re healthy. I cut a few classes to get some early-morning treatment. I was on the trainer’s table one morning when Coach Indinacci came in.
“Morning, Coach,” I said.
“Bobby around?” Indinacci asked.
“Right here,” said Bobby Breyer emerging from a supply closet.
Indinacci and Bobby stood about five feet from me as they reviewed the injury report.
“Knowles?” Indinacci asked.
“Good to go,” Bobby said.
“Schaeffer?”
“No contact for another week.”
“Savard?”
“Another week at least. Maybe two.”
Indinacci didn’t say anything. He turned and walked to his office.
“Was it something I said?” I asked Bobby, confused by Indinacci’s coolness.
Bobby didn’t answer.
Even when you’re hurt you have to show up during practice hours. Players would come in, see me on the trainer’s table, and ask me how I was doing. I had a bunch of them laughing one afternoon as I explained how my hamstring started killing me during sex with a puck fuck. “Had to abort the mission. Freaking embarrassing,” I was saying just as Indinacci walked up to our group.
“All right, guys, that’s it. On the ice in ten minutes,” he said, clapping his hands. The group around me dispersed and I was again alone on the table.
The cold front lasted for about a week. None of the coaches was rude to me. No one tried to rush me back. No one implied I was faking it. But they spoke to me only if I spoke to them first.
One day after practice I went into Indinacci’s office.
“Talk to you, Coach?” I asked.
“Talk,” Indinacci said.
“I didn’t get hurt on purpose. I got hurt making a save,” I said, getting to what I thought was the bottom line.
“I know. Hell of a save, too,” Indinacci said.
“Then why am I all of a sudden a nonperson?” I asked.
Indinacci leaned forward over his desk. “You’re not a nonperson, JP. You’re a nonplayer.”
“So that means I’m chopped liver?”
“No,” Indinacci said. “That means you’re irrelevant.”
I didn’t make the weekend trip to Orono for two games against Maine. I started practicing on the Monday after that series. That week we had a rare Thursday-night home game against New Hampshire. “You think I can play?” I asked Bobby.
“Probably. But if I were you I’d give it another few days. Play on Saturday,” he said. On Wednesday Coach Indinacci came up to me at the end of practice.
“What do you think about tomorrow?” he asked.
“I can play,” I said.
Eight
I spooned puttanesca sauce over two bowls of linguine. “Isn’t puttanesca supposed to be an aphrodisiac?” Faith asked.
“When Bruno gave it to me he said it gets its name from puttana, the Italian word for ‘whore,’” I said. “Bruno’s grandfather told him that some Italian ladies in the whore industry made puttanesca sauce because they thought men were aroused by the smell. Maybe it’s the anchovies.”
“Gross.”
“Of course it doesn’t work when your girlfriend tells you she’s taking an internship two hundred and fifty miles away.”
“Do we have to go through this again?”
“Yes.”
We spent the next half hour running the same familiar laps around the same well-worn track; arguing about her decision to pass up an internship in Boston, which I said would be perfect for us, to take one in Vermont, which she said would be perfect for her, or at least perfect for her career. “We’ll have all of July and August and most of June together,” she said.
“Great. What do we do for the other two hundred and eighty days?”
We weren’t getting anywhere until Faith asked the only question that counted. “Do you think we should break this off?”
“No. Do you?”
“No.” Then she smiled and said. “This puttanesca stuff making you horny?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
We skipped sex and went to sleep, each clinging to opposite edges of the king-sized bed, our bodies silhouetted like two mountain ranges, a cold desert of sheets and blankets stretching between us—the demilitarized zone.
Meanwhile, a rising northeast wind brought in moisture from the Atlantic and turned a flurry into a near blizzard.
Sidewalk plows were pushing aside a foot of heavy wet snow when I left for practice the next morning. I couldn’t find an empty cab and the streets were too snowy to drive on so I walked to the Garden.
When I got to the dressing room Luther and Flipside were in the process of ranking the months of the year. They disagreed on all of them except March. They ranked March last and not only because of the weather. For a hockey player one of the worst things about March is the NHL trade deadline. A lot of guys are on edge until that day comes and goes. The delays in my contract talks made me wonder if I should be worried. Faith going to Vermont would be a home-baked cherry pie compared to my being dealt to L.A. or Vancouver.
“You’re not going anywhere. Hattigan’s just dicking you around so he can stay way under the salary cap,” Cam said. “Starting goalies don’t get traded. If the Hatter deals anyone it’ll be Quig.”
“You talked to Kev?” I asked.
“Tried to but you know Kev. He’s always got somewhere to go, something to do. He won’t even admit his game’s fading faster than AM radio.”
“So what do we do?”
“Go with Plan B,” Cam said.
Before I could ask what Plan B was, Packy stopped by to tell me the team wouldn’t be taking me to Buffalo but that he planned to start me three days later at home against Philly assuming I was free of all concussion symptoms.
“Philly,” Cam said and laughed. “Nice way to ease back into things. At least you know where Serge Balon’s first shot is going.”
“Right at my melon,” I said. “At least he won’t score if he hits me on the head.”
“Goalies have strange priorities,” Cam said.
* * *
We lost 4–3 to Buffalo with Rinky in net. Watching the game on TV, I noticed how quickly Rinky recovers. He’ll drop down into his butterfly and in a fraction of a second be back up on his skates. Lately I’ve noticed that it takes me longer to recover, especially late in a game when my legs are tired. I hope no one else has noticed it. Maybe I can lose some weight, work on my leg strength in the off-season and be as quick as I used to be. Or maybe I’m kidding myself and it’s little things like this that begin that final slide. In most businesses people get better as they age. But not in pro sports. The life cycle of a player is from hopeful rookie to dependable starter to aging-but-wily veteran to a beaten-up guy just trying to hold on for one more payday. It’s always ugly at the end.
The loss to Buffalo dropped us into a third-place tie with Ottawa in our division. The way the playoffs work is that the three divisional champions in our conference—the Eastern Conference—are automatically seeded first, second, and third for the playoffs. The next five teams with the best won-lost records—no matter which division they come from—are seeded four through eight. The top four seeds get home-ice advantage for the first round. By early March we were nine points behind Montreal. Possibly too much ground to make up in the last month of the season. But if we finished a strong second in our division we might get the number-four seed and home ice.
I had two good days of practice befo
re our Saturday-night game against Philly. Sure enough Serge “the Weasel” Balon launched a missile at my head on his first shift. I caught it. “Makin’ sure you haven’t lost your nerve, JP,” Serge said as he skated past the cage before the face-off.
“Hey, Serge, the idea is to miss the goalie,” I said.
Serge is always a pain in the ass but that night had me wishing the NHL called penalties for criminal mischief. In the course of the first two periods, Balon slashed Taki, tripped Gaston, and ran Rex Conway into the Philly bench, where three Flyers punched him before he extricated himself.
The game was 1–1 after two periods. Packy gave us a few minutes to settle down before he came into the dressing room. “Enough’s enough, Quig. You got to send a message to Balon, you know what I’m saying? The refs aren’t doing it,” Packy said.
Quig nodded and took a swig of Gatorade, probably so he wouldn’t have to say anything.
The Flyers scored on their second shift to make it 2–1. When Philly put Balon’s line on the ice right after the goal, Packy countered by sending Quigley’s line over the boards. I figured the fight would start right after the face-off. But Kevin went up and down his wing like a toy player in a tabletop hockey game. To make it worse, Quig coughed up the puck to Balon, who came flying into our zone and was lining up a shot when Cam hit him and—as Cam’s father later described it—“put the goddamn Weasel on Queer Street.” Cam’s hit brought the crowd to its feet but didn’t save the game. We lost 4–1 to drop into fourth place in the division. We’d be lucky to make the playoffs.
Packy called Quig to a closed-door meeting in the coach’s office after the game. When Kev came out he changed into his street clothes, went straight to the Family Room, picked up Nan O’Brien, and took off. He left without talking to any of us.
“That’s it. I’ve had it,” Cam said.
* * *
We had two days of practice before we headed for Montreal. Sunday was just a light skate. Cam had the day off because he’d been playing about thirty-two minutes per game. Monday was a different story. That was the day Cam unveiled Plan B.
