by Jack Falla
“Huh?”
“Let’s play two,” she said, repeating the mantra of the old Chicago Cubs infielder as she turned over and slipped her arms around me. Faith is a gamer.
* * *
I don’t think my trade to Montreal truly hit home until our Saturday-morning game-day skate. There, hanging in my locker, was the bleu, blanc, rouge Montreal Canadiens game shirt with the number 31 on the back and sleeves and “SAVARD” sewn onto the back above the number. It’s the most storied uniform in the history of hockey and one of the most respected in the world of sport. My grandmother would have liked to see me in this jersey, I thought as I pulled it on over my chest and arm protector.
I don’t usually think a lot at practice. I find it best to let my body react instinctively with the moves so long embedded in muscle memory. But as I skated to the Montreal goal for the first time I couldn’t help but think that I was the latest link in a chain of Canadiens goalies stretching from me to Patrick Roy, Ken Dryden, Jacques Plante, Gerry McNeil … all the way back to George Hainsworth and Georges Vezina. It’s an honor to play goal for Club de Hockey Canadien. Which is all the more reason I shouldn’t have tossed my shirt toward the laundry cart after practice. I missed. The sweaty shirt hit the side of the cart and fell to the floor, where a tall silver-haired gentleman in a dark impeccably tailored suit picked it up and walked over to where I was sitting. “We don’t do that here, Jean Pierre. Our colors don’t hit the floor,” the man said, taking my shirt and placing it on a hanger in my locker, then brushing the CH logo with his hand as if to knock off any dirt it may have picked up. The man introduced himself but he didn’t have to. He was Jean Provost, a team vice president but, a generation ago, the first-line center and captain of the Canadiens. He helped Montreal win ten Stanley Cups and, since Rocket Richard’s death, had become the public persona of the Canadiens—Gallicly elegant in his dress and deportment, seethingly passionate in his love for the game and the team.
“You got off easy,” Tim Harcourt told me after Provost left. “The old-timers tell me that when Big Jean was in his first year as captain a rookie took off his game shirt and dropped it on the floor. Jean grabbed the kid around the throat. Took four or five guys to pull him off.”
When I came out of the shower Louis St. Martin, the team’s GM, was waiting by my locker. “Welcome to Montreal, Jean Pierre. Come upstairs for a minute when you’re through,” he said. “But before you get out of here I am sure a lot of reporters will want to know the intricacies of, what did you call it? The butter-up style of goaltending.”
Twenty minutes and a dozen media questions later, St. Martin and I sat in overstuffed chairs pulled up to a glass coffee table in an office big enough to have its own area code. “Your father is one of our luxury suite owners. You know this?” St. Martin said.
“You know my father?”
“I know all our corporate partners,” he said. “And I should tell you I’m the one who let him pass through security when he talked to you a few weeks ago.”
I didn’t know what St. Martin was probing for so I went for the conversational delay of game. “OK. It’s your building.”
“He told me the whole story. Said he wanted to tell you he was sorry. Which, by the way, I know he is.”
“Sorry finished out of the money,” I said.
“I understand. I only want you to know that I don’t think he will try to see you again. And if he does it will not be with my help.”
“He won’t be a distraction to me, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said.
“I suppose it is. Or was. We need you, Jean Pierre. We could win the whole thing. Again. For the twenty-fifth time.”
“You won’t even win tonight if I don’t get lunch and a nap,” I said, getting up to leave.
* * *
I ate toast and soup for lunch and tried to nap, something I’m usually good at. But I was troubled by Lou St. Martin’s bringing me one degree of separation from my father. Too close. I tossed and turned for an hour before finally falling asleep at about 3:30, a half hour before I’d told Faith to wake me up, which she did by putting her cold hand down my Tommy Hilfiger boxers.
“Hey, I have a game tonight … and not THAT kind of game,” I said, removing her hand.
“Have a good sleep?” she asked.
“Not enough. Doesn’t matter. I like to be a little logy when I get to the rink. The nerves kick in fast enough.”
We were playing the Toronto Maple Leafs and the game would be televised on Hockey Night in Canada, the most popular television program in Canadian history. In homes across the country the Saturday-night national telecast of a hockey game turns a TV set into a kind of a family hearth with sometimes two and three generations gathering to watch. And when the matchup is Montreal-Toronto the game takes on undertones people don’t like to talk about. “To be blunt,” I told Faith, “Montreal versus Toronto is French versus English; Catholic versus Protestant; working class versus ruling class. That’s oversimplified and is less true now than it was a generation ago. But it’s still more true than false.”
“You make it sound like the Crusades,” she said.
“Nah. Way more important.”
* * *
I got to the rink at five o’clock, three hours before game time. Besides Tim Harcourt I also knew Tim’s defensive partner Reggie Harper, first-line center Joe Latendresse, and a couple of other guys I’d met at Serge Balon’s golf tournament. Latendresse was with Boston five seasons ago. The Mad Hatter traded him on the day Joe and his wife, Renee, closed on a house. I’d introduced myself to the rest of the guys at practice. It’s easy for a traded player to go into a city and have twenty ready-made friends. The burden of a trade falls on wives, girlfriends, and children, who enter their new neighborhoods and schools as strangers. There are huge rewards that come with making it to the NHL. But there’s a big price, too. It starts with our parents driving us to frigid rinks on frigid mornings. And, for a pro player with a family, the price can include a scared child in a new school and a wife wondering how long it will be before her husband gets traded, sent down, or released and the family has to move again.
* * *
“Take ’em out, JP,” Picard said as the clock in the dressing room ticked down to game time. I stood up and walked down the curtained runway toward the bright lights beyond. I heard the PA guy begin his announcement “Bonsoir mesdames et messieurs…” but that was all I heard before I skated into a wall of noise made by twenty-one thousand fans. The TV lights were so bright I could see the marks of skate blades under the newly resurfaced ice and could almost feel the collective stare of the crowd. I kept my head down and skated directly to my net, where I roughed up the crease, using my skates to shave the too-slippery new surface so there would be no sudden slippage of my blades.
The game was a joy. Toronto’s Ian Manchester got a breakaway in the first minute. He went high to my glove side. My left hand shot up and grabbed the puck. I was peripherally aware of the fans cheering. I’m told they were also standing but I wouldn’t know that because I didn’t look up. More important than the ovation was that my new team seemed to calm down. Joe Latendresse gave us a 1–0 lead at the end of the first period and we were up 5–0 late in the third when the only question was whether or not I’d hang on for the shutout. I have a theory that a goalie working on a shutout needs one lucky break late in the game. Mine came when a shot broke off of my left pad and spun half over the goal line before a diving Reggie Harper swept it away with his stick.
We won 5–0 and the media voted me first star of the game. The three stars of the game have to stay in the tunnel briefly until being introduced to the crowd, beginning with the number three star. While waiting I glanced up for the first time and saw the out-of-town scoreboard showing that Boston had lost to Florida 6–1. Maybe I should have felt sorry for my old team. But I didn’t. In this game friendship lasts, allegiance doesn’t. I was a Montreal Canadien now.
* * *
I woke up Sunday morni
ng when Faith pulled back the drapes and light flooded our room. She was staring out of the west-facing window. “What’s that huge church?”
“Mary Queen of the World Basilica,” I said. “Why?”
“I was thinking maybe we could go to Mass. You know, like we did when we were kids.”
“You’re not throwing your repentent self back into the arms of Mother Church are you?”
“No. It’s more of a nostalgia thing. I can’t explain it. I’d just like to go to church with you.”
I didn’t have any excuse not to go because Picard had given the team Sunday off. But I said that if we were going to church we should go to Notre-Dame. “It’s a nice day. We can walk there and stop for breakfast on the way back.”
We got to Notre-Dame about fifteen minutes before Mass. I told Faith about my fantasy of playing Wiffle ball in the cathedral. I explained all of my rules. This sent her into a giggle fit that lasted most of the way through the Gospel, which was in French so neither of us knew what the priest was saying anyway.
After Mass we walked west along Notre-Dame, then north toward Mont Royal, away from the downtown office buildings and into neighborhoods of elegant old homes. On a shaded side street I saw six kids playing road hockey with a dirty tennis ball. “Got to see this,” I said to Faith, and led her down the street.
The boys, all about ten or eleven years old, were talking in French, but every so often I caught a familiar name. “Le but Joe Latendresse,” a boy in a Canadiens jersey yelled after he’d fired the muddy tennis ball into the netting of one of the small aluminum-framed goals. He held his stick aloft with his left hand and bumped his gloved right fist against the fists of his two teammates as they’d seen NHL players do on TV.
“In the States we called it street hockey. In Canada it’s road hockey,” I explained to Faith just as a car turned down the small street, forcing the boys to carry both goals out of the way to let the car pass. As soon as the car was gone the boys put the goals back in the middle of the street. The game continued. It was the same game that has been played for a century on streets in Toronto, Winnipeg, Minneapolis, Boston, or anywhere kids love hockey and don’t have—or can’t afford—the ice to play on. Faith laughed when one of the kids stood in goal, grasping his hockey stick as if it were a goal stick and declaring himself “le gardien de but—Jean Pierre SAVAARD…”
“In league games we were always ourselves but in street hockey we were our heroes,” I said to Faith.
“Who were you?” she asked.
“Patrick Roy,” I said.
“Why him?”
“He was a cocky guy. Played with a lot of confidence. I think we pick our heroes because they have something we wish we had.” We continued down the street, leaving the hockey game behind us.
As we walked, Faith put her left hand under my right arm and pulled me closer to her. “How many kids are we having?”
“Well, you’re Irish and I’m French so … let’s see, that would mean ten or twelve kids.”
She laughed. “I think two would be a good number,” she said.
“Yeah. You have three and life is an odd-man rush,” I said.
The rest of the day was like one of those soft-focus movie montages where the lovers roam around old Montreal, walking among the columns of Marché Bonsecours, the city’s original town hall, now a public market, then climbing to the top of Mont Royal, the hill overlooking the city.
“I was born over there,” I said, pointing east in the general direction of the Plateau section of Montreal.
“You want to take a walk there? Find your old home?” Faith said.
“No. I probably couldn’t find it. And wouldn’t want to even if I could. I just remember it was a dark place.”
“I know, Jean Pierre. I know and I’m sorry. But it’s over. It was over a long time ago. You won.”
I didn’t say anything, because I felt a sudden surge of almost primal sadness and was afraid my voice would break. We walked back toward the hotel, stopping for lunch at a restaurant near the Musée de Beaux-Arts. Faith said she’d take a morning flight back to Boston. “I wish you didn’t have to leave,” I said. I suggested she drive my car to Boston. “I don’t need a car in Montreal. And if you don’t have to go to the airport then maybe you can stay another half day?”
“Deal,” she said, reaching for the lunch check. “You get a free lunch, I get a Ferrari.”
“You should be an agent.”
“You’ve got Boston twice this week,” she said.
“Thursday there, Saturday here. Even if we split, it should be enough to clinch the division.”
* * *
The Bruins went 1–3 on their road trip. They were ten points behind us in the standings and thoroughly banged up. Gaston was still playing with bruised ribs, Kevin Quigley was hobbling around on a gimpy ankle, and Rinky Higgins had a bruised catching hand. Picard told us about Rinky’s sore hand and told us to blast away with high shots, glove side. Maybe that sounds cruel to some people but it sounded practical to us.
Cam and I snuck out for lunch Wednesday in Boston. We went to a private club his father got us into because neither of us wanted to be seen fraternizing with the so-called enemy the day before a big game.
“Lindsey’s grounded,” he said.
“For how long?”
“Probably until she goes to college,” Cam said. “Tamara’s really pissed.”
“What happened?”
“The day you got traded Lindsey took her goalie stick and beat the stuffing out of that huge teddy bear my parents gave her for Christmas. Said the bear was Madison Hattigan and she was going to kill him. Beat the shit out of the thing, teddy bear stuffing all over the room. Fucking massacre. Then she called my father and told him to fire Hattigan. Dad had to explain that he couldn’t fire Hattigan because he didn’t own the team. So Lindsey told him to buy the team. And, you know my father and Linds; he told her he’d think about it.”
“I’ll call Lindsey. Tell her I’m OK up here. And that Faith and I are engaged and scouting around for flower girls.
“How’s Rinky playing?” I said.
“Just well enough to lose. Trading you was stupid. And trading you within our division was beyond stupid. The Boston columnists are all over Hattigan. Lynne Abbott ripped him in her Sunday column. Even called him the Mad Hatter.”
“I wish we weren’t looking at each other down the gun barrels tomorrow night,” I said.
“Me, too. No way we each get our name on the Cup.”
“Maybe neither of us will.”
“Good luck anyway,” Cam said.
“You, too.”
* * *
We destroyed Boston. Beat them 8–1. Rinky Higgins was on the bench and Kent Wilson was in the Boston goal after the first two periods, which had us leading 6–0. Our first two goals beat Rinky on his glove side.
I lost the shutout to Rex Conway of all goddamn people. I think he one-timed a pass from his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Or maybe it was from Flipside Palmer like the PA announcer said.
The win wrapped up the Northeast Division title for us.
Alvin “Captain Baritone” Crouch of TV-8 caught me in the runway after the game. “Tonight’s win sets up a big game in Montreal Saturday, J. P. Savard. The Bruins will be desperate.”
I had to explain to Captain Baritone and his misinformed viewers that our win put us twelve points up on Boston with only five games to play and that the race was over. Not that he heard or understood a word I said.
“OK, you heard it live on TV-8 from ex-Bruins goalie J. P. Savard. Our next telecast Saturday night, seven thirty, live from Moan-RAY-ALL,” he said.
“EIGHT o’clock,” I yelled, hoping Captain Baritone’s microphone was still live. I was trying to save a few hundred thousand TV viewers from suffering through an insipid half-hour pregame show.
We chartered back to Montreal after the game, so I got to see Faith only briefly outside the dressing room. She said she’d got th
e Modern Automotive Grand Slam with the Ferrari—speeding tickets in Quebec, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.
I also saw Denny Moran, who just happened to be with my mother, who just happened to be wearing a couple of gold-and-diamond earrings only slightly less dazzling than the chandeliers in the Copley Plaza. She must have seen me looking at them.
“A birthday gift from Dennis,” she said.
“Oh my God, Mom, I’m sorry,” I said. In the midst of the trade, the move to Montreal, and my engagement to Faith I’d forgotten my mother’s birthday. “I owe you big-time on this one.”
“You do not,” she said, and laughed in a way that told me she meant it. “Win that Cup and bring it home. That would be the best present.” Then she leaned over and whispered, “Your agent’s a pretty nice present. So far.”
Time was when that statement might have bothered me but that time belonged to a fast-fading past.
We beat Boston 3–2 Saturday in Montreal in a lackluster game I’ll remember only because Cam scored on me. He whistled a shot from the right point that kissed in off of the left post. It was his one hundredth NHL goal—not a lot for a guy who’s been in the league ten years—but he skated to my net to claim the puck as a keepsake.
“I hope Caitlin shoots it into the fireplace,” I said as Cam picked up the puck.
“Just warming up for the second season, JP. The money games,” Cam said.
I knew how much Cam wanted to win his first Cup in his last year. And I knew how much I wanted to win it, which was more than I did when the season started. But only three things could happen. He’d win. I’d win. Or we’d both lose.
It was April and we were about to find out.
Ten
The noise shook the building and me.
We’d come into our dressing room after warm-ups. I was sitting in front of my locker running down my mental checklist of where Boston players like to shoot when I first noticed the noise. You can always hear the dull murmur of a crowd from inside a dressing room but this sound rose above normal fan enthusiasm to become a visceral roar pouring from twenty-one thousand throats. We didn’t only hear it, we felt it.
