Saved

by Jack Falla

  “Headache pill. Desaulniers gave them to me,” I said.

  “You get a lot of headaches?”

  “Not usually. Got my bell rung by Quigley in Game One.”

  “You got it rung earlier in the season too. Missed a couple of games with a concussion, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but it was only my brain. I’m a goalie, what do I need a brain for?” I said, leaving the room before he could say anything else. I came back into the main dressing room just in time to see Tim Harcourt rip a final stat sheet out of the hands of one of our rookies, Michel Joliet. Tim crumpled the sheet and tossed it in a trash barrel. “The only stat that counts is on the scoreboard,” Tim told the rookie. We all check our stats. But for a rookie to be caught studying a stat sheet in front of his teammates is a violation of the game’s code. Rookies have to learn. “Adventures in babysitting,” Tim muttered as he walked past me to the showers.

  * * *

  I met Marco Indinacci, Rudy Evanston, and Rudy’s parents at a crowded Crescent Street restaurant where I had reservations for five but where the maître d’ could only come up with a long narrow table for four to which he added a fifth chair at the head. I took that chair. I didn’t know it at the time but it proved helpful to have the whole table in front of me when I launched into an extemporaneous lecture. It started with a question from Rudy, who was sitting on my right. “I looked at the video from our last five games. I was playing the angles OK. But I let in nineteen goals in that stretch. Something’s got to be wrong.”

  I’d seen one of those games on TV and I thought I saw the problem. I explained it the way people in sports usually explain things at the dinner table—with silverware and condiments. “Here’s the goal,” I said to Rudy, laying my knife sideways on the table in front of me. I used the pepper shaker for a defenseman, the salt shaker for an attacker. “This bottle of Worcestershire is you,” I said, plunking down the bottle a few inches in front of the goal-knife. “The game’s changing,” I said. “Ever since the NHL came back after that lockout and decided to emphasize offense, the refs have been calling everything. And that’s seeped down to the college level, too. If a defenseman sneezes on the puck carrier it’s a two-minute penalty. Look at this,” I said, picking up the salt shaker. “This salt is the puck carrier and he’s coming at you down his left wing. The pepper shaker is your defenseman, who has inside position on the puck carrier. What do you do?”

  “I go to the top of the crease. Maybe a little farther,” he said, placing the Worcestershire sauce eight inches from the knife. “Keep square to the puck, know where the posts are, and take away as much of the net as I can.”

  “That was years ago, Rudy. Back then if the puck carrier tried to go to the net the defenseman could stop him by hooking, holding, or pulling a Glock from a shoulder holster. The way refs call it today the puck carrier can go hard to the net and there isn’t much the defenseman can do without risking a penalty.” I moved the salt shaker around the pepper shaker and toward the bottle of Worcestershire. “And God help you if they have an opponent camped in front of your net,” I said, putting a water glass to the left of the Worcestershire, “because that guy doesn’t have the puck so your defenseman trying to protect the front of the cage can’t even cast a shadow on him without drawing an interference call.”

  “So what do you do?” asked Rudy’s father.

  “The hardest thing to do. Be patient,” I said. “We can’t go charging way out the way we used to. Stay on your feet a fraction of a second longer. Discipline your impulses. And, in practice, work on your lateral mobility. It’s about side-to-side quickness now. We’re not like cavalry anymore, out there on the front stabbing away. We’re more like infantry moving defensively along interior lines. I was a history major, by the way.”

  “Only left it thirty-two credits short,” Indinacci said. “The university offers tuition remission for staffers, JP. A mid-five-figure salary, tuition, and job security—win or tie. That’s my final offer.” Everyone at the table smiled because they all knew Marco had offered me the job as associate coach.

  “Monsieur Savard, we are pulling the goalie,” said the waiter, returning the bottle of Worcestershire to the middle of the table and putting down a basket of freshly baked baguettes and a carafe of red wine. I asked the waiter for a tonic and lime. I knew red wine, or any alcohol, would bring back the headache that Desaulniers’s drug was beginning to push out.

  The five of us quickly fell into the casual conversation and easy laughter that can make a meal a communion. Marco got the biggest laugh when he provided us with a highlight list of my worst gaffes in college. “My favorite one, JP, was against Dartmouth where the puck flips in the air and you bat it with your stick—right into the freaking net. I remember a guy in the stands yelling, top of his lungs, ‘You should kill yourself, Savard.’”

  “That was my girlfriend’s father,” I said.

  I enjoyed reminiscing about college days when the game was so enjoyable because the stakes were so small.

  Marco offered to drive me back to the hotel in his rental car but I wanted to walk. Maybe relax a little and get rid of my headache. As we said our good-byes on the crowded sidewalk outside of the restaurant, Mary Evanston, Rudy’s mother, pulled me aside. “I’ve watched Rudy play his whole life. I don’t see him having fun anymore. Something’s lost. Or missing,” she said.

  “What I think is missing is Rudy,” I said. “A goalie can have great physical ability but the personality behind the mask has to be part of his game. That’s what turns technique to style. Fun? I don’t know about that. The position isn’t a lot of smiles. The joy is less in playing than in having played well.”

  “Right now he’s not playing with much happiness or confidence. Do you think he can make it to the pros?”

  “What’s the essence of your son?” I asked.

  “Rudy beat cancer. He’s a survivor. A quiet tough kid.”

  “Then he’ll be all right,” I said. “Toughness supports talent.”

  “I wish you could work with him.”

  “We’ll work this summer.”

  “I mean next season. That’s really Rudy’s last shot at a hockey career.”

  “Next game might be mine,” I said.

  “Oh, we understand. Just wishing out loud. Good luck in Boston.”

  We shook hands and I started walking south on Crescent Street. I didn’t get far before my head started throbbing and thudding with every step. I popped another pill.

  * * *

  We practiced at the Bell Centre in the morning. I went through the motions, stopping the shots that hit me or were within easy reach, letting the rest sail by. About halfway through practice one of the assistant coaches growled at me: “You could at least pretend you’re trying.”

  “I can try this morning or I can try tomorrow night. Which do you want?” I said. Jean Picard heard me but didn’t say anything. He knows. This is the time of year when a goalie is like a bank from which there are a lot of withdrawals and few deposits. I can ignore the fatigue and pain in the adrenaline rush of a game. Practice was just something I had to get through.

  We chartered into Boston after practice. Picard was great about it when I asked if I could spend the off night with my fiancée and try to take care of some details of my move to Montreal. “Check into the hotel with us, then do what you have to do. Just be at the morning skate. And give us a good game tomorrow. Tabernac, did you see that guy today?”

  He meant our backup goalie Ryan McDonough, who got lit up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Fontaine, the nineteen-year old, stopped a lot of shots mainly by flopping around making most saves with his body or the wide paddle of his stick in a style I’d seen played years ago by two-time league MVP Dominik Hasek.

  “Tell me again why you called up Fontaine?” I said.

  “He keeps the puck out of the net,” Picard said. “The only people who care how are other goalies.”

  * * *

  I took the
team bus from the airport to the Westin, where I checked into my room and called Faith, who picked me up in Boss Scags. “Want to drive my graduation present?” she asked. I didn’t. Faith drove the Ferrari better than I did. And enjoyed it more.

  We were in bed by ten o’clock, which is when Faith launched Operation Foreplay.

  “Sorry, hon. Not tonight. I have a headache.”

  “Jean Pierre, that is the oldest, most lame-ass excuse in the history of old lame-ass excuses.”

  “I don’t mean I don’t want to have sex. I mean I really have a headache. Been having it since Quig ran me over in Game One. Team doc gave me some pills. They help a little.”

  “Left side of your head? Same place as before?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s your vision?”

  “I’m seeing three pucks.”

  “Stop the one in the middle. Old joke,” she said, turning to snap on the lamp on my bedside table. She took off the lampshade and shined the light in my eyes. “Pupils are unequal but reacting,” she said. “You’ve got another concusssion. More likely, you aggravated the first concussion. You shouldn’t be playing.”

  “Only a few games left,” I said. If we beat Boston we’ll beat the Sharks or the Ducks in four, five games. Got all summer to take care of my head.”

  “It’s your brain you’re dealing with, JP.”

  “Gotta play hurt.”

  “This isn’t playing hurt. It’s playing injured. You could make it worse. I don’t want my husband shuffling around like Muhammad Ali.”

  “How about if I shuffle like Mr. Bojangles,” I said, getting out of bed to take another pill. “Seems I saw you play three rounds of the NCAA Women’s Tournament with a bad back junior year. How much Vicodin were you on?”

  “Too much. I almost got hooked on the stuff. I know what you’re saying, JP. I just wish this season were over.”

  I told her about Marco Indinacci still trying to get me to coach at Vermont and about my dinner with Rudy, his parents, and Marco.

  “College coaching would be a saner life,” she said.

  “I can’t leave three mil a year on the table, Faith. An NHL career is too short. And I want my name on that Cup.” She didn’t say anything. Not even when I told her the rest of the truth: “And I want to keep being important.”

  I returned to the hotel with the team after the morning skate. Justin Pelletier gave Joe Latendresse a shoeshine at lunch. A shoeshine is when someone distracts a guy long enough so that someone else at the table can pour about a cup of mayo or Thousand Island dressing on the distracted guy’s shoes. The guy getting the shoeshine usually doesn’t notice until he gets up from the table and by then the mayo or dressing is all over his socks and the cuffs of his pants. When he stands up we all yell “Shoeshine,” then laugh like it wasn’t the hundred and fourteenth time we’d seen it. It’s stupid but it breaks the tension.

  I phoned Faith before I turned in for my nap.

  “Cam called,” she said. “Said to call him at home before two thirty if you can.”

  “OK. What’s he want?”

  “A half million dollars,” Faith said.

  “You have got to be kidding.”

  “No. Really. Five hundred large,” she said, just as though Cam had asked to borrow a cup of sugar.

  “What does he want it for?”

  “Call him,” Faith said.

  “Damn right I’ll call him.”

  It was about two o’clock so I phoned Cam’s house. Lindsey answered.

  “Hello, Mr. Savard. I’ll get Daddy in a minute. I heard you’ll be coaching at the Vermont hockey camp.”

  “I’ll be helping Coach Indinacci,” I said.

  “Good. I’m going to the goalie-camp part. The first week.”

  “You sure, Linds? I don’t think Coach Indinacci has a girls’ goalie camp.”

  “It’s the boys’ camp. Girls are too easy. Caitlin shoots harder than the girls on my team. Caitlin’s telling everyone she scored a goal on you.”

  “It bounced in off a chair,” I said.

  “No excuses, Mr. Savard. I’ll get Daddy.”

  Cam came on the line: “JP, I need to take five hundred thou out of your account,” he said, never one to mince words.

  “This is to pay for the heart transplant I’ll need when I see my next statement?” I said.

  “It’s for an investment. Sort of.”

  “What am I investing in?”

  “It’s better if I don’t tell you now.”

  “Let me guess. You’re betting heavy on Montreal, then throwing the next two games. Shoeless Cam Carter.”

  “Nah. This is completely legal.”

  “Cam, this is serious money we’re talking about. I can’t just—”

  “Whoa … whoa … whoa…,” Cam said, cutting me off and doing what he does best, which is closing the deal. “You’ll know within three months what we used the money for, and if you don’t like it I’ll guarantee the half mil. It’ll go back in your account. No questions asked. No way you can lose.”

  “Does Faith know what it’s for?”

  “Faith knows.”

  “OK. Do it.”

  “You played well in Montreal, JP,” Cam said, changing the subject before I changed my mind. “You’re going to need your big-money game tonight. You’ll see a lot of rubber, bro. We lose tonight, we’re screwed. Still sucks you and I being on opposites ends of this thing.”

  “Keep your head up through the neutral zone,” I said, using an old hockey cliché just to have something to say.

  “Got news for you, JP. This is the playoffs. No zone is neutral.”

  We said good-bye. I popped another pill and fell asleep wondering why Cam needed a half million dollars of my money.

  * * *

  The Boston fans gave me a nice ovation when I was introduced before the game. But the rest of the night was downhill. Boston took nineteen shots—to our five—in a scoreless first period in which I was as outgunned as the guys at the Alamo.

  Luther Brown scored on me in the second period and two minutes later Jean-Baptiste gave Boston a 2–0 lead when he roofed a bottle knocker. Picard pulled me for a sixth attacker with a minute to play and we made it 2–1 when Joe Latendresse wrong-footed Rinky. But that was all we could do. The series stood at two games to one in Montreal’s favor. Because we had an early practice I figured it would be best if my headache and I stayed at the team’s hotel.

  I met Faith outside the dressing room after the game.

  “Good game,” she said.

  “Not good enough.”

  “How’s your head?”

  “Still hurts. And I’m not seeing the puck clearly.”

  “Promise me when this is over you’ll get your head checked out by someone who’s not a team doctor.”

  “My fiancée’s a doctor.”

  “Your fiancée would nail your butt to the bench if it was up to her,” she said, pulling me toward her for a kiss.

  “Hey, none of those goddamn public displays of affection in here.” It was Cam’s father. He and Diana were on their way to the Boston dressing room to meet Cam. We shook hands.

  “Goddamn shame you guys having to play each other like this,” Cam’s dad said.

  “Terrible,” Diana said. “I don’t see how anyone could let that Hattigan person run a team.”

  That’s when Cam’s father told us he’d tried setting up a meeting with Gabe Vogel to make an offer to buy the Bruins. First Gabe turned him over to a couple of corporate vice presidents. “Let me tell you something about Gabe Vogel and his goddamn vice presidents,” Cam’s father said. “Top-shelf people hire top-shelf people; second-shelf people hire bottom-shelf people.”

  “So what’d you do?” Faith asked.

  “Told them I needed a meeting with Gabe. They asked me for how long. I said ten minutes but I didn’t think I’d use all of it.”

  “What’s the strategy?’ I said.

  “Throw down a cash
ier’s check for twenty percent more than his team is worth and give him ten minutes to take it or leave it. He’ll be on it like a goddamn nose whore on a line of coke.”

  “Why overpay?” Faith asked.

  “I don’t buy things for what they’re worth, I buy them for what I can make them worth. First thing I do when I buy this team is fire Hattigan. Second thing I do is bring JP here back to Boston where he belongs,” the Deuce said, tapping me on the chest.

  “Come on, Cameron, we’ll be late,” Diana said, grabbing her husband’s arm and pulling him toward the Bruins dressing room.

  * * *

  “If that man ever teaches a course at the Harvard Business School, I’m taking it,” Faith said. “Can he do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Bring you back to Boston?”

  “Sure. Montreal is only renting me for the final months on my contract. I can sign with anyone come July 1. But until then I’m a Canadien.”

  We were walking toward the team bus when I said: “Don’t suppose you’d want to tell me what Cameron C. Carter the Third wants with a half million dollars of my hard-earned if socially undeserved money.”

  “I promised Cam I wouldn’t. I can tell you you’ll be happy with the investment.”

  “Well, if I’m not, Cam guaranteed the half mil.”

  “Actually, I guaranteed the half mil, JP.”

  “I’m surrounded by conspirators,” I said as I approached the bus. Faith squeezed my hand before she headed toward the elevator to the parking garage.

  * * *

  A casual fan might think it’s hard to play against old teammates and friends, especially if you know you might go back to the team you’re playing against. But no player thinks or feels that way. No one ever said it better than the late Herb Brooks, who coached the 1980 USA Olympic team to a gold medal. “You play for the name on the front of the shirt not the one on the back.” The Bruins weren’t enemies but they were opponents. I wanted to beat them.

  Game 4 started well. Montreal controlled the play and we had four power plays to Boston’s one, scoring on two of them to take a 2–0 first period lead into the dressing room. I still wasn’t seeing the puck well but I was stopping it, which in this business is all that counts.