Saved

by Jack Falla

  “What?” I said.

  “Nice nose,” Faith said.

  “You think my mother saw him?”

  “Had to,” said Faith. “Even better, he saw her.”

  “Yeah. Let the scumbag see what he walked out on. Miserable fucker.”

  “He apparently was a miserable fucker as you so colloquially put it, JP, but for Christ’s sake when are you going to let it go? How much control over your feelings do you want to give this guy?”

  “Guy like that deserves to be hated,” I said.

  “Hate destroys the cup that holds it faster than the object it’s poured on.”

  “Plato, Aristotle, or Pliny the Elder?” I said.

  “The sisters at Cambridge Catholic,” Faith said. “They weren’t wrong about everything.”

  “I can’t let it go, Faith. But I don’t blame you for not wanting to hear about it for the rest of your life. I’ll pick my spots.”

  “This isn’t about me, JP. Look at it this way. For the rest of his life your father’s going to have the greatest pain a person can suffer. Remorse. What do you think he felt tonight when he saw you and your mother? What do you think he feels every time he sees you play? His crime comes with its own punishment. Package deal. Doesn’t need you.”

  I nodded as if to say I understood the theory, which I did. But I think Faith knew that even though I could squeeze the theory into my brain, there wasn’t room for it in my heart.

  We stood against a wall in the corridor outside the club. “You watching the game from the suite?” she asked.

  “No. I’ll be down by the bench,” I said. I asked Faith to meet me outside the dressing room after the game. “Oh. Almost forgot. Here’s a pass that’ll get you down to the dressing-room level,” I said, handing her a plastic-coated card.

  * * *

  I learned the news from the Montreal cop stationed outside our dressing room. “You heard, Jean Pierre?” the cop said as I walked toward the dressing room. “Picard’s starting the kid. Fontaine. What’d they call him? The Demonator,” the cop said, chuckling, then shaking his head. “A teenager in a Game Seven. Tabernac.”

  I was talking to the cop when the dressing-room door flew open and Demetre Fontaine led a file of players onto the ice for what was going to be either the last game of the season or a ticket to the Cup finals. Jean Picard was the last one out of the room. “Why Fontaine?” I asked him.

  “Because he’s too young to be scared,” Picard said.

  Starting Fontaine in net looked like an inspired choice. Boston launched a cannonade at the Montreal end, getting off the first seven shots of the period and outshooting the Canadiens by an embarrassing 15–5 through the first seventeen minutes. But the flopping, diving Demonator stopped everything until a Gaston Deveau redirection of a Cam Carter shot beat him at 17:28 for a 1–0 Boston lead. Less than a minute later Joe Latendresse scored for us on a breakaway to tie the game and send the Montreal crowd into delirium.

  I like watching the game from near the bench. You not only feel it, you smell it—the sweat, the astringent smell of liniment, the faint ammonia smell of the ice, and all of it mixing with the smells of hot dogs and popcorn wafting down from the seats. Like a salmon, I could detect one part of rink in a million parts of fresh air and follow that smell to the nearest game.

  I’d been watching Fontaine closely. He wasn’t as undisciplined as he’d first looked. When he was on his knees he kept his hands high protecting the top corners. And his dives were so well timed that the surprised puck carrier couldn’t do much but shoot into the kid’s body. “You got your goalie for the next fifteen years,” I said to Marc Wilson, who was standing near the stick rack with me. But I was wrong. Montreal didn’t even have Fontaine for another fifteen seconds. I’d no sooner spoken when the puck squirted out of a scrum in front of the Montreal net toward the Boston right point, where Flipside Palmer fired a laser. Fontaine’s catching glove shot out and grabbed the puck. But as the crowd began cheering the save, a Boston player got shoved onto Fontaine’s fully extended left arm, pushing the arm against the post. I heard the kid scream and figured—rightly as it turned out—that he’d dislocated his elbow and was done for the game and the playoffs.

  Marc Wilson jumped onto the ice and headed for Fontaine. At the end of the bench an ashen-faced Ryan McDonough, his confidence as fragile as a Fabergé egg, hauled himself over the boards and began stretching in preparation for tending the Canadiens’ goal. Or trying to. No one would say anything disparaging to a teammate during a playoff—especially to a goaltender about to go into a Game 7—but I felt the confidence going out of our team as McDonough skated to the Montreal net.

  The Bruins got one shot in the final two minutes. It went in. Cam Carter sent a pass to Flipside, who misfired so badly that the puck skipped in front of McDonough and hopped over the goalie’s stick, between his pads, and into the net for a 2–1 Boston lead. I looked at our bench, where half the guys stared at their skates and the other half raised their eyes to the upper reaches of the arena, from whence a few beer cups and many boos rained down.

  There was an even louder chorus of boos as the horn sounded ending the first period. I stood at the stick rack waiting for the players to file past me toward the dressing room. Ryan McDonough practically sprinted to the safety of the room. I fell in behind Tim Harcourt, the last guy in line. I was a few feet from the dressing room when I heard the rapid clack of heels on cement and out of the corner of my right eye saw Faith, waving her pass at any security person who cared to see it and bearing down on me like a blitzing safety. She caught me just outside the dressing-room door.

  “Hey, JP. Season’s over if you don’t play in this rodeo,” she said.

  “Ever think of being a TV analyst?” I said.

  “A TV analyst can’t clear you to play. I’m a doctor. I can. And will. You up for it?”

  “Like I’m up for heaven when I die,” I said. “Why the change?”

  Faith hesitated a long time. “Your father, mainly,” she said. “I don’t want you to go through life feeling what he feels, that you weren’t there when it mattered. Heads heal faster than hearts.”

  Faith grabbed the dressing-room door and barged into the room ahead of me. The sudden appearance of a spectacularly attractive woman in a black leather suit in the middle of the dressing room came as an unsettling surprise to Ryan McDonough, who had stripped off all of his gear—as was his wont after a bad goal—and was standing naked beside a pile of goalie equipment. Ryan, who is hung like a race horse, stared at Faith in wide-eyed amazement.

  “Nice equipment, kid,” Faith said, glancing at Ryan and his pile of gear as she hurried for Picard’s office with me two strides behind.

  “I’m Dr. McNeil, Mr. Savard’s physician,” she said, reaching across Picard’s desk to shake his hand. “I’ll clear Mr. Savard to play. He’s yours if you want him.”

  “Want him? We need him. But I have to run this by Dr. Desaulniers,” Picard said, reaching for the phone that would connect him with the Canadiens owner’s private lounge. A brief conversation followed, the result of which was that Wingate Desaulniers said he’d be right down with a hand drafted statement that I’d hold him and the Canadiens harmless in the event of further injury and that I had the permission of Faith McNeil, M.D., to play.

  “Get dressed, JP,” Picard said, smiling. “Winnie’s just feeling paranoid.”

  I went to my locker and started putting on my equipment. I was half dressed when Desaulniers arrived waving his release form. I didn’t even stop to read it, just scribbled my name. Faith gave the paper a cursory and contemptuous glance and signed it. Faith can do contemptuous about as well as you’ve ever seen it done. “This is a big responsibility you’re taking on, Dr. McNeil,” Desaulniers sniffed.

  “JP’s my fiancé. What’s he going to do? Sue me?” Faith said.

  Desaulniers looked at the signatures, folded the letter, stuffed it in his pocket, and left.

  One of the assistant c
oaches almost torpedoed the deal when he reminded Picard that he could only play one of the two goalies listed on the official lineup card. “Not if they both get hurt. New rule,” Picard said, then shouted across the room to Ryan McDonough: “Hey, Ryan, I can see that torn Achilles tendon from here. Looks bad.” The players laughed, all except Ryan McDonough, who headed for the shower, done for the game.

  “Do that number proud, hon,” Faith said, giving me a whack on the butt and heading for the door to a round of appreciative stick tapping by my teammates. Faith pushed open the door just as Justin Pelletier said, “Hate to see you go.”

  “Yeah, but you love watching me leave, Justin,” she said, winking and putting an intentionally sexy hip check on the door. “Bonne chance, gars,” Faith said as the door closed.

  “Waive the five-year rule, son. That lady is Hall of Fame. First ballot,” Picard said as we stood up to head out for the second period.

  I got a great ovation from the Montreal fans and even a wink from Packy Dodd on the Boston bench as I skated to the net, where Tim Harcourt flipped a few pucks at me in a hurried warm-up before the ref threatened us with a delay-of-game penalty.

  I’d like to tell you my appearance in net inspired Montreal and befuddled Boston but it did neither. The Bruins kept pouring on the shots, outshooting us 14–8 in the period but failing to score. Late in the period I went to my knees, hard, to stop a close-in shot. Faith was right. The jolt to my body went right to my head. My headache was back although the pain was momentarily mitigated by an exchange between Rex Conway and Kevin Quigley. I guess Rex was trying to intimidate me when, before the face-off, he said: “JP … Woe to that man to whom our offence cometh.’ Matthew 18:8.”

  “It’s ‘BY whom THE offence cometh,’ and it’s Matthew 18:7,” Quig yelled at Rex. “I went to Catholic school, Rex. Don’t fuck with me on the New Testament.”

  “When you theologians are through I’d like to drop the puck,” the linesman said.

  The Bruins kept their 2–1 lead into the third period, when Joe Latendresse tied it for us on a shot from the low slot. Rinky Higgins went down a nanosecond too early and Joe snapped the puck over him.

  The rest was a blur to me. My head pounded every time I moved. I kept making saves on instinct like a stunned boxer trying to hold on until the bell. For a moment it looked as though that bell would toll prematurely. With two minutes left in regulation, play was at the Boston end when Cam Carter blocked a Montreal shot and took off on a breakaway—nothing between him and the Stanley Cup finals except me. Joe Latendresse turned and sprinted after Cam. Joe couldn’t catch Cam but he got close enough to trip him just before Cam shot. The trip called for a penalty shot and that’s the way the ref called it, pointing to the center-ice dot, from which Cam would skate in on me alone with the game, the series, a trip to the Cup finals, and hockey immortality his reward if he scored.

  The ref signaled to me to see if I was ready. I nodded and got into my crouch. Then the ref looked at Cam. When Cam nodded the zebra blew his whistle and Cam took the puck and began skating toward the goal. If this were a movie you’d see the scene in super slow motion. Cam, sweat dripping off his face, skating in at a deliberate speed cradling the puck on his stick. Me giving ground slowly waiting for Cam to commit to a shot or a deke. The movie camera would show you Cam fading to his left forcing me to move to my right. Then you’d see Cam shooting the other way. To my glove side. On the movie screen you’d see the puck saucering slowly toward the top corner, drops of water spinning off it and nothing but empty net in front. Then you’d see a glove come onto the screen and suddenly the puck would slap into the glove’s webbing inches before it would have sailed into the net. Here the movie would switch from slow mo to real time and you’d see and hear people cheering and our bench emptying as if we’d won the game. But just before the first of the Montreal players arrived at the net to mob me, Cam, skating around behind the net and with his head down so no one could read his lips, yelled, “Nice stop.” It was a classy thing to do and I wondered what I might have said if Cam had scored and ended my season and maybe my last shot at the Cup.

  All my save did was push the game into sudden-death overtime—twenty-minute periods, first goal wins.

  I suppose this would be the part of the movie where the coach comes into the locker room and says something inspirational and his team goes out and wins the game. But all that happened in our room was that Joe Latendresse went into the bathroom and smoked a cigarette, Tim Harcourt leaned into his dressing stall and momentarily fell asleep, a bunch of guys threw their sweat-soaked gloves in the clothes dryer, and Jean Picard told us what we already knew: “In sudden death any shot is a good shot.”

  The barrage continued into the OT with the Bruins putting eleven shots on me to our seven on Rinky Higgins. The first overtime ended with the game still tied. I was as tired as I’ve ever been. So were a lot of other guys—on both teams. The coaches had reduced shifts from fifty seconds to thirty-five or forty seconds to try to get players more rest. But goalies don’t get rest. I know it looks like we don’t have much to do out there besides making our twenty to forty saves. It’s not the saves that wear you down. It’s the constant moving: Up. Down. Left. Right. Squat. Stretch. Dive. Recover. Most of the movement isn’t to make a save, it’s to preserve our view of the puck and to maintain position. And of course we do this while wearing about thirty pounds of equipment.

  I’ve never been as tired in a game as I was in that second overtime. But, somehow, when the puck came into our zone, there was always a surge of adrenaline—a fear of losing, of having my season end—to keep me going.

  Goaltending is different from most jobs in that a goalie’s contribution—saves—comes at the end of one or a series of mistakes by his teammates. Take the face-off to my right late in the second overtime. Joe Latendresse, our center, was cleanly beaten on the drop by Boston’s Gaston Deveau, who slid the puck back to Kevin Quigley at the top of the circle. Our right wing was supposed to dart out and cover Quigley. But the winger blew his assignment. Tim Harcourt tried to block Quig’s shot but all that did was screen me. As soon as Tim stepped in front of me I butterflied to protect the bottom of the cage and to try to see under the screen. I saw the puck as it flew by Tim’s left leg, headed toward the top glove-side corner. Quig’s shot was much like Cam’s, and Hollywood would have showed it in the same slow motion with the Canadiens logo visible on the flat face of the puck, the top corner of the net seemingly open and the goalie’s glove shooting up at the last moment. The only difference this time is that I didn’t catch the puck. Quig’s shot clanked into the junction of the crossbar and the post. That slow-mo camera would have shown it … toppling … spinning … wobbling … toward the ice, where it landed on the goal line and spun—IN.

  “THAT’S GOOD!” the ref yelled, pointing at the puck repeatedly with his right hand as though he were killing a snake with a six-shooter. The ref was in perfect position to see the puck roll across the goal line an instant before I scooped it out with my glove. The red light blinked on and a loud collective groan filled the arena except at the far end, where a thousand or so Boston fans screamed and hugged each other.

  For a second or two I felt nothing. It was just another goal among the thousands I’d let in since I was a kid. But reality hit quickly. There was nothing I could do. Nothing I could say. I watched the Boston players vaulting over the boards and swarming Quigley. The hardest part of losing isn’t your own unhappiness; it’s having to watch the other team’s joy.

  I wouldn’t have seen any of this in a regular-season game, because I would’ve bolted straight to the dressing room. But in a Stanley Cup elimination game you have to hang around to go through the handshake line. It felt strange to be shaking hands with guys who had been my teammates for almost all of my time in the NHL.

  Flipside Palmer was first in line and was already singing, “We are the champions. My friend.”

  Gaston didn’t say anything—he just grabbed my
right hand and with his left hand pointed to the shot stats on the scoreboard. I’d made forty-one saves in two regulation and two OT periods.

  Quigley leaned over and said: “Glad I got it. Wish it wasn’t on you, JP.” I didn’t have the presence of mind to say it, but in retrospect, if someone had to beat me I’m glad it was Quig, a good guy coming off a tough year. Not to mention a tough life.

  Just as I came to Cam the PA guy announced the game’s three stars: Kevin Quigley was first, I was second, and Cam—who had about fifty minutes of ice time and dealt out more hits than the Mob—was third. “I hope you bet my half million dollars on Boston,” I said.

  “Much better investment than that. I’ll tell you after we beat San Jose,” Cam said, giving me a punch on the shoulder the jolt from which went straight to my still-throbbing head.

  * * *

  I lingered in the shower longer than usual, partly to take the edge off of my headache but also because I wasn’t all that eager to talk to the media. I’ve never been one to duck reporters after a loss, but this was an especially painful loss and I didn’t want to talk about it. Eventually I put on a robe and went out and told the few remaining writers that Boston is a great team and I wished them well in the finals. Lynne Abbott asked if Tim Harcourt had screened me on the last goal. “Quigley made a perfect shot,” I lied.

  Faith was waiting for me outside the dressing room. “How’s the head?”

  “Hurts like hell. But I’m glad I played. Thank you.”

  We walked toward the Boston dressing room because I wanted to wish the guys well. When I came out of the Boston room I saw Cam’s wife, Tamara, and daughters, Lindsey and Caitlin, standing in the corridor waiting for Cam. A tired Caitlin hung on her mother’s arm while Lindsey studied the game stat sheet a PR aide had given her. “You were screened on that goal, weren’t you, Mr. Savard,” Lindsey said, looking up from the stat sheet.