The Game

  And if we were to do something, who would decide what is right and wrong for a game? Who decides what is in a game’s best interests?

  Who is the keeper of the game? John Ziegler? The NHL owners?

  They are surely the only ones who can do something. But what are their interests? Why should they want the game to change? They are businessmen. They may love hockey profoundly, but they have an investment to protect. Their arenas are already more than eighty percent full, more than seven hundred times a season. What have they got to gain? And how would fans accept the change? In the United States, it is axiomatic that speed and violence are what sells. It was what new teams sold in the 1920s, it is what new teams sell today. A few years ago, the Tidewater Red Wings of the AHL told fans in southern Virginia that hockey was coming. Billboards went up—one read,

  “Brutal, fast, brutal, exciting, and brutal”; the other, “If they didn’t have rules, they’d call it war.”

  But if the pattern of gratuitous violence were eliminated, what then? Who would watch? Maybe the axiom is wrong. Maybe it has always been wrong. Maybe its formula only limits the appeal of the game, committing the already hardcore fan, turning away millions of others. Maybe fans really do want change. Maybe it would bring them into arenas in even greater numbers, in front of TV sets in greater numbers still. And maybe not. And who wants to take that risk? Years ago, it was simple. We didn’t have to worry about the best way to play because we were the best, and how we played was the best way to play. Then the Soviets came along, and things got complicated.

  But what can we do now? This is no public enterprise. Why should we think of hockey as a national possession? Why should we think of the Montreal Canadiens as ours? If we buy a car, we don’t think of General Motors as ours. So why is hockey any different? But it does seem different. The Canadiens do seem ours. We cheer them as if they are ours, and boo them the same way.

  Before every game—“Accueillons. Let’s welcome. Nos Canadiens!

  Our Canadiens!” And we want to believe it. And we do believe it until something happens that reminds us that they aren’t, that they really belong to Molson’s.

  It is our fundamental dilemma. A game we treat as ours isn’t ours.

  It is part of our national heritage, and pride, part of us; but we can’t control it. Baseball has no similar problem, nor basketball or football, for there is no external challenge to bind a public together, to turn a league and a sport into a national cause. And there is no sport in the United States that means the same as hockey means to Canada. So what is our future? How can we meet the Soviet challenge, and our challenge? It is to find a coincidence of interests. That point where the interests of the game and of those who own it are the same.

  For it is only there that our game can change enough to make a difference. And it can only happen if the NHL makes international hockey the climax to its season, in World Championships, or, more likely, in a year-end series between the Stanley Cup winners and the Soviet league champions. It would give a season a new, never-forgotten goal, because teams gear to win championships. They draft players and plan their teams with that in mind. They focus on last year’s winner. How can we beat them? Where must we improve? When the Flyers were champions, teams got bigger and tougher, just for the Flyers. When we took over, teams changed. With the Soviets as each season’s ultimate opponent, they would change again. Or should.

  Players’ skills and sizes would change, styles of play, the league’s enforcing of its rules; never to become some European facsimile, but something new, ours. It may never happen, but it could. For such an annual series will come about. The exponential revenues soon available by cable and pay-TV make it certain. Also certain is that the more competitive and attractive the series is, the higher those revenues will be. There is the coincidence of interests. There is the incentive to compete, and change. It is the chance we need.

  “Whom the gods would destroy, they first oversell.” The NHL’s American dream has come to an end, again. It will be back, years from now when old lessons grow hazy, when enough is different that everything before it seems hopelessly quaint and irrelevant, when optimism returns. For hockey is too appealing a game for the dream to die.

  Whether it will ever fare any better is less certain. In America, it is a game most of whose fans were never players, and now that the latest minor-hockey boom has busted, it seems they never will be. It changes how a game is watched, and enjoyed, how it is sold to its audience. It becomes a promoter’s game, a hard sell of hype and hyperbole—the fastest, the toughest—always pandering to stereotype. It is a game rel-egated to the fringes, to the not quite respectable line between sport and attraction.

  Hockey was not the sport of the 1970s as deadline writers wished it to be, nor was there ever really a chance it could be. An exciting mix of speed and violence, it was simply a game that made sense. And in the irrepressible logic of the time, that seemed enough. Whatever its problems, money and exposure would overcome them. But the econo-my turned down, too few sat by their TVs to be exposed, and it didn’t happen. There would be no quick fixes: no network TV contracts, no American superstar messiahs to start an unstoppable ball rolling. So at the end of its decade, hockey is where it was at the start—a minor American sport with major regional appeal. Except that the mood around it has changed. It is sour. The gods that oversold it are bitter.

  They feel betrayed. It is not the game they said it would be; it’s the game’s fault, they decide.

  The Challenge CLIP was the bottom, on the ice, and off Madison Square Garden, the Waldorf-Astoria, the Russians; a week in the Big Apple, big corporate clients wined and entertained. It was to be like Super Bowl Week, its model. “…one of the world’s most dynamic sports events,” columnist Dave Anderson wrote in The New York Times, “but no impact…. It should be the talk of the town. Instead, it’s hardly mentioned except by the hockey community.” And finally what should have been clear was clear. It is easy to feel big when you’re not, if you surround yourself with others who are smaller. But if you pretend you are big, and surround yourself with others bigger, you feel crushingly small.

  That is what happened in New York. There was Ain’t Misbehavin’, Sweeney Todd, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera’s Don Carlo and Madama Butterfly, the Knicks and the Celtics, harness racing at Roosevelt Raceway and the Meadowlands, St. John’s at Fordham, Queens at Brooklyn College, and us. And if any doubts remained, they disappeared on Saturday. For though Sunday was the final game, Saturday was the bottom. It was the day of the great TV fiasco.

  Unable to sell the series to an American network, the NHL put together an ad hoc group of stations for two games, selling the Saturday game to CBS for its afternoon sports program. Highlights would be aired on a delayed basis, sandwiched between coverage of the Los Angeles Times track meet, a WBA welterweight championship fight, and the International Pro Surfers Women’s Team Championship. The NHL also sold advertising space on the boards. When CBS found out, they asked the league to remove the advertising. The NHL refused.

  CBS decided to go ahead with the game anyway, but shifted their camera angles so that the advertising wouldn’t show. It would be the only extended network coverage of the season. For the game’s allotted minutes, CBS cameras followed the puck, but as it approached the boards, everything taller than a puck got chopped. It was the final humiliation.

  The league had tried too hard.

  But now the trains have passed through the tunnel, and the light remains. What now? It will be a quieter decade for the NHL.

  Expansion and the WHA behind it, it will be a time to turn inward, to put its unwieldy house in order. Like an aging adolescent having grown too fast, it will get reacquainted with its parts, get them in hand, and do something with them. It will be a time of realism, and stability, for chastened hopes and dreams deferred—except one. Off ice, the whispered word will be “cable.” But it will represent a
more modest dream this time, and more realizable, if the promised bonanza is only for some. It is time for a deep breath, a pause, a time to return the game to the ice. For that is the real tragedy of the 1970s, and the real opportunity of the 1980s. It is on the ice that its next great challenge lies.

  It was an easy win, 7-3, where wins are never easy, but the Flyers are not the team they were. Parent is injured, seriously again, perhaps for the last time. It’s his eye. A few years ago, it was his neck. A marvel-lous goalie at his best, Parent must play untroubled. His goaltending-guru, Jacques Plante, had seemed always able to unburden his mind, but now, in his thirties, Parent’s body overcomes him.

  So too Jimmy Watson, a small, brave defenseman, who plays often when he shouldn’t. He played tonight, but didn’t play well.

  Even Bobby Clarke has changed. The spirit of his team, Clarke could always find a level of commitment no one else was willing to find. But now there seems a different desperation in his game, as if he can’t quite feel that same commitment, and he’s scared. It’s as if he’s suddenly come face to face with human weakness—his own. It’s different when a body wears out, when legs get tired and slow. It seems an act of nature, unstoppable, beyond control. And it is forgivable. But not so a mind. Then it is weakness, unforgivable weakness. It is you. It happens often to those nearing thirty, when the best seems suddenly past, before age is accepted and new goals are found. Still Clarke, being Clarke, fights back, pushing himself to do what once was natural. But tonight he looked tired. He needs a new goal. The Flyers have always depended on him. Now it is his turn. He needs them to be real contenders again.

  But they are not. Their points totals may improve, they may move up in the standings, but it’s all illusion. They have a fundamental flaw, and can’t win. Each year since 1976, since their two-year hold on the NHL was ended, they have been the “new” Flyers. They are faster, more talented, more versatile, less goon-like than their predecessors.

  But each year, they show they are not. They are simply the Flyers. It is an attitude, and a tradition, that will not change. They have the same swagger. They play as if with the same impunity, as if penalties, fines, and suspensions are mere costs of doing business, to be served, paid off, killed without consequence. But things are different now. The costs are too high, the consequences too certain. The style that won them two consecutive Stanley Cups only guarantees that they will win no more. The irony is wonderful.

  It changes the mood of our games. It makes each less threatening.

  Knowing the ending, the rough parts are easier to take. So when Paul Holmgren beats up someone until my stomach turns, when the Spectrum crowd roars its approving roar, when Behn Wilson, Ken Linesman, and other “new” Flyers file by him in tribute, I smile. It is what we never got to feel as kids. What never happened to the bully on the block. For Holmgren, Linesman, Wilson, and the others, there is no more impunity. They will get theirs.

  The bar is Sunday-evening empty. Suddenly it’s full. One game is over; another begins.

  “…Aries, right?”

  “Huh? Oilers? No, no, no, Canadiens.”

  “Canadiens?”

  “You asked me if I played for the Oilers?”

  “No, I asked you your sign.”

  “Oh, hah hah hah, I’m a…”

  “You play for the Houston Oilers?”

  “No, no the Canadiens. The Montreal Canadiens. The hockey team.”

  “You’re a professional athlete? Oh wow! I mean, I don’t know much about hockey, but…”

  Games are played, so games are to be won. But they are easy games, soon forgotten. Until the next time. It’s a fact of every road trip. Some play, some don’t; no one keeps score. At home, wives and girl friends wonder.

  It’s quiet. The music has stopped. For some, the weekend is over.

  They gather up cigarettes and coats, say perfunctory goodbyes; at a table at the back, no one moves. It is our time. The luckless climb from their bar-stools; more tables are pieced together. Jackets get slung into chairs, ties loosen, talk comes dressing-room easy. It’s about goals and goals missed, money, women, cars, golf. Anything. Stories that we’ve heard before, and some we haven’t; and will again. It’s my favorite time, when something is done and over, and good, when there’s nothing more to do, and no place to go until morning.

  Everything slows down. Words get softer. We speak of “the game” this, “the game” that. Sentences trail off, never finished. Things go unsaid. Yet we nod and understand. It is at moments like this that I remember why I play.

  Last year, after we had won the Stanley Cup against the Bruins, several journalists asked what it had meant to me. I couldn’t really tell them. I heard myself speak of satisfaction and pride, yet I knew that wasn’t it, or all of it. I sat in my office a few days later, and tried again.

  I wrote this to myself:

  “I am good, and we are good, and when I do my best and we do our best, we win most of the time. When we win, we receive trophies and plaques, our names go in newspapers; they go on checks alongside numbers with lots of zeros. When people talk, they talk about us a certain way. And after a while, everything is inextricably linked—winning, playing our best, money, celebrity. If someone asks us why we play, we’re not sure any longer. We might speak ritually of ‘loving the game’; then, embarrassed, skip on to winning, money, and the rest.

  And everyone understands.

  “But ask us after a game. After we’ve played the Bruins or the Islanders; after a playoff game. If you don’t understand the excited tumble of words, look at our gray-white faces, at eyes that glitter and pop at you. Look at our sweaty smiles, at hands that won’t shut up. An hour later, a day’s tension sucked away, look at our bodies. All gangly and weak, so weak we laugh it feels so good. Look at our faces, at smiles distant and content.”

  I have a picture. It shows nine or ten guys, arms hanging on each other’s shoulders, faces dripping with sweat. Beaming. Tremblay, Lafleur, Palchak, Nyrop, Jarvis, me. I don’t beam; Jarvis doesn’t beam.

  A week before, we had won the Norris Division, Prince of Wales Conference, and $4,500; five weeks later, we would win $15,000 and our second straight Stanley Cup. Pete Mahovlich, our designated captain, held a tiny trophy we had given ourselves for winning a series of week-long intrasquad games. Later, we received $25 a man. It’s the happiest picture I have.

  Coaches like Vince Lombardi and George Allen have told us we must play for certain reasons. As children, our parents and coaches told us something else. But after the Bruins series, Chartraw came much closer, “I don’t play for money,” he laughed, “I play for the party after.”

  A few years ago, I called Dickie Moore to arrange an interview for a friend. Moore had been a fine player for the Canadiens in the 1950s, and after retiring with knee injuries (later, he returned briefly with the Leafs and the Blues), had built a successful equipment rental company in Montreal. It happened that I called on the first anniversary of his son’s death in a car accident. It had been a tough day was all Moore said. More for me than for him, he changed the subject. He asked me how I was, how the team was doing; then he turned reflective. He spoke of “the game.” Sometimes excitedly, sometimes with longing, but always it was “the game.” Not a game of his time, or mine, something he knew we shared. It sounded almost spell-like the way he put it. I had always thought of it as a phrase interchangeable with “hockey,” “baseball,” any sport. But when Moore said it, I knew it wasn’t.

  “The game” was different, something that belongs only to those who play it, a code phrase that anyone who has played a sport, any sport, understands. It’s a common heritage of parents and backyards, teammates, friends, winning, losing, dressing rooms, road trips, coaches, press, fans, money, celebrity—a life, so long as you live it. Now as I sit here, slouched back, mellow, when I hear others talk of “the game,” I know what Moore meant. It is hockey that I’m leaving behind. It’s “the game” I’ll miss.

  * * *

&nb
sp; MONDAY

  “It’s not just a job.”

  — A Chorus Line

  On the Road

  “Never again.”

  No one laughs. Cowlicks, gray stubbled faces, auras of garlic and beer. Stars of the world’s fastest game, on a bus to New York.

  Yesterday’s rain stopped moments ago. It’s dull and overcast.

  “Jesus, it’s bright in here,” Chartraw bellows. “Ya got no curtains for this thing, bussy?”

  “Hey Sharty, try these,” Lapointe says, holding out his sunglasses.

  “Your eyes are makin’ me sick.” Chartraw reaches for them. Lapointe puts them back on. There are sunglasses everywhere. Behind them, some are reading, most are sleeping. Shutt is bored. He tells everyone near him his newest theory on drinking—“Don’t inhale.” He laughs; no one else does. He watches Napier beside him. Napier’s head lolls from side to side, bounces to his chest a few times, and finally settles there. He’s asleep.

  “Hey Napes,” Shutt whispers, “you asleep?” Napier stirs. “Oh sorry, Napes. But Napes, I gotta tell ya somethin’. Napes, are ya listenin’?” Napier’s head lolls upright, one eye struggles open; he nods.

  “Sleep at night, Napes!”

  Behind Shutt, a little black book is being updated: “Ooh, she was a firecracker,” the diarist mumbles. “Gotta find her a permanent place.

  Lemme see, Anne, Anne, what goes with Anne…Ooh, she’s a silky little thing.” At that, those asleep begin to laugh.

  He doesn’t notice. “What goes with—Sullivan! That’s it, Sullivan.”

  Eyes pop open. “Silky Sullivan?” A loud laugh this time. “That’s not bad,” he says, pleased with himself. “Now what’ll I call him?” Awake, now sitting up, others shout their suggestions, “Ed? Naw, too obvious.