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“Arena football,” she said.

I was daydreaming out loud when I said it might be nice to take classes in the morning, then go to the rink and coach in the afternoon and be home for dinner. “And no more trips to Edmonton, Calgary, and Anaheim. A big road trip in college is to Boston for Northeastern on Friday night and BU on Saturday. And even if you go to the Frozen Four the season is still two months shorter than the NHL's. It'll be a good life in a few years,” I said.

Faith held up the forefinger on her right hand signaling that she'd have something important to say as soon as she swallowed a mouthful of pizza. “But Marco needs to name an assistant now,” is what she said. “And if you want to work with Rudy Evanston … well, Rudy's got only one season left.”

“Can't do it, Faith. I'm a player first. I think that old sportswriter Jim Murray had it right about pro players—we are what we do.”

She thought about that for a minute. “And if you don't you're nothing?” she said. It was a question but I couldn't answer it.

*   *   *

We walked the two miles or so back to Faith's house. “I'm tired,” I said.

“You're a professional athlete, JP. How can you be tired from a walk?”

“Maybe it's mental. This is the most relaxed I've been since training camp. No game to worry about.”

I slept through most of the late afternoon while Faith went grocery shopping. I awoke to the smell of grilled swordfish wafting up the stairs.

With no hockey game until the next day, we watched the Red Sox on TV after dinner. Just as I clicked on the game the announcer was reminding viewers that a week from Saturday would be a makeup game for the Sox versus Detroit and that the game would be “a day-night separate-admission doubleheader.” Faith giggled when she heard that.

“What so funny?” I said.

“We should do one of those,” she said.

“One of what?”

“A day-night separate-admission doubleheader.”

So we did. And this time I made it easy for her. I surely did.

I fell asleep thinking that I'd just had the best day of my life and I hadn't played hockey or spent money.

*   *   *

Friday wasn't the best day of anybody's life if you played for Boston or Montreal although it was slightly better for Montreal because we won 8–7 in a game in which both starting goaltenders—Rinky Higgins in the Boston net and Ryan McDonough for us—played poorly. Montreal was down 7–6 going into the third period. Joe Latendresse tied it on the power play, then won it for us at 17:18 of overtime when he swept in from the right side, got Rinky going left to right, then shot back across the grain, putting the puck into the place Rinky had just left. It was—as the TV guys like to say—a goal scorer's goal. Montreal held a 3–2 series lead going into Game 6 in Boston.

Cam's father invited me to watch that game from his luxury suite. I thanked him but explained I was a Montreal Canadien, at least for the time being, and it was best if I stayed down by my team's bench. Faith joined Cam's parents, six or seven Carter & Peabody clients, Denny Moran, and my mother in the C&P box. I stood in the runway beside the Montreal bench. You can't see the game very well from there. But you can feel it, sense its intensity, and glimpse its beauty. Skating is as close to elegance as a man can get.

Gaston was skating to space, his arrival magically timed to coincide with the puck's arrival. Cam was hammering guys. Flipside—his shirt billowing, back-checkers scrambling helplessly in his wake—was a one-man breakout play, sometimes carrying the puck the length of the ice like a fourth forward. Kevin Quigley was banging along the walls. And if that wasn't enough, Boston had three power plays to our one and scored on all of them for a 3–0 first-period lead. We were back on our heels.

I went into the dressing room between periods. The first thing I saw as I entered was Ryan McDonough taking off his goalie equipment. “Going somewhere, Ry? Doctor's appointment?” I asked.

“I always do this when I suck. Change everything. Underwear. Jock. Everything. Fresh start, eh?” he said, snapping off his words like a man badly shaken.

I felt I had to do some freelance coaching. “Don't attribute your ability to outside things,” I told him. “You played well enough to make it to the NHL. You're going to have to slam the door now. Resilience is part of ability. Nothing to do with a dry jock. Hey, if we get the next goal…” I didn't think I had to explain what everyone in the NHL knows—3–1 is the most dangerous lead in hockey. But my advice didn't do any good. McDonough gave up a softy in the first minute of the second period. That was it. With the game all but officially lost, Packy pulled McDonough and put in Demetre Fontaine. The kid played half the game on his knees or stomach diving around like a circus seal but stopping everything Boston shot at him. “What the hell's he doing?” said Marc Wilson, who was standing in the runway with me. “Stopping the puck,” I said. “It's the job description.”

Fontaine was named third star of the game even though we lost. Alvin “Captain Baritone” Crouch caught the kid in the runway as he came off the ice. “Demetre … Demetre Fontaine … Nineteen years old and you're third star in your first NHL game. How do you feel?”

In his French accent the kid said, “I radder win dan be turd star.”

“Turd star. Got to love live TV,” I said to Marc, who was bent over laughing.

Faith and I met my mother and Denny Moran at the Copley Plaza bar after the game. Denny told me Montreal was hot to sign me for two years “and I think I can push it to three or four if you want.”

“No. Two is good. No more,” I said.

“Well, this Fontaine kid will be ready by then,” Denny said. “His style, if that's what you want to call it, reminds me of the Dominator's.” “The Dominator” was the nickname of the great Dominik Hasek. We didn't know it then but in her story the next morning Lynne Abbott would give Demetre Fontaine his own nickname—the Demonator.

We speculated on which goalie Montreal would start in Game 7; the psychologically fragile Ryan McDonough or a teenager with thirty-nine minutes of NHL experience.

“Nasty choice,” Faith said.

“They won't dare start a teenage rookie in a Game Seven,” Denny said. I said I wasn't so sure. “The kid's cocky and cold-blooded—good things for a goalie in a money game.”

*   *   *

“Relieved you're not playing?” Faith asked on the ride back to her place.

“No. I don't miss the nervousness. But I feel…” I was going to say “useless” but changed it to “unimportant.”

“Someday you're going to have to learn you're more than a goalie,” she said.

“I'll take that course in two years.”

She gunned the Ferrari past the IHOP on Soldiers Field Road.

Eleven

I thought Faith would give me an argument about driving to Montreal on Monday so I could be at Tuesday's Game 7. She didn't. She understood. And came with me.

“My father had a team rule that a player had to travel both ways on the team bus. No driving home with parents after an away game,” she said.

“
Had
a rule? Doesn't he still?”

“Naw. Parents beat him down.”

We talked briefly about my taking a pass on the Vermont coaching job.

“If you don't when you can, then maybe you can't when you want to,” she said. “Whoever takes the job next could be there a long time.”

“It's worth the risk to play another two seasons. I'd give my left one to get my name on that Cup.”

“Hey. Careful what you wish for.”

I said that if I coached I'd rather be a goalie coach than a head coach.

“Hah. A goalie coach
is
a head coach,” she said.

“How you feeling?” she asked as we drove off I-93 onto I-89 in New Hampshire.

“Great,” I said. “No headaches. No nausea. I could go.”

“Stay like that for a week and if Montreal makes it to the finals maybe you'll be ready to play in Game Four or Five. I wouldn't recommend it but I know how you feel. You wouldn't even have to play. All you have to do is be on the roster to get your name on the Cup, right?”

“Technically. But I don't want to back into it that way. I want to matter.”

“If you can dress you'll play. Who else have they got? The Demonator? Stay symptom-free and if the Canadiens win tomorrow you might get your chance.”

I decided to tell her what I'd been telling myself since I woke up. “I don't mean I want to play in a couple of weeks. I want to play tomorrow,” I said, bracing myself for what I thought would be a tsunami of bewildered anger.

But Faith said nothing. The silence stretched for miles. Finally, without glancing at me, she said in a cold even voice: “What we have here, class, is a case of denial about a concussion that could lead to brain damage. Or, judging from your last statement, has
already
led to brain damage.” Long pause: “You've got to be out of whatever mind you've got left, JP.”

“I want to play tomorrow. And if we win tomorrow I want to play in the Stanley Cup final against San Jose. Players play. And there's no guarantee I'll ever get this close again.”

“A few days ago you were in Mass General. You've had three concussions this season. No doctor in North America would sign off on your playing.”

“A team doctor would,” I said.

“JP, after a first concussion the chances of a second concussion are four times greater. Even if you take a hard hit on your body the force could get transferred to your brain and that's it. Four concussions. Grand slam. Don't be foolish. You're hurt. There's no dishonor in not playing. This is about your brain.”

“It's about my heart, too. In the old no-helmet days guys got their bell rung all the time. And they played. I don't want my heart questioned. Ever. By anyone.”

“No one IS questioning it, unless maybe you are. What's this really about, Jean Pierre?”

“It's about paying the price to be the best at what you do. It's about our children taking their children's children to the Hall of Fame and pointing to a name on the Cup and telling them: ‘That's your great-grandfather,' or ‘your great-great-grandfather.' It's forever, Faith, for all eternity. After you get the money, this is what you play for. No one's forcing me, I
want
to play.”

We pulled into the truck stop and restaurant at exit 16 in New Hampshire a few miles east of White River Junction, Vermont. We fueled up the car and bought coffee and snacks for the rest of the trip. Faith got a box of cookies with a drawing of elves on the package. I bought a prewrapped sandwich. “Elves made mine; who made yours?” she said. It was a throwaway line but a casual smile, and there's nothing better than a smile to draw the poison out of an argument.

We didn't talk much as Faith drove us through Vermont and over the Canadian border. We'd crossed the Champlain Bridge into Montreal when she said, “You know, JP, if I hadn't been a player I don't think I'd even try to understand any of this.”

“Do you think you will understand it?”

“I want to. It seems to me all players are like this. Especially goalies.”

“It's part of the culture. Georges Vezina almost died in net.” As Faith pushed the Ferrari north into the heart of the city I told her the story of Vezina's death. On November 28, 1925, in the season opener against Pittsburgh in Montreal the thirty-nine-year-old Vezina began coughing up blood in the first period. By the end of the period he was so weak teammates had to help him off the ice. In the dressing room he kept coughing and spitting blood. Vezina had never missed a game in fifteen seasons with the Canadiens. Over protests of his teammates he insisted on starting the second period. But a few minutes into that period Vezina collapsed in a pool of his own blood. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with tuberculosis, a death sentence in those days. After being released from the hospital a few days later, Vezina went back to the rink to get his jersey, the one he'd worn the previous season when Montreal won the Stanley Cup. When Vezina saw his old goalie pads propped up in a corner he sat down and wept. Then he went home to Chicoutimi and died.

Faith let out a long sigh. I didn't know what that meant. We drove into the city in silence.

*   *   *

“You going to see Dr. Desaulniers?” Faith asked me as she drove north on University Street.

“First I'll call Picard. Tell him not to rule me out for tomorrow. Then I'll try to get a decent night's sleep. If the headaches come back then that's the answer. I'm done. If they don't I'll talk to Desaulniers. Shouldn't be a problem. The team needs a goaltender.”

The Canadiens were still providing me with a suite at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. I called Marco Indinacci before I unpacked. I thanked him for his offer but told him I wasn't a candidate. “Going to play two more seasons,” I said. Then I told him I was thinking of playing in Game 7.

“Don't do it, JP,” he said. “Too risky. You're with a good team. You could win a Cup next season. You could win two in a row. Sit this one out.”

I couldn't tell Indinacci that I'd probably be back in Boston the next season if Cam's father bought the Bruins. “Aren't you the guy who used to tell us you looked for players who wanted to pull the cart, not ride in it?”

“That was just coach's talk,” he said. “Can't that doctor you're engaged to talk you out of this?”

“That doctor I'm engaged to isn't happy about it. But I think she'll understand. Hey, you saw her play. She didn't leave much on the floor.”

“Didn't leave many loose balls, that's for sure. Faith McNeil was a goddamn human dust mop.”

“She's still a gamer.”

“So are you, JP. But take care of yourself, OK? I'll be watching on TV. I hope I see you in a suit and tie.”