99

by Wayne Gretzky

  The Soviet guys would pick my brain on how to get to the NHL, although they were adamant about not defecting. They were too proud of their country. They didn’t even like to mention the prospect because it was really dangerous to even whisper about it. In the late 1930s, Igor’s grandfather had said something about Stalin, and as a result his family had been exiled from Moscow to Voskresensk, a factory town so dirty with soot that the snow fell black.

  In the mid-1980s, under Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika policy, Soviet sports had to self-fund. So by the end of the decade, the Soviet Hockey Federation decided to sell a few players to the NHL, which paid $3 million in total for Sergei Makarov (Calgary Flames), goalie Sergei Mylnikov (Quebec Nordiques), and Krutov and Larionov (Vancouver Canucks). Fetisov’s dream finally came true. He and fellow defensemen Alexei Kasatonov and Sergei Starikov signed with the New Jersey Devils. Each player was paid about $100,000.

  • • •

  Things were going to be different in ’87. There were more games played back in the east. Glen Sather had coached so much hockey that he stepped aside and pushed for John Muckler to be assistant coach along with Jean Perron. Mike Keenan was head coach. He made some controversial choices in the way he put the team together—when Scott Stevens is cut and Normand Rochefort is playing, try to figure that one out—but it worked. Cam Neely, Wendel Clark, Steve Yzerman, and Patrick Roy were all late cuts, which just shows you the depth of the talent available.

  At the beginning it was a déjà vu of 1984. We started crappy. We weren’t losing, but the team was not gelling whatsoever and every game felt like a slog. It was really awful. We had a big team meeting with the management side—Bobby Clarke, Serge Savard, and Phil Esposito—with everyone trying to get to the bottom of what was wrong and what we needed to do. Just as in ’84, the conversation was about the top players who’d played so much hockey. The Oilers especially were physically and mentally tired. Mike had us wearing full equipment at a couple of the practices while going hard, and so one of the things the management and coaching staff agreed to do was to back off a little bit and let us regroup.

  There was a pre-tournament game in Hamilton where we got clocked pretty good, and then we were really flat in the tournament opener in Calgary. Mike was steamed. He told me to make sure that everyone made the team meal at the hotel because wanted to speak to us. Some of the guys weren’t happy because we were hoping for a chance to go out and relax. After we ate, Mike got up and said how ticked off he was. But then he said, “As a result, I want everyone to get their butts back on that bus. We’re all going out together. Everybody!” That night we shut down a little country-and-western bar.

  The next morning we got on the plane and started playing one of the longest card games I’ve ever been involved in—and one of the most fun. In the days before laptops, iPads, and iPhones, cards were a time-honored hockey tradition. We were flying commercial from Calgary to Toronto and then to Hamilton. As soon as we boarded we started playing a game called In Between, or Acey Deucey. In Vegas they call it Red Dog. That game lasted for the entire ride. The player on the left is the bettor. Using a double deck, the dealer puts down two cards face-up. The player bets. The dealer puts down another card between the two cards. If the card ranks between the two cards, the player wins and takes equal money from the pot.

  We were screaming and yelling and guys were betting quite a bit of money. I was partnered with Paul Coffey. We started going big and kept losing, so the pot got bigger. When we got to Toronto, the pot was still alive, maybe $20,000, and so we picked up the game again on the bus.

  Claude Lemieux, who was just a kid at the time, had pretty much left a full paycheck on the table. If you didn’t have the money you had to bail out because it was cash only. Claude looked down and saw that he had great cards, a two and a king. He needed his money back. So he looked over at Mario Lemieux and said, “Will you back me up?” Mario winked and said, “Go for it.” Ray Bourque was dealing. He pulled a five and Claude was whole again. We had just a great, great time.

  • • •

  I liked the way Mike Keenan coached. I think it was pretty smart the way he was able to find the right chemistry in such a short period of time. We had so many good players that Keenan would mix up the lines a number of times. He liked a physical presence on all the lines, so he spread it out and I think it served him well. The guys had a lot of respect for him.

  The best coaches all have different styles, but they all let the players play to their strengths by adapting the game to those strengths. That gives players confidence. And as that confidence builds, the players become harder to beat.

  A good coach also knows how to handle the ups and downs. When you win, players can get overly confident and that can be a problem too. So a coach has to be able to manage both overconfidence and underconfidence.

  Mike put Mario and me together for the first time. We hadn’t played on the same line because we were both centermen. But Mike had seen us score on a power play in the middle of the tournament and decided to leave us together. Still, when Mike first put us out there together we’d skate in the same place, side by side in the offensive zone. That’s because we both saw the ice the same way. But after a couple of games we could read each other and I didn’t have to adapt my game in any way. We started as linemates when we played against the Swedes, then the Soviets, followed by the Czechs. We tied the Russians and won the other two games, and everything propelled forward from there.

  Hockey used to have a lot of famous lines. I’ve already mentioned the late 60s’ GAG (goal-a-game) line in New York, with Jean Ratelle, Rod Gilbert, and Vic Hadfield. The Bruins’ Espo Line, with Phil Esposito, Wayne Cashman, and Ken Hodge, was big. The Canadiens had the Dynasty Line, with Guy Lafleur, Jacques Lemaire, and Steve Shutt. And the Kings’ Triple Crown Line, with Marcel Dionne, Charlie Simmer, and Dave Taylor, was another big one. But in my era there weren’t too many famous lines.

  Selfishly, helping Mario become a better player made me a better player. Mario was just a kid, but he had so much God-given talent. He was so big and yet so fluid on his blades, almost like a figure skater. Some guys can elevate their game to a greater level, and that’s what I saw Mario do. The older guys helped get him ready in training camp and all through the round robin. Learning from some of the great players on the team meant that he not only had a lot of new moves in his arsenal; I think it also lit his fire. I advised him to do two things. First, I wanted him to watch what the others were doing and then follow their lead. I told him to look at Mess, who was always the first guy on the ice at practice, never late. Second, I wanted him to let me be the passer so that he could shoot. He had these tremendous wrists. As for accuracy, he was an atomic clock.

  Mario and I were part of the big offensive production, but the guys in the dressing room who grinded it out were every bit as important. I look at impact players like Michel Goulet and Dale Hawerchuk. They were put in a position to do whatever had to be done in order to win. Goulet, who was the number-one gunner on his team, described himself as a plumber during that series, but it didn’t discourage him at all. He was just proud to be part of the group. Everyone felt that way. Craig Hartsburg was probably sixth defenseman. He was vocal on the bench and in the room, a great motivator. Every guy tried to find a way to help—Rick Tocchet, Brent Sutter, Brian Propp, go down the line. They accepted different roles from what they had on their own teams.

  • • •

  The 1987 Canada Cup may have been one of most skilled hockey series of all time, but it might have been the most vicious hockey too. If some of the stuff that went on happened today there’d be huge suspensions for both sides. The Russians may have been a little subtler about it, but they certainly had a fierce competitiveness. They were so strong physically that every battle was very tough. And remember, these were two teams with a lot of pride on the line. A passion to win and hating the other team feel a lot alike. That year at t
he world juniors, a stacked but chippy Team Canada had lost its shot at a gold medal because of a bench-clearing brawl against the Soviets. Theo Fleury said that Valeri Zelepukin, the guy he scrapped with in that game, was the strongest he had ever played against. Those Russians weren’t just good. They knew how to handle themselves.

  We won because Mike Keenan outcoached Tikhonov. Mike was really one of the best bench coaches ever. Still, I thought Tikhonov was a really good technical coach and that the system they played was tremendous: the way they broke out, how they took their time, how they killed penalties. Their five-man units and their power play. And it was all so special because of their patience. They’d hold the puck for two full minutes just to get one good shot.

  In this day and age, the key to success is to get people moving around so that you get the puck back to the point. You might get eight shots in on one power play. The Russians never did that. If they didn’t see what they wanted, they’d go back and restart.

  Where Tikhonov was weak as a coach was his stubbornness. He was very predictable and he didn’t change on the fly. He thought his athletes were better than our athletes, and so he never shortened his bench. He would roll six defensemen and four forward lines. Every player was thought to be as good as the guy in front of him, so the rotation never changed. At the beginning of the period the first line would start, then the second line and the third line, and then the fourth line would go. Soviet hockey may have been a machine, but there was a downside to that. They didn’t adapt as the game went on.

  It’s only fairly recently that they’ve even pulled the goalie if they’re down one goal. It wasn’t that they didn’t know how. It was just that they were confident that they were going to score with only five attackers. It started to change a little in the late 80s. You’d see the Big Five get double-shifted every now and then, but it was rare. Over the years, Soviet players got a bad reputation for not having heart. I’ve talked to them, and I know they cared about the game just as much as any Canadian. It’s possible they cared even more—for them, every game was an audition. I can see why people might think they didn’t play with passion, but it has more to do with coaching than with the players’ personalities. They were just forced to stick to the script.

  Glen Sather or Mike Keenan might start Messier’s line in the second period and my line in the third to get the matchup they wanted, but Tikhonov would start his best five guys every period. If they got a power play he’d put out the next unit up in rotation, whereas coaches like Mike, Glen, or Scotty Bowman would double-shift players, with Lafleur, Bobby Orr, and Denis Potvin playing every other shift.

  Our bench coaching was always better than theirs, all the way back to ’72. Had we played the Russians in the way they’re coached now, where they double-shift guys like Alex Ovechkin and play three lines and go down to four defensemen, history might look different.

  • • •

  The best game I ever played in was the second of the 1987 finals against the Russians. The level of competition that night in Hamilton was so high. It was an emotional game too, because we’d just lost 6–5 in Game One in Montreal after Vyacheslav Bykov threw a shot in front of the net and it deflected off my skate for the tying goal. I’d come out afterward to see my dad standing there looking angry. He was rarely critical like that, but he said, “You know, that loss was your fault. You stayed on the ice too long and that goal cost you guys.” I’d just told him that I’d gotten permission for him to fly with us on the charter to Hamilton. So I only looked at him and said, “You’re welcome.”

  On our way to Hamilton for the next game, I thought about what my dad had said and started feeling pretty grumpy. I kept thinking, “Hamilton? Why Hamilton?”

  My favorite arena to play in other than Edmonton at the time was Maple Leaf Gardens. I always played well there. In those days the glass behind the players’ bench was only a few feet high, meaning that if someone stood up behind us they could reach out and touch us. At Maple Leaf Gardens and the Montreal Forum we were practically sitting in the stands. It was wild, and players loved it. I remember thinking, “Wow, this is so cool.” There were two seats next to the end of the bench at the Gardens and my dad used to sit in one of them. I’d even be able to talk to him during the game. But he was so nervous that I’d say something like, “Hey, how you doin’?” and he’d barely be able to answer.

  No one had ever really played in Hamilton, so we didn’t know what to expect. It wasn’t an NHL city. In those days the games started at ten after eight, which was really late. I always got to the rink around three-thirty because once I was in the locker room no one could bug me and I could sit and have a coffee and talk to the trainers. But when I walked into Copps Coliseum it was dark and quiet, and again I thought, “Why not Maple Leaf Gardens?”

  Anyway, I was wrong. Once we stepped onto the ice after the warm-up, the electricity in the arena was amazing. It charged us up. And because it was a smaller arena, the sound stayed inside. That kind of atmosphere virtually changes your gravity.

  The game started off with a bang, back and forth. It felt like one of those nights when the puck just seemed to follow me around.

  Mark and Mario and I played every second shift. The Russians were playing four lines. The tempo was extreme. We were in the zone, but the Soviets were fresher. I remember coming to the bench and looking at Mark and saying, “Mess, I don’t think I can go.” We’d almost fall down on the bench. But twenty seconds later Mike would walk behind us and give us a little kick in the arse—“You’re up again”—and we’d jump over the boards.

  I had five assists, and Mario got three goals. We headed into double overtime. It was a pretty spectacular night. I was feeling very confident. I’d take my chances in overtime with Grant Fuhr in net any day. And he didn’t let us down.

  He made some saves that were incredible. We won the game and the jubilation was electric.

  I was staying at my folks’ place that night because Brantford’s just twenty minutes from Hamilton. I drove home with them. It was two a.m. We ordered pizza and I sat back on the couch, looked up at the ceiling, and thought about what a great night it had been and just how important this series was. Losing would mean letting the country down. And then I exhaled for about five minutes.

  • • •

  When we skated on in Game Three, Copps Coliseum was vibrating again. The fans were all standing and cheering. But the tempo of Game Two had been so fast that Mario, Coffey, Messier, and I were a little tired. Sure enough, Makarov scored less than a minute in, and by eight minutes in we were down 3–0. The high-energy electricity was dying in the stands like burst balloons. A lot of the fans sat down.

  And this is why I said earlier that Mike Keenan outcoached Tikhonov. He gave Mario, a couple other guys, and me a breather for about eight minutes while he double-shifted Brian Propp, Brent Sutter, and Rick Tocchet. Tocchet put the Russian defense back on their heels, especially along the boards. All of a sudden things weren’t so easy for them. They were looking over their shoulders. Then Tocchet banged in a rebound on the power play, followed by a goal from Brian Propp. We gave up one more before the end of the first, but we were much happier trailing 4–2 than 3–0. We were back in the game.

  When we went into the locker room, everyone was waiting for Mike to kind of blow up. Instead he walked in very calmly and said, “You guys will be part of one of the greatest comebacks in Canadian hockey history today.” Then he left the room. It just seemed to relax us while at the same time it fired us up. And it worked. Larry Murphy scored from the right point. Then Sutter got another. When Dale Hawerchuk shoveled in his own rebound, we were back in front.

  Mike idealized Scotty Bowman. I don’t think there’s any secret about that. Scotty had this reputation for being unreadable. He’d do things that were abnormal. People would be watching the game and saying, “Why is Bowman doing that?” He liked the surprise element. Like a card player, he didn�
��t like to tip his hand. And he’d ask a lot of questions to try to find out as much as he could about the other team. He’d rather surprise than be surprised. And like Scotty, Mike kept some ice cubes in a little cup and would chew on them. But he had his own tricks too. Sometimes, when he wanted to give us a break, he’d throw pennies on the rink and the refs would have to stop the game to clean up the ice. He wasn’t obvious about it; it’s just that there were holes in his pockets. And I think Mike really relished it when, as they did with Scotty, people would say, “Geez, what’s Mike doing?”

  So when it was 5–5 with a minute and a half to go, Mike put Mario, Dale, and me on the ice for a faceoff in our own zone. The three most offensive players in hockey for the most important faceoff of the series. As we went over the boards, Dale asked, “Are you gonna take the draw?” “No, no, Dale,” I said, “you take it.” So Dale was at center, Mario was on right wing at the hash marks, and I was just to his right. Larry Murphy was behind and Paul Coffey stood to the left of the hash marks.

  Dale kind of lost the draw and Mario raced into the middle and grabbed the puck. Two Russians came toward him, but when they fell over each other, Mario chipped the puck toward the point. Mike Keenan’s philosophy in hockey was always “Two guys on the puck,” and so both Mario and I immediately went toward it. Mario did a pirouette to dodge a check. Now we had three Russians out of the way.

  Mario feathered a soft pass to me up the left boards. I picked it up at the red line and carried the puck into the zone. Larry Murphy saw everything developing and just took off toward the net. The Russian defenseman, Igor Kravchuk, now had to cover me and Mario and also be in position to take away the pass to Larry, who was headed for the far post for a possible tap-in. Meanwhile, Hawerchuk got his stick on one of their backcheckers, Slava Bykov. This meant that when Mario came up as a trailer he was wide open. I dropped the puck back to Mario, and with 1:26 left in the game, he took two strides and ripped it over Myshkin’s glove hand into the top corner.