Jacques Plante, understandably, had been familiar with Soviet hockey for years, assiduously following its progress. For this reason, Radio-Canada, the French-language network of Canada’s national broadcasting company, asked Jacques to act as an on-air analyst during the televised game. North American hockey fans presumed that the Soviets, even if they had dominated world amateur hockey for years, would be wiped off the ice by real NHL pros. The players themselves did not view the Soviets as serious competitors. The only voices that dared to dissent from majority opinion were those of Michel Blanchard, sports columnist for La Presse… and that experienced observer, Jacques Plante.
Minutes before the first game of the series, played at the Montreal Forum, Jacques entered the visiting team’s dressing room, accompanied by an interpreter. Vladislav Tretyak, the young goaltender whose extraordinary talent had not yet been revealed to North American hockey fans, was astonished to see the legendary goalie walking towards him. Jacques, always the conscientious teacher, proceeded to explain to Tretyak how to outplay Mahovlich, Esposito, Cournoyer, and Henderson!
Tretyak, still in shock, had no time to reply. Jacques bid farewell to the Russian players and left. The young goaltender wondered why the former Habs goalie had graced him by this special honour…could it be that Jacques pitied him, given the opponents’ attitude that they were going to crush the Soviet team? In any case, Tretyak took Jacques’ advice to heart, and on the ice, he showed that he was up to the standard of any NHL goalie.
On the air, during the breaks between periods, Jacques used the blackboard to point out the strategies that the Soviet coach was deploying against the Canadian attack. The Team Canada players, on the other hand, had not bothered to analyse this aspect: they had always viewed the Soviets as good players, but of minor-league calibre compared to the NHL pros. It was a hard pill to swallow when the very first game resulted in a humiliating defeat for Canada. The plain fact was that Europeans, spearheaded by the Soviets, knew how to play hockey and could now beat the North Americans at their own game.
It took the members of Team Canada a long time to come to grips with this reality, but they finally managed to win the series, thanks to Paul Henderson s goal during the final minute of play in the decisive last game.
In the fall of 1972, pro hockey had difficulty digesting the double-whammy of the economics lesson from the WHA and the lesson in hockey skills from the U.S.S.R. Players and managers were clearly shaken. In Toronto, Jacques imperturbably continued tending net with his usual skill and dedication. A rumour was circulating that the WHA Quebec City Nordiques had made him an interesting offer to coach the team the following season, but if there was any truth in it, Jacques himself kept mum.
On Friday March 2, 1973, Jacques Plante was traded to the Boston Bruins, who had been desperately looking for a top-level goalkeeper since Gerry Cheevers’ defection to the WHA. They wanted a goal-tender who would give them a run at the Stanley Cup. The Bruins paid dearly in the bargain, sacrificing the first-round draft pick for the following season to the Maple Leafs.
In his new uniform, Jacques, who knew that the Bruins had a good chance of sweeping the honours that year, acquitted himself honourably, allowing 16 goals in 8 games and posting 2 shutouts. In the playoffs, however, he let in 10 goals in 2 games, and was replaced.
According to his contract, he was slated to play another season in the NHL with the Bruins. But after the finals, Jacques remained at the Hotel Sonesta in Boston to tie up his promotional activities, and on April 12, 1973, a bomb detonated: Jacques Plante had accepted a ten-year million-dollar contract as general manager and coach of the Quebec Nordiques.
This electrifying news spread like a trail of gun-powder and was on the front pages of the sports sections of all the newspapers in North America the next morning.
Overtime
The Man Who Carried a
Filing Cabinet in His Head
Throughout his career, Jacques Plante writes hockey columns for several newspapers and magazines.
Portland, Maine, March 25, 1978.
Jacques Plante, former star NHL goaltender, spent much of the spring season here, in a room at the Holiday Inn. This room was his refuge. How many hotels rooms, all over North America, had he known? In how many hotel rooms had he run through a game in his mind, just after playing it? How many times had he rehashed and reconsidered his career moves in this setting? Jacques had travelled a lot, and by that token, had spread himself thin. The hotel room had become the symbol of his solitude – the solitude of the thinker, as well as the unbearable solitude of homesickness and boredom. The goaltender had been forced to endure the necessary separation from his loved ones: for years, with the Royals and especially with the Canadiens, he had been the loner in the group, far from his young family. But the team had always returned home, and Montreal had remained his anchor of stability. The feeling of empty restlessness, of being a wanderer, had first come upon him when he had been traded to New York.
The time and place mentioned in connection with this stage of Jacques’ life story are arbitrary, although the heading of Portland appears frequently in the long letters he wrote during this period – indefatigably – daily, or even twice a day. It could just as well have been January 29, 1979, or December 11, 1980, at the Hilton Hotel in Philadelphia.
In his room, Jacques filled page after page; he had always loved to write.
For many years, of course, the main subject of his writing had been hockey. In 1957, in the middle of his best years with the Habs, he had written a hockey column for La Voix de Shawinigan, as if he wanted to share some of his glory with the town where he grew up. Later, in New York City, perhaps as a way to stay connected to his roots, he sent a weekly column to Le Samedi (later called Le Nouveau Samedi). At the same time, he wrote for Sports magazine. Jacques was a consistently observant commentator who paid attention to details; he described what lay behind the athletes’ performances – their diets, their training programs, their practice schedules – along with a dose of gossip about the players’ attitudes, occasionally mixed with his own particular sports philosophy. His columns invariably contained pertinent examples that revealed a deep understanding of the nature of spectator sports, and of the people who strive to stand out in this area of human endeavour. He never refused when he was asked to submit a column: writing had been such a pleasure for him since his school days.
Writing is also the medium of solitary people who want to communicate, to reach others on a level beyond banal small talk. Now, in Portland, he found himself in the familiar situation once again, although this time, his solitary vigil took the form of an intimate dialogue. During the last years of his life, Jacques found another means of expression – as a lover.
Portland, March 25, 1978; it could have been any other day or place. After leaving active play three years earlier, Jacques was often called upon to help other goaltenders. He had become a kind of therapist for them. It was known throughout the hockey world that Jacques Plante could accurately analyse a goaltenders skills and apply the appropriate corrections and improvements to them, taking their different opponents’ styles into account in the process. He had a reputation as a human filing system, a walking repository of statistical analysis. Along with his amazing skill on the ice in his prime, these attributes explain why Jacques continued to travel all over the continent.
Jacques had been the first influential hockey guru to recommend more than one coach per team: one supervising the goaltender and the defencemen, and the other directing the forwards. Hockey was evolving rapidly, and this system was now being used more frequently. Yes, there had been some improvements to the game, but in other aspects, it had changed for the worse. Jacques’ unfortunate sojourn in Quebec City was proof of this. Ever afterwards, he was unable to erase that dreadful year from his memory.
The year with the Nordiques.
Given Jacques Plante’s repu
tation as a tightwad, people might have been forgiven for presuming that he, like some other players who ended up behind the bench, was heading to Quebec City mostly for the money In fact, several other factors had motivated his decision.
“My return to Quebec has nothing to do with money,†he firmly declared. “I’m just happy to be going back to my native province.â€
Jacques had never hidden his distaste for big cities. In all the large urban centres where his career had taken him, he had experienced varying degrees of respiratory distress. His asthma was not the sole cause of it. Even more than his physical and medical condition, his discomfort was due to the feeling of incompleteness that he experienced whenever he was far from home. Back in Quebec, as he said himself, he could finally sleep in peace.
Disappointed by his results with Boston in the 1973 playoffs, Jacques had been looking for a career change in any case, and it had been provided by the offer from Quebec City.
On December 13, 1970, he had met a young Swiss woman, Raymonde Udrisard. She had come to work at Man and his World, an offshoot of the Montreal World’s Fair of 1967, and had stayed in Canada. She had gradually taken a larger and larger place in Jacques’ life, and they had begun living together. This had certainly been a reason for Jacques’ desire to end his nomadic existence. But his overriding motivation had been, as usual, his love of hockey: he knew the game as well or better than anyone else, and he was ready to meet the challenge of using this knowledge in a new way.
In that spring of re-evaluation in the aftermath of his disappointing time with the Bruins, Jacques was well aware that his life would change radically if he accepted the job of manager and coach of the Nordiques. However, in spite of all his experience and acumen, for the first time since hockey had become the focal point of his world, Jacques misjudged his new role, which had nothing to do with stopping pucks. In fact, he plunged into the worst nightmare of his life, and would only emerge from it badly demoralized.
As always, with Jacques Plante, nothing happened in a commonplace manner; with him, the ordinary took on an inspired, prodigal aspect. With his active, innovative mind, strong personality, and deep knowledge, Jacques knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish. But did he have the ability to take his players, the club owners, reporters, and fans in the same direction? When he tended net, he had been the target of bitter criticism – the common fate of innovators. Now, in his double role of manager and coach, he had to play a lone hand once again. He had to evaluate and select his players, pay them, and convince them to play well for him. In other words, he had to ask the players to justify his choices.
As a team member, Jacques had always been able to counter the criticism levelled at his unconventional opinions and his outspoken comments by the evidence of his skill. Because he was directly in the line of fire and shouted out instructions while defending the nets, Jacques’ orders were accepted unquestioningly by the other players, who had only to look to his example – and as a player, he had succeeded magnificently. Working behind the bench, however, requires a completely different kind of talent. Jacques quickly learned that a manager can bring together the best possible combination of players, and a coach can devise the best strategies in the world, but neither of them have skates on their feet nor sticks in their hands. They can issue all the forceful orders that they like and provide the most expert advice, but this doesn’t necessarily produce the desired results on the ice. And in major league professional sports, a manager’s decisions have got to lead to victories right from the start, especially at a time when the sport itself is undergoing rapid changes.
Jacques began by going after the big guns. He wanted to contract Jean Béliveau, who had once been the adored star player of the Quebec City Aces, but “Big Bill†preferred his peaceful retirement. Next, Jacques tried to obtain Guy Lafleur, a more recent hockey idol, but the Blond Demon chose to play for the Canadiens. Jacques’ efforts to recruit Réjean Houle and Serge Bernier fared better, and the two forwards joined the Nordiques in their first foray into the WHA. Together with defenceman Jean-Claude Tremblay, they formed a strong nucleus of francophone talent – but one that, unfortunately, did not prove strong enough to shake the other teams in the new system.
At the same time, Jacques was writing a weekly column in a local paper, À-propos, and succeeded in putting several reporters up in arms against him, which did not help the team’s morale. In spite of his astonishing amount of knowledge, Jacques was too much of a dreamer to succeed as a coach in pro hockey. The high-pressure job was a thousand miles away from the training camps, where eager young goaltenders listened respectfully to an expert’s pointers on improving their play. Coaching a professional team in 1973–74 was more a matter of motivating overpaid players – a task that sometimes seemed to require the strength of Atlas, even if the coach knew that he was not expected to carry the whole team on his shoulders.
The team that Jacques had promised to take to the playoffs faltered lamentably, and at the end of the season, Jacques was induced to resign. Claude Larochelle reported Jacques’ departure in Quebec City’s main daily newspaper, Le Soleil, on May 2, 1974:
PLANTE HANDS IN HIS RESIGNATION
The news is surprising, to say the least. People who know Jacques Plante intimately assured me that he would hang on to his contract until the end, and that the shareholders who wanted to show him the door would have a long struggle on their hands to get rid of him….
The news is stupefying at first glance. But if we look closer, we understand that Plante, a man who has always been affable and reasonable until the end had to admit the facts – the facts that were obvious to everyone who was following his progress with any attention. A superb goaltender and a refined game analyst, he wasn’t able to transpose onto the ice what he could express so well in words. He didn’t have what it takes to be a manager. He was certainly aware that the shareholders’ case against him was getting more serious and more irrefutable every day.
Jacques’ response to this unpleasant situation was to go back onto the ice for a comeback, as he had done in the past. Four days after his official resignation from his duties with the Quebec Nordiques, the Edmonton Oilers announced that they were contracting Jacques Plante – as goalie! At forty-five, revolted by his ordeal behind the bench, Jacques longed to put on his mask and leg pads and return to his first love: goaltending.
The best that can be said about the Oilers’ 1974–1975 season is that Jacques was consoled after the fiasco with the Nordiques by tending goal. But it was slight consolation: Jacques shared the job with Chris Worthy, and the team, although strong defensively, was weak in offensive play. The Oilers finished in last place in the Canadian division of the WHA and did not reach the playoffs.
The following autumn, Jacques reported to the Oilers’ training camp. But just before the beginning of the season, he learned of the death of his younger son. Jacques hung up his skates for good.
At forty-nine years of age, Jacques Plante, who had lived through more difficult situations than most hockey players, was coaching the fledgling goaltenders of the Maine Mariners, a Philadelphia Flyers’ farm club in the American League. They were, in succession: Rick Sainte-Croix, Phil Myre, Pete Peeters, Bob Froese, and the Swede, Pelle Lindberg. More than ever before, Jacques was a hotly sought-after consultant in his area of expertise, and he continued to practise this activity for the rest of his life. Most of that period was spent within the Flyers’ organization, but he also worked with the Canadiens in 1984–1985, and with the St. Louis Blues.
Besides teaching their potential goaltenders, Jacques occasionally went to watch games played by the adversaries of the Flyers. This was the team that had proved him a liar after he had confidently said in 1967 that the new expansion teams would have to play for ten years before winning the Stanley Cup: the Flyers, partly because of
their rough playing style, won the prestigious trophy in both 1974 and 1975, just seven years after their inception. Their number 1 goal-tender, Bernie Parent – Jacques’ acolyte – had become the best goalie in the NHL.
When he wasn’t in a hotel room or in an arena, Jacques spent most of his time on airplanes between Boston, New York, and Pittsburgh. He was observing, taking notes, and writing columns. He travelled with his life in his suitcase, his heart full. Although hotel rooms all look alike, he infused them with his love. This is why his letters to Raymonde were so intense and spontaneous.
His pen moved across the page, but he could not write fast enough to express all he felt for her. Jacques himself admitted that he was a fool in love. When they were miles apart, he constantly wrote her passionate letters, declaring that he was the happiest man on earth. Writing was Jacques’ preferred means to bridge the distance between himself and his beloved.
He would often stare at the wall of his room and visualize Raymonde standing in front of him, coming to life. He kept a photograph of her next to his bed, to feel close to her when he turned off the lamp to go to sleep, and so that her smile would be the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes in the morning. He carried three other pictures of her in his wallet. His favourite one was a snapshot taken during their trip to Lake Louise; it was a souvenir of a happy break that had briefly transported him far from his problems with the Nordiques, and had marked the beginning of their new life together.
In his letters, Jacques tenderly evoked the times they had shared, the affection that had grown between them, in Toronto and Boston, Quebec City and Edmonton, until they finally settled down in Switzerland. He recalled the first days of their romance, when he, the NHL star, would go to wait for her after work, like a bashful young man at the stage door. But mostly, he shared the events of his day with his beloved, as if she were with him wherever he went.
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