The Last Season

by Roy MacGregor

  NUCLEAR CANUCKLEHEAD!

  The face-off was in our end to the left. Torchy would take the draw; Saleski stood to the right, snorting like a workhorse, Kindrachuk on the other side, staring at eyes you see at deer hunts when the booze starts working into the trigger finger. Beyond Kindrachuk stood the closest Soviet to me, Kharmalov, who less than half an hour ago had seemed on his death bed, courtesy of Eddie Van Impe. Kharmalov was looking right back at me, also aware of the crowd shouting my name, and he was smiling.

  And then he winked.

  Winked!

  It caught me so off guard I blinked myself and he kept smiling and nodded at me. I looked down at my feet and felt the old heat rising in my ears. Not the old heat, a different heat; this warmth was not comforting, but disturbing. How many dozens of incidents had set Batterinski off before? That blown kiss in Vancouver ... the geek who called me a “Polish sausage” on Long Island ... the fan who threw a bag of used Tampons over our bench in Boston ... dozens of fool’s plays, and all of them ending in blood and Batterinski skating away in his stalled-time, distracted manner.

  Kharlamov saw: here I was a journeyman hockey player, at best a man who had completely ignited the crowd by doing nothing other than skating slowly, without falling, from the bench to the face-off circle. Players like Kharlamov and Lafleur could only turn the crowds on that way through realization. But I did it through expectation. And in Philadelphia, where the good play was seldom realized but violence always expected, Batterinski was the largest draw.

  It stunned me that Kharmalov understood this and was amused by it. Not only did he see the absurdity of the crowd from his elegant side of hockey as clearly as I saw it from the animal side, he had the nerve to share this insight with me. This guy had guts, taking a chance like that, and I had to admire him for it. I found I couldn’t look up. Afraid I’d return his wink.

  The puck dropped and it squirted to Kindrachuk and then back to Torchy, who put it behind the net to me as I swung quickly before the far corner. Christ, but it was good to be back playing with the only guy who never had to look to find me. As soon as Torchy dropped me the puck he took off in full flight for centre and I sent a high, quick one, leading his chest so he could glove it before the centre line. The perfect play: Torchy Bender’s breaking speed, Batterinski’s thread.

  But the puck never arrived. Sent out in perfect flight, it was intercepted straight out of the air before it even reached the blueline, a heavily taped stick snicking it clean as a cat would a floating Kleenex.

  Kharmalov!

  The puck seemed to rest on his stick as he brought it down into his skates. I dove to poke-check it, convinced he would be tied up momentarily, but the drop into his skates was deliberate, the puck moved like a pinball, left blade onto the stick, and me skidding out over the blueline like a curler who’s found Krazy Glue on his rock handle.

  Then I felt the familiar heat rise. I rose on one foot and hopped back, just in time to see Kharmalov cut in front of Moose and drop the puck perfectly to another Red Army stick for a clear shot, which fortunately caromed of the far side of the post and up against the glass. Kharmalov immediately turned to set up their forecheck pattern, but as he came out toward the blueline his stomach met the same fate as my lead pass to Torchy. I caught him full blade and turned, twisting. No cat with a Kleenex here; the lion with his kill. Kharmalov went down heavily, rolling, but I was immediately blindsided by Petrov, the big forward, who pushed me back toward Moose. I turned and threw down my stick, but not Petrov. He stood shouting something, whether to me or to the referee I couldn’t tell, but it didn’t matter what it was: I had moved into my fighting time zone. All I needed was for him to drop his stick.

  I charged Petrov but he turned his back and both linesmen caught me and, holding an arm each, forced me back toward the boards. I’d never been held this way before. Where was the mutual restraint? Where was the tug and release of so many previous battles, the opponent with his personal linesman, me with mine, the four of us sure of our roles, what was allowable, what was not, when to lunge and when to retreat, when to quit? Where was the old pattern?

  I twisted, but they did not release and then grab. Both held fast. They pressed me up against the glass while Michailov moved in, and through the reflection I thought I could see him talking to the referee like they were meeting over lunch. I put my knee to the boards and tried to force the three of us back, but they just pressed tighter. My face went flush against the glass and I could see the crowd pressing back, wide, gaping, outraged mouths all screaming in protest. They were on my side. They wanted me freed. They wanted Batterinski alone in the rink with the Russians.

  A hand-held camera moved in on the other side and I could see the cameraman duck down on one of his knees to get an angle on me. I cursed as loud as I could, hoping he might have the pick-up mike on, and stared straight into the camera. There was a small red light on over the lens, but inside the lens was black, with a small white core at the centre. It looked like an eye staring back.

  Batcha’s eye. Cursing.

  I tried desperately to wrench free, but they held fast. The fans were leaning and pounding fists against the glass now and I could feel their punches on my forehead. Punches given in sympathy, pounding mercilessly. The cameraman panicked and stepped aside, letting the crowd crush fast to the glass. We were less than a quarter of an inch apart now, fists pounding, mouths silently screaming toward mine, eyes bulging with thrill and desperate terror at the same time.

  All I could do was stare back, helplessly held by two linesmen.

  I’d never been this close to my fans before, never seen what they looked like. Never cared. But I saw now, and I knew finally that I was not Batterinski.

  They were.

  Two weeks later, our 4–1 victory forgotten by every Flyer but me, who saw it as a personal loss — but of what I wasn’t sure — I was having a beer with the boys out at Rexy’s. Torchy had a piece of paper unfolded and pressed flat on the table, an empty Miller at each end anchoring it., and we were trying to make out his scribbling. He’d had to hurry. He didn’t want Freddie the Fog to catch him taking down the day’s thoughts, but this one had to be saved, it was in a class by itself.

  “We know that hockey is where we live,” the Fog had written on the dressing room blackboard, “where we can best meet and overcome the pain and wrong and death. Life is just a place where we spend time between games.”

  Kelly giggled. “I thought Rexy’s was where we spent our time between games.”

  “What’s it mean?” Torchy asked. Only Torchy would have the nerve.

  “I don’t know. Where’s Clarkie? — he’ll know.”

  “He fucked off home.”

  And so we sat, wondering. Kelly finally called for one of the waiters, and Torchy and the rest began scouting around for action, settling on a foursome of pancaked, fidget-eyed, chain-smoking bleached housewives in the corner: Torchy claimed he was responsible for more kids in Cherry Hill eating casseroles for dinner than Kraft was — they put it in at three, he put it in at four, he pulled it out, ate, she pulled it out at six and the family ate. “I sometimes wonder if they can still taste me when they’re saying grace,’ he used to say.

  I sat nursing my own beer, still not in the proper frame of mind since the Russian game. They left the paper on the table when they went to the housewife table and I tried to read it upside down ... hockey is where we live, where we can meet and overcome pain and wrong and death. What would Clarkie say if he were here? I remember when we won our first game in ’74 and just before the final game the Fog wrote: “Win today and we will walk together forever.” Clarkie thought that wonderful; he’d repeat it to the rookies, use it again and again in the dressing room until we all got sick to death of it.

  I felt uneasy inside. I wanted someone to tell me how hockey could overcome pain and wrong and death, death in particular — how did the Leafs overcome Bill Barilko’s death if it took them more than a decade to win another Cup
? Explain that one to me Fog?

  As far as I was concerned the sayings of Freddie the Fog Shero were utter crap. On the night of May 19, 1974, the day we beat Boston 1–0 at the Spectrum to win the Stanley Cup, the Fog wrote down, “We will walk together forever.” We won.

  On January 29, 1976, the Fog decided he was tired of walking with me. He didn’t even have the guts to tell me himself.

  “Felix Batterinski?”

  It was my phone but I didn’t recognize the voice. Was Torchy handing out my number again?

  “Yah, who’s this?”

  “Phillip d’Atillio of the Enquirer here. We’ve received a tip that you’ve been put on league waivers. Any confirmation?”

  Surely it was a wrong number.

  “Hello?” the voice barked. “Are you there?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “A tip. Has anyone at the Flyers told you you’re up for trade?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we hear you are. We’re going with it in today’s paper. Any comment?”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, how does it feel?”

  “I don’t know whether it’s true.”

  “It’s true, believe me. How does it feel?”

  “How would you feel?”

  “I don’t play hockey.”

  “Then you wouldn’t understand, would you?”

  I slammed the receiver down and then picked it up again quickly, welcoming the dial tone. I let the receiver rest while I poured rye halfway up a beer glass and then filled the rest with coke. I gulped it down in quick swallows, my eyes burning wet, but it did no good. Batterinski was on waivers. Waivers. For the first time in his life.

  I stared at the wall unit over a second, stronger drink. A half dozen team pictures — some magnificent, like a million and a half Philadelphia fans spread out over Broad and Walnut and Chestnut and the parking area around the Spectrum, Torchy and I riding in the back seat, both of us covered in confetti and champagne. The goofs in the minors — Saginaw, Wichita, Saint John, Rochester — faces and places I’d love to forget. My first training camp just before Pittsburgh claimed me in the expansion draft. Pittsburgh, the town that makes Sudbury look like Paris. Erie. Hershey. My fling in the World Hockey Association: the Ottawa Nationals before they became the Toronto Toros before they became the Birmingham Bulls. To Philadelphia and back together with good old Torchy the following year, Torchy picked up from Detroit for two stinking draft choices. Some of the faces I could barely remember. Swoop Carleton, Pelyk , Harris, Hampton, poor damned Bill Masterton with his fractured skull and a trophy for his memory. Hockey, where we can best meet and overcome the pain and wrong of death. Tell it to Bill Masterton, Freddie.

  Walk forever, my ass — I broke the glass setting it down, pulled on a shirt, shoes, and raced into the Spectrum, petrified to turn on the radio in case I turned up as a bulletin.

  Freddie wasn’t there. I ran over to the general manager’s office and could hear Keith Allen’s voice soft as a pussywillow as he thanked someone for their “unselfish effort.” I was stunned to discover he was talking to Torchy Bender, dressed in what he called his best “screw suit,” the orange three-piece, pink silk shirt open to the navel.

  “There he is!” Allen called out to me.

  “Come in, Bats, come in!” Allen ordered as he stood up. He seemed to be welcoming me rather than knifing me in the back. I went in hesitantly, suspicious.

  “The Enquirer call you?” Allen asked.

  I nodded.

  “Damn. I’m sorry.”

  “Is it true?” I asked.

  “It’s true,” Torchy answered for him.

  I looked at Torchy, wondering.

  “It’s not all so bad,” Allen was saying, trying to pull a seat over toward me. I wasn’t in any mood for sitting and refused, staring straight at him.

  “Then it’s a lie,” I said.

  Allen was glowing. “Well, not exactly, Bats.”

  “They’re dumping you, Bats.” Torchy said. He was still smiling.

  “Not dumping,” Allen said frowning at Torchy. “We’re changing team, that’s all, boys.”

  “You just won two Stanley Cups,” I said.

  “Yes, and no small thanks to you, either. But a team can’t sit fast, son. We need new blood all the time. You —”

  “You’re old blood, Bats,” Torchy butted in.

  Allen pulled in his air and scowled, wishing Torchy would leave or shut up.

  “We have a good opportunity, Bats. We think its best all around.”

  “How can it be best for me?” I asked.

  “Ever been to California?” Torchy teased.

  I stared at him.

  Torchy smiled back. “We’re both going.”

  Looking back, I came to see Los Angeles was a godsend. For me, if not for Torchy. It had been necessary to have my face pushed to the glass before I could see that the Batterinski rep existed more in the crowd’s mind than my own. At thirty-one Batterinski had peaked.

  Tough shit. Hockey meant nothing in L.A. Not only were the Kings nobodies up against the Lakers and the Dodgers and the Rams, but who could possibly compete for notice with the Fonz and Suzanne Somers and Charlie’s Angels and, more precious yet, the true Hollywood stars. The Los Angeles Kings made as much sense as turning the Queen Mary into a hotel. We were the London Bridge in Arizona; the magic mountain in Disneyland was more real than a bunch of half-talented Canadians charging around on ice after a forty-five cent piece of black rubber in a replica of the Forum in Rome, all for a mere $12.50 a seat. They even sold margaritas and tacos in the tuck shop at the Fabulous Forum. No fat men with runny noses peering knowingly through the steam of their Styrofoam cups; in California there might be foam cups and heat but it began with cleavage and ended with skin-tight acrylic pants.

  Torchy and I rented a huge house out at Rolling Hills estates, a twenty-five minute drive down the San Diego Freeway and out toward the Palos Verdes Peninsula. We had a massive ten-year-old mansion with cathedral ceilings, black leather furniture with Tex-Mex design, bull horns over the bar and a spring-loaded, embroidered saddle seat in the television room which Torchy liked to ride nude while watching Sonny and Cher. Outside we had a huge, clover-shaped pool, a hot tub, a eucalyptus grove and a small garden of hibiscus, morning-glory and — Torchy’s favourite — scarlet passionflowers, all cared for by a nattering little Japanese man he took to calling Hirohito. The next house was a hundred yards away, past our purple morning-glory fence, past their stables, grazing Morgans, jump range and tennis courts. Another house beyond that and we had a view of the Pacific, great breakers rolling white and silent in the distant blue. Ugga-bugga.

  It took Torchy all of twenty-two seconds to forget he’s ever come from Kirkland Lake and that once, when we were in Sudbury, he had actually asked Lucille if she was serious when she said he should stop making a fool of himself with white T-shirts under his red shirt. Torchy became an instant minor celebrity, except he didn’t make movies, just stars. He made the gossip pages almost as often as the sports pages, pictures of Torchy in his new hairstyle from The Clip Joint and his aviator glasses and his white silk bandanas and pink suits making his hair stand out like a devil’s paintbrush. And of course, the large-breasted, hopeful starlet of the week. He even got his teeth capped — which turned out to be weird because he also suffered his first major injury: two lost teeth. But it had nothing to do with hockey. Torchy grabbed a couple of rookies, bought a water gun and some thick cream, loaded the gun and the rookies and took them all down to the Bare Bottom Bijou, where he emptied the joint by squirting cream over the necks of the entire front row at the precise moment of the first penetration. Unfortunately, three of the victims turned out to be football players from Houston, and failed to see the harmless fun in it.

  Not that this incident fazed old Torch in the slightest. He talked the team dentist into recapping the two and putting the bill through as a blocked shot in practice, something tha
t Torchy bender had never done in his life. But then, Torchy was trying a lot of new things.

  “Face it,” he told me one night as we were screening some of his recently acquired hardcore for an upcoming bash. “We’re just hanging on by the skin of our teeth now anyway.”

  “What do you mean? They’re talking like we’re saviours, man.”

  “We’re fillers, son, and you better come to grips with it. I got maybe two, maybe three more years left in these legs. What have you got left in your fists?”

  I was hurt, though I knew he was right.

  “They didn’t get me for that.”

  “The fuck they didn’t. I’ll give you one more season beyond me, ‘cause you don’t need the speed. But that’s it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybe, and since I’m not here for a long time, I’m sure as shit going to be here for a good time.”

  As it turned out he was going to be there for a time he couldn’t possibly have imagined, good or bad or long. But for the time being, he was Torchy Bender in all his Californian glory, now so far away from Kirkland Lake that he could wear a T-shirt under a red shirt and by the weekend a dozen Hollywood hangers-on would be following suit.

  Torchy and I were going to a team that had just come off the best season in its history, 105 points and a record of fourty-two wins, seventeen losses and twenty-one ties. At the start of the season the know-it-alls had predicted a first-place finish for the team and the Kings were supposed to be a Stanley Cup contender. Coach Pulford was called a genius. Rogatien Vachon was called the game’s greatest goaltender. It was, however, nothing but a fluke.

  Torchy and I tried, but we could not do everything. The only category the team improved in was they had less ties, nine compared to twenty-one, but unfortunately they also had far more losses, sixteen more, to be exact. Still, Torchy and I did improve the team for a stretch, and whereas the previous year the Kings had been beaten out in the preliminaries, this time we took them to the quarter finals. Torchy ended up with thirty-three goals and forty assists and I ended up with a new team record for penalties, 218 minutes.