Skates, a Stick, and a Dream

by Bob Leroux

  “Holy shit! Okay, guys, if you can’t feel your feet, into the warm-up shack with me. The rest of you can practise your passing, but don’t stay out here unless you can feel your toes.”

  The second practice took place in the Saturday afternoon sunshine. It was warmer and simpler, with Paul Labelle getting some help from Henry Markham to teach the kids the basics, using some drills that kept them moving. All play and no talk — that became Paul Labelle’s coaching motto. Like most of the kids, Billy preferred the scrimmages, where he could practise taking faceoffs, checking up and down the middle, keeping track of his wingers, and, what he liked best, organizing rushes up the ice.

  It wasn’t long before he and his teammates figured they were ready to take on those real bantam teams. Paul Labelle wasn’t so sure. He was afraid they were going to get creamed by an experienced team, most of whom were older and bigger. He hoped the Maxville team really was the weakest in the league.

  Maybe Billy sensed the coach’s lack of confidence, because the day of the first game he asked for a little extra help at Sunday Mass. His prayers focused on his need to score at least one goal that afternoon, or three, if God didn’t think that was asking too much. This left his mother wondering what prompted such close attention to the service for the first time since his confirmation. She didn’t realize he was controlling his excitement about the game just long enough to make a deal with the Lord.

  Chapter 6

  The Boys from the Front

  By the time the Campbell family set off on the ten-mile drive to Maxville, Billy had a hard time keeping his bum on the back seat. Perched on the edge, forearms against the front seat, he bounced up and down like the car depended on him for its forward motion. Everybody knew it would take a hockey game to bring him back down. Even David stopped teasing him about the game — tired already of “the coach said this” and “the coach said that.”

  They arrived at the arena just after two o’clock. Billy’s heart pounded with anticipation as he wrestled his gear through the heavy front doors. He soon spotted a friend he could follow to the change rooms at the rear of the building. His parents were glad to stay behind in the heated lobby and get their first coffee of the afternoon. For those who had to sit and watch, the Maxville arena in winter was a tough test of the circulatory system. Its war-surplus steel roof and cement-block walls created a stone-cold dampness that seeped into the bones of all but the most agitated fan.

  Not that the hockey players from Munro Mills were aware of the temperature as they made their way to the dressing room, each trying to outdo the other in studied nonchalance. They were about to play in a real hockey rink, with red and blue lines and white-painted boards, with boxed seats for the players, and long rows of seats for the fans. And hanging up there in the balcony above the lobby entrance was a real scoreboard, where someone would change the numbers every time a goal was scored.

  Some of their confidence left them, though, when they poked their heads into the wrong dressing room. The jeering and hooting from what appeared to be some “really big kids” from Maxville ensured a quick exit. They could tell from a glance that this was a real hockey team, with matching uniforms, and “shoulder pads, even.” Luckily, Mr. Labelle was waiting in their dressing room to remind them that they had some pretty big kids of their own.

  Billy was probably more nervous than most. He had fantasized so much about the game that the adrenalin was getting ahead of him. He found a place to sit, and then started pulling his stuff out of the old, khaki kitbag his father had scrounged for him. His heart hammered in his ears and his hands shook as he plucked shin pads, socks, and assorted items from the dark recesses of the deep, canvas bag, scared stiff that he might have come away without some crucial piece of equipment.

  Paul Labelle smiled when he noticed him with his head stuck in the bag. “Hey, Billy, you look like a stray dog in a garbage can. Why not dump it all on the floor?”

  Billy jerked his head up, blushing. “It’s okay, I got it.” He dropped the last item onto the pile of equipment in front of him. It was the brand new jockstrap his father had bought him, complete with metal cup. Even though he had tried it on at home, Billy was not convinced that his father’s advice on this matter was sound. After all, Angus Campbell had never even owned a pair of skates, let alone played hockey. Despite what his father had said, there was no way he was taking off his long johns to climb into this contraption. He sat in silence, watching surreptitiously as his friends started to get dressed.

  He was relieved to see that most of the guys were putting their jockstraps on over their underwear, and putting their jeans back on. Only a couple of boys had hockey pants and all the other paraphernalia that made a cauliflower out of a country cabbage. For now, most were more than happy to wear their hand-me-down shin pads over their jeans, holding them up with their annual Christmas presents — Maple Leaf hockey socks — and those elastic garters their mothers had made for them. Only a few kids had real hockey gloves. Like most, Billy would make do with his heavy, leather mitts, worn over the woollen mitts his mother had knit him to go with his green toque.

  He fidgeted impatiently all through the coach’s pre-game instructions, anxious to try out that shining expanse of artificial ice he had passed on his way to the dressing room. His imagination already had him speeding up and down the rink, coming to dramatic stops in a spray of snow, scoring spectacular goals on a real goalie, with real pads and a real goalie stick. Finally, at five minutes to three, Labelle herded his charges out of the dressing room with a sharp command. “Let’s go, gang. Time to show them what the boys from the Front are made of.”

  He hoped this rekindling of the old rivalry between the south of Glengarry, often called the Front, and the north where Maxville was located, would fire up his team. Unfortunately, the pride of south Glengarry slipped quickly from their minds as the boys stepped onto the ice. The Maxville team was already circling the rink, looking even bigger on skates than they had in the dressing room. That in itself was enough to frighten them.

  But what really scared these young boys was the ear-splitting eruption of noise from the packed seats along the side boards. A rising crescendo of cheers and yells bounced off the steel and concrete, pulsating down upon this huddled clutch of youngsters stopped at the edge of the rink, looking at each other with blank stares and open mouths. In their minds, the only sound they had ever imagined was the single voice of Foster Hewitt calling the play-by-play. This was a whole different thing.

  As he watched them skate like zombies through the warm-up, Coach Labelle couldn’t help but wonder if this match was a big mistake, doomed to be remembered as the massacre in Maxville. It really worried him when none of his players came clamouring to be first on the ice. And what was worse, he thought he heard sighs of relief from the six who were sent to the bench.

  The first twenty minutes were a blur. It seemed like all they did was skate up and down the ice, chasing the puck but never touching it. As Labelle would tell them later, that’s exactly what they did. Wherever the puck went, the team went — all five of them. The goaltender was the only one who played his position, mainly because he couldn’t skate well enough to leave the net.

  Naturally, the Maxville fans were ecstatic. Their boys scored on their first rush. Then the Munro Mills boys muffed their first line change, and got scored on while they were tripping over themselves to get off the ice. By the end of the first period, they were behind six goals to none. Labelle took them into the dressing room, hoping he could find a way to calm them down. He didn’t care much about losing to Maxville, but he thought it would be nice if his boys got to touch the puck a few times before the game ended. He gave them a two-minute lecture on playing their positions, but when he finished he still had a dozen athletes staring up at him with shell-shocked expressions on their faces.

  He started to laugh. “All right, all right; never mind any of that fancy stuff. Just get back out there and try to take the puck off those guys. And if you do ge
t hold of it, hang on to it till you get into their end. Then shoot, dammit, shoot in the direction of the net. Their net, okay?” And then he went out and insisted the referee forego the usual practice of switching ends. He knew it would be five minutes before his boys adjusted to skating in the opposite direction.

  With the crowd a little quieter and the opposition a little overconfident, the Munro Mills crew finally began to look more like the boys from the rink behind the Legion. They held the opposition to three goals that second period, and even scored one of their own. Billy, however, remained one step behind the action until the period was almost over. It took someone from the other team to get him going.

  His opposite at centre was one of the bigger boys on the Maxville team. He had dominated Billy from the opening whistle. With the score eight to one and five minutes left in the second period, the big lad got even bolder. Billy had just taken his first shot on goal when the big lad skated up with his elbows high, hit Billy square on the nose, and knocked him on his behind. He looked down at Billy and laughed, and then skated off with the rebound.

  Billy scrambled to his feet and chased after him, enraged that such a dirty play had been rewarded with the puck. He caught up to the Maxville centre just past Munro Mills’ blue line, heading for the net. Billy realized he couldn’t stop him now unless he got in front of the player, somehow. In desperation, he threw himself headlong on the ice and tripped the boy with his head. Billy never felt a thing. He was too busy concentrating on getting out from under the big guy when he fell. That, and finding the puck.

  Billy pulled himself from the tangle of legs and scrambled to his feet, and then corralled the loose puck and started pumping his way up the ice. And while he didn’t skate through the whole team and score a goal, he did move the puck out of his own end, skate around one opponent, and make a good pass to his left winger, just like the coach had told them. For the first time that afternoon, he began to believe he could play hockey with these big guys from Maxville.

  In the remaining minutes, Billy made a few good checks and bounced another shot off the goalie’s pads. That was consolation enough when the period ended and the team headed back to the dressing room. This time the boys were fired up, anxious to get back out there and start getting some goals. Their coach was relieved and happy. Exhibition game or not, at least they wouldn’t go home embarrassed.

  “You’re doing great, guys! You watch; you’ll get the best of them during the next twenty minutes.” Then he noticed Billy sitting in the corner, rubbing his offended part. “How’s the nose, Billy? Is it bleeding?”

  “No, sir, just sore.” He looked up at Paul Labelle and asked, “How come that guy didn’t get a penalty?”

  Some of the other kids chimed in. “Yeah, Mr. Labelle, wasn’t that elbowing?”

  Labelle laughed at the chorus of concern. “Well, now, boys, the referee must have decided it was an accident. Or maybe he didn’t even see it. If you want to play hockey, you’ll have to learn to look out for the other guy’s elbows. And don’t count on the referee to defend you.” Then he laughed again. “But don’t do like Billy, there. Jeez, lad, don’t you know it’s dangerous to trip someone with your head?”

  Billy grinned, remembering the pleasure of stopping the rush. “I was just trying to stop him from scoring. I guess my head got there first, is all.” He felt the side of his head for a second. “Anyways, my head doesn’t hurt, just my nose.”

  When they faced off to start the final period, the boys from the Front stood up straight on their skates and looked their opponents in the eye. From that beginning, they went on the offensive, playing their positions with assurance and forcing the other team to make mistakes. On his first shift, Billy came close to scoring a goal. Always the pesky checker, he forced a Maxville defenceman into a mistake and found himself with a loose puck in front of the net. He shot without thinking and beat the goaltender, but hit the goalpost. Half the team cheered, thinking it was a goal. Billy knew better. He chased after it, got it again, and passed it out front to a teammate before the opposition could react. The goalie caught the second shot in his trapper and froze the play, but Billy’s team now realized their opponents could be forced to give up shots, if pressed hard enough.

  On Billy’s next shift, his deal with the Lord came through, along with a little something the coach had taught him. As he watched the Maxville centre wind up for a rush out of his own end, Billy skated toward him with his stick held close, like Labelle had told him. As the opposing player brought the puck over the blue line, Billy waited patiently for him to get closer and closer. Then, like a lizard with its tongue, he suddenly thrust his stick out full length, surprising his opponent with a poke-check that swept the puck back into the opposition’s end. His left winger chased the puck and the Maxville defenceman into the corner, forcing him in the direction of the net. Seeing that, Billy headed for the boards on the right side. When the defenceman tried to bang the puck behind the net and out of his end, it came right to Billy.

  Then, like pins to a magnet, two Maxville checkers were pulled toward him, determined to block his advance to the front of the net. Billy fooled them. He skated away from the flow and behind the net. By the time his opponents realized what he was doing, they were committed to the wrong side, and he was able to cut a tight circle around the net and tuck the puck into the empty corner with his backhand. The most surprised people in the arena were the players on the Maxville bench. They couldn’t understand why their coach started cheering for the other team’s goal. But he couldn’t help it. “Son of a gun,” he shouted. “That kid’s got anticipation, and a backhand, too.”

  The goal scorer was glad everyone was so happy, but he decided to wait until the end of the game to celebrate. Billy Campbell was more than a hockey player. He was a competitor, and he took the long view, realizing that Maxville would now double their efforts to get the goal back.

  On his next shift, he learned what Mr. Labelle meant by defending yourself. The big Maxville centre had taken Billy’s goal as a personal insult, and when he caught him standing in front of the net looking for a pass from the corner, he piled into him at full speed, with his stick up around Billy’s shoulders. It wasn’t flagrant enough to be called high-sticking, but it was enough to knock a kid Billy’s size flat on his back.

  Billy was still sitting on the ice when he saw Brian Weir skate up beside his antagonist and start chopping him down to size. He took a vicious swing at the boy’s hockey stick and knocked it from his hands. “How do you like it, jerk?”

  “Hey, you!” The boy stepped into Brian with a puffed-up chest, trying to bump him into submission.

  Brian was not intimidated. He took his right hand off his stick and swung it backhand at the boy’s face. There was a funny plopping noise, like a ripe tomato hitting a wall. When the Maxville slugger saw the blood dripping down his chest, he decided he wanted no more of this wild man from the Front. He headed for the bench with his hands over his nose.

  Meanwhile, the referee was finally getting involved. “What’s the matter with you?” he yelled at Brian. “This is just an exhibition game.” He turned Brian by the shoulder and made him look up. “Do you understand me?”

  Brian began to lose his nerve. He had been in fights before, but this was the first time he had an adult audience, especially one in a striped shirt. “But, sir,” he managed to squeak, “he knocked my friend down.”

  “That’s the game, kid. You can’t smash people in the face just because they bodycheck your friends.” He pointed to the penalty box. “You got five minutes for fighting. Stay in there until I tell you to come out.”

  Brian nodded meekly and skated to the penalty box, thoroughly chastened, for the moment. Billy came over to offer his sympathy. “Jeez, Brian, I’m sorry. I guess I shoulda seen him coming.”

  “Never mind,” Brian answered, recovering his competitive instinct. “The big dummy got what he deserved.”

  “But you got a penalty.”

  “Don�
��t worry about it. Just go out there and stop them from scoring.”

  “Oh, sure,” Billy mocked.

  “No, I mean it. You’re faster than any of them. Just hang on to the puck. I don’t want them to score while I’m off, that’s all.”

  Billy looked back at the opposition, lined up and waiting to start scoring some more goals. They looked pretty confident. He turned back to his buddy. “I’ll try.”

  Brian reached over the boards and slapped him on the shoulder. “Show ’em, Billy.”

  Billy Campbell did show them, playing keep-away with the puck for most of the five minutes. Then he finished off the period by scoring a goal and setting Brian up for another. They didn’t get enough goals to win that first game, and they ran into tougher opposition in the games that followed, but by winter’s end the boys improved enough to tie Vankleek Hill once, and they actually beat Maxville by one goal in their final game. In fact, they improved so much with each game that Paul Labelle decided it would be a shame not to give them a chance to play again next year. In April, he told Henry Markham that Munro Mills would enter a bantam team in the county league next season. Then he set out to firm up the participation of Billy Campbell. It would not be as easy as he had hoped.

  It was in Dan Weir’s barbershop that he broached the subject, one day when he and Angus Campbell were both waiting for a haircut. “Well, Angus, I suppose you heard we’re going to enter a team in the bantam league next fall.”

  “Is that right?” Angus responded.

  “Yeah,” Labelle tried next. “Dan’s boy wants to play. Isn’t that right, Dan?”

  Dan Weir smiled and pretended to concentrate on cutting his customer’s hair. Donald Joseph MacPherson was in the chair, a local lawyer and a town councillor. He smiled, too, at the little drama being played out behind him. A few more snips and Dan Weir decided to help out, just a bit. “That’s right, Angus. I told the boy he could play. Guess I’ll be springing for all that equipment.” Then he couldn’t help but tease some more. “Probably cost an arm and a leg, that stuff’s so darn expensive these days.” He grinned at the alarm on Labelle’s face and added, “Gonna take a lot of haircuts to pay for it, that’s for sure.”