The Meaning of Hockey, Chapter 15

The Totems’ offices, dressing room and the corridor outside the dressing room bustled with activity as players, coaches, trainer, bus driver and assistants prepared for an extended road trip. Calgary, Red Deer, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Brandon, Regina, Moose Jaw, Prince Albert, Saskatoon, Swift Current — ten games in sixteen nights with over 5,000 kilometers of driving— the worst road trip in junior hockey.

Fortunately, the Totems were only required to run this marathon once a season. Luckily only three Totems still attended high school. With the extra homework and two weeks away from classes the trip was especially difficult for younger players.

Bobby was having a tough time connecting with the reality of what was going on around him because he had been thinking about Frida’s list of what would make a perfect partner. It was too long, too complicated, too ‘not him’. Or was he just making excuses? Avoiding hard work? He could do anything if he tried.

Just do it, don’t think about it.

I will become a thoughtful, caring, feminist-friendly anarchist-socialist type guy.

That’s it. Now think about something else.

His son, Mike.

No, something else.

So, he sat in his office, a pile of paperwork on his desk, making himself think about how different it was when he played junior in Moose Jaw. He stopped going to classes half way through Grade Nine. His attitude had been what was the point of school when you could play hockey for a living.

Strange when he thought about it, because back then the NHL didn’t pay nearly so well as today and salaries in minor pro were about what you’d get working in a mill. Nowadays the kids were pretty much forced to finish at least high school and the salaries in most of minor pro or in Europe were at least double what a kid could earn at a good unskilled union job.

Bobby saw, but didn’t really register, that Troy had entered his office. Troy must have said something to him because a response came from his mouth.

Concentrate. Breathe. Breathe. Focus. Fight the weariness.

“These guys have it fucking soft, compared to your time in junior, right?” Troy was saying to Bobby. “You didn’t have a fucking tutor on your fucking bus, did you Bobby?”

“I ever tell you about Freddie Atkins?” Bobby heard himself say.

Stories had become Bobby’s central interaction with other people except for Frida. They were safe. Easy. Unlike reality.\

“He was a defenceman from Hamilton who spent 21 years in the minors plus four in junior. You think about that. His hockey career was over at 41 and he’d spent 25 of those years on a bus. Used to say that was the only place he could sleep.”

Bobby would have preferred to live in the actual existing world, to meet the challenge of reality, but the stories were taking on lives of their own, springing from his lips when and where they wanted.

“Anyhow, after he retired — or more like no one would sign him anymore — he moved back to Hamilton and tried to live a normal life. Got a job working for Brewer’s Retail and bought himself a nice old brick house over by Gage Park in the east end.” Troy knew the city because he had played two seasons of junior with the Hamilton Red Wings.

“Lasted a couple of months, that’s all, in the job. He always had a drinking problem — that was one of the reasons he never made it to the NHL — so I guess losing the job wasn’t such a big surprise. But the other thing was he just couldn’t sleep in his house. He’d lay there at night and all he could think about were the nice, relaxing bus rides he’d taken in the AHL and the old Western and Central leagues. Damned if he didn’t finally decide to buy himself an old run-down Greyhound, strip the mechanical parts, and get it towed into his back yard.”

It was comforting to tell a familiar story.

“At first, he’d only go out when he couldn’t sleep, but pretty soon he was out there every night. He’d push back one of those bus seats and he’d sleep like a baby, just like the good old days. After a while he was living on the bus. Never went into the house. His old teammates would visit and they’d find him in the backyard on the bus. Wouldn’t leave. He’d call Dial a Bottle, pull out a deck of cards and have a little party at the back of the bus, just like the good old days in the Central League.”

Stories. They had taken over because he had been in a panic. He had been thinking about his son. He needed his absolute best story to explain something to Mike ... what was it? His absence? His life? Why he wanted to start over?

“Pretty soon that bus was stinking and the neighbors were pissed — property values tend to fall when there’s a crazy guy living in a bus next door. Kids started coming around and hassling old Freddy. They’d sneak into his yard late at night and scare the crazy old coot. Throw pucks at the windows. Chant things like ‘ten minute misconduct for being crazy.’ Then one night, the neighborhood brats get this idea to start a bonfire with all these broken hockey sticks. Next thing you know the bus is on fire and poor Freddy is toast. Crispy burned toast. But I guess if he had to go, that’s where he would have wanted it to end, on his favorite bus.”

“Fuck Bobby, that’s a sad one,” said Troy.

“Is it?” he answered as Troy’s words pulled him back towards reality.

“It’s a fucking very sad story to hear just before a fucking big road trip.”

Sad. Very sad. Back in the present. Maybe that’s not a good idea. Mike is about to show up. Telling stories is better than thinking about that.

There was a knock at his half-open office door. Bobby could see Neal Marshall and John Baxter waiting outside.

“Hey coach,” said Marshall. “You wanted to talk?”

“Both of us or one at a time?” said Baxter.

Bobby pointed at him and held up one finger.

John Baxter entered his office.

“I guess I better leave you two alone,” said Troy.

As he left, Baxter sat on the couch and Bobby remained behind his desk.

There’s no turning back. Focus on the plan.

The two men stared at each other.

“Coach?” Baxter finally said.

Just do it. Just do it.

“John, I need your help,” said Bobby.

“Whatever I can do, coach,” said Baxter. The 20-year old already had four years of major junior experience and was going into his second season as team captain, so he thought he knew the drill.

“Captain is an important position,” said Bobby.

“I know coach. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

After a few weeks of daily contact with his captain, Bobby had him pegged as a “type” he’d run into before. Baxter, a fourth-round draft pick of the Carolina Hurricanes, was the son of an important person in an unimportant town — his father was the mayor of Biggar. The main claim to fame of this southwestern Saskatchewan town was its highway welcome sign: “New York is Big, But This is Biggar.”

Baxter’s “type” would likely go back to Biggar and follow in his father’s footsteps or, if he enjoyed enough success in hockey to make a bigger-than-Biggar name for himself, he’d run for Parliament or the provincial legislature. Everything this “type” did was part of a calculated plan, probably hatched by the age of six, to become prime minister or bank president or the billboard model for some underwear company. This “type” was crafty but had one significant weakness. They were full of themselves.

“I want your opinion on a few matters,” said Bobby.

“If it’s about the losing, coach,” said Baxter, “I know if we can just stick together as a team, play as a team instead of as individuals, we’ll get through it.”

Bobby listened to this Hockey-Night-in-Canada babble prattle that he’d heard a thousand times and simply nodded his head. Why not make it tough on the little snot to figure out where to go next?

“If we can just improve our defensive coverage and get a little more aggressive, I think the wins will start coming,” Baxter said, looking at Bobby for clues about what to say next.

But Bobby just nodded at the empty words that allowed the speaker to avoid critical thinking and smiled pensively, as if something important was on his mind.

Baxter’s right eye twitched. “We’ve got to focus on our individual assignments. Get back to basics.”

Tone down the smile so that it is almost a frown. This is fun.

“If we can just translate what you’re teaching us in practice to our play in games,” Baxter said, his eye twitching again, “we’ll get some Ws.”

How many useless bits of “hockey wisdom” could the mayor’s son spew forth before entering a cliché-free zone?

“Us veterans have got to suck it up and provide leadership to the rooks.”

The kid is full of it. Whatever it is.

“I know how important it is for me to lead by example,” he said, sounding more like he was just warming up than running out of clichés. “I’ve got to prove I’m ready to go through the wall for every one of my teammates.”

Yikes, what have I unleashed?

“If every one of us can be unselfish and take those shots on net and finish all our checks and play with as much focus defensively as we do offensively and make sure we cover our man in the D-zone and execute the trap well in the N-zone and keep one man high in the O-zone and go to the net and get that traffic in front and keep moving and throw the puck around and …”

“John!” A Biggar mouth than his had won round one.

“Yes coach?” he said.

“I want your opinion on some matters,” said Bobby.

“If it’s about the losing, coach, …” said Baxter.

This time Bobby cut him off before he got started again.

“I’ve had some rather radical ideas about how a hockey team should be run and I’d like to hear your opinion about them,” said Bobby.

“Sure, coach,” said Baxter. “Shoot.”

“Well, John, I’ve been thinking that since the Totems are a new team, maybe we need a fresh approach to coaching and management and our general philosophy,” said Bobby. “That’s why we had such an unusual practice yesterday.”

“It was out there all right,” said Baxter.

“What did you learn from the practice John?”

“What did I learn?” said Baxter. “I’m not sure coach.

Bobby could almost hear the gears grinding in his brain.

“I guess I learned there’s a lot of different ways you can organize a practice.”

“Right,” said Bobby. “Exactly right.”

Baxter smiled.

“There’s a lot of different ways you can organize a practice or even a whole team,” said Bobby.

“I see that coach,” said Baxter.

“And I’m thinking that we need to begin viewing the Totems as an anarchist collective,” said Bobby.

Finally, he had said something that demanded a response not part of the curriculum in Introduction to Sport Platitudes. Baxter was stumped into silence.

“We are all autonomous individuals who have come together for a common purpose, “ continued Bobby. “So we need to rethink the forms of authority that have governed the world of hockey for far too long. This is a voluntary organization, not a fascist dictatorship. We’ve got to think about mutual aid. You understand what I’m saying, Baxter?”

“Uh, yes coach.”

That was the first time Bobby had ever heard Mister Smooth use the “uh” word.

“I’m saying we should not be bound by feudal and undemocratic modes of governance. Don’t you agree?”

“Uh, yes coach.”

“I’m saying that if we free ourselves from unnecessary and restrictive forms of authority, the creative spirit of every player on the team can be unleashed and we can form a collective greater than the sum total of all our parts.”

What the hell did I just say, thought Bobby. But when you’re on a roll, well you keep rolling.

“The way to overcome our losing record is by building team spirit and the only real team is one of anarchists on ice. All the old ways, the fascist forms of authority, that’s not the way to build a team. A real team is comprised of autonomous and equal individuals who may voluntarily give up some of their personal authority and decision making, but who are nonetheless still autonomous and equal.”

Just saying this felt liberating, thought Bobby. Slightly confusing, but liberating nonetheless.

“So, what I’m thinking, subject to consensus, of course, at a team meeting, is that we begin this process by banishing all the old titles, like coach, general manager and captain. Come up with new titles to more reflect the anarchist spirit.”

Baxter sat stunned and silent.

We have a twelve-hour bus ride to Calgary and I say we take advantage of the time together to hash out the details of our new forms of authority,” said Bobby. “Since you are captain and an influential voice among the players, I thought I’d give you a little extra time to think about it, to come up with some creative suggestions, before I spring my thoughts on the rest of the team.”

“Uh, thanks coach,” said Baxter.

Motormouth had been rendered speechless. After a few moments of silence, Bobby reached across his desk and put his hand on Baxter’s wrist.

“It will be good, you’ll see,” Bobby said.

Upon Bobby’s touch, Baxter sprang from his chair and stepped back a few paces. His look was one of terror, like a sailor who believed in sea monsters about to sail into uncharted waters.

“Tell Marshall to come in on your way out,” said Bobby.

As Baxter escaped from the office, Bobby heard him mutter: “Coach has gone totally fucking crazy.”

Next chapter: Wednesday

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