Filip Forsberg stands at center ice waiting for the ref to blow the whistle for the final shootout shot of the night of a meaningless game with the Utah Hockey Club at the Stockton-to-Malone, Delta Center. He is not Steven ‘Stammer’ Stamkos, the old pro with two Stanley Cups, who just missed on the last shot attempt for the Nashville Predators. He is not Peter Forsberg, his Swedish namesake star of a previous generation in Colorado, but he is a 9-year Swede NHL veteran who started strong, leading the league in plus/minus at times during his rookie year, a stat that quietly defines the best two-way hockey player. He has matured and solidified into a franchise player for the Nashville Predators.
He has endured this pesky fast and young Utah team all night
long with their relentless stick checks and touch passes. He suffered silently
the novice but knowledgeable Utah crowd at the Delta Center with them cheering their
goalie ‘Veggie’ Vejmelka, or the sniper Guenther and diggers Keller and
Cooley. These guys live, train and sleep
at altitude but the weight of the game wore them down. He had watched their clueless happy fans on
the Jumbotron all night dancing or drinking with their self-recognition and
fanatical comradery. Forsberg has been
ridden all night by the 28-year-old defensive Russian vet Sergachev and
disappointed by his star-studded team for underperforming and a slow
start. Some of them had reached their
peak with other high-performance clubs and traded away while their stock was
still high, only to fade away in a smaller market. Tonight, they rallied late against the
misplaced enthusiasm of Utah’s youth, grinding out a close checking, big old
bone crushing comeback tie in the third period, led by a smart play and a nonchalant
goal by Filip himself.
The Utah crowd was strangely enthusiastic considering their
mathematical elimination the night before, but this was the last game of the
first season that turned out better than expected in every way with close games
and crowded stands throughout busy sales of food, beer and merchandise. Salt Lake is a basketball town but they love their
new hockey club. SLC has risen from the
ghost town of suburban flight in the 70s, to a fun and vibrant CBD with good
jobs and bars, industries and restaurants and a lot of there, there. It is fun again to go downtown to see a show
or a game, movie or a play. Bolstered by
the Olympic infrastructure and Brigham Young’s wide street grid, access was
rarely a problem, and egress was always smooth and fast. With the sleek high-rise, postmodern
architecture gymnastics, the sky was the limit. The world is now welcomed to Mighty Five National
Park and the greatest snow on earth on our silicone slopes. This is the hockey place.
Overtime was exciting but fruitless, without the mad dash from the bench to the net for a quick game winner accomplished by Sid the Kid Crosby the month before, showing that he still had game when he needed it even if his emasculated team didn’t. Regulation play was without the tragic early season drama when Ovie broke his leg from an inadvertent collision at this same center ice. Ovie and Sid were the real veterans and stars of their generation, outscoring or outlasting the Great one, Wayne Gretzky, who during his time out scored and outlasted Howe, Orr, Bossey, LaFleur and LaMieux, combined. This felt to Forsberg like the passing of the torch to a new generation of hockey players driven by the tic-tac-toe passes thru the blue of the goalies crease. He felt, at times, like the lumbering slugs of the 60’s and 70’s without helmets or face guards or curved sticks.
But I still had memories; of my dad going to the classy sounding Stanley Cup finals at Madison Square Garden. Of Bobby Orr dispatching the St Louis with his speed and finesse on snowy 12 inch black and white TV while I wrestled with my childhood friends in the upstairs bedroom. When mom shouted what are so inexplicably violent about, we always replied innocently ‘nooothhhing’. Of watching the dump and chase Islanders win 4 Cups, sitting alone in ignorant Utah bars, before they relinquished to the wide open speed of Gretzky’s Oilers. Of getting front row seats with my best friend in the 70’s in Chicago Stadium to watch the Black Hawks play Guy Lafleur and the Montreal Canadiens - Les Habs….
The pace was unbelievably fast and
furious, especially from our vantage point where pucks caromed off the glass
and players’ faces were being smushed, right before our eyes. Then it happened, in slow motion - the magic,
the move, the moment. Guy Lafleur took a
clearing pass in full stride deep in the Black Hawk zone as he cut from his
wing towards center ice. The crowd rose with the "Flower" - as the
MVP scoring champ of the early seventies was called by the press. He wheeled effortlessly across the Fire Line
dealing the puck from side to side with his long, wooden stick. Guy's long, straight dirty blonde hair
billowed freely behind him as he accelerated. Two Chicago defensemen chased
after him, thwacking his arms and hands with their sticks, annoying but not
deterring him.
As he passed the blue line, he was flying at more than 30 miles per hour, bearing down on Tony Esposito who had come out of the net for the classic confrontation. Just as Lafleur passed in front of us he shifted sideways, dug his blades into the ice, and stopped dead. He did not stop with a slide, nor on a dime, he stopped instantaneously, defying physics and fate. His hair flowed in orderly slow motion, like seaweed in the ocean currents, from behind his head, past his ears and eyes, until it swept in front of his face and hung there expectantly. The defensemen suffered the same inertia, stumbling past Guy and colliding in front of him, screening Esposito's view of the puck and of the Flower. With a flick of his wrist, La Fleur shot the puck over the Espo’s glove side shoulder, top shelf, launching Esposito's water bottle in the air and lighting the red goal lamp. We howled.
The home crowd exploded, and both benches erupted in appreciation at the display of pure athleticism. The hapless Chicago defensemen were stacked and tangled in their own net along with the Tony Esposito and the puck. We fell all over each other with high fives and bear hugs, banging the glass and kicking the boards. La Fleur skated slowly off in front of us, with his lips pursed in a classic French-Canadian look of ennui. I could still see La Fleur at the post-game T.V. interview, smoking a cigarette (Camel, no filter - two packs per day), saying that it was just another goal and a good win for the team. We had never seen such style, such speed, such grace and will never forget it.
The NHL game had seen dozens of transitions over the last 100 years since it was born before the Great Gatsby of the Roaring Twenties. Hockey is a modern game played on manmade ice, indoors, mostly by Canadian men, in shorts. It had survived the basketball generation on bad TV’s, but fans could see that game of big men on a small court with a big ball. The NBA network advertisers relished all the time outs and play-stoppage to sell their wares. Now with large high-definition TVs anyone can follow the puck from the den, living room, pool, bar or the kitchen, and the camera can dolly back to show more of the rink and the action. The nonstop action of hockey appeals to a younger generation with a shorter attention span and demand for instant visual gratification. With minimal play stoppage of play the action is nonstop where each team has a couple of Time Outs per game, and they hardly ever take them. It is against the culture and the Code of hockey.
The culture is about being more and appearing less, never talking about yourself in interviews, and thinking about the team, always. Goals are given two assists, which count as much or more, and celebrations involve everyone on the ice and then the entire bench. The stat of pride is plus/minus where you share triumph and defeat with your linemates. Players are penalized for flopping and teams are penalized for erroneous challenges. Hurt players hardly miss a shift as they are sewn up with pulled teeth and sometimes broken bones or collapsed lungs. The Refs control the game but the players control the culture, The Code, where if you hit our star or goalie, cheap shot my friend, over celebrate my misfortune or take a late shot, someone will beat you up. The Code is the same as life – Don’t be a dick. It is largely the reason for most fighting for enforcement. Hockey is also an intense reactive sport where the softest thing to run into out there is another person. Tempers flare, people are intimidated, trash talk proliferates, and fists fly. But at the end they will shake hands, go out for beers, marry each other’s sisters and carry on with style.
Hockey had come to Utah, struggling thru years of minor league teams and celebrating the Canadien Team defeating the USA in the 2002 Olympics. Who was Forsberg to burst that bubble in the last home game of the year. Would it be like Jaques Demurs calling out Marty McSorley’s illegal curved stick and pulling the goalie with six minutes left to save the Stanley Cup from Gretzky’s upstart LA team and bring it back to Montreal for the 22nd time? Would taking this game be like Les Habs taking the Cup from LA and putting hockey back 10 years in LA and the USA? Naaaahhhh. Dream on. It’s just a game. Played to win, not for the fans or the coach, the owner or the press, but for the team, for each other. With a slow start every season and every night, pacing themselves to the long grind but eventually succumbing every night to natural competitive spirit they all had, clouding out the crowd and the pressure to just play the game the best they can. After 80 games and 1600 minutes of ice time, 200 brutal hits and 40 beautiful goals, 40 planes and hotel rooms and nights away from home it came down to this.
But Forsberg had forgotten all that torch passing stuff and he was there in the moment, flashing his well-established handlebar mustache under his plexiglass visor. He picks up the puck, skates off to the left and slowly circles in on the goalie ‘Veggie’ with a Predators stealth. After a few fakes and a flip back from his forehand, to get the goalie to move and spread his legs, he buries the backhand over the lefty goalie’s stick side and skates to the team meeting him halfway to the bench, celebrating the win. That is how it is done lads. The crowd is subdued momentarily but then celebrates the season with the home team for the last time. The gauntlet has not passed to the next generation yet but there is anticipation in the air, for the next stars, the next season, the next champion and the next incarnation of the Greatest Game.
Matthew Lindon
waterandwhatever.blogspot.com
