American Boy - Larry Watson [15]
In truth, however, those pickup games were far more recreational than they were competitive. What would have landed a player in the penalty box in a real hockey game was likely to be accidental and followed by an apology on our rink. Body checks were more like the suggestion of what an actual check might be, and there was never an occasion when players were tempted to throw down their gloves and square off. And Dr. Dunbar and the Burrows brothers, Stan and Don, were the only players who wore hockey gloves or pads. More often than not, Dr. Dunbar also wore his old Wolverines jersey. The rest of us were out there in wool mackinaws, sweatshirts, and mittens. No one wore a helmet or a mask, but back then very few professional players did either.
The Burrows brothers were pretty fair hockey players. They’d grown up in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and played in high school. Red Rayner was from Warroad, Minnesota, and he could play, too. A few more men had some hockey in their past, and still others developed a few skills just from playing over the years, but Dr. Dunbar was indisputably the best player. Born and raised in northern Michigan, he attended the University of Michigan on a hockey scholarship, and though he had an opportunity to play junior-league hockey after graduation, by then he had decided on a career in medicine.
Every time he laced up his skates, though, his talent and skill returned, and his superiority to every other player was apparent. He skated backward faster than most of us could move forward, and he handled the puck as dexterously as the rest of us might flip a coin and pass it from hand to hand. On the ice he had agility and grace that would have been astonishing if you only saw him sitting behind his desk in a suit. And if you were lucky enough to be on his team, your game improved instantly. He’d pass the puck to you in such a way that it didn’t even seem as if you had to catch it; it would simply land on your stick at exactly the instant when it had to be there. And with what seemed to be little more than a flick of the wrist, his shots on goal flew from his stick as if the puck were rocket propelled.
One Sunday a few weeks after that Thanksgiving Day when Louisa Lindahl was brought to the doctor’s clinic, we gathered for a game. There was no wind at all, and snow was falling at a rate of over an inch an hour, covering the drifts that had been on the ground since Thanksgiving. The flakes fell straight down like a heavy veil, but Dr. Dunbar was not to be deterred. He and a few other men brought out snow shovels, cleared the ice, and the game was on. A few wives, girlfriends, younger brothers and sisters were on hand as spectators, the snow gathering on their coats and hats faster than they could brush it away. They clapped as much to keep warm as to cheer us on. And Janet and Julia skipped from one side of the ice to the other, shouting encouragement to their father, Johnny, or me, their allegiance dictated by who was closest to the puck.
Johnny and his father played on the same team that afternoon, with the Burrows brothers on the opposite team for the sake of competitive balance. I was on the Burrows’ team, but I didn’t contribute much. My hockey skills were limited to getting up and down the ice in a hurry, so long as I could travel in a straight line.
Our games usually started slowly, as we all adjusted to being on skates and the older players allowed their joints to thaw. That day the heavy snow made all of us even more tentative in our first few trips up and down the ice. Soon, however, we were at full speed, though the pace varied considerably from player to player, and it was interrupted frequently that afternoon in any case, in order to clear the ice of snow.
Shortly after one of those breaks, Johnny was skating up the side of the rink with the puck. I had a clear shot at him, and when I hit him with a shoulder check, he flew off the ice and into a snow pile with a thump. The hit was legal, but the collision was more violent than I expected