Читать книгу Hope and Heartbreak in Toronto. Life as a Maple Leafs Fan онлайн

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Just before the puck drop, I ran into no less a figure than Gary Bettman as I was about to ascend the Gardens escalators to my assigned seat. I had just read a fairly positive review in The Hockey News that day about Bettman’s first hundred days on the job as NHL commissioner. Like the review, I believed that Bettman had done a good job, and, giddy in the excitement of the moment, I shook his hand and congratulated him. Bettman sheepishly thanked me but looked as if he thought I was not in complete control of all my mental faculties (I swear, I was). To this day, my friends, a few of whom are conspiracy types who believe Bettman is somehow out to get Canadian hockey fans, won’t let me forget doing it.

The game is both a blur and an event where even marginal details remain burned into my mind. Both men are no longer with us, but I can still see the mullets of Leafs coach Pat Burns and Peter Zezel swaying in the wind as though they are both very much alive. Even less glamorous Leafs such as Mike Krushelnyski are embedded in my brain. That same guy beside me — the Osborne fan — had hung the unofficial nickname of “Casual Cruiser” on Krushelnyski in some sort of backhanded nod to his effortless skating ability. And it was true: Krushelnyski’s cruising up and down his wing is one of the details that a setting such as the Gardens framed so perfectly. I saw Krushelnyski play in an NHL old-timers game in Barrie almost two decades later, and I instantly recognized that fluid stride the moment I saw it — it hadn’t changed a bit since he played at the Gardens that night, even if the man himself was older and greyer.