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

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Watching with me was a Kiwi friend, Mark, a car salesman from Wellington who had never been out of New Zealand before. To say he was caught up in the moment of being on the lash in Southeast Asia was like saying I was gobsmacked that Macoun, whom I honestly believed to be the worst defenceman in the NHL when I left Canada eighteen months earlier, was on the verge of winning the Stanley Cup. During the past year, I had gleaned through agate type in Australian newspapers that Macoun had ended up in Detroit. As much as I disliked Murphy, I positively hated Macoun. As I looked up at the screen, it was surreal he could be playing a key role on a team well on its way to another Stanley Cup win. It was him all right, right down to the cookie duster moustache.

“That guy looks like my dad’s mate,” said Mark, when I pointed out Macoun and the reason for my disbelief. “And I say his mate because my mom would have never let my dad wear a moustache like that.”

Back before I had left on my trip, Macoun’s tendency to cross-check the living daylights out of opposing forwards had become even more painful for Leafs fans than it was for the unfortunate players on the receiving end of them. A good stay-at-home defenceman since arriving as part of the Gilmour trade in 1992, Macoun appeared to have made the decision to wear flippers instead of skates — he slowed down almost overnight. His laying the lumber on opponents was no longer oddly endearing. That’s because the cross-checks seemed to be coming more and more frequently just as the soon-to-be-injured opposition forward was scoring a goal.