Читать книгу Hope and Heartbreak in Toronto - Peter Robinson - Страница 12

Creating More Leafs Fans

Make babies or watch the hockey game? Can’t you do both?

No, this isn’t some crude rehash of the old joke about a certain sexual position and still being able to watch Hockey Night in Canada. It involves having secured Leafs tickets on the same night your wife’s meticulous charting tells her that she’s likely ovulating.

Now that’s a conflict.

Ask any couple who want to have children — it doesn’t just involving snapping their fingers. The whole process can be a bit stressful. Ask the male half of that coupling just how stressful when it also involves planning around the Leafs, and, if his wife were within earshot, the answer may permanently impair his ability to produce children.

The night was February 20, 2007, and the Leafs were in a futile struggle to get into a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The Boston Bruins were in town and trailing the Leafs in the chase to get inside the top eight teams.

It was an important night not only at the Air Canada Centre but also at a nicely appointed semi-detached starter home in Toronto’s west end, where the Robinsons hung their shingle at the time. Earlier that day, my frantic searching on the Internet had produced two tickets for the pending Leafs–Bruins tilt. A $160-something-plus-fees purchase was allayed by colleague and good friend Jason Logan, who was willing to pick up his share of the tab. Arrangements were made to meet on the Jane Station subway platform in time to get downtown for a few prime-the-pump pints and what was supposed to be a spirited tilt, a rarity for mid-week games.

The only pending obligation to that point was to walk my dad’s dog, who was a house guest while my father was travelling. Aussie, the four-legged family member, was his usual accommodating self, bounding through our neighbourhood with that canine smile only yellow Labradors are capable of. He was just happy that someone was paying attention to him. To be honest, though, I wasn’t really paying that much attention to him at all — I was distracted and just wanted to get downtown.

Heading back up the driveway, Aussie was pulling me along, knowing a treat waited at the other side of our side door. Little did I know that there was also something waiting for me on the other side of that door.

Now, Mrs. Robinson has endured a tremendous amount of impulsive activity on her husband’s part since shortly after we met in the summer of 2000. (True story: we met at my family reunion — she was there as a guest of my cousin and is not an actual relative.)

Our first date a few days later included three table changes, ostensibly because the sun was in my eyes. In reality, I was so nervous, I needed to get out of the sun because I was paranoid that she would notice I was sweating (my sunglasses would have solved the sun issue but remained tucked nicely inside a pocket so as not to give away my ruse).

She didn’t notice a thing. The date went well, as did subsequent ones. I think she even started to like me. Poor woman.

We were married in November 2003. The Leafs were in the midst of a western trip and tied the San Jose Sharks 2–2 on our wedding night. The marriage got off to a good start: she said all the right things about my wedding speech, in which I made reference to not having children until the Leafs win the Stanley Cup.

But it soon became obvious that if I didn’t want to be an old, grey, angry Leafs fan with no offspring, I’d better reconsider. So, in the fall of 2006 I accepted that I should drop the precondition and get down to the brass tacks of procreation.

But some of that impulsive behaviour started to pop up: buying Leafs tickets. I had always been a fan and went to several games a year. Now I was going to dozens of them. Aside from the occasional raised eyebrow, my wife took it all in stride and was happy to offer the occasional shoulder to cry on when I came home slightly annoyed and slightly inebriated.

In spite of, or perhaps because of, my Leafs habit, the attempt-at-pregnancy thing wasn’t quite as easy as slipping down to the Air Canada Centre. Trying was all good fun for the first few months, until we realized we didn’t have the same biological makeup of teenagers on reality TV.

More substantial methods were undertaken. And that took some of the fun out of it, to be honest. Suddenly the normally enjoyable business of trying to create babies became more, well, robotic. Like math class without your clothes on. Charting, temperature-taking.

Mrs. Robinson spent increasing amounts of time with her nose in a massive book that reminded me of a university textbook I wouldn’t dare think of reading, even in university. The book, and my wife’s head stuck in it, became a ubiquitous presence around our house. She also took to visiting websites that made the whole business seem more like a chemistry project.

Things were starting to get a bit testy, and my normally easy-going better half suddenly had one rule: if it was time, it didn’t matter what was going on, I had to drop everything I was doing and take action.

I distinctly recall adjusting my work schedule and, gasp, missing the occasional shinny skate to stick around the house waiting for that time. There were even times when I suggested a practice run but she waved me off in order not to spoil things when she entered the fertility red zone.

So, as the clock ticked just past five o’clock on the day in question, Mrs. Robinson suddenly struck that look just as Aussie pounced for a dog biscuit.

Talk about a dilemma.

On the one hand, Leafs tickets in my pocket, a ravenous animal tethered to my arm, and an oblivious friend on the verge of arriving on the subway platform several hundred metres up the road, and on the other, my wife before me, who never makes any unreasonable demands, with the temerity to demand sex. Right then.

The horror.

I took one look at Mrs. Robinson, another at Aussie, and I knew that I’d better be on my game.

And quick.

I got to the subway about five minutes late.

Jason and I had worked together for many years at SCOREGolf, where he was that publication’s managing editor. He’s a fine wordsmith in the sense that he can polish others’ work and he’s pretty handy with his own pen. He doesn’t suffer fools to the point that he can be a bit on the grumpy side with dunderhead colleagues and late friends. And I was often both.

This time, however, I managed to mutter something about being confused about where I was to meet him — the concourse of Jane Station or the actual platform — and he accepted the oversight. We caught the next train, and to this day he is unaware of the conundrum I faced a half-hour earlier. To him, it was just another trip down to the ACC.

That night, the Leafs buzzed all over the place, firing forty-four shots at the net occupied by Bruins goalie Tim Thomas, but not a single one got past the burly Michigander. The Bruins didn’t have nearly as tough a task slipping the disc past their former teammate Andrew Raycroft, who is as bean-pole skinny as Thomas is squat.

It’s amazing that Raycroft managed to accomplish three things during his two short seasons in Toronto. The first is that he won thirty-seven games his first season, which is technically a share of the team record with Ed Belfour. In reality, Raycroft won three games in shootouts, which weren’t used as a method of breaking ties when Belfour was a Leaf.

Raycroft’s second great accomplishment is that he still makes Leaf fans’ ears burn at the thought of how he was handed the starting job in 2006–07 in order to validate the trading away of hotshot prospect Tuukka Rask. Completely incapable of stealing a win, or even standing firm in the crease in a key game, Raycroft was among the statistical minnows at his position. During his so-called record-tying season, most Leafs followers will tell you they have more memories of him looking forlornly over his shoulder at a puck that escaped his timely attention, or with his baseball cap affixed to his head, sitting on the bench, after being pulled.

The last great achievement of Raycroft is that he managed to make a folk hero out of a man named Jean-Sebastien Aubin. Aubin was a career journeyman who had put together an inexplicable 9–0–2 run when he took over the starter’s job a season earlier when Belfour was hurt and Mikael Tellqvist wasn’t up to the job. Aubin earned a contract extension but Raycroft was anointed the starter when he arrived in town without really earning it. Aubin was forced to sit and wait for opportunities such as the one he was about to get on this night.

With Raycroft playing against his old team, it was obvious the Bruins knew how to pick him apart, and by the start of the third period, his rear end was fastened as tightly to the Leafs bench as the customary cap was on his head.

The Leafs lost 3–0, even though they grossly outplayed the Bruins. They missed the playoffs that season by a single point, and the loss that night was one of a handful that could be identified as crucial setbacks.

But the Robinson household had something else to look forward to that spring, even if there was to be no playoff hockey. Baby number one was on its way. In due course the dizzying whirl that is life for young couples expecting for the first time confirmed that my balancing act on that February night really was a job well done. Even though the Leafs were shutout that night, I had managed to break one past the goalie.