No matter who believes this is beyond me?
Somebody like me?
I felt panic. My body tightened and my ears started to ring. What didn’t I know about myself that he knew? Who was he speaking with who had told him I wasn’t good enough? Maybe my dad had been right all along.
But at the same time, I could see in his eyes that he believed in me, that my goals were attainable, that he accepted me, that he understood me. I was starting to believe that maybe I had found my place, that here was someplace I belonged, that I had finally found my true home.
I didn’t see the dead eyes of a shark hunting its prey. Instead, I saw the compassionate eyes of somebody who knew what was going on inside my head because, in his telling of his story, he too had been a brilliant student and a top athlete, and nobody but people like us could understand just how difficult it is to be a jock in a geek’s world and a geek in a jock’s world.
“People like us”—those words haunt me still.
Maybe the problem was that I wasn’t enough of a jock to truly be a jock? Maybe I wasn’t enough of a geek to truly be a geek? Maybe I was nowhere, lost, and without his help and guidance I would always be lost, alone, one of a kind? Maybe I was just nothing special? He understood me, he knew what it was like to be caught between two worlds, he would help me with both worlds. I was one of a kind, but he was too, so the two of us would be one of a kind. “People like us have to stick together to help each other,” he said.
“People like us…”
After a short while, everything he said made perfect sense to me. He was increasingly becoming the major voice and guiding light in my life, and I was slowly becoming isolated from the people closest to me. My coaches couldn’t know, my family couldn’t know, the others on my team couldn’t know about our relationship, and that was pretty much it for me at that time. If any of them ever found out, it would be all over.
And Graham was dangling a pretty big carrot in front of me for immediate gratification. The older team in our area that Graham coached, the Midget (sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds) St. James Canadians, was in contention to represent Manitoba in the Air Canada Cup (now Telus Cup), the national Midget hockey championship. Graham told me that if his team qualified, it would have an expanded roster for the tournament. He thought I should be added, given the potential need for a third goalie for the tournament and his belief in my abilities. I was shocked, as that would mean he’d be lifting me two levels, bypassing the two AAA goalies in the age group ahead of where I was playing, two goalies who were also highly regarded.
Graham’s team did qualify for the Air Canada Cup. It was held in, of all places, Winnipeg that spring of 1979. I’ll never know whether he was telling me the truth, but he told me he tried to get permission to add me to the roster and was denied because he wasn’t allowed to bypass the boys who were older than me. Graham told me he protested. The three players (none of whom were goalies) he called up from the team a year older than mine were James Patrick, a defenseman who went on to star in the NHL; Dave Farnfield, who ended up playing at Yale; and Rob Scheuer, who ended up captaining the Princeton hockey team.
While the first of those names is what hockey people will focus on, it is the second and third names that were relevant to me, as they were recruited by and eventually accepted at Ivy League schools. To me that indicated that Graham was able to deliver on his promises. The reality, of course, is that Graham had nothing to do with their being recruited by Ivy League schools. But I didn’t know that back then.
GRAHAM HAD GOTTEN to know me very well. He understood what I wanted to achieve and had positioned himself as ideally suited to help me achieve my dreams. He saw that I was particularly vulnerable because I was a bit of a loner caught between two worlds. I looked to Graham and not to my dad—a man who, I am sure, loved me but just couldn’t show it—for guidance. I opened up to Graham. I let him in.
A goaltender has an interesting perspective on the game of hockey. In many ways the game unfolds in front of the goalie, its patterns revealing themselves sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but usually in recognizable ways. An adept goalie adapts and reacts to the moving parts, most often without even consciously thinking about what is happening. The goalie is said to be “in the zone,” and the pucks are stopped, controlled, and redirected with ease.
I thought I was on my game. I was in the zone, a dominant player on my team, in my league, and I was now being tutored and mentored by a leading figure in the game. I thought I could see everything in front of me, that everything was finally coming my way. It all looked so promising, so attainable, so very real.
But in reality, I couldn’t see anything.
THREE
ATTACKED
THERE WAS NEVER a clear start to what he was doing, never a moment to look back on where I could say to myself, “There, it’s so obvious what he was doing, I should have never let it happen.” But then again, when I look back on all of this, all I can see now is that every single interaction with him was just such a moment, when “Of course, it’s all so clear what he was doing. How could I have been so weak, so stupid, to let this all happen?” is the only possible response.
In a sense, our relationship just evolved from our initial meetings. I devoured Graham’s progressive theories about hockey systems and his love of fast-skating defensemen and speedy forwards who went deep into their own end to win back possession of the puck. I craved the attention he gave me in our meetings, being treated as a peer, as an adult, as somebody more than I was at home. I felt fortunate that he was willing to help me progress with my hockey and my academics, that he was willing to mentor me and bring out the best in me. So, when he suggested that we meet not at a restaurant but at a school field for a training session, I was ecstatic.
Graham started setting up training sessions where he would show me various stretching exercises and body-positioning techniques to incorporate into my own off-ice workouts. This was in addition to the reading material he brought to our meetings which confirmed my belief that Graham was indeed a most different type of hockey coach. I was already completely captivated by his detailed analysis of the shortcomings of North American hockey and the benefits of learning Swedish and Soviet systems. Those systems were known for their focus on off-ice learning, so it was only natural for him to move on to dryland (off-ice) training, something they focused on and which at the time was still seen as somewhat revolutionary.
I was the perfect willing subject. Beyond wanting to excel at hockey and take advantage of what Graham had to offer me, I was still, deep inside, the insecure, overweight young boy who in my own mind needed to work extra hard on my physical conditioning. No matter how tall, strong, and athletic I had become by age fourteen, in my mind I was still the uncoordinated, pudgy boy who hadn’t yet grown into his body.
Graham had picked up on that, and he was very good at taking the stories of my past and using them to home in on my insecurities to convince me that I needed his training methods.
“You know, a guy like you with big legs has to work hard to keep up with the play.”
“You know, a guy like you has to fight for everything you’ll ever get, because nobody’s ever going to help you like I will.”
“You know, coaches
