| |
I haven't really cared much about why Jonesy got traded, truth be told.
Guys get moved all the time. Sometimes for personal reasons, sometimes for business reasons. Sometimes teams just don't see eye to eye with their players. Feelings get hurt. It happens. But at the end of the day it's a business, and none of that matters – the only thing that matters is what kind of a hockey player you are.
Which is strange, because Jonesy is a damned good hockey player – and he's been great in the room for us, too.
But his old teammates? They don't like him. At all. It's obvious. It feels catty, even, like a group of mean girls who banish one of their own after she kissed the wrong boy. I don't get it. It makes me wonder what happened?
Jones keeps his head down all game. He doesn't seem too interested in playing his muck-raking style like he normally does – he plays hard, and he hits when he should, but he doesn't run his mouth like he would against a normal opponent.
It's weird to see him be quiet for once.
And I think it takes us off our game. We've grown used to letting Jonesy be our mouth-piece out there, our driving force, the guy who gets us engaged. But tonight he's not, and while he's playing well, the rest of us feel flat.
Whatever happened between him and the Jets seems kind of serious. Because if it wasn't, I have to imagine, he'd be chirping his former teammates all game long. The Jets, for their part, are quiet too – but they wear these shit-eating grins. They'll get real close and whisper something to Jones, but his face just looks blank. No response from him. At all.
It's weird. It looks like they hold all the cards. Like Jones is at their mercy.
As for the game itself? It's a tense, hard-fought affair without a lot of offensive chances. Both teams are playing a tight, lock-down game, and there's a feeling that the first mistake a team makes is gonna end up in the back of the net. We don't wanna be that team, and neither do they, and so both sides really clam up.
The fans are restless. They want something to cheer for. They want to see action. At a minimum, they wanna see fights – after all, the media has all but promised there would be bad blood. So when the fans are confronted with this cautious, tentative game? The fans' disappointment is palpable.
Tonight, my legs aren't what they have been recently. I feel sluggish ... slow to react ... and I'm missing my top gear. And I realize this is how I played all year, before we got Jonesy.
But something is different now. I can't find him on the ice. Every time I look for him, he's not where I expect him to be. I pass the puck to where I think he'll be, only to look a split-second after passing it and realizing we're not on the same page at all anymore.
It's weird, considering how tight we've been all year. We've been on the same page since day one ... until this game.
After the Jets' goalie stops the puck and freezes play, the Jets' captain, Dimitri Burkhardt, skates up to me and we're alone for a moment.
“Hey Vance, heard you're Jonesy's new roommate?” he says.
“Yeah,” I grumble. I'm not much interested in whatever their fight was.
“You catch him sneaking out late at night yet? You know ... going to any strange places?”
My eyes narrow. “The hell are you talking about, Burkhardt?”
“I guess he hasn't told you then. You better ask him about it!” he cackles as he skates off.
Uhh. Okay. Strange places? The hell could that mean?
Jones skates up to me right afterward. He stares after Burkhardt.
“What'd he say?” he says quietly.
“Not much,” I mumble.
Play starts again. It's late in the third, the game is still tied 0-0, and finally someone starts to step up and take control of the game. It's Donovan. He's seen enough and he's taking matters into his own hands.
“C'mon, I don't give a shit about these jerk-offs! Let's rally boys!” he roars at us on the bench.
But his play on the ice is the real inspiration. Donovan is a big guy, a real heavy-weight d-man and something of a dying breed in the NHL. Throwing your body around year after year can really take its toll on your body – and Donovan realized a while back that he had to dial the physical play back a notch or two if he wanted to wring a few more years out of his career.
But when Donovan gets pissed off enough, he will play like he did when he was 25, and it's a sight to behold.
A Jets forward skates down Donovan's lane. The Jets player has taken it for granted that Donovan doesn't hit anymore. He gets careless and hits his top gear, trying to sprint around Donovan's outside. But Donovan surprises him with a flash of his youth – he takes a powerful stride backwards and lunges at the player with his hip stuck out. Don-o catches the forward and throws his weight into the guy, crushing him into the boards with a thunderous hit. The Jets player falls on the ice, dazed and slow to get up to his skates.
The crowd stands up and roars. Finally they have something to cheer about.
Donovan's snarl is the missing element we've been looking for. With the veteran throwing his weight around, the team wakes up, at last, and we start to find our offensive game. In the end, with only a few minutes to go in the game, it's an innocent looking wrist shot by Tanner that deflects off a skate and wobbles through the air and finds the back of the Jets' net.
And that'll be the game winner. We'll win the game 1-0.
After the game, Jones will be swamped by the media all over again. He fields question after question about the trade, some truly and utterly ridiculous. Jones refuses to comment on the rumors, and I can't help but think he finally looks frustrated by it all. He only wants to talk about the game, not the trade or anything that has happened in the past.
Donovan pulls me aside during all the commotion.
“Look,” he says. “I dunno what the hell this kid did, but this is starting to get weird. You hear what the Jets players were saying all game long? Just hinting about how they can wreck his career. They're toying with him, Vance, whatever he did in Winnipeg, they're dangling it over his head and letting him torture himself.”
I nod. After that game, I've got no choice but to agree with him.
“You gotta get to the bottom of it, Vance. Make sure that whatever it is, it's not gonna blow up in our faces, alright? Last thing we need is a media circus hanging over us in the playoffs. I wanna win a Cup, Vance, this is my last shot.”
“Yeah,” I grumble. “You're right.”
“It's gone on long enough, Vance,” Donovan says, shaking his head and he walks off. “For fuck's sake, make him put an end to it.”