Carbonneau at Ice Level

The author attends Dallas Stars vs. Chicago Blackhawks, December 23, 1999

When I was little my favorite movie was "Peter Pan." I couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful than a boy who could fly. I liked nothing better than to pretend I was Wendy, watching Peter swoop in graceful circles around the nursery…and then sprinkling me with fairy dust so I could fly too. Every time they showed the movie on TV, my heart pounded with excitement for days beforehand and days after. A boy who could fly...

And just like that, my heart was pounding when my two daughters and I saw the Dallas Stars begin to spill through the gate onto the ice for warmups at Chicago’s United Center. We ran down the aisle, Katie and Amanda taking the two vacant seats at the end of the first row, and I stopping at the glass to watch for the man who wore those unique CCM Tacks.

Astonishingly, he seemed to be looking right at me as he burst onto the ice. I dropped to my knees, and it was not only to avoid obstructing the view of the people who might be behind me.

And from then on I didn’t stop smiling.

He does fly, this eternal boy…with a nearly effortless push of a leg, he is off, like a bird lifting from the water into the sky. He wheels and glides, glides low like a hovercraft, and when he turns the angle of his body ignores the rules of physics. He makes his own wind and carries himself upon it, as alert as the hawk searching for prey. Sometimes he is that stern, but then you see he’s only playing…he grins and you can see the sparkle in his silver blue eyes from where you kneel. He’s that close, close enough that his flight catches up your soul…perhaps his passing leaves behind the fairy dust that makes you fly too.

I do feel I’m flying, with this unstoppable smile on my face, and I can feel my own happiness talking back to me, telling me to notice that for the next twenty minutes I will be so alive, it doesn’t matter that I stopped breathing, that my heart stopped beating, the moment he came on the ice.

Carbonneau, I imagine, is more at home in this element than in the one where I live. He barely notices he is able to fly, he’s so used to it. No doubt likewise he is oblivious to how he appears when standing still. There he is, across the ice, his arms propped up on his stick, doing what my friend Martha calls "a Ken Dryden," after the famous statue. He’s only waiting, he’s not thinking about what those arms can do, what that stick can do, what his feet and legs and sense of balance can do, acts so superhuman. He’s just waiting. While he waits there is so much to see: Mike Modano flying by, power at top speed; Ed Belfour stopping another puck with the thwack of rubber on leather; Sergei Zubov finally realizing that my daughter is holding up a sign wishing him a Merry Christmas in Russian. I see all this, in wonder…and yet my center remains over there, waiting, with all this happening around it.

And then he moves again, he’s in position to take a pass in front of the goal, not 15 feet from me, the puck is on his stick, he takes the backswing…and fans on it. I laugh, and revel in watching him curse to himself. I laugh to be reminded that he’s the same species as I am--that makes it all even better somehow. He is the same flesh, yet somehow he has managed to elevate that with which he was born to this amazing level. Long ago he learned to take wing, and practiced flying until he became this.

And so the warmup goes…a simple practice, a routine which must seem endless over the two decades. He has to go now…and with a final circle he flies away to that room I will never see…the room that is the chamber where he switches back and forth from being someone like me to being the miracle I have just witnessed. Happily, he won’t be shedding his wings quite yet. I return to my seat to await the next appearance…and I’m still smiling.

Before too long it's game time, the teams return to the ice, and then the Stars conduct their pre-game ritual. As he has since his Habs days, Carbonneau takes his place to the right of the net and his teammates tap him in turn. I’ve seen so many pictures of this, seen it before in person, but he’s so close that it is no longer mythical but just as real as my girls at my side. The Stars tap Carbo because that’s how it’s done, how it has always been done, but deep down I wonder, would they do it if they didn’t believe it was magic?

I have written before about the thrill of the anthem in Chicago: There’s truly nothing else like shouting and screaming with those thousands of fans. Deeper motivation springs this time from the fact that Carbonneau stands silhouetted on the blue line, swaying from foot to foot. We yell "STARS!" at the appropriate moments in "The Star Spangled Banner," unafraid of a backlash by the locals…they can’t hear us over the noise.

The game begins. It certainly won’t be the best the Stars have played lately…but I don’t mind a bit. Carbo is playing wonderfully well. Will he ever lose a faceoff? And the joy of live hockey is that your eyes can follow the action that occurs away from the puck. Thus I can see all the defensive forward is doing to bust up plays, I can see him putting that ability to fly into the use for which he learned it. Eternal youth indeed--how else can he get from here to there so quickly?

And I am also free to watch him on the bench. He will not stop talking. The others wear those vacant, panting expressions you always see when the camera pans the bench, but Carbonneau must catch his breath between words, for he won’t shut up. He tirades at Assistant Coach Doug Jarvis, who listens patiently. Guy gestures, his ungloved hands circling, pointing. He seems to have a plan, and I wish somehow I could know what it is. I think, become a coach when you retire, Carbonneau, or you will drive yourself and everyone close to you crazy.

Whatever Carbo’s plan, the Hawks are up by three after the first. In the second, the tables turn. A frenzy of shooting…and two goals result. Hope springs eternal. But the score is less important to the Carbo-obsessed than are such things as those faceoffs (at last he actually loses one) and the penalty kill. I never tire of him taking to the faceoff circle, directing his linemates as to where they should stand, with that air of authority which you think (if you’re me) alone ought to be power enough to make the opponent want to forfeit. And the PK is a thing of beauty. I can feel the force of Guy’s concentration from here. He breaks up a pass, he clears the puck. The beauty of defensive play is that it requires you to out-think your opponent, the satisfaction of it is watching yourself thwart his desires. At thwarting desires, Guy has a special knack.

Alas, the third does not go well. But Carbonneau continues to win faceoffs at an alarming rate, he is a plus-one, the penalty kill prevails. And he does not, of course, let up talking on the bench. I can’t read his lips, even with my binoculars, but I am grateful that even when weary from this road trip, discouraged by the play, he does not sink into some moribund reverie. He will not stop yapping. I continue to smile.

I do get to hear him once: He is in the far zone and lets out a one-syllable bark that carries all the way across the rink, over the voices of some 5,000 people who are also speaking at the time. So now I’ve heard him speak, live, this one unintelligible word.

Later, he is in our end of the rink when the Hawks’ Bob Probert high sticks him. Four inches shorter and 50 pounds lighter, Carbonneau goes ballistic. He is ready to drop the gloves, which renders Probie a bit taken aback. As for me, I catch the fever at once, I’m on my feet screaming, "Touch him again, Probert, and I’ll kick your ass myself!" I, of course, am a comical figure saying this…Carbo, however, is not. He goes to the box for roughing, having drawn a double minor for Probert, and sits not with shame but with that indescribable dignity which no one else in the NHL can match.

The game winds down with the Hawks getting an empty netter. In the final seconds, Carbonneau awaits a last faceoff, and chats amiably with the linesman. He wears a weary, bemused half smile, and bends over for his last swipe at the falling puck. He wins this one too, which by my count makes it 13 out of 15.

The horn sounds.

I bid him and the Stars farewell as they head for that room, where they will go from demigods to holiday travelers just like we are. My fairy dust wears off, I sink back to earth with a happy sigh. On our way out the locals belittle us for our Stars jerseys but they don’t bother us. Amanda is just happy to have hers, a brand new Modano. Katie is still stunned because before he left the warmup, Zubov told her thank you through the glass.

And as for me, I’m running my head what it was like to watch Carbonneau fly, so I don’t forget it too soon. This, in part, is why I wrote this. The journalists will never tell you--in fact, no one mentioned Carbo at all in the morning papers. The cameras will never show it, it can’t be captured on videotape or film. What Guy does on the ice is the magic you believed in when you were a child--the magic which, back then, you expected you would eventually see with your own eyes, but forgot as you grew older and smarter.

I’m suggesting you believe in it again. Because I’ve seen him, this Pan on skates, and I don’t believe he’ll ever grow up, or give up flying, or lose the ability to cast out a handful of fairy dust over our heads so we can fly too.

Photos thanks to the awe-inspiring Brad Amodeo (see more at www.photoplex.com)