Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - The Glide - The Greatest Hockey Game Ever Played

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

“'They tried to stop us,' says the old man. 'But we kept playing.'” More about the joy of winter sports on this week’s pod. Including Stuart’s ode to skating from Jasper, Alberta. And a beautiful Big Narrows story about a memorable game of hockey from long ago. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. If you listened to the podcast last week, then you will have heard one of my all-time favorite Vinyl Cafe stories. Holland. That's the one where Dave and Morley go to Holland to skate on the frozen canal. I love the imagery in that story, especially at the ending. Morley and Dave walking together through the airport, tethered together by the wool from Dave's unraveling sweater. If you missed that podcast last week, it's not too late to hear it. You can listen to that the same place you are listening to this.

The whole archive is there. Like I just said, I love the imagery. It's written like a movie. I can see it. I can even see the way the camera pulls out at the end. And I love it for its description of love and of marriage. But I also just really love the description of skating. I don't think it's an accident that Stuart chose skating as the activity to connect Dave and Morley. Skating, like love, requires a combination of hard work and just letting go. And letting go requires trust. You have to trust your skates.

You have to trust the ice. You have to trust yourself and your ability to do it. And it requires giving in, letting go. There are some sports that have a tremendous amount of structure and, you know, rules and strategy. I suppose all sports have that to some extent. But there are other ones that to excel at it, you have to just kind of go inside of yourself and be free. Swimming's like that. And swimming's like that. And downhill skiing is like that. It is for me anyway.

And so is skating. I love skating. I'm not a very good skater. I don't do it very often anymore. And I'm not always great at doing the thing I think is required to be a good skater. I'm not very good at letting go, of trusting myself, of trusting my skates. But despite not being very good at all, I still love skating. I love it because it's something I used to do with my dad. He taught me how to skate. My dad is a wonderful athlete. He's a sports writer. So sports and physical stuff were huge in my family growing

up, and skating was like our thing. It's partially our thing because it's his thing. My dad has written a lot of books about figure skating, 13 to be precise. He's been to 10 Olympics, and he's in the Skate Canada Hall of Fame. He wrote Brian Orser's biography and Scott Moore and Tessa Virtue's biography. And my dad taught me how to skate in our local arena in Orillia. We used to skate together Sunday afternoons. My brother used to get up really early, so Toby, my brother, and my mom would stay home to nap, and me and my dad would go to the arena to skate. To this day, I remember the songs we used to skate to. Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper, Billie Jean by Michael Jackson, and Flashdance. So I love skating because of those foundational

memories with my dad, but it's not just that. I love it because of the way it makes me feel. It makes me feel free. We shouldn't be able to do it as human beings, right? It's not a natural thing to us. It's not like walking or running. Those sports make sense. We're designed for that. We're built for that. We're not built to swim. We don't have gills. And we're not built to glide on ice. We have to teach ourselves how to do those things, which means we have to create new pathways in our brain and in our bodies. We have to forget our innate abilities. We have to let go. And I think that's what I like about it. I like things that challenge me to do that, that require me to do that. Because letting go is not something that comes naturally to me.

And because I love the feeling when I'm finally able to do it, That feeling of getting it, of letting go and just letting my body glide. My eldest daughter, Eloise, six years old, just started to get it this year. We've been skating once a week and I saw her get it. We were at our local arena in Chelsea. She's been on skates for years now. She diligently waddles around the ice, taking baby steps. She's not afraid. She is never afraid, and she's naturally athletic. But like her mom, what she struggles with is not coordination. It's not hard work. It's not the physicality of the sport. It's the mental game. It's the letting go. It's the glide. But she finally got it this year. And to watch her get it was, it was like watching a plane take flight. One moment it's grounded and the next it's flying.

And there is no turning back after takeoff. It's like watching freedom take flight. So that's what we're going to talk about today on the podcast, skating. We have two stories for you. First, we'll hear from Stuart with an ode to skating. And then I have a backstory for you, a hilarious story about a practical joke that Stuart played. And then later in the show,

we'll hear a David Morley story about skating, about the greatest hockey game ever. But first, this. This was recorded at Jasper Park Lodge in Jasper, Alberta, back in 2014. This is Stuart McLean. From the Jasper Park Lodge in beautiful Jasper, Alberta, it's the Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean! Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I am so very delighted to be here today. And being here, I am reminded that there was a golden era in Canada when we did a few things as well as and probably better than anyone did them anywhere else in the world. Ice hockey, for one. We invented the game, after all. And I'll have more to say about hockey later in the show.

Railways, for another. We built railways with an outrageous daring do. And hotels, for a third. The Chateau Laurier in Ottawa. The Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, veritable castles with copper roofs that proclaimed we were going to be around for a while, and while we were, we planned to do it in style, which brings us here to this stylish place. brings us here to this stylish place. In a country of iconic hotels,

this log cabin mountain retreat has to be near the top of any list. And the great thing about Jasper, about Jasper Park Lodge, as opposed to all the other great railway hotels, is that there is no reason to be here. Except, of course, to be here. And here I am back again. My brother and sister both worked here back in the day.

Steph was a bartender. Al ended up as one of the managers. He met his wife Susan here, and they got married here. So I've been around this place. I have both played and worked here, but never in the style that I am enjoying this weekend. When we arrived on Thursday, we were given the keys to Outlook Cabin. The finest cabin on the property, I dare say. A sprawling log cabin with a cathedral-roofed living room and a dining room and a kitchen and six, I counted, bedrooms. And I got room 182, the one His Royal Highness George V and his queen, the Queen Mum, were given in 1939 when they crossed Canada coast to coast by train trying to drum up support for the war that everyone knew was coming.

It is, I am stunned to say, the second time in my brief life that the royal family and I have shared a throne. Here, and once in Sackville, New Brunswick, the Marshlands Inn, a more modest but equally enchanting place, when I was given the same room that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth rested in. And speaking of royal bottoms, something I never expected I'd find myself speaking of here on the radio, and of enchanting places, I took my royal bum, as we now call it, down to the shores of Lake Mildred this afternoon,

and I laced on a pair of skates, and I had one of the most enchanting winter afternoons of my life. Just let me set the scene. It's not a big lake, but a lake nevertheless, not a pond, surrounded by evergreens, ringed by mountains, signal, pyramid, an old man, a mountain that actually does look like an old man lying on his back. The mountains, snow covered, and the lake too, except for the rink, which is an idiosyncratically perfect rink. Instead of the usual rectangle, it's a one-kilometer-long, snow-cleared roadway the width of two Zambonis.

And it snakes around the lake's circumference. So you step into your skates and onto the ice, and you skate in a big, winding, never-ending loop Beside the trees and under the mountains Today just happened to be the most perfect winter day ever A bluebird sky and five degrees above So as I skated, I was peeling off layers My hat first, then my gloves and my coat,

as around and around I went on the milk smooth ice, white mostly, except for the patches where it was pure black. And you can see the water below, and the air bubbles trapped like little effervescent fingers of coral. Skating along, I imagined what it would be like to flap your little wings and fly away. I pumped my legs instead, and around and around I flew to the bone-like crunch of blade on ice, the paper-tearing symphony of wintered happiness.

The trumpet of the sun on the ice, the white of the snow on the mountaintops, the bite of my blades, the huffs and the puffs of the other skaters, the swing of their arms and mine in time. And I'm thinking, what music would I play? What song could possibly be the soundtrack to this movie? Until I realized I was already singing over and over the few words that I know from the joyful Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof.

The opening number where the milkman Tevye is pulling his milk cart because his horse is too lame for the job, and he is asking God, who would it harm if I were a rich man? I felt winter rich. And then I spotted a little path diverging from the main path, a little path that veered off and led out to the center of the lake, no more than a ribbon of ice, no wider than a sidewalk. And I leaned my shoulder into the turn and I skated out to the center where I found, like a pearl nestled in an oyster, a shinny rink complete with knee-high snow walls and nets.

And I stood there thinking, this could be the most perfect shinny rink in the country. The rink at the center of the lake that's under the mountains and beside the trees. As I skated away, my thoughts turned to the city I must return to, and I thought this. Every winter, every city in the country should take one main street, a street that goes from east to west or north to south, and they should run a Zamboni down it, one end to the other, Zamboni down it, one end to the other, so everyone in the country could skate through the winter the way you can here in Jasper. Winter is long and it is hard, but it's not nearly as long nor nearly as hard when you can play in it. And what could be more playful than skating through town? Now, I know what the naysayers will say.

They'll say, we can't do that. Where will the cars go? Well, the answer to that is simple. The cars have wheels. The cars can go somewhere else. else. As for the rest of us, the rest of us will skate. We'll fly past the stores and the skyscrapers as if we were kings and queens. We'll skate through December and February and all the other dark months of winter until we land on our royal bums smack in the middle of spring. That was Stuart McLean from a live concert we recorded in Jasper, Alberta back in 2014. We have to take a

short break now, but we'll be back in a minute with a backstory about a practical joke that Stuart played when we were out in Jasper. And of course, with that Dave and Morley story that I promised you earlier. Stick around. Welcome back. Before the break, we heard Stuart's ode to skating. We went to the Jasper Park Lodge to record that show because I wanted to do a show that celebrated winter. Stuart's job as writer and host of the Vinyl Cafe was to make sure his parts, the David Morley stories, the opening script, were as good as they could be. But my job, or part of it,

was to worry about the sum of those parts, to ensure that they added up to something. It was pretty easy for me because I had great parts to work with. Stuart gave me excellent puzzle pieces, so it was easy to assemble something beautiful. But the best shows have layers of meaning. My aim was to add layers so thin, so discreet, you couldn't even notice them. They just add up. So I decided we'd go out to Jasper, an iconic Canadian winter destination, and that we'd record a show that was, essentially, a celebration of winter. We opened the show with that script, the one you just heard about skating, and we closed the show with the story that you're about to hear next about hockey. I'd never been to Jasper Park Lodge, and I was excited to go. I had heard so much about it from

Stuart and his brother Alistair and his sister Stephanie. They have a deep history there. So I made a plan. We got in touch with the hotel, and we figured out how to turn the ballroom into a theater. We packed it full of chairs and put in a sound system and lighting. The date of the show happened to be on my husband's birthday. Now, I just said that like I had no control over it. I did. I had a bad habit of booking concerts on Josh's birthday. After a few years of this, early on in my relationship with Josh, Stuart said something like, if you're going to keep doing this, you should

make sure we're going somewhere fun so that he has a reason to come along. It was good advice. We always had to record in January around Josh's birthday, and I always missed his birthday, and it was becoming a bit of a thing. So I made it a good thing. We started booking really fun shows in January. That made it fun for Stuart. He never wanted to record in January. He was so exhausted from the Christmas tour. And it made it fun for Josh, too. Josh would take a week off work and come along for these January trips, and we'd celebrate his birthday somewhere great, like Tofino, or in this case, Jasper. Josh and I flew out to Jasper early to go skiing.

And Bill, our sound guy, came along, too. He brought a friend. So there were five of us. Me, Stuart, Josh, Bill, and his friend, all staying together in one cabin. Josh and I and Bill and his friend would go out skiing every day while Stuart wrote, and we'd all meet up that night at the cabin for dinner. One night after dinner, Stuart and I were working together in the kitchen, and Josh was in there too, doing dishes or something. Bill and his friend were in the living room watching a movie. At some point, Bill came into the kitchen to make a pizza, a frozen pizza. He turned the oven on,

and he was waiting for it to heat up. We were all chatting and waiting for that little red light to tell us that the oven was ready. Eventually, that preheat light went off. Bill opened up the oven, slid the frozen pizza in, and set a timer for 12 minutes. And then he went back into the living room to continue watching the movie. Stuart and I went back to work. About 10 minutes later, Stuart stood up and walked over to the stove. He opened the oven door and peered at the pizza. I looked over and said, I don't think it's ready yet. Stuart put his finger to his lips, the universal sign for shh. And then he very quietly removed the pizza and put it on the top of the fridge where no one could see it. Josh and I were confused, but

we rolled with it. I should pause here to tell you a little bit about Bill Harald. Bill is one of the funniest people I know. He has a dry sense of humor and excellent timing. But what he excels at is practical jokes, absurd practical jokes. Practical jokes is not quite the right description. He makes up these elaborate stories and he convinces people that, well, no, he doesn't convince people. He convinces me. He convinces me that these elaborate stories are true. He's done this a few times over the years. He's told me an elaborate story, too elaborate to be true, and then he has systematically convinced me that it's true over the course of a three-week tour. Here's an example. One tour, he told me that he had just seen this really interesting documentary about

dogs giving birth. He set it up beautifully. He told me how surprised he was to see in this documentary that dogs give birth differently, that they give birth from their, um, from their bottoms. from their bottoms. Now, when he told me that, I did exactly what you probably just did. I guffawed, I laughed, I whooped, I rolled my eyes and I said, come on, Bill. I know you're teasing me. But then he just kept coming at me with facts and details. We were out on tour in the Maritimes and he just systematically kept at it gently over the three week tour. It took him nearly a month. But by the end of that tour, he had me convinced. I got home from the tour. And as I was unpacking, I was telling Josh all about the tour and eventually I got to the part about the dogs giving birth. It's so embarrassing,

I said. This whole time I thought dogs gave birth the same way we did. Can you believe it? I had no idea that they gave birth through their bums. Josh just looked at me, deadpan, and said, let me guess, Bill? That's how good Bill is. He gaslit me for three straight weeks to the point where eventually I believed him about something that is so obviously not true. That's Bill. He's the best. So when that timer went off, both Josh and I were ready to play along with Stuart's joke. Bill had it coming for him.

The timer buzzed, and Bill came into the kitchen to remove the pizza. And the pizza was nowhere to be seen. Bill looked at Stuart and said, What did you do with the pizza? We looked up, surprised Stuart and said, what did you do with the pizza? We looked up surprised and said, what are you talking about? What do you mean? What pizza?

Bill went back into the living room to ask his friend if she had taken the pizza out of the oven. And when he left the room, Stuart slipped the pizza back into the oven again. Bill's friend said, what do you mean the pizza's missing? And she came into the kitchen to look for it. And of course, the very first place she looked was the oven. And there it was, in the oven, just where Bill had left it. She looked at Bill with a face that said, are you sure you're okay? The pizza needed a few more minutes, so Bill and his friend went

back to the living room and picked up their movie. And as soon as they did, Stuart took the pizza out of the oven again, put it back on top of the fridge. The timer went off. Bill came back into the kitchen to get the pizza, and it wasn't there. Now he knew the game was afoot. Bill left the room again. Stuart put the pizza back in the oven again. Bill knew it was him, but Stuart never fessed up. When Bill came into the kitchen, Stuart was at his computer, deeply engrossed in the story. Peter deeply engrossed in the story. I don't remember how it ended. I know Stuart never fessed up.

And I also know Bill knew it was him. But I don't remember what happened in the end. But I know what I wish happened. If I were writing this story, and if this were happening to Dave or to Morley, not Bill, this is how I would end it. The third time Bill left the room searching for the pizza, Stuart would take the pizza and slice it up. He'd put it on the dining room table with plates and napkins and a beautiful bottle of wine. Bill and his friend would see it and recognize it for what it was, a game well played.

Wine by way of apology or recognition. A thank you for 15 minutes of entertainment and for a story that we'd have the pleasure of telling and retelling for years to come. All right, we have to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a minute with a Dave and Morley story, a story we also recorded in Jasper, Alberta, a story about the greatest hockey game ever played. Welcome back.

Story time now. This is the story we call the greatest hockey game ever played. No one, well, certainly not me anyway, is ever going to reconcile to anyone's satisfaction the many and conflicting opinions about which of the thousands and thousands of hockey games ever played on ice was the greatest game of them all. Although if you ever had the chance, as I have, to raise that question with any of the old-timers

who live in the town of Big Narrows in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, you would be told that the matter was settled over a half century ago. For they'd tell you, as they have told me, that the greatest game in hockey history was played in the autumn of 1945, the year the Big Narrows coal miners defeated the Port Arthur shipbuilders to win Cape Breton's one and only Allen Cup, Canada's senior hockey championship. And then, as was the tradition

for the amateur champion team in those days, the coal miners took off for Europe to represent Canada in the hockey championship of the world. You won't read about it in any record book, won't read about it anywhere, but you can hear about it in the narrows. That's right, says Smith Gardner, who you can find on any Thursday afternoon,

sitting at the table in the window that overlooks the river at the Breakwater Hotel in Big Narrows. Smith and his buddies get together for a pint or two every Thursday. And if you happen to show up, they'd be more than happy to tell you about the game. They know more about it than anyone else alive. Allow me to introduce them. There's Smith, of course, a pretty good hockey player himself. Though he was way too young to play in the game I'm going to tell you about, Smith is in his early 80s today. Sitting across from him with his back to the window is arnie gallagher arnie's in his late 70s as nearest anyone can figure more or less runs the narrows out of his storefront on water street

arnie's the town's combination florist travel agent and funeral director just tell me where you want to go, Arnie likes to say And I'll get you there, dead or alive Arnie is also the fire chief and ex-mayor To Arnie's right, nearest the front door The guy fiddling with a silver cigarette case That's Russell Montgomery, the ancient bird-like town librarian. He is 94 years old and long retired from the library, but sound of mind

still, he's the town's undisputed historian. And the fourth guy, the older gentleman, the one wrapped in the blanket, well, he's the only one at the table who was on the team. He was there, though he doesn't talk about it often. Well, that's because they hushed it all up, says Smith. If you look to the record books, it says they didn't even play for the Allen Cup in 45 on account of the war. Well, that's a load of malarkey. They played all the other war years,

and by the spring of 45, everyone knew the war was all but over. They played, and we won, fair and square. It's what happened in Europe that made them go all hush-hush on the thing. Smith is right. They did play in 45. And the team from the Narrows did win. Darn right we did, says Smith. The Governor General was there to present the trophy. Actually, he wasn't.

It was actually Hugh Andrew Montague Allen himself, the man who donated the Allen Cup, who called it into being and for whom it was and is still named. He was 84 years old that night, probably the richest man in Canada, although all the money in the world couldn't protect him from the ravages of those grimy war years. His two daughters, 15-year-old Gwen and 16-year-old Anna, both drowned when the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat. His 20-year-old Eton-educated son Hugh was shot dead over the English Channel three years later.

Only his fourth daughter lived into adulthood, but she died when she was 47, leaving the old man childless, with nothing else to do that lonely Saturday than to present the trophy that bore his name. But that isn't the night they'll tell you about around that table in Big Narrows. It was the game in Finland, says Smith, not the ones in Montreal. Norway, says Russell Montgomery, the librarian, correcting him. They won the Allen Cup in the spring, says Russell. They went to Norway in the fall.

They left in August, says Smith, trying to keep pace. Sailed for Newcastle. They left in September, says the librarian. Sailed for Liverpool. They left right after the armistice. They played in November in the port town of Bergen on the Atlantic Ocean. So do I have your attention? Can I make my case?

This game I want you to hear about should be considered. This forgotten moment of hockey history was, I would put forward, the most elegant, enchanting, and certainly whimsically concluded hockey game ever. And it should at least be on the table. There were eight teams in that forgotten European tournament. England, Norway, Belgium, Switzerland, that's four. Sweden, that's five. A group of dubious pedigree who claimed to represent France, that's six.

Canada, of course, represented by the coal miners, that's seven. And Czechoslovakia, the Czechs, who had been crushed by Germany, divided and annexed. The government was in exile until late 45, and they were in no shape to send a hockey team that year. But it was a point of pride. After those years of occupation and oblivion, the checks were there. Yes, they were, says Smith, picking up his glass and taking a sip and then staring down at it and falling into silence. All of them quiet now. We have to be patient with these four old guys. They've known each other far too long to be hurried along, even by the moon-deep prodding of silence.

Eventually, Arnie will take a sip of his beer, set it down, and say, when I was a kid, our mothers used to put baked potatoes into our skates, hot, right out of the oven. And we'd walk to the pond in those days, and when we got there, our skates would be warm on account of the potatoes. So we'd put our skates on and put the potatoes in the snow, and the potatoes would freeze, and when they froze, we'd use the potatoes as pucks. We'd eat them on the way home cold.

Everybody at the table is nodding earnestly, except for the old guy in the blanket who barks, what the heck's that got to do with anything? I'm just saying, says Artie, that it's a different game when you play it out of doors. Everyone knows that, says the old guy. Artie says, I'm saying there are things to consider when you play out of doors, like the ice and the wind, for one. That's two, mutters the old guy.

For crying out loud, says Smith. He has his hand on the old guy's shoulder. He's looking around for their waiter. Can we have some refills here, says Smith. Someone's getting grumpy. The waiter comes over and sets down another round of drafts. The old guy picks up a knife and runs it across the top of his glass, pushing the foam onto the tabletop.

He picks up a salt shaker and salts his beer. And then he bends down and takes a sip without touching the glass. He looks around the table and scowls. And they all fall silent again. and they all fall silent again. The point, of course, isn't the cold or the wind or how they used to change ends halfway through the last period so everyone had the wind at their back for an equal amount of time, so it was fair. The point is the autumn of 1945, the autumn after the Big Narrows coal miners won the Allen Cup in Montreal

and Montague Allen presented it to them and they took the train to New York City and got on the RMS Mauritania and sailed for Europe to play in the championships of the world. The first game of that series was on 7th November, says Russell Montgomery. 25 below zero and windy. They stepped onto the ice and, wait a minute, wait a minute, says Arnie. How many guys went? They all look at the old guy, but the old guy has nodded off. There were in fact 11 of them on that team 12 counting the coach

and what I know is this they got to England a week or so before the first game down the duffel bag gangplank at dawn. Onto the gray bomb-scarred Liverpool docks. Five of the 11 had served overseas. Augie, McDonnell in France. Moose and Spit in Italy. Archie got as far as England, but never got to the continent. So you can understand, perhaps, that they were edgy that morning. The vets, who had more or less just got home, didn't want to be back. Didn't want any part of the war anymore.

And the ones who had stayed home, they were guilty they had missed it. Well, they all felt guilty. They'd all survived. And they all knew someone who hadn't. They went from Liverpool to Oslo by ferry or something and then to Bergen by truck. And they arrived just in time for the first game. They hadn't had their skates on since the Allen Cup,

which meant they hadn't skated for maybe six months. The Bergen rink was outside. And of course, it being so close to the end of the war, there were no lights or anything. Everything was rationed. So the there were no lights or anything. Everything was rationed. So the games were played during the day, a couple in the morning and a couple in the afternoon. In their first game, which was that afternoon they arrived, the coal miners played Switzerland. Before the game, they watched a bunch of Norwegian guys in blue fisherman sweaters shovel the rink.

And then, in the midst of all that gray post-war gloom, the most magical thing happened. A chestnut draft horse pulling an ornate wheeled watering machine was led onto the ice. The horse came from Russia. The contraption from Italy. It looked like a float from a parade. It had an etched brass firebox to heat the water and as it circled the rink, it hissed and billowed like a circus calliope. A man sitting on the top back was playing an organ. The problem was it was so windy that the water froze in little waves, like on a beach when the sea pulls back from the sand and it leaves layers of water behind.

The players watched the ice machine in absolute awe. When it was done, they stepped onto the uneven surface and skated around, stumbling on the wavy bits. And then the Swiss team came out. They looked tough, said Aki McDonnell under his breath. Their blue wool jerseys had a broad yellow stripe across the shoulders, little crests on the front and big numbers on the back. A good third of them were wearing leather helmets.

They looked like a team of fighter pilots. It set the boys off balance, the heavy shadow of the war everywhere, the bombed-out ruins of all the cities, the wounded veterans in all the cafes. Everything looked gray and tired and unshaven. So Archie McDougal, who played the entire game that afternoon, won the opening face-off and stuffed the puck back to whomever it was on defense.

He head-manned it up to Augie, and Augie carried it to the blue line and then dumped it into the Swiss corner. And that's when it hit them. Snap. Augie goes in after the puck and it was like he had skated off the rink and onto the harbor. The rink was nearly twice the size of the rinks they were used to. Augie's going in and he's going in and he's going in. He's going in forever. He's fighting the wind off the North Sea all the way. And when he finally makes it to the corner, he turns to look for the net. And the net's so far away, Augie nearly faints.

They were used to playing the lane game. They were used to skating up and down the lanes like players on a tabletop set. They soon learned if they stayed in their lanes, well, the forwards could barely see the guys on the other side of the rink. And as for defense, back home you played just off the boards, and anyone tries to go around you, you took a step and pushed them into the boards. Here, you play close to the boards like at home. There was one mother of a hole down the middle.

At the end of the first period, the Swiss were beating them 4-1. Guys are good, said Archie, in between periods. End of the game, it was Switzerland seven, coal miners two. And it should have been more. They lost their first two games, that one against the Swiss, and the next against the Norwegians. But then they beat the Brits and the dubious guys from France. And they seemed to find their confidence.

And to make a long story short, when all was said and done, the championship of the world, 1945, came down to the Cape Breton coal miners against the Czechs. The final game was scheduled for a Saturday afternoon. First, there was a big breakfast, cooked outside over a fire. At least 500 people showed up. More, says the old man in the blanket, waking up, leaning forward.

There were thousands all around the rink and up on the roofs. At the end of the third period, this is the part we're not supposed to talk about, says the old man. It is Russell Montgomery, the old librarian who stares him down, says, if we don't talk about it, who's going to? Someone should talk about it. What happened is this. They played three flawless periods of hockey, perfect hockey. Each team playing their own game.

The Canadians dumping the puck into the corner and skating in and digging it out. The Czechs carrying it across the blue line. If they didn't see their way across it, they turned around and headed back to their own end and started again. The game rolling back from one end of the rink to the other. The shots that made it to the net, perfectly precise. The goalies, precisely perfect. When regulation time ended, they were tied.

Zero-zero. So the ref called them together and explained Because they were also tied in total tournament goals They were going to overtime That was the rule They could go to the dressing room and get warm And in 15 minutes they'd come back out and play A sudden death overtime period

The team that scored the first goal would be the champion of the world. So there they were, three weeks and three periods into it, sitting on the rough wood benches in the dressing room that they shared. Two teams, one wood stove. Staring at each other in their sweat-soaked wool jerseys, two teams, one wood stove. Staring at each other in their sweat-soaked wool jerseys, each sweater a couple of pounds heavier than it was at the beginning of the game, Augie was running his hand up and down his stick,

a solid piece of ironwood. The old guy looks around the table. He's staring at each of them. You have to understand, he says, very quietly, everything was so different. The whole of Europe was devastated. Russell Montgomery spoke next. He says,

The idea of sudden death had no appeal to any of you. The old man nods his head. They all knew too much about sudden death. They all knew too much about the cost of victory and the price of defeat. The soldier boys and the boys who hadn't served, they had all, each one of them, Canadian and Czech, Norwegian and Brit, seen too many of their friends set off on voyages of hope that had ended on the hopeless sea of history.

The old man snorts. History, says the old man. We had no time for history. So this is what happened. They came out for the overtime period, and the people watching watched in stunned silence as they skated out, all of them, and dropped their sticks at center ice. And then Augie and the check captain stood there

picking the sticks up and throwing them randomly, one stick to one end of the rink and one to the other. The players went and found which end their sticks had landed, and when they did, that was the end they'd defend. Before they began playing, they skated to center ice again and changed sweaters. So in the rubble of the war, the two teams who played the overtime period for the championship of the world were a made-up mishmash.

Some from this side and some from that. Some Czechs and some Canadians. The overtime period was no more than a giant, joyful game of shitty. They tried to stop us, says the old man. But we kept playing. They had come to seek honor. And they had decided there could be no honor if winning meant one of them had to lose.

The period lasted for hours. People who were there said it was the greatest hockey they'd ever seen. There wasn't a whistle. It was pure hockey. No penalties, no power plays. Just the puck and play after memorable play. Some of the best players in the world. Some of the most perfect hockey ever.

The officials were furious. There was a meeting that night. They threatened to expel Canada and Czechoslovakia from international competition. But there was some sort of deal struck that involved secret money, and part of the deal was everyone promised not to talk about what had happened, and no one ever did, which is why you've never heard of it. But it happened. The old librarian leans forward and looks at the old man in the blanket. What I always wondered was how it happened.

Whose idea was it? It was Augie, right? I always figured it was Augie. The man in the blanket laughs. You want to know the truth, he says? I'll tell you the truth. It doesn't matter anymore. No one one cares anymore It wasn't Augie It wasn't any of our guys Or any of the Czechs either

It was Sir Alan Sir Montague Allen Who had met them at the Allen Cup And when news of the European tournament reached his desk Had not only paid their way across the ocean, but had gone with them. His last hurrah. Sir Alan, who had lost two daughters and one son in the first war, had gone into the dressing

room after the third period and said, the right end would be to end it right here. One should play for the game, he said, not for a flag. The old man in the blanket shrugs. Someone translated for the Czechs. They all felt the same way. They needed Sir Alan to say it. But when he did, they shook hands in the dressing room

and they went back onto the ice and they changed sweaters. That's the truth, says the old man. That's what happened. Then he says, later, some of the fellas regretted we did that. Some of them were ashamed. But that was a long time ago, and they're all gone now. I'm not ashamed. I don't regret anything.

I played in the greatest game of hockey ever played. What's to regret? I played in the greatest game of hockey ever played. What's to regret? He looks around at the mall, and then he takes a sip of his beer, and he falls back to sleep. If you look at the record books, you'll see they didn't play the world championship the next year.

But when they got it going again in 1947, you'll also see that Czechoslovakia won. And then Canada the year after that. Then Czechoslovakia the year after, and then Canada after that. A person who knows what you know now might wonder if they were trading back and forth on purpose, as if they were trying to preserve the spirit of that fantastic game in Bergen. Some people say that is exactly what was going on. And they say old Montague Allen had his hands all over it.

He died in 1951, and that's when it more or less ended. Canada won once or maybe twice more, but Sweden won the next year. Then the Soviet Union the year after. We'll never know about that, but this much is true. There was this brief moment of complete purity. That afternoon in Bergen, on the edge of the deep gray ocean, when the winds of peace were blowing instead of the winds of war, and the ice was as hard and as fast as ice has ever been. And young men played like young boys, the black puck skimming over the hard white ice like nothing bad had ever happened,

like no one ever died, as if life was made for laughter. And there could be great victory without great defeat. That was the greatest hockey game ever played. All right, that's it for today. But before we go, here's a sneak peek from one of next week's stories. He'd never gotten over it. Just the thought of rats creeped him out.

He'd lie in bed at night listening for them. Morley eventually got used to it, and then she got tired of it. The furnace would bump on and Dave would lurch awake. Did you hear that, he'd ask. Don't worry, sweetie, she'd say, rolling over. It's only a rat. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is Greg Duclute, who is smooth as ice. Theme music is written by Danny Michelle and played beautifully today by rob carley and the show is produced by louise curtis greg de clute and me jess milton let's meet again next week until then so long for now Thank you.