Besides flattering me, Graham started digging for more about me.
“You know, I think that a strong family upbringing can be helpful in developing character. Most of the guys on my team have great parents. But it’s also possible that coming from a tough family background can make you into an even stronger person. What’s your family like?”
I gave him a bit of information, but not the whole story. “We’re OK, I guess.”
He told me about his team, shared some hockey secrets, asked about my school, and touched on current affairs. Our discussion was very exciting for me, and I felt as if I were being brought into the inner workings of the local hockey community. Knowing about my success at school and my interest in academics, he played up his position as a teacher and let on that he was highly educated. And he immediately homed in on the potential issues that might be at play.
“I know what it’s like to be very smart and good at school while also playing sports. The other guys can sometimes make it hard on you. It can be a lonely place. I understand.”
By engaging me, adult to youth, as somebody who mattered, by listening intently to my every word without dismissing me or yelling at me, Graham instantly became somebody I thought I could talk to, somebody I wanted to talk to, somebody I respected and admired for the simple reason that he made me feel that I finally had a meaningful voice outside of the classroom. It was the first time my intellectual side had been respected and encouraged outside of school, in the real world. I didn’t have that at home. And all it took was this one conversation to make me feel good about myself.
I don’t remember things like what he was wearing or what we ate, the kind of things you think would be etched in my memory. I do remember looking down as he went on and on about me, breaking eye contact with him out of embarrassment, and seeing a stain on my hockey team jacket next to the team crest and worrying that he would see that stain and think I was a slob for having spilled milk on it earlier and not cleaning it properly.
Mostly, I remember getting up from the table and feeling almost dizzy, slightly removed from the situation while thinking that this couldn’t be happening. How lucky was I? How cool was this? It was amazing.
And of course, I had a long time to think about it because I walked home. It wouldn’t be right, he said, for us to be seen together. And he told me to keep our contact secret—something he would reiterate at each of our meetings.
I thought it had been one of the best days of my life.
WE CONTINUED TO meet at the same restaurant every few weeks or so for a few months.
Over time I became increasingly at ease discussing things with him. From answering with a simple “OK” when he asked about my relationship with my parents at our first meeting, I increasingly opened up when he later circled back to the issue. I slowly, gradually let him in on the isolation I was experiencing at home and divulged how difficult it was no longer having my best friend around all the time.
He would tell me that I was better than the rest of my teammates and that I deserved better coaching, coaching that respected both my physical skills and my brain. He would go on and on about hockey strategy, stressing that a goalie should know more than anybody else on the team about how the patterns of the game work because goalies have to participate actively in a team’s own defense while at the same time responding to the other team’s offense.
“You know, traditionally, goaltenders in minor hockey have been ignored when it comes to teaching hockey theory. Do your coaches teach systems of offense and defense?”
“Well, they run drills for us with the guys having to be in different places in different situations.”
“But do they give it an overall structure, something cohesive where everybody has certain fundamental responsibilities?”
“Not really.”
“You need to know what the other team is trying to do in your zone. And you need to know what your team is trying to do to defend that. There’s a reason for all of that positioning.”
“I think our guys are just trying to remember where the coaches want them to be.”
“Look, I appreciate the role of the goalie in a way others can’t. Because you’re smart, once you understand the patterns, the systems, you can use your head in connection with your talent to move far beyond others playing your position. I’m sure your coaches already recognize that. Maybe your guys just aren’t ready for systems, or surely they’d be teaching you how to play, wouldn’t they?”
He asked about my parents and my relationship with them. What were they like? Where did they come from? What were their interests? What had they done in their pasts? What were they doing now? Surely, given their backgrounds, they would understand that I needed to be challenged, and they were already encouraging my intellectual pursuits and supporting me in my athletic and academic efforts, weren’t they?
The seeds of doubt were sown. Who was there to teach me? Who understood me? Who was there to champion me? My parents? My coaches?
Graham asked me what I wanted to do with my life. Did I want to pursue hockey, or did I want to do something with my education? If it was hockey, he said, there would be no stopping me—provided I received the right coaching and training, and he could help me with that. If it was something else, he, a teacher, could also provide guidance as I worked toward university. But if it was a combination of the two, he, as both a leading figure in the hockey world and a teacher, was ideally situated to be my mentor.
I wanted to do both. I had always wanted to do both. I told Graham that my dad had only gone to Grade Eight and that I would be the first in our family to go to university. He would have heard the way I said it, the determination in my voice. He would have understood that I wanted to be different from my dad, better than my dad.
“My dad focused on hockey and look where that got him.”
And with that statement, without realizing it, I had crossed a line. I was now speaking disrespectfully about my own father to somebody outside the family, somebody who until very recently had been a complete stranger. The one thing Graham would most easily have learned about me and my relationships with my own family was that I wasn’t going to be like my dad. Graham instantly saw that as a way to connect to me, to bond with me.
Those seeds of doubt. Who was there to teach me? Who understood me? Who was there to champion me? After our meetings I would think long and hard about what he had said. He didn’t tell me that my parents were bad or that my coaches were bad. He left me to come to my own conclusions. He prompted me to ask myself what I wanted and how I might best achieve that. But before prompting me to ask myself those questions, he had already positioned himself as the answer to my dreams.
We increasingly discussed how I could best develop as both a player and a person. He now knew that I wanted to play varsity hockey at university, and there was no way I was ever going to change my mind about that, notwithstanding his position as a junior hockey scout. There were rumors of a new rule that would make those playing major junior hockey, the level of the teams for which Graham scouted, ineligible for NCAA university hockey in the United States (this rule was, in fact, adopted the next year), so he never pushed me to the Saskatoon Blades or the New Westminster Bruins or whoever else he may have been helping. Graham took great pride in steering players into what is now the Canadian Hockey League, but that was never on my radar.
“I understand you. You want to do what I wanted to do, exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to get a scholarship and play hockey in the States too, but my asthma got in the way. It’s smart. You get the best of both worlds. You’ll have your hockey and an education to fall back on. That education will always be there.”
“Graham, I’m not ever going to play in the NHL.”
“You