multimedia extravaganza triumph
Terpsichore and Tisiphone
2013-14 Edmonton Oilers: MacTavish, Hemsky.
Notes: Last night Twitter was freaking out at the news that MacT and 83 were due to hold a press conference. Today they did, it was as predictably great as any where a historically losing team has to tell the media to step off the grass. I had forgotten my killer attraction to the Oilers' webteam. Title is for the Muse of the dramatic chorus, and the Fury of vengeful destruction.
Warnings: Craig MacTavish's 1984; the Oilers' 2006-2013; entirely underplotted.
"That was a good job," MacTavish tells him, afterward.
Hemsky nods.
"I thought it went very well. You were serious, and the media were impressed." He is careful to phrase it this way: you did a good job, it worked on the media. If there's any flaw in the game today, it is that so often the media tees up the shot, and all a player has to do is walk though it. Naturally, as soon as he thinks that, MacTavish thinks about all the other problems in the game. Too fast with the vision of immortality at the horizon of polystyrene and high-performance fabrics, everyone training all the time and still thinking that there's only one way to measure success, the dissatisfaction he feels every morning at putting on his glasses. "Thank you."
"You are welcome," Hemsky nods. "Thank you."
"You don't need to thank me. It's my job to talk in press conferences. I mean, what else am I going to do these days?" He smiles to show that it is a joke. There is never a shortage of things for him to do: phone calls, emailing, meetings, keeping an eye on the travel schedule, figuring out what journalists what need to hear and calling them about that, remembering what fourth-liners need to hear and telling them that, calling Oklahoma, and texting under the table to let the kids know that he's there for them. "I cleared my morning for this." He wishes he could wave off Hemsky's concern, because he can always clear his schedule for talking down to journalists about his best player, but Hemsky hasn't expressed any concern at all. "That's why I'm here."
("I'm very nervous," Hemsky had told him, yesterday afternoon.
"You're, in fact, very dangerous," MacTavish answered. "It'll be fine, you'll see."
Hemsky had nodded the way that he did when he hadn't understood an English word and didn't like anyone knowing. It's not clear to MacTavish when this became a stall for time, a way for Hemsky to consider what he didn't like when someone told him, but Hemsky's always been better than he lets on. MacTavish doesn't blame him. Some days it seems like the Edmonton Journal won't rest until it has burned off a player. Hemsky is more amenable than Souray, and less exacting than Gilbert, who always knew exactly what he was worth until he didn't believe himself any more. MacTavish will admit that Penner was a problem of his own making, but at least he could fix his own mistakes. There's a reason that most of the former players for this team are not exactly on speaking terms with anyone in the front office much less ready to stand united with the general manager in front of the press.)
"I am always on your side," MacTavish says, sincerely. Everyone has gone away, even the media staff, and it's quiet now. He looks at his hands, and at the floor. Everywhere is very blue, and he remembers it all. The job is different this time, more talking, but in every way that matters, it's the same. He's here again and he will do what he knows best. "That's what I do." The only training he's ever gotten for this has been listening to front office guys and knowing that he wanted to hear something totally different than what they said. Toronto had more or less been an excuse for that, but he'd never left to go figure out what he was doing. Since he hadn't reflected at all on what was happening, he doesn't feel as though he learned anything. He would take time to think, but Lowe had kept calling. Hockey keeps itself busy, and it keeps him busy, but it's not hard.
Going out onto the ice isn't hard either, although he doesn't do that anymore. That might be the easiest thing there is, and he's brave enough to do it. He might even be sufficiently in-shape to do it. There are some things you have to let go. City to city, hockey was always there for him, the same eighty feet of space that he always had known. For years, it had been comfortable, until his world had shrunk down in Boston. MacTavish knows he has built a reputation as a thinker, but he went from eighty feet to ten feet: what wasn't there anymore had to go somewhere, and it ended up in his head. There are still faint millipedes of stitch-marks on his head and arms. He got the time to think, and he knew that he had to think. "I know you wanted to go to Ottawa" MacTavish starts, then stops. This isn't easy to talk about, but he feels he has to do it. He feels like he has to do everything: tell the journalists to lay off Hemsky, let Hemsky know that he is part of this team, work over the past. These things are not for forgetting, and he's never let himself out before.
Hemsky shakes his head. "No, no, I don't. I told that to everyone."
Everyone being no-one, of course, in Ales Hemsky's mind. No one had ever known, and no one had ever needed correcting that Hemsky really was staying. MacTavish remembers 2006 as well as he could be possibly expected to: better than Lowe, but worse than Pisani, who had looked haunted when MacTavish had seen him at SportChek, frozen and followed by a thousand ghosts. Pisani had told him, much later, that he remembered every moment of the run like a series of photographs, piled up in some room in his head, and they'd cascade out whenever he opened the door , and he'd have to think about -- the half-step in Ray Whitney's skating stride. Lowe and most of the city of Edmonton had gotten drunk. He doesn't exactly know what Hemsky did.
And isn't that funny now, that he doesn't know what the only other person who was on ice-level did that summer. Of course, in 2006, no one did know what the next seven years would be like, and he'd made no special effort to follow Hemsky in any particular way. If he's being true about it, he'd thought that Hemsky was the most likely to fly off, leave North America. That was an unduly cruel thing to think, he knows, and Hemsky would not do something like that, but he didn't know Hemsky that well.
Good Czechoslovak boy, like all those good Canadian boys.
He doesn't know Hemsky that well, really. He doesn't know what he did over this last summer, and he doesn't know what he thinks about much of anything, if he thinks anything at all. "You told that to Lowe."
Hemsky smiles, close-lipped. "I thought he should know."
MacTavish knows guilt well, and he doesn't feel it: Hemsky does think, and he tried to fix a problem, in his own inimitable way. That's true, and more than most players could say. "Probably. It just wasn't a good time." Which has nothing to do with Hemsky, who was in the middle of a very good contract and playing well, and had asked to meet with Lowe because he thought he might go to Ottawa in a fair trade, him for Heatley. It wasn't a good time for the rest of the organization, and while they were feeling rebuffed and rejected, Hemsky had walked right along, like it was easy. "It was good of you to try." Lowe told him about that, called up slurring, and promised to trip Heatley in the halls during the Olympic selection camp. They weren't speaking that frequently, so MacTavish doesn't know if Lowe ever did so; he suspects not, because no matter how bad Heatley might be at everything other than hockey, he's very good at hockey. That counts for more.
"I watched them in 2007. They tried very hard. Then I was hurt anyway."
MacTavish only narrowly doesn't put his hands on his hips. "What do you mean?" Honestly, he was in Toronto, and he wishes everyone would stop assuming that he tracked the insider gossip here. He had other things to do. He really does mean that, he isn't just saying it because he missed coaching. Coming back has been nice, but Edmonton's not the only city that he's been before, and while he never wanted to go work for the Rangers, he had liked New York enough.
"I was hurt, I was out for a season." Hemsky shrugs, as though this is all obvious. "I couldn't do anything so I stayed here in Edmonton. I don't think Ottawa would have been good."
"People get hurt, there's no shame in that." It's not exactly true: while everyone does get hurt at some point, there are rules about it, and the first one is that it hurt the team more than it hurt you. No matter how many hospitals he's been to, or old friends he's seen, MacTavish feels that this is still a good thing to think. Saying that makes everyone think about the rest of the team, and it's supposed to motivate them. MacTavish is never sure that it has, but he approves in principle of other people thinking more deeply. No one has ever run stairs in self-pity: everyone has done it when they get past their miserable whining and think about who will depend on them.
He knows shame better than that.
Hemsky leans, his hands in his pockets, like he's not sure what to say. This is probably the longest conversation they've ever had. There have been longer ones, but always with other people: agents and presidents who had things to say of their own. General managers aren't supposed to talk to players too much, unless there's a trade. Since Ottawa leapt at Ryan, they had been unpersuadable all summer, and where was Hemsky going to fit in St Louis? There's not going to be a trade.
That was probably what Hemsky wanted. Penner came, and then left again, and look what he got. MacTavish doesn't have to like him to know that he's a good friend, and that Hemsky has to have heard what it's like to win some silverware. Dallas isn't particularly astounding, but he'd talked to Horcoff enough. From the outside, it must look easy: trade good players to good teams and let them get lucky. Horcoff, who is the soul of patience in all things, at least pretended like he believed that line, because it was just a step in leaving. MacTavish doesn't know how to make it up to Hemsky. He's not so process-oriented as Horcoff, who is happiest with a 'to-accomplish' list in his hand, but they didn't get anything done. There's no way they can even pretend that there's a way up from here: they didn't trade Hemsky and he can't do his best somewhere else.
Hemsky's best isn't something to toss away, but MacTavish wishes they still didn't have it in Edmonton. Unfortunately, no matter how much he thinks about it, confronts himself with failure, the principal fact won't change: Hemsky is in Edmonton, and he's not leaving. Not unless they all get very lucky, and MacTavish believes in luck on the ice, which is a very small and distant thing right now. He does not believe in luck with trades, that somehow Patrik Elias will request a new linemate and they'll be ready to provide. A nice thought; after seven years, nothing looks so nice as it normally does. It cheers him, a little, but Hemsky's still standing here, pale and deserving of something more than what MacTavish can offer him.
"I know so. You did a good thing. Ottawa won't call but Detroit might."
"That's strange to think," MacTavish says, more sharply than he intended. It is also never going to happen. The Wings won't call, and never have. They're not so brilliant at drafting as they seem to think, but they certainly don't have anything to learn from anyone in Edmonton. They might have gotten lucky players, and stuck with them, but that's all. They don't have an extra four million hidden away, and they can't take Hemsky.
"Maybe. I like it."
MacTavish doesn't know if Hemsky means he likes calls from Detroit or staying in Edmonton. One of those is so immediately unpalatable that he rejects it right away: Hemsky is here, he must mean that. MacTavish is, he realizes, thinking about Hemsky like a general manager should, like the general manager of the Oilers should think about a player. For so long, he's been sure that Hemsky will get moved, and he's tried to convince twenty-eight other front offices, again and again, that Hemsky would look good in their sweaters. (He never talked to Calgary, because nothing except Christmas geese needed two overdeveloped wings.) Now, MacTavish finds himself in the position of trying to imagine Hemsky on his team, the thirtieth. It's not hard, since it has actually happened, he doesn't need a photograph modified, but he has never thought about it before. Hemsky was there, and Hemsky was supposed to be the one who got traded long ago, his time in Edmonton was always going to be just a city that got mentioned in a TSN report when he moved again.
That was the kind of player Hemsky was supposed to be. European wingers, and that's enough explanation. It's not unkind, it's just statistical: no one builds around a player like Hemsky, someone insubstantial and flighty-looking. Hemsky is not either of these things, and building a team is nothing like building a skyscraper. No one ever knows what they'll have, and no builder puts in windows before a foundation. Until now, he's always thought of it in some negative capacity: we don't have a solid defensive pair to build on, someone who can give us time to teach the younger guys not to cut inside. Everyone does dream of that, and he had never noticed that Hemsky was still there, a decorative feature that somehow became load-bearing, someone who just never went away and became part of the team accidentally.
He'll never be the core of the team, never be outspoken enough for anyone to remember a team as distinctively his, but devotion has its charms. MacTavish smiles.
Hemsky smiles back.
François Couperin's Les barricades mystérieuses for additional delectation.
2013-14 Edmonton Oilers: MacTavish, Hemsky.
Notes: Last night Twitter was freaking out at the news that MacT and 83 were due to hold a press conference. Today they did, it was as predictably great as any where a historically losing team has to tell the media to step off the grass. I had forgotten my killer attraction to the Oilers' webteam. Title is for the Muse of the dramatic chorus, and the Fury of vengeful destruction.
Warnings: Craig MacTavish's 1984; the Oilers' 2006-2013; entirely underplotted.
"That was a good job," MacTavish tells him, afterward.
Hemsky nods.
"I thought it went very well. You were serious, and the media were impressed." He is careful to phrase it this way: you did a good job, it worked on the media. If there's any flaw in the game today, it is that so often the media tees up the shot, and all a player has to do is walk though it. Naturally, as soon as he thinks that, MacTavish thinks about all the other problems in the game. Too fast with the vision of immortality at the horizon of polystyrene and high-performance fabrics, everyone training all the time and still thinking that there's only one way to measure success, the dissatisfaction he feels every morning at putting on his glasses. "Thank you."
"You are welcome," Hemsky nods. "Thank you."
"You don't need to thank me. It's my job to talk in press conferences. I mean, what else am I going to do these days?" He smiles to show that it is a joke. There is never a shortage of things for him to do: phone calls, emailing, meetings, keeping an eye on the travel schedule, figuring out what journalists what need to hear and calling them about that, remembering what fourth-liners need to hear and telling them that, calling Oklahoma, and texting under the table to let the kids know that he's there for them. "I cleared my morning for this." He wishes he could wave off Hemsky's concern, because he can always clear his schedule for talking down to journalists about his best player, but Hemsky hasn't expressed any concern at all. "That's why I'm here."
("I'm very nervous," Hemsky had told him, yesterday afternoon.
"You're, in fact, very dangerous," MacTavish answered. "It'll be fine, you'll see."
Hemsky had nodded the way that he did when he hadn't understood an English word and didn't like anyone knowing. It's not clear to MacTavish when this became a stall for time, a way for Hemsky to consider what he didn't like when someone told him, but Hemsky's always been better than he lets on. MacTavish doesn't blame him. Some days it seems like the Edmonton Journal won't rest until it has burned off a player. Hemsky is more amenable than Souray, and less exacting than Gilbert, who always knew exactly what he was worth until he didn't believe himself any more. MacTavish will admit that Penner was a problem of his own making, but at least he could fix his own mistakes. There's a reason that most of the former players for this team are not exactly on speaking terms with anyone in the front office much less ready to stand united with the general manager in front of the press.)
"I am always on your side," MacTavish says, sincerely. Everyone has gone away, even the media staff, and it's quiet now. He looks at his hands, and at the floor. Everywhere is very blue, and he remembers it all. The job is different this time, more talking, but in every way that matters, it's the same. He's here again and he will do what he knows best. "That's what I do." The only training he's ever gotten for this has been listening to front office guys and knowing that he wanted to hear something totally different than what they said. Toronto had more or less been an excuse for that, but he'd never left to go figure out what he was doing. Since he hadn't reflected at all on what was happening, he doesn't feel as though he learned anything. He would take time to think, but Lowe had kept calling. Hockey keeps itself busy, and it keeps him busy, but it's not hard.
Going out onto the ice isn't hard either, although he doesn't do that anymore. That might be the easiest thing there is, and he's brave enough to do it. He might even be sufficiently in-shape to do it. There are some things you have to let go. City to city, hockey was always there for him, the same eighty feet of space that he always had known. For years, it had been comfortable, until his world had shrunk down in Boston. MacTavish knows he has built a reputation as a thinker, but he went from eighty feet to ten feet: what wasn't there anymore had to go somewhere, and it ended up in his head. There are still faint millipedes of stitch-marks on his head and arms. He got the time to think, and he knew that he had to think. "I know you wanted to go to Ottawa" MacTavish starts, then stops. This isn't easy to talk about, but he feels he has to do it. He feels like he has to do everything: tell the journalists to lay off Hemsky, let Hemsky know that he is part of this team, work over the past. These things are not for forgetting, and he's never let himself out before.
Hemsky shakes his head. "No, no, I don't. I told that to everyone."
Everyone being no-one, of course, in Ales Hemsky's mind. No one had ever known, and no one had ever needed correcting that Hemsky really was staying. MacTavish remembers 2006 as well as he could be possibly expected to: better than Lowe, but worse than Pisani, who had looked haunted when MacTavish had seen him at SportChek, frozen and followed by a thousand ghosts. Pisani had told him, much later, that he remembered every moment of the run like a series of photographs, piled up in some room in his head, and they'd cascade out whenever he opened the door , and he'd have to think about -- the half-step in Ray Whitney's skating stride. Lowe and most of the city of Edmonton had gotten drunk. He doesn't exactly know what Hemsky did.
And isn't that funny now, that he doesn't know what the only other person who was on ice-level did that summer. Of course, in 2006, no one did know what the next seven years would be like, and he'd made no special effort to follow Hemsky in any particular way. If he's being true about it, he'd thought that Hemsky was the most likely to fly off, leave North America. That was an unduly cruel thing to think, he knows, and Hemsky would not do something like that, but he didn't know Hemsky that well.
Good Czechoslovak boy, like all those good Canadian boys.
He doesn't know Hemsky that well, really. He doesn't know what he did over this last summer, and he doesn't know what he thinks about much of anything, if he thinks anything at all. "You told that to Lowe."
Hemsky smiles, close-lipped. "I thought he should know."
MacTavish knows guilt well, and he doesn't feel it: Hemsky does think, and he tried to fix a problem, in his own inimitable way. That's true, and more than most players could say. "Probably. It just wasn't a good time." Which has nothing to do with Hemsky, who was in the middle of a very good contract and playing well, and had asked to meet with Lowe because he thought he might go to Ottawa in a fair trade, him for Heatley. It wasn't a good time for the rest of the organization, and while they were feeling rebuffed and rejected, Hemsky had walked right along, like it was easy. "It was good of you to try." Lowe told him about that, called up slurring, and promised to trip Heatley in the halls during the Olympic selection camp. They weren't speaking that frequently, so MacTavish doesn't know if Lowe ever did so; he suspects not, because no matter how bad Heatley might be at everything other than hockey, he's very good at hockey. That counts for more.
"I watched them in 2007. They tried very hard. Then I was hurt anyway."
MacTavish only narrowly doesn't put his hands on his hips. "What do you mean?" Honestly, he was in Toronto, and he wishes everyone would stop assuming that he tracked the insider gossip here. He had other things to do. He really does mean that, he isn't just saying it because he missed coaching. Coming back has been nice, but Edmonton's not the only city that he's been before, and while he never wanted to go work for the Rangers, he had liked New York enough.
"I was hurt, I was out for a season." Hemsky shrugs, as though this is all obvious. "I couldn't do anything so I stayed here in Edmonton. I don't think Ottawa would have been good."
"People get hurt, there's no shame in that." It's not exactly true: while everyone does get hurt at some point, there are rules about it, and the first one is that it hurt the team more than it hurt you. No matter how many hospitals he's been to, or old friends he's seen, MacTavish feels that this is still a good thing to think. Saying that makes everyone think about the rest of the team, and it's supposed to motivate them. MacTavish is never sure that it has, but he approves in principle of other people thinking more deeply. No one has ever run stairs in self-pity: everyone has done it when they get past their miserable whining and think about who will depend on them.
He knows shame better than that.
Hemsky leans, his hands in his pockets, like he's not sure what to say. This is probably the longest conversation they've ever had. There have been longer ones, but always with other people: agents and presidents who had things to say of their own. General managers aren't supposed to talk to players too much, unless there's a trade. Since Ottawa leapt at Ryan, they had been unpersuadable all summer, and where was Hemsky going to fit in St Louis? There's not going to be a trade.
That was probably what Hemsky wanted. Penner came, and then left again, and look what he got. MacTavish doesn't have to like him to know that he's a good friend, and that Hemsky has to have heard what it's like to win some silverware. Dallas isn't particularly astounding, but he'd talked to Horcoff enough. From the outside, it must look easy: trade good players to good teams and let them get lucky. Horcoff, who is the soul of patience in all things, at least pretended like he believed that line, because it was just a step in leaving. MacTavish doesn't know how to make it up to Hemsky. He's not so process-oriented as Horcoff, who is happiest with a 'to-accomplish' list in his hand, but they didn't get anything done. There's no way they can even pretend that there's a way up from here: they didn't trade Hemsky and he can't do his best somewhere else.
Hemsky's best isn't something to toss away, but MacTavish wishes they still didn't have it in Edmonton. Unfortunately, no matter how much he thinks about it, confronts himself with failure, the principal fact won't change: Hemsky is in Edmonton, and he's not leaving. Not unless they all get very lucky, and MacTavish believes in luck on the ice, which is a very small and distant thing right now. He does not believe in luck with trades, that somehow Patrik Elias will request a new linemate and they'll be ready to provide. A nice thought; after seven years, nothing looks so nice as it normally does. It cheers him, a little, but Hemsky's still standing here, pale and deserving of something more than what MacTavish can offer him.
"I know so. You did a good thing. Ottawa won't call but Detroit might."
"That's strange to think," MacTavish says, more sharply than he intended. It is also never going to happen. The Wings won't call, and never have. They're not so brilliant at drafting as they seem to think, but they certainly don't have anything to learn from anyone in Edmonton. They might have gotten lucky players, and stuck with them, but that's all. They don't have an extra four million hidden away, and they can't take Hemsky.
"Maybe. I like it."
MacTavish doesn't know if Hemsky means he likes calls from Detroit or staying in Edmonton. One of those is so immediately unpalatable that he rejects it right away: Hemsky is here, he must mean that. MacTavish is, he realizes, thinking about Hemsky like a general manager should, like the general manager of the Oilers should think about a player. For so long, he's been sure that Hemsky will get moved, and he's tried to convince twenty-eight other front offices, again and again, that Hemsky would look good in their sweaters. (He never talked to Calgary, because nothing except Christmas geese needed two overdeveloped wings.) Now, MacTavish finds himself in the position of trying to imagine Hemsky on his team, the thirtieth. It's not hard, since it has actually happened, he doesn't need a photograph modified, but he has never thought about it before. Hemsky was there, and Hemsky was supposed to be the one who got traded long ago, his time in Edmonton was always going to be just a city that got mentioned in a TSN report when he moved again.
That was the kind of player Hemsky was supposed to be. European wingers, and that's enough explanation. It's not unkind, it's just statistical: no one builds around a player like Hemsky, someone insubstantial and flighty-looking. Hemsky is not either of these things, and building a team is nothing like building a skyscraper. No one ever knows what they'll have, and no builder puts in windows before a foundation. Until now, he's always thought of it in some negative capacity: we don't have a solid defensive pair to build on, someone who can give us time to teach the younger guys not to cut inside. Everyone does dream of that, and he had never noticed that Hemsky was still there, a decorative feature that somehow became load-bearing, someone who just never went away and became part of the team accidentally.
He'll never be the core of the team, never be outspoken enough for anyone to remember a team as distinctively his, but devotion has its charms. MacTavish smiles.
Hemsky smiles back.
François Couperin's Les barricades mystérieuses for additional delectation.