For several years now, the expression “Easter basket” has taken on a meaning for me that has nothing to do with eggs or cocoa. With family or friends, after brunch, there is usually someone to suggest a walk, and then why not go stretch in the first April sun on a basketball court? It was not lacking again this year, and we found ourselves dribbling like devils in a secondary school playground, three adults against three youngsters, including a follower of Bennedict Mathurin recruited on the spot.
It is no longer uncommon to see twelve-year-old kids mastering, with nonchalant dexterity coupled with unconscious arrogance, a technique such as the “change of hand dribbling between the legs”, and that gives the kind of game where the oldest, round eyes and hanging tongue, find themselves facing a deficit of a dozen points after a quarter of an hour of play.
It reminded me of the day when, recovering from an atrocious boiled vodka with two or three CEGEP friends, we went to treat our hangover in the park with a soccer ball. There, little guys who had Italian blood in their veins and half our age stunned us by dribbling in our legs for part of the afternoon to inflict a mortifying beating on us.
But at Easter this year, I was quite happy to lose against such a beautiful youth. Sublimated by pedagogy, our defeat seemed acceptable, the sacrifice of the pride of grown-ups to the renewal of generations. I just wish we had shoved them a few more baskets. Following a hard contact, I sprawled on the abrasive asphalt, and when I got up, I sported on my grated palms two beautiful stigmata of the crucified.
I happen to like to lose. I’m too adept at putting myself in the opponent’s shoes to have that enviable killer instinct that professional sports celebrates. When sweat, blood, tears and 110% aren’t enough, losing with grace sets the true champion apart. But I note that on the ground – all the grounds, from the ice rinks of America to the turf of the Olympic stadiums -, the famous and untranslatable maxim of the mythical Vince Lombardi (” Winning is not everything; it’s the only thing “) is always a figure of revealed truth.
I think of the Canadian women’s funeral faces after their loss to the Americans in the final of the Women’s World Cup last Sunday. “When you receive this silver medal, said captain Marie-Philip Poulin, it’s something that stays with you. Every time you train, when you get on the ice, you remember it…” To hear him, this second place was more of a shameful stigma than a consolation prize.
It must be said that on this scene of women’s hockey, where two dominant powers, Canada and the United States, have exchanged the world title for twenty years and where the other countries are non-existent, a second place can, logically, pass for an irrevocable defeat.
In 2019, when the Boston Bruins reached the Stanley Cup Finals for the third time in nine years, I didn’t hesitate to betray my favorite team to favor the Saint Louis Blues. My fan heart can be as cold as a computer, and my math was simple: At the turn of the 1970s, the Blues, going to hell for an expansion division populated by late-thirties and strangers in the battalion, had appeared in three consecutive finals and had been massacred at the total count of twelve victories to zero. Half a century had now passed, and I thought the Blues deserved a few sips of Mumm from a grail in the shape of a big can.
And then, Boston had won in 2011, so each in turn. After the Bruins escaped Game 7 of the Finals, I was surprised by the intensity of the pain expressed by their captain, Patrice Bergeron, this guy who, 500 kilometers from Montreal, is today what closest to a Carbo and a Gainey. Yes, that same Bergyqui, against the Blackhawks in 2013, still in the Cup final, was playing with a punctured lung, a fractured rib, torn rib cartilage and a dislocated shoulder. Did you say “upper body injury”?
But according to the words he made in his team’s locker room in June 2019, losing in the final hurt even more. “A slap in the face, he told the TVA Sports reporter who came to listen to the losers. You can’t get any closer than that to the Stanley Cup. They just killed my dream of retouching this trophy…”
Four years passed, until that Easter day when, back home, tapping on my phone, I learned that the Bruins, under the leadership of Captain Bergeron, had broken the record for the most wins in one season, a record that they then shattered by planting the Capitals of Ovechkin before coming to knock out the Canadiens at the Bell Center without ever having lifted their foot. I found the welcome that the local scribes gave to this Quebecer whose jersey bears the C of the formation which has just experienced the best season in the history of the NHL rather lukewarm.
All that remains is to defy all these stories of pressure and curse, to imitate the Canadian of 1977 and to win the Stanley after flying over the regular season at an unprecedented altitude. Because those Bruins can’t lose.
Going into the playoffs, they won 3-1 as expected. As of this writing, they are being picked up 3-6 by the Panthers. It’s going to be a long spring.