Demystifying a legend

Reviewed by Dave Stubbs (Montreal Gazette, March 10, 2008)

Demystifying a legend

Randall Maggs's book on the great Terry Sawchuk tells the story of a man who achieved greatness despite being tortured by demons for most of his life 

DAVE STUBBS, The Gazette, Montreal - Monday, March 10, 2008

Randall Maggs still recalls this walk to class in Lachine: he was in the third grade in 1952, and when he tore open his new pack of hockey cards, he found himself staring straight into the face of NHL magic.

"The top card was Terry Sawchuk," Maggs remembers. "Sawchuk was the guy you wanted more than anybody else, and there he was, staring out at me, a sheen of bubblegum dust over him.

"It was the only card I remember getting, and it was one of the electric moments of my life."

It has taken Maggs a half-century to revisit this hero of his youth. But the tribute the Newfoundland poet and university professor now pays Sawchuk, a dark and brooding pioneer of Original Six goaltending, is as stirring as it is unique in hockey literature.
Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems (Brick Books, $20) is the product of 10 years of Maggs's research, interviewing and writing. Each of the dozens of short poems is a revelation; together, they are a compelling journey through the career and life of one of hockey's greatest talents and most tortured souls.

Sawchuk won four Stanley Cups and four Vézina trophies during an NHL career that spanned three decades and saw him wear five uniforms over 971 games. He still leads the league with 103 regular-season shutouts, though that "unbreakable" record is on the cusp of rewrite, New Jersey's Martin Brodeur idling at 96.

Sadly, Sawchuk is better remembered for the demons he battled with little success - a profoundly sad childhood that bled into an adult life of eating disorders, alcoholism, infidelity, spousal abuse and violent mood swings. He died on May 31, 1970 at age 40, killed by clots in his blood which developed after a sodden fight he had provoked with former teammate Ron Stewart a month earlier.

The book is much more than the study of a single man. It is a walk back to another time both pure and blemished and into a game much different than what we watch today. And it's a wonderful celebration of maskless, thinly padded goalers who wore barefaced grimaces of pain, even fear, with their bruises that lasted into the summer.

"We skated with these guys. Everybody did," says Maggs, whose brother, Darryl, played 135 NHL and 402 World Hockey Association games from 1971-80.
"The goalies of the day, and in particular Sawchuk, were so bloody heroic. They revolutionized the game."

Maggs never really put down roots, his father a career military man. The author recalls tuning in NHL radio broadcasts on the prairies, the boys adoring the Canadiens as much as their dad despised them.

"He was a big Detroit fan," Maggs says of his father. "If Montreal was winning, he'd get quieter and quieter. And if Detroit lost, he'd be up and out the door into the barn, so devastated that you wouldn't see him 'till morning."

Maggs saw his first NHL game at the Forum in 1952, future Canadiens Hall of Famer Gump Worsley in goal for the Rangers.

"Gump's net got knocked off its moorings, the puck went up to the other end, and Worsley just swung the net around and shoved it up against the boards," he says.
"Nobody saw this except for the fans, who were screaming until the referee turned around to see Worsley standing there innocently, his net facing the boards."

Maggs played hockey while living in Winnipeg, acutely aware the suburban rinks on which he skated were those of Sawchuk's youth.

Touring a book of his poetry in the mid-1990s, he glanced up at a Saskatchewan grain elevator and saw the town's name: Floral. He was passing through the birthplace of Red Wings icon Gordie Howe.

"It was like getting hit between the eyes with a ball peen hammer," Maggs says. "I started working on poems one at a time."

Through contacts, Darryl put him in touch with many of Sawchuk's contemporaries and the journalists who covered the goalie's career, their recollections providing vivid insight into his personality and achievements.

Of special note in the book are Maggs's talks with former Red Wings teammate Gary Bergman and the late referee Red Storey, who, after a full afternoon, kept sitting him back down for just one more tale.

"It is trying to deal with where the truth lays, even if you can't find it," Maggs says of piecing together a legend's life from many sources. "It's a mythology that's been created. You may not have exactly what happened, but you're trying to get at the truth of the situation. ...

"Sawchuk had that typical western and maybe Canadian demeanour where, somehow, to speak about your problems is weakness. And he had all kinds of weaknesses."
If his book is one about a necessary courage, Maggs didn't plan it that way. He embraces that theme, however, as he considers this also a work about concealment.
"Am I trying to splay Sawchuk on the wall to show people the things he didn't want them to see?" he asks. "All I can do is show the things people showed me, and let them draw their own conclusions.

"This is not about what Sawchuk became at the end, but why. He's such a complex character. I think he had a really strong self-destructive sense and I think the position he played really stressed his nature."

Maggs admits he grew a little protective of his subject as the book evolved. Now, as the Devils' Martin Brodeur closes on a record that turned 38 last month, the author watches the nightly sports highlights cheering not for, but against a goalie.

"I watch until I see the first puck get past Brodeur," he says, nevertheless pleased that the pursuit by the Devils star is bringing Sawchuk's legend to a new generation of fans.
"New Jersey beat Toronto 4-1 not long ago, and I didn't give a (expletive) as long as the Leafs got one."