G erry M cNeil: G oaltender Under Pressure

1. Gerry McNeil: Goaltender Under Pressure David McNeil

2. Preface When Game Seven of the 1954 Stanley Cup Finals between the Montreal Canadiens and the Detroit Red Wings went into “sudden death” overtime, most of the players involved felt a familiar mix of expectant dread and exhilaration. Detroit had won the Cup four years earlier in a seventh game against the Rangers that had also gone into overtime. On three occasions since, the Red Wings and Canadiens had needed extra time to decide a playoff game, the most recent being only a few nights before.

3. When Montreal lost the Cup to the Leafs in ‘51 all five games in the series went into “sudden death,” and the Canadiens had two overtime wins against Boston–once at the Garden in the ‘52 Semi-Final and again in the clinching game of the ‘53 Final. Gerry McNeil, the Hab goalie for Game Seven in ‘54, could take little solace in knowing that his stellar play had brought his team back from a 3–1 deficit.

4. Few would remember the comeback, but everyone would remember the winning goal. Being on the brink of victory or defeat and knowing that the smallest of margins would probably determine the outcome only added to the intensity.

5. The pressures on goalies in the NHL of the early 1950s was unlike anything we know today. Only one goalie dressed for each game, so a substitution would only occur in the case of a severe injury. Goalies did not wear face-masks and were expected to take the odd puck off a cheek. There was no hiding a sub-par performance or escaping the tension of the situation.

6. Years later McNeil would describe the feeling of losing that Game Seven on a fluky overtime goal: “It’s like the end of the world!”1 He didn’t know it then, but it would be his last NHL playoff game. Another thing he didn’t know was that no other goalie in NHL history could say that he had played in three overtime Cup-winning games. What he did know on that April night in 1954 was that there was a world of difference between victory and defeat, between playing in front of a record-breaking crowd at the Olympia and where he had come from a little over ten years before. 1. Dick Irvin, Jr., The Habs: An Oral History of the Montreal Canadiens, 1940-1980 (Toronto: M&S, 1992), 111.

7. This book pulls together two purposes. First, it tells the story of Gerry McNeil’s short but remarkable NHL career, wedged as it is between that of two Hall of Famers (Bill Durnan and Jacques Plante). Second, it focuses on certain aspects of sports media from the 1940s and 50s, and links these to the development of major sports as a modern spectacle. The outline of the story follows a familiar pattern.

8. Chapter 1 chronicles McNeil’s long “understudy” role from his first NHL training camp in 1943 to his first chance at “big time” hockey in ‘47. The second recalls on how he is called up to replace an injured Durnan at the end of the 1950 season and how he preserves the latter’s last Vezina Trophy win. Chapter 3 traces his incredible streak of 218 minutes 42 seconds of shutout play against the best team of the time–the Detroit Red Wings.

9. The climax of McNeil’s spectacular rise is the focusof Chapter 4--the ‘51 Finals when every game goes into overtime, a rise that ends with Bill Barilko’s famous goal captured by Nat Turofsky’s equally famous photo. Chapter 5 deals with certain injuries and problems that McNeil, and other goalies, had to play through. In a time when concussions were not monitored as they are today, there was pressure on all players to shake off a bit of dizziness as if it were a bruise.

10. McNeil’s comeback, after pulling himself in the Semi-Final, to win the Stanley Cup in ‘53 is the subject of Chapter 6. Chapter 7 looks at another playoff comeback and his subsequent attempts to retire from professional hockey. Nervous tension had exacted a cost, and it was time to plan a retreat back to a normal life. The last Chapter traces the denouement of McNeil’s post-NHL life, and the new challenges that presented themselves.

11. Parallel to this story is an analysis of a moment in the history of sports media, specifically as it relates to Gerry McNeil’s career but with an eye on more general elements. The early 1950s saw photography becoming part of popular culture via the magazine; McNeil’s full-page color portrait was featured in Sport magazine’s article on NHL goalies in February 1951 (see cover illustration). Canadians would gain access to the moving image with television in the fall of ’52 when the French CBC aired its first broadcast from Montreal; McNeil is the second player to be seen in the opening sequence after Gordie Howe. McNeil’s presence in this moment of history is palpable if subtle. First NHL Game on CBC Television

12. Chapter 1 contains commentary on the private and public sources upon which I have drawn, both photos and discourse. Since Gerry McNeil was my father I had access to a personal family history, much of it oral, that informs the public record as it exists in contemporary journalism and subsequent histories. Chapter 2 contains reflections on the aesthetics of sports photography–what we look for and what we marvel at. Skill and chance play essential roles. Time and nostalgia color our reactions. Chapter 3 looks at a specific photo in some detail and examines its decorative and cultural functions as a private artifact. Chapter 4 analyzes some of the consequences that affected my father from being associated with Nat Turofsky’s famous picture of Barilko’s goal, a very public artifact.

13. It also traces the beginnings of the popular sports magazine, Sport followed by Sports Illustrated with their pictorial formats. Chapter 5 shifts to the moving image. As well as the beginning of televised games, I examine a short publicity film featuring McNeil and some other Habs on a fishing trip. That certain famous photos served as points of departure for subsequent motion pictures is also discussed in Chapter 5.

14. Chapter 6 deals with the spontaneous versus the expected in the picture(s) of victory. The more negative aspects of major sport as cultural spectacle are raised in Chapter 8, and these involve commercial interests, mechanical responses, and self-consuming gawking.

15. This Chapter also contains a review of writing on hockey insofar as it celebrates the game and may be seen in terms of MacAloon’s idea of the festival surrounding a sport or sporting event. The spectacle is not restricted to visual representation; in fact, its aural aspects are critical factors. The familiar radio voices of Foster Hewitt and René Lecavalier were part of the popular imagination long before the moving image; however, we now get to feast on the spectacle via digital technology.

16. Unlike other Hab goalies whose Hall of Fame stature makes it difficult to see beyond their statistics and fame (already well known), I refer to Patrick Roy, Ken Dryden, and Jacques Plante (one could also add Bill Durnan and George Vezina), Gerry McNeil is virtually unknown. His story, with all the multimedia accoutrements, can be enjoyed and the general significances noted without the noise of celebrity.

17. The link between the hockey career and the slice of sports photography analyzed here has to do with depth-of-field and a bygone era. As mentioned, the biographical subject is my father; my reconstruction of his hockey life is marked by points of reflection that were developed in the calm dusk of our adult relationship.

18. Time for a hundred visions and revisions a half-century after the fact. At times my focus is sharp and detailed; at times the angle gets as wide as my lens permits. The illusions, however, are always meant to instruct and delight.