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game.
    â€œBecause I let in a bad goal,” I said.
    â€œGuess again.”
    â€œBecause I smashed my stick?”
    â€œYou’re getting close,” Coach said. “I pulled you because you showed how much you were hurt. JP, in the goaltending business you never—ever—show how much you’re hurt. Get up, shut up, and stop the next shot.”
    *   *   *
    About a half hour after our exhibition win over the Rangers I was walking across the rink parking lot to our bus when Marco Indinacci caught up with me. “Good game, Ace, except for that last goal,” he said. “Hey, you asked me when I was going to retire,” Marco said. “What about you? When you going to hang up the tools of ignorance?”
    â€œFour or five seasons,” I said. “One more contract.”
    â€œDon’t stay too long, JP,” my old coach said. “There aren’t many happy endings in the NHL.”
    *   *   *
    It was after 2 a.m. when the bus pulled up to the Château Frontenac. Packy told us we had practice at Le Colisee from eleven to noon.
    I’m an early riser, which is a good thing if you want to get one of the few copies of the Toronto Globe and Mail at the Frontenac’s front desk. I think breakfast with the sports section is one of life’s minor pleasures. I was reading an NHL Notes column while finishing my coffee when I saw the news that, in the aftermath of the Rangers’ loss to us, New York had called up my old UVM teammate Gaston Deveau. I knew most NHL GMs thought Deveau was too small—he’s about five feet nine, 160 pounds—to play in the the Show. So Gaston went overseas and for six seasons tore up Europe like the plague. The Rangers signed him two years ago but buried him in the minors. I was happy he’d get his first shot at the bigs.
    *   *   *
    We coasted through practice. Guys were more interested in what restaurants and clubs they’d hit than in Packy’s penalty-kill and power-play drills. Bruno Govoni tried to round up a party to hit a suburban strip club. He asked Rex Conway to go but our Christian right winger said he wasn’t a big fan of strip clubs because, as Rex put it, “Like Moses ye shall see the Promised Land but ye shall not enter.” About once a year Rex gets off a good line. I figured that would about do it for the season.
    *   *   *
    You’d need three weeks to hit all the great restaurants in Quebec City. Some of the guys went to Le Continental or Aux Anciens Canadiens, both across the street from the Frontenac. But Cam and I had been to those places in our early days when Quebec City had an NHL team, the Nordiques. That team moved to Denver, where it’s now the Colorado Avalanche. I wanted to try someplace new, so Cam, Luther Brown, and I went to Le Saint-Amour on rue Ste-Ursule, also an easy walk from the hotel. I had the caribou steak grilled with wild berries and served with poached pears in red wine. Cam ordered a château-bottled Bordeaux— “Château de Deuxième Hypothèque,” Cam said to the waiter while pointing to what must have been the most expensive wine on the list. The waiter laughed. “Château de Second Mortgage,” Cam translated for us. He wasn’t kidding. Our bill looked like the tote board at Saratoga. Cam paid.
    Luther and I like jazz, so I suggested we catch the first set at L’Emprise, a jazz bar in the Hotel Clarendon. Cam was surprised there was no cover charge or minimum. He laughed at the sign on the door: “Consumption Obligatoire.”
    We got the last three seats at the narrow bar that borders three sides of the small stage. The group that night was the Quintette Joelle Clarisse. The woman I assumed was Joelle—a striking young blonde in a black sheath dress—was the vocalist, and four young guys were on piano, drums, bass, and tenor sax.
    Joelle