December 15, 2014 Issue

Pick of the Issue this week is Ben McGrath’s “The Ice Breaker,” a profile of Montreal Canadiens’ kinetic, charismatic, brilliant defenseman, P. K. Subban. I’m a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. But last year, when the Leafs collapsed in the final month of the regular season and missed the playoffs, I followed the Canadiens’ post-season exploits. Their triumphant series against the thuggish Bruins was, for me, the hockey highlight of the year. Subban was mesmerizing. He scored a goal I’ll never forget. McGrath describes it beautifully:

Yet it was a projectile from Subban’s howitzer that lingers in my mind as one of the enduring images of last spring’s playoffs. This was during Game Five of the Eastern Conference semifinal series between the Canadiens and their hated rivals the Bruins, in which Cherry had accused Subban of “poking the bear”—provoking Cherry’s former team with a low and possibly dangerous hit on the enforcer Shawn Thornton. After the first game, in which Subban scored two goals, including the overtime winner, a disturbing number of Boston fans had used the N-word on social media. (One tweet read, “Tied something for SUBBAN,” and was accompanied by an image of a noose.) And here, four games later, was Subban, occupying the point on the power play, so impatient for the puck that he began bouncing up and down on his skates, like a child without a care. (“He says, ‘Mom, when I’m playing, from my head to my toes, I don’t feel anything,’ ” Maria told me.) He even got airborne, just as a teammate was finally getting around to setting him up with a pass. Slow it down now, and watch carefully: Subban’s skate blades reëstablish contact with the ice a second before he one-times a laser beam into the upper right corner.

That “Slow it down now, and watch carefully: Subban’s skate blades reëstablish contact with the ice a second before he one-times a laser beam into the upper right corner” made me smile, as I mentally replayed Subban’s marvelous goal.