6 Haunted by Bill Spunska Roy MacGregor’s The Last Season

Small Town Gothic

Felix Batterinski and Bill Spunska are both big hard-hitting defensemen from Polish-immigrant families. They both start playing in small northern towns and achieve success greater than their more skilled peers because of their competitive drive. Bill’s hockey success, as we saw in chapter 4, is equated with his acquiring Canadian identity. Felix, too, has a brief moment as a Canadian hero—but the briefness of the moment points to the ironic way in which the echoes between Bill and Felix occur throughout The Last Season.

Take the novel’s portrayal of Felix’s small town roots. The small towns that figure in the hockey myth tend to descend from the one depicted (and gently made fun of) by Stephen Leacock. “Mariposa,” he writes in the Preface to Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, is based on real towns all across Canada, where there are “the same square streets and the same maple trees and the same churches and hotels, and everywhere the sunshine of the land of hope” (1994, x). Combined with the northern environment, such towns provide the spiritual heart of hockey—the corner rink—as well as the set of values popularly attributed to both hockey players and Canadians, that “healthy, hearty, virtuous” race described by Robert Grant Haliburton in 1869 and further defined in 1902 by Ralph Connor, with his portrayal of muscular Christian hockey players in Glengarry School Days. Roch Carrier’s Ste. Justine, as we saw in the last chapter, evokes similar characteristics in a Québec context.

The small northern town from which Felix Batterinski comes, however, is far from a “land of hope.” Pomerania, as Matt Keening puts it in the excerpt that begins The Last Season, is “where a couple of hundred beaten Poles came following their failed revolution of 1863. And here they remained defeated. The local economy is simple and double-edged, lumbering or welfare, each compensating the other. Opportunity is equally simple: it lies elsewhere” (MacGregor 2012, 9). Beyond its poverty and lack of economic opportunities, Pomerania is described as plagued by ethnic division (Irish versus Polish), violence, drinking, sexism, and superstition. At the beginning of the novel, Felix has already had to move to a larger town, Vernon, to play midget hockey. When he returns to Pomerania he is shocked by the difference: “Vernon had a covered arena with artificial ice; Pomerania had an outdoor rink, ice pebbles and spring muck” (18). Felix feels no nostalgia for the old outdoor rink. Instead, the lack of amenities reinforces for him how impoverished and backwards Pomerania is. “Here it was dark and lonely and threatening,” he says, “like a wolf might burst out of the bush at any corner. In Vernon, coming home from a late practice, it was like moving in perpetual daylight.… But here, here there was nothing” (38).

The Last Season paints a particularly grim portrait of the northern climate of Pomerania. Rather than being associated with a healthy and virtue-inspiring outdoor life, the climate is associated with isolation and lack of opportunity. When Felix returns at age eighteen, for example, he has a particularly stark impression of the place: “I looked around Pomerania and saw water to haul and wood to chop, freezing all winter, slapping flies all summer, rotting turnips and soft carrots and wizened-up potatoes from February on, disaster when you missed your moose” (141). He goes on to observe that the summer economy is mainly about “American tourists and camper trailers” and “rich, blond-haired kids” passing through on their way to summer camps in Algonquin Park (141). He does build muscle that summer helping his father work in the bush, but this means enduring mosquitoes that were “like a second shirt” (142). He tries to help his father with the live bait business that provides him with “four out of every five dollars” each year, but even that is thwarted by his father’s self-sabotaging attachment to Batcha, the second wife of Batterinski’s late grandfather, who objects to the sound of customers’ cars coming down the Batterinski road (142–45). Batcha, as we’ll see, is something like the tutelary spirit of the place.

McGregor seems particularly attuned to the class divisions in a small town. As I pointed out in my analyses of Ralph Connor and Scott Young, poverty in the small towns of the hockey myth tends to be genteel; the emphasis, instead, is on social unity and how every boy can become a Canadian man through hockey. Pomerania, however, is akin to the impoverished neighbourhoods from which the protagonists in Margaret Laurence or Alice Munro tend to come. Like a protagonist in Munro or Laurence, Felix is driven to succeed by his family’s poverty, and his choice of hockey is dictated by what seems available (he doesn’t show any special love for the game). An early episode has Tom Powers, the captain of the midget team (for players aged sixteen and seventeen), making fun of Batterinski’s ragged underwear. As a result, at the first team practice, in a scene reminiscent of Bill Spunska and many other sport literature heroes, Batterinski devastates the prima donna captain with a body check—thus hinting, among other things, at the source of his intense drive to succeed.

The Violent Drive to Succeed

The poverty of the Batterinski family is one source for Felix’s determination to succeed as a hockey player. Yet, as the description above suggests, everybody in Pomerania is poor—including Felix’s equally talented friend Danny Shannon. What distinguishes Felix from Danny?

The Last Season doesn’t answer the question definitively. It does, however, offer evocative clues. One has to do with Felix’s embarrassment about his father’s backcountry, Polish-inflected speech—how he says “dem” for “them” and “tink” for “think” (13). Felix associates hockey success with erasing these marks of difference from his identity. Another hint has to do with his self-consciousness about his pimples. The novel’s first section emphasizes Felix’s feelings of sexual inadequacy and ends with an episode in which he, Danny, and two other teammates sneak into the Vernon arena to have sex with a girl named Maureen. Maureen receives the other boys favourably but rejects Felix (68). Felix responds with fury. He stalks off alone and, still in a rage, trashes a parked car, after which he feels “quiet and calm” (70).

The difference between Danny and Felix is summed up by their coach, Sugar Bowles. Both Danny and Felix have talent, he explains, but only Felix “want[s] it” enough to make it (58). Ironically, Danny’s lack of desire is connected to how well he succeeds in the limited world of Pomerania. Danny has what Felix’s father calls “the damn sneaky Irish charm” (18). He is a popular teenager, a partier and self-styled lady’s man, who “became the centre, no matter where he was” (19). He succeeds at courting a girl named Lucy Dumbrowski, quits school at sixteen, and gets married. While Felix is rising through the hockey ranks, Danny has two children with Lucy, works at the local mill, and rises to the position of foreman. By this point he has become the classic big fish in a little pond—literally big, in the case of his weight, which balloons from his drinking and overeating.

In later years Felix believes that Danny peaked too soon, at thirteen instead of thirty: “All that curly hair, nice clear skin, all that charm, the big smile, the great walk … what happened to it?” (107). Sugar believes that the root of Danny’s behaviour is fear. The text suggests that each of these explanations has some truth in it. Because Danny gets attention, status, and sex so easily from his “Irish charm,” he doesn’t need to strive for other success. Yet Danny’s claim to “care less” about anything beyond Pomerania is clearly a defense mechanism (141). There is a telling moment when Felix returns in 1976, at the height of his career, and Danny has reverted to using the word “dem.” By this point, Felix understands, Danny is in a state that is “[as] bad as Poppa” (261).

The Last Season gives both negative and positive explanations for Felix’s competitive drive. Partly, the text suggests, he is driven by his sense of being on “the edge” of an already marginal community. Partly, though, he is egged on by the positive reinforcement he receives. After he crushes a small Parry Sound winger, then pummels the larger player who tries to come to the winger’s defense, he is aware of the spectators who become “[silent] with admiration” (29). Later, Sugar Bowles says that his actions “turned [the game] around for us” (31). Sugar tells Felix he could make the NHL if he maximized his talent for rough play. If he does this, Sugar says, “you won’t have kids dreaming about you … but you sure as shit’ll have the general managers” (58).

A similar combination of negative and positive explanation is described by one of the NHL’s most famous enforcers, Dave “The Hammer” Schultz, who is mentioned in The Last Season as a teammate of Batterinski’s on the Philadelphia Flyers. Schultz describes how he grew up in rural Saskatchewan “on the thin edge of poverty,” a timid boy, not good at school, who was too shy as a teenager to date girls (Schultz 1981, 23, 28). Hockey provided “a sense of accomplishment” (29). Because he had talent, he was channeled into the junior system. By the time he got to Major Junior, he thought of himself as a fast-skating winger who could score goals. He had never, until this point, had a fight. Then one night a brawl broke out and before he could get out of the way an opposing player knocked him out with a punch. Both he and the opposing player got five minutes for fighting. This taught him “the jungle law of hockey,” which was that he would not be able to survive as a “pacifist” (31).

After his introduction to hockey’s “law of the jungle,” Schultz became a fighter step by step. First, he began to initiate fights in junior. The reaction he received made him realize “that goal-scorers weren’t the only ones to get recognition” (35). Then he was drafted in the fifth round by the Philadelphia Flyers. As a low draft pick, he needed a way to distinguish himself from other aspiring players to make the NHL. Fighting and intimidation turned out to be his ticket. While in the ECHL, he began “to develop a rational frame of reference for such activity,” partly based on the fact that his coaches approved and partly based on the attention it brought him (36). Almost overnight, fighting made him “a celebrity” (37). The adulation he received encouraged him to fight more; and as fans, media, and coaches began to expect him to fight, he felt he had “no choice but to oblige them” (38). He moved up to the AHL in 1970–71, where “my coaches encouraged the bad guy image I was projecting because they felt it was good for the team—I protected the small players—and it was good box office” (39). He set the AHL single season penalty record, and was rewarded with a promotion to the NHL, where, in 1974–75, he set the NHL single season penalty record that still stands today (472 penalty minutes).

The real-life Schultz and the fictional Batterinski, then, have similar outward motivations: both want to escape impoverished environments, and both receive positive reinforcement for their behaviour. More than outward motivation is required to become a goon, however. The mystery of characters like Batterinski and Schultz is not just about what drives them to compete so hard—Bill Spunska, after all, competes hard—but what drives them to employ extreme violence. The Last Season implies that Felix has inner urges that can’t be accounted for by the outward circumstances of his life. Take, for example, his need to arrive at the rink first: “It was not a matter of trying to be first. I had to be first” (21). The italicized “had” suggests a compulsion in Felix. Contrast this with how Scrubs on Skates associates Bill Spunska’s getting to the rink first with his sterling personal character. Bill “tries hard” but Felix “has to.”

Felix’s inner urges respond to hard physical contact—especially fighting. The first Parry Sound incident is preceded by him being embarrassed by Bobby Orr. Sugar Bowles benches him until his need to hit something becomes “[bad]” and, when he gets back on the ice, he immediately crushes the smaller player, after which he feels “fine” (MacGregor 2012, 15). The parallels with sexual frustration and release are, I think, pretty obvious. The text also implies that when he fights, Felix enters a state of relaxed alertness akin to the athlete’s Holy Grail, The Zone:

In a fight, I relaxed. I could sit in the dressing room in the hours before a game and twitch so bad sometimes a foot would jump right off the floor. But when my defenseman charged I was aware even of my own breathing. He came in flailing, but to me it was like watching someone swim toward me doing the crawl. (30)

Even late in his career, in Finland, when he is filled with doubts about many aspects of his career, Batterinski experiences calmness and a heightened sense of being alive during hits and fights (see 111 and 183).

Felix’s psychological response implies that a deep, largely unconscious need is satisfied by the violence. This suggests that violence, for him, has a purpose beyond having a career and winning hockey games. Is that purpose a sinister one?

Interestingly, Dave Schultz reports a psychological response to fighting that is similar to the one experienced by Felix. In the run up to his first real fight, he describes feeling “a hostile form of ecstasy” which continues during the fight itself. “To be honest,” he writes, “the sensation of my knuckles colliding with his cheek made me want to jump for joy” (Schultz 1981, 34). Later he describes how the adrenaline rush of hard physical contact leads to a desire to fight, which in turn makes the adrenaline rush even stronger:

By the time we collided my juices were flowing very fast. As we parted from the original collision I realized that I wanted to pick this guy apart and I started swinging.… I was on a terrific high, psychologically, and felt just as strong physically. Once I started landing the punches to his head my nervousness dissipated. (36)

Though Schultz goes on to characterize the mental state he gets in during a fight as “craziness,” the overall features of what he describes are similar to MacGregor’s descriptions of Batterinski. In both cases, fighting creates a sense of power that is connected to unconscious forces over which the players have only partial control. Schultz makes this explicit when he writes that the feeling he got made him feel like “the Incredible Hulk” (36).

The psychological responses of Schultz and Batterinski hint at an important aspect of the debate about violence in hockey. The literature about the evolution of combat sports tends to contain two quite distinct theories. One theory, perhaps most influentially articulated by Norbert Elias in The Civilizing Process, sees in the evolution of sports like hockey, football, and boxing a gradual development of rules that reflected the imperatives of a more civil society. Early combat sports like jousting were extremely violent, often leading to fatalities, but, as sports developed, codes of conduct were introduced to “restrain” the competition, so that victory became less dependent on “direct physical force.” In this evolutionary process, Elias sees a parallel to the evolution of a social order less dependent on raw violence for its maintenance and more dependent on “civilizing” structures like the rule of law (Elias 2000, 157–58).

In opposition to this theory is the claim made by theorists like Jean-Marie Brohm that sports are a way of perpetuating, by other means, the violent underpinnings of Western society. According to Brohm, sports are training grounds in the core values of patriarchal capitalism, in which players and spectators both are conditioned to be consumers and capitalists, with the emphases on virility, symbolic and physical violence, chauvinism, racism, and sexism that go along with this (Brohm 1978, 15). Michael Novak (1988) clearly encountered versions of this critique as he wrote The Joy of Sports, because at one point he feels the need to defend his love of violent sports. “Say, if you like, that men ought to be less primitive, less violent, less mesmerized by pain and injury,” he writes. “Say, if you like, that football dramatizes what is worst in the human breast and ought, like pornography, to be refused public benediction. Football makes conscious to me part of what I am. And what football says about me, and about millions of others like me, is not half so ugly as it is beautiful” (xv).

Does hockey nurture a violent streak in Felix that might otherwise have remained unexpressed? Or does hockey allow him to vent his violent urges within the relatively safe space of the hockey rink? Is goon-like behaviour a violation of the code that governs violence in hockey? Or is it only an expression of the violence inherent in the kind of intense competition that is a necessary part of the game?

The Last Season does not offer simple answers to these questions. What it does do, however, is demonstrate how difficult it is to separate the “beauty” of hockey from its “ugliness.” Hockey—like other physical sports—has a built-in tension between the thrill of a combat-like activity and the risk of real injury or death, just as it has a tension between the desire to win and the requirement to restrain that desire within certain rules. How to maintain the thrill while keeping the risk of ugliness at an acceptable level is a perennial issue. The desire to win inevitably creates moments of ugliness. In a physical sport like hockey, as Felix Batterinski’s story illustrates, these ugly moments sometimes take the form of extreme violence.

A Man’s Game Revisited

The hockey myth posits a mutually reinforcing relationship between manhood and the game. Not only does it take a man to play hockey, the myth suggests, but playing hockey makes a man. Both senses are implied by Gordie Howe’s 1950 definition of hockey as “a man’s game.” Bill Spunska, as chapter 4 argues, embodies the masculinity celebrated by the myth. Gruneau and Whitson summarize what the myth promises as follows:

At its best [the myth’s] model of masculinity defines the real man as a decent person of few words, but with a powerful sense of his own abilities and the toughness and physical competence to handle any difficulties that might arise; a man that people respect and look up to but don’t dare cross; a man who generally respects the rules that govern social life, but knows how to work outside them if necessary. (1993, 191)

Because Bill tends towards a muscular Christian-like version of hockey’s manhood, he doesn’t work outside the rules. Felix, on the other hand, is more like real life enforcers such as Dave Schultz—an explicit rule breaker. In this he has affinities with Benny Moore, the goon figure in A Boy at the Leafs’ Camp. Still, Felix’s overall identity conforms to the traditional masculinity described by Gruneau and Whitson. He even echoes, with approval, Gordie Howe’s assessment of hockey: “A long time ago I decided that hockey was the masculine game” (MacGregor 2012, 80).

Much of The Last Season is devoted to exploring the limits of the masculine identity promised by this “man’s game.” For example, the novel emphasizes that Felix eventually becomes a prisoner of his own reputation. At first, establishing a “rep” is an important part of his success. A key moment is a gruesome fight in Junior A which turns him into the anti-Bobby Orr: “Bobby Orr would get the cover of MacLean’s. I almost got the cover of Police Gazette” (130). From this point on, he understands that his role is to “appear superhuman to the rest of the team.” He aims to appear so beyond human weakness that he becomes the “ultimate equipment” (131). A subtle but significant effect of this mentality is that Felix begins to address himself as “Batterinski,” a third person character outside of himself. This signals what the price of such a reputation is: the alienation of yourself from yourself.

Sure enough, once Batterinski’s rep is made, it takes on a life of its own. At one point during a fight in the NHL, he sees fans pounding the glass and realizes that he “was not Batterinski. They were” (234). Around this time, he understands that his reputation has put demands on him that are out of his control: “Batterinski had created the rep and the rep was destroying him” (248). The demands spill out into the rest of his life. During a visit to Pomerania, he is goaded into fighting by an obnoxious drunk in a bar. He pummels the guy, and Danny calls him “a fuckin’ hero.” But Felix knows “otherwise” (273).

A reputation dependent on a superhuman appearance is, of necessity, fragile. The first sign of weakness undoes the appearance. This happens to Felix when “a goddamn college punk” decks him with a sucker punch during an exhibition game (284). After this his reputation and career rapidly fall apart.

Dave Schultz reports a similar real-life trajectory in The Hammer. At first, he writes, his coaches encouraged his “bad guy image” because it protected the smaller players (Schultz 1981, 39). Once his reputation was established, however, it meant that he had “a reputation to uphold”—which meant increased expectations that he would fight: “I became the anti-hero of hockey, the barroom brawler who rarely failed to satisfy the fans’ insatiable lust for violence” (80). At the height of his powers, he lived in dread that he might lose the aura of invincibility he needed to succeed. This happened in an incident similar to the fictional one described in The Last Season, when an unknown rookie from the Atlanta Flames, aided by the clumsiness of a linesman, got in an unexpected punch and broke his cheekbone (148–49). The injury wasn’t the problem, Schultz writes; the problem was the damage to his reputation, which encouraged players “who had once feared me … [to] think it appropriate to exploit my potential weakness” (150). His career spiraled downward quickly thereafter.

The stories of Batterinski and Schultz demonstrate an uncomfortable truth: because it depends so much on the denial of weakness— a denial, even, of the male body itself (which becomes just “equipment”)—the manhood promised by the man’s game, while appearing powerful, is, in fact, fragile.

Not a Ladies’ Man—or a Father

Another uncomfortable truth illustrated by The Last Season is that the identity associated with hockey does not travel well outside the rink. The hockey myth implies that the game makes a boy into a man not only on the ice but off. The roles of boyfriend, husband, and father are fundamental to traditional masculinity. There is, then, a painful irony in the fact that the pursuit of hockey success can turn young men into lousy boyfriends, husbands, and fathers. Even if players manage to resist the more character-damaging temptations of the hockey world, there is still the basic problem of the lifestyle. In The Hammer, Schultz writes plaintively about the male-centred nature of the Philadelphia Flyers during the heyday of the Bullies, led by captain Bobby Clarke. “Fighting the battle was the be-all and end-all of [Clarke’s] existence. He wanted our team to be a team. As far as we were concerned, the wives were a fact of life, but they were to be segregated into the under-class section” (Schultz 1981, 50). Ken Dryden describes a more enlightened culture around the 1970s Montreal Canadiens, but he still recognizes that even the most committed players in hockey end up isolated from their families during the season. The demands of the season, Dryden writes, are such that no matter how hard you try to stay connected, ultimately, “your family learns to cope … without you” (Dryden 1989, 113).

One of the most heart-breaking aspects of The Last Season has to do with Felix’s attempt to parlay his hockey success into success in everyday life. Remember that part of what fuels Felix’s competitiveness is his awkwardness around the opposite sex. By the time he arrives in Finland as a player/coach, he is a thirty-six-year-old man, a winner of two Stanley Cups, with the extensive sexual experience you might expect in an unmarried professional hockey player. As he puts it, “There are names and faces and rear ends I no longer recall in all twenty-one National Hockey League cities” (MacGregor 2012, 81). Yet when he meets Kristiina, a contemporary Finnish woman, he reverts to the pimply-faced small town boy he once was. He is “bashful” about Kristiina’s casual nudity (116) and prudish about sex itself. In Helsinki, he reverts to the old-fashioned, male protector stereotype, arguing that the kind of pornography they encounter should be banned to protect “women” and “kids.” Kristiina retorts that she doesn’t need protecting (89). Felix’s limited repertoire when it comes to relationships leads him to express his attraction to Kristiina by blurting out that he “loves her” and asking her to marry him. Her refusal to take his proposal seriously contributes to his angst at the novel’s end.

For Felix, as for the players in Al Purdy’s “Hockey Players,” hockey is less a preparation for life than an escape from life. At a number of points the novel contrasts the simplicity of the game with the complexity of life. Felix is most comfortable in his hockey uniform, because the uniform implies the ability to resolve events simply and directly through action. Just before his teenaged sexual humiliation with Maureen, for example, he wishes that he had his uniform on (68). When Kristiina talks about the complexities of her love life, he thinks “If she were only in hockey uniform I would hit. But I am helpless here. Talk—always goddamn talk” (196). The game itself is an opportunity to not think: “what I need to be thinking about [on the ice] is absolutely nothing—my mind as clear as the next play” (297). Though there can be psychological benefits to this kind of clearing of the mind (which writers like Bill Gaston have associated with the Buddhist state of enlightenment), it has to be part of something more than the narrow hockey world experienced by Felix Batterinski for it to help someone fulfil traditional masculine roles away from the rink.

Canada’s Hero?

One of the most fascinating passages in The Last Season takes place at the beginning of the fifth section. This section is dated January 11, 1976, and it tells of events during and after the Super Series ’76 game between the Philadelphia Flyers and the touring Soviet Red Army team. Super Series ’76 was the first exhibition series in which teams from the Soviet Championship League toured North America to play against teams from the NHL. By the game of January 11, 1976, the two touring teams had won most of the time, with the Red Army team being undefeated in three previous games. Since the Flyers were the reigning Stanley Cup champions, considerable pride was at stake in the final contest. As it turns out, the Flyers dominated, outshot the Red Army team 38-13, and won the game 4–1.

The account in The Last Season makes reference to some famous elements from the historical game: the hit by Eddie Van Impe on Valeri Kharlamov, the temporary walkout by the Soviets, and so on. The primary focus, however, is on how the game temporarily transformed the Flyers from the most hated team in hockey into national heroes: “Schultz, Kelly, Dupont, Saleski and Batterinski were suddenly white knights riding out to meet the forces of evil” (MacGregor 2012, 229). Felix’s father, who previously has been ashamed of Felix’s on-ice violence, phones from Pomerania to cheer him on (230). And Felix himself sees his derogatory nickname, Canucklehead, which opposing fans had previously used to taunt him, turned into a term of endearment: “CANUCKLEHEAD JA, SOVIETS NYET!” reads a sign in the arena (229).

Nationalist sentiments in 1976 were heightened by awareness of parallels between the Super Series and the Summit Series of 1972, when, as Felix puts it, Paul Henderson “salvaged Canada’s pride … with a lousy 34 seconds left” (229). The manhandling of the Red Army team, then, was taken as a vindication of Canadian hockey. Tim Burke, writing in the Montreal Gazette, summarized this point of view: “The Flyers salvaged Canada’s pride in her national sport with a near perfect hockey masterpiece” (quoted in Flyers History n.d.).

Two weeks later, as Felix notes, all is forgotten (MacGregor 2012, 234). Felix himself has an uneasy feeling about change in the air, which turns out to be prophetic: he is traded to the Los Angeles Kings on January 29. This trade—which parallels the trade of Dave Schultz to the Kings after his contribution to the two Stanley Cups in Philadelphia—highlights the ephemeral nature of heroic status, as well as the sordid side of the business of hockey (Felix also has his money stolen by an agent). Felix contrasts the cold-blooded nature of the trade with the band of brothers rhetoric advanced by the Flyers’ coach, Fred (the Fog) Shero. Before the Stanley Cup winning game of 1974, Shero wrote on the dressing room blackboard: “Win today and we will walk together forever” (235). A year and a half later, Felix is traded. As he puts it: “On January 29, 1976, the Fog decided he was tired of walking with me. He didn’t even have the guts to tell me himself” (236).

A key part of the hockey myth is the idea that hockey can be a shortcut to Canadian identity, especially for immigrant boys, as well as a means of achieving fortune and fame. The ideal trajectory of a career as defined by the myth is embodied in Bill Spunska, who goes from uncertain small town Polish immigrant to a standard bearer for the nation over the course of Young’s trilogy. The ending of A Boy at the Leafs’ Camp leaves the clear impression that playing in the NHL—and the fame and fortune that will come with this—are in Bill’s future (Young 1963).

The Last Season troubles this trajectory. The depiction of January 11, 1976 emphasizes the complexity and fragility of being a national hero. As a Philadelphia Flyer, Felix is hated in Canada, where, for many fans, the hockey played by the Bullies embodied all that was wrong with the game. Then, with one game against Red Army, he becomes a national hero. Then, two weeks later, he becomes an also ran, discarded to the hockey outport of Los Angeles.

One other key aspect of the Bill Spunska story is troubled by The Last Season. Remember that Bill, like Felix, comes from a family of Polish immigrants. The Spunskas, however, leave their Polish history behind when they come to Canada. The only effect on Mr. Spunska of his time in the Polish underground is to allow him to bear the lesser challenges of a life in Canada with ease. Soon he is so versed in Canadian history that he is informing his Canadian colleagues of their own history (Young 1953, 165). Bill’s ascension through the hockey ranks not only makes him more Canadian; it also erases the trauma of his family’s past. There is never a hint, at any point in Young’s trilogy, of him being hobbled or haunted by his Polish heritage.

Much of The Last Season, however, is about the heavy burden of history upon Felix. One way the novel illustrates this burden is by having Felix receive translations of his grandfather’s memoir about the family’s Polish roots. The translations stress the horrible suffering of the Polish people over the years. They are accompanied by commentary from Felix’s father about the racism that Polish immigrants suffered in Canada. Felix claims not to care about any of it. He is embarrassed by his poor, Polish background and by his father’s accent, and quite chauvinistically asserts his Canadianness when, in response to the lessons in family history, he says things like “Bor-ring! … I’m sorry, Poppa, but that’s just the simple truth” (MacGregor 2012, 104). The only history he is concerned about, he claims, is the history he has himself made: the one recorded in the NHL record books, especially his “stunning, remarkable, atrocious, magnificent 2,038 minutes in penalties” (95).

Disavow it though he might, the larger trajectory of the novel makes clear that Felix’s identity is intertwined with his Polish immigrant history. A strong part of what drives him is a need for respect—and this need is clearly a product of his familial and cultural background. These backgrounds come together in a powerful way in the strange relationship Felix has with Batcha, the second wife of his dead grandfather, who lives with his father. Batcha is like a revenant of the old country—a superstitious witch-like figure who constantly judges Felix and blames him for family tragedies (especially the death of Felix’s mother when she gave birth to him). Again, Felix disavows her influence; for a long time, he dismisses her calling him a “monster” in Polish. But the last tragic scene of the novel, when Felix accidently eats rat poison thinking it is the caul that he had been born in (he eats the caul to break the spell his birth seems to have cast on him), makes it clear that he has also been driven, in significant part, by a need to make his own life right in the face of family history (382).

A Telling Omission

The Last Season, then, explores a number of issues related to the changes in hockey in the 1970s—especially the seeming intensification of violence in the professional game. The echoes of Bill Spunska in Felix Batterinski’s character highlight the distance between the idealistic portrayal of Young’s famous books and the reality of the post-expansion NHL. Dave Schultz’s The Hammer offers a real-life glimpse into many of the same issues explored in the novel. The overall trajectory of Felix Batterinski’s story is tragic, with Felix’s death at the end putting an exclamation point on how his life has not lived up to the promises of the hockey myth.

The tragic trajectory of the novel is reinforced by a telling omission. Felix, remember, wins two Stanley Cups as a member of the Philadelphia Flyers. Yet the novel contains almost nothing about this part of his life. There are only the briefest descriptions of the games he played, the camaraderie, the elation of being a champion. Implicit in the omission is the idea that NHL success does not mitigate the cost of Felix’s hockey quest, nor does it comfort him when he is faced with the transition to life after hockey. Michael Oriard suggests that the athlete-hero of American culture tends to be trapped in adolescence, so that even with success he does not achieve the maturity characteristic of a classical hero, returning home to find love, to assume a place of leadership, and to use the wisdom (and treasure) he has acquired on behalf of the community (Oriard 1982, 138–39). Although Felix experiences some personal growth during his journey, he remains largely trapped in the way Oriard describes. Without personal maturation, The Last Season makes clear, a hero’s triumphs are ephemeral.

Works Cited