“It’s our f—–’ water bottle. Don’t touch it.”
Toronto Maple Leafs forward David Clarkson, both mic’d and fired up, is getting after the Detroit Red Wings’ Todd Bertuzzi.
Bertuzzi has just shot a puck at a Gatorade bottle that tumbled off the top of Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier’s net, and Clarkson doesn’t like it.
“I’ll buy you a new one,” Bertuzzi chirps back, dripping with tattoos and sarcasm.
Though water-bottle trash talk is hardly the stuff of deep-seeded hockey hatred, it is exchanges like the one between players like Bertuzzi and Clarkson—guys who keep two hands on a grudge—that allow those of us who’ve only been able to afford nosebleed seats the feeling that we’re on the other side of the glass.
And in-game tension is easily the best thing this third season of HBO’s 24/7: Road to the Winter Classic has got going for it.
Last Saturday’s Winter Classic prelude game between the Leafs and Wings at the Air Canada Centre acts as the showpiece for Episode 3, as the editors flip-flop between the dressing rooms for pregame and intermission pep talks, building tension while juxtaposing the coaching styles of Mike Babcock and Randy Carlyle.
It’s in the room where we snag a few gems. Babcock on Reimer: “The top’s gonna be available.” (Sure enough, two Detroit players score by shooting high on the Leafs netminder.) Carlyle on why the Leafs should dump the puck in hard from the left boards around the right wall: “They got all left-handed defencemen. No righties. So it’s harder for them to pick up the puck.” Carlyle on Wings goalie Jonas Gustavsson: “Put pressure on ’em. The goaltender cannot and does not play the puck effectively in moving it to his partners.” The Wings saying they’re “a way better team.”
When Clarkson bangs in an iffy goal in the third period, we get a chance to observe the NHL’s goal-review team in action. The hockey league’s review system is being studied this season by both the NBA and NFL. And it’s this kind of great, behind-the-scenes stuff, unavailable on a regular broadcast, that the series could use more of.
Time and again, a window opens for us to learn something deeper about the game and its players. And repeatedly the blinds are drawn before we see more than a glimpse into the lives of the players or passing glance into the inner workings of the Leafs or Wings brass.
Perhaps the players are too guarded. Perhaps their off-ice lives lack the drama necessary for great prime-time television. Or perhaps HBO’s cameras haven’t been granted the access or the characters necessary to yield gripping vignettes.
The tension between Carlyle and goaltender James Reimer after the latter gets pulled after the Period 1 is palpable… but is never expanded upon. No interviews with Carlyle, Reimer or Bernier follow up the goalie’s glare at his coach after he was replaced by Bernier.
Reimer and Bernier’s contest for the crease is one of the most compelling storylines of the Leafs’ first half of 2013-14, and captain Dion Phaneuf’s looming free agency is of even more concern to Leafs Nation. But as we were shut out from eavesdropping on Phaneuf’s disciplinary phone call earlier in the miniseries, our insight into the defenceman’s contract negotiations amounts to some safe, vague answers from Toronto VP and assistant GM Claude Loiselle about Phaneuf’s importance to the club. How fun would it have been to catch a few moments of the actual negotiations? Recall how HBO’s Hard Knocks can sneak a camera into those meetings where NFL coaches decide who will be their No. 1 quarterback or give us a lens for the heartbreaking one-on-one when a player is cut from the team.
The off-ice scenes aren’t altogether bland. The image of Clarkson catching the subway from Royal York to the ACC, some dude with a newspaper invading his personal space on the peoples’ chariot, strikes a nice contract to Phaneuf piloting his Bentley to the rink. Santa Claus shows up at the front door of the Alfredsson home while the kids are still awake (it’s a Swedish thing; you wouldn’t understand). And a peek into Red Wing Brendan Smith’s hockey-happy household tips us to the irony of Brendan growing up a Leafs fan but playing for his brother Reilly’s favourite team. (Reilly now plays for Boston.)
James van Riemsdyk plays an annual Christmas outdoor pickup game with his younger brothers and his eager dad.
“We’ll see if he embarrasses himself at all,” van Riemsdyk tells the cameras, smiling. “The new Bryzgalov.”
And there you have it: No one wants to embarrass themselves, lest they become a Bryzgalov or a snagged piece of toast. So the off-ice segments, while sometimes insightful, lack the spontaneity and creativity of the very game the show aims to capture.
Thankfully, we have the on-ice moments—filmed in definition so high you can count the pockmarks on the players’ tired mugs or the flakes of snow kicked up by a sharp Datsyukian cut to the slot. And we have the mic’d up players and coaches, whose clipped, profane aggression should be cranked to 11 come Wednesday with a New Year’s Eve hangover.
Those water bottles won’t stand a chance.