Wayne Gretzky's Ghost by Roy Macgregor Page A

says. His remarkable real estate success was not by accident, but the result of careful computer programming applied to property and land. Having at one time mathematically determined how many footsteps would wear out a carpet, he may be on the verge of discovering how many head fakes will bring him the Stanley Cup.
    Should Buss have any thoughts about reducing Marcel Dionne to an equation, however, he may as well forget them. Marcel Dionne is not merely a hockey player, but also an idea, one that was originally created by a huge family back in Drummondville, Quebec, and is protected and prodded by that family even today.
    What computer could measure the grey stucco, seventeen-room house at 89 13th Avenue, l’Épicerie Dionne in the front, the large kitchen behind packed with many of his thirteen uncles, each with a personal touch of advice for
Le P’tit Marcel?
And what of those late Saturday evenings, the big men sitting seriously, their territories traced in empty “quart” Molson’s bottles, the sound of sliding coins rising up toward the boy’s bedroom where he lay awake knowing that in the morning he would have the price of a new hockey stick? How could a computer be fed the letter from
les Canadiens
that arrived there when Marcel was barely in peewee hockey, telling his parents to take special care of him because Senator Molson and the organization were watching? Or how Marcel would skate about the rink after a victory, the fans reaching down to touch him, and how, when he undressed, he would find dollar bills stuffed in his gloves?
    And who but Marcel Dionne himself will ever understand why he dared not once to dream of playing in the NHL, knowing that dream would be ridiculed each time he had trouble reaching over the boards to sign autographs, or when his uncles whispered in the kitchen, thinking him asleep? He was
too small
. It made the pressure even worse. “Hockey … hockey … hockey … hockey,” he says, his voice dropping to a tense whisper. “I was going nuts.”
    When faraway St. Catharines’ Black Hawks wooed him at seventeen, he jumped from the Quebec to the Ontario junior league. And when outraged hometown fans threatened court action—to keep him where he belongs—his parents, on a lawyer’s advice, fabricated a ploy to make it seem as if they were separating. His mother, Laurette, brother and three sisters ended up in totally foreign St. Catharines, expenses to be met by the delighted new team.
    He calls that his moment of truth. He began putting on weight, his playing blossomed and after four months his family returned to the icy stares of Drummondville. The darling of Drummondville became the darling of St. Catharines, spoiled and worshipped. Two successive junior scoring titles followed, climaxing in 1971 when St. Catharines met the Quebec Remparts to decide the best junior team in Canada. More accurately, to decide the best junior player in Canada, for Quebec’s star was none other than his old nemesis, Guy Lafleur. Sadly, the series turned to such violence—Dionne was savaged as a “traitor” in the Quebec press, his family had garbage thrown at them and his Aunt Denise miscarried shortly after a near riot in Quebec—that St. Catharines refused to complete the series and Quebec won by default.
    Incredibly, this was not to be Marcel Dionne’s low point. He was billed as “the next Gordie Howe” from the moment he arrived in Detroit, but his four years there are remembered more for the tears and anger and open fights with management than they are for his hockey. Small talk to a
Detroit Free Press
reporter about his two Dobermans and the baseball bat he carried in his car ended up as the next day’s headlines: DIONNE CAN’T WAIT TO QUIT . With hisdislike of the city and the team in print, Dionne was advised not to dress that night for a game against Minnesota, but he refused,