At night the balls were always being whacked into his door or against his window, and he would run to get them and toss them back to us. He had Michael shovel his driveway, and always came out to speak to us. Some nights he would stand in the cold for an hour in his T-shirt, his false teeth chattering a mile a minute. He told us that the Europeans were playing hockey better and better. The Norwegians now had a Canadian coach, and the Swedes were big. That, during the war when the Canadians put on exhibitions in England, like Mr. Foley and the North Shore Regiment, we were pretty much top drawer. But he said, not any more. In fact he was reiterating what my uncle had said, but thankfully he wasn’t as happy about it as my uncle was. The Russians were good — not as good as the pros yet, but soon would be — the Swedes were becoming stronger — the Czechs too. Of course we had all heard of this, and were immediately suspicious. “Well if we send our pros over, “I told the old Colonel, “That would put a surprise into them.
