A Father's Love Keeps Shining Through Pain
SELENA ROBERTS
E-mail: selenasports@nytimes.com
MONTREAL The moment of silence was startling. Usually, you hear a beeper or a restless child or a vendor's footsteps or a tipsy wisecracker. Something.
But not a sound echoed at the Bell Center on Tuesday night, not the click of a hockey stick or the twitch of a skate blade, as a photo appeared on the screen above the ice.
With a tall ship's mast in the background and calm sky overhead, a camera captured the profile of the Canadiens icon Bob Gainey. He projected a firm jaw, wore the floppy hat of a vacationer and, with his right arm, curled his 25-year-old daughter tight to his chest. His eye met the distance.
Laura Gainey looked into the lens and stole the frame. A vision of dark hair, dark eyes and a deep dimple in her smile, she was happily tucked next to her father's chin. The two were in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in June, ready to set sail for a trip on the three-masted Picton Castle.
She knew the ship, from ropes to galley. She was a crew member. In the dark of last Friday night, amid high seas, a rogue wave swept her off the deck of the Picton Castle about 500 miles from Cape Cod. Officials called off a search for her on Monday evening.
In a single snapshot, during 40 seconds of silence, you could absorb the emotional arc of Bob Gainey's life because you knew every detail, every epiphany and pain, behind that photo of a father and daughter.
He has been a public figure for more than three decades. Longevity is not always flattering for superstars. Personal vices devour some, hubris isolates others. And some disappear into an athlete's afterlife, last seen on their trading cards. With Gainey, there is no disconnect, no version of the loyal player that doesn't jibe with the devoted man.
''Look what he has been through,'' said Guy Fortin, a Canadiens fan on St. Catherine Street Tuesday afternoon before the team played Boston. ''The way he has handled everything, I think, is the way we all hope we would: with dignity. Like he played.''
In effect, the exposure of Gainey's private sorrow has been a public inspiration. It's the paradox of a visible life embraced and endured gracefully by a discreet man.
For days, with everyone on this side of the Canadian border consumed by the disappearance of Laura, Gainey's past was gently reopened on the airwaves and front pages by longtime hockey writers like Red Fisher of The Montreal Gazette.
Here was Gainey, his life on a loop. In 1973, he was the shy rookie from Ontario who had shoulders as square as street corners. Within a few years, he was the newlywed who married the lovely Cathy Collins, a spirited gal and the 15th of 19 children. He was the fabled future Hall of Fame player who led the Canadiens to five Stanley Cup titles and the fixture who played for Montreal his entire 16-year career.
Gainey became a widower, though. One fall day in 1990, in his first season as coach of the Minnesota North Stars, he received a message to call home. As he told The Dallas Morning News nearly a decade ago, his daughter Colleen, 5 years old at the time, answered the phone crying.
''Mommy's asleep on the bathroom floor, and I can't wake her up,'' Colleen told him. ''What am I going to do, Daddy?''
Cathy Gainey had fainted. Maybe it was a virus or a cold, she thought. Doctors discovered a malignant brain tumor.
''He's on the verge of tears a lot,'' Cathy once said of her husband. ''You're seeing what he's feeling. He can leave me and then focus himself at the rink. Then he comes home, and he's focused on us. You know how secure that makes me feel? He's my strong arm.''
In 1995, after endless operations and radiation treatments, Cathy died at age 39.
Gainey was a single father. He had to raise Stephen, Colleen and Laura on his own. All three internalized their mother's long illness and death differently. Colleen slipped into a deep depression. Laura lost herself in a cocaine crowd. Gainey, describing the crisis to The Morning News in 1997, said he had dragged his daughter out of a house where he thought drugs were being used. Twice, in one weekend.
He couldn't help her by himself. He checked her into rehab. As one Canadiens official mentioned, Gainey attended 12-step meetings with her whenever she asked.
The Gaineys recovered together. But now, three years after he returned to his beloved Montreal as the Canadiens' general manager, Gainey is immersed in grief over ''our darling Laura,'' as he described her in a statement.
Gainey has taken a leave of absence. But Canadiens Coach Guy Carbonneau -- who played with Gainey in Montreal and for him with the Stars -- has been talking to him every day.
''I'm sure Bob watched'' the moment of silence, Carbonneau said. ''I'm sure he was touched.''
Wherever he was. It's the public-versus-private conundrum again. Gainey isn't more vulnerable to heartbreak than anyone else, only more visible.
''You have to respect his privacy,'' Canadiens left wing Sergei Samsonov said. ''At a time like this, you let him be.''
And when he returns? Inside the nurturing hockey culture -- an oxymoron to anyone outside Canada -- the sport doesn't breathe or smile, but it is a love that will never leave you.
Who knows how Gainey is grieving right now? Who knows what he sees in the picture of himself and Laura aboard the Picton Castle? But in the silence of Bell Center, most witnessed a revered legend who, over the years, has maintained his grace as a husband and father, too.
