Breezer revels in crowd's embrace
Goalie walks into the arms of 15,500 fans who chant his name.
Editor’s note: This column originally appeared in the Post on June 13, 1996.
Like Mike Tyson on
MIAMI — fight night, he entered the arena, the crowd pushing toward him and parting before him all at once. John Vanbiesbrouck, as an athlete always wrapped in several layers of cushion and cloth, walked into the loving arms of 15,500 Florida Panthers fans Wednesday night as a man.
That’s what he is, folks, all extraterrestrial video highlights
to the contrary. Behind that steel-jawed Panthers mask is a neighbor of ours, his home in Boca Raton and his commute to work down Interstate 95 more dangerous than anything required of him on ice.
How strange it must have been for the Beezer on Wednesday, making that drive to Miami Arena with his wife
and three young sons in the car
and a fog of unfamiliar emotions in his head. There was no opponent to focus his famous concentration upon, no pregame meeting to attend in the
locker room.
There was, however, a horrendous traffic jam to navigate. Hundreds of cars crawling down off the freeway and into the happy clutches of city parking lot attendants. Scores of celebratory messages, scrawled on rear windows and across bed sheets in defiance of Colorado’s Stanley Cup sweep. Thousands of party animals descending on one spot and with one goal.
They were coming to see the Beezer, to sing his cartoon nickname in spontaneous praise, to tell him that every time he threw his body in front of the inevitable Avalanche, they were right in the Florida goal with him.
Gritting their teeth. Swinging their arms. Doing everything within the power of their collective wills to hold the Panthers’ 170-pound anchor in place.
Vanbiesbrouck must have sensed it, for it certainly seemed like more than one person guarding the Panthers goal in Game 4’s three-overtime classic. Over nearly two months of playoff action, he stood his ground, prime target in a Stanley Cup shooting gallery.
For three seasons, his stubborn streak has been the soul of this expansion franchise. Yet Wednesday night, with the rink ripped out of Miami Arena by bulldozers and nothing to stand on but his reputation, the Beezer appeared genuinely surprised at how much the fans adored him.
“Hopefully, we’re creating a bond between us and the fans that will last a long, long time,” Vanbiesbrouck said as he stood at the end of a line of players headed up a tunnel, through the mouth of a two-story, plastic foam Panther and into the bedlam of the pep rally beyond.
“All you’re ever asking for as an athlete is to be shown respect from people who know you tried your hardest. This is such a tremendous amount of respect from our fans. How does this rate with the excitement I have felt at other times in my career? This is top of the list.”
Numero uno wasn’t always Vanbiesbrouck’s designation in New York. His love affair with that hot-blooded hockey town rose and fell as the Rangers did in the standings.
In 1986, he was hailed as the NHL’s top goalie, the Vezina Trophy presented as proof. In the 1990-91 season, he wasn’t even recognized as the best goalie in Madison Square Garden, forced to alternate starts with Mike Richter. Then, when the 1993 expansion draft left teams the option of protecting just one goaltender, the Rangers sent Vanbiesbrouck to Vancouver.
The Panthers, however, banked everything on the Beezer, taking him first in the expansion draft, pushing him foremost in every start-up marketing campaign. It was a heavy responsibility, but no more so than carrying a young team into the Stanley Cup finals.
The Beezer will take a well-deserved break from all of this in the coming weeks, piling the family into a motor home and cruising the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in search of clear lakes and tranquil nights. Rosalinde, his wife, will enjoy being back home. Their kids, Ian, 8; Benjamin, 6; and Nicholas, 4, will be happy just to be with Mom and Dad, no autograph hounds in the vicinity.
You may have seen Rosalinde leaving her seat between the second and third overtimes Monday night to get Ian a pretzel. Hockey games, no matter how historic, are part of the routine for the Vanbiesbroucks.
Wednesday’s Panthers appreciation rally, however, was not. Moments before he walked out of the darkness and onto the frenzied arena floor, Vanbiesbrouck prepared to hear the beloved “Bee-zer, Bee-zer” chant in a different way, perhaps for the first time in his 13-year NHL career.
“When we’re playing a game, I never look up at the faces in the crowd,” he said. “Tonight I will look at the faces. Let me tell you, that chant is not business as usual for me. Every time I hear it, it’s new.”