The book - FACEOFF - and movie pretty well follow the same story line. It takes place during the year that Billy Duke is playing his rookie season for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Sherri Nelson is lead singer for an up-and-coming folk-rock band.
They met in a club on the evening in May that Billy's Junior hockey club (a league one below the National Hockey League - usually 17-19 year olds) the Hamilton Red Wings won the Memorial Cup (Canadian Jr Championship.)
She went back to Toronto because she was finishing a club tour with the band and Billy was heading home to Sunset (fictional place) for the summer. His father had died when he was about 12 or 13 and his mother was raising his sister, Estelle, alone by managing the family general store. Billy was drafted by the Leafs and came to town in September to training camp. He befriends George "Chief" Armstrong, who was the captain of the Leafs and had been playing for at least 20 years.
After he hits town, the team has a meet the Leafs reception and we meet both Coach Fred Wares' wife who is an alcoholic and Greg Walsh, who is a reporter for one of the Toronto newspapers, and who does not like Billy - he does not like Billy's cockiness and believes Billy is being paid too much money. Later on, Greg will become a minor character in the story. In the book, Grace has more of a role. Fred had tried for years to find a way to help Grace get over her alcoholism - this is before the advent of Betty Ford Centers and so it was not considered a disease like today.
Billy and Sherri are re-united when after spending some time with George and having a beer with him, he walks home and sees a poster in a large department store that Sherri is upstairs in the record department signing record albums. Sherri's manager, Syd Charrington, realizes what great publicity this possible romance could bring the band. So he takes Billy, Sherri and Barney (a member of the band) out to a small establishment to celebrate. He then tells Barney that they need to get to the office because of some error. Of course, he is leaving Billy and Sherri alone to hopefully kindle some romance.
Meanwhile, Sherri tells him he does not have to hang around and he says that if not, he would have been in his hotel room wishing he had someone to talk to. So she shows him around. It begins to storm during their evening together and she is afraid of thunderstorms so they head to her place. It is the rehearsal hall and since there was no one using the upstairs, she moved in there. It stops storming after a while and Billy heads home, saying that he will call her sometime. She says she will be busy with the upcoming tour - they are going to embark on a 6-week tour throughout the southern US about 10 days from then.
The following Wednesday, Billy plays his first NHL game and is named third star and gets a goal and an assist. He is so excited and decided to head over to Sherri's place to tell her the good news. The band has been rehearsing and everyone leaves except for Barney. He leaves after Billy arrives and Billy asks Sherri how she feels about Barney and she says she loves him - but it turns out not to be the type of love that Billy is talking about.
He gets her tickets for the next Saturday night's game, even thought, she has never been to a game, and she is late for it and only stays for the first period or so, in which Billy gets into a fight. After the game, she is waiting for him in the hallway of the Gardens and she gives him an itinerary of her tour schedule.
During the 6 weeks, they call each other and make plans that in December, the tour ends in the same city, they will meet.
However, things changed. He is to play the LA Kings in Inglewood and she is to finish the tour in a peace festival in Anaheim. But during the game, he becomes injured. Apparently, earlier on the season, LA had played in Toronto and Billy had gotten into a scrap with and injured one of the Kings and the Kings were out for revenge. Well, it was a bloodbath and Billy received a concussion and bruised ribs. He was taken to the local hospital when the Forum medical staff was unable to revive him. Sherri and Barney heard the news over the radio when they were driving in from the concert and headed straight to the hospital. There, they had a less than romantic reunion. Sherri remains in LA and returns on the same plane that Billy to Toronto. Syd Charrington meets them at the airport along with many reporters. Billy is on the injured list for 10 days and they head to Sunset for a little R&R. Sherri meets Billy's mother and sister and gets to unwind a little after the tour. It is out in the country and winter.........
However, their bliss is shattered when Billy reads an article written by Greg Walsh, a reporter for one of the Toronto papers who does not really like Billy. Sherri starts to realize that she cannot live in Billy's world - full of fighting, violence, etc. But Billy tells her he is different from the other players - he is younger, stronger, tougher - and that is why she digs him. So they head back to Toronto after the 10 days. In the book, they describe those three weeks more than in the movie. Billy spent most of his nights with Sherri and except for practice and games, they were together most of the time.
They spend Christmas apart - he had a game the following day and left Christmas Day for it.
The owner of the team, Graydon Hunter, had a New Year's Eve party for the team at his place. Sherri danced with the host, but she was a little intimidated because he reminded her of her father. Sherri went into the ladies' room to freshen up and she ran into Fred Wares' wife(the coach) Grace was an alcoholic and from what Sherri saw of the team, she was afraid she would become an alcoholic in later years. She did not really like hockey and felt she would be left alone on game nights or when the team was on road trips.
Meanwhile, Billy has a conversation with Coach Wares. Fred ask him if he is going to marry Sherri and Billy says they are young, there is plenty of time to decide. Fred says that decisions are the hang up of life. So Billy decides maybe it is time to decide his future with Sherri.
Sherri left the party, while there is still time to escape, and told Billy to make up some lame excuse for her leaving. Since she took her car, she drove away in it. Billy followed her as soon as he was able to hail a cab back to the loft. The band was having a party of their own. Sherri, of course, decides to join the party and is given a joint to smoke and Syd offers her some acid. Billy arrives on the scene and decides to take Sherri and decide right then and there if they want to get married. However, certain people are also in the room Sherri has been using and that does not sit well with Billy. Finally, he has a confrontation with Syd and as he walks out, after he hits Syd, he says that he does not like Sid or his friends.
Things start to go bad for Billy and Sherri during the next three months and their separation. Billy becomes an agressive hockey player - during the month of January, he sets one-month record for most penalty minutes. Sherri, on the other hand, handles it in turning to drugs. She becomes badly addicted to them causing the group to break up. Finally, in the end of March, things come to a head. During the last part of March, Billy becomes involved in an on-ice altercation and hits a referee. He is suspended for five games and there are 6 games left in the season and the Leafs need to win two games to make the play-offs.
Meanwhile, our old buddy Greg Walsh decides to do some digging into Sherri's past and finds out that she was convicted on a drug charge but the charges were dropped. So he decides to write an expose where he meets Sherri and she admits to drug use. However, later on it, Billy is convinced it is all in Mr. Walsh's mind.
Billy practiced with the team and watched them just coast along. Then the night before the big game, he went home to decide as to what to do. His mother asked him if he was still seeing Sherri and if he was still in love with her. He thought about it and decided maybe he should go and see her. Maybe there was still something they could salvage of the relationship.
Meanwhile, they show Sherri and she is in pretty bad shape. She has become addicted to acid and the band members, all except Barney, have moved to San Francisco. Barney has decided that maybe he and Sherri should move there too. So she goes to sell her car and they will use the money to buy busfare.
Billy decided to go and see Sherri the next day - the day of the last game of the season. He arrived back in Toronto about noon, made an appearance at the Gardens and told George to keep the bus for him. The team had arranged to spend the night at the Holiday Inn so there would be no distractions and they could concentrate on the game.
Billy took a cab to the loft, but Sherri was out selling her car. He told Barney that he had a message for Sherri to meet him at 9 pm in front of the Holiday Inn because he wanted to marry her. Barney told him that at that time, they would be on the way to San Francisco. Billy also realized that Sherri left home when she was around 14 (This part is not talked about at all in the movie). Her parents had divorced when she was younger. Her mother was an alcoholic and her father an insurance agent who was a wife beater. He also abuse Sherri when she was younger, so she ran away and became a street person.
At 9 pm, Billy is standing out in the front of the Holiday Inn. The owner of the Leafs and Coach Fred Wares have discussed the column in the paper about Sherri and Billy. The coach assures him that Billy and Sherri have not been together for at least 3 months. Meanwhile, Fred gathers up all the players and tells them that it is time for bed.
As Billy waits in the front, a car pulls up in the parking lot and as the headlights get closer, he realizes that it is Sherri. She parks the car in front of him and opens the door rushes to his arms. He tells him that he wants to marry him because he really needed her. She wanted to get married that night, but that was impossible because they could not get a lisence before Monday. She stated her position several times. However, she attracted the wrong attention. Coach Fred Wares, who was putting his wife in a taxi, came over and asked what was going on. He told Billy to get upstairs - he was supposed to be in bed 15 minutes ago. Billy answered saying that he wanted 5 minutes to straighten out a few thimgs. Fred said he did not have 15 seconds, because if he did not get his butt upstairs, he was through for the season. So Billy told her to take a room there and he would call her after the game. Sherri, meanwhile, just stayed put. Billy kissed her and left. Fred turned to her and told her why was she there when she knew that it was on the eve of one of the most important games of Billy's career when he should be relaxed and concentrating on the game?
The next scene shows Sherri taking off throught the parking lot in her car and Billy phoning the front desk to find out if she has registered. As they put him on hold for a minute, he looks out the window of his hotel room and sees her car driving through the parking lot. He takes off down the hall, hitting a lamp in the room on the way. He has been rooming with George Armstrong who says, well maybe you can afford all of this but I can't. George is about 25 years older than Billy - had kids, etc. Billy takes off and hails a cab and follows the car. Meanwhile, Sherri is all upset because of what Fred told her. She is not really watching the road and comes to a steep hill. She keeps on going past the warning sign and crashes her car. The cab is caught in the traffic caused by the accident. When they go past the accident, the cab driver comments on what happens when these little foreign jobbies roll (she drove a Fiat, small car) they roll. Billy got out of the car and tried to get past the policemen who were directing traffic. They informed him that she was dead. In the movie, he went back to town and during the playing of the movie theme, WINTER COMES EARLY, it shows clips of Billy playing hockey, Sherri singing, other people in the movie - Estelle, Billy's parents. In the book, he ends up at the morgue and then someone calls his lawyer Joe McMillan and he ends up at Joe's house. Billy leaves the house early in the morning and ends up downtown in the early morning. He walks downtown to the loft and falls asleep. During his walking, he finds a newspaper box with the headline about Sherri's death on the front. He buys the paper and reads that there was a reference to the accident, and that there will probably be an inquest. When he awakens, he looks at his watch and realizes that the game has already started. He hails a cab to the Gardens and as he is dressing for the game he whispers, please forgive me, Sherri. The game is already 2-0 in favour of the opposing team. And as he makes his way from the dressing room to the Leafs bench, the crowd spots him and starts to cheer. Fred spots him and says, "Well, let us get something going, okay." And as he goes over the boards to go on the ice, the novel is over.
In the movie, after the scene with the song, it is the next night. The owner, Graydon Hunter and his wife are sitting in the stands behind the bench. He asks where Billy is and Fred tells him that Billy has the night off with his permission. Graydon looks at his wife shrugging his shoulders. Billy appears in the hallway and it ends the same way as the novel.
