“We have to go.”
The security guard looked baffled. These three youngsters had caused one of Boston’s top attractions to be evacuated and a SWAT team to storm the building. No one outside the New England Aquarium except them knew why, and now they had something more important to do?
“We have to,” Sarah pleaded. “We play our final game of the tournament in an hour.”
Quickly they explained to the guard, who had never even heard of the Paul Revere Peewee Invitational Hockey Tournament. He took down their details – their names, where they were staying, their home numbers – and raking a hand over his sweaty brow, he nodded that they were free to go.
They raced back to the hotel, arriving just as Mr. D was loading his portable skate-sharpening equipment onto the back of the old bus.
“There you are!” he shouted. “You three are running late! Grab your bags and get them down here. We leave in five.”
The three Owls looked at each other. There was no time to tell anyone what had happened.
Besides, who would believe them anyway? And they didn’t really know what had happened.
“Where the hell were you?” Nish said, as Travis sank into his stall in the dressing room at the TD Garden.
“We went to the aquarium again –”
“Bor-ing!” Nish said before Travis could continue.
Travis just smiled. He had no idea how to describe his morning, but boring was not one of the choices.
He put on his pads, right, left. All was quiet. He pulled his jersey over his head, kissed the Screech Owls crest from behind, and sagged in his stall. He was exhausted – and the final game still had to be played.
Travis could not recall a time when he’d been so out of it in a tournament. Was it just because it was summer? No – he’d been wrapped up in something else entirely. He had to get his focus back. Had to. He was captain, after all. He was Travis Lindsay, captain of the Screech Owls, and his teammates depended on him.
Their opponents in this final deciding match would be the Mini-Penguins. The Pittsburgh team, who’d been defeated by the Owls on Travis’s goal and Nish’s Hail Mary pass, had gone on to beat the Chicago Young Blackhawks 5–2, proving Muck’s point that the Owls had found their game following that resounding opening loss to the Young Blackhawks.
Muck had little to say. His pregame talk set a new record for brevity.
“Have fun.”
It was exactly the right thing for Muck to say. From Game 1, when the Owls had been humiliated, they had grown in confidence with every game, every shift. They were still far from mid-season form, but they were playing real hockey again, the game they loved so well.
And it was fun. It was fun when Travis pumped through that first corner on the fresh ice of the TD Garden. It was fun when he thought about being on the same ice that the Stanley Cup champions played on. It was fun when he hit the crossbar on his first warm-up shot. Fun when both Sarah and Sam slammed their sticks into his shin pads before the opening face-off. Fun when he and Nish did their ritual taps with Jenny, who’d be playing nets for the Owls. Fun when he came off from his first shift and looked down the bench to see Nish leaning over hard, his head buried between his knees. Travis didn’t need to see any more to know the defenseman had his game face on.
The Mini-Penguins were going to be tough again, perhaps even tougher than in the previous match. The big center – the Lemieux-Crosby clone – was in brilliant form, leading rush after rush up the ice. Travis loved watching how effortlessly he stickhandled, but he also knew it was his job to ensure that the center’s stickhandling didn’t end up with a puck in the net behind Jenny.
There was no score in the first period and, amazingly, no score in the second. Muck always argued that there could be nothing better than a 1–0 game in hockey, but Travis had never agreed with that. Virtually every legendary game ever played – the 1972 Summit Series, the 1987 Canada Cup finals – had had the same score, 6–5, and he figured any game with eleven goals had to be superior to a game with only one.
But this game was special.
The big center rushed often, but with Travis staying back and Nish at the top of his game, they kept the big guy at bay, for the most part. And Sarah was on fire, skating as fast as or faster than any player on the ice.
The Owls were all playing their best. Fahd blocked shots. Simon Milliken put a beautiful check on the big Penguins’ center. Jesse Highboy, never known for carrying the puck, rushed end to end and put a shot off the Penguins’ goalpost. Jenny was superb in net, her glove hand lashing out like a cobra to bite off any shot that threatened to beat her.
Early in the third, the big center took a pass just over the red line and split Lars and Sam on defense. He came in hard on Jenny, dipped his shoulder to get her to make the first move, and then went backhand. But Jenny had refused to fall for the fake and was still standing there, the puck bouncing hard off her chest pad.
The puck bounced back, dropped, and skipped over Lars’s stick and onto the stick of the Penguins’ right winger, coming on fast in search of the rebound. He swung hard at the bouncing puck, coming in just under it, clipping it so it flew up, up, and over a helplessly falling Jenny.
The Mini-Penguins had the lead, 1–0.
Travis checked the clock. Twelve minutes left. The crowd, clearly many of them from Pittsburgh, were cheering hard for their heroes. Travis noticed a large number of waving American flags. No surprise. The Penguins were the American team, the Owls from Canada. And this was Boston, after all. Home of the Boston Tea Party, birthplace of the American Revolution. Patriotism here was huge.
“U.S.A.!” the crowd chanted.
“U.S.A.!”
“U.S.A.!”
Twelve minutes. Travis thought about it. More than enough time. But the clock seemed to be ticking faster and faster. Eleven. Ten. Less than ten minutes now …
Travis felt Muck’s hand touch his shoulder and looked up. If Muck was anxious, he wasn’t showing it. In fact, it struck Travis that Muck was loving this game, even if they were behind. And no doubt about it, it was a great game.
Travis leaped the boards as Derek came off. He checked the clock. Six minutes. Sarah had the puck in her own end and fed it off to Lars. Lars played a give-and-go with her, and Sarah broke over her own blue line, headed for center.
Dmitri was racing down the right side. Sarah put a perfect backhand pass off the boards and onto Dmitri’s stick just before he crossed the Penguins’ blue line.
Dmitri took the puck in and button-hooked it, pausing with it by the boards. As a defender came at him, he slipped the puck through the player’s feet and Sarah caught it with her skates and kicked it up to her stick.
Travis knew his play. He rushed to the left of the net. If he crashed into the goalie, so be it – the important thing was to get to the net.
Sarah floated the pass to him. Travis hit it down out of the air and instantly cranked a hard shot – off the crossbar, over the glass, and into the crowd.
As they skated back to the bench, he slammed his stick down hard. Sarah cuffed the back of his legs with her stick.
“Nice try. Next time, we’ll do it.”
Travis nodded and sagged in his seat, gulping for breath. He checked the clock. Two minutes left.
Two minutes!
Muck signaled to Jenny that he wanted her high, out by the slot so she could get off fast if he called her.
Muck touched the back of Travis’s neck. “Can you go again?”
Travis nodded, still gulping air.
The whistle blew, giving Travis a few more seconds of recovery time. Muck put out Nish and Lars together, the team’s top defensemen, and then sent out Jesse, who’d been having another good game, and Andy, who could hold off the big center of the Penguins if needed.
Before the puck dropped, Nish glided along the boards by the Owls’ bench.
He had something to whisper to Travis.
Travis nodded.
The Owls got the puck out and up over center, giving Muck the chance to wave Jenny to the bench and send Travis out as the extra attacker.
The crowd was bursting with excitement, every fan in the building rising to his or her feet.
The Mini-Penguins dumped the puck into the Owls’ end, but not deep enough for an icing call.
Nish was first back, and he picked up the puck and stood with it behind the empty Owls’ net. He looked calm as he surveyed the lie of the ice.
Travis knew what Nish was looking for. He spun hard and began skating down the left side, not even looking back to see what Nish would do next. He knew what Nish would do.
He was just about to reach the center ice line when he heard the crowd shout in surprise. He knew they were watching Nish’s special play, the high Hail Mary pass that had worked so brilliantly before.
Travis listened for the puck to land beside him, knowing he was clear.
But there was no slap of the puck on the ice. There was no puck!
Instead, there was the sharp sizzle of other skates, and then the chop of skates skating away from him in the other direction.
He turned just in time to see the big center drop the puck down onto his own stick. He had intercepted Nish’s Hail Mary!
Down the ice the big center flew, with Travis in pursuit. Only, Travis was now badly out of position. And Sarah, the only Owl fast enough to catch the center, was not on the ice to give chase.
It was all up to Lars and Nish. There was no goalie in the Owls’ net, Jenny having been yanked so that Travis could go on.
Lars and Nish both fell in the hope of blocking the big center’s shot, but the player held, danced the puck niftily between them, and very gently deposited the puck in the empty net.
Mini-Penguins 2, Owls 0.
The game was over, the championship lost.