The alarming work at the top of the funicular was not the only display of hate graffti. Nor was it all anti-French. Freshly scrawled over billboards and along the wooden walls around construction sites, and even on the sides of the Colisée, were the slogans “GO HOME ANGLAIS” and “UGLY ENGLISH” and “MAUDIT ANGLAIS.” The New Battle of Quebec was being waged with spray-paint cans, not muskets.
“Who can be doing this?” Travis kept asking as the Owls gathered in their dressing room at the Colisée for game three of the peewee tournament.
“It’s probably lots of different people,” said Data. “Obviously at least two, because there’s two different points of view.”
“What are they trying to prove?”
“Prove?” said Data. “I doubt they’re trying to prove anything. They’re just spreading hate.”
“What’s the point?” Travis asked.
“To show that it’s impossible for English and French to get along, I guess.”
“Why don’t they come to the Duponts’? They’d see we get along just fine.”
Muck came into the dressing room, and all the players looked up. The coach looked concerned, but it wasn’t about the spray-painting.
“I don’t like doing this,” he said when he was satisfied he had their attention, “but Mr. Dillinger has done some calculations. The tie with Beauport has put us in a tough position. We have to win by at least five goals tonight, according to Mr. Dillinger’s mathematics, if we’re to have any chance of making the finals. If we win, and Beauport wins tomorrow morning, it’s going to make three teams tied at the top in points: us, the Beauport Nordiques, and a team we never even got to play–the Saskatoon Wheaties.
“Saskatoon’s already finished their three games. They’ve got a tie, too, but altogether they’ve scored four more goals than we have and three more than Beauport. If we want to make sure we play in the final, we’d better win by five.”
“We’ll win by ten,” Nish predicted.
Muck didn’t even smile. “Five will be adequate, Nishikawa,” he said, and abruptly left the room.
“Geez,” said Nish. “What’s got into him?”
“Nothing,” said Travis. “He just doesn’t like it when teams run up scores, that’s all.”
“Ig-bay eal-day,” Nish said, shaking his head and bending down to tighten his skates.
The team from Burlington, Vermont, had yet to win a game–but they weren’t that bad. They had size and they had heart. Travis had rarely seen a team work so hard. But as Muck always said, “You can’t teach talent.” And the Burlington Bears had precious little talent to spare, apart from a quick little centre and one defenceman who was every bit as good in both ends as Nish. Overall, the Owls were faster, smarter, and much better coached. If one of the two Bears’ stars didn’t do it for their team, it basically didn’t get done.
Just before the opening face-off, Sarah had skated away from centre ice and, bending over, with her stick resting on her knees, had drifted by Travis for a quick, quiet consultation.
“It’s up to us to get Muck’s five,” she said.
“We’ll do it,” Travis replied.
In fact, Sarah would do it by herself. Because he had to have the goals, Muck started double-shifting her towards the middle of the first period. She would take a shift with Travis and Dmitri, catch her breath while Andy’s line was out, and then be thrown back out by Muck on a makeshift line with Derek Dillinger on one wing and little Simon Milliken on the other.
She played magnificently. Even though the Bears’ coach was smart enough to have his good defenceman stay on her every time she was on the ice, Sarah could not be stopped. She scored twice in the first period and three times in the second–and with only five minutes to go in the game, and with the Owls leading 7–2, Nish pointed out something that Travis had been afraid to say out loud.
“You can go for the record!” Nish called down to Sarah from the defence end of the Owls’ bench.
Sarah was bent over, gasping to catch her breath, and only nodded. She knew, just as Travis knew. She had five goals; young Guy Lafleur had scored seven the night before they sewed the velvet pucks onto his sweater.
“We’re…already up…by five,” she finally gasped.
“C’mon,” Nish prodded. “Give it a shot!”
The Bears were giving up. If the defenceman or the little centre didn’t carry the puck, no one else seemed to want it. They just wanted the clock to run out, and were dumping the puck from their own end, causing an endless series of icings.
Nish hated icing, and would do whatever he could to prevent one. Travis had rarely seen Nish skate forward as fast as he was flying backwards next shift to snare a dump-in before it crossed the icing line. He reached it just before the linesman could blow his whistle. The linesman waved off the icing, and Nish circled his net, still gathering speed.
Travis headed for centre. Nish fired the high, hard one–a play they rarely attempted–and it worked perfectly. Travis caught the puck in his glove, and simply let it drop down onto his stick as he crossed centre. What a perfect pass!
Travis was in with only the Bears’ good defenceman back, and Sarah was moving up fast. He was on the left side, with a shot at a bad angle, but Sarah might be able to get the rebound. He didn’t think he could get around the defenceman going one on one.
But there was still the back pass! Sarah was uncovered–the rest of the Bears not even bothering to come back with the game so clearly lost–and she was dead centre, just at the blueline and headed for the slot.
Travis slipped the puck onto his backhand, checked once on Sarah, and then pulled the puck back and around.
As soon as he let the pass go, he knew he’d blown it. The defenceman had read the play perfectly and, with the game already out of reach, had decided to gamble. He leapt past Travis, giving him a clear run to the net, but since Travis had already committed himself to the high-risk pass, he was doomed.
The defenceman picked up the puck in full stride. Travis was off-balance and turned, badly, into the boards. Sarah had been going full-speed towards the Bears’ net and couldn’t turn in time. Dmitri was on the far side, racing for a rebound, and he, too, was out of the play.
The defenceman was at the red line when the little centre turned and broke for the Owls’ blueline, directly between Nish and Data, who were back-pedalling fast and trying to squeeze him off.
The defenceman’s pass was perfect, a floater that the little centre knocked down with the shaft of his stick as he jumped through the opening between Nish and Data. Nish turned, flailing, willing to trip and take the penalty, but the little centre’s skates were off the ice and Nish’s desperate sweep met nothing but air.
The centre was in, alone, on Jenny. He faked once to his backhand, kept it on his forehand, and merely waited for Jenny to go down. Just before he lost the angle, he fired the puck high, ticking it in off the far post.
Owls 7, Bears 3.
Travis skated back to the bench with his head bowed. He could feel Muck’s eyes boring right through his helmet, the heat of his coach’s stare unbearable. He knew what Muck had said about the back pass. He knew he had blown it.
With neither coach nor captain saying a word, Travis made his way down the length of the bench and plunked himself down beside Jeremy Weathers, who was back-up goalie this game. Even Jeremy wouldn’t look at him.
Travis sat, staring down between his legs, disgusted with himself. He felt a towel fall around his neck. Good old Mr. Dillinger. But then, he thought, the towel was also a sure sign he wouldn’t be going back out.
“We have to have five,” Muck said.
Travis could tell from the tone of Muck’s voice that the coach didn’t like saying this. More goals from the Owls at this stage of the game would look like they were just running up the score. Muck couldn’t turn to the sparse crowd–none of them booing Travis this night–and explain to them why he had to have a five-goal victory. He just had to hope he got it, and could get out of this awkward game as fast as possible.
“Sarah,” Muck said, “you’re centring Dmitri and Lars.”
Travis looked up. Lars? But Lars was a defenceman! He was being replaced by a defenceman?
Five Owls lined up for the face-off at centre. Sarah, Dmitri, Lars, Nish, and Data. Travis checked the clock. Less than three minutes to go. They had to have a goal.
Muck’s hunch paid off almost immediately. Lars was so quick, so smart with the puck, he was able to pluck it out of the face-off scrum when Sarah got tied up with the little centre.
Lars circled at centre and dumped the puck back to Nish, who immediately tried his long floater play. He lifted the puck as high as he could, the puck flipping through the air as it rose over the Owls’ blueline and centre ice.
The Bears’ star defenceman had read the play correctly, and leapt to snare the puck with his glove, but it was just a touch too high for him. It clicked off a finger of his glove and fell behind him.
Sarah was already moving. She picked up the puck, moved over the Bears’ blueline, and fired a quick slapshot that surprised the Bears’ goaltender, who completely whiffed on the glove save. The puck bulged the net, the red light came on, and the Owls’ bench, Muck included, went wild.
Owls 8, Bears 3. The five-goal lead was back in place!
Muck sent Andy’s line out to check the Bears, and when Andy’s line tired, he put back the same five who had scored the big goal.
With less than fifteen seconds left, Lars, with his uncanny ability to knock pucks out of the air, caught a long pass at centre ice. He moved in fast, completely fooling the only defenceman back by moving with a great burst of speed to go to the side, and then slipping the puck back into the slot area, where he was able to dodge around the defenceman and go in clear.
It was one on one, Lars on the goaltender. He shifted. He faked. He stickhandled so fast the Bears’ goaltender went down on his back, lying there helplessly. All Lars had to do was flick the puck over the goalie.
But he instead skated to the side of the net and turned, looking behind him. The Bears’ star defenceman was coming in fast, racing straight for Lars.
Lars waited until the final possible moment, then flipped a saucer pass over the stick of the defenceman and hit Sarah perfectly for a tap-in goal, the net as good as empty as the goaltender turned on his back and stared helplessly while Sarah scored her seventh goal of the game.
“You did it!” Nish shouted as he joined the pile-on. “You tied the record!”
“Lars shouldn’t have done that,” Sarah laughed. “That was embarrassing.”
“It doesn’t matter!” Nish shouted. “You got your seventh–same as Lafleur!”
Nish wasn’t the only one who had noticed. Tournament organizers rushed from the stands to congratulate her. The Bears, led by the quick little centre and the good defenceman, lined up to shake her hand. Reporters and photographers were milling onto the ice to get shots of her holding seven pucks.
How nice, thought Travis. They’re no longer chasing me.
He still felt foolish about the back pass, but then, if he hadn’t blown it, Sarah wouldn’t have had to score a sixth goal and would never have been on the ice with Lars, who gave her the seventh.
Travis dressed quietly. Apart from one sharp look from Muck, who shook all the players’ hands, nothing more was said about the messed-up glory play. There was no need.
When they left the rink, a light snow was beginning to fall. Nothing had been painted on the bus this time, Travis noted with some gratitude. Perhaps the whole thing was just going to fade away.
“Travis!” someone called.
He turned, nervous, instantly on guard–but this was no reporter. It was a young voice, though in the dark of the parking lot and the light snowfall, Travis couldn’t quite make out its source.
“Travis!” called a couple of voices this time, and three figures came racing up, puffng and wiping melting snow from their eyes.
They were kids, all younger than Travis.
“S’il vous plaît!”
They were holding out hockey cards. Travis Lindsay hockey cards. They wanted his autograph.
Travis took the offered pen and the cards. He signed each one carefully, a big loop on the L, and the number 7 inside each loop.
“Merci,” he said as he handed each one back. “Merci.”
Travis’s world felt right again.