February 2002
My biggest goal ever and my first kiss happened on the same weekend.
Only one of these events was awesome.
We were warming up for the championship final of the Midget house league. A pass blew by me deep into West Van’s side of the ice. I skated after the puck, and one of their players passed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said. He jerked his head up to stare at me.
“Fuck. You’re a girl,” he said.
No shit, Sherlock.
Then he grinned. “Well, winning this game is gonna be even easier than I thought.” Number 25 made a kissy face at me. West Van had finished first in regular season play, so they had a ton of swagger. Our team, North Van C5, had finished fourth, and battled through the playoffs to get here.
“You wish,” I said. “You’re definitely going down.”
“Yeah, right. The only thing going down will be you—on my dick.” He made a hand motion, in case I didn’t know where that was located.
What an asshole. I skated away, but his teammate number 12 was watching us and read the name on my jersey.
“Hey Tanaka! Five dollah sucky-sucky?”
Sexist and racist. Beating these guys was going to be a huge pleasure.
Phil Davidson was cruising the centre line and watching us. Phil was one of my best friends. He was an awesome hockey player. In fact, he was so good that other parents sometimes complained that he was even on our team, saying he should be playing up in rep hockey. Phil had a lot of stuff going on—like swimming, soccer, track, and guitar—so he wouldn’t have time for everything if he played rep as well. That was nice for our team and really nice for me, since he had been the centreman on my line forever. By now, we had a sixth sense of where the other person would be on the ice.
“Everything okay, Kelly?” he asked, as I skated back into our zone.
“No problem,” I told him. Trash talking wasn’t really personal. Guys just glommed onto whatever was easiest, like the fact that I was half-Asian or a girl. Now that I was fifteen, I took a lot more grief because most girls had switched to girls’ hockey. I wasn’t switching. I had played on the same hockey team since I moved to North Vancouver, and I liked my coach and my teammates. Why mess with something great?
The game got off to a bad start. West Van scored two goals in the first period and we spent way too much time running around in our own zone. Our head coach, Jerry Jankowski, talked to us between periods about calming down.
“You’re letting your minds get ahead of you. Win one shift, and don’t think about the outcome of the game.”
He was right. I was too aware of how important the game was, but I needed to keep my focus small. Our line went out first: me, Phil, and Evan Novak.
Phil won the face-off and sent it back to the defenceman and we all took off. A perfect pass came to Evan, who zoomed along the boards into the West Van zone. Two guys were converging on him, so he fired the puck forward. It rang around the boards where I picked it up and went directly at the net. A big d-man rushed out and steered me towards the corner, but I kept control of the puck and made a short pass back to Phil.
Phil snapped his shot off right away and drilled it top shelf. Beautiful goal! Evan and I skated over to congratulate him.
“Top cheds! Way to go, Phil.” I hugged him and even through his mouthguard, he had a huge smile.
As we skated back to the bench, I passed number 12, who should have been covering Phil. “Who’s sucky-sucky now?” I called out, and he swore at me.
The goal seemed to boost our confidence, and everyone started playing better. A few shifts later, Dex, our best defenceman, led a rush up the ice. He deked through almost the whole West Van team and fired off a hard shot that went in five-hole. Everyone on the bench leaped up and cheered. Now it was a tie game!
On our next shift, Phil brought the puck into the offensive zone, and I skated alongside him. He flipped me the puck and I took it behind the net and delivered a pass to Evan, who was just coming down his wing towards the goalie. About five seconds after I made the pass, I got hit big time.
I totally wasn’t expecting a hit that late. I went pretty hard into the boards and onto the ice. It hurt, but nothing major, and I popped back up. I looked around to see who had hit me and it was 25, that jerk-off from the warm-up. But Phil was already on him, giving him a two-hander across the chest and cursing him out. The guy hit the ice and Phil got called for a crosscheck. In the power play that followed, West Van scored their third goal and took back the lead.
Randy Lum, our assistant coach, yelled at Phil when he got back to the bench. “Stupid penalties won’t help us win the game, Davidson.”
Phil shrugged and sat down beside me.
Then I started in on him. “Phil, I’ve told you, stop protecting me. I can handle things myself. I take the number and get them later.”
“Yeah, Kelly, like your body checks are going to hurt anyone.”
“I’m fine. I don’t care if I take a hit if we can make a good play. We need to beat these guys, and you can’t let it get personal.”
“Whatever.” Phil was ignoring me. He always did whatever he wanted.
Coach Jerry knew exactly what was going on, so he switched up the lines. I was now playing with Marcus Craig and Andrew Lum. We would be a fast line, but not too much size. Jerry was trying to prevent Phil from taking any more dumb penalties.
The game went back and forth: we’d get a catch-up goal, then West Van would score again. Late in the third period, the score was 4-4. Phil had gotten the tying goal, a beautiful blast from the high slot that seemed to freeze the goalie and then bounced in off the post.
Then my line went out. Marcus brought the puck in and did a fancy no-look drop pass. I picked up the puck and dealt it cross-ice to Andrew and went right to the net. Andrew zoomed in and shot the puck hard but the goalie put his blocker on it. The rebound squirted out to me, and I shot right away. It went high, and the goalie reached for it but missed.
Score!
I threw my arms in the air. Marcus and Andrew grabbed me and we all cheered. Now we were ahead 5-4.
After that, the whole team hunkered down, played great defence, and withstood a desperate drive by West Van as they pulled their goalie and fired everything they could at the net. When the buzzer sounded, we started whooping and piling on our goalie, Jim Mendez. But there wasn’t even time for a ceremony, because there was another game and the Zamboni was waiting to get on. We shook hands with West Van and filed off like any regular game. I went to the handicapped washroom to get changed all by myself. I felt a little lonely, but only for a moment.
Wow, I had just scored the winning goal in a championship game! If that wasn’t a dream come true, I didn’t know what would be.