Travis Lindsay loved dressing rooms. The smells, the sounds, the anticipation before a game and the satisfaction after: ever since he began playing Travis had loved that first feeling that came over him as he walked into a hockey dressing room.
He loved the familiarity. He loved to know he had his place and his teammates would expect him to be in it. He loved the insults, the practical jokes, the wicked, Coke-forced belches, the stupid, meaningless, harmless bragging.
Sometimes the feeling was better before a game, when everyone would be coming in at different times–Nish usually first, delivered by his parents, who knew his habits best, and then dawdling until he was the last one dressed. Matt Brown always late, his bigmouthed father in a panic and sharp with Matt as he pushed him to hurry. Fahd sometimes playing Tetris on his Game Boy until Mr. Dillinger announced the Zamboni was out on the ice, then dressing with all the precision and efficiency of a human computer. Sarah Cuthbertson arriving fully dressed but for her shoulder pads, sweater, gloves, helmet, and skates. Willie Granger with some obscure fact he’d memorized from the Guinness Book of Records, like the world’s longest sneezing fit being 978 days or something. Travis particularly liked it when everyone would finish dressing in near-silence, everyone knowing that there was nothing now but a few words from the coach and a game to come.
Sometimes he liked it best after a game–after a victory, anyway–when he could take as much time as he wanted, sitting there grinning and sweaty, his hands in his lap, his helmet, sweater, shoulder pads, elbow pads, and gloves all off, everything else including his skates still on and tied up tight. Travis loved the feeling of a game well played, the way they would all go over the best plays and the goals and about how well Guy or Sareen had played in goal.
Players would explain missed opportunities (“I couldn’t get the puck to lie down,” “That ice was terrible, the puck skipped right over my stick”) and they would talk about players on the other side (“Did you see his face when he got that penalty?”) and hope, always, that maybe someone would say something good about the way they had played. And usually someone did. The Screech Owls were, after all, a team.
Travis had a thing about arenas. He loved the warmth and the light when the door opened for a 6:00 a.m. practice in the winter. He loved the cool and the dark when the door opened for a 6:00 p.m. practice in the early fall. He loved the smell of Dustbane when the workers were cleaning up. He loved the sound a wide broom made when it was pushed across a smooth cement floor. He loved the dry, sparking smell of the sharpening stone when it hit against a skate blade, especially if Mr. Dillinger was doing the sharpening, and he loved to watch how silently, smoothly Mr. Dillinger could work the skate holder across the shiny steel surface of the sharpener.
But more than anything else, Travis loved new ice. He liked to stand with his face against the glass while the Zamboni made its final circle. He liked to watch while the water glistened under the lights and then froze. He loved to be first onto the ice and feel the joy of new ice as he went into his first corner, coming out of it with a fine turn so he could then skate backwards to centre, watching the first marks form on the fresh surface–his marks.
He liked the first feel of a puck on his stick. He did not like, but could do nothing about, pucks sticking in water that had yet to freeze. Sometimes a player would be about to take a slapshot when the puck would suddenly grip on him, and player and stick would go gliding on alone, the stick swinging down on air. When other players saw that happening, they always roared with laughter. It was embarrassing, but it happened to everyone.
Travis already had superstitions. He was still a long way from Montreal Canadiens’ goaltender Patrick Roy talking to his posts, but Travis had a few things he always had to do. This year he had to ring a shot off the crossbar. If he could do that in practice or in the warm-up, then he’d have a good game.
Travis had never seen a rink like this one before. Massive, white, more like an art gallery than a hockey arena. They’d walked by the hall of fame. They’d stood by the Olympic display watching the video repeat the 4–3 win over the Soviet Union that had given the Americans the 1980 Olympic gold medal. None of the Screech Owls had ever seen such a celebration–not when they won, not even when they watched the Stanley Cup playoffs and saw the Rangers or the Penguins or the Canadiens win.
The win had been called “The Miracle on Ice.” And it looked like a miracle. The place had filled with thousands of blue and white balloons. The crowd had poured onto the ice. The players were in tears. Men and women–who were they? fathers? mothers? officials?–crying and hugging each other and touching players as they passed by, as if the players had some magical power that might rub off–and seeing that film it seemed as if they did. There wasn’t a Screech Owl watching who didn’t imagine him or herself there and part of something so special nothing else in life would ever compare.
The rink itself was huge, big as an NHL rink, with red seats and ads on the boards–Coca-Cola, Kodak, Miller Draft, milk–and the ice surface so big and square that the Screech Owls, none of whom had ever skated on an Olympic-size ice surface before, could only stare as if they were seeing a mountain or the ocean for the first time. A player could get lost out there!
The dressing rooms had shelves for the equipment, hangers and lockers for the players, and, as Nish shrieked when he saw them, “Pro Showers!” The Screech Owls’ home rink didn’t even have one shower. The Olympic Center had a massive shower room with stainless steel tubes running from floor to ceiling that had shower nozzles sticking out at different heights and in every direction. More like a car wash than any shower Travis had ever seen, but he could hardly wait to try them.
Before the practice, they lined up for commemorative photographs, and then, when all the pictures had been taken, Muck spoke to them. Apart from the coaches and Mr. Dillinger, whistling softly as he laid out the sweaters and socks, the players were alone in the huge dressing room, the team entirely by itself. This year Muck had put an end to parents coming in. They were “players” now, Muck had said, not “helpless infants,” and the change had been profound.
Travis could still remember when the tiny dressing rooms were so crammed with parents–sometimes both parents–that the players could barely move. He could remember how, even after it had reached a point where their sole job was tightening the skates, the parents would stay for the coach’s speech, and how some of the dads–Mr. Brown had been the worst of them–had insisted on adding their own speeches, the kids all sitting there secretly giggling and paying not the slightest attention to whatever came after the first “Listen up!”
“I want to speak to you for a minute,” Muck began, his voice so soft he could have been speaking one-on-one to any of them. “This is a good tournament. We’re going to have to be at the top of our game if we’re going to go anywhere in it. You already know some of the teams here. We’ve played the Toronto Towers before. We know them and they know us. Rest assured the others are every bit as good, if not better.”
Travis hated the Towers. Chippy and arrogant–the Screech Owls had played them twice before and lost once and won once. The game they won the Towers had protested, claiming Muck had stacked his team. He hadn’t, of course, and the organizers had thrown the protest out. But that was the kind of team they were.
“There are teams here from New York State, Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Minnesota. We haven’t seen any of them. And the first team we play–the Portland Panthers–are the top-rated team in New England.”
“We’ll wipe ’em,” Nish said.
Muck looked up from his piece of paper and fixed his gaze on Nish, who reddened.
“You’re going to be hearing there are scouts in the stands,” Muck said.
Scouts! NHL scouts watching the Screech Owls? Why?
“Some of your parents have already informed me that this is so, but I want you to understand exactly what it means. They’ve been there before, only you never knew about it. And I certainly never would have mentioned it to your parents.
“They are not NHL scouts, no matter what some of your moms and dads may be thinking. They’re mostly coaches, and a few general managers of bantam teams. Maybe the odd midget team. But that’s all they are. This is a convenient place for some of them to see what’s coming up in their own district–and remember that, you’re all committed to the Central District until at least midget age–and maybe to get a sense of how the players are coming along in other hockey areas.
“That’s it. It’s that simple. Nobody’s going to walk up to you and say, ‘Sign here and you’re Jeremy Roenick’s left-winger for next season’…”
Nish let the air he’d been holding snort through his nose. Travis was surprised to find that he too had been sitting there with breath held, almost afraid to breathe. Yet Muck had been talking as calmly as if he were sitting around the dinner table, nothing more.
“…I’m dead serious, ladies and gentlemen. I’m going to say something to you that sounds like the exact opposite of what I’ve been yelling at some of you now for more than four years. ‘Keep your heads down.’”
Muck paused, letting the line sink in.
“Anyone know what I mean by that? You, Travis?”
Travis tried to speak but nothing came out. He had to clear his throat and start over. “It means we should concentrate on what’s going on on the ice.”
“You got it. Forget the stands. Forget thinking about what might happen five or six or seven years from now. For all you know, you might be in the same jail cell as Nish here by then.”
Nish sat back as everyone laughed, shaking his head in disgust, used to Muck’s cracks, enjoying the moment as much as anyone but determined never to show it.
“The Screech Owls are here to play hockey–nothing else. You’ve heard me say it a million times. ‘Hockey is a game of mistakes.’ Let’s not make our first one before we even leave the dressing room. Now let’s go out and make a team of ourselves. Nish, you bring the pucks.”