Ten minutes into the first period, Travis understood. Muck had been talking about someone specific: Sarah Cuthbertson, Travis’s centre, the Screech Owls’ leading scorer.
Sareen, her eyes still red and swollen, was sitting on the bench as the back-up goaltender who would only come into the game if Guy Boucher happened to get hurt. But Sarah, as always, had taken the opening face-off.
The game had begun terribly. Sarah had lost the face-off and the opposing centre–number 5, big, dark-haired, and menacing–had dumped it back against the boards near his left defenceman, the little number 4 that Muck had warned them to be careful around. Dmitri hadn’t listened: he lunged for the puck, hoping to tip it over the defenceman’s stick and into a break, but instead the quick little defender had beaten Dmitri to the puck, slammed it off the boards, past Dmitri and Sarah and perfectly onto the tape of the big centre, who had already turned and had a step on Nish. The puck reached him just as he crossed the blueline. Another few inches back or a fraction of a second slower and it would have been offside; but it wasn’t, and number 5 had nothing between himself and the net but poor Guy Boucher, wiggling wildly backwards to play the angle of a long shot at the same time as he protected his crease. Guy was too slow, too late. Number 5 fired from the top of the circle, a high rising slapshot that blew past Guy as if he was flapping a wing at it. 1–0, Panthers.
Six seconds into the game and all they could think of was the score, even though Muck had told them to erase the score from their minds.
Travis couldn’t remember a shorter shift. Six seconds! Not being involved in the play, he had hardly moved. He hadn’t even shaken the butterflies from his stomach, hadn’t increased his pulse or broken a sweat–and here was Muck calling them off the ice and sending out Derek’s line.
They sat out three shifts, Derek’s line going out twice more and the game beginning to move back onto equal footing. Once, Mr. Dillinger, in crossing toward the defensive units with a water bottle, gave Travis a gentle, encouraging pat on the arm, but Travis didn’t want encouragement. He wanted Muck to call Sarah’s name so they could head back out and make up for things.
“Sarah!” Muck finally barked. “And stay with your man, Dmitri.”
They skated back out and Travis could hear some of the parents shouting. Dmitri looked cross, angry with Muck for seeming to put the blame on him. The face-off was to be in the Panthers’ end of the ice, and Sarah was determined not to lose this one. Twice the linesman waved her around to get her to face correctly, and each time she went back to turning sideways with her bottom hand reversed, her lower grip almost at the heel of the stick, a certain sign that she was going after the puck and it was going straight back and across to Nish for the shot. Travis thought the official might wave her out altogether and he’d have to take the face-off when, suddenly, the linesman threw the puck down so hard it bounced straight back up.
Sarah was waiting for it. She clipped the puck out of midair on the bounce and drew it back, as Travis had known she would, to Nish, who moved in for the shot. The dark Panther centre was rushing him, though, and sliding with his pads toward the puck, so Nish, instead of hammering the puck into the pads and having it bounce out over the blueline, stepped lightly around the sliding player and rifled it around the curve of the boards so it came perfectly to Travis, who was waiting, expecting.
Travis took a moment to look. A Panther defender was rushing him and trying to poke check–a mistake–and Travis took advantage of his decision by sliding the puck between the player’s outstretched stick and his skates and twisting around so he was free again, the defenceman piling shoulder-first into the boards. Travis faked a pass to Sarah at the front of the net and swung the puck back to Data, who was pinching in from the far point, and Data shot.
But the shot never came through. It hit the Panthers’ little blond defenceman on the chest, bounced over Sarah’s stick, and landed in empty space between the crease area and the blueline. Quick as a cat, the little defenceman gathered up the puck and sped away, with Sarah in pursuit and Travis, lost in the corner, well out of the play.
The little defenceman and the big dark centre raced down the ice, the puck moving twice between them. Dmitri, caught skating the other way, could not get back. Data, having taken the shot, had fallen trying to turn hard. He scrambled back fast but not quickly enough, and was also behind the play. Only Nish was back, his skates snaking backwards almost as quickly as the two Panthers’ could stride forward.
Sarah was the only Screech Owl forward in position to get back into the play. She missed her check when the puck first went off the little defender, and tried to catch him, but by the blueline Sarah was digging deep, her head down, shoulders swinging, a tired player seeming to be wading waist-deep through water rather than scooting on this magnificent, hard ice, as the two Panthers were doing.
The big centre cut cross-ice, the little defenceman cutting so he went over the blueline just ahead of his teammate. Nish was dead centre, expecting the crisscross, playing the pass. The little defenceman looked to pass, moved his stick to pass, and Nish gambled, going down on his knees and arms to block the pass that never came. The little defenceman tucked the puck perfectly back in on his skates and kicked it niftily around the sprawling Nish, the two Panthers now home-free on Guy Boucher.
Guy, caught in an impossible two-on-none situation, had no choice but to play the shot. But to do so, he had to leave the far side of the net wide open for an easy tip-in. Number 4 faked a shot, passed quickly, and big number 5 swept it into the net effortlessly.
Panthers 2, Screech Owls 0.
Two shifts, two goals-against for Sarah, Dmitri, and Travis. They didn’t even have to look for Muck’s hand signal to know they were coming off. All three skated over, heads down, knowing they were in trouble.
But Muck wasn’t angry. When Sarah sat down he came up behind her, placed a towel around her neck, and leaned down and whispered into the ear-hole of the helmet. Travis couldn’t hear a word. He could only, out of the corner of his eye, catch Sarah choking back tears and nodding in agreement. Muck straightened up, tapped Sarah affectionately on the shoulders, and then went first to Travis and then to Dmitri.
“We’re going to mix the lines. You’re on with Derek for the rest of the game.”
Travis felt terrible for Sarah. She was too exhausted to play. The lack of sleep and crying had worn her down. Muck had done the right thing. Sarah would play a few shifts with the other lines, but the scoring they so desperately needed now would have to come from Travis and Dmitri and Derek, who was as good a replacement as the team had for Sarah. Muck had done what he had to do, and Muck–perhaps alone–didn’t think the game was lost.
Travis and Dmitri were well used to Derek. They had played together on the odd power play and in the rare situations when Sarah would get a penalty and Travis and Derek would be sent out to kill it off. They had also worked together in a tournament at Christmas time when Sarah was off with the Toronto Aeros at the Canadian Women’s Nationals.
Derek wasn’t as smart with the puck as Sarah, but he was better at face-offs and had probably the team’s best backhand. He couldn’t pass as well as Sarah, but all that meant was that Travis and Dmitri would have to take the puck off their skates once in a while rather than feeling it click perfectly onto their tape, as was so often the situation with the magical Sarah.
The tournament games were set up in two twenty-minute periods, with a break, but no flood, in between. The score was still 2–0 at the break. The Screech Owls had yet to get a goal, but at least they were now holding their own. And no one was working harder than Derek Dillinger, who had stepped in so well for Sarah. He worked as hard coming back as going down, and several times had got back to break up Panther rushes. Other Screech Owls were working hard to pick up the slack. Mario, Zak Adelman, Jesse Highboy–all playing their hearts out. But what the team needed now were some good scoring chances.
“It’s coming, it’s coming,” said Muck, who seemed much relieved at the break. Mr. Dillinger was busy making sure everyone had fresh water and a towel. Travis was standing, face-mask up, helmet half off, beside Derek when Mr. Dillinger came by with water, and he saw a proud Mr. Dillinger quickly reach out and gently pinch Derek’s arm as he passed. Nothing more, nothing that anyone but the father and son would notice. Travis felt happy for them both.
“Derek,” Muck said. Derek pulled the towel off his face, staring and waiting. “You guys have got to use the fast break more. Use Dmitri’s speed on right. They’re lining up across the red line. You should be able to chop one off the boards that Dmitri can catch up to on-side and be in behind them. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“And another thing, Travis, I want to see the third guy coming in late for rebounds, understand?”
Travis nodded. He understood.
The second period began quite differently from the first. Derek won the face-off and sent the puck back to Nish, Nish lazily circling back into his own end to draw in the Panthers’ forwards. One darted for him, and Nish bounced the puck back off his own boards so the player flew past and the puck came back out to Nish, alone. He called this play his “Ray Bourque,” and much to everyone’s surprise, it usually worked.
Nish used the open ice to hit Derek with a pass as Derek skated toward him at the Screech Owls’ blueline, and Derek niftily dropped a pass to himself as he turned, so the puck was waiting for him when he came around and headed up-ice. Travis inhaled deeply–it was a dangerous move if a defenceman was around, but as Muck had said, the Panthers’ defenders were dropping back to the red line, protecting their lead.
Derek barely looked for Dmitri. He slapped the puck so it hit the boards waist-high directly in front of the Panthers’ bench. The puck jumped and lost velocity and fell near the Panthers’ blueline, quickly losing speed as it crossed ahead of any players.
Dmitri already had the jump on the defence. He had come out of his own corner full-steam, and Dmitri at top speed with a puck to chase was about as fast as Travis had ever seen a peewee player. He turned the Panthers’ left defenceman so fast that the defender’s skates caught on each other and he went down onto one knee, Dmitri gone by the time he recovered.
The Panthers’ goaltender saw the play and raced for the puck. A mistake. He had misjudged twice: first that Derek’s slapper would carry down into the Panthers’ end, second that Dmitri Yakushev was just another skater coming at him. By the time he realized his mistake, it was too late. The goalie sprawled and slid, waving his stick and pads to create as large an obstacle as possible, but for Dmitri, gobbling up the puck at the blueline, it was child’s play. He dipped around the goaltender and, from the top of the circle in, had an empty net.
Panthers 2, Screech Owls 1.