Travis loved the way momentum could shift in a hockey game. Equal skills, equal number of players, equal time on the clock, and yet sometimes a game could shift so lopsidedly, first one way, then the other, that it would seem as if only one team at a time had skates on. Like in his dream.
This time the momentum was all with the Screech Owls. This time he felt as if there were no skates on his feet, but instead of a nightmare it was that joyous sensation that comes only a few times a season, when your skates are so comfortable and your skating so natural that there is no awareness of where skin ends and steel begins.
Just as the first period had belonged to the Panthers, the second, and final, was going to belong to the Screech Owls. On the line’s next shift, Derek again sent Dmitri up right wing, but the Panthers were prepared this time and Dmitri wisely looped at the corner and hit Derek with a return pass as Derek came across the blueline.
Derek shot from a bad angle, but was smartly playing for a rebound, and Travis, coming in late as Muck had said he should, found the puck sliding onto his stick directly in the slot area. He rifled a shot so hard he fell with the force, the puck ringing like a bell off the crossbar and high over the glass into the seats.
There was a time when Travis Lindsay might have preferred this. There was a time–he figured every hockey player felt this way–when the finest moment possible in a game was when a puck would come back on edge and could be lofted high over the net where it would slap against the glass. Players in novice would sometimes get more excited by a good hoist than a goal. But no more. For the last year or so Travis had been able to shoot so well the concern was more in keeping it down than getting it up, and this time he had put it too high. This time he had blown it.
“Nice try,” Muck said when the line came off. Travis would have none of it. He sat, his head bowed, his gloves tightly between his legs, waiting to get out there again.
Sarah was trying her best to play. She was being short-shifted by Muck to save her energy, and it was helping. She picked up a puck in her own end, played it off the boards to herself to beat a check, then hit Matt Brown at centre, just barely avoiding a two-line pass. Matt dished it off backhand to Mario Terziano, who didn’t have the speed but let a rocket go as he crossed the blueline, the puck rebounding perfectly to Matt, who walked in and roofed a backhand with the Panthers’ goaltender on his back, waving his glove helplessly.
Panthers 2, Screech Owls 2.
“Allllll right!”
From the bench, Travis could hear Mr. Brown’s bellow above all the other shouts in the arena. He looked over and Mr. Brown, who always walked along the first row of seats, was shaking the short glass and pounding it.
“Now put it to ’em!”
Mr. Brown was red in the face and seemed more angry than happy. Travis felt sorry for Matt at a time when he should have felt happiest for him. Matt’s teammates were slapping him and high-fiving him and Travis knew that Matt was hearing his father’s screams above everyone else’s. Too much pressure for me, Travis thought. Poor Matt.
Next shift out, Matt Brown was pulled down from behind and, with Matt out of the play, the little Panther defenceman moved up into the play and rifled home a rebound to put the Panthers up 3–2. Mr. Brown went snaky behind the glass, crawling up it and screaming at the referee.
“Open your eyes!”
The officials ignored Mr. Brown, who kept pounding the glass throughout the Panthers’ celebrations and the face-off. Travis’s line was out, and he could still hear Mr. Brown screaming.
“Who the hell’s paying you for this? You goof!”
Just before the puck dropped, Travis saw the one official look up at the other and lightly shake his head and smile. They could hear. They knew. They understood perfectly who the “goof” was in this rink.
Nish blocked a shot beautifully from the little blond defenceman and hit Travis moving out of his own end. Travis could feel the puck on his stick and see more open ice than he’d seen all game.
He caught a flash out of the corner of his right eye: big number 5, charging at him. Travis slammed on his brakes, the big, dark centre flying past him and crashing into the boards. Travis began skating hard again, heading cross-ice, but lost his footing from a hard slash across the outside of his shin. Stumbling, he fired the puck up along the boards toward Dmitri and then felt the stick across his back, slamming him face-first down onto the ice.
The Panthers touched the puck and the whistle shrieked. Travis, still on the ice, could hear Mr. Brown screaming, swearing. He turned and he could see the big centre pointing at him with his stick turned blade down, the message clear: I’m going to get you.
Travis couldn’t figure out what he’d done. He’d stopped and the big centre had crashed into the boards. He supposed he’d embarrassed him. Nothing more. If that was all it took to throw the Panthers’ best scorer off his game, the Screech Owls had a chance.
The referee gave number 5 four minutes: two for slashing and two for cross-checking. He could have given him two for charging, as well, but the charge had missed so the referee had chosen to ignore it. Four minutes was more than enough.
Travis could feel Muck’s confidence in the way he told them to stay out for the power play. Travis felt fine, not even aware of the slash or the cross-check, and he could sense time changing for him the way it always did when things were starting to go right for the Screech Owls.
It was as if everything moved in slow motion. Travis was aware of every player on the ice–even of Mr. Brown, screaming “Gooooo with it!” from behind the glass–and he could feel himself moving as he had always dreamed he would one day move. His stride fluid, his arms steady, head up, the puck with him. Dmitri once told him the Russians called this “dancing with the puck” and he knew exactly what they meant. However he tried to move the puck, it obeyed.
Travis beat two players, one on a shoulder fake and the second with a deft slip between the player’s skates. He could hear the roar from the stands. He could see Derek racing for the open ice, hear Derek’s stick slapping the ice as he called for the puck.
Travis hit him beautifully, Derek not even breaking stride as he slipped past the remaining defenceman and in on net. The goalie played him to go to the backhand as Derek crossed left to right in front of the net, but Derek shot on his forehand to the short side as the goalie began to move across with him, the puck blowing the netting out like a pillow before falling, the red light flashing, Mr. Brown bellowing.
“Alllllll rrrrrrighttt!”
Panthers 3, Screech Owls 3, with two minutes to go.
The big, dark centre of the Panthers hit a goal post and Gordie Griffith almost slipped one through the Panthers’ goaltender’s five hole, but the game ended in a tie.
The Screech Owls raced to congratulate Guy, who ripped his mask off a red, soaked, but ecstatic, face. A tie, yes, but they had come back from being down 2–0, which in some ways was as good as a win. And against what everyone said was the best team in the tournament!
Muck and the two assistants, Barry and Ty, and Mr. Dillinger came running onto the ice to join in the celebration. There were high fives for everyone. Muck slapped the back of Travis’s helmet and Sarah gave him a friendly tap on the shinpads, and Travis saw Mr. Dillinger throw a bear hug around his son. Derek deserved it. He had played brilliantly in place of Sarah.
The two teams lined up to shake hands. It was quick and almost the same as every other time–gloves tapping gloves, most players barely looking at each other, a few mumbling something like “Good game” or “Good luck”–but this time, when Travis reached number 4, the little blond defenceman of the Panthers who had played so wonderfully, he looked up.
And the little defenceman winked.
Winked, and smiled, and skated right past Travis and then off the ice, leaving Travis to skate back into the crowd of congratulating Screech Owls wondering what on earth that had been all about.
A good game? The crossbar? Sarah? The pizza deliveries? The Panthers wouldn’t do something like that…
Or would they?