The arena was filled to near capacity. Some of the other teams were waiting around for the awards ceremonies and most of the parents were still there as well. It was going to be the biggest crowd Travis had ever played in front of, and though he would have loved to have been lining up for the opening face-off, he was happy for Derek. Derek deserved it. Derek needed it.
They played both anthems before the opening face-off. First “O Canada,” then, to a rising roar, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The roar was just like the one in Chicago, whenever the Blackhawks played on television, only here the crowd and players were smaller. But just as excited.
Travis stood along the bench for the Canadian anthem, burning with his own pride, but it was nothing to what he could see in the brimming eyes of Mr. Dillinger, who was staring at Derek as if the boy himself were the flag.
What Mr. Dillinger had done was wrong, but Travis thought he now understood what Muck had been getting at when he said, as he had been saying for as long as the boys had been playing for him, that “hockey is a game of mistakes.” The kids had always thought that meant poor decisions on the ice, but they now all knew it also meant bad decisions off the ice. Muck also said mistakes are things you can always fix. You stop leaving drop passes. You take that extra split second to look before passing. You don’t just fire the puck blind from the point. And, Travis guessed, you stop trying to control things when you yourself aren’t out there trying to play the game. And, most important, you never hurt your own teammate to do something for yourself. Once you start doing that, there is no team.
But now the team was back, and all together. Derek was back on the ice. And Mr. Dillinger was acting like Sarah’s personal valet. Still, Travis couldn’t help but watch Sarah carefully as she went into her first turn. The new skates glistened and sparkled, but they held. Perfectly. And when she began striding down the ice, she skated like the Sarah Cuthbertson who had been amazing them all since she took up the game and showed everyone that a girl can not only play, a girl can star, and, in the case of the Screech Owls, a girl can be captain.
Nish, of course, was as ready for this game as any in his life. He had swiped the official scoresheet when Barry had it in the Screech Owls’ dressing room to fill out, and he had figured out who the enemy was by name. The little blond defenceman was Jeremy Billings, the big dark centre Stu Yantha. Nish liked to know names, and liked to use them, too.
He went after Yantha halfway through the first period, with a face-off down in the Screech Owls’ end and Travis on a line with Matt Brown and Gordie Griffith.
“Hey, Stu!” Nish called from in front of the net.
Yantha, waiting for the one linesman to bring a new puck for the other to drop, looked up, not knowing who had called his name.
Nish was grinning like he’d already scored. “I bet I know why your parents called you ‘Stu’–”
Yantha just stared, baffled. Nish hit him hard and low: “’Cause they couldn’t spell ‘Stuuuu-pid!’”
Travis had never laughed through an entire shift before, but this time his sides were hurting when he came off. Yantha had chased Nish around the ice from the moment the puck dropped until Nish had raced off for a change. Yantha was so distracted he forgot all about the puck and had become consumed by his rage. If it hadn’t been for the little defenceman, Billings, the Panthers would have been in real trouble.
Sarah was having trouble with her new skates. But it had nothing to do with sabotage. Twice during shift breaks she had loosened them and Mr. Dillinger had massaged her insteps. She was cramping up in the stiff, new Tacks. But she was not quitting. She never missed a shift.
With a minute to go in the first, Sarah intercepted a Panther pass just inside her own blueline and, on a backhand flip that might have skidded away if she’d been using Travis’s stick, she hit Dmitri on the fly. Dmitri raced in alone, deked the Panthers goaltender, and sent a backhand along the ice in through the five hole.
1–0, Screech Owls.
Mr. Dillinger almost went nuts. He jumped so hard the water bottles spilled off the back shelf and onto the floor. He whooped and cheered and, when Sarah came off, hit her immediately with a fresh towel and a full, salvaged water bottle. And Derek hadn’t even been in on the play.
With Gordie Griffith struggling, Muck told Travis to take the next face-off, and the Panthers also changed, sending out Yantha’s line.
“Nice shiner.”
Travis wasn’t sure where the voice had come from. Yantha was leaning down for the face-off, but suddenly he looked up and Travis could see the sneer of contempt through the shield.
“You’re soon going to have one for the other eye, runt.”
Travis said nothing. He won the face-off on a backswipe to Nish, but Yantha flattened Travis with a cross-check to the face before he could turn. The referee either didn’t see it or didn’t care, for there was no call.
Nish tried to hit Gordie Griffith with a cross-ice pass and shouldn’t have. The little blond defenceman had read the play perfectly and zipped into the hole, gloved the puck down, and dropped it onto his own stick. With Nish already beaten, he was able to use Data as a screen and put one through Data’s skates into the short side behind Guy Boucher.
Panthers 1, Screech Owls 1.
A tie game, with the buzzer going to end the first period.
At the break, Muck told them to watch their plays. “Don’t take stupid chances,” he said, without mentioning Nish’s bad pass. He didn’t have to say anything directly to the big defenceman. Nish looked like he’d just lost his home and family and television. He was pounding his fist on his leg, desperate for a chance to make it up.
Mr. Dillinger had Sarah’s skates loosened all the way. He pulled them free and Travis could hear Sarah’s sharp intake of breath as she realized her feet were bleeding. Both socks were pink with blood.
Mr. Dillinger seemed very worried. “Those blisters are breaking!” he said.
“Put some ice on them,” Sarah said to him.
Mr. Dillinger looked at Sarah, unsure, but the uncertainty vanished when he saw the determination in her eyes. He reached for the ice bucket, set it down, and began working handfuls of ice cubes over her feet. Sarah flinched from the pain but refused to give in, and when Mr. Dillinger pulled first one foot, then the other, down into the freezing bucket of ice and water, she actually seemed to sigh with relief.
If Sarah can do that, Travis thought, I had better do something with my good feet.
“You’re better than they are,” Muck said. “This game is yours if you want it.”
Sarah’s skating was becoming laboured. She picked up a puck behind her own net but lost it trying to pivot out. The big dark centre, Yantha, picked it up and flicked it fast, the puck hitting the back of Guy’s shoulder and dropping just over the goal line. The Panthers’ bench and fans let out a mighty cheer when the red light indicated what had happened. The Screech Owls’ bench let out a collective groan. Travis flinched when he saw Sarah, completely out of character, smash her stick in half over the crossbar.
Panthers 2, Screech Owls 1.
Muck put Sarah’s line right back out, and his hunch paid off. She won the face-off and hit Derek, on the left, who crossed the blueline and sent a long shot ricocheting around the boards to Dmitri, racing in on the right. Dmitri neatly deflected the puck back to Sarah, coming in late, and Sarah stepped past the defence, pulled the goaltender completely out of the net, and sent a back pass to Derek, who had only to tap it in for the tying goal.
The Screech Owls’ bench went nuts. As pretty a set-up as they’d ever seen the magical Sarah create.
Screech Owls 2, Panthers 2.
Travis was sent back out at centre, and again Yantha came on. This time the Panthers’ big centre butt-ended Travis right off the draw, sending him spilling down.
Travis found his footing just as Yantha came back for the puck from his defence. The big centre had his head down as he picked a bad pass off his skate and did not lift it again until he reached the red line–by which time it was too late.
Travis hit him low and as hard as he could. He shut his eyes and drove as if he were going through a door, and Yantha crumpled over Travis’s back, his feet flying out from under him and high up over Travis in a half-somersault where he landed hard on his back. The referee’s whistle blew. He was pointing at Travis. His hand then indicated tripping.
Nish slammed his stick hard on the ice in protest. “No way! That was perfectly clean, ref!”
“Put a lid on it or you’re off with him,” the referee said to Nish.
The players were all milling around. Yantha was still down, moaning, so no one had to worry about him, but everyone else was looking for a partner to hang on to. The little blond defenceman, Billings, took Travis in his arms, the two of them struggling for show but uninterested in scuffling.
Billings was laughing. And he winked again. “Nice hit,” he said, then released Travis.
The Screech Owls survived being a player short and, later in the final period, Yantha took a bad penalty when he went after Nish in the corner and the referee caught him for slashing.
“Stuuuuu-pid!” Nish called after Yantha as the big centre angrily headed off to the penalty box.
“One more word and you’re with him,” the referee told Nish. Nish wisely shut up.
Muck put out a new power-play team: Sarah, Derek, Dmitri, Nish, and, on the point, Travis. Any other time he would have been left wing on the power play, but Muck wanted to keep his first line together and bring Travis up for the advantage, so point was where he put him.
Travis, unfortunately, had never before played the point. He had no idea what Muck was up to. All he wanted to do was make sure he didn’t blow it and cause the winning goal for the Panthers.
Sarah controlled the puck beautifully off the face-off. She and Dmitri began playing what they called “Russian hockey” in practice, one circling endlessly back so it seemed like the whole team was going in reverse. They kept dropping the puck to each other as they circled, controlling, waiting until one of them saw an opening to shoot through.
The Panthers, bewildered at this seeming nonsense, put two players on Sarah, who was now carrying the puck in yet another circle, and Dmitri took the opening the moment he saw it.
Sarah hit him on the tape with her pass. Dmitri crossed the Panthers’ blueline and stopped in a spray of snow, circling back again but staying on-side, and hit Travis with a perfect cross-ice pass as Travis gained the blueline. Derek was on the opposite side, stick raised to shoot, and Travis dished off a quick backhand that Derek one-timed so hard it hit behind the upper inside bar and stuck, dislodging the Panthers’ goalie’s water bottle.
Screech Owls 3, Panthers 2.