Travis did his little bounce-skip as he turned the first corner on the new ice. Just ahead of him, Nish did the same. At the next corner, he saw Liz do one too, her second thrust of her right skate digging deep, the blade sizzling as it cut into the fresh ice and left its mark. She was a beautiful skater.

Travis wished the ice could always be fresh. He loved the feel of it, but he also loved the stories in it, the way he could read how someone had shifted from forward to backward skating, the way a long, hard-driving stride threw snow.

The River Rats may have had beautiful uniforms, but they could not skate at all like the Screech Owls. Travis knew from the warm-up that it would be an easy game for the Owls–but perhaps not for him. He’d failed to hit the crossbar while taking shots at the empty net. He knew it was silly, but he liked to start each game with his good-luck sign.

The River Rats had one pure skater–one player with the little bounce-skip as he came out onto the ice–and a few big players, but little else.

Travis’s line started. Derek won the face-off and put the puck back to Nish, who drew the forechecker to him and then hit Data with a perfect pass. Data put the puck off the boards so it floated in behind the River Rats’ defence, and Dmitri, with an astonishing burst of speed, jetted around the turning defender, picked up the puck, and put a high slapshot in under the glove arm of the Albany goaltender.

Muck then took Travis’s line off. An eleven-second shift. Muck hated to embarrass anyone, either on his own team or on any other. (Well, perhaps with the exception of Nish, who needed regular embarrassing.) The shift had been so short that from the bench Travis could actually see the play in the new ice: Dmitri’s quick jump past the defence, the marks where the defence had turned too late, Dmitri’s perfect trail followed by the defenceman’s stumbling chase, the very point from where Dmitri had shot–all still laid out on the ice like a connect-the-dots puzzle.

At the end of the first, the Screech Owls were up 4–0 on a second breakaway by Dmitri, a good shot from the slot by Gordie Griffth, and a hard shot from the point by Lars Johanssen. At this last goal, the entire bench had erupted in shouts for “Cherry!” when everyone realized Lars had scored his first goal as a Screech Owl. It was a good thing the others were scoring, Travis thought. Even with such weak opposition, he couldn’t break out of his scoring slump.

Jennie had all of two shots to handle, and one of them a long dump from centre ice. Apart from their one good skater, the River Rats were simply out of their league, outclassed and already out of the game. Muck couldn’t have been more displeased.

Travis thought he knew why. Muck hated a game like this at any time–too easy, too tempting to players like Nish to start playing shinny–but he would hate it even more as the first game of an important tournament. He would say it made the Screech Owls too confident, too easy to beat in the second game, which is the game that usually decides whether a team continues on the championship side or the consolation side of the tournament. From the moment the puck had dropped in this match, Muck was probably more worried about Game Two than Game One.

Muck began giving extra ice time to the third line. But Andy, Jesse, and Chantal were still too dominant for the Albany team. Andy scored a fabulous, end-to-end goal, finishing with an unnecessary fall-to-your-knees, fist-pumping celebration that made Muck decide to yank them off as well.

Muck finally told the Screech Owls to ease up.

With a minute to go, and the Screech Owls up 7–0, the River Rats’ one good player took a pass at centre. Data had been pinching up ice and was caught behind the play, leaving only Nish back between Jennie and the skater.

Nish was skating backwards as fast as possible. The ice was old now and choppy, and he dug in as best he could. But he could not cut off the swift River Rat without turning toward him and shifting from backward to forward skating.

Just as Nish made his move, the skater made his. He pushed toward Nish instead of going away from him, and as he did so he flipped the puck so it rolled high over Nish’s stick and fell flat behind him. The skater simply hopped over Nish as he fell in desperation, picked up the puck, walked in, and pulled Jennie to her right before dropping an easy backhander in behind her.

The game ended 7–1. The players shook hands–Jennie congratulating the scorer on his play–and then headed for the dressing room.

Muck came in a few moments later, not at all pleased.

“What do you have to say for yourself, Nish?” Muck asked.

“What’dya mean?” Nish asked.

Muck smiled. “You got deked out of your underwear out there.”

Nish shook his head in disgust. “He can have them.”