They were to play a team from Michigan called the Detroit Wheels, one of the top-ranked peewee teams in the United States.
Muck seemed apprehensive. “This is a smart team,” he said. “Well coached and well conditioned. You make a mistake, it’s in our net. So we play safe at all times – understand, Nishikawa?”
“Understand, Coach,” Nish mumbled, his head between his shin pads, his helmet on, his stare straight down between his legs.
Sarah rolled her eyes at Travis from across the dressing room. They both knew how much Muck hated being called “Coach” – “This isn’t football,” he’d say, “I’m ‘Muck’ or, if you have to, ‘Mr. Munro,’ but I am not ‘Coach’” – but they also knew that Nish was in game mode, head down, full concentration. Travis took it as a good sign.
Travis had played in a lot of wonderful rinks: the Olympic rink in Lake Placid where the Miracle On Ice game had been won, the Quebec Colisée during the Quebec Peewee, Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto before they built the Air Canada Centre, the Globen Rink in Stockholm, and even Big Hat Arena in Nagano, Japan. But still Madison Square Garden was special. It was as if they were skating under a huge, sprawling, golden church ceiling. And the seats somehow seemed closer to the ice, even though that was impossible. The Stanley Cup banners and retired jerseys in the rafters only made it feel all the more important, all the more special.
Travis liked the feeling of being here. He liked the way Nish had prepared for the game. He liked the way Sarah had skated during warm-up, her strides so smooth it sounded like she was cutting paper with scissors as she took the corners. He liked the fact that he hit the crossbar with his first shot of the warm-up.
The Wheels were bigger than the Owls. They were bigger and stronger and played a more physical game. First shift out, Nish got hammered into a corner on a play that Mr. Dillinger shouted should have been a penalty. No penalty was called, and Nish got right back up and into the game. No grandstanding.
“We’re faster,” Muck said after the first few shifts. “We can get a step on them. Speed is still the most intimidating thing in hockey – don’t forget that when you’re out there.”
Travis felt Muck was speaking directly to him. To him and to Simon and to Jesse and to Fahd and to Liz – the smallest Owls, the ones most likely to be frightened away from the corners by the huge all-male Wheels. It felt to Travis as if they were playing against men, not other twelve-year-olds.
“Check out number 6,” Sarah said after she and Dmitri and Travis came off from a shift. “He’s got a moustache.”
Travis tried to see through the other player’s mask. It was difficult to say for sure, but it certainly looked like the beginnings of a moustache. He shuddered. Perhaps they were men. Perhaps there had been a mistake in the scheduling.
The Wheels scored first, and second, both times by essentially running over the smaller members of the Owls. Once Fahd coughed up the puck. The other time Wilson dropped it for Simon, who was simply bowled over by a larger Detroit player.
Muck showed no nervousness at all. “Use your speed,” he said to Sarah at one point, laying a big hand on her shoulder for support.
Next shift, Nish made a wonderful block on a good Wheels opportunity and jumped up and moved the puck behind his own net. He fed it up along the boards to Travis, who used his skates to tick it out onto his stick blade. A large Wheels defenceman was pinching in hard on him.
Travis’s original plan was to dump it out through centre and trust that Sarah could pick it up, but he didn’t want to be the one who gave the puck away, so he moved it onto his backhand and put it hard off the side so it squeaked past the pinching defender and up along the boards.
Sarah read him and swept to the boards, picking up the puck behind the pinching defenceman, who was now caught up-ice.
Dmitri was on the far side. Sarah slapped a hard pass that flew over the remaining defenceman’s poking stick and Dmitri knocked it down niftily with his own stick – a “Russian pass,” Dimitri called these when the three of them practised high passes in practice. He kicked the falling puck onto his stick and took off, free of any checker.
Travis knew exactly what Dmitri would do – cut across the ice so he was angling into the goal. Fake a forehand to the short side. Keep and tuck around the goalie. Then backhand a shot high.
Sure enough, the water bottle flew off the back of the net just as the red light came on.
Two minutes later Derek knocked down a puck at centre ice and threw a blind pass to Nish, who was charging straight up the middle and hammering his stick on the ice. The pass was almost perfect. Nish reached ahead and just barely poked the puck between the two Detroit defenders, then jumped through and over them as they came together to block him, shooting as he fell. The puck rose hard over the Wheels goaltender’s shoulder and Nish came right behind it, knocking the goalie flying as he took out the net. All three – Nish, goalie and, net – crashed into the boards.
Wheels 2, Owls 2.
“Just use your speed,” Muck advised at the first break. “It’s working.”
There were moments when it didn’t seem to be working. The Wheels went ahead; Andy tied it up on a great, ripping slapper from the far circle. The Wheels went ahead by two; the Owls tied it again, on a goal by Fahd, on a screen, and by Derek, on a nice tip of a hard Nish screamer from the point. Nish was all business – no showboating, no Pavel Bure moves, just Nish working as only he could when his mind was on the game.
They finished regulation time tied 5–5. The referee explained there would be a five-minute overtime. If nothing was decided, then the game would go down as a tie; they couldn’t go into further overtime, as other teams were scheduled to play. Muck wanted the win. The extra point might make the difference between the Owls making the finals or not.
They played cautiously for the first couple of minutes, each team afraid to make a mistake. Muck played all three lines evenly, hoping for a break that didn’t seem to come. The Wheels seemed to be doing the same.
Travis checked the clock. One minute to go. He looked down the bench. Nish was sitting at the far end, his back heaving, his head between his legs. Not once this game had Nish done anything stupid, not once had he faked an injury, not once had he even spoken. Travis couldn’t remember a single game where Nish had been this concentrated.
Muck leaned over Nish and asked him something, Nish nodded, and then Muck slapped his shoulders. Still fighting for breath, Nish bounded over the boards for what might be the final faceoff.
“Sarah,” Muck called. “Your line.”
Travis, too, had yet to recover his breath. But Sarah and Dmitri were already over the boards. The faceoff was in the Owls’ end, and Sarah was, by far, the best at faceoffs. They needed to win this one, to keep it away from the Wheels and to give themselves one more chance to win.
In one motion Sarah plucked the falling puck from the air and turned, sticking her rear into the big Wheels centre so he couldn’t get at it. Travis knew the play perfectly. She would block and he would scoop up the puck and go.
He grabbed the puck and tucked it away just as the big centre bulled his way past Sarah.
Nish was behind the net, waiting. Travis fed him the pass.
The far winger was driving in hard on Nish. Nish pretended he didn’t even see him, then very gently pinged the puck off the back of the net just as the winger reached him. There was no puck for the winger to play, Nish stepped out of the way, the winger flew past, and Nish easily picked up his own pass as the puck came back to him off the net.
He swung to the far boards, looking up-ice.
Dmitri was breaking. Nish saw him and sent a high, looping pass that almost hit the clock. Dmitri straddled centre to make sure he was onside and pounced as the puck fell.
The Wheels’ biggest defenceman was on him, but he was no match for Dmitri’s amazing speed. Dmitri shot for the near boards and made as if to cut sharply against the defence for the net. The defence had no choice but to charge full at Dmitri, and Dmitri slipped the puck through his own legs to Sarah, coming up fast with the big centre hacking at her as he tried to keep up.
Travis saw his opening. He cut across towards Dmitri’s side and headed in a long curl towards the net. His winger came with him. He could feel the player’s stick hard against his shin pads, hard on his pants. He could feel the blade hooking him. The referee should have blown his whistle, but there was nothing. The officials were going to let it go.
Travis attempted to shoot, but the player chasing now had his stick blade right under Travis’s arm and was pulling him off the puck. Travis tried again to snap a shot, but he missed the puck and fell. He could hear the crowd yelling for a penalty. But still no whistle.
Travis was down, the checker falling on top of him. Travis kicked at the puck with his skate and it flew back towards the blueline.
With the big Wheels player now fully on top of him, Travis struggled to see.
Nish had the puck!
Nish was in full flight. He picked up the puck at the blueline, and with one lovely little fake to the right he took out the only remaining check. He came in on the goaltender alone.
The goaltender gambled – he rushed at Nish.
Nish pulled the puck back with a perfect little tuck, stepped around the falling, flailing goalie, and, slowly, lifted the puck into the middle of the net.
Owls 6, Wheels 5. The final buzzer could barely be heard above the cheers of the crowd.
Travis scrambled to his feet and charged for Nish, already backing into corner with his stick thrown down and his gloves in the air.
Travis and Sarah and Dmitri hit Nish at the same time, with Sam coming up fast to join in and Jeremy already halfway down the ice and the rest of the Owls pouring over the boards.
“Speed!” Sarah screamed. “SPEEEEEED!”
Nish was smiling at Travis.
“King of Overtime, too,” he said. “I forgot that.”