“If you think of the stick as an extension of your arm,” Muck was saying, “you’ll get the knack of it a lot easier.”
Muck was standing at centre ice in the Tamarack Memorial Arena, only it wouldn’t be quite accurate to refer to it as “centre ice,” because below his feet was concrete. The ice had been taken out weeks before. Nor was Muck in his usual track suit. Instead, he wore a torn T-shirt, worn sneakers with no socks and no laces, and an old pair of sagging white shorts with a green stripe down the sides. The long scar from the operation that had ended his dream of playing NHL hockey was clearly visible to the sixteen kids standing around him, listening.
“And don’t aim. Think your shots in. If you picture it happening, nine times out of ten it will happen.”
It sounded like hockey. Five a side; goalies, defence, and forwards; centres and wingers; passing, shooting, and checking; practices, scrimmages, and games. But at this time of year, with Muck Munro standing there, it could never be hockey. Muck had few rules about hockey, and the Screech Owls knew them by heart. Hockey is a game of mistakes. Keep your head up. Speed wins. They call it a game because it’s supposed to be fun. And no summer hockey, not ever – not with Muck Munro coaching.
Yet here was Muck, at centre “ice,” surrounded by the Screech Owls.
Several of the Screech Owls players – Nish and Travis included – had asked Muck to reconsider his rule against playing summer hockey. They wanted to spend the summer together as a team. And several of the parents had volunteered to set up car pools to get the team to the few rinks in the area that kept ice going all summer.
“No,” Muck had replied.
The Owls had been disappointed, and it showed on their faces.
“But you can stick together as a team,” he’d added. “And I’ll coach.”
The Owls now looked confused.
“But–but,” Fahd began, “you said, ‘No summer hockey.’ ”
“That’s correct,” Muck said. “Summer is for other games, other skills.”
“What other skills?” Sarah had asked.
Muck smiled. “We’ll play lacrosse.”
Travis had been amazed at how quickly it all came together. Some of the Owls barely knew what lacrosse was, but after Muck told them how, in some places, lacrosse was even more popular than hockey, and how almost every hockey player he’d ever known – himself included – who had tried the game had fallen completely in love with it, they began to change their minds.
What convinced them was Muck’s point that the skills learned playing lacrosse would pay off later on the ice. Wayne Gretzky was a great promoter of the game, and said it was in playing lacrosse that he learned how to use the area behind the net so brilliantly to set up passing plays. Joe Nieuwendyk, who once won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the MVP of the Stanley Cup playoffs, said his astonishing ability to tip pucks out of the air and into the goal came from playing lacrosse. Bobby Orr loved lacrosse; Adam Oates, the great playmaker, loved lacrosse; and even Nish’s idol – his “cousin” Paul Kariya – had played it while growing up in British Columbia.
The Owls were sold.
A few of the Screech Owls had played the game before, but never together as a team. Jesse Highboy, who pointed out the game had been invented by Natives, had an uncle who’d played on a Mann Cup championship team – “Lacrosse’s equivalent of the Stanley Cup,” Jesse had boasted – and Andy Higgins, who had moved to Tamarack from another town, had played two years of atom lacrosse before he turned peewee age.
In a surprisingly short period, the Screech Owls peewee hockey team, one of the best peewee hockey teams around, became a passable lacrosse team. So much of the winter game translated perfectly to the summer game, and the differences, for the most part, were obvious. Concrete instead of ice. Sneakers instead of skates. A stick with a pocket for catching and carrying the ball instead of a stick with a curved blade for taking passes and shooting a puck. Yet so many of the passing and checking patterns remained the same. And the idea of both games was exactly the same: put the round object in the other team’s net more often than they can put it in yours.
“Goaltenders are a big difference,” Muck explained at the Owls’ second practice. “More goals are scored in lacrosse. Lots more goals.”
“Yes!” shouted Nish, who lived to score goals.
“And the goalie has no protection,” said Muck. “Once he leaves his crease, he’s fair game.”
“Yes!” shouted Nish, who was forever picking up penalties for “accidentally” running over goalies.
“Now, we need a very, very special player for this position,” Muck continued. “We need someone who’s big – someone with a great big butt that’s going to fill our net so there’s no room for anything else to get in.”
“Yes!” shouted Sarah and Sam, both of them pointing at the only Screech Owl who could possibly fill Muck’s requirements.
“No way!” Nish shouted. “I’m an ‘out’ player – I don’t do goal!”
“You’re sure?” Muck asked, both eyebrows arching.
“I score goals,” Nish protested, his face reddening and twisting. “I don’t stop goals.”
“Well,” said Muck, “what if I told you that lacrosse goalies can carry the ball all they like.”
“Who cares?” Nish whined.
“What if I told you that lacrosse goalies can cross centre, unlike hockey goalies, and that they can even try to score if they have a chance.”
“Big deal,” Nish groaned.
“What if I told you that, in lacrosse, the goalie is the glory position?”
Nish’s big face twisted so tight it seemed to Travis it might soon start dripping water. No one said a word. Nish opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again as if suddenly unsure.
Muck waited patiently, flicking the new white lacrosse ball up and down in his stick pocket and staring at Nish, a small smile on his face.
Nish twisted and sputtered and finally gave in.
“I’ll think about it.”
Nish turned out to be a wonderful goaltender. With his double chest pad on, his big shoulder pads and pants, his flopping shin pads, and his heavy helmet and cage, he seemed two or three times larger than when he was dressed for hockey. He was large, but also quick, and he took so easily to the game that even Muck appeared surprised.
Travis knew for certain it was Nish deep inside all that padding when, during a scrimmage, Nish blocked a shot and scooped it up in the big, wide goalie stick and headed straight up the floor towards the far net.
At the far end, Jeremy Weathers was still trying to get used to the thicker, heavier equipment of the lacrosse goaltender. Only little Simon Milliken was back, and Nish used his weight and bulky equipment to run right over him as if he were a pile of earth and Nish a bulldozer. He came in, faked once, and ripped a hard sidearm shot that clicked in off the far post behind Jeremy.
Anyone else would have turned and trotted back down the floor, but not Nish. He dove into Jeremy’s net, knocking the smaller goaltender aside, and grabbed the still-bouncing India rubber ball. Once he had it, he wiggled back out and, holding the ball over his head as if it were the Stanley Cup, raced around the rink boards, tipping his helmet at an imaginary, cheering crowd.
Nish had found his natural position.