They played against the Brisbane bandits the following day. Fahd, of course, asked where Brisbane was, and when Muck said it was quite a ways north of Sydney, Simon jumped in to say if it was more north, then the chances were they might be better hockey players. That seemed to make sense, until Data explained that the farther north you go in Australia the hotter it gets. Darwin, in the far north of Australia, was surrounded by rain forest and had tropical weather all year round.
“That figures,” said Nish, noisily wrapping clear tape around the tops of his skates. “Everything’s always backwards here.”
Muck couldn’t resist. “Is that a request to play forward, Nishikawa?”
“No way!” said Nish, reddening. “You can’t be serious?”
“Sure I am,” Muck said. “Great opportunity for us all to try new things. Whatdya say? You’re always racing up the ice anyway when you shouldn’t be, so why not start out of position to save yourself a little time?”
Nish groaned, placing his face in his beefy hands.
“Tell me this isn’t happening,” he mumbled to himself.
But Muck was serious. He had already juggled the lineup and put their new positions down on a card, so it wasn’t just a sudden idea. Travis was now on defence, paired with Dmitri. Lars was another centre, playing between Sam and Fahd. Sarah was back with Andy. Everyone else was also changed. Left wingers became right wingers. Right wingers moved left.
“This is madness,” grumbled Nish.
“It’ll keep you alert,” said Muck. “You can fall into a rut playing all the time with the same person or in the same position. Maybe now you’ll find out why so many forwards can’t seem to make it back to backcheck.”
They finished dressing and took to the ice. The Bandits were already out there, spinning around in their own zone. They stared in something close to awe at the Owls coming out onto the ice. Travis could sort of see why. His team looked marvellous in their matching sweaters and socks, their Screech Owls logos, and each sweater with the player’s name over the number – Travis with “Lindsay, 7” and that treasured C just a bit above his pounding heart.
None of the Bandits could skate like Sarah. None had Andy’s size or Nish’s shot. But they were clearly a better team than the Sydney Sharks, most of whom – Wiz included – were in the stands to watch.
Travis had one of those days. He hit the crossbar on his first shot in the warm-up, and when the game got underway, he had no trouble at all on defence, in part because the Bandits were slow, and in part because Dmitri was so fast he could make it back in time to cover up if either he or Travis got caught cheating.
Muck seemed remarkably relaxed. He knew that the Owls would never meet a team as good as them over here, and he seemed determined to make it fun for everyone. This wasn’t a true tournament, after all, just a series of exhibition matches. The Owls were under strict orders not to run up the scores, and Muck gave them permission to try all the things they’d be afraid to try in real games back home.
For Nish, now a centre, this was a licence to go insane. He took it upon himself to carry the puck whenever he was on the ice, no matter how thick the traffic. He spun and danced and dipsy-doodled with the puck. He tried spinneramas and even, at one point, deliberately fell onto his knee pads and slid right between the Bandits’ defence while choking up on his stick and still stickhandling.
The others were less flashy. Travis tried his backpass a couple of times, and Dmitri read it perfectly. He tried his fancy puckoff-the-skates play, and it worked twice. He even tried the heel pass Bad Joe Hall had taught him, and it worked.
Sarah, on defence, put on a skating spectacular. She was up and down the ice so fast it must have seemed to the Bandits that there were two Sarahs out on the ice, one playing up and one back.
Every time Sarah made an interesting play, the Sharks erupted with cheers, led by Wiz. Sarah was obviously their favourite – or maybe, Travis couldn’t help but wonder, just Wiz’s favourite.
The Bandits took a while to adjust to the Owls’ speed, and they certainly lacked their skill, but they were eager and persistent.
With the Owls up 3–0, Nish tried a foolish lob pass to himself that one of the Bandit defenders read, stepping forward and batting the puck out of the air before it could land. It flew into open ice, and the little Brisbane defenceman raced for it, picking up his own hand pass, which was legal, and then heading up-ice against Dmitri and Travis.
Dmitri had the angle to keep the defenceman cut off from the net, and Travis flew across ice to try to check the puck away from him. The little player threw a pass backhand, blind, but it landed perfectly on the tape of a scurrying Bandits forward, who now had a clear run in on Jenny.
Panicking, he shot, and Jenny kicked it out with a pad, right back onto the blade of the shooter. He shot again, and this time it hit Jenny in the side and pushed on through, dropping on the ice and rolling into the net.
Owls 3, Bandits 1.
The Brisbane bench emptied. They rushed the scorer and piled on the little defenceman as if he had scored the Stanley Cup winning goal in overtime. In any other circumstance, this would have been a delay-of-game penalty for Brisbane, but the referee let it go. Even Muck was hammering the boards in admiration, cheering on the very team he was playing against.
After that, the game dramatically improved. Brisbane seemed to find their nerve playing the big team from Canada, the land of hockey, and they scored twice more to tie the game.
Nish scored on a rather overly dramatic rush from back of his own net, fell after he’d slipped the puck in, and lay on the ice, waiting for the Owls to leave the bench and pile on. But Muck, of course, would have nothing to do with such a display. Eventually Andy skated over and rapped his stick on Nish’s knee pad, and Nish, beet-red even behind his mask, got slowly to his feet and skated back to the bench. They were laughing when he arrived, and he flung his stick down so hard it bounced off the first-aid kit and caught Mr. Dillinger on the arm.
“Far end,” Muck told him.
It was all he needed to say. Nish moved down and took his familiar “benched” seat at the far end. He had played his last shift against the Bandits.
They played another twenty minutes. Travis scored on a nifty backhander, and the Bandits scored again.
In the final minute, the Bandits coach brought his goalie out as an extra attacker, and Muck answered by bringing his goalie out as well. Travis had never heard of such a thing, but he guessed it wasn’t against the rules. Muck also put out the Owls’ weakest players, with instructions to take it easy.
Ten seconds to go, and the little defenceman who’d scored the Bandits’ first goal got a backhand on a puck that was rolling up on its edge and lobbed it hard and high down the ice. It seemed, for a moment, as if the puck might lodge in the rafters, but it came down, bounced sharp to the right, skidded, and slid, and barely nipped into the near corner of the net.
Tie game!
The buzzer sounded and both sides cleared their benches, rushing out of habit to congratulate the goalies – only this time there were no goalies on the ice.
“Ridiculous!” Nish said as he skated out, pretending to be working out kinks and stiffness from sitting so long. “Muck had no reason to pull our goalie, as well.”
“He wanted a tie game,” said Travis.
“You know what they say in the NHL,” Nish said.
“What?”
“A tie is like kissing your sister.”
Travis turned, blinking in astonishment. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means ties suck, ties are for losers, ties don’t mean anything, ties are like a 50 on your report card – you passed, but your mom’s mad at you and your teacher never wants to see you again.”
“You’d know about that!” Travis laughed.
The Brisbane Bandits weren’t taking it like a 50 on a report card. A 5 –5 tie against this top peewee hockey team from Canada was, Travis thought, more like an A+, like skipping a grade, like an extra month of summer holidays.
Or would it be “winter” holidays in Australia?