There was one final hockey game still to play. It would be the grand finale of the Oz Invitational, the Screech Owls of Tamarack, Canada, against an all-star team of the best peewee hockey players in all of Australia. Wiz Roberts would captain the Aussie All-Stars against Travis Lindsay and the Screech Owls.
They played at the Macquarie Ice Rink, but so many curious spectators wanted to watch, they could almost have filled an Olympic stadium. The organizers packed in as many as could legally fit and then turned a blind eye as dozens more squeezed in. At 7:00 on a Saturday night they dropped the puck.
“Dah, da-da-da, da-ahhhh!” Nish sang as he lined up beside Travis before the anthems.
“Hockey Night in Australia?” Travis asked, smiling.
“You got it, myte,” Nish answered in an Aussie accent.
This game was different. The two teams were perfectly balanced. Wiz was the equal of Sarah on the ice, and each of the Aussie teams in the tournament had one, two, or three youngsters good enough to play for the Screech Owls. And the Aussies were so fired up by the chance to play on an all-star team in front of such a loud, boisterous crowd that they all seemed faster, smarter, and bigger than before.
“These guys are good,” Travis said on the bench after his first shift.
“They’re amazing!” said Dmitri.
Travis and Sarah leaned back and winked at each other behind his back. It was great to be back with Dmitri. It had been fun playing with Wiz, but the three Owls had a special connection.
Dmitri scored the first goal on a play Travis had seen so many times it seemed he was watching an old movie. Sarah won a faceoff and got the puck back to Nish behind Jenny’s net. Nish moved up towards the blueline and lifted the puck so high it almost hit the rafters. Dmitri, anticipating perfectly, chased the puck down when it landed and came in on a clear breakaway. Shoulder fake, shift to backhand, a high lifter – and the Aussie water bottle was in the air, saluting Dmitri’s trademark move.
Travis realized that playing against Wiz was very different from playing with him. He was astonished at how strong he was on the puck; he simply refused to be knocked off. He scored once and set up a second, and halfway through the first period Muck countered by insisting Travis’s line go head-to-head with Wiz’s line whenever the Aussie sensation was on the ice.
That meant Sarah against Wiz, Wiz against Sarah. They checked each other. They faced off against each other.
Travis wondered how they would handle this, but he had his answer almost at once when Sarah shouldered Wiz hard out of the faceoff circle and used her skate to kick the puck to Travis.
Travis curled back, losing his check. He looked up and down the ice. Lars was free on the far side, and he fired the puck back to him.
Lars took stock of the ice, faked a pass over to Wilson, and instead chopped the puck off the boards to Dmitri. Dmitri took off like a shot up the far wing and slipped a quick pass to Sarah, now hitting centre.
But the pass never got to her. Using his shoulder, Wiz easily knocked Sarah off the puck, grabbed it, and turned hard back the other way.
Lars and Wilson tried to take away his space by closing in on him, but Wiz saw it coming. He plucked the puck off the ice so it sailed between the two squeezing defenders and leapt into the air over them, Lars and Wilson crashing together in a tangle of sticks and skates.
Wiz was in alone. He deked out Jenny and fired the puck hard into the goal. He turned, laughing, and plucked the puck off the ice as it rebounded out of the net, twisting his stick perfectly so the puck lay on the blade, just like an NHLer, and handed it to the linesman.
Heading into the third period, the Owls were down 5–3. Muck, for the first time, seemed really into the game. He had his coach’s face on, giving away nothing, but telling each and every one of the Owls that this was the time to get serious. No more shinny. No more glory plays. Just real hockey.
“Nothing stupid, Nishikawa,” he said. “We need you on the ice, not in the penalty box.”
Nish nodded and he stared straight down at his skate laces.
Nish is in the game, Travis told himself. Nothing to worry about there.
“We need you, Sarah,” Muck said.
Sarah nodded, her face streaming with sweat. It would be up to her, both to hold off Wiz and to make sure the Owls came back.
The crowd had grown so loud Travis wondered if they were pumping in a tape of a Stanley Cup game. It seemed impossible that so few people could make so much noise. But they were all Aussies, he reminded himself, and there was no louder fan on earth than the Aussie at full volume.
Besides, they could sense a win. They could smell victory. To beat the Canadians at their own game would be something special.
Travis slapped his stick against Nish’s shin pads before the faceoff. Nish never looked up. His face was as red as the helmets on the Aussie All-Stars. Sweat was rolling off him, and they hadn’t even started the final period. He was in the Nish Zone – and Travis was glad to see him there.
Nish began the charge. He picked up a puck in his own end, faked a pass up to Travis, and carried out, playing a sweet give-and-go with Dmitri at centre ice.
Nish, carrying again, came across the Aussie blueline, tucked a drop pass between his legs, and left the puck for Sarah as he took out the one Aussie defender.
That left Sarah and Travis with a two-on-one. Sarah waited, faked a shot, and then slid a hard pass across the crease to Travis, standing at the corner of the net all alone.
It was one of the easiest goals of his life. He simply let the puck hit his stick and tick off into the net.
Nish would also set up the tying goal. He carried again, a few minutes later, and hit Andy with a long breakaway pass. Andy came in, rifled a slapshot off the post, and Nish, charging hard to the net, picked up the rebound and stuffed it before the goaltender could get across to block his shot.
Aussies 5, Owls 5.
With the clock ticking down, Wiz brought the crowd to its feet with a stupendous carry that began in his own end and involved stickhandling past Sarah not once, not twice, but three times.
But Sarah would not give up. She chased and chased, using her speed to cut off the twisting, turning Wiz as he worked his way up-ice.
At one point Travis could see Wiz laughing as Sarah slid in, once again, to knock the puck free. But with two blinding-fast hand movements he was past her, the puck still on his stick.
Travis had never seen anything like it. Was this how the twelve-year-olds in Brantford felt when they realized they were up against Wayne Gretzky? Was this what it was like to play against a young Mario Lemieux or a Jaromir Jagr?
Wiz still had the puck. He looked up and threw a quick, hard pass towards the net that his winger, swooping in from Travis’s side, barely ticked with his stick.
Barely, but enough. The puck skipped once and dived in under Jenny’s outstretched pad.
Aussies 6, Owls 5.
The roar of the crowd was so loud, Travis looked straight up, half convinced the roof was crashing down.
He checked the clock.
Thirty seconds. Probably not enough.
Sarah led their line over to the bench, but Muck held out his hand to stop them. He wanted them on for the final shift. Their best chance was with Sarah up front and Nish back. If they couldn’t make something happen, no one could.
Sarah took the faceoff. She seemed furious that Wiz had so dazzled her moments before. She held the puck, stickhandled deftly around him, turned back and did it again, just for good measure, and then sent a pass back to Nish.
Nish surveyed the ice.
Twenty seconds left.
He began moving slowly up across centre. He saw Travis and flipped a quick pass.
Travis faked to go to centre ice, then turned sharply, heading down the boards.
The Aussie defenceman followed, aiming a shoulder at him.
Travis bounced ahead, the hard check missing him as the defender crashed into the boards.
Travis heard the crowd gasp.
He stopped, stickhandling. He sent the puck around the boards to Dmitri on the far side, and Dmitri clipped it back hard to Nish.
Nish moved in.
Wiz dove to block the shot.
Nish faked, danced around a spinning Wiz, aimed, and fired hard and high.
Ping! Off the crossbar!
Travis watched helplessly as the puck popped high in the air, turning over and over and over.
Sarah was already back of the net.
The puck landed and she scooped it, plucked it off the ice like an NHLer, and was about to hand it back to the referee.
But no whistle had gone!
Three seconds.
Sarah, balancing the puck on the blade of her stick, stepped around the corner of the net and had her feet taken out from under her by a sliding defenceman.
But not before she whipped the puck, lacrosse-style, high into the far corner.
The referee’s whistle blew! The horn went!
Owls 6, Aussies 6.
Sarah had tied the game with the Wizard’s own move!
Travis’s gloves and stick were already in the air. He, too, was flying, sailing towards a mound of Owls that already included Dmitri and Nish, with Sarah on the bottom.
Nish’s cage was almost locked on Sarah’s, Nish’s face crimson as he screamed.
“YESSSSSS! SARAH!”
“Back off, Dragon Breath!” Sarah shouted, laughing. “Before I gag!”
But no one paid any attention. More bodies arrived. The bench had emptied. Travis, twisting happily in the pile, could make out Mr. Dillinger’s pant leg, then Muck’s jacket sleeve, then smell Muck as the big coach himself landed smack in the middle of the pile.