The Owls were almost too excited to concentrate on practice. The boys were all talking about the Bloody Tower and how neat it was going to be to sleep there. The girls were wild about the uncanny resemblance between the Young Lions star centre and poor young prince Edward, for whom every female on the team had now expressed her undying and total love.
“You’re swooning over dust!” Nish laughed when he caught Sam hugging a postcard of the portrait of the young princes. “He’s been dead for over five hundred years!”
“Edward was valiant,” Sam snapped at him. “You don’t even know what the word means!”
“Sure I do!”
“What then?”
“I dunno – ‘brave’?”
“It’s way more than that!” Sam hissed, her face almost as red as Nish’s. “It’s about being incredibly brave and having grace and knowing what has to be done and doing it!”
“That’s bull – you don’t even know what happened.”
“His brother was smothered with a pillow. Edward was stabbed by his jailers. It’s obvious he came to his brother’s rescue even though he knew what would happen. That’s valiant.”
“You don’t know that,” Nish countered. “They didn’t have surveillance cameras in those days.”
“I know in my heart what happened,” Sam said, near to tears. “And in my heart Edward was valiant, something you’ll never understand.”
Nish laughed. “Like I want to be stabbed. What are you, nuts?”
“Drop it, Nish,” Travis warned, pulling his friend’s arm to get him into another part of the dressing room away from Sam and Sarah.
“They’re pathetic,” Nish snapped as he let Travis lead him off. “They think they’re in love with a ghost.”
“Let it go. We’ve got some practising to do.”
Muck had arranged for extra time at the practice facility at the Serpentine. He and Mr. Dillinger and Data had a number of drills to work on, and they put the Owls through their paces for more than an hour: wind sprints, stops and starts, crossovers, two-player rushes, three-player rushes, two-on-ones, three-on-twos, breakouts, penalty killing, and power play.
Travis worked the power play, but Muck made one change, putting Dmitri at centre, where he’d never played, and moving Sarah over to right wing. “This is a speed-through-the-centre game,” Muck said. “I want our breaks to come straight up ice and our playmakers along the boards, understand?”
They didn’t, but they all nodded as if they did. Muck also switched Sam and Nish so they’d have a left shot on the right side and a right shot on the left. Since there was no blueline, Muck reasoned, there was no point in trying to have players on defence with their sticks tight to the boards. Better, he figured, to have the shot on the open side for a better angle.
Data had a contribution as well. He had dummied up some plays on his laptop to show the Owls.
“I compared video of Owls ice-hockey games to some digital shots of the in-line game against the Young Lions,” said Data, delighted to have everyone’s rapt attention. “Watch these two examples.”
Data’s hand flew over the keys and up came some video of Sarah, during a league game back in Tamarack, skating full speed after a player in possession of the puck, only to have Nish’s stick lunge into the frame and poke-check the puck. Sarah turned instantly in a massive spray of snow and headed back up ice with the puck.
“Now this,” said Data, bringing up his next example.
It was Sarah again, only this time on in-line skates during the practice match against the Young Lions. She was moving down the playing surface in pursuit of Edward Rose, who was carrying the ball.
Nish hit Edward Rose just as he tried to cut for the net – the Owls gathered around the laptop cheering as if they were watching the game live – and Sarah cut hard to turn back with the ball, her skates skipping on the surface as she leaned hard to change direction.
“What do you notice?” Data asked as he killed the screen.
“Sarah’s lost a step,” Nish said, giggling.
“You’re right. You can’t turn as quickly on wheels. That makes turnovers a completely different game. And Muck’s got a few ideas on that …”
Muck then talked about how the Owls were going to attack from now on. He wanted them to think about soccer, and about lacrosse, and he wanted them to keep circling as they mounted an attack rather than always going for the fast break.
“If the fast break is there for you,” said Muck, “fine. Take it. But if you’re trying to move the puck” – Muck coughed, uncomfortable – “… or whatever they call that silly thing … if you’re trying to move it up, you want to do it in waves.”
“Swedish hockey!” Lars shouted.
“Classic Russian hockey,” Dmitri corrected.
“Why?” asked Fahd.
“If we can get them chasing us, going toward our net,” said Muck, “then when we move it forward they’ll have to turn. And I think every time we can drop back and drop back and then attack fast, we can catch them going the wrong way. And by the time they’ll have turned, we’ll be in on them.”
“I like it,” said Dmitri.
“I love it,” said Lars, who was forever singing the praises of European hockey and telling them they could learn something from soccer.
“We’ll try it,” said Muck.
He split the Owls into two teams for a prolonged scrimmage. Every time the players followed their normal hockey instincts – to head-man the ball, to look for the fast break, to charge straight ahead – Muck’s whistle blew. Not to stop play, but to remind the players to reverse fields, to circle back, send lateral passes across the surface, do whatever was necessary to get the other side to stop skating back to receive the attack and lure them forward to try to gain control of the ball.
The moment the tide turned and the side not in possession of the ball began moving forward, Muck wanted the side in possession to charge straight ahead, forcing the defenders to turn.
It worked. Dmitri and Lars instantly understood the thinking behind the new style of play. Sarah caught on quickly too, and gradually the entire team understood this new form of attack: wait, circle, wait again, draw the other side toward you, then charge.
Travis’s line played wonderfully in the new system, thanks largely to the move that put Dmitri at centre and in charge of the attack patterns. Sarah adapted nicely to her new role, and Travis found that he, too, could play better if he just showed the patience that seemed to come so naturally to Dmitri and Lars.
By the end of an hour they were exhausted and itchy with sweat. Nish’s face was so wet and red it seemed on the verge of bursting. But he towelled off quickly, yanked out his new helmet, and pulled it on as if he’d just been awarded the MVP prize.
They undressed in silence, tossing their soaked jerseys into a pile in the centre of the tent for Mr. Dillinger to pick up for washing, the only sound the rip and tear of the shin-pad tape coming off and being tossed over to Sam’s corner so she could wrap it onto her growing ball.
Finally, Nish broke the silence.
“Can we please get rid of that stupid ball?” he said, his voice slightly muffled.
“What’s your problem, Big Boy?” Sam asked.
“It’s embarrassing – you make us look like a ….”
“Like a what?” Sarah said, pouncing. “Like a girl’s team?”
Nish was scarlet. “I didn’t say that.”
“No, but that’s what you think,” said Liz.
“I just think it’s time to drop it,” Nish said. “It’s too big. It’s out of control.”
“Like you,” said Jenny.
Nish shrugged. “I hate it,” he said. “You won’t get any of my tape.”
“We don’t want your tape!” Sam snapped, picking up her tape ball and ramming it deep inside her equipment bag. “Besides, we think your stupid golden helmet’s embarrassing. I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing something like that.”
Nish shrieked. “You don’t have to worry! It’s for the best player on each team – and we all know who that is, don’t we?”
Sam threw some loose shin-pad tape at Nish, who let it bounce harmlessly off his prize helmet.
Travis went back to untying his skates. He could not believe how silly some arguments could get. He remembered his dad once saying that when he had been a young boy they used to say things like “Your mother wears army boots” to upset someone in the schoolyard – and it worked!
Talk changes, Travis thought, but not the stupidity of it.
He wasn’t embarrassed by the tape ball one bit.
He was often embarrassed by his best friend.