There was no time, however, for Kelly Block to do anything about the Screech Owls’ team spirit before they played their first game. The Drumheller Invitational Peewee Tournament was getting under way first thing the next morning, with the Owls scheduled to play their first match against the Hanna Hurricanes.
“That’s Lanny McDonald’s home town!” Data had shouted as Mr. Dillinger read out the schedule to the Owls gathered in the dressing room.
“Maybe they’ve all got big red moustaches!” Nish shouted.
Travis giggled, thinking of a bunch of twelve-year-old boys and girls skating out looking like they were Yosemite Sam from the Saturday-afternoon cartoon shows. He was a great fan of Lanny McDonald, even if he’d never seen the Hall of Famer play in the NHL. He knew that Lanny had scored a big goal for the Calgary Flames the year they won the Stanley Cup, and he knew, of course, that Lanny McDonald not only played with heart, he approached life the same way. He’d come all the way to Tamarack, after all, for the big fundraiser after Data was hurt by the car.
It was time for the Screech Owls to hit the ice.
“LET’S GO!” Sarah called, slamming her stick hard onto the concrete floor of the dressing room. Travis, the captain, hadn’t even put his helmet on yet! He scrambled to catch up, joining in the shouting.
“C’MON SARAH — A COUPLE OF GOALS!”
“MAKE YOUR FIRST SHOT COUNT, DMITRI!”
“BE TOUGH, LARS! BE STRONG!”
“MOVE YOUR BIG BUTT, NISH!”
Travis moved quickly through the door leading to the ice surface, Data slapping the rear of his pants as he passed. Travis had come to count on Data’s slap as much as he needed to hit the crossbar in warmup. Data being there meant a lot to the Owls–he had, in some ways, become as important a coach as Muck himself. Not for how he planned out the games and changed the lines, but for how his own intensity and desire seemed to rub off on the others.
Travis stepped out onto the ice of the little arena knowing there was nothing he’d rather be doing. It might have been like summer outside, but in here the air was cool and the ice as hard as glass. He could hear his skates dig in on the corners. He could hear the buzz of the crowd. It seemed as if the entire town of Hanna had driven down for the game. Travis hit the crossbar on his first shot, a high snapper over Jenny’s left shoulder. He slammed his stick triumphantly into the boards as he swooped past the net and turned back towards the blueline.
The crossbar was a good omen. Sarah took the opening faceoff and turned her back on her checker, giving her time to send the puck back to Nish, who was already in motion. Nish crossed his own blueline and–just as his skates touched the tail of the green dinosaur on the Owls’ side of centre–sent a high, looping pass up the right side for Dmitri, who timed it perfectly, snaring the puck just as it crossed the Hurricanes’ blueline. There were cries in the crowd that Dmitri was offside, but Travis knew better. Dmitri’s astonishing speed often made him look offside, and besides, the linesman had been right there as he crossed.
The Hurricanes’ defence was quick, however, and Dmitri’s route to the net was cut off. But for Dmitri it was no problem: he did his reverse curl, heading directly towards the boards, and then cutting back up towards the blueline. The move worked beautifully. As he headed in one direction, everyone else went the other way. He caught Sarah perfectly as she slipped over the blueline. Sarah dished a backhand pass to Travis, cutting in from his wing, and then took out her defender. Travis found he was all alone, one-on-one with the Hanna goaltender. A quick deke to the backhand and Travis lifted the puck high as he could as he flew past the net, the goaltender sprawling. He couldn’t see what happened, but the ping off the crossbar followed by the whistle told him he had scored–and it was a beauty!
Screech Owls 1, Hurricanes 0.
One shift and they were already ahead. A grateful Mr. Dillinger was all over Travis’s line, tossing towels over the necks of Travis, Sarah, and Dmitri as they skated off and took the bench. Towels–and they hadn’t even broken a sweat! Data wheeled along the cramped space behind the bench and slapped each of them on the back.
Travis turned to high-five Data–and then saw that the Screech Owls had another coach. Kelly Block! He was standing beside Ty, seeming to dwarf the young assistant coach.
“What’s ‘Mental Block’ doin’ here?” Nish hissed in Travis’s ear.
Travis shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess he just appointed himself coach.”
“If Muck was here he’d toss him out of the rink.”
Travis shrugged again. He didn’t know. If Muck were here, he doubted Block, for all his nerve, would have the guts to step in beside the Owls’ coach. But Muck wasn’t here, and Block was trampling over poor Mr. Dillinger right in front of their eyes–or, more accurately, right behind their backs.
Travis felt Kelly Block’s hands on his neck, rubbing hard through the towel. He didn’t like the feeling at all.
“Atta boy, Trav! Way to go out there! You just keep open for Sarah to hit you–you got it?”
Got it? Travis wondered. What’s this guy talking about? Of course he’d try to get open for Sarah. They’d been playing together so long now, neither of them, or Dmitri, for that matter, even had to think about what the play might be. It was as if three players–Travis, Sarah, and Dmitri–shared one mind. But here was this smarmy “sports psychologist” acting as if he’d come up with the play himself.
Soon, Andy had scored a lovely goal on a hard slapshot through traffic. Fahd scored–a bit of a surprise–on a play in which he seemed to walk in, in slow motion, from the blueline and slip the puck under the arm of the falling Hurricanes goaltender. Jesse Highboy scored on a tip-in, and Wilson scored on a weak backhander that went in off a defenceman’s skate.
Screech Owls 5, Hurricanes 0.
It was clear by the end of the first period that the team from Hanna was badly outclassed by the Owls. Instinctively, the Owls began to hold back a bit, knowing that Muck never, ever wanted them to run up the score on a team. “Never humiliate an opponent,” he used to say. “You try to embarrass the team you’re playing against, you really just embarrass yourself.”
Kelly Block, however, began to take over at the break. While Mr. Dillinger hung his head low and stayed in the background, working on Sarah’s skates, Block tried to make a speech that only caused Nish to get the giggles. He talked about how these tournaments are often decided on goals as well as points, and how the Owls had better make every shot count. Kelly Block’s eyes, Travis noticed, had taken on a new look. It was as if they were on fire. Travis found he couldn’t look him straight in the eye.
By the middle of the second period, Block had taken over completely. He was calling the line changes. He was standing directly behind the players, rocking on the balls of his feet and chewing on ice the way some of the big-league coaches did. He was ignoring Mr. Dillinger and Ty and even Data.
Travis felt the hand on his neck again.
“Trav,” Kelly Block’s voice growled into his ear, “I’m going to shake up the lines a bit, okay?”
Travis didn’t know what to say. Shake up what lines? And why? But he knew what he was expected to say, and he said it: “Okay.”
“Sarah!” Kelly Block shouted. “Out with Jesse Highboy–and you, Liz!”
Up and down the bench heads bobbed up, helmets turning back and forth as friends and teammates tried to catch each other’s eye. What was going on here?
Travis noticed that Kelly Block had a list in his pocket that he kept referring to and making changes on with a pen. It was crazy. Sarah had never played with Jesse or Liz in her life. And who did Block want him to play with?
“Nishikawa!” Block shouted after an offside whistle. “You’re centring Travis and Andy!”
Instinctively, Travis turned to see if Nish would look in his direction, and sure enough, his best friend shot him a glance. Nish looked as if they’d just stepped into an insane asylum and some nut had taken charge of the Owls. Nish at centre? Not likely.
Sarah’s expression said pretty much the same thing: Who is this guy? What is going on here? Where’s Muck?
Nish didn’t even know how to line up for the faceoff. Twice, the linesman had to correct his stance. Then he threw Nish out of the circle. Red-faced and angry, Nish had to let Travis take over the draw.
Travis won the faceoff and sent it back to the defence–but the defence turned out to be Derek Dillinger! Derek, who’d never played defence before, lost the puck in his skates and let it slip away into open ice, where a quick little Hurricanes forward picked it up and flew down on Jeremy, scoring high to the stick side.
When they got back to the bench Kelly Block was furious. He benched Derek for losing the puck and Nish for getting thrown out of the faceoff circle.
“You had nothing to do with it,” Travis told his friend, hoping to comfort him.
“He hates my guts,” Nish said. “That’s all that’s going on here. He hates me.”
“Maybe he knows what he’s doing,” Travis said. “He’s a sports psychologist after all.”
“Yeah, right–and I’m a rocket scientist.”
By the third period, Kelly Block was setting lines as if he were drawing names from a hat. The confusion was so enormous, he obviously felt he had to explain himself.
“This is a great opportunity for us to try out some new combinations,” he said during a quiet break in the play. “We’ve got a lot of work to do on team chemistry.”
Travis could only shake his head. “Team chemistry” never used to be a problem. Muck hadn’t put the Owls together as if he’d dropped a pack of cards and simply picked it up in whatever order he found it. The Owls had been years in the making. Most of them went all the way back to mite together. Travis and Sarah had first played together in novice. And as long as they’d been peewee players, they had played with Dmitri on the first line. The top line.
Now there was no top line. No lines at all, it seemed. Defencemen were playing up, forwards back. Travis wondered if Block would yank Jeremy out of goal in the final few minutes and put him at centre.
The Hurricanes used the confusion to edge their way bit by bit back into the game. They brought the score to 5–3 with two minutes to go, when Sarah, now back on defence, began an end-to-end rush that left a soft rebound lying at the edge of the crease, and Dmitri backhanded it home so high and hard the goaltender’s water bottle flew through the air and shot its contents all over the glass in front of the goal judge.
“Atta girl, Sarah!” Kelly Block shouted as they returned to the bench. “You’re a natural defenceman–sorry, defence-person!”
Sarah said nothing. Travis had never seen his friend so unhappy about setting up a goal.
But Sarah’s discomfort was nothing compared to Nish’s. Nish was sitting at the far end of the bench, pounding his skates into the board to keep the circulation flowing in his feet. Travis could tell, even at that distance, that he was crying. But he wasn’t sure why.
Frozen feet?
Or frozen out?