Glad to meet you, Joe Hall,” Mr. Dillinger said, taking off his hockey glove and reaching for the young man’s hand. Mr. Dillinger’s hand seemed to disappear into Joe Hall’s like a gopher into a large hole.
“I live down by the campsite–heard some of the other coaches saying your coach couldn’t make the trip. True?”
Mr. Dillinger was nodding, catching his breath. “I’m just the manager and skate sharpener. Data here’s more of a coach than I am.”
Joe Hall turned his beaming smile on Data. “I can see that,” he said. “You’ve got some drills worked out on that board, I see.”
Data seemed shocked, instantly shy. “Oh, I was just fooling around.”
“Nah, they’re good,” protested Joe Hall. He turned his gaze back on Mr. Dillinger. “I’d be honoured to help you run the practice. Just say the word.”
Mr. Dillinger nodded gratefully. He looped off Muck’s whistle and tossed it to Joe Hall, who slipped it around his thick neck and sat down on the bench to put his skates on. A stick and gloves lay behind him. He’d come prepared.
“Just what we need,” Nish whispered into the back of Travis’s helmet. “Another expert.”
Travis turned, irritated. “We need somebody who knows what he’s doing.”
“I think he’s kind of cute,” said Sam.
“So do I,” agreed Sarah.
“Better than anything else we’ve seen around here, that’s for sure,” added Sam.
“Get a life!” Nish practically spat in her direction.
Sam rolled her eyes. Sarah giggled. Usually it was Sarah who took the shots at Nish and kept him in line. She seemed happy to be sharing her duties.
Joe Hall was ready in less than a minute. He stepped out onto the ice surface and flexed, stretching carefully before looping around the rink a couple of times. It seemed to Travis that Joe Hall hadn’t been on skates for some time, but he could see that, even on rusty legs, he had a marvellous, powerful stride.
“Okay, Owls,” Joe Hall said when the team had gathered around. “Let’s have us a practice.”
Twenty minutes later, Travis was bent over double, sucking for wind. Nish, splayed out flat in the corner, was groaning and gasping for air. Andy was hanging over the boards, gulping his breaths. Everywhere it was the same, with one–no, two–exceptions. Sarah, who seemed to find skating easier than breathing, was still flying about the ice in her lovely, effortless stride. And right behind her, a little less elegant but more powerful, was Sam. They were laughing.
Joe Hall was a taskmaster. He skated them until most of the Owls had either dropped or were about to drop. He ran complicated breakout drills that sent the puck flying out to centre ice so quickly that Sarah, waiting for the pass, barely had to flick it on her backhand to send the swift Dmitri in on clear breakaways. He had them working the corners, practising penalty-killing and switching, on a rap of his stick, from zone to man-on-man coverage. It was exhausting, but it was a superb, hard practice. Muck would have approved.
Joe Hall blew hard on the whistle, calling the players down into a far corner. He had them drop to one knee when they arrived. Nish arrived on both knees, spinning wildly, and knocked into Andy and Fahd and Lars so hard he sent them tumbling like bowling pins.
Joe Hall waited until everything was absolutely silent, then he stared at Nish and spoke in a low, steady voice. “You can go and sit on the bench, mister. We’ve still got some business to do here.”
Nish looked stunned. He turned, mouth open, and Travis could see the pink spreading across his cheeks. But no one was offering any sympathy.
“Get going,” Joe Hall said. “You’re wasting our ice time.”
Nish rose to his skates. Slowly he skated away, the rasp of his skates uncannily loud in the empty rink. Not a single Screech Owl even dared to breathe.
But Joe Hall was smiling again. He had forgotten already about Wayne Nishikawa, troublemaker. “Anyone here know about the Silver Seven?” he asked.
“Data would,” Sarah said.
“They were hockey’s first dynasty,” offered Fahd.
“That’s correct,” said Joe Hall, nodding. “They were the original Ottawa Senators. Four Stanley Cups in a row at the start of this last century. Not even Gretzky’s Edmonton Oilers managed that. Guys like Harry ‘Rat’ Westwick, ‘Bones’ Allen, ‘Peerless’ Percy LeSueur, and ‘One-Eyed’ Frank McGee.”
The players giggled at the names.
“You don’t hear nicknames like that these days, do you?” Joe Hall said. “The kid I just sent off, what’s his name?”
“Wayne Nishikawa,” Fahd offered.
“And his nickname?”
“Nish.”
Joe Hall shrugged. “Figures. There’s no imagination in hockey any more. All you kids should have nicknames–they’re as important in this game as numbers. What should be Nish’s nickname?”
“‘Chicken’?” suggested a voice from the back. It was Sam.
The other players giggled. Joe Hall looked from face to face, waiting for an explanation, but no one was volunteering.
“Did you have one?” Fahd asked.
“Me? Yeah, I did.”
“What was it?”
Joe Hall shook his head: “You’ll have to figure that one out for yourself.”
“No fair!” protested Fahd. But Joe Hall was already changing topic.
“Let me tell you something about ‘One-Eyed’ Frank and Harry the ‘Rat,’” he said. “They’re both in the Hockey Hall of Fame, you know.”
“We were there!” said Jenny.
“Then you should know why they’re in the Hall of Fame. The ‘Rat’ was one of the best skaters who ever played the game. If you really had to have a goal, you counted on him. Frank McGee once scored fourteen goals in a single Stanley Cup game–a record no one’s ever going to break. How do you think they scored those goals?”
Fahd raised his hand like he was in class. Joe Hall nodded at him.
“Breakaways,” he suggested.
Joe Hall shook his head. “How do you get a breakaway?” he asked Fahd.
“You fire the puck up to someone who’s breaking.”
Joe Hall smiled and pointed. “Exactly! But what if you couldn’t do that?”
“You mean offside?” asked Andy.
“No,” said Joe Hall. “I mean what if the rules didn’t allow you–or anyone for that matter–to pass a puck up to a teammate?”
“What kind of a rule is that?” asked Lars.
“It was the rule they played under. It wasn’t until 1929 that hockey brought in the forward pass. Did anyone know that?”
“No,” Fahd answered for them all.
“For more than thirty years they played the game by using only drop passes and back passes–and still ‘One-Eyed’ Frank McGee was able to score fourteen goals in one game. It worked for the Silver Seven, don’t you think?”
“I guess,” said Fahd.
“I guess so too,” said Joe Hall. “And so we’re going to bring that pass back to this tournament. We’re going to move ahead by going backwards.”
For more than thirty minutes, Joe Hall had the Owls work on drop passes and back passes. He had them scrimmage with one new rule added–no forward passes. At first it confused the players terribly, but after a while they started to get the hang of it and began moving up the ice in waves, with each successive wave rushing quicker just as pucks were dropped back to them.
“We look like Russians!” shouted Dmitri proudly.
“We look like idiots!” corrected Nish, who had been allowed back into the play.
But Travis didn’t think so. There was method to Joe Hall’s madness, and the Owls were starting to look for the play developing behind them. They were using themselves as decoys, drawing off checks while leaving pucks for teammates rushing up behind. It might not have looked quite right, but it was working.
Sarah looped behind her own net and, with a burst of speed, slipped straight up centre, sending the opposing defence–Nish paired with Lars this time–backpedalling wildly. She dropped the puck neatly to Sam, charging up from her defensive position.
Travis could see the play. Sarah had used her body to “accidentally” brush Lars back and take him out of the play. It was just Sam on Nish, with Travis coming up fast.
If Sam could drop to Travis, he would have a clear shot on Jeremy, who was already shimmying backwards into his net, glove ready.
Sam saw the play, too. She dropped the puck deftly between her skates and turned to see if Travis was in his expected position.
And that’s exactly when Nish “smoked” her.
The sound was astonishing. It was more like a collision in the parking lot than a hit just inside the blueline. There was the sound of air bursting from lungs, pads giving, plastic cracking, sticks and skates and bodies colliding.
Sam went down hard, sprawling toward the corner.
Nish, who barely kept upright, staggered once, then dropped his stick and gloves.
He tucked his hands under his armpits, dropped into a crouch, and began skating in a wide circle past the fallen Sam.
“CLUCK! CLUCK-CLUCK-CLUCK!” Nish cackled as he looped around the ice in an exaggerated chicken dance. “CLUCK! CLUCK-CLUCK-CLUCK-CLUCK-CLUCK!”
Joe Hall’s whistle sounded like the scream that had never come from Sam. Travis had often wondered how Muck could put so much emotion into his whistle–shrill for anger, slow and rolling for contentment–but this was a new sound, a frightening one.
Nish stopped his stupid show. Joe Hall came skating back, pointing, his hand shaking.
“You’re outta here, Mister! The dressing room–and make it fast!”
Nish didn’t argue. He left his stick and gloves on the ice and never even broke stride as he leapt through the gate leading to the dressing room.
Travis turned his attention back to Sam. She was on her knees, fighting for wind. Sarah was already there, an arm over Sam’s shoulders.
Sam gathered her breath, put her skate down, and stood, a bit unsteadily.
She was laughing!