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I stayed silent. I didn't want to make more work for Natalie. She seemed stressed out lately, and she didn't need me to say something stupid again and have it go viral for all the wrong reasons.
DeLoo was the one who skated away first, and then I went back to the bench.
As I skated that way, Carter said, "Good job there. Nice to see you join the goal celebration."
I smirked as I accepted the high fives.
The second line went out to do the next faceoff, but it was really just a way to kill the last few seconds of the period.
As we waddled to the locker room, I felt the tap. Which meant that I was going to be the one doing the interview. Which wasn't really that surprising. Between having the shelter kids here and scoring, I was the natural person to do it.
I tossed my gloves into my bucket before kicking it off to the side. Lutzy tossed me a towel. I rubbed my face and hair, trying to get some of the sweat off. That way, I didn't look like a total twat.
That's when I got the headset with the microphone handed to me. I slipped it on and waited. Then came over Amber Marques. I smiled but didn't say anything since she was clearly listening to the voice from her earpiece. I leaned in and heard that they were cueing out from the segment asking for people to donate to the shelter and how I invited everyone to the game.
I hoped the fans came through.
Then Amber smiled. "Ready?"
I nodded.
Tom lifted up his camera. With his free hand, he counted down from three, two, one.
Amber immediately said, "Well, speaking of Spencer Sukuzi's crew, we got the man of the hour."
That was not a comment I was used to hearing. I smiled since I didn't get too many compliments like that. I just played a hard game, and I played rough. Sure, I would pick up a fair amount of goals since Carts and I played so well off each other.
"So, Spencer, why don't you let us know how the goal happened?"
"It was one of those plays that come when you don't quit. You gotta keep going in after every rebound and just get it in."
"Of course. That's always been one of your strengths. You don't quit."
"Even though it's early on in the season, you can't ever quit. The league is too quick and too good if you have a bad game or a bad night."
Amber smiled, but you could tell she didn't love how cliche I was with my words. At least the interview was almost done, and I could have a few minutes to myself with the guys in the locker room.
"Any other passing words for us?"
"Please donate to your local women's shelters. They are doing so much good work in helping out families in difficult situations."
I hoped that was enough to get Natalie and the team off my back about having to share all the work I do with the shelters. I just wanted to play hockey and make love to my girl.
Chapter 20
Spencer
As I parked at the shelter, it was easy to spot Eric aggressively shooting pucks into a trash can with a stick that I gave him from last week’s game.
There was some heavy emotion with each shot.
I locked up my SUV and went straight over to Eric. After a few minutes of letting him blast his shot into the garbage can, I cleared my throat.
Eric stopped his shot long enough for me to say, “Looks like someone is having a bad day.”
He didn’t acknowledge me and just went to the garbage can and scooped out his “pucks.” While there were a couple regular pucks, probably signed ones that we gave to him, most of them were fist-size balls. Including some paper balls and baseballs.
Yup, I recognized that behavior. I did the same stuff when I was that age.
