Page 41 of Thin Ice

They came out and did it all over again, same forecheck, with a body on me a beat after every touch, and patience—endless patience. They'd decided Game Three was an outlier.

They finished everything. Every time I took the puck along the wall, I was checked a beat after the puck left my stick, clean and hard. One hit like that is nothing. After the thirty-fourth one, it felt like a tax I'd be paying all night.

I didn't back down.

For the first period, the hip held. I'd done my floor work in the hotel room that morning, thirty extra minutes of it because the barometric pressure was diving. By puck drop I was as loose as I got anymore. I killed a penalty, won a puck battle down low, and took a hit at the end of a shift that emptied my lungs. Typical night at the rink.

They scored when their fourth line hemmed our third in for a full minute. A puck bounced off a skate in the crease and landed in the net. Misha's vision had been blocked.

In the second period, the tax on my body came due.

Six minutes in, a rim came around hard in our zone, and I got there first, back to the pressure. The play was simple: hold, let the hit come, and then send the puck to the middle. I've made that play since I was fifteen. Most of the load runs through the left hip.

The hit arrived on time, and it moved me. The puck squirted off my blade into the slot instead of down the ice in the middle. Their center ended up alone with it eleven feet from Misha. The shot didn't miss.

None of the media would hang the failure on me. On the broadcast, it would look like a puck that took a hop, and then the battle went the other way. The guys on the bench tapped my shins when I stepped off the ice. Brick said something about the rim being a bad bounce.

I played the rest of the game. Wes got one back early in the third, a wrist shot through a screen that made the building go quiet. We pushed. Jamie hit a post. Misha kept it a one-goal game with a save on a two-on-one that he had no business stopping.

With ninety seconds left, Coach sent me over the boards for the six-on-five. Wes got tossed from the dot for cheating in, and I stepped in to take the draw and won it clean. I skated to the net front and stood in the paint, taking cross-checks while the pucks came at the net. The last one kicked wide, and Boston chipped the puck the length of the ice into our empty net.

That was the game. Three–one. The series was even at two.

I looked for Elias on my way off the ice. It was now a habit. He stood with his back to a pillar, occasionally looking at me and then returning to scanning everything else.

The media took twenty minutes. On the road after a loss, they let the pack in all at once. Three dozen people filled the locker room.

Wes was first. The captain always answers for a loss. He stood at his stall with a towel around his neck and faced them down.

"They came in hard," he said. "We knew they would. We didn't manage the puck well and gave them too much off the rush. That's on us. We're back home for two now. I like where we're sitting."

"Are you planning anything different at home?"

"The plan didn't fail. It was a couple of missed reads and a couple of bad bounces. Now we're in a best-of-three. We've been in worse spots."

Wes was good at dealing with the media. I dressed slowly two stalls down and let him have the pack.

They didn't let me get away with that. When they spat Wes out, they came looking for the veteran.

"Nolan, what'd you see out there tonight?"

"I saw a good team playing a good road plan at home," I said. "They finished their checks and didn't give us breaks. That's Boston. They deserved the win."

I was quick and complete. Crediting the other team is the safest thing you can do with the media in a losing room. Nobody was ready to criticize a man who was gracious.

Then one of the national guys leaned in past a beat writer. "You've taken a beating this series, Nolan. Four games of heavy contact. At your age, how's your body holding up?"

I watched a beat writer glance up from his phone. Wes stopped toweling his hair. It was a real question.

"Fine," I said. "It's June hockey. Nobody feels good. You play the game in front of you."

I let it out smooth, as usual. Then I picked up my water bottle, and I left the room.

The charter plane's lights went dark twenty minutes after wheels-up. It was standard after lost games. Nobody sleeps after a win; after a loss, half the plane is out before the seatbelt light.

I couldn't sleep. My brain wouldn't stop.

I went back for water somewhere over Ohio. The galley light was on its dimmest setting, and Misha sat in the last row with his tray table down and a padlock in his hands. It was one of the old brass ones off the shelf in his apartment. He had a pick and a tension wrench working the keyway.