Page 95 of Home Ice

“Yes, and you should trademark it like I did Varga.”

He peeled off toward the far circle, leaving me to wonder whether the trademark story was true.

The horn sounded, ending warmups, and I banked my last puck off the boards to Tyler’s section on my way to the tunnel.

***

Minnesota won the opening draw and put the puck behind us. Four seconds later, two of them arrived in our corner at the same time. It was exactly what Coach Markel had promised.

Their forecheck wasn’t fast, but it was constant pressure. It came in waves that didn’t care about the last wave. We spent the first ninety seconds of the game learning with our bodies what the tablet had told our minds that morning.

On my first shift, I took a pass along the boards, and everything in me that had been drilled since September said go up ice. I went sideways instead, cutting toward the middle. Their winger overran me, and the third-pair defenseman, number 44, swung his hips to cut across. I brought the puck back the other way. His second turn started and never finished. I was past him before his skates were under him, and their center had to come down and take me. That left Heath alone at the face-off dot. He was so alone that he had time to pick the target of his shot.

The shot went off the goalie’s blocker and out of play. It didn’t go in, but when I sat down, Coach Markel leaned over and said, “That’s there all night.”

“He recovers slowly on his backhand side,” I said.

“Then lean on his backhand side.”

In the second period, six minutes in, we made it work.

It started as a nothing play, a puck banked around the boards that I caught at center ice. I touched it back to Varga, turned as if I was cutting across, and Varga gave it right back. Now 44 had us bearing down at full speed: the puck going one way, me going the other, two choices arriving at the same time. He turned once. I cut back inside him, and he started his second turn. We never arrived there. I shot short side and high, over the goalie’s glove.

Nineteen thousand people were on their feet.

When it died down, Coach Markel looked down the row at me. “Same look next time.”

Trier leaned in from my other side, breathing hard from his shift. “Section 112,” he said. “Little guy with a puck. He’s been standing the whole game.”

Minnesota tied the game on a net-front scramble that Pratt had no chance to stop. Late in the period, one of their defensemen ran me into the boards hard. The hit was clean. My hip said otherwise. I heard the crowd exhale when I got up and finished my shift.

The horn ended the second with the game 1–1.

In the room, Coach Markel didn’t turn on the video screen. He stood in the middle of the floor and waited for us to quiet down.

“They’ve stopped defending the second turn,” he said. “They’re defending the line instead. You know what that means. It means the second turn is now our game. Twenty minutes.”

Minnesota spent the first shifts of the third in our end, and I heard worry in the crowd’s cheers. Pratt held. Rook blocked one with the top of his foot. Tomorrow it would be purple.

My next shift, a safe play showed itself. Their defenseman pinched down hard along my boards to keep the puck in. The play was to bounce the puck off the boards and live to fight another day.

No.

I took it off the wall instead, under the pinch, and skated out of our zone through the middle of the ice. Nothing came of the rush. It didn’t matter. You could feel the game tilt one degree back toward us.

On the next power-play I shot from the top instead of feeding Heath through the seam everybody saw. Their goalie caught it clean out of the air, but Varga noticed. He knocked his knee into mine when we sat down on the bench.

“They keep guessing pass,” he said.

“I know.”

“Stop being famous for passing.”

“I’m working on it.”

Rook’s shift ended, and I was over the boards with Varga.

Eight minutes left, still 1–1, and their third pair got caught on the ice with our line coming back the other way. I saw 44‘s partner look toward their bench for instructions, and he got nothing.