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"Two."

"One and a half."

He leans over the boards and says something to Dana, and she comes around the end of the bench and crouches in front of him with her hands on his shin guard. He stares straight ahead at the ice the whole time like it's a dentist's chair.

I stop talking. For one and a half shifts. Webb times it.

Two-two after sixty minutes. Overtime.

Three-on-three in overtime is my favorite thing in hockey. There's so much ice. It's like somebody took away all the furniture in a room and told you to dance.

Moretti crouches behind the bench before the first shift. "Hale, Webb, Castel."

I nearly fall over. Hale and Webb are the old reliable pair. They're who you put out when you don't want anything to happen.

"Possession," Moretti says. "Nobody gets cute. We hold it until somebody makes a mistake, and that somebody is not us." He looks right at me. "Castel."

"Yes, Coach."

"Nobody. Gets. Cute."

"Yes, Coach."

We win the draw. Hale sends it back to Webb, Webb holds it, and we circle, and circle, and circle. For forty seconds, we just pass the puck around like we're babysitting it. Denver chases us and gets tired. I can feel the crowd getting restless, that low hum a building makes when it wants something to happen.

Then Hale bumps it up to me on the far wall.

I've got speed. There's one D in front of me, a big guy with a long reach, backing up, and behind him is all that empty ice. I can see it in my head before I do it: the puck between his skates, me around the outside, alone on the goalie. I've done it a thousand times. I did it in juniors. I did it in the World Juniors against the Swedes, and they still play the clip.

I push the puck through his legs.

He closes them.

It's not even a good play by him. He just stops skating and brings his knees together, and the puck hits his shin pad and bounces straight to his teammate, and suddenly there are two of them going the other way and I'm behind the play looking at their backs.

Webb's the only one back. Two on one.

Hale's chasing. I can see him from behind, pumping hard, and his right leg isn't doing what his left leg is doing. It's hitching every stride, like there's a stone in his skate. He's not going to catch them. He tries anyway. He dives at the last second, stick out, full-length on the ice, and misses the puck by about a foot.

The pass goes across. The shot goes in.

The horn goes off. It's their horn now, the short ugly visitor one, and the building goes so quiet I can hear the Denver guys yelling to each other as they pile into the corner.

Hale is lying on his stomach on the ice. He doesn't get up right away.

I skate over to him. I don't know why. I put my hand out.

He looks at the hand. Then he gets up on his own, using his stick, slow, and skates past me to the bench without a word.

The room is so quiet you can hear the showers dripping.

Guys are pulling off gear without talking. Nobody's music is on. I sit in my stall still in my skates, and I can't make my hands untie them.

"Circus is fun," Brandt says, to nobody, "until you're the clown."

This time somebody laughs. It's short and it's not loud, but it's there. Kowal, maybe. Or one of the guys at the end whose names I'm still learning.

Moretti comes through the door. He doesn't look at anyone. He walks straight down the middle of the room, stops at my stall, and says, "My office. Nine a.m. tomorrow."