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Neither of us says anything. He steps onto the ice. He glides down to the bench and sets the tray on the boards. He doesn't bring me mine. He leaves it there.

Then he skates out to the blue line.

He picks up the first puck.

I drop into my stance.

He comes.

He comes fast and clean, no fake, no shoulder, nothing, and he snaps it low blocker so hard and so fast that I'm still reading the release when I hear it hit the back of the net.

One.

He doesn't celebrate. He skates back to the line.

The second one he takes high glove. I get a piece of it, I feel it on the edge of my glove, and it doesn't matter. It goes in off the bar and drops.

Two.

The third one, he walks me. He comes in slow, makes me come out, holds it, holds it, and then pulls it to his backhand and around my pad and tucks it in the far side like he's putting something on a shelf. I'm flat on the ice. I didn't get anywhere near it.

Three.

The fourth one goes five-hole. I don't even see it leave his stick.

Four.

He goes back to the blue line.

He stands there with the fifth puck under his blade. He's breathing hard. His breath is coming out in clouds. He's looking at me down a hundred feet of ice, and I'm looking at him, and the building is so quiet I can hear the compressor ticking over somewhere under my feet.

Every other time, this is when he shoots it wide.

I don't move off my post. I don't give him anything. I set my feet and drop my hips and open my glove and look at him over the top of it, and I wait. I want him to see I'm not giving him anything. If he takes it, he takes it from me.

He comes.

He comes straight down the middle at full speed, and at the top of the circle he looks me right in the eyes, and I see it in his face. He's not going to miss this time.

He lets it go.

It goes over my glove and under the bar and into the top corner of the net, and the water bottle jumps on its peg, and the net shakes, and the sound of it fills the whole empty building.

Five.

Five for five.

He doesn't skate a loop. He doesn't come into my crease. He doesn't say say it, Josip.

He stops at the top of the circle, a few feet away, with his stick across his thighs, breathing hard.

I come up out of my stance. I push my mask up.

That's the deal. Five for five, and I'm done with him. He's just a guy on the team now. He won.

I've got the words. I've had them since Thursday night, three pages of them, in the back of the Book of Grudges. I've been saying them in my head for two days. I open my mouth.

Nothing comes out.