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Next to him, the #4 jersey's hanging in its pressed plastic.

He opens his eyes. He looks at me across the room.

I can't read it. I can't read it at all.

Eleven minutes into overtime, Harrow gets a two-on-one.

It's my fault. I pinched at the blue line. I went for the puck and missed it, and now it's Harrow's top two forwards coming the other way with nobody back but Petey, and Petey's eighteen and on his heels.

I'm chasing. I'm not going to get there. I can see the whole thing happening in front of me in slow motion, the pass across, the one-timer, the empty side of the net.

The pass goes across.

Dane moves.

I've seen him make a thousand saves. I've watched him from a hundred feet away every morning since September. I've never seen him do this. He goes across the crease like he's been fired out of something. Full extension, flat out, his whole body stretched sideways in the air with his glove arm reaching back across the open net. The one-timer comes off the Harrow guy's stick like a gunshot.

His glove closes on it.

He lands on his side in the crease. He's lying there flat on the ice with his glove arm in the air. He's holding it up.

He's holding it up so I can see it.

The building comes apart.

The whistle hasn't gone yet. The ref's just staring. Dane gets to his knees. He doesn't freeze it for the faceoff. He drops it at his feet and rolls it out from his glove, and he looks up the ice at me.

I'm at our blue line. I've just turned around.

He moves the puck. One flick of his blade. A hundred and ten feet, through the neutral zone, through two Harrow sticks, and onto my tape at center ice.

I'm alone.

There's nobody between me and the Harrow goalie. There's nobody anywhere. It's the whole length of their half of the ice and it's quiet and it's white and it's six in the morning at Kettle with the overheads half on, and I've done this a thousand times.

I don't think about it.

I come in fast. I give him the shoulder. He bites. I pull it to the backhand.

Five-hole.

The red light comes on.

I don't remember the next minute.

I remember the glass. I remember going into it and the whole building on the other side, eight thousand people, all of them screaming, the student section coming down over the seats. I remember Wes, and Okoye, and Jace, and Petey, and Gunnar picking me up off the ice like I weigh nothing. I remember my mom at the glass with both hands flat on it and her face crumpled up.

I remember Nico, next to her, pounding on the glass with his fist, screaming SWEDE, SWEDE, SWEDE.

And then the pile on top of me gets quiet.

It's weird. It goes quiet from the outside in. One by one, the guys on top of me stop yelling and turn around, and look at something behind me, and get up. Wes is the last one off. He holds out his hand and pulls me to my feet, and he's got this look on his face, and he turns me around by the shoulders.

Dane's at center ice.

He's skated out of his crease, all the way out, past the blue line, past the red line, in full pads, all of it, his mask pushed up on his head. He's standing in the middle of the faceoff circle at center, on the big painted lantern. He's looking at me.

The building's getting quiet. Not all at once. Section by section, people are looking down, noticing, nudging each other. The noise drains out of the arena like water out of a tub.