Chapter 43 The Final
CALEB
The first period was scoreless.
Not because we were not generating chances. We were. Two posts and a breakaway that their goaltender stopped with his pad and should not have. The game had the texture of something that was going to open up and had not yet decided when.
I stayed patient.
That was the instruction I had given myself in the tunnel before puck drop. Not win. Not perform. Not impress Porter or Walter or my mother in the stands. Stay patient. Play the game in front of you. Every shift. Every puck. Every decision.
Their team was called Lakeview and they were the best team we had faced. Not the most physical, not the fastest, but the most structured. They played a system that was almost impossible to exploit because it did not leave gaps. You had to create the gap yourself.
In the second period they scored.
It happened on a sequence we had not prepared for because you cannot prepare for everything. Their defenseman pinched at exactly the right moment and their center was in exactly the right place and the puck went in clean.
One to nothing.
I sat on the bench.
Did not look at the clock.
Did not look at the stands.
Found Mia on the bench instead.
She was writing on her clipboard. Not looking at the score. Not looking at me with a pep talk expression. Just doing her job, tracking the game in numbers, the same way she did every game.
The same as every Thursday.
I looked back at the ice.
Two minutes later we went down two.
A power play goal on a shot I should have blocked and got a piece of but not enough of and it went in and the Lakeview bench erupted and our bench went very quiet.
Coach called a timeout.
He did not raise his voice.
“We have been here before,” he said. “Not this exact game. But this exact moment. Down and pressing.” He looked around the bench. “What do we do in this moment?”
Nobody answered because it was not a real question.
“We play the next shift,” he said. “That is all. The next shift.”
We played the next shift.
I scored on it.
Not the next shift exactly. The one after. A deflection in front on a point shot from Eli that caught the post and went in and the building was loud and I felt something loosen in my chest that had been tight since Lakeview’s second goal.
Two to one.
Third period.
I had been in third periods like this before. Down a goal, twenty minutes left, the whole season in the balance. I knew what they felt like. I knew the way time moved differently and the crowd noise changed and the ice felt different under your blades.
I was not nervous.
I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
At eight minutes we tied it.
Third line goal. Nobody expected it. Their bench did not expect it. Our bench erupted.
Two to two.
Twelve minutes.
I looked at the clock.
Then I looked at the bench.
Mia was not writing on her clipboard. She was watching the ice with both hands around it and her eyes bright and I thought about the equipment room and the contract and the coffee and all the same time tomorrows.
I looked back at the game.
At eleven minutes I scored.
I could not have told you exactly how. It happened in the compressed way important things happen, a puck in the corner, a decision made faster than thought, a shot on instinct that went in clean.
Three to two.
Nine minutes.
Our bench was standing.
I went to mine and sat and breathed and did not look at the clock.
Coach said nothing. Just put his hand briefly on my shoulder and let me be.
Nine minutes.
We held.
Eight minutes.
We held.
Five minutes.
I blocked a shot with my shoulder that hurt and did not matter.
Two minutes.
The longest two minutes of my life.
Final buzzer.
The noise was immediate and enormous and I was on the ice and the team was on the ice and Eli had both arms around my neck and Coach was at the bench with something on his face I had never seen there before and in the stands Walter was standing and beside him my mother was standing and she was crying.
In the tunnel.
She was already there.
Clipboard at her side. Eyes bright. Hands at her sides.
I crossed the tunnel in four steps.
I held her and she held me back and I could feel her heart beating against my chest and I thought this is it, this is the thing, not the trophy, not Halifax, not any of it, this right here.
“We won,” she said into my jersey.
“We won,” I said.
“Three to two.”
“Three to two.”
She pulled back and looked at me.
“The contract ends tonight,” she said. “Six months.”
I looked at her.
“I know,” I said.
“So what now?” she said.
I looked at her face. The brown eyes clear and direct. The girl from the equipment room who had thrown tape at my chest and told me she understood nothing and had turned out to understand everything.
“Now it is just us,” I said. “No contract. No cameras. No terms.”
She held my gaze.
“Just us,” she said.
“Just us,” I said.
I kissed her in the tunnel with the championship noise behind us.
She kissed me back like she meant it to be permanent.
It was.
And for the first time all year, nothing in me felt like it was still waiting for the next game.