I gave him the slight nod that meant yes.
I finished my laces. Around me, players dressed and chirped. Somewhere out there, Kovac had a contact list and was quietly working through their phone numbers.
By the time I stepped onto the ice, I’d decided. I was going to get Varga off Kovac’s list before the trip was over.
***
Coach Markel ran a video session late afternoon in one of the hotel’s conference rooms. He was efficient. He’d sanded his presentation down to eleven minutes. Their top line was first. He highlighted the center who hunted the middle of the ice and the big winger who’d plowed me into the glass twice last March. Markel froze a zone entry and stood with the clicker loose at his side.
“They want this lane all night,” he said. “Rook’s pair doesn’t give it to them. Everything to the wall. Let them live on the wall.” He clicked once more. It was a face-off alignment. “We don’t get the last change. So we change smart, and when the matchup’s wrong for a shift, it’s not wrong, it’s just hockey. Play it.”
That was it. His sentences got shorter every season because the structure was living in our legs, and he knew it.
Philadelphia came out hard. In their first shift, the big winger checked me behind our net to introduce himself. He didn’t get the puck. I sent it off the glass away from our goal. The crowd cheered the check and booed my play. Nineteen thousand people booed a textbook zone exit. Philadelphia.
Markel sent me over the boards every time their top line stood. Twice in the first ten minutes a forty-second shift turned into ninety because the puck refused to leave our zone. Trier was solid at my side. We did our unglamorous work: making nothing happen over and over again.
Pratt did the rest. When shots reached him, his glove was there, casual as a man catching a tossed pair of keys. After each, he tapped the posts and reset.
We scored in the second. Varga’s line caught tired legs in their defense. Rafe won the race to a dead puck in the corner. He passed it to Varga on the half-wall, and my man took care of it from there. He slowed down and let the defense over-commit, leaving a lane open. The puck landed on Rafe’s tape.
Rafe didn’t miss. The net came off its moorings, and so did he. Varga hit him so hard in the celebration that they both bounced off the glass. I stood at the blue line watching nineteen thousand people boo the man I loved while he laughed into a twenty-year-old’s cage.
Philadelphia tied it before the second period ended. It was a miracle shot past six bodies that nobody could stop. The third period was long. Markel shortened the bench to four defensemen instead of six with twelve to go, doubling my shifts.
Varga scored the winner with just over four minutes left. He won a net-front scramble with three whacks at the puck, and it bounced off somebody’s skate. They reviewed it for two minutes while the crowd held its breath. The goal counted.
I played three of the last four minutes. Markel sent my pair out for the final minute-forty against their top line. They pulled their goalie out of the net to carry an extra attacker. We didn’t chase anything. We held the house. I blocked a shot with the inside of my ankle that I’d feel in the morning. When the horn sounded, the scoreboard said 2–1.
In the room, the music was loud. Mikkelsen got the player-of-the-game helmet and wore it like a crown. Varga conducted the noise with a water bottle as a baton. I sat in my stall and started the long process of turning back into a civilian.
Markel waited for me in the hallway to the bus. He had his overcoat on and hands in his pockets. “Twenty-four minutes tonight,” he said.
“It was there to play.”
“It was.” He nodded. “Tell me when it’s too many.”
“I will.”
“You won’t. That’s why I asked.”
He walked toward the bus, footsteps even on the concrete. I got on the bus.
***
Rafe wore a tie.
He stood in the private room we had reserved at the back of the steakhouse when I came in, hands at his sides, dressed like a man awaiting sentencing. He wore a navy tie, knotted small and ferociously tight, with a white shirt ironed into submission.
Around him, twenty hockey players in quarter-zips and open collars were finding seats. Trier bounced on the balls of his feet with joy. “Rafe. You look beautiful.”
“Thanks,” Rafe said flatly.
“Doesn’t he look beautiful?” Trier asked no one in particular. “He looks like he’s selling us a mutual fund. Sit by me. I want people to think I have a lawyer.”
“Leave the kid alone,” Cross said from the head of the table. Cross had the seat he always took, and he nodded at the chair to his left. Rafe took it.
The tie lasted nine more minutes. Varga took it off him.
