Cross got there first.
He didn’t stand or raise his voice; I’ve never once heard him raise it. He had one shin pad on and the other across his knee, and he looked directly at Dahl.
“You’re a scratch who chirped the best d-man I’ve played with about his relationship.” He paused. “Go worry about your gap.”
Then he buckled the second pad.
Across the room, Pratt looked up.
He took Dahl in for a second, the long flat read, and then he looked at me for less than that. Pratt only speaks when something’s wrong. We’d all known that since his rookie season.
He looked at Dahl again. “Mind your gap.” A small laugh spread through the room.
I dropped onto my bench and pulled my gear out.
Rook came in after. He didn’t know yet. He couldn’t have, but I watched him clear the door and do the thing he does, a half-second scan he thinks nobody sees.
He read the room like he reads a rush coming at him. Dahl was still standing at the far wall in his suit, and the room was too quiet. Rook knew it was about him.
Mark poked his head in. “Fifteen, gentlemen.”
“Fifteen what? Fifteen minutes? Fifteen reporters? Fifteen years until I get a stall with more legroom?” I spread my arms wide. “Mark, talk to me. Use your words.”
“Goodbye, Lucas.” The room laughed. It was genuine laughter.
Markel appeared next. His entire speech was three sentences long.
“It’s our building, home ice. Nothing that happened in here today follows us out there. Play our game, nobody else’s.”
***
We played a classic Ironhawks game.
The first period was stiff for both teams, but the second opened up.
Cross won a draw in their end, clean, and sent it straight back to Rook at the point. Rook took two steps along the line to pull their winger toward him, and the second the lane bent, he sent it down to me on the half-wall.
I caught it with a defenseman closing in and held until he committed his hips. That’s when I sent it back to Cross, where the lane was opening.
Rafe arrived on the opposite wing. He got his stick on it and redirected it under the goalie’s glove. The lamp lit, and two hundred Saskatchewan pounds folded me into the glass at full speed. Nineteen thousand people roared and stomped. I laughed into the kid’s cage.
They pushed back in the third and wouldn’t go down easily. For four consecutive minutes their top line lived in our zone. Rook stayed with them.
He sent the puck off the glass and out twice. He blocked one with the inside of his ankle. Pratt made one save that was worth a highlight reel. He plucked a shot out of the air with his glove.
We were up by two with under two minutes left , and they pulled their goalie out of the net. Markel sent Rook’s pair out, and they held the house. Their point man wound up for a one-timer and Rook stepped right into the lane, knocked it down with his stick and looked up the ice.
Two hundred feet of rink opened between him and the empty net. He didn’t slap it. He chipped it. It was a flat, lazy, perfect chip that rode the ice and died in the back of the net like he’d walked it down and set it in by hand.
We were up by three at the horn.
Dahl watched from the press box. He was gone before we left the ice.
In the corridor past the cameras, where the carpet starts, I caught up to Rook. “Hey, are you good?”
“Yeah.” He meant it.
“Dahl’s done at the end of the year,” I said. “And I want—“ The claws came out before I could stop them. It was the part of me that wanted to find him in the parking lot and tell him exactly which gaps to mind for the rest of his career that had little left. I had the breath in me to say it.
