“First period’s about to start. You should know that I intend to be emotionally expressive out here tonight, Cap. In honor of the journey.”
“Sawyer—”
“I’m talking about hockey emotions. Focused, professional, hockey emotions.” He skates backward away from me with the expression of a man who is absolutely not talking about hockey emotions. “Let’s go win this thing.”
The first period is a grind.
Their team is physical—bigger than us on the boards, aggressive on the forecheck—and we spend most of the twenty minutes playing defense and looking for openings that keep closing before we can get there. We go into the first intermission tied at zero, which is better than it could be and worse than it should be.
In the locker room, I say the things I’m supposed to say. Adjustments. Positioning. The specific breakdown on their leftdefenseman who telegraphs his passes a half-second early. Standard stuff, the language of a game I’ve been playing since I was five years old.
What I don’t say—what I’m only starting to understand myself—is that we’re playing tight. Not because of talent. Not because of preparation. Because they can feel me on the bench, coiled and controlled, and it’s traveling through the lines.
I don’t know how to fix that in an intermission speech. So I say the tactical things and trust that the second period will shake something loose.
It doesn’t entirely. We score first—Holden, off a scramble in front of the net, ugly but it counts—and then give it back four minutes later on a defensive breakdown that I take apart in my head approximately six times on the bench before I make myself stop, because replaying mistakes while the game is still happening is the fastest way to create more of them.
Between the second and third periods, Slammy takes the ice.
I will say this: whatever is happening inside that costume tonight, it is committed. Slammy skates to center ice with a wireless microphone—I didn’t know Slammy had a wireless microphone, I have questions about when this was acquired and approved—and begins leading the crowd through what can only be described as a feelings exercise for two thousand people.
“HAPPINESS,” Slammy announces, and the crowd cheers.
I don’t recognize the raspy voice.
“FRUSTRATION,” Slammy announces, and the crowd boos dramatically, which is accurate.
“DETERMINATION,” Slammy announces, and the crowd does something between a roar and a war cry that makes the building shake.
From the tunnel, the team watches this.
“Should we be taking notes?” Holden asks.
“I have notes,” Shep says. “I’ve had notes for weeks.”
“Sawyer,” I say, without heat.
“Right. Hockey.” He doesn’t stop grinning. “Hockey feelings only.”
Slammy finishes with one final instruction, involving the entire crowd standing up and exhaling at the same time, which is either a breathing exercise or a fire hazard depending on how you look at it. Then Slammy takes a bow, skates a small preparatory lap, and exits the ice to a standing ovation.
The third period starts.
It’s tied with four minutes left when Coach Duff calls timeout.
Not because anything has gone wrong, exactly. We’ve been trading chances for fifteen minutes, both teams running on fumes and adrenaline and whatever the Sorrowville crowd has been feeding into the building since Slammy’s intermission performance. The energy in the arena is different from anything I’ve felt this season—loud and invested and alive in a way that our home games stopped being sometime in October.
We cluster at the bench. Duff has his clipboard. His expression is the one he gets when he’s already made a decision and is checking his math one final time.
Then he looks at me.
Not at the clipboard. At me.
“Foster.” His voice is flat and even, the voice he uses when he wants to be heard without raising it. “What do you see.”
Not a question. A request.
I’ve been playing hockey my whole life and Coach Duff has never once asked me what I see in a timeout. He tells us what he sees. He draws on the board and points at things and we execute them. That’s the system. That’s how it works.
