“Chicago’s brought up enforcers with instructions to injure my top players,” I said without preamble. “Specifically targeting Max, Cole, Keegan, and Dante.”
Silence on the other end. Then: “Dante’s not playing tonight.”
“He will be for game five. And apparently someone in Chicago thinks what happened in that bathroom wasn’t enough.”
More silence. I could practically hear Ignatius thinking, running through the same calculations I was running, coming to the same conclusions about available options.
“The Council can’t intervene in human sports,” he said finally. “You know that.”
“I’m not asking for intervention. I’m asking you to talk to Cole and Keegan privately. I’ll get Max and warn him, but what I want to say and what I can say in the locker room are two different things.”
“I understand,” Ignatius said. “I’ll handle Cole and Keegan. You focus on keeping the rest of your team intact.”
“Thank you.”
I hung up and sat there for another moment, letting the rage settle into something colder and more useful. Then I stood, grabbed my jacket, and headed down to the locker room todeliver a pre-game talk that would need to walk the line between warning my team and not psyching them out before puck drop.
This was going to be ugly.
Chapter twelve
Delayed Penalty - A penalty is signaled, but play continues temporarily.
Theron
The game started exactly the way I’d expected—physical, aggressive, with Chicago throwing hits that were technically legal but designed to hurt. Their coach had clearly given them the okay to push the boundaries, and the refs were calling it tight on both sides, which meant the game kept stopping for penalties that disrupted any momentum we tried to build. Dante was upin the press box along with two rookies I wasn’t playing. I’d have been happier if he was at home, but that would have felt too much like punishment, and I knew we had to talk. I just had no idea what to say.
First period ended 1-1. Keegan had scored early on a beautiful wrist shot from the point. Chicago had answered eight minutes later on a deflection that Levin had no chance of stopping. The physicality had been ramping up with every shift, and I’d already had to pull Cole off the ice twice when I saw Markov lining him up for hits that had nothing to do with the puck.
Second period started better. Max scored thirty seconds in on a breakaway that made the building erupt. We were up 2-1, and for a moment I let myself believe we could control this game, could weather Chicago’s aggression and find a way to claw back into this series.
Then Ethan Collins made a mistake.
Collins was one of our rookies—twenty years old, called up from the AHL when we’d had injury problems in January, no experience with playoff intensity. He was skilled, fast, had good instincts when he wasn’t overthinking. But he was young, and young players made mistakes when veterans baited them.
Which was exactly what happened.
I watched it develop from the bench. One of Chicago’s veterans—Himmel, a thirty-five-year-old who’d spent his entire career learning how to get under people’s skin—had been chirping at Collins all game. Nothing the refs could hear, just the constant stream of commentary that playoff hockey allowed. Collins had been handling it well enough, ignoring it, focusing on his game.
Then Himmel said something that made Collins’s shoulders tense. I saw it happen, saw the exact moment the kid lost his composure. Himmel went into the corner for a puck battle, and Collins followed him in with his stick up.
The high stick caught Himmel across the face—not hard enough to draw blood, but high enough and visible enough that every ref in the building saw it. The whistles blew immediately.
“Fuck,” I said, because I knew what was coming.
Four minutes. They gave Collins four minutes for a high stick that had been manufactured by a veteran who knew exactly how to make a rookie look undisciplined.
Collins skated to the box with his head down, and I made a note to talk to him after the game about veteran tricks and keeping your composure. But that conversation would have to wait, because right now, we had four minutes to kill against a team that had brought up enforcers specifically to take advantage of situations like this.
I watched Chicago’s bench. Saw their coach lean forward, saw him gesture to someone in the back. And then Markov and Jensen hopped the boards.
My stomach dropped.
“Max,” I called, but he was already heading over the boards for his shift, because that was what captains did—they played the hard minutes, took the tough assignments, led by example even when it cost them.
I should have stopped him. Should have called a timeout, adjusted the lines, kept him on the bench until the penalty expired. But I didn’t, because pulling your captain off the ice during a crucial penalty kill sent a message to the team that you didn’t trust him, and I couldn’t afford that message with up to another three games left to play.
So I watched Max take the face-off in our defensive zone. Watched him win it clean, get the puck to Ash along the boards. Watched Ash start to carry it up ice, looking for a clearance.
