“Marchetti’s going to make Berger frame that spreadsheet.”
“Berger already framed it probably. It’s matted.” He takes the long way without either of us calling it the long way. Same as all season.
“You were square all night,” I tell him. “Even on the third one. They had you moving post to post and you never got beat across, you got there first and let it come to you.”
“You watch the whole game from the bench like that? Frame by frame?”
“I watch you. It’s not the same thing.”
“Most guys would’ve said the whole game.”
“Most guys aren’t backing you up. I’ve got one job, and it’s knowing how you’d play the puck I’m about to face if they pull you. So I watch how you play it. It’s a depth chart.” I watch the buildings go by outside the car. “That glove save in the second, on the tip, you were already low before it came off the stick.”
“I guessed.”
“You didn’t guess. You saw the winger open his blade and went low because you knew he’d tip it. Own it.”
“Says the man who watched too many replays of one goal in a game we won by four.” He glances over at me.
He knows my patterns. I told him about them months ago. The OCD. Gwen. The building on Juniper and the support I get there a couple of times a month.
“The goal mattered.”
“It went in during garbage time of a four-goal win. It mattered to exactly one person in the building.”
“That person has to live in my head.”
“I know.” He says it to the road, easy, no push. “I’m trying to make it nicer in there.”
I don’t have anything for that, so I look out the window, and he lets me.
“You believe it yet?” he says after a block. “Where we are in the playoffs? That we are one game away from round two?”
“No.”
“Me neither. Berger’s got us climbing the chart and recalculates after every win. He’ll run out of decimal places before we run out of series.”
“We’re going to win this round.”
He looks over, eyes wide. “You don’t usually say things like that.”
“I’m saying it once. Write it down. We win this round, and nobody in that building in October would’ve put a dollar on us taking a single game.”
“Game’s in two days. You think you’ll get in again?”
“If we’re up big. Or down big. Garbage time’s my whole career.”
“It’s not garbage when you’re in it. Another twenty minutes in your first playoff run counts, Soucy.” He says my name like it’s part of the sentence. “Say it counts.”
“Ask me again in two days when I’m mopping up another blowout and letting one in.”
“I’ll ask you every time.”
“That might be a lot of asking.”
“I’ve got the time.”
The window’s down and the night’s loose. I’m apparently a person who says things tonight, so I say one more.
