Page 86 of Home of the Brave

It was awful to watch and even worse to expect my defense to be where they should and find massive gaps. There’s only so much I can do when they’re taking four times the number of shots we were.

Sure, we’re losing, but I’ve blocked over forty shots.

They’ve only made fifteen.

Where were their heads?

I glanced down to the coaches, slightly validated they looked as displeased as I felt.

Hartman came to the bench, throwing his leg over the boards and giving a death glare to anyone dumb enough to look his way. He was shaking his head. If we were home, we’d all be bracing for the talk he’d give us, but this was Tyson’s team, and he was part of the problem.

“It’s just one game. We’ll be back for the third,” Kitcher said behind me.

I nodded as if that mattered.

There was just something so frustrating about underperforming when we all knew we could do much better.

Getting pulled, through no fault of my own made me––

“GOAL!”

And there was the final nail in the coffin. An empty net goal just to really drive it home. There was only ten seconds left, but Coach Abrams gave me the wave to go back out. It was a pretense at this point, but I couldn’t argue.

I got to my net and turned to watch the last face off. Miraculously, we won it, and the puck soared away from me. I watched it drop as the final buzzer sounded.

Habit kept me in place.

I wanted to storm off. I wanted to get to the locker room and rip into them, but decades of good coaching kept me from making a scene.

I skated toward our benches as I swore to never take my home team for granted again.

“That sucked,” Schultz said as I stepped past him. He had the ability to let bad games roll off him. Something I wished I could mimic more than ever.

Hartman and I were more similar. We took each win and loss personally.

The locker room was silent as I finally shuffled in, holding my helmet at my side. I looked around, but no one met my eyes. They sat with their heads down, looking defeated. As if they’d just gone to battle, fought their best, and their enemy bested them.

I’d feel a shred of sympathy if I thought any of them had given it their all.

“What was that?” I finally cut through the tension.

“Leave it,” Hartman warned.

He held my gaze before I finally relented and went to my locker and pulled off my jersey and shed my equipment. I headed to the showers without waiting for the coaches or Tyson to start a speech.

With our Utah team, I was all about winning and losing together, but that was not at all what happened today.

I wanted the water to wash away my mood, to be the fresh start I needed before going out and facing the press. Facing Victoria.

Fans didn’t need to see this side of me either.

By the time I changed and walked out, I felt marginally better.

Until the first microphone was shoved in my face and a reporter started without a hello or how are you. “Why did the team fall apart?”

“Ask them.” I shoved past him and was approached by another journalist, who at least had the decency to talk to me first.

“That was hard to watch, Henson.” He gave me an apologetic smile. “Defense just wasn’t there.”