Page 190 of On His Team

“I am.”

Then the puck drops again. That’s hockey. You get maybe half a minute to feel anything before somebody sends you back over the boards.

Ohio State ties it early in the third.

2-2.

After that, the game gets tighter. Percy stops a tip that should go in. Mackey clears a rebound. Blue gets cross-checked after a whistle and somehow skates away without giving them what they want. That might be the most impressive thing anybody does all night.

Seven minutes left, Stanley gets the winner. Of course he does.

Benson wins a battle below the goal line. Blue gets a touch. Stanley finds space inside. Again. Not the wall. Not floating. Inside. He buries it.

3-2.

The building explodes.

Stanley celebrates like he’s never scored before.

I laugh from the blue line.

The last two minutes feel longer than the entire clinic did this morning, and I wasn’t even the one running that. Fuller has Benson, Blue, Trent, and me out there in front of Percy, and Ohio State pulls their goalie as soon as they gain possession. Six on five.

They work the puck low first, trying to drag us down with it, but we get it out and force them to regroup through neutral ice. They come right back. Forty seconds. A shot gets through from the point, and Percy tracks it cleanly all the way into his glove. The whistle goes with twenty-three seconds left.

Nobody says much before the faceoff. There isn’t anything useful left to say.

Benson wins the draw toward the wall, and Blue gets there first, pinning the puck against the boards while two Ohio State players dig at his skates. Ten seconds. Somebody finally kicks it loose, and it slides far enough into the slot for me to get my stick on it. I don’t try anything clever. I send it as hard as I can down the ice.

Five seconds.

The puck keeps sliding.

Then the horn goes.

I let out a breath so hard my chest almost hurts.

3-2.

We needed that.

It isn’t a title, and it isn’t a tournament game anybody is going to talk about five years from now, but nobody in our room gives a shit about that when we come off the ice. We came into tonight seventeen, twelve, and two after losing to the same team less than twenty-four hours ago. Now we have another win, and for the first time in a while, the room feels like ours again.

Somebody gets music going before half of us have even taken our helmets off. Stanley is already watching clips on somebody’s phone, bouncing between his game-winner and my goal like he personally produced both of them.

“Run it back,” he says.

“You’ve watched it four times.”

“Five.”

He ignores me and starts the clip again. Apparently scoring one goal has made my entire night public property.

From somewhere behind me, Stanley shouts, “She fixed you.”

“I fixed me.”

Stanley says, “She provided the data.”