Page 281 of On His Team

Mackey made me look twice until I stopped getting burned when I didn’t. Percy went from barely saying a word behind us to directing half the ice every time the puck came into our end. Stanley got dragged into the middle so many times he finally started going there before anybody had to yell at him. Blue spent February learning that walking away could matter more than winning whatever happened after the whistle, and forty minutes into the biggest game of our lives, he proved he knew the difference.

None of that happened because we wrote five things on a board. We just kept doing them. I look around the room. Nobody seems afraid of the next twenty minutes. Tired, yeah. Stanley has a red mark across one cheek from somebody’s glove. Benson is bent forward retaping the knob of a stick that doesn’t need it. Mackey has his eyes closed beside me. Percy finally sits down. But nobody looks like they’re waiting for something to save us.

Coach comes in and lets the room settle before he speaks. “It’s twenty minutes.”

Heads come up.

“You know what’s sitting on the other side of it.”

He looks around once. “Go take it.”

That’s all.

I pull the towel from around my neck and reach for my helmet.

Around me, everybody else gets up too.

The third settles into the kind of hockey where every mistake seems louder than it should. Nobody gets much room through the middle, and every puck that reaches a goalie comes with three people arriving behind it.

A little over seven minutes in, Michigan loses control behind its own net.

Stanley is the first one there, but the puck gets knocked away from him in the battle and rolls out toward the left circle. For a second, it’s sitting in open ice with nobody on it.

Then Blue comes through. He doesn’t settle the puck. He doesn’t pull it back or look for another option. His stick meets it in stride, and the shot is gone before Michigan’s goalie finishes pushing across.

It beats him over the blocker.

The red light comes on.

For half a second, Blue just stares at the net.

Then our bench loses its fucking mind.

He turns for the corner with one glove in the air, and Stanley gets to him first. Theo hits them from behind, Owens piles into the side, and by the time I get there, Blue has disappeared against the glass under half the team.

Somewhere beneath all of us, he’s yelling.

I can’t hear a word.

When the officials finally break us apart, we skate back toward center. Blue passes our bench on the way and Stanley reaches over the boards to smack the top of his helmet again.

Blue shoves his glove away.

Stanley does it again.

“Fuck off.”

Stanley is grinning. “National championship goal, baby.”

The scoreboard above center ice changes while Michigan lines up for the faceoff.

3–2.

There are twelve minutes and nineteen seconds left.

Benson bends over the dot.

The puck drops, and Michigan comes right back at us. They push. We get it out. They come back. Coach starts shortening the bench with around nine minutes left, and Mackey and I barely get our breathing under control before we’re standing again.