Page 32 of On His Team

I stopped waiting for that call a long time ago.

Tonight, Penn State is enough. They come out heavy, and for the first eight minutes nobody gets clean possession long enough to do much with it. Then Stanley scores from almost exactly where Aspen told him to stop shooting.

Theo moves it over. Stanley gets the puck outside the dots instead of driving in and lets it go.

It catches a defenseman’s shin and changes direction.

In.

Stanley celebrates like he planned every inch of it.

When he gets back to the bench, Benson grabs the top of his jersey.

“Aspen is going to kill you.”

Stanley points at the scoreboard. “One-nothing.”

“You shot from the wall.”

“It went in.”

Aspen is going to hate that argument.

Stanley does it again in the second, still farther outside than she wants him. He later claims he was “basically in the slot.”

He was not.

The game opens up after that. Benson gets one off the rush. Blue creates another by carrying clean through the left side. Tate gets the fifth. Percy makes one save late in the second that keeps Penn State from making the whole thing uncomfortable.

Five-two.

I don’t get a point. What I get is four retrievals in the third where I reach the puck without already knowing where I’m sending it.

Two still go up the wall. One goes behind the net to Mackey.

One I keep.

That one feels the best.

I look once. Look again. Pressure comes from my right, the middle stays open, and this time when I take it, I know why I’m taking it.

Nobody cheers. Nobody notices. By the time I hit the neutral zone, the student section is yelling about something else.

Mackey taps my shin with his stick when I get back to the bench. Fuller gives me one nod, and Percy says, “Better,” after the whistle.

That’s enough.

That’s a good night.

The locker room after a win is loud enough that I have to lean toward Mackey to hear him. Stanley is on the bench in his underwear before most of us have our skates off.

“I would like to address the room. I scored twice.”

Blue looks up. “We were there.”

Stanley puts up two fingers. “Twice. After being informed, in writing, by my own girlfriend that I need to improve basically every part of my offensive game.”

Benson throws a roll of tape at him. It hits Stanley in the chest, and he catches it.