Page 77 of On His Team

Tie game.

The bench gets quieter. Not nervous yet. Just tighter. Everybody knows what Coach said after the last third-period lead we blew. Nobody says it. With less than two minutes left, there’s a defensive-zone draw to Percy’s right. Faceoff. Puck into the slot. Shot. Net.

3-2.

The building goes silent before Michigan State’s bench finishes celebrating. I sit there staring over the boards, already replaying the sequence even though I wasn’t on the ice for it.

The horn goes.

We lose.

Coach comes into the room after and waits until nobody is moving. “That’s the third time.”

That’s all he says about it. He doesn’t need to give us the other two. We know.

Saturday is worse.

There’s no lead to lose.

Michigan State gets two before the first period is half over, and the second one changes the sound in the building. Not completely. The student section keeps trying. The band keeps playing. But there’s a drag to everything afterward. Tate gets one back. For a while, it feels possible. Then the second period starts. They score again. And again. The fourth goes in off Faulkner’s stick, but Coach pulls Percy anyway. Percy skates toward the bench. Then past it straight down the tunnel. Nobody says anything.

I’m on the ice for two of the four. One of them is mine. I go back for a puck with two forecheckers coming at me, look once instead of twice, and rim it up the wall because that’s what I would have done a month ago.

Their winger is waiting for it before the puck leaves my stick. Ten seconds later, it’s behind Percy. I know it as soon as it happens.

By the third, half the building is waiting for us to give them a reason to come back into it. We don’t. With several minutes left, people start leaving.

The horn finally goes at four-one.

For a second, nobody moves. Then somebody boos. One person. Maybe three. I can’t tell. It doesn’t matter. I’ve heard boos in every road building I’ve played in. I’ve never heard one here.

We go down the tunnel.

Coach waits until everybody is sitting before he comes in. He has a sheet of paper folded once in his hand. That alone gets everyone’s attention.

“Sixteen, nine, and one.”

Nobody moves.

“You were comfortably inside the national field a few weeks ago. You aren’t comfortably inside anything tonight.”

Stanley is staring at the floor.

Fuller unfolds the paper, looks at it once, and folds it again. “The teams you’re losing to are the same teams fighting you for those spots. Every one of these weekends matters twice. You move down. They move up.” He looks around the room. “I’m not giving you a magic record. There isn’t one. Rankings move every weekend, conference tournaments change things, and anybody who tells you exactly what you need today is guessing.”

He stops.

“The part I can tell you is this: if you keep playing third periods like last night and first periods like tonight, you’re going to spend Selection Sunday hoping other teams lose.”

Nobody likes that. I can see it. Benson’s elbows are on his knees. Blue has both hands clasped between his legs. Stanley hasn’t moved since Coach walked in. Percy is back in the room now. Still in half his gear. Still quiet.

Fuller looks at all of us one more time. “You wanted April.” His eyes move toward Benson, then Stanley, then me. “Start playing like it.” Then he leaves.

Nobody says anything for a while.

We’ve talked about winning a national championship since New Year’s Eve. Not privately. Not like some stupid thing people say because every team technically has a chance.

It’s written on a whiteboard in our kitchen.