Page 153 of Offside Angle

“Now do it again.” His gaze moves around the room, catching each of us in turn. “Don’t start protecting the score. Protect the way you’re playing. Keep your structure, take care of the puck, and make them work for everything they get. The second you start thinking one goal is enough, you hand them a way back into this game.”

Nobody needs clarification.

“Clear?”

“Clear.”

Damian gives one short nod and turns toward the coaches’ board, already moving on to whatever he wants adjusted for the second.

The second period somehow manages to get uglier than the first.

Whatever restraint both teams had left disappears during intermission. The hits come harder, sticks start finding ribs and gloves a little more often after the puck is gone, and every battle along the wall feels like it has acquired a personal history none of us knew about ten minutes ago.

I take a shoulder square to the chest early in the period and lose most of the air in my lungs, but I manage to move the puck up to Cole before the guy can finish pinning me. Cole gets enough room at the circle to rip one toward the net, and for half a second I think it’s in.

The puck catches the crossbar instead.

The entire building groans like somebody punched twenty thousand people at once.

“Fuck,” I mutter as I turn back up ice.

Vanguard answers almost immediately with an odd-man rush that forces Shane across his crease. Their forward tries to beat him low, but Shane kicks the shot away with enough force that I hear puck against pad even from the bench. The rebound hangs around just long enough to make everyone panic before Viktor gets there and hammers it off the glass and safely out of the zone.

Nobody gets to breathe for long.

That becomes the rhythm of the period—one team lands something, the other answers before the first can enjoy it. We’re trading chances, hits, blocked shots and insults without anybody managing to land the one that matters.

Then, halfway through the period, we finally make a mistake Vanguard can use.

A clearing attempt gets held in at our blue line, and their defenseman wastes no time putting a low shot through traffic. Shane gets his pad on it, but the rebound kicks straight into the slot, exactly where nobody wearing a Reapers jersey wants it.

Luca is already cutting through.

Of course he is.

Because apparently that little bastard has made it his personal mission to appear wherever the puck is most inconvenient.

I move toward him expecting the shot, but he catches everyone leaning his way and slips a backhand pass across the crease instead. Their winger is waiting on the other side and taps it home before I can get my stick across the lane.

1–1.

The arena goes flat for half a heartbeat before the Vanguard bench erupts.

Luca swings past ours on his way toward center wearing the same pleased little expression he’s had all series, like being irritating is a measurable hockey statistic and he currently leads the league.

Annoying little demon.

I spit onto the ice, reset my grip on my stick and head out for the next shift.

After the tying goal, whatever open space existed disappears completely.

Both teams tighten up, and suddenly even crossing the blue line turns into a hostage negotiation. Every entry gets challenged, every puck dumped into a corner becomes a three-man wrestling match, and most of my shifts are spent with somebody’s shoulder in my chest or their stick tangled through mine while we fight to move the puck six useful feet.

Shane bails us out twice when Vanguard manages to get through. At the other end, Elias finds room for a one-timer from the slot and their goalie somehow gets across in time to rob him, leaving Elias staring toward the ceiling with the expression of a man preparing to file a formal complaint with physics.

Nothing gives.

By the final few minutes, both benches are running shorter shifts, and everybody coming off the ice carries the exhaustion of men who’ve been fighting far longer than forty minutes.