Page 154 of Offside Angle

The second period ends in 1–1.

The entire building rises around us, screaming itself hoarse while we head toward the tunnel.

We don’t say much in the intermission.

The third period starts with all of us playing like somebody lit a fire under the bench.

Four minutes in, I get my chance when Vanguard’s defenseman tries to rim the puck around the boards and out. I read it early enough to step down from the blue line and throw my stick into the lane, stretching far enough that one knee nearly hits the ice, but I manage to keep it in. The puck catches my skate on the bounce, I kick it forward, spin away from the first guy trying to close on me, and see Nico cutting through the slot with speed.

I don’t think about the pass. I just send it hard and low, straight onto his stick.

Nico lets it go in stride and buries it top corner before the goalie can get across.

2–1.

The building fucking explodes.

Nico disappears beneath Cole and Elias almost immediately, and I’m there a second later, crashing into the pile and hammering one glove against the side of his helmet while he screams something completely incoherent into mine. The bench is losing its mind behind us, the crowd is so loud the goal horn barely exists underneath it, and when we finally separate to skate back toward center, something reckless starts creeping into my chest.

We might actually do this.

I don’t let myself say it, and I barely let myself think it, but for the next few minutes it follows me everywhere. Every clear gets a roar, every save Shane makes sends the building higher, and every time Viktor or I kill a rush before it reaches the crease, the crowd reacts like we scored again. We stop looking for anything pretty and start protecting every inch of ice we can reach, because seven minutes sounds like nothing until you’re trying to survive all of them with a one-goal lead and the Cup sitting somewhere on the other side.

Then Vanguard gets one back.

There are a little over seven minutes left when everything collapses in front of Shane at once. A shot comes through traffic, somebody gets a stick on it, and suddenly the puck is loose in the crease with bodies everywhere. Shane drops, Viktor tries to clear it, I’m fighting for position with somebody I can’t even identify, and their winger gets his stick underneath the puck before any of us can find it.

It slides under Shane’s pad.

2–2.

The sound disappears from the building so fast it almost feels unnatural. Vanguard’s bench erupts while their players slam into each other near the crease, and I skate past the net with both hands locked around my stick hard enough that breaking it over the crossbar starts to feel like a perfectly reasonable use of equipment.

I don’t.

Barely.

There’s still time, so we go again.

The last few minutes stop feeling like normal hockey. Everyone is exhausted enough that technique starts giving way to instinct, and every loose puck becomes a fight between guys who have nothing left except whatever they can drag out of themselves. I block a shot off the side of my skate and lose feeling in half my foot, but there isn’t enough time to care. Elias gets loose on a partial break and nearly beats their goalie high, only for the glove to flash up at the last possible second.

The clock keeps moving anyway, and every time I look up there’s less of it.

Then, with just under two minutes left, the whole fucking season turns on one stupid bounce.

Vanguard dumps the puck deep and sends a forward after it. He wins the race along the wall, gets enough separation to throw a blind pass toward the middle, and none of us have time to set before the puck catches a skate in front. Mine, Viktor’s, somebody’s. I don’t even know.

It changes direction so violently that Shane is already moving the wrong way when it slips past him.

For half a second, nobody reacts.

Then the red light comes on.

3–2 Vanguard.

The arena goes silent in a way I’ve never heard twenty thousand people go silent before.

Not quiet. Not stunned murmuring. Just this awful vacuum where all that noise used to be while their players celebrate and I stare at the net, trying to make sense of the fact that there’s less than two minutes between us and watching somebody else win the Cup in our building.