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“HEADS UP!” HAMMER’S shout came only a nanosecond before the puck flew straight for both the bench and my head. I was smart enough to duck, but that left Drywall Tierney, our head equipment manager, right in the line of fire. That frozen piece of vulcanized rubber hit him in the jaw, which spurted blood almost immediately.
The trainers rushed him down the tunnel to stitch him up, one of them holding a towel to Drywall’s chin as they scurried away.
Bergy slapped one hand on my shoulder, the other on Hammer’s. “Get out there boys. Let’s keep the pressure on them.”
We were in Denver playing the Avalanche, leading by a single goal in the third. The Avs weren’t the best team in the Western Conference by any stretch of the imagination. At least not this season, although they had some pieces in place for the future. Right this second, those pieces were on the ice, meaning they had some firepower up front that we didn’t want to face. Better to keep the puck in their end and not give their offense the chance to go to work.
Hammer and I headed over the boards, and he tapped his stick on my skates to gain my attention. “I’ll pass it to you. You get the damn thing out of our zone. Clean fucking first pass, and we’ll let the forwards have at it.”
I nodded and took my position for the face-off.
Hammer had been my defensive partner for the last couple of weeks. He was still new to the team, but he definitely wasn’t new to either the game or the league. Our general manager had signed him right before Christmas since we had a lot of injuries on D. He might be getting up there in years compared to a lot of guys in the league, but Hammer was still a steady presence, and the two of us were learning to work well together on the blue line. He was more of a stay-at-home defenseman, playing solidly in our end but rarely showing up on the score sheet. I was penciled in as an offensive-minded, puck-moving defenseman. That was what they kept trying to groom me into being, at least, but so far in the NHL, I hadn’t done so well with that role. Still, I was the better of the two of us when it came to passing the puck to our forwards. We had a plan when we worked together, and we stuck with it.
Koz lined up to take the draw with his two wingers, Nate “Ghost” Golston and Axel “Jo-Jo” Johansson. The puck had barely hit the ice before Koz won it cleanly back to Hammer. He backed up a couple of strides and waited for each of the rest of us to settle in place. Once he had a clear lane, he saucered the puck over to me. His pass hit my stick right on the tape. I was already in motion, heading out of our defensive zone. A Colorado winger tried to poke-check the puck away from me, but I stickhandled my way around him and passed it up to Ghost, who was waiting at the blue line.
Clean entry. We got in the zone and the forwards went to work.
The Avs backchecked like crazy, trying to force the puck out of the zone. No luck. Koz had always been a crazy motherfucker, but he was even more doggedly determined when he had the puck on the stick. Ghost was small but strong as an ox and faster than should be legal. Jo-Jo could play keep-away for what feels like hours. When Bergy had gotten the idea to put those three together on a line a couple of months ago, it was like magic. All three of them started to play up to their potential—except for the fact that they still didn’t score as much as everyone hoped they would. They spent way too much time showing off their various skills and not enough time shooting the fucking puck toward the net.
That was what they started doing now. The game started to feel like a passing clinic. We had the Avs hemmed into their zone and exhausted from chasing those three around, but no shots on net.
Ghost got the puck down near the goal line, but that left him with a crazy angle to shoot from, and he had two big Colorado defensemen bearing down on him. Koz and Jo-Jo were both well covered. For some reason, the remaining Colorado winger was covering Hammer instead of me. Dumbass. I whacked my stick on the ice a couple of times to gain Ghost’s attention. In no time, the puck was screaming my way.
One-timer. Right off the goalie’s pads.
But all three of our forwards crashed the crease, and Ghost managed to tip the rebound high and tight, under the crossbar and in the net.
“Fucking right,” Hammer shouted as he skated over and smacked his gloved hand on my helmet repeatedly. “That’s what you fucking do, kid. That’s why you’re going to earn the big bucks one day.”
BY THE TIMEI finished showering and dressing after the game, Ghost had already been called out to do the post-game interview with Anne Dennison. Better him than me. I sucked on camera. Put a hockey stick in my hands, and I was fine. But shove a mic in my face, and all I did was blush and stammer and answer in two-word sentences.
The television and radio crews rarely requested me for interviews because it was next to impossible to get a decent sound bite out of me. Ghost tended to do well with them, though—especially when Anne conducted the interview. The two of them had been flirting with each other like nobody’s business all season, which only led to the guys ragging on him even more than we already did. He was the smallest guy on the team—and practically a fucking midget out on the ice compared to the rest of us—so he always took a lot of heat for anything and everything. His crush on Anne was only the latest fodder he’d let slip.
I busied myself with tossing all my gear in my bag so the equipment guys could haul it out and tried not to pay attention to the pair of them. Ignoring them wasn’t easy, though. The way they’d set everything up here in Denver, Anne was conducting her interview about three stalls away from me.
Ghost dragged a towel down his face and draped it around his shoulders, holding on to the ends of it in a way that caused his biceps to flex. Then he winked at her. Apparently he didn’t care that the cameras were catching his every move, as long as Anne noticed.
She gave him a sly grin, which emphasized her exotic cheekbones. I had no idea what all ethnicities she came from. She looked partly Indian, but there was a lot more in there, leaving her with dramatic features to go alongside her taller-than-the-average-woman stature. Add in some killer heels, and you couldn’t honestly blame the guy for being smitten with her.
“Tell me what you all talked about heading into the third period, only up by a single goal against this dangerous Avalanche offense.” She pushed the mic toward him.
“We just wanted to keep the pressure on them, not get caught thinking we were ahead and didn’t need to do anything more. One-goal games can be a trap, especially when you’re on the road.” Still the pat answer all hockey players tend to give, but Ghost said it with feeling, not to mention with cocky smiles and a bit more muscle flexing than was entirely necessary.
But Anne absolutely ate his response up. “You and your line did exactly that. Nice goal there halfway through the third. You were so strong on the puck with the Avalanche double-teaming you.”
“Gotta give the credit to my line mates and 501 over there,” he said, winking and pointing in my direction. “He’s the one who made the magic happen. Great shot to get some action in front of their net. It was a group effort. Everyone on the ice contributed to that one.”
Anne flashed a smile in my direction, but the amount of time she spared me was very brief. After that, her attention was squarely on Ghost.
Drywall Tierney came up to take my gear from me.
“How’s your chin?” I asked as I hoisted my bag over to him.
He lifted his head to show me. “Seventeen stitches, but at least I’ve still got all my teeth.”
“Better than most anyone else around here can claim. Didn’t fuck up your jaw?”
“It’d take a hell of a lot more than some stray puck to take Drywall out,” Hammer said, coming back from the showers. He stripped off his towel and tossed it in the hamper in the middle of the room, leaving himself naked as the day he was born.
