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Koz waited until the goalie committed and pulled himself out of position. Clean pass over to Ghost, who tapped it in over the goalie’s sprawling attempt to remedy the situation.
Tie game. Seven minutes left, and we had all the momentum.
The track meet didn’t end there, despite Bergy’s attempts to calm us all down on the bench. “We play fast but within control. Take your time out there, boys. Slow down and assess the situation.”
Shots kept pelting the goaltenders. Someone would grab the puck and shoot it up ice to a streaking teammate. The race was on again. Turnover after turnover in the neutral zone.
It was utter chaos out there, and I was so winded I didn’t know how to slow the game down.
Four minutes left. Still tied.
I chugged an entire Gatorade as soon as I came over the boards to prepare for my next shift.
The Sharks crashed in on Nicky, with Colesy trying to break up the play. He and two Sharks forwards collided, full speed, at the boards. Colesy came up and immediately raced to the bench holding his arm funny. A trail of blood followed behind him.
“Skate blade,” he said. No further explanation required. The trainers rushed him back to the locker room to perform whatever repairs he needed…if they could even do that here. I wasn’t so sure. That was a hell of a lot of blood coming out of him in a very short period of time. He might need surgery or something.
Play was halted so they could clean the blood off the ice. We were down to four D.
Bergy was busy with the forwards, trying to reiterate the fact that they needed to slow everything down and let the game come to them, reminding them that there were only four of us on defense now, so they needed to help us out as much as possible. While he was doing that, Handy sat down with the four remaining defensemen.
“I want Harry with 501, Hammer with Demi.” He slapped us each on the shoulder, and that was that. We had a plan. We could do this.
Harry and I went out first, ready to set the tone for how the remaining few minutes of this game needed to be played.
Our top center, Riley Jezek, won the face-off straight back to me. I skated backward a couple of paces, waiting for the rest of the guys on the ice to get into position. RJ and Jamie were both well covered, but Aaron Ludwiczak had gotten free from his guy, so I saucered the puck up to him. Those three cycled a bit, and RJ got off a couple of nice shots at the net, but nothing went in. Each time, one of our forwards managed to dig the puck free and maintain possession. But the Sharks were circling. Each second that ticked off the clock, one of them got closer to poke checking the puck free.
Pavelski almost managed it, but I pinched in along the boards to pass the puck back to Jamie while Harry shifted over to cover my point and RJ cycled back to fill in Harry’s point.
Or at least that was how it was supposed to work.
Communication breakdown.
Pavelski zipped past me, puck on his stick, and Harry had realized what I was doing too late. We were off to the races again, and I was gassed.
I dived for the puck.
Got my stick tangled up in Pavelski’s skates, instead.
The ref’s arm went up, and he signaled for a penalty shot.
Pavelski went out to center ice all by himself. Picked up the puck on his stick. Deked once. Twice. Roofed it, stick side, beating Nicky.
And once again, it was my fault. It was the first shift Harry and I had been out there together. He hadn’t anticipated what I would do; I hadn’t told him. That was on me, especially since I’d missed poking the puck away from the other guy.
We skated back to the bench, me mentally berating myself the whole way.
Hammer came over the boards and slapped his stick on my ankles. “Hey. Look at me.”
I shot my head up.
“You took a chance. It didn’t work out. Big fucking deal. Take another chance anyway.”
THEY’D SCORED ANOTHERgoal in our empty net in the dying moments of the game, so we lost five to three. Two losses in a row. It fucking sucked, but I was determined to not only listen to Hammer’s words but to believe them. I couldn’t let this sink into my head any more than we, as a team, could afford to let this losing trend become a streak.
I was about to head out and go home when Jonny locked an arm around my neck like he was going to give me a noogie and dragged me toward the concourse.
“What the fuck did I do to deserve that?” I demanded once I got free from his grasp. I couldn’t think of anything I might have done or said to Cadence to have him ready to kill me, but that was exactly what I’d thought was going to happen once I realized who had hold of me.
