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I shook my head and brought my dinner to the couch.
I didn’t need bad luck or good luck, I needed things to stay the exact same. I finally masterminded things to be perfect. I was here with my buddies playing on a great team, I finally got my brother to move back to Michigan, and I set him back up with Addie, who I fucking loved. Now I was Godfather to one of their sons, and the other was named after me. I didn’t need any changes, strange or not.
“You guys ready for the Colorado game tomorrow?” Garcia asked, plopping on the couch next to me and grabbing the clicker.
“Yeah,” Hassik said.
“It’s gonna be a rough one, boys,” I sighed.
“Let the bodies hit the floor!” Garcia chanted. He was a fighter. He loved scrapping in the corners and picking fights with guys twice his size.
I shook my head. I didn’t care about the fights. I needed to get more points to pad my stats. Stats were always a point of stress for me, so I tried to get way ahead of the curve in the first half of the season. Plus, I was closing in on Duke, the leading scorer, pretty fast.
5. Tyler - Thursday night game
I knew it was going to be a tough game to get any points, but I didn’t know it was going to be this bad.
Almost every time I touched the ice tonight, the whistle was blown for yet another penalty, and I was sick and tired of having to play shorthanded tonight.
At this point in the game, both teams’ penalty boxes were packed to capacity.
Across the ice from me, Duke, Campbell, Griff, and Garcia, were all squished next to each other in our box, having to stand because there wasn’t enough room for all of them to sit. I could see their shit-eating grins from where I sat on the bench waiting for my next shift, which was about to come up way too fast without them in the lineup. They were loving this. I shook my head at them as I squirted some water at my face.
Colorado’s box didn’t look much better. The ref just finished giving their third guy a five-minute penalty for targeting one of our rookies, Oskar, pretty badly. I thanked God I had a couple seasons under my belt and was no longer considered a rookie.
Seconds later, Oskar was hoping the boards to sit next to me on the bench.
“Rough out here, eh?”
I turned to look at him and immediately went into a gagging fit, dry-heaving and making yaking noises.
“Son of a bitch, Jetts, don’t look at him, get out there,” Coach said behind me, tapping me on the helmet.
I did my best to swallow down my queasiness, and I jumped the boards to put as much distance between me and Oskar’s bloody mug as I could. Coach knew my disdain for all bodily fluids that weren’t my own– and sometimes even when they were my own. I barfed on the bench once when Duke’s blood dripped onmyskate. To make matters worse, the replay of me vomiting ended up all over sports blogs for a solid week, and that was enough for Coach to never want it to happen ever again.
“Let’s see some clean play!” the ref yelled at us as we glided to the circle in our defensive zone for the next faceoff. “There’s no more room to put any of you away. Get it together!”
The refs probably weren’t surprised with the shitshow this game was becoming. We were tied-up 3 to 3 with two minutes left to go in the third period. This much tension would turn any game into an aggressive mess, but the fact that it was a Detroit versus Colorado matchup made it even worse. Our teams had a decades old rivalry.
The ref blew the whistle and I moved into position. I usually played wing, but right now, I’d have to play a bit of defense considering that it was a three on four.
As soon as the ref dropped the puck, Colorado won the face-off, and their center kicked it back to their D.
Things moved fast then. The three of us Crewmen players tried to box up the best we could. I played the high guy, which meant I was going on attack mode against their defense up by the blue line.
And it must’ve been my lucky day.
Their left D guy tried to slide the puck to their righty, but the righty fumbled the puck. I sprinted to get to it before he could recover his mistake, and I won.
I had a fuckingbreakaway.
My heart pounded as I realized I was going to be theheroof the fucking game.
My jersey billowed back behind me as I skated up ice as fast as I fucking could. My legs were burning, but I could practically feel the crowd rising to their feet as I made a dash down ice to the net.
I looked at my stick for a split second, and that was enough to fuck up my entire opportunity.
Because in that split second, their goalie decided to skateatme.
