I nod, not trusting myself to speak without betraying Logan. I decide against telling her how I watched him sit in his car this morning, head against the steering wheel, carrying a weight no one can see.
They'll be fine," she says with practiced confidence. "The boys are ready. They've been waiting all season for tonight.”
I wish I shared her certainty. Logan completes another lap, and I can see his eyes scanning the stands, looking for me in my usual spot before he spots me in the WAG suite. His mouth twitches with a silent greeting that only I would notice.
The buzzer sounds at the end of warm-ups, and the players file off the ice. Logan is last, as always, waiting for each of his teammates to leave the ice before exiting. That part of his superstitious routine will never leave him.
By the third period, my fingernails are bitten down to the quick. The game is tied 2-2, every shot, every save amplified bythe stakes of the playoffs. The mood in the WAG box has shifted from social to silent—and tense.
"Come on, come on," I whisper, Logan's watch heavy in my pocket. I pull it out and squeeze it in my hand as if that might coax a bit of luck out of it. The arena throbs with nervous energy, the sellout crowd collectively holding their breath as the clock ticks down below three minutes.
I watch Logan hop over the boards for his shift, his movements sharper now, driven by adrenaline and desperation. He positions himself perfectly at the point, stick ready as the Blades cycle the puck along the boards. Kovy battles for possession in the corner, somehow managing to nudge it out to Benny, who slides a perfect pass up to Logan at the point. Their forward trips and falls which allows Logan to pinch all the way down to the top of dots.
The crowd rises in a single, fluid motion as Logan sauces a pass back over to Benny as the defense changes direction to rush that way. The goalie is scrambling to get back into position on the other side, as Benny sends it back to Logan where a nearly empty net yawns unprotected. Logan has a wide-open shot.
His stick comes down to shoot and—he misses. The puck slides untouched beneath his blade. The crowd goes silent for a heartbeat, then erupts in a groan that seems to suck the air out of the building. Logan looks down in disbelief, his body frozen in the follow-through of a shot that never happened.
Colorado recovers the untouched puck, their transition game deadly as they push up ice with numbers. Logan tries to get back, but he's caught flat-footed, still processing his miss as one of their forwards streaks down the ice for a breakaway. The shot is quick, precise, and finds the top corner.
3-2.
The remaining ninety seconds are a blur of pulled goalie and desperate attempts, but the score holds. Game over.
The WAGs around me offer sympathetic hugs and smiles knowing how tough this will be for Logan. "They'll get 'em in St. Louis," and "Plenty of hockey left to play," and "We just need one." I nod mechanically, already calculating how long before I’ll be with Logan, already rehearsing what I'll say to comfort him.
It's well after midnight when he’s finally home. I open the door to find him standing there in his suit, tie loosened, eyes exhausted. Without a word, he steps inside, dropping his bag by the door and heading straight for the couch.
"Are you hungry?" I ask, knowing he probably hasn't eaten since the pre-game meal.
He shakes his head, already reaching for the remote. "I need to see it again."
I busy myself in the kitchen, making popcorn he probably won't eat, giving him space while staying close. When I return to the living room, he's got game footage pulled up on his iPad, the play already frozen at the moment just before his missed shot.
"Here," he says, voice flat. "Watch this."
I sit beside him, placing the bowl between us, as he presses play. The sequence unfolds in agonizing slow motion—the pass, the wide-open net, the whiff. He rewinds and plays it again. And again. Each time, his jaw clenches tight.
"I lost us our home ice advantage," he says unprompted, eyes never leaving the screen.
"What?"
“When the team with home ice loses at home, the odds are evened out. You have to protect home ice. Each team now has 3 games at home in a seven game series. It’s my fault we lost.” He pauses the footage at the exact moment he misses the puck. "I had the game on my stick."
I place my hand on his knee, feeling the tension vibrating through him.
"It's my fault." His voice cracks slightly. "My boys battled with everything they had for fifty-eight minutes, and I couldn’t deliver when I had a wide-open net."
He presses play again in some kind of masochistic ritual that might magically erase the game’s outcome. I gently take the remote from his hand and turn off the TV.
“Let’s go to bed, handsome.” We stand and head to the bedroom.
As I drift off to sleep, I'm remembering the scene from this morning—my arms around him, his body responding to mine, the connection between us that was so abruptly cut short.
Chapter 25
Logan
The Ball Arena visitor's locker room smells like shit. I tape my stick for the third time, ripping off the previous attempt because the spacing wasn't right. Down 2-1 in the Western Conference Finals after losing Game 3 here in Denver against Colorado. If we lose tonight, we're all but done—down 3-1 is nearly impossible to overcome, and our season will be on life support. I have to be better.
