What the fuck?
Well, I could watch the replay later. Right now, I needed to stay with my linemate and complete this play.
Not that he needed me, apparently. There was a skater hot on my heels, but Vasily was miles ahead of everyone, flying toward the goal with no one in front of him but the netminder.
I didn’t imagine anyone in the building was surprised when the goal light came on.
Calgary wasn’t happy about it, though, that was for sure. Maybe because they still had that massive chip on their shoulder, or maybe because they thought we had a ringer and they were pissy about it.
As if they’d ever complained about a player from Calgary’s NAPH team coming down for a stint.
Well, whatever. We had a goal on the board, and I was still marveling at how Vasily had made it around that beast of a defenseman.
I wasn’t the only one, either.
“I’ve watched this four times, Chevy.” Coach shoved the iPad into Vasily’s hands. “I don’t know how you fucking pulled that off.”
Vasily chuckled as he took the iPad. I leaned in because I wanted to see this too.
On the screen, slowed way, way down, Vasily was speeding toward the offensive zone with the puck on his stick. As he crossed into the neutral zone, there was that monster of a D, closing in on his left side, dropping his shoulder a little and clearly preparing to knock Vasily off the puckandhis skates.
And—there. Just before the guy would’ve hit him, Vasily hit the brakes, then veered hard to the left mere inches behind where the defenseman expected him to be. Before the defenseman could recover, Vasily whipped around him, their skates and bodies narrowly missing, and he kept going, the puck never leaving his stick as the D-man went sprawling behind him.
The mechanics of it wasn’t a big mystery. It was the agility and speed that blew my damn mind.
I whistled. “Holy shit. That was some—” I lost my train of thought when Vasily’s eyes met mine through our faintly fogged-up visors. Oh God, I was so stupid for him. After watching him maneuver on the ice, and then seeing those gorgeous eyes with that wicked and ever-so-slightly cocky glint—fuck me.
“My only regret?” he said, still grinning. “I didn’t get to see him faceplant.”
I snorted and gestured at the iPad. “Well, now you can watch it over and over in slow mo.”
“Eh. It isn’t the same as watching it in real-time.”
I just laughed, rolling my eyes, and we both watched it again, because it was pretty funny. The best part was the utter shock on the guy’s face when his center of gravity shifted beyond the point of no return, and he realized he wasn’t going to make contact with Vasily.
“Think he’ll try to make you pay for that?” I asked. “Making him look like an idiot?”
Vasily huffed. “He can try.”
“Shit. I kind of want to see that now.”
He laughed, elbowing me. “Of course you do. And besides, I didn’t make him look like an idiot. He did that all by himself.”
“Uh-huh. You think that’ll stop him from trying to make you pay?”
“Probably not.” He flashed me another wicked—and seriously disarming—grin. “He can try.”
That defenseman did try to exact retribution from Vasily near the end of the third, but it didn’t work out the way he’d hoped. Vasily took the punch and didn’t retaliate, and we wound up with a power play while the dumbass went to the box for roughing. The defenseman’s pride and Vasily’s refusal to take the bait gave us the chance to score a power play goal, which tied the game in the final minute.
And then in overtime, Brown—who’d still been beating himself up over his costly penalty in the first period—pottedhis first PHL overtime goal. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him celebrate more exuberantly. In the bar at the hotel, he wasn’t even drinking all that much, but he was grinning the whole night.
Good for him. Penalties happened, but it never felt great to be the one in the box when the other team scored on the power play. A little redemption went a long way sometimes.
We didn’t stay out super late that night. We were all still wiped from flying in last night, and we had to practice again tomorrow before getting on the bus. Road trips were not for the faint of heart.
I slept hard that night. Even thoughts of Vasily couldn’t keep me awake, and I passed out the second I hit the pillow until my alarm went off. Then it was downstairs to breakfast before the bus took us to Calgary’s rink for an earlyish practice. After that, we filed onto the bus for the four-hour drive (maybe five, given the snow).
I was honestly surprised we were taking the bus from here to Edmonton in January. Both cities were experiencing snow because, hello, Alberta in January, but the roads were reasonably clear and there were no storms in the forecast. Hopefully that held; my major junior team had been stranded in Buffalo once because a massive storm had dumped a massive amount of snow on the city the morning after we’d flown in. I wondered to this day if the coaches and chaperones had ever recovered from wrangling a team of restless teenage hockey players stuck in a hotel for two solid days.
