I skated out last, mask tilted back.I tapped each post once—left, right—no extra flourish, then settled into a compact ready stance.
I scanned the north end.Habit.I didn’t expect him to be there.I’d basically avoided him for a week, and two days ago I’d walked out of the dorm while he lay facing the wall.
But he was there.
Three rows higher than his usual spot.No Maya today.Austen, arms crossed, face unreadable behind his glasses.He was wearing his own coat, not my hoodie.
My heart hammered a rhythm that had nothing to do with hockey.He showed up.Even after I failed every variable, he showed up.
Show me tomorrow, he’d said.
I pulled my mask down.Okay.Watch this.
Puck drop.
Stonehill came out flying, a swirl of white and navy flooding the zone.They were fast, desperate for a playoff spot, and they knew I was playing injured.They tested the shoulder immediately.
First shift: A dump-in chased down by their forecheck.The puck cycled to the point.
My heart hammered against my ribs—the old panic, the noise.I wanted to crouch lower.I wanted to tense up.
Austen’s voice drifted through the static in my head.“Quiet the eye.Slow the input.”
I took a breath and stopped scanning the chaos of legs and sticks.I locked my gaze on the puck carrier’s blade.
Visual attachment.
The defenseman walked the blue line and fired.
Old Luke would have lunged.Old Luke would have tried to punch the puck into the netting to look dominant.
New Luke did less.I didn’t reach.I didn’t lunge.I made a six-inch shuffle to the right.Economy of movement.Distance equals time.If I moved less, I had more time to react.
Thud.
Blocker save.I didn’t punch at it; I angled the board, steering the puck gently into the corner, away from the danger zone.
Controlled.Quiet.
“Nice steer, Monk,” Ryan called, collecting the rebound.
Another shot thirty seconds later—low glove.I dropped into the butterfly, sealing the ice, and swallowed the puck.No rebound.
The crowd noise spiked, a wall of sound, but inside the helmet, it was silent.
I exhaled.The period blurred into an Austen math lesson: shot vectors, clearance angles, probability trees folding down to one outcome at a time.I counted thirteen shots before Stonehill registered a real danger chance.
Power play.They set up the umbrella.
The pass snapped cross-ice, finding a seam through our penalty kill box.It was a one-timer set up for their sniper in the circle.
Old Luke—panic Luke—would have slid early, opening the five-hole.
This Luke waited.
I pushed off my post—a hard, explosive T-push.I arrived at the top of the crease exactly as the stick met the puck.I was square.I was set.
Whap.
