They know it, too. Their defenseman panics, just enough. He throws the puck the length of the ice.
The whistle blows. Icing.
Face-off in their zone.
We lose it.
I hop over the boards, switching in. Their defenseman takes the puck at the right point, and I’m already moving, closing the angle, doing everything right. Textbook. He pulls back, looks off, and I read the pass—I read it—and I’m moving to cut the lane when he threads it low to their winger at the left circle.
Everything slows.
The winger settles it in one touch. Weight transferring. Stick loaded. The kind of release that’s trained into muscle memory, so it happens without thought.
Kettler’s there though.
He’s moving, dropping, getting his body in the lane?—
The puck catches the inside of his skate and pops up, perfectly, cruelly, right to their center at the top of the crease, screening the goalie. He doesn’t even have to adjust.
He just tips it in. Perfectly placed, over Volk’s right pad. The red light goes off.
The noise that comes is enormous and immediate.
And final.
But all I hear is the silence of our crowd.
My legs stop.Everythingstops. The burning, the exhaustion, all of it just… gone.
Replaced by something worse.
Florida’s bench empties onto the ice. Their players pile on top of each other in our zone, and the noise rushes back in from everywhere. I’m standing in the middle of it, and I cannot move.
Volk is on his knees in the crease, gloves off, staring at the ice.
Kettler is still exactly where he was when he fell, sitting on the ice with his stick across his knees.
Fox has his helmet in his hands. He’s shaking his head slowly, over and over.
We came so far.
We came so goddamn far, but it wasn’t enough, and I don’t know what to do with that. Five years of wanting this—wanting it with these guys, these maniacs I love like family.
There will come a time when I think about next year. When I’ll give the pep talk. When I won’t be this angry, this gutted.
But that moment isn’t now.
There’s not even anyone to be angry at. And that’s the worst part. Sometimes, you play your best game and lose anyway, and all you can do is stand there and accept it.
I skate over to Kettler first.
I pull him up without a word, and he lets me, but he won’t meet my eyes.
“Not on you,” I tell him.
He shakes his head.
“Kett.” I wait until he looks up. “Not on you.”
