So I give him the only thing I can: a single nod.
Finish it.
We do.
One more save.One more ugly scramble in front of my crease, bodies crashing and sticks hacking and the puck skittering loose in a tangle of skates.I drop, seal the ice, feel it hit my pad, feel the rebound die under me.
Whistle.
Faceoff.
Colorado pulls their goalie.
Six-on-five.
The puck moves like a threat, zipping point to half wall to bumper, every pass a new attempt to pry me open.Every shot lane feels engineered to make me second-guess my own eyes.Their bench is screaming.Their crowd is standing.And all I can hear inside my mask is my own breath—measured, controlled—because that’s the only thing I’m allowed to own right now.
Every pass is a question:Are you really that good?Can you really hold?
I track.I shift.I push.
A one-timer rips through traffic and I drop with it, pad sealing the ice.The puck stings my leg and kicks out.Bodies crash into my crease, sticks hacking, skates scraping, and I want to start swinging my blocker like a weapon—but I don’t.I stay locked in.I stay in my lane.I stay the last line.
Another shot—high tip—glove up.I catch it clean and the whistle blows and the building groans like it’s personally offended I exist.
Faceoff.
They keep the extra attacker out.
And as the linesmen set the puck, I look down the ice and see Cally hovering near the far blue line, hunting.He’s not coasting.He’s reading.Waiting for one mistake, one lazy pass, one moment of desperation that turns into a gift.
The puck drops.
Colorado wins it clean, cycles fast, tries to drag us out of shape.A pass slides to the point.Shot.Blocked.Rebound pops loose and skitters toward the boards.
Cally moves first.
He angles his stick, steals the puck off a Cobra’s blade like he’s taking something back that never should’ve been touched, and then he’s gone, already turning up-ice.
The crowd’s roar spikes—hope, hunger, belief—and then it starts to die when they realize what’s happening.
Cally hits center.Looks up once.The empty net waits at the far end like an open mouth.
He could take the safe play.Dump it deep.Kill time.
He doesn’t.
Because Cally doesn’t do safe when he can do final.
He winds up at the red line and snaps it.
The puck travels the length of the ice—clean, true, a straight line through thirty thousand people holding their breath—and it slides into the empty net with a soft, brutal little tuck that feels louder than any goal horn.
For half a second, there’s nothing.
Then our bench detonates.
Their crowd turns into a wall of sound—boos, fury, disbelief—because that goal isn’t just insurance.
