I worked the well and didn't look up.
Nashville was still a point behind us. That fact was passed around the bar beginning at five. The game wasn't a must-win. It only felt that way.
As the anthem ended, Pratt ran his standard loop: two passes along the boards, left then right, then a tap on each post with the heel of the stick. The camera cut away before the second tap.
The puck dropped.
The first period ran clean. By eight minutes in, Pratt had blocked six shots, and one of the guys at the high-top declared, "He's locked in tonight."
I poured. I built drinks that came out the same as they had at the start of the night and would at the end. I didn't look at the screen unless something happened that changed the noise in the room.
It was 0–0 going into the second, and then it stayed that way going into the third.
Halfway through the last period, Cross threaded a pass through the slot to Kieran, who buried it top corner, and shouts filled the bar.
Nashville pulled their goalie with a minute thirty. I was watching.
They hit the post with a shot with forty-one seconds left on the clock. I'd been wiping the same glass for two minutes.
Nashville scored with eleven seconds left.
A guy in the back flatly said, "Fuck," and immediately asked for the check. The clock ran out, and the game entered overtime.
It would be three-on-three for five minutes.
Pratt killed a clean two-on-one early. He read the pass before it was made, taking the puck off the shooter's blade with his pad. Cheers rose from the bar.
Nashville came back with a shot from the left circle. Pratt got a piece of it but not all of it. The puck kicked off his glove. Pratt had explained to me there is a place in front of the crease where a rebound dies and a place where it sits up and waits for someone to reach it. This one sat up. Holt swung at it on the backhand; the puck caught his skate at an angle nobody could have predicted, and it went in.
The bar fell silent.
The broadcast ran the replay once, then ran it again slower. They froze a frame where the puck was suspended over the blue paint, Pratt's glove extended, and Holt's stick moving. You could see the goal about to happen, and there was nothing anyone in the picture could do about it.
Nora didn't look at me. She was at the service end with a slip in her hand.
I picked up a glass to dry it.
The commentators didn't blame Pratt. It would have been easy to, but they held off.
They walked through the play, isolating and labeling bits and pieces.
Pratt gets a piece of it here, but that's a rebound he'd want to control.
Right, and once it kicks into that space, you're asking your defenseman to do something reactive on his backhand under pressure.
Nashville capitalized on a messy situation.
I turned away from the screen.
The crowd began to disperse. The four-top of jerseys was the first to go. A couple in the back asked for one more glass of wine. Tomasz passed behind me, "There goes a grand. Losses do that."
The TVs cut to the post-game. It was a wide shot of the ice, with players passing down the line, gloves off and offering low handshakes. Pratt was at the end with his mask up. His expression was blank.
I picked up an order ticket I didn't remember being handed and read it. Two glasses of the house red. I poured and carried the drinks to the table myself. The woman thanked me. I said, "Of course," and came back.
Nora was at the service end again, watching me.
She didn't ask if I was okay. She knew not to.
