The Titans wanted revenge for the road loss that had tied the series. They hit hard, finished every check, clogged the neutral zone, and dared the Enforcers to break through.
Tane felt the lidocaine working almost too well—his right arm moved without protest, but the feedback was muted, like steering through fog. He compensated with positioning, with vision, with the kind of veteran patience that turned half-chances into threats.
“Keep going men,” Tane roared as he made a block and set up a counterattack. “Rebrov! Move!”
“On it,” Alex replied, his elegant style belying his veteran status.
But midway through the second period, disaster struck.
Jacob carried the puck over the blue line on a rush, head up, looking for the trailer. A Titans defenseman stepped up and drove through him—shoulder to shoulder, clean but devastating.
Jacob’s skates left the ice…
He twisted mid-air and landed hard on his right side, sliding into the boards with a sickening thud.
The whistle blew. The crowd groaned.
Tane was already moving.
Jacob pushed up onto one knee, grimacing, right arm cradled against his ribs. The trainer jogged out but Jacob waved him off at first, stubborn as ever, then winced again and let the man help him to his feet. As they skated toward the tunnel, Jacob looked across the ice, locked eyes with Tane, and raised his voice over the noise.
“You’ve got this!” Jacob shouted. “Win it without me, Cap! I know you can!”
The words hit Tane like a slapshot to the chest.
He nodded once—sharp, certain—then turned back to the face-off circle. Jacob disappeared down the tunnel and out of sight but certainly not out of mind.
The bench was quiet after that. No chatter. No jokes. Just grim focus.
Tane gathered the veterans on the next shift change—Alex, Connor, himself.
“No heroics,” Tane said low. “No fancy plays. We grind. We finish checks. We protect the house. We win ugly if we have to. But we win.”
“Got it,” Connor snarled, his fearsome defense never being more important.
“We’re going to take this all the way back to our first championship,” Tane said. “No one thought we could do it. Remember the semifinals? We get ourselves back to that place and we do it now.”
They nodded. No questions.
The third period became a street fight on skates.
The Titans pushed for the dagger. The Enforcers pushed back harder.
Tane blocked two shots off the same shoulder—he felt the impact through the padding but not the pain. Alex buried a rebound on a power play to tie the game at 2–2.
Connor won every board battle in the defensive zone.
Tane himself scored the go-ahead goal at 12:47—nothing flashy, just a greasy deflection off a point shot that slipped under the goalie’s pad.
3–2.
The Titans pulled the goalie with ninety seconds left. Tane stayed out for the six-on-five, directing traffic, clearing rebounds, eating cross-checks to the back. With thirty-four seconds remaining, Connor stripped the puck at the blue line, chipped it ahead, and Tane chipped it again—an empty-netter from center ice.
Final score: 4–2 Toronto Enforcers.
The horn sounded. The building exploded, or certainly felt like it was about to.
Tane skated a slow lap with the team, stick raised, letting the noise wash over him. It wasn’t his prettiest game—his skating looked labored, his shot lacked its usual zip—but it was one of his gutsiest.
