“Nah.”
The next whistle comes a few seconds later on an icing call against Wisconsin. The dot is in their end. The kid is across from Blue at the right circle, and I am two feet up and inside, and Coach taps the boards from the bench because Coach has seen what I have seen. Blue lines up. The kid skates in. He puts his elbow into the back of Blue’s neck on the way to the dot.
I step in. The kid is already swinging by the time I have my glove up, and the elbow he throws comes around the outside of my own glove and catches me clean across the cheekbone. I feel it in my back teeth. The shot is hard enough that my head turns with it, and by the time I have turned back, Blue’s on him, beating the hell out of him. I drop my glove and go.
Stanley is already there from the half-boards. We get Blue off the kid, and the linesman gets to us before it goes anywhere, and Coach is yelling something from the bench that I cannot hear. Two more Wisconsin guys pile in. Percy comes out of the crease and yanks the second one off Stanley by the back of his sweater. The linesmen are good. They get the pile sorted in under fifteen seconds and the boys go to the box.
I get five minutes for fighting and a face wash. The kid gets five and a ten for the elbow. Wisconsin loses their winger for the rest of the game. I skate to the box with my mouth full of blood and my left cheekbone throbbing from the clean hit. I sit in the box, lean forward, and spit into the small plastic cup the trainer hands me through the gap in the glass. I work my tongue along the inside of my teeth. Nothing’s broken.
The penalty timer ticks down.
I look over at Blue on the bench. He’s bent forward over his stick, looking at the ice. Stanley is next to him with his glove on Blue’s back, saying something at the side of his face mask. Blue nods at whatever he is saying.
I serve the rest of the five and come back to the bench. Coach doesn’t say anything when I sit down. He puts his hand on the back of my neck for a beat. Then he turns back to the play.
We settle in after the brawl.
I finish every check legally and Stanley finishes every check enthusiastically. Percy stands on his head in net and makes a glove save off a one-timer at the back post in the third that he had no right to get to. He makes another save under his left pad ninety seconds later. The two saves keep us alive long enough for Blue to put one home, and we go up 3-2 with four minutes left and hang on through a pulled goalie and an empty-net cleanup that Rowan handles from inside our own blue line.
Final 3-2.
The horn goes. Percy is on his knees in the crease with his arms over his head. The bench empties for him because the bench knows who won that game and it was him. I get to him last. I tap the top of his mask with my glove and lean my forehead against his cage. He grins at me through the bars.
“Percy.”
“Reeve.”
“Two thousand percent.”
“Merci, mon capitaine.”
“Good game, kid.”
He laughs. I skate to the bench. Blue is at the boards with his glove out, and I tap it on the way past.
The locker room is loud.
Stanley dances. He’s wearing only his pads from the waist up, which is the thing he does after a win, and which Coach has, in the last two seasons, stopped trying to stop. Percy has his mask off and is sitting on the bench with a grin. Blue is at his stall pulling his pads off without saying much. The rest of the guys are a mix of things, some are dancing with Stanley, laughing, or getting dressed.
Coach comes in. “Boys.”
The room quiets.
“That was a hard game. But you did good out there.”
Stanley howls.
That’s the end of Coach’s speech.
He looks at me at my stall. The trainer brought me an ice pack and I am holding it against my cheekbone with my right hand.
“Reeve.”
“Coach.”
“How’s the face?”
“It’s fine.”
