“Get your own goalie,” Bowen snaps.
I hide my grin behind my mask. The boys are buzzing already. And for once, I don’t feel separate from it. I’m a part of it.
Every save settles us deeper into the game. Every whistle tightens the bench energy another notch until the confidence starts feeling tangible.
Knight leans over the boards during a TV timeout. “You’re seeing beach balls tonight, huh?”
“More like balloons.”
“Cocky bastard.”
He says it affectionately. Normally, I’d expect chirping after that. Instead, there’s something almost proud in the way he says it.
The second period gets worse. Or better. Depends on your perspective.
Camden takes a hooking penalty four minutes in, and suddenly we’re trapped in our zone for what feels like an entire geological era. Seattle moves the puck fast, trying to pull me out of position.
The puck moves fast around the zone. Point. Half wall. Cross-crease.
A shot rockets toward the open side of the net, and I push hard to my right, getting enough of my pad on it to deflect the puck wide. The crowd erupts anyway, sensing an opportunity. Another shot comes flying through traffic almost immediately after, and I barely track it before instinct takes over and I glove the puck.
The whistle blows.
My lungs burn, but underneath the exhaustion, I feel weirdly alive. Every save settles something inside me another notch.
“Holy shit,” Bowen says as we line up for the next faceoff. “You’re unconscious tonight.”
“Little busy,” I say.
The puck drops again.
Seattle wins the draw cleanly and fires a one-timer from the circle before anybody can fully reset coverage.
Point-blank.
Instinct takes over. I drop into butterfly and snap my glove hand upward just in time to catch the puck before it whistles past my ear.
For half a second, the entire arena goes silent.
Then the crowd explodes.
“ROURKE! ROURKE! ROURKE!”
I toss the puck casually toward the ref as my heart tries to punch through my ribs.
By the next stoppage, the save is already replaying on the Jumbotron overhead.
“Are you kidding me?” one of the commentators says overhead. “That save is absolutely ridiculous.”
“Rourke is standing on his head tonight. This is elite-level goaltending.”
A dangerous kind of energy starts building after that. I try not to listen to commentary during games. Way too easy to start believing people when they’re praising you or destroying you.
The boys feel it. I feel it.
By the third period, nobody’s even saying the word shutout anymore. That’s hockey law. You don’t say it out loud unless you want the universe to personally humble you. But everybody knows. You can feel it in the way the bench tightens every time the puck crosses center ice.
Every blocked shot gets louder. Every cleared puck gets celebrated harder.
