tonight you celebrate like a team that made the Final. because you did
Marchetti
i love you Cap
Avi
go to bed Marchetti
Jensen
he's right. enjoy it tonight. it doesn't come around often
Murray
i've been to one. lost it. enjoy the part before you know how it ends
Thompson
...that got heavy fast
Murray
it's the Cup. it's allowed to be heavy
Berger
heavy AND fifty percent. write it down
Chapter 23: Lundy
Ibuild the calm how I build the twenty-two minutes, one piece at a time, before anyone gets to the room. I'm in my stall an hour early with the overheads still off and the light coming gray through the tunnel. I do the breathing my mother taught me before she taught me anything else, and by the time the room fills I'm the man the room expects. Settled. Easy. The big body at rest in the corner that the rest of them orient toward without deciding to. Nobody has to know it's assembled. That's the whole point.
Davis drops onto the bench beside me first. "Head's better?"
"Better. Lights are still a lot. Couple more days."
"We need you, man. Soucy's standing on his head, but we need you."
"Soucy's better than anyone gives him credit for. You're in good hands." I say it and I mean it, every word, and meaning it does nothing to the thing underneath the words. "You watching the Finals tape tonight?"
"You're not?"
"Can't do screens yet. You'll have to run it without me."
"We don't run anything without you."
"You ran four games without me. You won them. You're going to be fine." It comes out warm and certain, how I say everything, and inside me it lands as the other thing. They ran four games without me and they won them.
Makinen comes by with a protein shake he sets on the shelf at my elbow without comment, the way I'd do it for him. "How's the head."
"Better. You didn't have to do that, you know. Drop the gloves on him."
"Yeah I did. He put my goalie into a post."
"I'm not even your goalie right now. Soucy is."
"You're both my goalies. He hit one of mine. That's the whole math." He cracks his own shake. "Don't make it a thing."
