Same route.
Twelve steps from the locker room door. Left at the equipment room. The smell of ice at the second turn — that specific cold that’s been there every game for four seasons, the one that means something is about to happen.
Same song. One earbud. Not telling anyone.
I get to my stall.
The locker door is empty where the folder used to be.
I stand there for a second and look at the space. Seven to one against us. Expert panels unanimous. Hendricks and Cole. Every analyst who wrote us off before Game 1. I don’t need the paper anymore. I know what it says. I’ve always known what it says. The folder served its purpose and now it’s in my bag and the door is empty and I’m still here.
The Cyclones are still here. One more game.
The tape. Thirteen wraps. Left to right. Blocker last.
I pick it up. Roll my right shoulder. Check the ghost.
Quiet.
For the first time in two seasons — completely, genuinely quiet. Not managed. Not held. Just quiet. I know where it lives. Someone named it for me in a tunnel and I’ve known where it lives ever since and tonight it doesn’t move.
I go to my crease.
I’m ready.
The building’s different for Game 6.
I’ve played in loud buildings. Playoff buildings. Buildings where a sold-out crowd needs something from you and the noise is the pressure you perform under. But this is home ice and this is the Cup Final and this city has been waiting since before the franchise existed, and the noise is something else entirely — it enters the body before the brain has a chance to process it. Sits in the sternum. Changes the air.
The glass is vibrating.
I stand in my crease and I let it in.
My team behind me.
Aiden — who stayed when he could’ve gone somewhere easier, who believed in this city before the city believed in itself. Liam — who joined because he saw something worth building and hasn’tsaid more than ten words about it since. Brody — irreplaceable, ridiculous, cries at every win and never once acknowledges it, and I would go to war for that man without a second thought. Sebastian and Caleb. Coach Barnes, who has been running the same system for four seasons and never once flinched.
Every man who showed up when it was hard.
Four seasons. Everything we built from nothing.
I face the ice.
Everything outside the crease is noise.
First period.
The Reapers come at me early and hard. Their top line on the ice inside thirty seconds, moving fast, trying to establish something before we find our footing.
I stop it.
Aiden scores at 11:42 — the kind of goal that looks inevitable in replay, a shot off a rebound that he read before the rebound happened. Their power forward answers at 14:09. Clean shot, good angle, I had it and it caught the post wrong.
1-1.
I stop twelve shots. The ghost doesn’t come up once.
Second period.
