Liam. Shorthanded.
Their defenseman pinches at the wrong moment — one second too slow getting back — and Liam reads it the way Liam reads everything: before it happens, quietly, with complete certainty. He takes the puck the other way, one defenseman between him and the goalie, and puts it top shelf so clean it barely makes a sound going in.
He planned it from the face-off. That is exactly who Liam Steele is and has always been and I’ve never been more grateful for him than I am right now.
2-1 going into the third.
I stop nine more. The wall holds.
Third period. Nine minutes left.
The Reapers pull everything — line changes every thirty seconds, their best scorer touching the puck every shift. I stop four shots in a row. The building gets louder with every save, the arithmetic getting better with every second that comes off the clock.
Six minutes left.
Whistle. Scrum at the top of my crease — sticks down, jerseys grabbed, the standard post-whistle bullshit that everyone does to remind everyone else they’re there.
Griffin’s in it.
Of course he’s in it.
He’s saying something to Brody. Brody’s not engaging, which is restraint I didn’t know Brody had. Then Griffin tilts his head a quarter inch toward me and says something else and I don’t catch all of it but I catch the syllable.
V.
Loud enough I can hear it through the helmet. Just loud enough.
He’s looking at me when he says it.
My blocker hits the ice.
I don’t think about it. I’m halfway out of my crease before my brain registers the decision... and by then it doesn’t matter because the building has already heard it — that frequency change, the gasp that’s not a gasp, the whole place realizing at once that goalies don’t do this, I don’t do this, I haven’t been out of my crease in four seasons except to celebrate something one of my guys did.
The linesman’s already moving.
Griffin’s already smiling.
I get one in.
Right hand, no glove, clean — the way I’ve taped it for eight years. His head goes back and the spray is real and the crowd hits a frequency I have literally never heard in this building in four seasons of playing here.
The linesman’s on me before I can swing again. Two of them, actually. They’ve got me by the arms and I’m not fighting them.
I got what I came for.
The whole building is on its feet.
On its feet.
The whole building standing for a goalie who just left his crease.
The ref points at me.
Two minutes. Roughing.
Brody is already cursing his way to the box to serve it for me.
Of course he is.
