Page 164 of Offside

Vegas was built different. Vegas had been to the finals three times in seven years and had four All-Stars in their lineup and a power play that had gone seven for twelve in the first round and showed no signs of cooling. The Sidewinders were outmatched and we knew it and we played anyway. Hard, physical, the hockey of a team that had decided how it wanted to go out and was not going to be embarrassed doing it.

I played every game like it might be the last one. Because it might be. I was thirty-one years old captaining an expansion team that had just upset a playoff veteran in six games, and I took that with me onto the ice every night and it sharpened everything.

The series went five games. Game four was a win. A grinding, physical 2-1 win that the building came alive for, and I felt it in my chest from warm-ups. The crowd was different now, not just engaged but invested, the noise of a city that had decided this team was theirs.

Game five was at home.

The arena was full. Legitimately full, Phoenix having decided somewhere between the trade deadline and the first-round upset that this team was worth showing up for. The noise of it was different from anything I’d played in all season. Not the polite interest of a city trying to remember how to care about hockey. Something rawer. Something that sounded like love.

I scored our second goal with eight minutes left in the third. A power play conversion off a Theo feed, and for those eight minutes the building believed. I could feel it, seventeen thousand people holding their breath, releasing it on every shot. It wasn’t enough. Vegas was too good and too experienced in exactly the moments that mattered.

We lost 4-2.

In the locker room after, the quiet was the right kind. Not crushed, not failed, but honest. They’d given everything they had and come up short, and they sat with it quietly, nobody reaching for a way to make it smaller. I sat with my pads half off and looked at these men. Eli with his eyes closed against his stall, Theo with his head back against the wall, Danny still in full equipment staring at the floor, Cole sitting forward with his hands clasped between his knees. The whole improbable collection of them, assembled from other teams’ leftovers and shaped into something real.

Proud. That was the word. Proud of every single one of them.

Calloway came in and said something brief and true. That we’d made history, that the city knew what we’d done, that next year started tomorrow. And then left us alone with it, which was the right call.

Griffin found me as the locker room was emptying.

“Next year,” Griffin said.

“Next year,” I agreed.

Griffin met my eyes. The goalie’s eyes, steady and clear, reading the play to the last second. Then he extended his hand. I shook it and Griffin pulled me in briefly, and when we separated Griffin nodded. The small nod that meant something was done and didn’t need any more words. And went back to his stall.

I sat alone for a minute after the last of them had gone to the showers. I stared at the number 17 on my jersey, my gear on the floor, the Sidewinders logo on every surface. The coiled rattlesnake in burnt orange and black. The franchise the city hadn’t been sure it wanted, that the city had turned out to want very much.

I thought about September. The empty facility, the fresh paint smell, Griffin walking in last. I thought about Maren at the family skate, shaking my hand and deliberately not letting herself look at me after.

I thought about all of it. The whole seven months, the thing I’d been given that I hadn’t known I needed. And took the loss of the game and the end of the season for what they were. Real, and earned, and not the end of anything that mattered.

I showered and dressed and went to find her.

She was where I’d left her. In the corridor outside the locker room, leaning against the wall in my jersey, talking to Eli’s daughter. Iris had apparently been allowed to stay up past her bedtime for the occasion and was wearing a Sidewinders hat that was too big for her and holding Eli’s hand and regarding the world with the alert, solemn attention of a four-year-old who knew something important was happening.

I crouched down to her level. “Hey, Iris.”

“Hi,” Iris said. “You lost.”

“We did,” I said. “How do you feel about that?”

Iris considered this carefully. “Sad,” she said. “But Daddy said you played really good.”

“Your daddy’s right.” I glanced up at Eli, who was watching with the expression he wore when Iris said something that landed. “He’s usually right about hockey.”

Iris nodded seriously. “He knows everything about hockey.”

“He does.”

Maren met my eyes over Iris’s head, warm and unhidden, and I straightened up and went to her and kissed her temple and felt her lean into me, easy and unguarded. For a flash of a moment I thought about what she would look like with our kids.

“Okay?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah.” I put my arm around her. “We had a good year.”

“You had a great year.” She pressed her face briefly against my shoulder, then added quietly, “All of you. Every single one of them.” She pulled back slightly and watched me with the directness she always had when she meant something. “And I got to watch all of it. From the stands with your name on my back. That meant something to me.”