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"I'm not good at this," he says finally.

"We know," Webb says.

A couple of guys laugh. Brandt doesn't.

"Hale was good at this," Brandt says. "He'd stand up here and say two words, and everybody would want to run through a wall. I don't know how he did it. I've been watching him do it for six years, and I still don't know." He looks around the room. He looks at me, last. "So I'm just going to say what I know. We're twenty minutes from going home. I don't want to go home. I want to go back to Chicago and play one more. For him."

Nobody says anything.

"That's it," Brandt says. "That's all I got."

He sits down. He looks embarrassed.

Kowal, across the room, bangs his stick on the rubber floor. Twice. Then Webb does it. Then Sorel. Then everybody, the whole room, sticks on the floor, loud, until it sounds like the building's coming down.

Brandt stares at them. His ears are red.

Sorel leans over to me under the noise.

"Did Brandt just give a speech?"

"I think so."

"Was it good?"

"It was terrible," I say. "It was the best speech I've ever heard."

Webb's on my other side. He's got his elbows on his knees, and he's looking at the floor between his skates.

"He's watching," Webb says quietly. "You know that, right?"

I don't ask who.

"I know him," Webb says. "Twelve years. He's on his couch with his leg up and he hasn't moved since the anthem. He's yelling at the TV about your stick." He almost smiles. "He's got the Christmas lights on. I'd bet you money."

"You don't know that."

"I know him," Webb says again, and gets up to go back out.

They go ahead again early in the third. Varga, on the power play, a one-timer from the slot. He skates past our bench after and taps two fingers on his heart, twice, the same way he did in game four.

Two-one Nashville. Ten minutes left in our season.

On the bench, nobody says anything. Brandt's got his head down. Moretti's standing behind us with his arms folded.

I look at my skates. At the pink laces, double-knotted, bright as anything under the arena lights.

You came out at sixteen so nobody could make you small.

"Brandt," I say.

He looks up.

"Give me the puck on the next shift," I say. "Just give it to me. Don't look for anybody else. Give it to me and get out of the way."

He looks at me for a long moment. Then he nods.

It happens with six minutes left.