Page 140

Brandt wins the faceoff back to Webb, and Webb chips it up the boards to me, and I get it on the half-wall with my back to the net. There's a Nashville D right on me. It's Varga's partner, a big guy, a bruiser, and he's leaning on me, and I can feel his stick in my ribs.

I don't dump it. Any rookie with any sense dumps it.

I spin.

A full three-sixty on one skate, the move Owen made me redo in October. Do it again. The drill is a two-on-one. You don't do a lap. The D reaches for me, and I'm not there anymore, and I'm coming off the wall toward the slot with the puck on my forehand and all that empty ice in front of me.

Varga's coming across. He's the last man back. He's fast. He's got his stick out, and his whole body, and he's going to take my legs out, I can see it, he's going to throw himself at me and take whatever penalty they give him.

I stop.

Dead stop, both edges, a spray of ice right into his face. He goes past me. He slides past me on his stomach with his stick flailing, and he hits nothing but air.

I'm alone. It's me and the goalie. I've got time. Too much time. I can hear the building go quiet the way it does when everybody realizes at once what's about to happen.

I don't do anything fancy. I don't have to. I just look at him, and he looks at me, and I shoot high glove side.

It goes in.

The building goes dead silent. Nineteen thousand people. Completely silent. The only sound in the whole arena is the horn from our bench, and Webb screaming.

Two-two.

I don't think about it. I'm nine years old in my mom's kitchen. I turn around and I drop to my knees and I slide.

I slide on my knees the whole length of the zone, stick in the air, all the way to the boards, and when I hit the glass I throw my head back and yell so loud I feel it in my ribs. I don't care about the cameras. I don't care who's watching, or what they think, or what they'll say.

Behind the glass, a little Nashville kid in a Varga jersey is staring at me with his mouth open.

I point at him. I grin.

He grins back.

Then Sorel lands on me, screaming something in French that would make my mother wash his mouth out. Then Brandt. Then Kowal and Webb and Adeyemi, and I'm at the bottom of a pile on the Nashville ice, laughing so hard I can't breathe, with somebody's elbow in my ear and somebody's glove on my helmet and my pink laces sticking out from under the whole mess like a flag.

We win it in the last minute.

Not me. Kowal. Kowal, who hasn't scored a goal in the playoffs, who doesn't celebrate, who has the personality of a parking garage. With forty seconds left, he takes a pass from Webb at the point and shoots it through three bodies, and it hits the post and goes in.

Kowal doesn't celebrate. He just turns around and skates back to our bench with his arms at his sides, the same as always.

But when he gets there, he leans over the boards, right next to me, and taps my pink laces with the blade of his stick. Twice.

Three-two. Final.

Series tied, three games to three.

Game seven's Monday. In Chicago.

In the room after, everybody's screaming. Somebody's got a speaker. Adeyemi's filming. Moretti's standing in the middle of it all with his arms folded, and he's not smiling, but his eyes are.

He comes over to my stall.

"The slide," he says.

"Yes, Coach."

"You know you're not supposed to do that. You could break your knee."