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I can feel his hand on my chest. Still. Through the pads. Right where he put it at the mouth of the tunnel.

Go.

The first shift, nothing. The second shift, their goalie makes a save on Sorel that he has no business making, flat on his back, with his glove over his head. The third shift, Varga gets a breakaway, and our goalie stops it with his shoulder, and the whole building makes a sound like a car crash.

Four minutes in. Five. Six.

Every shift feels like it lasts an hour. Every time I come off, I look down the bench toward the tunnel, and he's there, in his folding chair, with his leg up on the bucket and Dana standing next to him. He's leaning forward so far that I think he's going to fall off the chair. His hands are gripping his knees.

He doesn't look away from the ice once.

Eight minutes in, Moretti taps my shoulder. Me, Brandt, Sorel. Webb and Kowal on the back end.

I go over the boards.

We win the faceoff. Brandt pulls it back to Kowal, and Kowal holds it, and holds it, and the Nashville forwards come at him, and he doesn't panic. He never panics. He has the personality of a parking garage. He slides it across to Webb.

Webb's at the right point. I'm on the left wing, way out by the boards, near our blue line. Nashville's D has pinched in. There's nobody between me and the far end except empty ice.

Webb looks up. He sees me. Then he does something I've only ever seen one person on this team do.

He doesn't pass it to me.

He passes it to the empty ice in front of me. Flat and hard, to a spot where nobody is. A spot where nobody should be. The kind of pass Owen throws. The kind I learned to skate to without looking, all season, on the top line, before any of this happened.

I'm already moving. I don't think. My legs just know where it's going.

It lands on my tape.

I'm gone.

It's me and the far end of the ice. I can hear skates behind me. Somebody's coming, fast. I don't have to look to know who. It's Varga. It's always Varga.

He's gaining. He's so fast. He's got his stick out, reaching, and I can feel the blade of it tapping at my heel, looking for the puck, looking for my skate, looking for anything.

You reach, you're off balance. You're off balance, I'm gone.

He reaches.

I cut. Hard, to my right, across his body. His stick goes where I was. He's off balance. His skate catches. He goes down behind me, sliding on his side, and I hear him hit the boards.

It's me and the goalie. I'm coming in on his left. He's big, and he's square, and he's good, and he's played the best series of his life, and he's staring at me like he already knows what I'm going to do.

I don't do the spin. I don't do anything fancy. I don't have time, and I don't need it.

I just shoot. High. Blocker side. Everything I have.

It hits the crossbar.

Ping.

The best sound in the world. The sound of almost. The sound from opening night, the first shift of my first game, the one nineteen thousand people stood up for even though it didn't go in.

For one second I think it's out. For one second the whole building thinks it's out. I can hear them start to groan.

Then I see the net move.

The puck came down off the bar. Straight down. Behind the goalie. Over the line. It's sitting in the back of the net, and the goalie's looking over his shoulder at it like he can't believe it either.