Page 46 of The Call-Up
“And one for just before,” Danton finishes.
“Not funny,” Brandon says. “And come on, Ryan. Danton is the only one of us who’s old enough to be quotingThe Cutting Edgeat me.”
Danton grins wildly and points at him. “But you have seen it.”
“Of course I’ve seen it,” he huffs. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to throw up!”
“You might,” Roysy says as he joins us.
Ivanov turns to face us from where he’s standing and waiting at the front of the tunnel. “Is this a family thing?” he asks. “Your brother? He get sick too?”
“No!” Brandon exclaims. He puts his helmet back on his head and secures the chin strap. “I hate all of you!”
“No you don’t,” I tell him as I rest my gloved hand on the top of his head, then lean forward bumping the visors of our helmets together.
He attempts to glare at me but fails quickly. “Fine,” he says, then grins playfully. “I don’t hate Ivanov.”
“Because I’m the best,” Ivanov says. He claps his blocker hand into his goalie glove. “Now let’s go kick some Brown Bear ass!”
At Ivanov’s command, we follow him out of the tunnel for warmups. Winnipeg’s fans are on their feet, booing us as we take the ice.
So this is the playoffs. This is what they mean when they say everything gets turned up. That the game becomes more intense.
I’m not surprised. I’ve played in big games before, just never at an NHL level. But as we skate out onto the ice, it is very clear that while competing and winning silver at World Juniors was intense, the stakes here are even higher. I’m loving it already, and we haven’t even dropped the puck.
I skate over to Brandon, who’s loosening up his hands by swirling a puck around one of the logos on the ice. “Pretty wild, huh?” I ask him as I grab one of the other nearby pucks to play with.
“Insane,” he says. I can barely hear him over the crowd.
I lean in closer. “I can’t wait to experience this in our barn.”
“Same.” He smiles at me and loses control of the puck.
I catch it with my stick, then slide it back to him. He skates a circle around me while dragging the puck with the toe of his stick. Then, once he’s a few feet away, he slides it back to me. It lands on my tape, and I spin a quarter turn, then flick it towards Ivanov in our net. He easily catches it in his glove, then drops it to the ground as he waits for the next puck to come his way.
Brandon chips one towards him this time, and again, he catches it.
“Nothing’s getting past me tonight,” he says.
“Let’s hope not,” I say and send another puck his way. “It’d be great if we could get a shut?—”
“Ryan! No!” half my team shouts at me in unison.
Brandon
Okay, so a shutout’s not happening. But that doesn’t mean we’re not about to win this game. The score is currently four to three andwe’re down to the final minute and a half of play. All we need to do is hold on and follow Coach Chris’s explicit instructions.
“Bouchard! O’Shea!” he calls out from the bench at the same moment I see Winnipeg pull their goalie so they can put an extra forward on the ice, making us play five on six.
O’Shea and I skate with abandon to our bench and practically throw ourselves over the boards at the same time Roysy and Reinhold hurl themselves over and onto the ice.
This is their specialty. They’ll do whatever they can to make sure Winnipeg can’t get a shot off, and if they do, they’ll be there to stand in front of it. And if Winnipeg starts to think about playing dirty, well, these two will put a stop to that. They are our Swiss Army knives. Players who can play any role, do pretty much anything, except consistently score goals.
That’s what my line is for. Although Ryan gets to stay out there right now because Ryan is an expert at one other thing. Face offs.
He is the king.
And we’re going to get to see it, as Ivanov has just gloved down the puck, putting a stop to play.
