Page 51 of The Call-Up
It’s time.
Ryan
Of all the elements of my position, there’s something about the opening face off that I like best. Maybe sometimes, more than even scoring goals. The first face off sets the tone. It gets the puck moving. It tilts the ice to one team’s favor. Right now, I’m going to claim that favor for the Mules.
The ref is positioned. He has the puck in his hand. He’s checked in with me and my opponent. Three… two… one…
The puck hits the ice and I snap it to my right where I know Brandon is waiting. He grabs possession of it with his stick and begins skating towards Winnipeg’s zone. Once he’s at the top of the right circle, he snaps the puck back to me, then immediately takes a hit from one of Winnipeg’s defensemen.
I catch sight of it out of the corner of my eye, but I can’t waste any time being worried. He’ll be fine. He knows how to take a hit. And to avoid taking a hit myself, I pass the puck to O’Shea, who’s positioned himself near the left side of the crease. He takes the puck and wings it back across to the right side. I spin my gaze around fast enough to catch the moment Brandon winds up, then comes down to one knee as he slaps the perfect one-timer right through traffic and into the back of Winnipeg’s net, surprising everyone.
The lamp lights. The goal horn blares. And the stadium erupts as O’Shea, Danton, Clemmers, and I all converge onto Brandon, pressing him up against the boards in a massive hug.
So much for me setting the tone. Brandon just upstaged me, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
Brandon
I may have scored the first goal, but that only lit a fire under the collective asses of the Winnipeg Brown Bears. We’re halfway through the second period and the score is tied two–two. After my goal, we’ve had to fight for every square inch of ice.
Like right now as I’m battling a player who, I swear to God, is twice my size against the boards for the puck. He has me pressed all the way against the glass. I can feel fans pounding their fists on it while screaming and cheering us. Finally, with a little bit of luck that I’m attributing to my smaller size, I squeeze out from under his pressure and get enough of the toe of my stick onto the puck to chip it away from the boards. All I can do is hope that one of my teammates is there to intercept it.
From the roar of the crowd, it sounds like someone did.
Now free, I quickly try to track the puck as I skate away. Clemmers gets a hold of it. He’s passing it to Danton across the blue line, keeping it in Winnipeg’s zone. Danton sees that I’m finally free, then passes it back to me, but I don’t hold onto it long. O’Shea is wide open across the ice near the left circle. I pass it to him and then he takes his shot.
It bounces off the goalie’s pads, but Ryan has timed his skating perfectly and slides right in to catch the rebound. He jams the puck into the net through a small gap their goalie left open between his skate and the post.
“Fuck, yes!” I exclaim and skate directly to Ryan, who has crouched down low and is screaming at the top of his lungs in victory.
Winnipeg’s goalie kicks the puck out of the crease, then slams his stick over the crossbar. “You got fucking lucky!” he yells at Ryan. “It’s not fucking happening again.”
Ryan
It does, indeed, happen again. Though this time it’s Danton who sneaks one past him in the final three minutes of the game.
He looks as stunned as Winnipeg’s goalie does while he celebrates with his stick held high in the air.
“Nice one, Cap!” I say to him as I come over and sling my arm over his shoulders.
“That was a beauty!” Brandon says.
“No, it wasn’t,” Danton laughs. “It literally bounced off my knee and then went in.”
“Hey,” I say, bringing my voice down to a serious tone. “They don’t ask how; they just ask how many.”
“Fucking truth.” Danton continues to laugh and skates away to collect fist bumps from the rest of the team, who are all pounding their sticks against the boards over the bench.
“Roysy!” Coach Chris yells and gestures for the third line to go out onto the ice. “Shut them down. Don’t let their center get out of the neutral zone.”
“Yes, sir,” Roysy says as he hops over the boards. The rest of his line follows. This is where Roysy shines and why I’m so glad to no longer have him on my line. Our playing styles didn’t match the way mine and Brandon and O’Shea’s do.
But damn is he good at what he does. As soon as the puck drops and Winnipeg wins the draw, Roysy slams right into their center as he tries to skate away with it, completely leveling him near center ice.
Roysy continues his run through their defense like he’s plowing through a wall. He knocks two of them off balance and away from any chance of recovering the puck. It slides untouched all the way to the other side of the thin red line at the far end of our zone, where Ivanov skates behind his net to claim it. He holds the puck there until Roysy can take it from him. Roysy quickly grabs the puck, then begins to skate across the ice with it. When he runsinto pressure from Winnipeg’s defense again, he passes it to his linemate Reinhold, who then sends it to Gauthier. The three of them are basically engaging in a game of keep-away, and it’s working. Winnipeg is running out of gas as the clock runs out.
The game is ours. And after this win, we only need two more to make it to the next round.
Brandon
