Page 5 of Punked By the Playmaker
In a daze, I skated toward my spot to the left of the face-off circle, but Cole intercepted me before I could line up.
“He wants to make fools of us.”
I scoffed. “No shit.”
A determination glinted in his eyes. “What do you say we deny him the satisfaction?”
“How do you suppose we pull that off when the Luck have been ramming it down our throats all night long? It won’t take them more than thirty seconds to capitalize on our empty net.”
My captain shrugged. “At this point, I’d do just about anything to spite the bastard for putting us in this position. Whatever it takes, I’m not letting them score on us while Rockwell and Kozlov sit on the sidelines.”
It was worth a shot. We didn’t have anything left to lose.
“Let’s do it,” I agreed.
Cole pulled the rest of our linemates over, hyping them up to play their fucking hearts out and keep the opposing team away from our net.
The ref blew his whistle three times in sharp succession, making his annoyance at our huddle clear. “Get your asses over here, or I’ll call you for delay of game!”
“We’ve got this,” our leader gritted out as we set up for the face-off.
The puck was dropped, and Cole tied up the Luck’s center, which allowed me to scoop up the black rubber disc with my stick, and I was off to the races. But I didn’t make it very far. The defenseman covering me checked me into the boards right as I crossed the offensive blue line, and I lost control of the puck. It wasn’t long before one of the Luck forwards was skating in the opposite direction, barreling toward where our open net lay waiting.
I hustled as though my ass was on fire to chase him down, but thankfully, our line’s right winger, Dylan Sutton, got there first. A quick up pass to Cole and we were on the rush again, this time with numbers.
Crew skated up from defense, joining his brother and me as we tried to outsmart the two defenders for the Luck. I crashed the net just as Cole ripped a close-range slapshot. The puck hit the goalie’s blocker before dropping to the ice, and I beat at his pads with my stick, furiously trying to jam it in.
The whistle blew, and play stopped.
“Dammit,” I panted out the curse, exhausted after skating up and down the ice several times.
Cole nudged my shoulder. “Keep at it. We’ve got this.”
Another face-off win, and we were passing around the zone, attempting to get the Luck out of position so we could take a high-chance shot. Cole was battling in front of the net, and theirgoalie kept shifting from side to side, trying in vain to track the puck. With him screened, we took advantage and peppered him, but frustration mounted when we couldn’t get one of those shots to pop the back of the net.
I never remembered it being this hard to score a goddamn goal.
Pressured at the blue line, Crew was unable to hold the zone, and the Luck were gathering speed through the neutral zone. With only one man to beat, they wound up for the easy shot, but just as they let the puck fly, Jagger came from out of nowhere and put his body directly in front of it, blocking the attempt.
If I weren’t so out of breath, I would have let out an impressed whistle, because I hadn’t seen him fight that hard to defend once since my arrival in San Diego.
We came off on a shift change, and the second line worked just as feverishly to defend our net that was absent a goalie.
Eventually, play came to a stop due to an offside, and Davenport called over to Rockwell, “Get back out there.”
There were audible sighs of relief amongst the team, and you could bet your ass that we did everything in our power to make sure he didn’t face another shot for the rest of the game.
As much as I hated to admit it, our coach’s unconventional tactic had motivated an improvement in play. And while it would undoubtedly suck during the early days of his reign, the Surf were better off for having him behind the bench.
After seven games of Davenport at the helm, we managed to win two of them. It might not sound like much, but it was progress, a step in the right direction.
But fuck, if the practices weren’t brutal.
Today’s “lesson” focused on precision shooting after we had an embarrassingly low number of shots on goal, despite the number of attempts taken in our game last night against the New York Freedom. Coach had the whole team lined up at different angles in front of an empty net, and if we missed, we had to skate a hard lap before trying again.
I was ashamed to admit that I skated my fair share of laps—as did the majority of my teammates—and after practice, it became a race to see who could shower the quickest to beat the rush to the treatment room. We were all in need after that tough workout.
Sucking in a sharp breath, I lowered into an ice bath, letting the chill numb my aching muscles.
