Page 45 of Two for Charging

The second line took to the ice. Mooney’s speed had improved since last season; he must have been working at it this summer. He and Howie had another scoring chance, but one of Chicago’s D-men blocked the shot, and when Howie tried for the rebound, the goalie blocked it again.

The Sea Lions’ third line was a bit of a mess. Fedorov had potential, but he was new on the smaller NHL ice, an odd adjustment Luca had to make last year as well. They gave up the puck as Nieminen headed for the bench, leaving Hayes to defend alone. But Dmitriyev was at least as good as Chicago’s backup goalie.

In the first intermission, with the score tied at zero, Lindy stalked through the locker room, ignoring all the half-undressed chests and Hayes’s wince of overblown sensitivity as a trainer held a bag of ice on the shoulder he’d smacked into the boards when the Firecrackers tried to get past him.

“Good hustle on the first and second lines,” she told them. “Keep up the shots on goal. Henderson won’t get lucky forever. Third line, I want less sloppy play. You’re giving them chances they don’t need.”

After a brief pause for Dmitriyev to translate, Fedorov bowed his head and said, “Yes, Coach. Sorry, Coach.”

Lindy patted him on the shoulder. “Good kid. Remember, it’s game one. You have eighty-one more to prove yourself. Have a little fun out there.”

The second period did start out fun. Tom caught a pass from Vanderbilt at an improbable angle and sent it sailing top shelf over the goalie’s shoulder, bypassing three Firecrackers and two Sea Lions in the way. Their bench was jubilant, sticks tapping all around, and even Luca began to feel the vague stirring of team spirit.

Twenty seconds later, the second line replaced Tom, Jax, and Vanderbilt. Luca’s thighs burned. With the game barely half over, he had already racked up twelve minutes of ice time. He was gasping for the right moment to head for the bench when it happened.

Just over the line to the offensive side, Howie had the puck on a breakaway when Denisov crushed him into the boards so hard his skates lifted up off the ice, sending him sprawling onto his stomach.

In an instant, Breezy and Luca were beside him.

Breezy, the taller, stronger of the two of them, skated toward Denisov menacingly.

Luca spat out his mouthguard. “Can you stand?”

Howie groaned.

Luca got down to his knees. “Howie?”

“’M good,” Howie managed. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, then onto his hands.

“Did you hit your head?”

Howie pulled off his helmet and tried to push his hair out of his face before realizing he was still wearing gloves. “No, shit, I’m fine.”

He yanked his gloves off and rubbed at his face before getting to his feet, his movements slow and clumsy. By then a referee and two linesmen had skated over to them. The referee had his whistle in his mouth and a hand on Denisov’s chest, pushing him away from Breezy, who shouted something but hadn’t dropped his gloves. A good call on his part; Breezy rarely fought, and Denisov, being both taller and notorious for his perpetual bad temper, would be a poor choice to start with.

Luca gathered up Howie’s gloves and handed them to him as the linesmen checked to see if he had sustained an injury to his face or neck. With nothing evident, Howie skated off toward the bench. He favored his left side. Maybe his face and neck weren’t injured, but something was.

The referee called two minutes for boarding on Denisov.

“Two minutes!” Breezy cried. “Two minutes. Are you kidding? That wasn’t a minor penalty! He could have—”

The referee blew his whistle in Breezy’s face.

“Come on,” Luca muttered. “Don’t get yourself an unsportsmanlike.”

“Okay, but did you see—”

“Yes, Breezy, I saw.” He dragged Breezy to the bench by the elbow in time for the first power play unit to hop the boards, and shit, he was on PP1. Luca stayed on the ice with Jax, Tom, Vanderbilt, and—in the absence of Howie—Mooney as a fourth forward.

“You good?” Jax asked, and Luca shot him a nod as they lined up for the face-off.

Jax was a face-off specialist at the best of times, but now, after his boyfriend’s favorite rookie had gotten hurt? His stubbornness wouldn’t allow him to lose. There might as well have been no one on the ice besides Tom and Jax as they ping-ponged the puck back and forth until one of them had a clear shot on goal. It only took forty seconds for Jax to score, pushing them to 2–0.

The second power play unit didn’t score, but a minute after returning to five-on-five, Hayes managed a picture-perfect assist to Fedorov, who slotted the puck in under the goalie’s pads.

In the second intermission, the locker room was jubilant. They were up three–nil, and Fedorov had his first NHL goal in his first game, which meant he got the aux cable. Even incomprehensible Russian techno counted as pump-up music when the team was already pumped up.

Howie came limping out of the trainer’s office to a round of applause. He’d smacked into the boards with his hip and shoulder, he said, but apart from some bruising, he’d be fine. Judging by the sheen in his eye, he’d been granted a judicious application of the good painkillers, the kind the trainers saved for rougher injuries.