Light the Lamp (23 page)

I’d been sitting
in the penalty box for a minute and forty-two seconds. My time was almost up, and the boys were doing a hell of a job killing off the minor I took when I accidentally high-sticked Phoenix Coyotes captain Shane Doan. Eighteen seconds to go and I would be in the clear, as long as the guys kept doing exactly as they had been.

We were leading three to two about five minutes into the third period. The Coyotes were a divisional rival fighting to get one of the wild card spots in the playoffs. With only weeks remaining in the season and both teams needing two points, it had been a contentious game so far. They weren’t giving us an inch, and we couldn’t afford to let up on them, either. We didn’t have a good enough lead on the teams fighting for the wild card spots to be in the clear. Not even close.

For us—and for teams like Phoenix—the playoffs might as well have started a month or two ago. We were already playing like we were in them.

Deep in our zone to the right of our goaltender, the linesman dropped the puck. Henrik Markusson—Hank—won it for us. He tied up his guy’s stick and twisted his body around so he could kick the puck back to our defense. They passed it
D
to
D
then shot it past all the Coyotes and out of the zone. No icing was called since we were on the penalty kill.

By the time Phoenix gathered up the puck again and started it back toward the neutral zone, my penalty was expiring. The clock ticked down.
Three seconds
. I got up from the bench.
Two
. The timekeeper moved into place to open the door to let me out.
One
. The Coyotes
D
made a crisp pass to one of their forwards, who was waiting just outside the blue line, and he took it into our zone.

Zero
.

The door opened. I stepped onto the ice just as Hank barreled into the puck carrier, laying him out with a huge, open-ice body check and knocking the puck free. Antoine Gagnon got to the puck before anyone else could get there.

“
Gags!” I slapped the blade of my stick on the ice and headed toward Phoenix’s zone, not even looking back to be sure he’d heard me. Gags would find me.
 

Half a step before I crossed into the zone offside, the puck hit my stick right on the tape. Perfect timing.

The Coyotes’
D
were behind me, so no one would catch me. It was just me and Mike Smith, the Coyotes’ goaltender.

I swung out wide, and Smith skated out to challenge me, trying to take away my angle. I deked once, and he bit on my move, pulling himself out of position. Then I stickhandled the puck to my backhand and shot.

The goal horn blasted before I even saw it go in.

“
Nice fucking pass, Gags,” I said when the boys caught up to me to celebrate.
 

We headed off the ice and Scotty sent Zee’s line out to match up against Phoenix’s energy line—guys that used their speed as weapons and generally wreaked havoc on opposing teams. We were up four to two now, and Scotty wanted to keep the momentum going in the right direction, especially after that penalty kill and scoring on the back end of it.

They lined up for the face-off at center ice, and right away everyone on our bench knew trouble was brewing. The Coyotes’ forward who lined up next to Babs slashed at his feet and pushed him hard—just this side of a cross-check—trying to goad him into a fight.

Babs wasn’t a fighter. I doubted he’d even fought when he’d played major junior, and
everyone
in major junior fought. It was like a rite of passage for those kids. But Babs was a skilled forward, the kind of teammate that the fighters were on the team to protect.

“
You fucking want someone to fight, you fucking fight me!” Cam Johnson shouted out to the ice from the bench. Jonny was always ready to drop the gloves. He was one of those guys who actually liked to fight, who didn’t just do it because he was expected to. Granted, he could score, too. He was a good guy to have as a teammate.
 

“
All the options out there and you go after Babs?” Webs yelled. “Fucking dipshit.”
 

“
Real classy move, fucktard,” one of the other boys called out.
 

“
Don’t fucking do it, Babs,” I added to the chorus. “That’s not your game.”
 

He didn’t have to fight. He could refuse to drop his gloves and just skate away once the puck was dropped. He could let Zee or Soupy or someone else who had fighting experience deal with it, or we could just let this goon seethe because no one would take him up on his offer. That would be the smart move for us. A fight now could give them momentum, something we’d just taken firm control of in this game with my goal.

More so than many games, hockey was a game that relied on momentum—who had gained control of it, who was taking advantage of it, who was letting it slip away. We couldn’t afford to just hand it over to Phoenix because they had a goon who wanted to turn the tide for his team.

The linesman dropped the puck.

Babs dropped his gloves.

After two swings, one of them directly to Babs’s nose, the Phoenix player dropped Babs to the ice. He hadn’t even gotten a good blow in. It had been over almost before it’d started. Their bench went nuts cheering for their guy as though he’d just scored in overtime of game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals.

The linesmen skated both fighters off to the penalty boxes and cleared all the dropped sticks, helmets, gloves, and other gear from the ice. Even though we were leading by two, it seemed as though now the Coyotes had the upper hand. They’d just stolen all our momentum.

I settled in for the battle that this game was becoming. Guys either lived for games like these or hated them. Most of us loved them, myself included, but only because they really got your competitive juices flowing, got the adrenaline coursing through your body. It could be hard to come down from a doozy like this one was turning into.

Babs lifted a towel to his face, and it came away bloody. When one of the linesmen took him his gear, they talked for just a minute. Then they escorted Babs back across the ice to our bench.

“
Think my nose is broken,” he mumbled just before the trainers took him back to the locker room to check him out.
 

I was right about the shift in energy. It was like the Coyotes suddenly sniffed out some urgency. They buzzed in our zone, keeping the pressure on and hardly making a mistake. We were barely able to get our guys off the ice to send out players with fresh legs because they kept us hemmed into our defensive zone.

With about five minutes left, RJ, Eller, and I were on the ice and had been for far longer than we should have been. Phoenix had managed to keep us in our end and make two line changes. I was gassed. We all were.

Eller finally got his stick on the puck, blocking a pass from getting through. He skated it out of the zone, trying to get to center ice before shooting it down to the other end so we wouldn’t get called for icing. He got there, so I hurried over to the bench for a change.

Gags went out to replace me. I still had one skate on the ice when one of Phoenix’s defenseman regained the puck and sent it back in. None of our guys got to change but me.

A couple of crisp passes later with all our players scrambling to get into position, the Coyotes finally got the goal they’d been working so hard to earn.

At least at that point we were finally able to get in a full line change.

Babs came back to the bench from the tunnel wearing a full cage on his helmet. He took a seat next to me and gave me a sheepish look.

“
When I told you there were things worth fighting for, I wasn’t talking about that kind of fighting,” I said.
 

“
Yeah. I know.”
 

“
What were you thinking?”
 

Babs shrugged. “I don’t think I was thinking at all. Maybe that everyone else fought so maybe it was my turn.”

Jonny grunted. “If you want to fight, you fucking need to learn how to do it. Or better yet, leave it to someone who already knows.”

The coaches came up behind us. “Broken?” Scotty asked.

“
Yeah. But I’m fine.”
 

“
Then get your fucking ass out there and worry about putting the biscuit in the basket, not about fighting. They just fucking scored on us.”
 

I was pretty sure Babs was blushing when he climbed over the boards. It seemed like pretty much anything could make him blush.

The next several minutes of play continued in much the same fashion—with Phoenix dominating us in every way conceivable. It wasn’t that we weren’t working hard or giving enough effort. They’d simply found another gear and were leaving us behind. It didn’t help that we’d had a game last night and they’d had the day off.

Somehow, we needed to find our legs again.

“
Keep moving, boys,” I shouted. “Use your fucking wheels, and let’s finish this off.”
 

Every time we managed to get one of our sticks on the puck, only a moment or two went by before one of their guys forced a turnover. The more we fought it, the more exhausted we got, until it felt almost inevitable that they were going to tie the game.

Nicky was just about the only thing keeping us in this game. He was standing on his head, stopping every puck that came his way and putting together some Save-of-the-Year candidates in the process. There was one shot when RJ, Eller, and I were out that I’d been certain would tie the game. Nicky had come out to challenge like Smith had done with me earlier. He’d stopped the shot, but the rebound had gotten away from him and had headed straight for Doan, who’d been waiting on the other side of the crease. Doan had an open net, and none of us could get over in time to tie up his stick or do anything else. But somehow, Nicky had flown across, all spread-eagled and flailing, and he’d managed to get just enough of the butt of his stick over to send the puck careening up into the netting over the glass.

With about two minutes left in the game, Zee’s line had a good shift. It was the first time since Babs had his fight that our guys spent any decent time in the offensive zone. It looked like Babs scored, too. The puck was in the net and the horn sounded, and the crowd at the Moda Center went wild. We were all on our feet, shouting and celebrating already, but then the ref waved the goal off and signaled a penalty.

“
What the fuck was that?” Scotty shouted when the referee skated over to our bench to explain. “That was a fucking goal, there’s no fucking reason—”
 

“
Campbell bumped into the goalie’s arm on the play,” the ref said. “Goaltender interference.”
 

Soupy was one of the guys who was always willing to go to the front of the net, where he was likely to get a bruised back and legs from being cross-checked and slashed all night by the opposing defense and goaltenders. It wasn’t all that out of the ordinary for those kinds of players to get called for interference, whether it was deserved or not.

And this time, it wasn’t. The replay being shown on the Jumbotron overhead—repeatedly, and accompanied by a chorus of boos from the crowd—proved it.

It didn’t matter, though. He was headed to the box, and we only had a little over a minute left in regulation.

Phoenix pulled their goaltender to gain a two-man advantage while they tried to tie the game. It didn’t take them long, either. They won the draw, passed the puck over to a sniper waiting at Nicky’s back door, and got it in.

Tie game. A minute left. I could feel the points slipping away.

 

Babs was the
first of the guys to come up to the owner’s box after the game, and I was glad for it. As soon as he stepped foot through the doorway, Katie threw off the blanket we had been sharing and ran into his arms. She’d been a nervous wreck about him ever since he’d gotten into that fight and had left the game for a little while. I couldn’t say I blamed her. The more of these Portland Storm games I’d come to, the more I was starting to realize that, for hockey players, injuries were kind of like cockroaches—they never really went away, and instead just kept multiplying.

Of course, Rachel had found out from her boss that Babs had “only” broken his nose and he would be just fine. She’d shared that news with the rest of us, but Katie hadn’t been able to stop worrying the rest of the night, through the end of overtime and the shootout—which the Storm won—and then the seemingly interminable time after the game came to an end. Her disquiet had rolled off her in waves, pouring into me and keeping me bound in the same flood of anxiety.

My turn to really worry—my
own
worry, not taking on Katie’s or someone else’s—had come during the overtime period when Liam had gotten caught up in a big pile of bodies near the goal and someone’s skate blade had ripped a gash in his cheek. They’d rushed him down the tunnel, but he’d left a trail of bright-red blood all along the ice as he went.