Chapter 9
Abbott
"Walsh is sitting tonight. Rest game. You're starting."
"Okay."
"Puck drops at seven. Be ready."
"I'll be ready."
He nodded once and walked away. That was it. Reeves didn't elaborate if the situation didn't require it.
I stood in the lobby and thought about it.
My first start of the season—not a relief appearance, not a mid-game substitution, not the playing time a backup got when the starter was hurt.
A real, scheduled start. My name on the game sheet and my pads in the crease, sixty minutes of hockey where I was the last line and the first responsible party.
I went through the day methodically with the goalie rituals I'd built over the years for the hours before puck drop.
Stretching. Visualization. It was a mental exercise of mapping the other team's tendencies, who shot high, who went low, who telegraphed, who released late.
I ate lunch alone—which was normal for game-day goalies, the isolation of a position that required you to be inside your own head before you could be inside a net.
Kieran found me in the hallway outside the ballroom the team was using for the pre-game meeting.
"Stop thinking," he said.
"I haven't started thinking."
"You've been thinking since Reeves told you." He assessed me like a man who knew exactly what starting meant because he'd done it a thousand times. "You're better than you let yourself believe. Play like you know that."
He walked away. I stared at the spot where he'd been standing and thought about what it cost a starter to tell his backup to stop being afraid of being good.
I was good—not just adequate, not just solid, not just good enough for a backup good.
The game started. My body took over like it always did in net, conscious processing switching to pure reactive instinct. It was the only thing I'd ever found that came close to what Jamie described as reading a room.
In the first period, I made twelve saves.
Two of them were highlight-reel material—a glove snag on a one-timer from the left circle that I read off the shooter's hip rotation, and a pad save on a cross-crease feed where I pushed off the post with a lateral explosion that felt like flight.
The puck hit my pad. I felt the impact travel up through my knee and into my chest. The arena got quiet, the way arenas go quiet when the visiting goalie does something they weren't expecting.
In the second period, the Storm scored twice and I held. We survived a penalty kill where I made three saves in forty seconds. Luca tapped his stick on the ice coming off the PK, which was his way of saying That was yours. I breathed and reset.
Between periods I sat in the locker room and drank water. I said nothing. I listened to the hum of a team that knew they were being held. That was what a goalie did, you held the team. You gave them the confidence to push forward because they trusted you to be there when the push failed.
In the third period, we were tied 2–2 after their power play goal.
The arena was loud and hostile. Road arenas got that way when the home team was in a fight.
Their crowd wanted blood. The building vibrated with it—the stomping, the chants, the raw aggression of fans who could feel the momentum and wanted to push it over the edge.
I made impossible saves—a breakaway where I read the deke in the shooter's eyes.
The puck skittered away and the crowd groaned.
I reset without celebration. Cellies were for skaters.
There was a deflection that changed direction six feet from the net and my glove moved before my brain told it to.
It was pure reflex, the instinct trained into muscle memory over ten thousand hours of practice.
There was a screen shot through traffic where I found the puck by sound, the pitch of rubber hitting a stick blade at high velocity, and got a piece of it with my blocker.
Between saves I tracked the ice. I saw Luca's line executing the cycle.
I saw Jamie grinding along the boards in the defensive zone, using his body to protect the puck, buying time for the change.
I saw the way the team was playing, tighter and more committed.
They played with the conviction that their goalie was there, and they were willing to do the dirty work because they knew the last line would hold.
That trust was it. It was something I'd never had for sixty minutes. It's what Denver was offering and the thing I'd tasted tonight. But even as I held it, laced with the knowledge that Jamie Hayes was on the ice in front of me, the reason I was playing well tonight was for him.
The Storm scored the go-ahead goal with three minutes left. Garrett shot it from the point off an Eriksson feed.
The final was 3–2. Thirty-one saves. First star.
The locker room after the game was the beautiful chaos of a road win, loud and full of the physical energy that athletes burned off through noise and contact.
There were helmet taps and stick taps on the floor.
Volkov tried to hug me. I let him, which was the only appropriate response to a Volkov hug.
And then Jamie.
He came across the room lit up from the inside. He was completely thrilled. His face was open and incandescent. I never gotten tired of him like that. He stopped in front of me, his smile so wide it looked like it might hurt.
"That's what I'm talking about." His voice carried across the room. Not yelling, just loud the way Jamie got when something mattered. "That's what you are."
That's what you are.
I didn't look at him for three full seconds. I stared at the nameplate above my stall and let the comment sit between us. I let it sit in my chest—that special place I kept the things Jamie said that meant more than he knew.
That's what you are. Not That's what you did, what you are. The distinction was so important. In front of the whole room, Jamie Hayes had told me that what I'd done tonight wasn't an exception. It was the rule. This was who I was. I'd just been standing behind someone else.
"Thanks, Hayes," I said. My voice was even. Goalies were good at even.
He punched my shoulder, the punctuation of a sentiment he'd already expressed with his face.
He walked away and I watched him go.
I thought about Denver.
At the hotel later that night, I sat down on the edge of the bed. Jamie was in the shower when my phone buzzed.
Marty.
"Denver's front office watched the game," he said. "They're extremely interested. The offer is formalizing. We're talking about two years, three point five per. Starter guaranteed."
Three and a half million per year. Starter guaranteed. It was a number that someone like me, a career backup, was never supposed to hear.
"I'll call you tomorrow," I said.
"Clay. This is the one."
"I know. I'll call you tomorrow."
I hung up. The shower in the bathroom turned off. Jamie came out in shorts, toweling his hair. He was still buzzing from the win and the momentum of a road trip that was going well.
"Thirty-one saves," he said, dropping onto the bed. "Thirty-one. You know what Kieran averages on a thirty-plus save night? His save percentage drops in the third period on high-shot games. You were better in the third than the first."
He knew Kieran's third-period save percentage on high-shot games. He knew mine would be different.
"You should be a starter somewhere," Jamie said, not for the first time. But tonight, after what he'd said in the locker room, after the way he'd looked at me, his comment landed in a place that was already raw.
"Maybe," I said.
He looked at me. His expression sharpened for a fraction of a second—he'd noticed something—and then softened back. He didn't push. He was learning not to push me on this trip. He'd figured out that what he was sensing was bigger than contract anxiety.
"Goodnight, Abbott."
"Goodnight, Hayes."
I lay in the dark beside him and thought about three and a half million dollars and a starting net. I remembered his voice across the locker room. That's what you are.
I had known for a while, but it was getting louder. No number and no net in any city in the world was going to outweigh the sound of Jamie Hayes believing in me like that.