Chapter 36 Luca
Third period. Two-one. The building has not been this loud all year and the clock shows six-twelve and I am on the bench with my stick across my knees watching Marchetti work the puck along the far boards.
A win tonight and the first-year expansion team that nobody projected past twenty-eighth goes to the playoffs.
Coach sends me over the boards with Thompson and M?kinen.
My skates hit the ice and the surface is chewed, third-period texture, the edges less reliable than the first period's clean sheet.
I take the left wing. Thompson wins the draw.
The puck comes back to the point and Mueller fires it wide and the boards catch it and I chase.
My legs are good. The stride has been good for weeks now, not the stride from October, which was mechanical, the body going through repetitions that had nothing underneath them. This stride has push in it. The edges are mine.
I win the puck off the wall and cycle it back to Mueller and Mueller puts it on net and the goalie covers and the whistle goes and the building rises again because every whistle in the third period of a clinch game is its own small event.
Columbus pulls their goalie at one-fifty-two. Six skaters. M?kinen blocks a shot at the blue line. The puck squirts free. Jensen chips it out of our zone and the puck rolls across the center line and Hájek is there.
He is twenty years old and his edges are the fastest on our roster and the puck is on his tape with an empty net at the far end.
The building holds its breath.
Hájek's release is clean, low, the puck sliding flat across seventy feet of chewed ice and finding the back of the empty net with the sound that empty-net goals make.
Three-one.
The building detonates. I am over the boards before the horn finishes and I hit Hájek at the blue line with both arms and his helmet is crooked and his mouth guard is hanging from his cage and his face is the face of a twenty-year-old who just scored the goal that sends his team to the playoffs.
"You absolute beauty," I tell him. "You gorgeous Czech bastard."
"I just shot it," he says. He is grinning and his eyes are wet and he is twenty and I am twenty-four and the kid who bumped a bench on his way to his stall in September just sent us to the postseason.
"You shot it into an empty net from the center line. That is not just shot it. That is a nine-point-two."
"A nine-point-two?"
"Maybe a nine-three. I'll confirm after film review."
The pile finds us. Thompson's arm across my back. Marchetti's voice from somewhere inside the mass, words that are not words, just the sound a man makes when the season is still alive. The pile is heavy and warm and loud and I am inside it.
The clock runs out. Three-one. The first-year expansion team that nobody projected past twenty-eighth is going to the playoffs.
I stand on the ice and the confetti is falling and the building is screaming and I am here. Not narrating being here. Not performing celebration for a team that needs me to perform it. Just here, standing on ice that belongs to us, in a building that is ours.
The locker room has completely lost its mind. Somebody has produced champagne. Thompson is spraying it without aim or restraint. Marchetti has his sweater off and is standing on a bench conducting an invisible orchestra with his water bottle.
"Four-point-one," I call across the room, holding up one finger.
"What?" Thompson yells.
"The champagne. Four-point-one. Barely qualifies as a sparkling beverage. Whoever bought this should be fined."
"We just made the playoffs and you're rating the champagne."
"Making the playoffs does not excuse bad champagne, Thompson. Standards are not seasonal."
"Berger, I will pour this entire bottle on your head."
"That would be a waste of a four-point-one, which means it would be a waste of almost nothing, so go ahead."
Thompson pours it. I stand there with champagne running down my face and my undershirt soaked and the room is laughing and I am laughing and the champagne is terrible and the night is definitely a ten.
Mueller is at his stall with a towel and the expression of a man cataloguing the evening for future reference.
"Mueller. Rate the clinch."
"I don't rate things. That's your department."
"Everyone rates things, Mueller. You just don't announce it."
"Seven."
"Seven? A seven for a first-season playoff clinch? That is an insult to this franchise."
"Seven for the game. Nine for the result."
"That is not how clinches work."
"It's how math works, Berger."
"Math and clinches are different disciplines, and I will not hear otherwise."
He almost smiles. Mueller almost smiling is a nine-point-six on the rarity index.
Avi comes through the room. He moves through the team the way he has moved through it all season, one hand on a shoulder, a nod, his face carrying the full weight of what this locker room has built. When he reaches me he stops.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey, Cap."
"You good?"
"I'm good."
He looks at me. All season he has been giving me this look, the one that checks without pushing. Tonight it is not checking. Tonight it is confirming.
"Good," he says. He squeezes my shoulder once and moves on. Ash is behind him. Ash walks past and clips the back of my head with his palm, light, the way he clips guys when the gesture is the whole sentence, and keeps walking toward the showers.
Marchetti appears at my stall. He is dripping champagne and his hair is plastered to his forehead and his grin is the grin from September, from Day One, from the stall across the horseshoe where the brass played and the room was new.
"I need you to rate this moment. I need an official number."
I hold up one finger. The room quiets. Not fully. Enough.
"The Firebirds' first-season playoff clinch," I say.
"Atmosphere: nine-point-four. Champagne: four-point-one, a disgrace.
Hájek's empty-netter: nine-point-three, confirmed after on-ice film review.
Thompson's champagne-delivery technique: six-point-seven, uneven distribution, too much on me, not enough on Mueller.
Mueller's attempt at a rating: historically significant but mathematically disqualified.
The overall evening, inclusive of hockey, locker room, and franchise-historical significance. .."
I pause.
"Nine-point-eight."
"Not a ten?" Marchetti shakes his head.
"Nothing is a ten, Marchetti. A ten implies perfection. Perfection implies there is nothing left to want. There is always something left to want."
"I’m glad we’re playing Miami in the wild card," he says.
The sentence lands in my chest and stays there.
"Why Miami?"
"Because I want to beat the team you came from. That's how it works. You beat the team that lost you."
"That is aggressively sentimental, Marchetti."
"I am aggressively sentimental. It's part of my charm."
"Your charm is a six-point-five. Generous."
"My charm is a nine and you know it."
He is not wrong.
Hájek is at his stall, still in his gear, his helmet on the bench beside him. He is looking at the room the way rookies look at rooms when the room has become theirs. I catch his eye.
"Hey, Háj. That shot. Walk me through it."
His face opens. "The puck was just there. Jensen chipped it out and I was at the line and I looked up and the net was empty and I just..." He mimics the release with his hands.
"You just shot it."
"I just shot it."
"And now we're in the playoffs."
"Yeah." His voice catches on the word. Just for a half-second. Then the grin returns, wide and young and open, and I reach across and put my hand on the back of his neck the way Avi puts his hand on shoulders, the gesture that says the room knows you are here.
"Nine-point-four. Final answer. The shot was a nine-point-four. The face you made after was a ten."
He laughs. The laugh is young and fills his stall the way laughter fills stalls when the season is still going.
The room empties slowly. Showers. Clothes.
Guys on phones calling whoever they call when the news is good.
I change into my clothes and pack my bag and the stall is clean, the way my stall has been clean since September, skates aligned, helmet on the shelf, tape to the left.
The alignment is just how I keep a stall.
Not a system holding anything together. Just a stall, kept well, because I keep things well.
I pick up my phone. Mouse's face on the screen. I open FaceTime and call Wes.
He picks up on the first ring. His face fills the screen and behind him I can see his kitchen, the low light, the counter with two mugs on it, the camera bag by the sliding door. He is on the couch. His hair is damp. He has been watching.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
"You're soaked."
"Thompson." I angle the phone so he can see the champagne still dark across my chest and shoulders.
"You look good, Luca. Happy."
"Mueller rated the clinch a seven," I say. "A seven, Wes. He said he was averaging."
"He's not wrong."
"You are not allowed to side with Mueller on the night we clinched."
"I'm observing that he has a point."
"The spreadsheet will reflect this betrayal."
He laughs. The laugh is low and quiet and easy and it comes through the phone and I lean against the stall and the locker room behind me is almost empty now and the champagne smell is settling into the carpet and the room holds all of it the way rooms hold nights that matter.
"Ten days," I say.
"Ten days. Enjoy the win, but get some sleep tonight."
"I'll be at film at seven-thirty."
"I know you will."
"Good night, Wes."
"Good night, Luca."
His face goes dark. I hold the phone for a second. The screen is Mouse again, her paw on the lime, her face the face of a cat who has never been impressed by anything and is not going to start now.
The playoffs are in ten days. The wild card is Atlanta and Miami. I will stand on the ice and he will stand on the ice and nobody in the building will know what they are seeing except us.
I push through the doors into the Atlanta night. The air is warm. Not salt-warm. Not coastal. The landlocked heat that sits on your shoulders and stays. I have been here for seven months and the heat is still not the heat I got used to in Miami.
But the heat here is mine.
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