32. Cole
Cole
The roar moves through the arena before it hits me.
I’ve played in this building twice. Showcases, high school tournaments, college scouts lining the concourse with clipboards before I even step on the ice.
Those games felt important. This game makes every breath drag harder through my chest. Four NHL teams have scouts in the building tonight.
The draft is in June. Every shift I take is an audition for the rest of my life, and I have to do it in the loudest room I have ever occupied.
Addison pulls us in at the bench. The huddle tightens, helmets touching, Declan just outside the crush, sweat and cold air and athletic tape trapped between bodies. Addison’s voice cuts through the arena noise, sharp and steady enough that we go still around it.
“Third period. Twenty minutes. You’ve played forty minutes of hockey tonight and you’ve earned every second of ice time you’re about to get.
Now go earn twenty more.” He looks around the huddle.
His eyes land on each of us, Adrian, me, Dante, Gio, then Declan at the edge.
The starters. The first line and the brick wall behind it.
“Play your game. Trust your linemates. Stay out of the box. Michigan’s power play has been killing us. Don’t give them chances.”
Adrian taps his stick on the ice. My legs answer before I have to think.
We go.
I take the ice for the opening faceoff with Dante beside me on the left wing, Adrian at center, and my place on the right.
The positioning locks in before I have to think about it.
Years of skating together have done that to us, since high school, since we were sixteen and running the same drills on a rink in Connecticut until our lungs burned and our legs quit forgiving us.
I know where Dante will be before the play fully forms. He knows where I’ll be. A shift of his shoulders tells me I’m cutting behind the net. The angle of my blade tells him where I’m going. Trailer. Back door.
The puck drops.
Michigan comes out hard. Their forecheck is relentless, two men deep, rotating, putting pressure on every touch.
Faster than the tape showed. Their top line has a center who is six-foot-two with NHL hands and a shot that comes off his blade too fast. He gets position on Adrian in the first shift and rips a wrister that Declan snatches with his glove, casual and efficient, the save of a goalie who has been stopping rubber since he could stand.
The first five minutes are a siege. Michigan cycles in our zone, with pucks clanging off the post and Declan making saves that would be highlight reels if we weren’t too busy surviving to appreciate them.
I block a shot with my shin, and the pain flashes bright and hot from ankle to knee.
I skate through it because the puck is already moving and the third period doesn’t fucking care where it hurts.
During the TV timeout, I look up.
Press box. Third row, left side.
She is there with her laptop open and her spine straight, shoulders set, eyes down on the ice like she is already filing what the rest of the building is still screaming about. From sixty feet below, she is only a shape behind glass.
I know the shape anyway. I have been finding her from center ice since the first game she covered.
The whistle brings us back.
Dante gets low in a board battle. The Michigan defenseman has size on him, but Dante plants his edges and locks his shoulder into the boards until the other guy runs out of space. His shoulder drives in. His stick works free. Then the puck is on the wall, coming to me, and the ice opens.
Three-on-two.
My next breath cuts short.
I carry through the neutral zone. Michigan’s D backs up.
They respect my speed, they’ve watched the tape, and the retreat gives me a lane.
The lane to Dante opens instead of the shot.
Dante fills wide left. Adrian drives the net.
We have run this play a thousand times in practice: I carry to the hash marks, sell the shot, and slide the puck through the defenseman’s feet to Dante on the back door.
I sell the shot. The goalie commits. The puck slides through.
Dante one-times it blocker side.
The puck hits the back of the net, and the roar slams into my cage. The Briarcliff section erupts. The horn. The goal light. Sixteen thousand people releasing at once. 3–2.
Dante slams into the boards in celebration, and I’m there with his gloves on my jersey and my hand on the back of his helmet. His forehead knocks against mine through the cages. His eyes find me through the visor.
“Filthy pass,” he says, grinning.
Nobody sees that grin except me, Maya, and the inside of his helmet. For half a second, the composure slips off his face.
“Filthy finish,” I say.
The lead lasts four minutes. Michigan ties it on a power play, Adrian in the box for a slash he swears he didn’t commit, and their top line makes us pay. One-timer from the circle. Declan has no chance. 3–3. Adrian comes back to the bench with his jaw locked and both hands tight around his stick.
The bench goes quiet. Gloves tighten around sticks. Chests heave. Nobody looks away from Addison. He doesn’t panic. Addison has never panicked in a game I’ve played for him. He adjusts the lines, shortens the bench, and I understand the message: the starters are playing the rest of this game.
Seven minutes left. Then five. Then three.
The ice gets heavier with every shift, the third period of a Frozen Four game grinding through my legs, my lungs, the dull throb in my shin.
Michigan is tired too. Every shift starts taking pieces out of us.
Every stride costs more than the last, and nobody on either bench has enough air left to waste.
Addison calls a timeout with 2:47 left. We huddle at the bench, sucking down water and air while the boards shake under the crowd noise.
“Gio,” Addison says. “You’re in for the next shift.”
Gio’s head snaps up. He has been on the bench for the last six minutes, second line, playing his minutes, doing his job.
He is fast and skilled and reckless enough that Addison has spent four years trying to keep the fire pointed at the net instead of the penalty box.
The play here should be the top line: Adrian, Dante, and me.
“Coach—” Adrian starts.
“Gio. With Cole and Dante. Adrian, you’re centering the second unit.”
A few helmets turn. Adrian’s jaw works, but he doesn’t argue. You do not argue with Addison during a timeout. His eyes find mine, then flick back to Addison.
I nod. Adrian nods back.
Gio stands and tightens his chin strap. His eyes are too wide, too bright. His gloves flex around his stick, and his knee bounces once before he forces it still. Against the boards, his stick taps in a rhythm only he hears.
“Gio.” Dante’s voice is low enough to cut under the arena noise instead of fighting over it. “Take a breath. Find the soft ice. We’ll get you the puck.”
Gio nods once. Sharp. His focus narrows. His shoulders drop half an inch.
The whistle blows. We take the ice. Three forwards. Me on the right wing, Dante on the left, Gio at center. This line is new. We’ve practiced it, but we have not played it in a game this big. 2:47. Tie game. Frozen Four. The crowd noise presses against the glass and waits.
Offensive-zone faceoff. Gio wins it clean, his hands quicker than Michigan’s center, the puck kicked back to our defense.
We set up in their zone. The cycle begins.
Dante along the half-wall, me in the corner, the puck moving in the patient, ruthless rotation Addison built this program on. Possess. Cycle. Wait for the opening.
Michigan stays disciplined. They clog the lanes.
Their goalie tracks the puck with steady, focused eyes.
The cycle continues. Thirty seconds. Forty-five.
The clock keeps draining. My legs scream.
Dante’s face is red behind his visor. Gio skates high between the circles, restless, stick blade turning open and closed.
Michigan’s defenseman takes the puck behind his net and starts cycling it back, buying time.
I am already low enough to pressure when I read the angle, the lazy backhand, the half-second where the puck sits exposed on his blade.
I close the gap in two strides and strip it clean, my stick through his, the puck free on my blade before he registers what happened.
Gio.
He has drifted to the slot. Lower than he should be. Right in the danger zone, between the circles, low enough that both Michigan defensemen have lost track of him. He has found the soft ice.
I feather the pass.
Soft. Flat. No bounce.
It slides between the other defenseman’s skates and reaches Gio’s blade at the exact speed a shooter needs. The second it lands, my vision tunnels. Crowd, clock, stakes, scouts, draft, noise all fall to the edges.
Gio’s stick.
The puck.
The net.
Gio shoots.
The release is fast, deceptively fast. From the press box, it probably looks casual. From the ice, it looks impossible. The shot comes off one clean transfer of weight from his back foot to his front, and the puck explodes off his blade with a velocity that doesn’t match the effort.
Top corner. Glove side. The water bottle on top of the net launches into the air.
The horn sounds. The boards shake under the noise.
Gio’s arms go up, his stick over his head, his mouth open in a scream I cannot hear because the noise has swallowed everything except vibration.
I reach him first. My arms close around him, lifting, his skates barely catching the ice before Dante hits us a half second later.
The three of us collide at center ice, helmets crashing, gloves gripping jerseys.
The rest of the team swarms from behind.
Dante and I grab Gio from both sides, and the pile builds until we are six deep for one wild second before the officials start shouting and Gio is screaming at the center of it.
“I FOUND IT!” Gio screams into my face cage, his eyes wild. “THE SOFT ICE! I FOUND THE SOFT ICE!”