Brayden
twenty-two
Ilooked around the locker room. This was it.
Four years after the Seals’ inauguration, and we were playing game seven of the Playoffs.
It was neck and neck, three games apiece.
The Colorado Boomtown had the home-ice advantage, but I'd seen purple everywhere on the streets. It was as if the whole of San Diego had travelled to watch us play. Every one of the boys’ families, and in my case, both my family and found family, were here cheering us on.
We were ready. Our gear was on, our skates sharpened, and our minds were focused. We would make the Boom weep.
Mironov was the only one of us who’d lifted the Cup before.
We all burned for it. We’d worked hard, pushed our bodies to the limit.
Training had been endless, but we’d earned every win to get ourselves to this point.
We were nearly there—three twenty-minute periods were all that stood between us and the Cup.
One more goal than the Boom was all we needed.
We were going to do it.
The Cup was ours.
But first we had the game of our lives to play. The decider.
Sixty minutes until we would heft the Cup.
The Colorado Boomtown were out for blood.
We weren’t going to let them taste it.
Gauthier stood, and the chirping ceased. My heart rate ratcheted up. This was it. We were really here. The Seals were a young franchise—even younger than the Golden Knights had been when they’d won their Stanley Cup. We were going to make history tonight.
Gauthier moved to the middle of the locker room and scanned us, his expression intense. There was a banked fire in his eyes that matched the one smoldering in my belly. It was about to explode into an inferno.
He paced, meeting each of our gazes with a steady one of his own.
“This, tonight, is the culmination of years of hard work. Most of us were on skates before we could run. We’re now at the pinnacle of our sport. Two teams—the best in the world. One will walk out of here tonight as the champions. It’ll be us.”
I whistled, and the other boys cheered, all of us banging our sticks on the rubber matting in the locker room.
“Look around, boys,” Gauthier continued. He held his hands out wide, gesturing to each and every one of us.
I did as he said, scanning the faces of the men who’d become brothers to me.
Rune, my closest friend on the team and a goalie with the skills you only see once in a generation.
Gauthier, our big brother. Hux, the quiet guy who was a strategist with almost a precognition about plays.
Minns, who was fiercely protective of his brothers and terrifying on the ice.
Mironov, the enforcer—the man who’d take anyone down for one of us.
“Years from now we'll look back and remember winning the Cup tonight. We’ll know we earned it, that we battled every second of every game to get here.” He closed his hand into a fist and thumped the Seals’ logo on his jersey.
“Boys, this is our moment. Our time. This brotherhood—our family—was formed through blood, sweat, and busted teeth.”
He was right. This team meant the world to me.
It had only taken one season to change everything for me.
Before, in Boston, I was reckless. I was a smart-mouthed average player.
I wasn’t part of the Blizzards family; I didn’t deserve to be part of a team playing for the Cup.
But now I was different. Now I deserved it.
I’d earned it. I was no longer coasting on my teammates’ efforts.
I’d become one of the elite alongside every man sitting in this room with me.
“We'll remember pushing ourselves until our bodies broke.” He pointed out Cohen, our second line left defense, who’d been playing with a torn MCL since game one.
It was strapped, he’d had a cortisone injection, and he was ready to go.
He’d need surgery in the off-season, but there was no way he was missing this game.
Every one of us would have done the same.
“We'll remember the sacrifice each and every one of us has made.” He pounded his chest over his heart, and my body vibrated with excitement. Anticipation coiled in my gut, the knowledge that we were going out there to achieve something I’d only dared to dream of as a kid.
“We'll remember how much heart we have. Skill isn’t enough anymore. The Boomtown have skill. But we have more than that. We don’t just want the Cup. We crave it. Eat, breathe, and sleep it. We need it.”
He nodded slowly, casting his gaze around us again. Our gazes locked, and the bouncing in my feet stilled. All that energy, the eagerness to get out there, settled, channeling into an unquenchable thirst to win. I wouldn’t rest until we’d beaten their asses.
This game would be ferocious.
We would bring it harder.
“We want it more than them. I know how much our city wants it. I know how much our friends and families and that crowd in the arena want it. You can hear them chanting for us already.”
He paused, letting his words sink in, and we hollered and hooted, revving ourselves up.
We’d seen the crowds gathering outside the barn as the bus had driven in.
We’d watched them stream in on foot and in cars from our hotel rooms high above the city, purple Seals flags converging on the barn en masse.
Team spirit surged in me. Purple, black, and white ran through my veins.
Gauthier held his index finger up, and we quietened once more. “We've got one shot. Every goal, every win to this point is history. They all got us here, but we’re not done yet. Tonight, right now, is all that matters. Us, this family, is what matters.”
He gestured to the entire team gathered around and directed, “We play for one another.” As he spoke, his voice rose with each word until he was shouting. “We play hard. We play with heart. We win.”
We hollered, standing up and crowding him, all of us embracing. I bumped my bucket against Rune’s cage and fist-bumped Hux, then Minns.
Gauthier roared, a deafening call that set fire to those banked embers smoldering low in my belly, “We hoist that Cup.”
The responding shouts and whistles in the locker room were more deafening than the ones in the stands during a must-win game.
I sucked in a breath and exhaled slowly, focusing my mind on the goal.
On the Cup.
The trip through the tunnel passed in a blur. We burst onto the pristine ice like men possessed. The crowd went wild, but it was white noise in my brain. I was manifesting the win, the game unfolding in my mind’s eye. We had this.
The red center line divided the two halves. On one side, the Boomtown started filing out, moving into their stretches and some skating slow laps to warm up. The crowd roared louder, the vibrations from their cheers shaking the barn.
I sized Colorado up. I knew a few guys on the team. They were good.
We were better.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, breathing deep. The ozone scent of the ice machines, the smell of popcorn and hotdogs, the cutting of blades, the bright lights, and the taste of dreams that were right there within our grasp filled me.
We had this.
We were ready. I was ready. I dropped down and stretched, shaking out the last of my tight muscles.
I looked to the stands. Keeley, Hannah, Spencer, Keeley's mom Jen, Spencer's parents, Brian and Lorraine, my mom, brother, Noah, and even my dad were all in the crowd—the most important people in my life were here supporting me.
It was the same for my teammates—their loved ones were here or watching on television and showering us with their encouragement and support.
My gaze caught on the Boomtown’s team mascot, Dusty Kaboom, a caricature of an old-time miner.
He was hamming it up with the Black, orange, and yellow clad fans in the stands and somehow managed to do a backflip down the stairs and land on his feet.
Colorado fans loved their mascot, but like him, they’d all be disappointed tonight.
It was time to give our fans what they’d come to see—San Diego making history. The Seals winning the Cup.
***
The final buzzer sounded. I dropped my stick, tossed off my gloves, and raised my fists in the air. I bellowed and skated toward my teammates converging on the spot where Rune had just won us the game, deflecting a shot on goal that would have evened the score and sent us into overtime.
We’d done it.
We’d won the Stanley Cup.
Jubilation filled me, my heart beating hard and excitement pulsing through my veins.
Pride washed over me. We’d actually done it.
Every decision I’d made, every argument I’d had, was worth it.
I was vindicated. I’d just proven to myself and my family that I was never meant to be a football player.
No matter how much my parents wanted that for my future, it was their dream, not mine.
I’d reached the peak of my sport. I’d summited it and was now standing at the top, victorious.
My brothers were here with me. My family was watching.
The Boomtown were an established team with decades of experience.
They hadn’t seen a Stanley Cup Final for over twenty years.
But they’d come close. We were the underdogs.
We’d been the new team on the block who’d come out fighting from that very first game.
I hadn’t been here from the start, but that didn’t matter to these boys.
We were a family, and just like Gauthier had said in his speech, I would remember this moment and the faces I shared it with until the day I died.
The Seals may not have had a long tradition or decades-long experience, but our scrappy team had just pulled off a coup.
“Y’all did it,” I shouted to Rune and jumped on him, wrapping myself around him like a koala. I kissed his cage and laughed as he spun me around and then playfully shoved me off him. We lost the buckets, and he squeezed my nape.
“That was fuckin’ magic,” he praised. “Your offense was incredible.”