Chapter 9
TAYLOR
I was a bleary-eyed mess as I stepped onto the ice for warmups that night.
Pregame nap? Barely slept. Last night? Didn’t sleep nearly enough. On the plane? Less than an hour.
And now I had to pull off eighteen to twenty minutes of ice time. Fuck my life.
We needed to be on our toes tonight, too.
Calgary was coming into tonight after back-to-back losses, and they’d been embarrassing losses.
Scarborough had stomped them 5-1 the night before last, and two nights earlier, Champlain had shut them out.
They’d been a mess, and they’d had last night off, so they were well-rested, had a massive chip on their shoulders, and were ready to come in and redeem themselves.
We could win, but they sure weren’t going to make it easy.
And apparently we weren’t going to make it easy on ourselves, either—five minutes into the first period, we were on the penalty kill. Cams was in the box for tripping, and Vasily and I fidgeted on the bench while we watched the special teams set up in our defensive zone.
“Not good,” he muttered.
“No, but our PK is good,” I said even as I restlessly bounced my knee. “Calgary’s power play isn’t that great.”
Vasily made an unhappy noise but didn’t gainsay me.
The ref dropped the puck, and Nix won the faceoff.
He immediately whipped around and sent it flying down the ice, clearing it out of our zone.
Brody shot after it along with one of Calgary’s skaters.
Those of us on the bench shouted encouragement; I didn’t know if he intended to make an attempt at a shorthanded goal or just waste the power play’s time, but either way—good on him.
Brody managed to maintain possession and keep it away from the opposing players. Nix entered the zone too, and they passed it a couple of times. No scoring chances, but they wasted a solid thirty seconds of Calgary’s power play.
One of their forwards did finally manage to snipe it away, and Nix and Brody sprinted for the bench for a line change.
“Nice job,” I said to Nix as he dropped onto the bench.
He nodded sharply, focused on the action as he took a swig from his water bottle.
With under a minute to go on the man advantage, Calgary finally set up, and they managed two shots on goal. Then one of our guys cleared the puck, and the penalty kill did another line change, this time swapping out all four players.
One of Calgary’s forwards had the puck and bullied his way into our zone, not even slowed down by the two penalty killers who tried to get in his way.
I held my breath because I knew what was coming. Nix managed to get in there and very nearly knock the skater off the puck, but it wasn’t enough. One lightning-fast backhand later, Calgary scored with four seconds remaining on their power play.
The crowd cheered, as did the home bench. The visitors’ bench was completely silent.
Brown came out of the box and skated back to the bench, looking sheepish as if he’d just cost us the game.
“Keep your chin up,” Vasily told him. “Still plenty of hockey left to play.”
Brown shot him a surprised look, as if he hadn’t expected the encouragement, least of all from our temporary star player.
“He’s right,” Coach said. “We’re only down one, boys. Get to it!”
I wasn’t at all surprised he sent out my line and the top D pair for the next shift. All five of us were well-rested from the two-minute penalty, so we were ready to even up the score.
At first, it wasn’t looking good. Calgary got us into our own end and kept us there.
But then I got the puck away from a forward at the same time I dodged a check from another, and I shouted, “Chevy!”
Vasily was locked on me, and he was ready when my puck landed square on his tape. Ready, and completely unguarded. He tore out of the defensive zone.
A second later, a Calgary defenseman was speeding toward him, and I winced in anticipation of the open-ice check he was about to deliver. Though Vasily wasn’t small, the defenseman was bigger; no amount of skill could change physics.
And then…
The defenseman was toppling to the ice while Vasily continued his charge toward the goal.
What the fuck?
Well, I could watch the replay later. Right now, I needed to stay with my linemate and complete this play.
Not that he needed me, apparently. There was a skater hot on my heels, but Vasily was miles ahead of everyone, flying toward the goal with no one in front of him but the netminder.
I didn’t imagine anyone in the building was surprised when the goal light came on.
Calgary wasn’t happy about it, though, that was for sure. Maybe because they still had that massive chip on their shoulder, or maybe because they thought we had a ringer and they were pissy about it.
As if they’d ever complained about a player from Calgary’s NAPH team coming down for a stint.
Well, whatever. We had a goal on the board, and I was still marveling at how Vasily had made it around that beast of a defenseman.
I wasn’t the only one, either.
“I’ve watched this four times, Chevy.” Coach shoved the iPad into Vasily’s hands. “I don’t know how you fucking pulled that off.”
Vasily chuckled as he took the iPad. I leaned in because I wanted to see this too.
On the screen, slowed way, way down, Vasily was speeding toward the offensive zone with the puck on his stick.
As he crossed into the neutral zone, there was that monster of a D, closing in on his left side, dropping his shoulder a little and clearly preparing to knock Vasily off the puck and his skates.
And—there. Just before the guy would’ve hit him, Vasily hit the brakes, then veered hard to the left mere inches behind where the defenseman expected him to be.
Before the defenseman could recover, Vasily whipped around him, their skates and bodies narrowly missing, and he kept going, the puck never leaving his stick as the D-man went sprawling behind him.
The mechanics of it wasn’t a big mystery. It was the agility and speed that blew my damn mind.
I whistled. “Holy shit. That was some—” I lost my train of thought when Vasily’s eyes met mine through our faintly fogged-up visors.
Oh God, I was so stupid for him. After watching him maneuver on the ice, and then seeing those gorgeous eyes with that wicked and ever-so-slightly cocky glint—fuck me.
“My only regret?” he said, still grinning. “I didn’t get to see him faceplant.”
I snorted and gestured at the iPad. “Well, now you can watch it over and over in slow mo.”
“Eh. It isn’t the same as watching it in real-time.”
I just laughed, rolling my eyes, and we both watched it again, because it was pretty funny. The best part was the utter shock on the guy’s face when his center of gravity shifted beyond the point of no return, and he realized he wasn’t going to make contact with Vasily.
“Think he’ll try to make you pay for that?” I asked. “Making him look like an idiot?”
Vasily huffed. “He can try.”
“Shit. I kind of want to see that now.”
He laughed, elbowing me. “Of course you do. And besides, I didn’t make him look like an idiot. He did that all by himself.”
“Uh-huh. You think that’ll stop him from trying to make you pay?”
“Probably not.” He flashed me another wicked—and seriously disarming—grin. “He can try.”
That defenseman did try to exact retribution from Vasily near the end of the third, but it didn’t work out the way he’d hoped.
Vasily took the punch and didn’t retaliate, and we wound up with a power play while the dumbass went to the box for roughing.
The defenseman’s pride and Vasily’s refusal to take the bait gave us the chance to score a power play goal, which tied the game in the final minute.
And then in overtime, Brown—who’d still been beating himself up over his costly penalty in the first period—potted his first PHL overtime goal.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen him celebrate more exuberantly.
In the bar at the hotel, he wasn’t even drinking all that much, but he was grinning the whole night.
Good for him. Penalties happened, but it never felt great to be the one in the box when the other team scored on the power play. A little redemption went a long way sometimes.
We didn’t stay out super late that night. We were all still wiped from flying in last night, and we had to practice again tomorrow before getting on the bus. Road trips were not for the faint of heart.
I slept hard that night. Even thoughts of Vasily couldn’t keep me awake, and I passed out the second I hit the pillow until my alarm went off.
Then it was downstairs to breakfast before the bus took us to Calgary’s rink for an earlyish practice.
After that, we filed onto the bus for the four-hour drive (maybe five, given the snow).
I was honestly surprised we were taking the bus from here to Edmonton in January.
Both cities were experiencing snow because, hello, Alberta in January, but the roads were reasonably clear and there were no storms in the forecast. Hopefully that held; my major junior team had been stranded in Buffalo once because a massive storm had dumped a massive amount of snow on the city the morning after we’d flown in.
I wondered to this day if the coaches and chaperones had ever recovered from wrangling a team of restless teenage hockey players stuck in a hotel for two solid days.
Well, so far so good on this trip. We’d see what happened on the much longer bus ride from Edmonton to Winnipeg.
I’d just taken a sip of my coffee, and I very nearly spat it out when someone took the seat next to mine.
“Did you miss the snow when you lived in Vegas?” Vasily asked, casual as could be.
I somehow didn’t sputter my coffee, and after I’d swallowed it, managed to sound relaxed and normal. “Sometimes. But then I’d visit my parents in Michigan during Christmas and remember how much I hate ice that’s not inside a hockey rink.”