Chapter 8 #2
“Yep.” I nudged his arm. “Now warm up before Coach sends us both to the minors.”
He laughed, and we both started skating to loosen up our legs.
Maybe pointing out that he’d made it into the big leagues hadn’t been such a hot idea, though.
As practice went on, and throughout the day as we all went through our pregame routines, his nerves were visible from space.
He was jittery and anxious; hockey players were notorious for not being able to sit still, but Trews was way too twitchy.
By the time we hit the ice for warmups, I was genuinely surprised he could still skate.
That wasn’t good. Especially not when he was playing here. He’d hate himself if he shit the bed during his Los Angeles debut.
Time to pull his attention in a different direction.
While he was doing some stretches near the penalty box, I skated up beside him. “Hey.” I lowered my voice. “You want to know something about the other team?”
He turned to me, eyebrows up behind his visor. “What?”
“Number fifteen? Dodson?” I nodded as subtly as I could toward the other end of the ice. “He’s real easy to rile up.”
Trews grinned. “Yeah?”
“Mmhmm. Annoy the shit out of him, and he’ll make mistakes.”
“Doesn’t like getting chirped at?” the kid asked. “Or doesn’t like getting the puck taken away?”
“Both, but chirps especially piss him off. If you can steal the puck and talk shit at the same time, he might even break a stick over his leg.”
Trews cackled. “Ooh, this is going to be fun.”
I laughed and tapped his skate with my stick.
It was a strategic move, of course—Dodson really was entirely too easy to goad into making costly mistakes.
It also had the other desired effect, though: as near as I could tell, Trews forgot all about the nerves he had about playing in this arena.
All through the rest of warmups, he kept shooting glances toward the other team, grinning to himself.
After puck drop, whenever we were on the bench, I could practically hear the gears turning in his head as he tracked Dodson’s movements.
If Dodson wasn’t on the ice, then Trews zeroed in on other players, similar gears turning behind his wicked eyes and smartass grin.
Hell. That worked better than I’d hoped, and I filed it away for future games—when his nerves threatened to get the best of him, redirect him into ice gremlin mode.
It wasn’t just keeping Trews focused, either.
Dodson was, predictably, not happy about the pest chirping at him and getting in his way.
Coach seemed to have caught on, too—he had Trews and his D partner, Astala, playing more minutes than usual.
I mean, why not give the rookie more ice time if he’s distracting the star forward enough to keep him from scoring?
About five minutes into the second period, Trews and Astala were again on the ice at the same time as my line—and Dodson’s.
As I was setting up for the faceoff, I did my usual glance around to make sure I knew where everyone was.
When my gaze landed on Trews, I had to bite down on my mouthguard to keep from laughing. He was laser-focused on Dodson.
The puck dropped. Dodson won the draw, and he quickly passed it to one of his wingers.
Davis was closest to the winger, and he poke-checked the puck away. Not enough to gain control, but it was enough to make the winger lose possession. Perfect. Davis managed to grab the puck, and—
A whistle blew.
What the hell?
I turned around right as an official shouted, “Two minutes for cross-checking!”
“Oh, come on!” Dodson barked. “That was not—”
“You want an unsportsmanlike, too?”
That was when I realized Trews was down. He was no worse for the wear, pushing himself back up on his skates, but the wince said he’d taken a hard hit. A crosscheck, apparently, and while he was miles away from the puck.
I skated up to him as he was taking off one of his gloves. “You okay?”
He nodded and gingerly rubbed his neck with his ungloved hand. “Think I can sue him for whiplash?”
I grimaced, and I was about to make a smartass comment when the crowd started roaring in a familiar bloodthirsty way.
I spun around, and my heart jumped.
Avery and Dodson faced off amid scattered gloves and sticks, their fists up and their mouths moving, though I couldn’t hear a word they were saying over the crowd. Their faces filled in the blanks, though—they were both pissed, snarling and shouting as they squared off.
It was Dodson who finally took a swing. Avery deftly avoided it, then grabbed a handful of Dodson’s jersey and landed a hard hit to his face.
Dodson staggered a bit—I think the only thing holding him upright was the grip Avery had on his sweater—and he managed to block the second blow.
Then fists were flying, and the crowd was screaming, people banging on the glass as players tapped sticks on ice and boards.
Dodson got a grip on Avery’s jersey and, I thought, his chest protecter, and he spun him around, pulling him off-balance. They both toppled, Avery landing hard on his back, which only egged on the Dodson-favoring crowd.
The refs stepped in, of course; they always did once the players went down.
Someone managed to haul Dodson off Avery.
Avery was on his feet in a heartbeat, still spitting nails and shouting after Dodson as blood ran down his lip and chin.
I jumped in and grabbed him, pushing him back with a hand on his chest.
“Crosscheck the rookie like that again!” he snarled past me. “I fucking dare you!”
“Hey, hey.” I nudged him back a little more. “Easy.”
He didn’t even look at me. His gaze was locked on the man he still clearly wanted to fight.
“Five minutes,” the ref told him. “Cool it, or you can take a misconduct, too.”
That seemed to get through, and Avery eased off a little. He was still pissed, but he pulled his attention away from Dodson. He acknowledged the ref with a nod.
There was blood on the ice, so the ice crew came out to quickly clean it up.
I turned to Avery again. “You good?”
He swallowed. “Yeah.” He flicked his gaze toward Dodson again, and—shit. Avery wasn’t just pissed—he was shaking with fury. His eyes flashed and he didn’t even seem to notice the blood on his face. “Motherfucker is going to eat his teeth if he does that again.”
I blinked. “I… Trews is okay. Just so you know.”
Avery’s gaze flicked to me again. Then he looked around, and he found Trews, who was skating alongside Astala, probably waiting for the ice crew to leave so we could resume playing.
Slowly, Avery relaxed. “Good.” His shoulders dropped. “Jesus, the way he went down…” He swallowed hard and shook his head.
I just nodded, still puzzled by his reaction. It wasn’t like the penalty had gone uncalled. And Trews hadn’t been hurt—sore, yes, but no worse for the wear. He’d been up on his skates before Avery and Dodson had dropped gloves.
“I should…” Avery tilted his head toward the box. With a reluctant grin, he said, “Give ’em hell while I’m in there, eh?”
I laughed. “You know we will.” I clapped his shoulder, and he headed for the box.
Dodson got into the other one, and he seemed to have calmed down, too, at least enough that he didn’t start screaming at Avery through the glass divider.
A second Los Angeles player joined him to serve his crosschecking penalty.
Well, now we had a power play. I was pretty sure we could make L.A. pay for that stupid crosscheck and put Avery back into a good mood.
We did, too. L.A. didn’t have a great penalty kill this year, and it only took thirty-three seconds for us to get past them and put a puck behind their goalie. That gave us a one-goal lead, too, which seemed to have Avery in better spirits when he finally left the box.
Even better, halfway through the third period, the score was 3-1 thanks to a certain rookie defenseman scoring his first ever professional goal.
“Nice one, kid!” I smacked Trews on the back. “Great place to get your first goal!”
He blinked, then looked around, and that starstruck expression from earlier came back.
Holy shit, his eyes said. I just scored my first goal… here.
He smiled like a kid on Christmas for the rest of the game.