Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Max Stevens
I know it’s him before I see the number. The way he moves across the ice during warm-ups. It’s that particular economy, the absence of wasted motion, that lingers in my mind long after I’ve named it.
Forty-one. Frank Amato. Here for the Chicago-Detroit game on a Thursday night that I didn’t check the officiating roster for because I never check the officiating roster.
I check the other team’s third line and the defensive pairings and whether their goalie has been running hot. I leave the officials to the officials.
Tonight I wish I hadn’t.
With the same attention he brings to everything, he runs the line check with no performance, just the work of a man who has done this long enough to reduce it to pure function.
During warm-ups, he avoids making eye contact with me.
He doesn’t need to. The roster is in his packet.
My name is on it. He has already decided how to read this game before the puck drops.
The first period is clean. My hard work is dedicated to keeping it that way.
Because Trey is observant of everything, he notes that I’ve transformed two potential ugly wins into correct ones, and he skates past me during a line change to remark “nice read” in the distinctive captain’s voice that signifies he’s aware of my actions and not currently seeking an explanation.
I don’t answer. I’ll take the next shift and do it again.
The second period is where Frank Amato starts being a problem.
Not wrong. That’s the thing I have to hold onto.
He’s not making incorrect calls; he’s making precise ones.
A hooking call on me in the neutral zone that goes both ways on this ice approximately twenty times a game and gets called approximately twice.
I was hooking. The call is right. I sit two minutes and watch Detroit press on the power play and think about how Frank Amato positions himself on the ice.
He’s been observing my hands closely. I noticed this behavior during my first shift back.
He’s the one who takes the angle when I’m engaged in a board battle, and he’s the one who positions himself so that his direct field of vision includes my stick arm.
It’s obvious he has made a decision about what to watch.
He has watched a thousand players and learned a thousand patterns and decided mine is in my hands. He’s right. My hands are the problem.
Third period. Tie game. Detroit’s fourth line runs Fuze after the whistle.
Not hard, not a suspension play, but the grinding persistence of a team that wants to win by two a.m. and has decided to play the man rather than the puck.
Fuze goes down. Gets up. Gives me the look that means your call.
I move toward Detroit’s number eighteen.
Amato appears between us. Not dramatically.
He simply positions himself as if he had read the play just four seconds before it arrived.
He’s between me and number eighteen with the calm authority of someone who has stood between larger problems than this. His eyes find mine. Three seconds.
The same from the hallway. A verdict delivered without words.
This time there’s a message in it I didn’t have the context to read before: I know who you are.
I sense what you’re about to do. And I know something else now, too.
I turn away. Number eighteen gets a two-minute roughing minor.
We score on the power play. Trey buries it from the half-wall and the building comes apart and I’m first over the boards and I should be celebrating and I am, I’m celebrating, but the back of my neck is still warm from Frank Amato’s three seconds and what was in them.
After the final whistle, during the handshake line, I pass him at center ice. He’s already looking at his scoresheet. I keep moving.
“Stevens.” I stop. Turn. Amato stands at center ice with his scoresheet in one hand and his helmet in the other, standing with the stillness of a man who chose this moment.
“The hooking call in the second.” His voice is the same off-ice as it is on.
It’s level, designed to carry exactly as far as he intends it. “You knew it was coming.”
It isn’t a question. “Yes,” I say.
He holds my gaze for one beat. “That’s a start.” He turns and skates toward the officials’ room. I stand at center ice for longer than I need to and stare at the space he just occupied. Trey finds me there, already stripped of his helmet, and follows my eye-line to nothing.
“You good?” I don’t answer. I leave for the tunnel.
That’s a start. A few words. Delivered at center ice, in a building full of people who couldn’t hear them, to a man he officially has no reason to address after a clean game. Frank Amato just told me he’s watching. Not the file. Not the stats. Me.
I shower. Dress. Text nobody. Sit in my stall until the room empties. Amato’s assessment this season is the most terrifying I’ve received from the most unfortunate source. I sit in my stall and let it sink in.