Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Max Stevens
Give him nothing.
Her voice in my head for forty-five minutes of hockey.
The weight of it. A trust exercise, not just a request. She is in the press box.
Frank Amato is at center ice. The three of us form a triangle across this building that nobody else in this arena can see.
The ice knows. That’s the thing about hockey — the ice knows when something is different.
The weight of a skate changes when you’re playing scared.
Changes again when you’re playing for something.
I've been playing scared for three years.
Like a man who expects to lose, so he hits first.
Frank Amato is at center ice in his officials’ black and white, hands clasped behind his back, watching warm-ups with the specific stillness of a man who has catalogued every player and already knows what each of them is going to do.
He clocked me the moment I stepped over the boards.
Still tracking me. That’s fine. Let him watch.
I take my warm-up laps. Clean edges. Sharp stops.
I find Toni in the press box on the second circuit, in the same window, third from the left.
She’s not watching warm-ups. She’s watching her father.
Her teeth clenched, her badge is straight and she is holding every piece of herself in place. Give him nothing.
The puck drops. I play the first period like I’m taking a test. First period is physical.
Detroit plays aggressively on the forecheck, two big defensemen who like to grind in the corners, and their fourth line takes a run at Knox on the first shift.
I’m already moving. My feet hit the ice heading for the crease — and I stop. I read it.
Knox is up. Shaking it off. No damage. The ref is right there. I pull wide, stay in my lane, let the play reset.
Trey skates past my shoulder. No remark. But his stick taps my shin pad once. Got it.
Every board battle won correctly. Every read made before the hit. Third shift, their second-line center takes a run at Fuze along the boards. Late hit. Dirty. The kind that used to flip a switch in me. I feel the familiar surge, every instinct I own screaming now, and I don’t go.
I skate to the ref. “Number eleven. Late hit on twenty-two.”
The ref looks at me. Possibly checking if I’m injured or feverish. “Saw it, Stevens.” I skate away.
From center ice, Frank notices. Referees always pay attention when a pattern breaks. Good. Let him notice.
Rourke’s equivalent tonight is a Detroit forward called Mercer, he’s fast, undisciplined, the kind of player who makes his career by being annoying at a professional level.
He runs Knox twice in the first eight minutes.
Both times I hold position. Both times the ref catches it.
Both times it is not me. This is the version of the game Toni has been building in the film sessions and I’m playing it with my teeth clenched because Mercer is making it personal and I’m choosing, actively and expensively, not to let it be.
Frank tracks me. I feel it the way I felt it in the hallway this morning: the specific quality of attention from a man who has decided to watch something and is patient enough to wait for what he came to see. I don’t give it to him.
Second period. We score first, Trey during a power play, top corner.
The bench loses its mind, and I’m over the boards before the horn stops echoing, piling on, Trey grabbing my sweater and yelling something I can’t hear over the crowd.
Detroit ties it three minutes later. Their celebration is fine. It happens.
Tie game. Mercer clips Knox high after a whistle.
Barely illegal, and the bench holds its breath.
I’m already across the ice. Three strides in and I feel it: the angle Frank Amato is taking, the sightline opening up between me and Mercer, the precise positioning of a referee who has already decided what this moment is going to look like.
He wants to see what I do. I stop. Two feet short of Mercer.
I plant and I look at Frank across the ice, and he looks at me, and neither of us moves for one full second.
I turn around. Skate back to the wing. The crowd makes a sound.
That collective exhale-roar of twenty thousand people who expected violence and didn't get it. Trey is at my shoulder before I reach center ice. “Good read,” he says. His voice contains the particular restraint of a man keeping his reaction small because he knows I need the space. I don’t answer. My jaw aches.
Late in the second, their enforcer, a guy named Briggs, six-four, two prior suspensions, comes into the corner after me.
Real weight. An intent to send a message.
I take the hit, stay up, chip the puck to Lucas, and skate back to the wing.
Briggs says something as he passes. I don’t answer.
She asked me to give him nothing. I’m giving him exactly that.
From the penalty box area, I catch Frank Amato in my peripheral.
He’s three feet from me on the ice. Watching me, not the play. I don’t look at him. I watch the puck.
Third period, tie game, six minutes left.
Briggs runs Knox. High, late, the kind of hit that should never happen but always does.
Knox goes down to one knee, and the arena holds its breath.
I’m already there. I stop two feet short of Briggs.
My gloves stay on. My voice is very dull.
“That’s a penalty.” Briggs looks at me. He was ready for me to drop them.
This is something he doesn’t know what to do with.
“Walk away,” I say. The ref is already moving in.
Arm up. Penalty signal. Briggs goes to the box.
Power play. Trey sets up on the half-wall, Lucas on the back door, Fuze in front.
I win the battle for position in the corner, come out with the puck, and thread it to Trey.
His shot is a wrister, short side, nothing.
Two minutes are up, they end up getting one over on Knox, and we are down by one.
A fight breaks out. Briggs and Lucas in a minor disagreement, the ref pulling them apart.
I skate away from the pile. Not because I don't feel it, but because I need to breathe. The space this team gives me when I need it is the thing I’m most grateful for on this earth.
I breathe. Forty-one seconds left. We kill the remaining time trying to score but failing. Final whistle. The handshake line takes three minutes. I shake Briggs’ hand. He looks at me differently. He's right to.
On the way back to the tunnel, Frank Amato passes me.
We don’t speak. But he looks at me with the same three-second assessment he gave me in the lobby this afternoon, but this time it reads differently.
Something that hasn't been decided yet. Not a verdict this time. I go to the locker room. I don’t know if it’s enough.