Chapter 22 Open Ice
OPEN ICE
Darius
Game seven.
This is what everything comes down to, the place you either become a legend or spend the next fifty years rerunning what you could have done different.
They call it a sold-out crowd but it feels like every motherfucker who’s ever wanted a piece of me is here, the air inside the barn humid with beer, anxiety, and the sticky heat of ten thousand bodies screaming their heads off for blood.
We line up in the tunnel, shoulder to shoulder.
Every guy on the roster is twitching with nerves, but you can tell who’s ready and who’s already writing their own obituary. Marcus spits on the concrete, slaps the back of his glove three times against the wall.
Tommy is dead silent, jaw working a piece of tape into shreds.
Ash is next to him, helmet on, chin already dripping with sweat even though we haven’t stepped on the ice yet, the cut above his eyebrow from last round puckered like a second mouth.
When the doors open, the noise is a single, unified roar, like standing too close to a jet on takeoff.
The arena’s done up in blackout towels, blue and silver, everyone waving them at once so it looks like the world is a blizzard. We skate the lap. I take my net, draw the crease with the tip of my stick.
Ash does his tap-tap on the boards and the sound cuts through the noise like a bullet.
The other team is already lined at the blue, their jerseys freshly laundered, the look in their eyes not fear but contempt. Kruchten, their captain, stares at me like he’s got the next three hours scheduled in his calendar, break us, break me, hoist the cup over my corpse.
We’re the home team, so we get the last change. Coach starts me with the line I’ve played with all year, Tommy and O’Doul on D, Ash at left wing, Raz at center, and Kai, because he’s the only one who can keep up with Ash’s tempo.
The puck drops and it’s a car crash from the first shift, everyone finishing checks, every faceoff a fistfight that just happens to include a puck.
Kruchten is shadowing Ash from the opening second, talking constant shit. At the first whistle, he skates up beside him and leans in close.
Even from sixty feet away, I can read his lips. “Does your boyfriend suck as hard as you do?”
Ash doesn’t flinch. He just grins, gums red, and chirps back. “He benches more than you. And he fucks harder, too.” I catch it, because that’s who I am, always watching, always processing, the guy who never blinks first.
The first period is all nerves, tight passes, nobody wanting to make the fuckup that gets them in the highlight reel for the wrong reason. I see every play two seconds before it happens, the patterns burned into my brain.
The Titans dump and chase, the same as every other game, trying to get bodies in front of me and bang in the garbage goals.
I stonewall three shots in the first minute, each one a little harder than the last. My pads are already humming with the impact.
On the bench, between whistles, the talk is quiet. Tommy whispers, “Watch the weak side, they’re cheating high.” Ash stares at the ice, jaw working, and I know he’s thinking about what Kruchten said, but also about the next shift, the next opening, the next moment he can turn the knife.
On the ice, everything is noise and color, but in the crease, time slows. I can see every bead of sweat, every flash of stick blade, the way the puck skitters on the fresh ice.
Second shift, Ash takes a stretch pass, beats two defenders wide, cuts inside, and gets tripped. No call. He slams into the boards, pops up, and skates to the bench like nothing happened.
Then it’s my turn.
A turnover at the blue, Kruchten with a two-on-one, every muscle in my body firing at once as I shuffle post-to-post, reading the pass, watching his eyes.
He tries to go short side, glove high, but I snatch it out of the air and hold it for the cameras, just to let him know who’s in charge. He bangs his stick on the ice so hard the blade snaps.
The crowd eats it up.
But in my head, I’m only watching Ash, every time he takes a shift, every time he gets lined up for a hit, every time he dangles a defender and then laughs about it on the way back to the bench.
Halfway through the period, we get our first power play. Coach yells for Ash to double-shift. He lines up at the half-wall, hair plastered to his forehead, eyes alive.
The puck cycles around, Marcus bombs a shot from the point, it bounces off a shinpad, and Ash is there for the rebound, quick hands, in the net before the goalie even registers what’s happened.
He doesn’t celebrate. Just skates past the Titans’ bench and gives Kruchten a look so cold it could freeze vodka. The crowd goes nuclear.
Next shift, Kruchten goes after him. He throws a cross-check so blatant even the blindest ref can’t miss it.
The whistle blows, but Ash just gets up and laughs, skating to the box without a word.
On the penalty kill, it’s all about damage control. I’m alone in the net, vision tunneled to the point of pain.
The puck is a blur, but my brain is faster. I track every pass, every tip, every screen. At the buzzer, I’ve made fourteen saves, and the scoreboard reads 1-0, us.
Intermission is a black hole of nerves and adrenaline. The locker room is a fog of sweat, ammonia, and blood, Kai’s got a cut on his cheek, Tommy’s knuckles are already splitting open, and Ash is chugging Gatorade like he’s dying of thirst.
I sit in the corner, eyes closed, replaying the last twenty minutes on loop, looking for any sign of weakness.
Second period starts worse. They adjust, double-team Ash on every possession, start throwing elbows, hooks, anything to slow him down. The ref calls nothing.
It’s prison rules now. We lose a man to a cheap shot, four minutes for roughing, and then it’s trench warfare in front of my net. They get a lucky bounce, puck off a skate, ties the game.
The sound in the arena dies for a second, then comes back twice as loud.
Ash is a marked man now. Every time he touches the puck, he gets dogpiled. But he keeps coming.
Late in the period, we get a chance. Raz wins a faceoff clean, Tommy fires a wrister, and Ash, parked in the slot, threads a pass between two defenders to set up Kai, who buries it clean. Textbook vision.
Ash doesn't even celebrate his own assist, just pounds the glass once and points at Kai. Not showboating.
Just letting everyone know they're alive.
The Titans answer back immediately. Kruchten muscles his way past two defenders, gets loose in the slot, rips one five-hole.
I get a piece of it, but not enough. Tie game, 2-2. He celebrates like he just solved cancer, skates past our bench and makes a kissing face at Ash. I want to murder him.
Third period, everything is pain. My legs are numb, my gloves soaked, helmet dripping sweat into my eyes.
Every time I look up, I see Ash skating, relentless, refusing to give an inch. He draws a penalty, then another, always getting back up, always laughing about it. We can’t get the go-ahead goal.
The Titans’ goalie is standing on his head, and every missed chance feels like a gun to the head.
Then, with five minutes left, Ash does something I will never forget.
He takes a clearing pass, spins off the boards, and dangles not one, but two Titans defenders, slipping the puck between their sticks like it’s nothing.
He’s one-on-one with the goalie, fakes shot, then dekes to the backhand and lifts it top shelf.
The entire building is on its feet before the puck even hits the netting.
He turns, glides to the corner, and just stands there, arms out, letting the sound roll over him. He doesn’t look at me, but I can see the smile in the set of his shoulders.
The next four minutes are hell.
They pull their goalie with a minute left, extra attacker, Kruchten parked in the crease, looking for any tip, any garbage goal.
The puck is in our zone the whole time. I block shot after shot, body in the way, face in the way, whatever it takes. Thirty-eight saves and I feel every one of them in my bones.
Final twenty seconds. Kruchten gets loose, breakaway. It’s just me and him. He tries to go five-hole again, but I don’t bite.
I close it off, and the puck thuds against my pad, harmless. I freeze it, whistle blows.
The faceoff is in our zone, six seconds left. Timeout. The guys skate to the bench, sucking air, jerseys soaked. Coach says nothing. Just looks at us, then nods. “You know what to do.”
Faceoff drops. Titans win it clean, Kruchten to the point, slapshot coming hot. I see it the whole way, glove it, then rip the puck out and toss it down the ice. The buzzer sounds.
It’s over.
We win.
There’s a second of total silence, then the world explodes. Helmets, gloves, bodies everywhere. I’m buried under a pile of teammates, the weight of victory and sweat and the end of a year that nearly broke me.
Ash finds me in the chaos, helmet off, hair sticking up like a lunatic, blood running from his eyebrow. He grabs me, shoves his forehead against mine, and for a second, we’re the only two people in the building.
“You did it, D,” he says, voice raw. “You fucking did it.”
I shake my head, dizzy. “No. We did.”
The rest is noise and celebration and beer dumped over my head and the feel of the cup, heavy and real, in my hands for the first time.
But all I care about is that, somewhere in the noise, Ash is laughing, and it’s real.
And for the first time, I let myself laugh too.
———
Asher
I don’t hear the horn. Not the first one, anyway. All I hear is the sound of my own blood, screaming through the tunnels of my ears like the whole world is about to explode, which, technically, it does.
The buzzer is swallowed up by a stadium’s worth of people losing their collective minds, and then there’s just gloves, helmets, and grown men launching themselves onto the ice in a kind of ecstatic brawl.
I’m on my knees in the slot, panting so hard it feels like my chest is going to collapse.