CHAPTER THIRTEEN SUDDEN DEATH
By the second overtime of the conference final, victory had stopped looking heroic.
The series against Colorado had consumed thirteen days and nearly everything Milwaukee possessed.
The Summit won the first game with speed at altitude. Milwaukee answered at home behind Brock’s two assists. Colorado took Game Three. Tyler scored in overtime to win Game Four. Brock missed most of Game Five after his knee locked during warmups, and the Frost lost without him.
Facing elimination in Game Six, Tyler produced a hat trick and refused to collect the old weekend reward.
“Ledger is closed,” he said afterward.
Brock opened one eye from beneath the ice packs covering his knee and ribs. “Temporary insanity.”
“Playoffs.”
“Same thing.”
The victory forced Game Seven in Milwaukee.
Neither captain slept the night before. They lay naked in the shared bed without trying to convert tension into physical release.
Brock held Tyler. Tyler counted Brock’s breaths.
At four in the morning, they went to the kitchen and ate cereal from mixing bowls because every clean dish was in the dishwasher.
“What if this is the last game?” Brock asked.
Tyler knew he meant more than the season. Brock’s playing future remained unresolved.
“Then we play all of it,” he answered.
At the arena, a message waited above both captain stalls.
NOTHING SAVED FOR TOMORROW.
Keller had written it in black marker.
The game began with Colorado scoring two goals in the first nine minutes. Milwaukee tied it before intermission. The second period produced no goals and three injuries. In the third, each team scored once. Regulation ended two to two because both goaltenders turned panic into impossible saves.
The first overtime lasted twenty minutes without a whistle long enough for anyone to think. Tyler hit the post. Brock cleared a puck from the goal line. A Colorado forward struck the crossbar so hard the sound silenced the arena.
When the horn finally sent them to intermission, players did not speak. The stakes had moved beyond language.
It looked like thirty exhausted men trying to remember how legs worked.
The Milwaukee Frost and Colorado Summit had played eighty-three minutes without deciding who would reach the championship.
The score remained two to two. Sweat soaked every base layer.
Blood marked the ice near both benches. Every collision required bodies to rise through pain that would matter tomorrow.
There was no tomorrow for the losing team.
Tyler sat beside Brock during the intermission before double overtime. Trainers moved around them with towels, electrolyte bottles, tape, and urgent questions.
“Hands?” Tyler asked.
Brock flexed both inside his gloves. “Working.”
“Knee?”
“Attached.”
“Actual answer.”
“Seven.” Brock looked at the bruise spreading beneath Tyler’s left eye. “Head?”
“Clear.”
“Actual.”
“Very clear.”
The trainer checked Tyler’s pupils and agreed.
Keller crouched before them with the whiteboard. “Colorado pinches both defensemen when Hayes carries high. Lawson, trail the rush. Hayes, if the lane closes, put it where he can reach.”
Brock knocked one glove against Tyler’s. “One play.”
“Two captains.”
They climbed over the boards.
The arena rose around them. Milwaukee fans had been standing for an hour, black towels moving beneath white lights. Every shot produced a roar. Every blocked attempt ended in a collective groan.
Colorado controlled the first shift. Brock cleared two rebounds and absorbed a hit behind the net. Tyler collected the puck, carried through center, and was forced wide.
Line change.
They returned three minutes later.
Colorado nearly ended the season on the next faceoff. Their center won the draw backward, and a shot traveled through four bodies toward the net. Brock saw it late. He dropped one knee and caught the puck against his thigh.
The impact folded him.
Tyler cleared the rebound, then circled back instead of leaving the zone.
“Up,” he said.
Brock pushed against his stick and rose. “Play.”
Tyler looked at the pain around his mouth. “Actual?”
“Nine.”
“Bench.”
“After the shift.”
They survived another forty seconds. At the bench, the trainer examined Brock’s thigh while Keller sent the third pairing over the boards.
“Deep bruise,” the trainer said. “No fracture unless you lie about sensation.”
“Sensation.”
“That is not an answer.”
Brock named every finger and toe the trainer touched. Tyler listened from one seat away while forcing air into tired lungs.
“Your turn,” Brock said.
“For what?”
“You’re holding your side.”
Tyler removed his glove. A stick had caught him beneath the ribs during the previous shift. The skin already reddened.
“Five,” he admitted.
“Actual?”
“Six.”
Both captains returned before either trainer approved.
The next five minutes belonged to goaltenders. Tyler created a breakaway and ran out of angle. Brock blocked another shot with his shoulder. Colorado’s captain reached the crease alone and failed to lift the puck over Milwaukee’s pad.
Fatigue made every opening enormous and every decision slow.
With seventeen minutes gone, Keller shortened the bench. Tyler and Brock took every second shift.
“You two still communicating?” he asked.
“Painfully,” Tyler said.
“Good. Win before I have to skate you myself.”
Their final shift began after an icing call trapped Colorado’s tired line. Tyler leaned over the faceoff circle. Brock waited at the point, weight held carefully off one leg.
The puck dropped.
Milwaukee won it. Tyler carried high, exchanged with Brock, and cut toward the wall. Colorado cleared but could not change. Brock retrieved at center and sent Tyler back into the zone.
Tyler won a board battle and passed to Brock at the point. Brock’s shot struck a shin pad. Colorado countered. Brock turned, pain reducing the first stride, but reached the slot in time to break up the chance.
The puck came back to Tyler.
He accelerated.
Open ice appeared through center. A Colorado defenseman backed toward the blue line. The second defender, Grant Mercer, approached from Tyler’s blind side.
Brock saw him.
“Tyler!”
The warning arrived one fraction too late.
Mercer’s shoulder struck Tyler beneath the ribs.
The hit lifted him from the ice.
His back hit the boards. His helmet struck glass. Air vanished. For one white instant, sound and vision collapsed.
The puck remained near his stick.
Tyler saw Brock entering the zone through a narrow tunnel of light.
Keller’s instruction returned.
Put it where he can reach.
Tyler fell to one knee and pushed the puck forward with one hand.
It crossed beneath Mercer’s stick.
Brock received it above the circle.
He had time for one stride.
The shot left his stick low and hard.
It passed between the goaltender’s pad and the post.
Red light.
The Frost had won.
The arena exploded.
Brock did not raise his arms.
He turned toward Tyler.
Tyler remained against the boards, one hand pressed to his ribs.
Brock crossed the ice while teammates poured from the bench around him. He dropped beside Tyler and removed one glove.
“Look at me.”
Tyler lifted his face. “Goal?”
“Goal.”
“Good pass.”
Brock’s expression broke between relief and fear. “Terrible pass.”
“You reached it.”
The medical staff arrived. Brock refused to move until Tyler answered every orientation question.
Name.
Tyler Hayes.
Location.
Milwaukee.
Score.
Three to two.
“Relationship to the large man trying to interfere with the exam?” the doctor asked.
Tyler looked at Brock. “Complicated.”
Brock’s laugh sounded close to pain.
The doctor helped Tyler stand. The arena roared again when he raised one hand.
Only then did Brock celebrate.
Teammates surrounded both captains at the tunnel entrance. The conference trophy waited at center ice. Keller accepted it, then refused to touch it according to playoff superstition. Tyler stood beside Brock for the team photograph with one arm held tight against his ribs.
Brock’s hand remained at the back of his waist, steady and protective.
In the medical room, Tyler submitted to neurological testing, rib imaging, shoulder examination, and questions repeated often enough to become insulting.
No concussion. No fracture. Severe rib and back contusions.
Muscle spasm. Cleared to travel home with observation and ordered to rest forty-eight hours.
“Championship starts in five days,” Tyler said.
“Then you have forty-eight hours,” the doctor answered.
Brock listened to every instruction twice.
The locker-room door opened before the doctor finished. The rookie winger entered carrying the conference trophy with both hands while Keller and half the roster crowded behind him.
“Trophy got lost,” the rookie said.
“It belongs upstairs,” Tyler answered.
“Team voted.”
The rookie placed it on the medical counter between boxes of gloves and gauze. No player touched the silver surface. Superstition permitted carrying it, apparently, but not celebrating with it.
Keller looked at Tyler’s imaging results, then at Brock standing close enough to block the overhead light. “Doctor says no head injury?”
“No concussion,” the doctor confirmed.
Keller exhaled. “Then congratulations. You scared ten years off me.”
“You look younger,” Tyler said.
“Pain medication affecting judgment?”
“He refused it,” Brock said.
Tyler turned. “I accepted anti-inflammatory medication.”
“After arguing.”
“It was a discussion.”
The team laughter eased something inside the room.
Players filed past Tyler one by one. Some touched his shoulder. Others struck fists against his uninjured hand. The goaltender placed the game puck beside the trophy.
“That pass,” the veteran center said. “Idiotic.”
“Successful.”
“Still idiotic.”
Brock agreed too quickly.
When the roster left, Keller remained. “Lawson, the entire team is upstairs. Go take five minutes.”
“I’m staying.”
“I know. That is why I am ordering five.”
Brock looked at Tyler.
“Go,” Tyler said. “Remind them you scored.”
“You made the pass.”
“We can continue this argument for decades.”
The word stopped Brock.
Decades.