Grizz
The arena is a living thing tonight, throbbing, hungry, all teeth and noise.
Third period on our home ice and the ravenous Vipers fans are on their feet.
It’s usually a winning combination. Front-row fans pounding the glass, the crowd roaring truly believing they can will the puck across the line through sheer volume.
The Buffalo Wolves are clinging to a one-goal lead, and every moment is more tense than the last.
The whistle shrieks and play stops mid-stride. The puck—deflected off a stick—skitters up and into the stands. A wave of boos rolls down from the upper bowl, mixed with that deranged, gleeful scramble of people reaching for the sudden coveted souvenir.
Thirty-two.
That’s enough time to break your heart in ten different ways.
Tanner is out here with me, and the second we’re circling toward the dot, I angle toward him. “This is bullshit,” he says, eyeballing the enemy. “Number 15 has been taking cheap shots at you all game.”
My eyes turn toward the Wolves’ bench, then back to him. He’s breathing hard too, but he’s always calmer than I am, like his anger goes through a smarter filter before it reaches his mouth.
“Yeah,” I mutter. “Refs got blinders on tonight.”
I jerk my head toward the corner where it’s been happening.
The cross-checks after whistles. The nasty behind-the-play elbows when the play is in transition.
The stick taps that aren’t taps. The kind of shit that bounces off because of the adrenaline but you’ll sure as fuck feel in your body the next morning.
“He clipped me behind the net,” I hiss. “Then he slashed Coen and—”
“I know,” Tanner cuts in, voice firm. “I know. But listen to me, now’s not the time to retaliate or do anything stupid.”
He glides closer, shoulder almost bumping mine.
“We get back at him by lighting up the scoreboard,” he says. “Tie it. Then we win it in overtime.”
The simplicity of it is refreshing. I take a breath, deep enough to hurt, and my visor fogs for half a second before it clears.
“Yeah,” I say, though my blood is still boiling. “Yeah. Fine.”
Tanner’s mouth twitches. “Good. Because you’re about to win this draw.”
The ref skates in, lines up at the dot. He’s the only calm person in the building. The noise swells again—fans chanting, stomping, screaming—an avalanche pressing down on the ice.
I set my stick, knees bent, shoulders loose the way I’ve always been since taking face-offs as a little kid. The Wolves’ center squares up across from me, eyes hard, expression carved from stone. My world narrows to the dot, the puck, the next second.
The ref drops it and time snaps back into motion.
My stick chops down. I win it clean—feel the little impact as the puck skitters backward—and our defenseman snaps it to Tanner, who receives it on his forehand.
He makes a move, a quick shift of weight that sells one direction and takes another.
A Wolves’ defender bites, and Tanner is past him in one smooth cut, hips square, edges sharp.
The crowd explodes—anticipation, not celebration yet, but that rising howl that says go, go, go.
I take off.
I’m already hustling to the far post, head up, scanning lanes, legs burning. I can feel the clock without looking at it, like it’s a pulse behind my eyes.
Twenty.
Nineteen.
Eighteen.
I yell, loud enough to cut through the roar. “Tanner!”
And I tap my stick on the ice—once, twice—hard. A beacon. Actually, a demand.
Tanner sees me. I can tell by the way his shoulders lift, by the way his head turns a fraction. But the passing lane isn’t there yet. The Wolves have bodies stacked in the slot, sticks down, trying to suffocate anything that breathes.
So Tanner shows why he has a reputation for high hockey IQ.
He skates a little higher, toward the blue line, drifting up and out like he’s going to pull back and reset. It’s subtle, but it drags defenders with him. Their formation stretches. Their heads turn.
And in that stretch—
I’m alone.
Wide open at the far post, no stick on me, nobody sealing me off. Just empty ice and the net sitting there yawning at me. It’s the prettiest sight in hockey for a forward.
I angle my blade, ready. Knees bent. Hands soft. All I have to do is breathe and finish. The clock is bleeding out.
Five.
Four.
Tanner’s eyes catch mine once more. He’s got it now—the seam, the opening, the one line of daylight in a forest of legs.
He rips the pass.
A laser.
It leaves his stick flat and true, a bullet sliding across the ice right to me. Right to my blade. Right to the moment that either makes you a hero or haunts you.
Two seconds.
I lean in, already tasting it—hearing the eruption, envisioning the red light, feeling the team crash into me at the glass—
And then the puck hits a bad patch, snow buildup in the goalie’s crease.
A skip.
A tiny, stupid hop off the ice, like the rink itself decides it wants to ruin my life.
It jumps over my blade.
Over.
My.
Fuckin’.
Blade.
For a fraction of a second my hands still move like I’m going to catch it anyway. The puck sails past, harmless, sliding behind the net.
The buzzer screams and the horn blares.
The arena sound drops into this stunned, disbelieving roar—half outrage, half grief. I don’t think anyone processes what just happened.
I stare at the net.
At the empty space where the puck should’ve been.
Then I tilt my head back, looking up at the rafters. Is there an explanation written in the steel beams?
You have got to be fuckin’ kidding me.
I take one slow breath, and it feels like I’m swallowing fire. And then—right on cue—number 15 from the Wolves skates by.
He doesn’t even look at the puck. He doesn’t even look at the clock. He looks at me as he swings his stick hard.
It catches me in the back of the legs, right behind the knee pad—deep, mean pain that makes my muscles jerk. My skates scrape, and for a second I almost go down.
He leans in as he passes, voice low and ugly.
“Way to finish,” he sneers. “Fuckin’ pussy.”
The refs don’t see the whack.
They never see it. They see the puck, they see the clock, they see the obvious. They don’t see the cheap-shot shit that happens in the shadows—behind legs and bodies, behind the story they’ve already decided they’re watching.
My legs throb where his stick caught me. The pain is biting and hot, and it stacks right on top of the miss, right on top of the buzzer and the split second where the prettiest sight in hockey turned into an empty net and a skipped puck.
The crowd is still roaring, but now it’s a different kind of noise—rage mixed with disappointment, accented by disbelief.
I can feel it vibrating through the boards and every instinct in my body tells me to go after that fucker and make him pay for that chop.
I consider it. I watch as he celebrates with his teammates and I know if I go over there…
if I retaliate, the benches will clear. It will be a free-for-all.
Instead, I turn my back. My blood is boiling as I step over the wall, one skate at a time, hands heavy on my stick. My chest is heaving from anger as much as exhaustion. I want nothing more than to destroy something or someone.
Anything will do.
I need to get off the ice and into the locker room. I need to get away from the lights and the noise and the expectation that I’m a better human than people usually give me credit for.
I’m halfway toward the tunnel when a voice cuts through everything. “Grizz! Grizz! Over here—Grizz!”
A TV reporter, perched by the bench with a mic in her hand and a camera operator already angling the lens. Her eyes are bright, hungry, but the last thing I want is a microphone in my face, so I ignore her, turning toward the tunnel.
And nearly run Daisy over. I see the empathy in her eyes for the loss, for that failed goal. But I also see that she’s in business mode, her expression calm and controlled, bracing for impact and trying to prevent the building from collapsing.
I keep moving, stepping past her.
“Grizz,” Daisy calls, her hand grabbing onto the sleeve of my sweater, and I’m forced to stop. Her voice is patient but stern. “Nationally televised game. They get one postgame interview with whoever they want. You know the deal, same as always.”
I stare at her as though I don’t recognize her. “Now?” I grind out, my fury refusing to dissipate.
“I know,” she says, quick. “But yes. Now.”
My anger sloshes around inside me, looking for somewhere to go. I want to shove it into the locker room, into the walls, my gloves. I want to swallow it whole.
Instead, I turn toward the reporter because the cameras are already on me and because Daisy is right, and because in this league you don’t just play hockey—you perform compliance.
The reporter smiles. “Grizz McAvoy,” she says, mic lifted. “Tough loss tonight. We’re live—” She shoots a look at the camera operator. “Roll it.”
A red light blinks on the camera. The building’s noise fades into a distant roar. All I hear is my own breathing.
“So, Grizz,” she says brightly, “what’s your overall takeaway from this game?”
I blink at her. I can feel sweat cooling under my gear, turning clammy. “We didn’t get it done,” I say. “We had chances. We didn’t finish.”
She nods like that’s adorable.
“And the ending there,” she presses, eyes narrowing. “You had a wide-open look at the net in the final seconds. What happened?”
My jaw flexes. “Puck bounced.”
“Just a bad hop?”
“Yep.”
She leans in a fraction. “You looked frustrated. Were you rattled by the physical play? We saw a lot of contact from Buffalo—especially number 15.”
I can feel Daisy’s presence beside me, like a hand hovering over a switch. I know what she wants: Don’t. I know what she needs: Control.
The reporter keeps her smile, but her eyes are knives. “Do you think the referees let too much go tonight?”
I stare at her. My grip tightens around my stick. “No comment.”
Her smile doesn’t falter. “No comment. Okay. But fans are going to wonder—do you think that impacted your ability to make the play at the end?”
Something in me snaps, like a tendon overstretched.