25. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ROWAN
I wake up at ten past seven on our national championship morning, and the first thing in my head isn’t Michigan. It’s a hallway with a stack of chairs against one wall and Gianna Reeve standing in the middle of it telling me she loves me.
That’s what my brain gives me first. Not the game.
Not their forecheck. Her, six steps down a hallway, saying my name so I would turn around.
And me walking back to her. I said it back without thinking about it first. I didn’t consider it or weigh it or wonder whether I was supposed to wait.
She said it, and I heard myself say it back because it had already been true for longer than I realized at the time.
There’s something that happens to me when Gianna comes around. Something that has been happening for months. Now I have words for it.
I look at the ceiling for another minute and remember the way she said it. I want her to say it again. Then I get up because there’s a hockey game.
Championship morning looks almost exactly like every other game morning.
Breakfast is at eight. Half the room is in team sweats, and the other half looks like they got dressed without opening their eyes.
Marsh eats four eggs without speaking. Owens is on his phone.
Stanley eats continuously with no visible enjoyment while explaining to Beaumont why he might or might not buy a car.
Percy sits at the end of the table with plain toast. Blue says maybe four words all morning.
Benson looks significantly better than he did yesterday, which just means he probably slept. Good. He needed it.
We have treatment at nine. My shin is better, exactly like the trainers said it would be.
Everybody keeps checking the time casually.
I catch Benson doing it once, then catch myself doing the exact same thing forty seconds later.
Stanley sends a picture to the group chat. It’s the whiteboard from the kitchen at Hawthorne, propped in the corner before we left.
1. DON’T COST US.
2. DON’T TAKE THE BAIT.
3. SHOW THE FUCK UP.
4. DO THE WORK.
5. WIN THE FUCKING THING.
Nobody answers right away.
I stare at the picture.
Win the fucking thing.
We wrote that in our kitchen in January. Stanley pressed so hard on the last one that the marker squeaked. Gianna made a comment. Everybody laughed. Then we went back to eating like we hadn’t just written down the thing that would end up following us for the rest of the season.
Blue finally sends a thumbs-up. I send one too. That is all anybody says about it.
The team meeting is at twelve, and Coach keeps it to twenty minutes.
It’s all hockey. Michigan’s forecheck. What they did to us in Detroit.
How aggressively they sent two men deep and forced our defensemen to make decisions before we had full possession.
Their power play, which is one of the best in the country and hurt us badly three weeks ago.
Their second pair. Faceoffs. Discipline.
Fuller spends four minutes on discipline without looking at anyone in particular. Then he closes the laptop.
“That’s what I’ve got,” he says. “You’ve beaten very good hockey teams over the last three weeks. Nothing about tonight is beyond you.”
He picks his jacket up from the back of a chair. “Reeve.”
Benson stands. He looks around the room for a second before saying anything.
“I’ve lived with Stanley for four years, which means I’ve spent four years listening to this idiot tell me exactly how Camden was going to win a national championship before he graduated.”
Stanley nods seriously. “I did say that.”
A few guys laugh.
Benson points at him. “And the annoying part is, he actually believed it. Even when we sucked. Even when we didn’t get close. He believed it enough that eventually the rest of us started believing it too.”
Stanley’s smile fades into something more real.
Benson looks around the room again. “But we didn’t get here because Stanley decided this was our year. We got here because everybody in this room decided to do the work when nobody was watching.”
Nobody moves.
“One game,” Benson says. “That’s it.”
Stanley stands beside him. “Three weeks ago, Michigan took one from us.”
Benson nods.
“Tonight,” Stanley says, “we take the one that matters.”
That gets the room. Guys howl. Somebody hits the table. Benson grabs Stanley by the shoulders, and Stanley immediately tries to pull him closer.
“Let’s make out now.”
The whole room breaks when Benson tilts his head towards him then shoves his face away.
“Get the hell away from me,” Benson laughs.
I laugh my head off. Mackey is next to me, belly laughing. Stanley lifted the mood immediately and knows it. It’s exactly what we needed. The tension goes out of the room just enough that everybody can breathe again.
Then Benson looks around. “One more game, Wolves.”
Stanley slaps both hands onto the table. “Let’s win the fucking thing!”
The bus leaves at one, and the arena is nothing like it was when we practiced here.
There are people outside at two in the afternoon.
Michigan has turned one side maize. Camden has a section on the other side with a barrier between them.
There is a band somewhere. Somebody has a giant sign with Stanley’s face on it, which Stanley spots through the bus window and immediately starts drawing attention to.
Then we turn the corner and see a line of guys with C-A-M-D-E-N painted across their chests.
The bus loses it.
Guys are yelling, pounding the windows, laughing.
I look at Blue beside me. “This is fucking good.”
He nods once.
It is.
Camden showed up.
We go in through the loading dock the way we always do, walk down a concrete hallway, and enter the locker room.
Then we get ready for our last hockey game.
I see Gianna during warmups.
I’m coming out of the far corner between reps and coast along the boards toward our end.
I glance up on the way past. Her mom is on one side of her.
Lucy is on the other. Her hair’s down, and she’s swaying slightly to whatever music is playing through the arena.
When she sees me, she smiles. Then she holds up one finger. One.
I laugh into my cage and get back in line.
Benson lines up for the opening draw with Michigan’s center bent across from him. The official looks once in each direction and drops the puck.
Benson gets tied up, and Michigan comes away with it.
Their winger puts the puck behind us before I’ve even finished turning, with the first forechecker already coming hard.
I get there below the goal line with him on my back, and he finishes the hit hard enough that my shoulder goes into the glass. The puck keeps moving.
Mackey gets to it, but Michigan has another guy on him before he can turn. He sends it around the wall, and they keep that in too. Twenty seconds into the game, all five of us are below the tops of the circles and Michigan still has possession.
A shot comes through traffic. Percy catches it and holds.
I skate toward the faceoff circle while Mackey passes me on his way into position.
“Again.”
I nod.
Michigan wins that draw too.
This one turns into another forty seconds in our end before we finally get the puck out, change, and do almost the exact same thing on the next shift.
Michigan is getting two guys below our goal line before we can establish anything, and every time we try to move the puck up the wall, somebody in white is already there.
At 3:40, Percy has to kick out a shot from the slot after we lose a puck we should have gotten out. Less than two minutes later, he stops another one after Michigan turns a harmless dump-in into thirty seconds of possession.
When I finally get back to the bench, I’m breathing harder than I should be six minutes into a game. I grab my water and lean forward while Fuller comes down behind us.
“Quit forcing the wall.”
Nobody answers him.
We know.
Stanley’s line is still out when we finally start spending more than ten seconds at a time on the other side of center.
Michigan has backed off just enough that our forwards can get through the neutral zone without dumping every puck, and the game starts opening in little pieces instead of all at once.
I’m halfway through a change when Stanley gets the puck along the wall.
He’s come off that side hundreds of times this season. Usually he carries it wide and waits for something to open underneath him, but Michigan’s defenseman is already leaning that way, expecting it. Stanley sees it too. He plants his outside skate and cuts underneath him instead.
Straight into the middle.
Straight into the part of the ice Aspen has been yelling at him to attack since New Year’s Eve.
Their defenseman realizes too late and reaches across him. His stick catches Stanley through both arms, but Stanley keeps his feet and gets enough of the puck to send it toward the net from maybe seven feet out.
It goes under the goalie’s arm.
For half a second, Stanley keeps moving like he isn’t sure.
Then the red light comes on behind him.
Our bench is over the boards before I hear the horn from the goal.
Stanley turns toward the corner with both arms spread, yelling something I can’t hear over our side of the building.
Marsh gets to him first and nearly puts him through the glass.
Owens piles in from the other side, Benson jumps on both of them, and by the time I reach the corner, Stanley is somewhere underneath everybody.
When we get back to the bench, he’s still grinning hard enough that his mouthguard is hanging out.
“One,” he says.
Benson shoves him toward the door. “Sit down.”
Stanley sits.
The scoreboard above us says 1–0.
We keep it for less than three minutes.
Michigan gets possession high in our end late in the period and moves it across the point before we can close. Their defenseman shoots through four bodies. Their winger is planted directly in front of Percy, and Percy is already dropping when the puck changes direction somewhere in the traffic.
He looks behind him.
So do I.
It’s in.