25. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #3
With just under five minutes left, we ice it. Michigan sends its best guys back over for the draw, wins it clean and keeps us trapped long enough that my legs start getting heavy. We finally get a puck beyond their defense with around three and a half left, and five of us change almost at once.
I sit down. Take two breaths. Fuller points at Mackey and me. Of course. I get back up.
Michigan’s goalie starts toward the bench with 2:20 left.
“Six!” somebody yells.
By the time I get over the boards, he’s gone.
Michigan has six skaters spread across the zone within seconds. Fuller has trusted Mackey and me with these minutes for months, so there is nowhere else I would be anyway.
The puck moves around the outside while we protect the middle. They send it low, bring it back high, switch sides and try again. Nobody chases farther than he has to.
The clock drops under two minutes.
Then Michigan gets the puck back to the point.
Their defenseman moves it across before Benson can reach him, and I’m coming up from the corner when I see the player at the top of the circle receive it.
His hands separate. His stick comes back.
I know what is coming before the puck stops rolling.
There is a lane straight to Percy. I get into it.
The shot catches me on the outside of my left thigh.
The impact is so hard I don’t feel pain at first. It is just a violent crack against the padding and the strange sensation of my entire leg switching off underneath me.
Then it hits.
Heat tears through my thigh so fast my stomach turns. The muscle locks solid, then starts throbbing deep enough that every pulse feels like somebody driving the puck into the same spot again.
My skate slips out from under me. I go down hard on my side. The puck ricochets into the corner. Mackey gets there first.
I try to push myself up and my left leg doesn’t cooperate. The second I put weight through it, pain bites through the muscle and the knee tries to fold.
“Fuck.”
The building is so loud I barely hear myself.
There’s still more than a minute left.
Mackey has the puck pinned against the wall with two Michigan players trying to dig it loose. I get one skate underneath me, then the other. My thigh feels swollen already, tight inside my pants, and every stride sends another hot pulse through it.
I make it three steps before the whistle goes.
The trainer is leaning over the boards before I reach the bench. “What got you?”
“Thigh.”
“Can you put weight on it?”
“Yeah.” Technically.
I sit, and the second I stop moving, the pain gets worse. The outside of my leg is burning now, a deep, ugly throb underneath the sting where the puck hit.
The trainer gets a hand against the padding.
I nearly come off the seat. “Jesus Christ.”
He looks at me. “You sure you can go?”
I’m watching the ice. Michigan has six guys out again. There’s just over a minute left in the national championship, and Mackey is already looking toward the bench waiting to see who Fuller sends with him.
“Yeah.”
“Rowan,” he warns.
I nod. “I can go.”
He stares at me for half a second, then points toward the ice. “Then move it before it tightens up.”
I stand. The first step hurts like hell. The second one is worse. By the time I get to the door, I can skate on it.
There’s 1:11 left when I go back over the boards. My first few strides are ugly, but once I get moving, it holds. That’s all I need from it.
The faceoff is in our end. Benson crouches over the dot with Blue beside him, Mackey is on my right. Michigan has six skaters again and no goalie.
The puck drops.
Benson wins it back, but not far enough. Blue gets a stick on it along the wall, Michigan gets another one underneath his, and suddenly four guys are jammed into the same few feet of ice trying to move a puck nobody can see.
It finally kicks loose toward the middle.
Percy drops over it before anybody else can reach it.
Whistle.
I look at the clock.
Forty-one seconds.
Half our bench is standing now.
We line up again.
Michigan wins this one and gets the puck high before we can pressure. They move it once across the point, then down the wall, looking for something through the middle. I stay inside because my leg is not giving me enough to chase even if I wanted to.
Their winger gets the puck near the circle and throws it into the slot.
Twenty-two seconds.
Someone gets a stick on it. The shot comes through anyway. Percy takes it high off the shoulder. The puck drops into the corner. Still out. Owens gets there first and manages to knock it farther along the wall before Michigan closes on him. It isn’t enough to clear, but it buys us a few seconds.
Blue comes through behind him. He gets the puck on his forehand, turns his body between it and the guy reaching for him, and sends it hard up the boards.
This one gets out.
More than out.
The puck keeps going all the way into Michigan’s end.
Fourteen seconds.
Their defenseman has to turn.
He reaches the puck near his own goal line with eight seconds left and wheels back up ice.
Seven.
They come through center as fast as they can.
I am standing just inside our blue line, trying to keep my weight off the outside of my left leg without giving away the middle.
Michigan still has the puck.
Five seconds.
Their winger looks up.
There is nowhere left for him to go.
And I know.
Not because the horn has sounded.
Not because anybody has thrown a glove.
Because there is not enough ice left between them and Percy.
Three seconds.
There is not enough time.
We’re going to win.
Two.
The thought lands whole.
One.
The horn goes.
Our bench comes over the boards before I can move.
Gloves fly. Somebody throws a stick high enough that I lose it against the lights. Percy drops to both knees in the crease with his arms over his head, and Marsh reaches him first, hitting him hard enough to take both of them onto the ice.
Mackey gets me from behind. I drop onto one knee. Pain tears through my thigh so sharply that my whole leg jerks, but it barely registers underneath everything else.
I’m yelling. I have no idea what I am saying. Maybe nothing. The sound coming out of me does not feel like a word.
Then Stanley is there. He grabs the back of my helmet with both hands and screams directly into my cage, his face red, eyes wide, every word disappearing into the noise around us. I grab his jersey because I need something to hold onto, and he shakes me hard enough that my teeth click together.
Blue crashes into us from the side. Blue, who barely celebrates anything, is screaming too.
I start laughing.
Percy gets pulled out of the pile near the crease with his mask gone and his hair plastered flat against his forehead. He makes it maybe three feet before somebody else grabs him and he disappears again.
Then Benson gets through.
I see his face before he reaches me.
He’s crying.
Not trying not to. Not wiping it away. Just crying in the middle of the ice with seventeen thousand people around us and a national championship horn still echoing through the building.
He grabs both sides of my helmet and presses his forehead against mine. His mouth moves. I can’t hear him. I grab the front of his jersey.
Then Stanley hits us. Blue does. Percy next.
The whole group tips sideways, and suddenly I’m on the ice with bodies on top of me, somebody’s elbow in my ribs, a skate jammed against my shin pad and Stanley laughing so hard he can barely breathe.
Percy lands somewhere near my shoulder.
Benson is still holding onto somebody.
Blue is shouting.
And for a few seconds, nobody tries to get up.
Four years in that house.
Every practice. Every fight. Every stupid rule on that whiteboard.
All of it.
We fucking did it.
The handshake line takes longer than I expect because nobody rushes it. Michigan is wrecked. Their goalie barely looks up. Their captain holds onto Benson’s hand for several seconds and says something to him, and Benson nods through all of it before pulling him into a quick hug.
By the time one of their defensemen reaches me, I’m putting less weight on my left leg than I mean to.
He looks down at it. “You good?”
“Yeah.”
He gives me a look that says he does not believe me, then laughs once and shakes his head. “Fucking hell. Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
“Enjoy it.”