Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Max Stevens
The Garden has a specific sound. Every arena does, if you play in enough of them.
Boston sounds like a building that expects to win.
Washington hums with bureaucratic patience.
Chicago, our roar has a distinct frequency that resonates in my back molars.
Tonight is Philly, and Philly sounds like a dare.
The boards are softer in the corners, worn down by two decades of bodies.
The ice here is old in a way you can feel in your skates…
There's a distinct smell to away ice. Your body learns these things without being asked.
Mine learned the difference between home ice and away ice before it learned geometry.
The penalty box at Philly is directly behind the visiting bench, which means I can see Coach’s expression for the entire two minutes every time I’m in it.
Coach has fifteen expressions. I can identify all of them.
The one he’s wearing right now, at the end of the second period, says: don’t test me tonight. I’ve memorized that one in particular.
The thing about protecting your goalie is that it’s not a decision.
It's a reflex. Same as blocking a punch you never saw coming. For two seasons, Knox has played goalie for us, serving as Madman’s backup his initial season.
He’s got this thing he does. It’s a particular stillness before he locks in that indicates when he’s fully focused.
Tonight, through two periods against Philly, he’s had it.
Fourteen saves. Two were robbery. One was flat-out theft.
Their defenseman, an asshole named Calloway, six-three, a known cheap-shot artist, two prior suspensions, comes into the crease after the whistle and clips Knox high with a follow-through he absolutely does not need to take, something in me trips like a breaker switch.
Not a decision. A reflex. I’m there before I think it.
My gloves are gone before Calloway finishes his follow-through, and then it’s bodies and noise and the chaos of a hockey fight that’s real.
This is not a tap-and-dance, not two guys holding jerseys, it’s actually real, with Calloway’s first punch glancing off my chin and my answer landing square.
Someone grabs my arm. I shed him. Someone else piles in from the side.
The crowd draws one collective breath and holds it.
I see Knox get up. That’s the only thing I need.
Once the linesmen arrive, the contest finishes.
They give me two fighting majors and march me toward the locker room while the third period starts without me.
I sit on the bench in my own tunnel and watch on the monitor and work through a roll of pre-wrap with my hands because otherwise I’ll put them through the wall.
There’s blood down the front of my sweater and I’ll need to change it before returning to play.
This hinges on Calloway receiving the Instigator penalty.
Then, the officials would waive the automatic game misconduct for me.
But it’s still a shitstorm that’s going to come down on my head.
The monitor shows Philly pressing. Knox is sharp.
The team is holding. My lip is split. Tomorrow, my jaw is going to ache.
My knuckles are bleeding. On the monitor, Trey wins a face-off cleanly.
Lucas sets up at the left circle. The game keeps moving the way it does but without me, fine, always fine.
I sit in the tunnel and witness it happen and think about reflexes.
Whether they’re always worth it. Whether this one was.
Late in the third, the coach sends me back out.
I wasn't expecting it. I look at him and he stares at the ice instead of at me, which is how Coach says I know what I’m doing, and I’d rather not discuss it.
I snap my helmet back on and step over the boards, and the crowd makes a sound I feel in my back teeth.
The board battle comes fast. Their guy is bigger than me by twenty pounds, and I don’t care.
I win it on footwork, chip it low, take the hit.
It’s a good hit, clean, the kind that would have made me swing six weeks ago.
I stay up because I’m twenty-two years old and I have been taking hits since I was nine and I have never once gone down on a clean check because my first coach taught me that one thing, at least.
Center to Lucas. Lucas buries it. The arena loses its mind completely.
I breathe. I skate away from the pile, and the guys give me room.
Seems they always do when I need it. I’m sucking air.
Blood in my mouth from where my lip split, iron-warm.
The noise is enormous and I’m looking at the tunnel.
By the time I’m sitting in the locker room, my phone is blowing up.
My sister, Piper, whose texts I read because she will actually come to the arena and find me if I don’t.
Piper: You’re everywhere. Put your phone away and don’t say anything to anyone.
Piper: I mean it, Max. Not a word.
Piper: The clip has 2M views. It’s been 11 minutes.
I put my phone face down on the bench.
Worth it. Except I sense what the next forty-eight hours will look like now.
The league call. Sully from PR arriving with that disgusted expression he gets.
Coach saying I told you without saying it.
And her. Toni, with her clipboard and her file on me and the look she had this morning in the weight room when I told her I’d been watching, which she almost let herself react to before she pulled it back behind glass. That look is going to be different now.
My phone goes again. Unknown (872): This is Damian Price, NHL Player Conduct. We need to discuss tonight’s incident. Monday, 9 am.
That's the one.
Placing the phone down, I catch sight of someone at the tunnel entrance. I get a glimpse of her. She’s there.
When did she come down from the stands? She’s in the tunnel mouth, NHL badge, iPad under her arm, not writing. Just observing. The glass between us doesn’t do much. I can see her face clearly enough.
She saw the fight. She watched me come back out. She witnessed the goal.
I look at her.
She doesn’t leave.