Delay of Game

by Catherine Gayle

  So in a few days’ time, the two teams playing each other tonight would play again—and it would be all-out war for about a week or two. Best of seven. Winner moves on in the toughest tournament in all professional sports to compete for the Stanley Cup. Loser gets to call it a summer early and go home to work on the perfect golf swing.

  The only things that mattered now were setting expectations and establishing a tone. We may not have gotten into the playoffs in the last five years, but we had no intention of going down easy, and they planned to make us pay for every inch of ice we wanted to take. For both teams, tonight was all about sending a message about what was to come in the first round.

  The matchup would be interesting from a sports network perspective—the perennial playoff contender who had never won the big prize against the team made up of young players hungry to prove themselves and a few aging vets hoping for another shot at the Cup before they retired. It should make for an intriguing series from those storylines alone, but there was a lot more at play than just that.

  The season series between our two teams had grown more and more contentious with every game. We didn’t like them; they didn’t like us. That went back pretty much twenty years or so, well before any of the players on the ice were in the league yet. Sometimes it seemed like we’d loathed each other since even before the Storm came into existence. It was a mutual, decades-old hate fest, and things had gotten progressively nastier each time we’d faced them over the course of the current season. The fact that we would have to play an entire seven-game series against them in just a few days had only served to intensify that hatred, if that were even possible.

  It was still a scoreless game in the third period, and it had been filled with more than just a few hard—not to mention dirty—hits. On both sides. There was no pretending our play hadn’t skirted the line of legality just as much as theirs had. Anyone who tried to argue otherwise was full of shit.

  But what was happening right before my eyes went beyond merely hitting.

  I didn’t see what started it—something in the corner behind our net, where several guys from both teams had converged, it seemed—but I heard a bunch of angry shouting, and a scrum broke out in the blink of an eye. Each of our five guys paired off with a Canuck. Everyone in the building got on their feet—both benches, all the fans. No one could sit with that kind of tension on the verge of seriously boiling over. Our goaltender, Nicklas Ericsson, skated away from his crease and off to the corner so he couldn’t get dragged into the fray.

  That made me breathe a little easier. Nicky had already missed quite a bit of action this season with a concussion. And really, the last guy you ever want fighting in hockey is your goaltender. The more distance he put between himself and all the shit going down on the ice, the better. That was the way I looked at it, at least.

  Every guy on our bench was yelling and tapping his stick on the boards. The coaches paced behind us, screaming at the refs to get the melee under control and cheering our boys on just like the rest of us were.

  But then the shit hit the fan.

  One of the guys in visitors’ white took Andrew Jensen down hard. Jens was our number one defenseman and my road roommate this year. He wasn’t a fighter, but he had answered the call out there just like any of our boys would do in a pinch. Now he was flat out on the ice and not moving a muscle.

  All the guys on the bench went berserk when we saw Jens on his back like that. The linesmen were trying to deal with a couple of the fights that were heading out toward center ice. One of the refs was down on the ice with Jens, and the other was trying to help Eddie Masters, our head trainer, get to Jens since it looked like he was in some serious trouble. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the stretcher come out for him, and that was something you never wanted to see. It almost always meant extremely bad news.

  With all that going on, though, no one was doing a goddamned thing about the asswipe in white who’d just taken out our best fucking defenseman.

  “Stay on the fucking bench,” Scotty Thomas yelled from close behind me. “No one leaves this bench or you’ll never see another fucking minute of ice time as long as I’m the coach here.”

  The assistant coaches were shouting similar shit at us. They just wanted to be sure we all followed the rules. Back in the day, the NHL had experienced issues with bench-clearing brawls, so harsher punishments were instituted now for anyone who left the team’s bench in a situation like this. Automatic suspensions and fines for the player. Fines and possible suspensions for the coaches. Even heftier fines for the teams.

  We all knew the rules.

  I knew the fucking rules.

  But I also knew it was my job to protect my teammates. I could score a goal here and there. I was a serviceable fourth-liner and penalty killer and I could move up the lineup when they needed me to, but I wasn’t going to kid myself. One of the main reasons the Storm kept me on the payroll year after year was because I didn’t let fuckers like that take out the star players on my team. Sometimes doing what was right was more important than following the fucking rules. I knew it. The coaches knew it. The league knew it. Everyone in the whole damn building fucking knew it.

  Center Antoine Gagnon was holding his own with a guy who had a reputation as a fighter, much like I did. Good on the kid. Gags was a second-year guy, really young, who was still trying to establish himself as a regular. I’d never thought of him as a fighter before, though.

  Keith Burns, our other defenseman on the ice for this shift, had his guy pinned against the glass, and they were both trying to catch their breath after a heavy bout. I wouldn’t be surprised if they went another round before the linesmen got to them to break things up. I hoped for Burnzie’s sake they didn’t. We needed him able to play, especially if Jens was going to be out for a chunk of time.

  David Weber was in a big tilt with his guy—another heavyweight fighter for the Canucks—but Webs was a wily veteran who’d been in more fights in his career than just about anyone else on the team other than me. I didn’t need to worry about him.

  Henrik Markusson had never even been in more than a shoving match before, though, at least not to my knowledge. Hank wasn’t holding up well. The guy he’d paired off with was pummeling him with one right hook on top of another. I could only hope Hank wouldn’t get hurt like Jens had. We couldn’t afford to lose either one of them right now with the playoffs being right around the corner. Someday soon I needed to take Hank aside and give him a few fighting pointers just in case he got stuck in a situation like this again. When a line-brawl starts, you don’t always get to pick which players are out on the ice for it.

  But fighting tips would have to wait. This was happening in the here and now. I made notes in my mind, taking down numbers of the guys in white who would need to be dealt with when I finally got the chance—and I would get my fucking chance, since we were going to have a whole playoff series against each other starting in a few days.

  But then I saw it: a streak of white, out of the corner of my eye, heading straight in Nicky’s direction. The same fucker who’d laid Jens out was going for my goddamn goaltender.

  Nicky didn’t have to fight him, at least not according to the rules in place. He could refuse. But if this asswipe started throwing blows, what the hell was Nicky supposed to do? He would have to protect himself, and then he’d be fighting, and that was not something I could let happen.

  “Stay the fuck where you are. No one leaves this fucking bench.”

  I heard Scotty’s shout, and I knew he meant for me—for all of us, really—to stay put and be good little soldiers.

  “That means you, Jonny,” Bergy bellowed from right by my ear. “Keep your ass on the bench. Don’t you fucking put a skate over the boards.”

  Yeah, that one was definitely directed straight at me and no one else. Bergy knew me well since he’d still been playing when I came into the league. I actually fought him once, so he knew exactly what I was. Hockey player. Fighter. Some people called me
a goon. I wasn’t a goon, but I couldn’t sit back and let certain things happen.

  Things like this fucker making a beeline for my goaltender.

  I felt Bergy’s hands on the back of my jersey, trying to physically restrain me and keep me on the bench.

  I didn’t give a shit.

  All that mattered at that moment in time was that it was my job to protect my teammates.

  So that’s exactly what I did.

  BY THE TIME the rest of the team left the ice following our two to nothing loss, I’d already taken off all my gear, showered, and put my suit on to get out of there.

  I’d been kicked out of the game for what I’d done, which wasn’t a surprise to anyone, me least of all. That’s what happens when you blatantly disobey the rules, jump over the boards in the middle of a fight, and beat the shit out of the guy who’d just taken out your top defenseman and was on his way to do the same to your goaltender.

  I was okay with the consequences of my actions. I’d known going in what they would be, so I couldn’t complain about any of it after the fact—not even the automatic ten-game suspension I was going to have to serve.

  One thing I hadn’t considered was the timing of it, though. This wasn’t a good time for a suspension, not that there is ever a good time for one. But this really was bad timing with the playoffs starting in a few days. We needed all hands on deck, but I’d have to sit out of the first ten playoff games we were in. If the team got eliminated before we played ten games in the postseason, the suspension would carry over to the regular season next year.

  Either way, I was going to be sitting in the press box for a long time, and that was not where my team needed me to be. They needed me on the ice. They needed me in the locker room between periods. They needed me doing all the things I’d done all season, but now I couldn’t. I’d helped them out in one way, but I’d royally fucked them over in another way. But there was no time for regrets, even if I’d felt any.

  Scotty would be even more pissed off at me than usual. I knew that. I was prepared to let him yell as long as he needed to in order to get it out of his system. I was prepared to sit in our general manager Jim Sutter’s office tomorrow and hear how disappointed he was in me, even though I hated that worse than anger. It made me feel like I was letting my mom or one of my sisters down.

  I’d have to try not to let Jim’s disappointment get under my skin too bad. Especially since I knew I’d done the right thing, even if the right thing was against the rules.

  What really bothered me was the idea that I might have let my teammates down. We were a band of brothers, however cheesy that might sound, and now I couldn’t be out there holding up my end of the deal for a while. Granted, Nicky would still be able to play—and he was more important to the team’s success than I was. That was the whole reason for me doing what I’d done, wasn’t it? To keep him healthy because we absolutely needed him in the playoffs if we were going to have a chance in hell of doing well.

  Gradually, the boys trickled into the locker room. No one said much. We’d stood up for ourselves, and we’d protected each other out there as best we could, but the Canucks had still delivered us a walloping on the scoreboard. That wasn’t exactly the message we’d intended to send leading into our first-round meeting.

  I was sitting in my stall as they came in. They tapped me on my legs with their sticks as they went past me, and a few of them—Webs, Eric “Zee” Zellinger, and Brenden “Soupy” Campbell—gave me a little whack on the head or the shoulder with their gloves.

  Those were signs of respect around here, not disappointment. It was their way of thanking me for doing what needed to be done. I nodded to acknowledge them. They got it. They might still be disappointed in me because of the suspension, but they knew why I’d done what I had. There wasn’t any need for me to say anything. When Nicky passed me, he held out a fist for me to bump before heading to his stall.

  In the end, they hadn’t taken Jens to the hospital. He’d come to on the ice, and they’d carted him off on the stretcher so they could evaluate him. Nothing was broken. He said he didn’t have any headaches or anything like you’d expect with a concussion, but he was still going to have to go through the league’s concussion protocol since he’d been knocked out cold on the ice. That meant he’d be out at least a week, but if he was lucky, it wouldn’t be any longer than that. Not like me.

  Bergy and Hammer, our two assistant coaches, came into the room after the boys did. Bergy caught my eye, his lips pressed into a thin line. A quick jerk of his head was the only response he gave me, letting me know his take on the situation. It wasn’t all that long ago that he’d been a player, too. He may not be happy with me, but he understood. Hammer didn’t acknowledge me in any way.

  Scotty was the one who would be livid. Because of what I’d done, he was going to be automatically suspended, too. The commissioner would rescind his suspension, of course. That was what they always did in these cases, unless they thought that the coach had sent the player out there. If there had been any cameras focused on the bench, and I was positive there had been, then they would have caught him yelling for us to stay put, and they would have captured the fact that Bergy was trying to physically restrain me. There was no reason to think that Scotty’s suspension would be upheld. His fine would, as well as the one for the team, but the fines weren’t that bad. Not when you made two million a year like Scotty did or had a team owner like Jackson Engels, who had money seemingly growing out of his ears.

  Sure enough, when Scotty came through the big double doors into the locker room, his red-faced glare was directed straight at me. He hadn’t been physically exerting himself on the ice like the boys had, but his forehead and neck were covered in enough sweat to make it seem as though he had just run a marathon.

  “You!” he shouted. He marched across the room, even stomping over the team logo in the middle of the floor—sacred ground in any NHL locker room that’s never supposed to be walked on—and not stopping until he was standing right in front of me. I could feel his wrath as much as hear it. “What in the name of fuck were you thinking? You fucking directly disobeyed me—all of the fucking coaches—and you fucking got yourself suspended.”

  With his right hand, he reached up and rubbed his jaw, like all his shouting was causing him pain. And his breathing was coming in short gasps, but that didn’t stop him. It only slowed him down for a minute.

  I kept my trap shut and took it. He was the coach. He had to get it out of his system, and I had to deal with it. That’s just how it goes. But he seemed even more worked up than normal, and that was my fault.

  “Ten fucking games! Automatic! A fucking appeal won’t do any fucking good on something like this. You got—”

  Scotty had just been getting up a good head of steam when all of a sudden he stopped screaming at me, flexed the fingers of his left arm, tensing and relaxing them over and over again, and swayed like he was going to pass out.

  “Scotty?” Bergy zipped across the room and pulled Scotty’s arm around his shoulder. “Get Doc in here right now!” he shouted, trying to ease our head coach backward and to a chair.

  “On it.” Hammer blew through out of the room, and half the team was on their feet trying to figure out what the fuck was going on and what to do.

  “I’m… I’m fine,” Scotty argued, but anyone could tell that he wasn’t anything close to fine. He wasn’t breathing normally. He was sweating even more profusely than he had been at first. And the look in his eyes was terrifying—wild and darting from side to side as if he couldn’t slow them down or focus on anything.

  Within seconds, Dr. Mitchell burst into the room with the arena’s emergency medical team on his heels. They wheeled a stretcher in, plus some other cart loaded with medical paraphernalia. They forced Scotty to lie down on the stretcher, everyone crowding around to work on him until none of the guys on the team could see him or what was going on.

  What the fuck had I done? I knew I’d pissed him off, b
ut now it looked like I’d gotten him so upset that he had a fucking heart attack or something. Was that what this was? Was this what a heart attack looked like?

  “Sara,” I croaked out, but I didn’t say her name loud enough that anyone else could hear me over all the voices of the men dealing with our coach. But shit, I didn’t know if Scotty was literally dying in front of our eyes. I knew fuck all about what was going on, other than that I was the one who’d caused it, but his daughter ought to be here. She ought to know. She ought to be with him.

  I cleared my throat and tried again. “Sara. Someone needs to get Sara.”

  Hammer came back through the double doors just as I said it. “Jim’s on it, and he’s heading in here, too. He’ll be here in a minute. They both will.”

  Doc’s voice filtered through the room and reached me as he spoke to the EMTs. “He’s having a cardiac event.”

  He was having a heart attack. I slumped down on the bench in front of my stall, unable to process it all. A few of the other guys had heard Doc, too, and the whole room was filled with rumbles as one guy told the next and everyone questioned what was going to happen. I could only stare.

  I’d just killed Scotty. I’d just killed Sara’s father. He was the only family she had, and I’d just gone and given him a heart attack, and now he might be fucking dying while all I could do was sit there and watch, and she was going to be all alone in the world.

  Bergy whistled to get everyone’s attention. “Let’s stay out of their way. Everyone step back and let the professionals do their jobs.”

  The boys backed away, slowly taking off their pads and skates and the rest of their gear. I still hadn’t moved a muscle. I was too stunned by what I’d just witnessed to do anything more than remember to breathe.

  They’d put an IV in Scotty’s arm and hooked him up to monitors and God only knew what the fuck else, and they were starting to roll his stretcher out of the locker room. But Sara still hadn’t arrived from the owner’s box. With all the fans trying to leave the arena, that could easily take several more minutes while she tried to fight her way through the exodus.