The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 1

by Roy MacGregor

  Norbert Philpott came running to tell the four roommates what was happening as they arrived. “Someone dumped laundry detergent into the Jacuzzi!” Norbert shouted. He had his father’s Camcorder.

  There were men in business suits running around and looking very annoyed. Several women with gold hotel badges stared at the youngsters from the hockey teams as if they’d all been in on it. The Screech Owls were one of four teams booked in the hotel. Several members of one of the teams–the Portland Panthers, Travis knew, since two of the kids had Panthers T-shirts on–were laughing and pointing, much to the fury of one of the hotel women who was scowling directly at them.

  One of the workers emerged from the bubbles with three opened soap boxes, the tiny ones from the machine in the laundry room, and held them out to some of the others as evidence.

  “I bet they washed off their prints,” Nish said, giggling.

  But none of the adults was laughing. The men in suits and one woman with a hotel badge were huddled with Muck and three other men in sweatsuits–coaches’ uniforms–and all were talking very quietly, very seriously. Muck was shaking his head.

  “He’ll think it’s me,” said Nish.

  “Was it?” Travis asked.

  “Up yours.”

  Muck called the Screech Owls to the Adirondack Room for 9:30 a.m. Everyone knew what it was about. Everyone also knew that the soap storm had been caused by someone else, not one of them. Another team, perhaps. An angry hotel employee. But not the Screech Owls.

  Having nothing better to do, Travis and Nish showed up early, and at the top of the escalator on the way to the Adirondack Room, they came across a tearful Sarah Cuthbertson and Sareen Goupa being led into a corner by Muck and Mrs. Cuthbertson. Sarah’s mother seemed very distraught.

  The two girls had dark circles around their red eyes and looked as if they had been crying. Could it be that they had soaped the Jacuzzi? Sarah? Sareen? Nish and Travis could not believe it. The girls never goofed around. The idea of either of them even thinking of such a thing, let alone carrying it off, was too mind-boggling to consider. But why the tears? Why were they so upset?

  The boys soon found out.

  When everyone got into the room, Muck called order. Mr. Dillinger, looking just as serious as Muck, shut the big doors and the place fell eerily silent, everyone waiting for Muck to speak. He seemed to start and catch himself several times, unsure of what to say.

  “First off, I don’t believe it was any of our team, all right?”

  “Couldn’t be,” Mr. Dillinger said from behind the gathering.

  “I don’t have to tell the Screech Owls how to behave. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a hotel, a motel, or you’re being billeted with families, you treat where you are like it’s your own home. Understand?”

  No one had to answer. They had heard this line from Muck since the first time they’d headed out of town for a tournament.

  “I don’t know who did that stupid prank and I don’t much care. I know it wasn’t anyone in this room. But that being said, you have to understand you’re all under suspicion because I would doubt very much that those responsible are about to own up.

  “I have been informed by the manager that one more incident and every one of the teams booked in here is out, no matter who’s responsible. Out in the streets.

  “You understand the seriousness of the situation. It doesn’t matter if any of us did it or not, we do one slightly foolish thing and we may as well have done it. So be on your very best behaviour from here on out.”

  There were mumbles of agreement from around the room. Travis was confused. None of this explained why Sarah and Sareen had been crying. It wasn’t as if they had planned to spend the day in the Jacuzzi.

  “We’ve got a bigger problem than that on this team,” Muck said. He looked over at Sarah and Sareen, who were standing with Mrs. Cuthbertson, their heads down and backs slightly turned so no one would see their red eyes.

  “These two young women say they were awake all night long. Pizza deliveries coming to the wrong door, banging on the walls, someone partying half the night.”

  Travis thought he saw Muck’s gaze flicker sharply toward the back of the room. Travis turned. Mr. Brown and some of the other men stood there. Mr. Brown’s face was red. His eyes looked little better than Sarah’s. But not from crying.

  “We’re here to play in a hockey tournament. We’re not here on vacation and we are most assuredly not here to keep young players up all night long when they need their sleep. I’d like a little more co-operation. Understand?”

  Travis walked down the hill to the rink with Nish, Derek, Data, Willie, Sarah, and Sareen. The girls said they were in the south wing with parents on all sides of them; all the boys were in the west wing of the hotel, with the coaches at the end of the hall. Sarah thought there had been several parties going on, but the only parent’s voice she recognized was, of course, Mr. Brown’s.

  “But it wasn’t only him,” Sareen said.

  “The pizzas were worse,” Sarah said. “They came three times. The last one was at 4:30 in the morning! And it wasn’t Mr. Brown who ordered them. We could hear him yelling at the poor guy when he went to his door.”

  Maybe the yelling was part of it, Travis thought. Maybe Mr. Brown was getting back at Sarah for going to Muck about the bribes.

  And maybe it was nothing but too much noise. It had happened before at other tournaments. But usually it was other teams’ parents. The Screech Owls’ parents were generally pretty quiet–for hockey parents.

  Travis’s group arrived at the Olympic Center at the same time as the Portland Panthers, who had come down the big hill in their very own bus–no rental for them, it even had the team name and colours painted on the side.

  The Panthers’ coaches and managers were dumping the equipment out onto pull carts to take into the arena. The bags all matched and sported the team logo, and each had a number on it that would match a sweater and a player. Just like the NHL. The coaches and managers wore matching blue track suits with “Panthers” in bold yellow lettering across the back. They, and all the team, had blue caps with similar lettering. They looked almost professional.

  Travis always felt funny running into the players from another team. He was always amazed at how big and tough the other team seemed, always bigger, always tougher, always seeming more cocky, more sure of themselves than Travis’s team. He wondered if perhaps the Screech Owls appeared the same way to the Panthers. But since he knew the Owls so well, had seen most of them cry at some time, afraid at others, he didn’t see how that could be possible. How could the Screech Owls scare another team?

  The Screech Owls dressed quickly, quietly, efficiently. Travis adored these moments before a big game, the way zippers sounded coming undone on bags, the way some of the players could rip shin-pad tape around their pads so quickly and loudly that it sounded like a dirt bike was coming right through the wall. He liked the sound of Mr. Dillinger filling water bottles, the sound of old tape coming off a stick and new tape going on.

  Travis divided players into two groups: those who taped from the tip of the blade to the heel, and those who began at the heel and worked to the tip. Those who began at the heel, he believed, were sloppier and did bad jobs. Travis himself would never use a stick that had been taped heel to tip.

  Mr. Dillinger taped tip to heel, the right way, and sticks taped by him were perfectly smooth, each wrap perfectly overlapping the next. Still, Travis preferred to do his own sticks, even if they didn’t look quite as good.

  Mr. Dillinger wasn’t whistling. He wasn’t joking. Perhaps he was upset about what had happened to Sarah and Sareen. Perhaps it was just that he knew how important this first match would be against the powerful Panthers. He came into the room with a pair of newly sharpened skates in each hand, one pair for his son, Derek, the other for Dmitri, who had a thing about freshly sharpened skates. Dmitri had to have them done immediately before a game. If his skates had been sharpened the day befor
e–even if they hadn’t been used since–he would ask for a fresh sharp. And Travis thought his own thing about ringing a shot off the crossbar during the warm-up was weird.

  Derek, on the other hand, rarely worried about his skates. Travis smiled to himself. Perhaps with this being Lake Placid and the Olympic arena and the Screech Owls’ first international tournament, it was a case of the trainer being more nervous than the player–especially since the trainer was the player’s father.

  Muck began speaking, slowly, his words smooth and long, meaning he was relaxed and ready.

  “You don’t know this team. From what we can gather, they can put a lot of rubber in the net. The ones to watch are their big centre, number 5, and they’ve got a very quick little defenceman, number 4. They move the puck around well.

  “We know we can sometimes panic and run around like chickens with their heads cut off. We can’t have any of that against a team like this. So we stay calm out there no matter what happens.

  “We get down a couple of goals I want you to forget there’s even a scoreboard out there. We play our game and it’s either good enough or it isn’t. Understand?”

  No one had to answer. They did.

  “I may have to make some line changes as we go. If I change you, it doesn’t mean anything except I think you’ll help us more on another combination. It doesn’t mean you’re hurting us where you are, understand?”

  No one did. No one dared to ask. Every player thought Muck was talking directly to them. Everyone thought it meant exactly what Muck had said it did not mean–that he was worried about certain players hurting the team. Travis swallowed hard and figured everyone else in the room was swallowing at the same time.

  Ten minutes into the first period, Travis understood. Muck had been talking about someone specific: Sarah Cuthbertson, Travis’s centre, the Screech Owls’ leading scorer.

  Sareen, her eyes still red and swollen, was sitting on the bench as the back-up goaltender who would only come into the game if Guy Boucher happened to get hurt. But Sarah, as always, had taken the opening face-off.

  The game had begun terribly. Sarah had lost the face-off and the opposing centre–number 5, big, dark-haired, and menacing–had dumped it back against the boards near his left defenceman, the little number 4 that Muck had warned them to be careful around. Dmitri hadn’t listened: he lunged for the puck, hoping to tip it over the defenceman’s stick and into a break, but instead the quick little defender had beaten Dmitri to the puck, slammed it off the boards, past Dmitri and Sarah and perfectly onto the tape of the big centre, who had already turned and had a step on Nish. The puck reached him just as he crossed the blueline. Another few inches back or a fraction of a second slower and it would have been offside; but it wasn’t, and number 5 had nothing between himself and the net but poor Guy Boucher, wiggling wildly backwards to play the angle of a long shot at the same time as he protected his crease. Guy was too slow, too late. Number 5 fired from the top of the circle, a high rising slapshot that blew past Guy as if he was flapping a wing at it. 1–0, Panthers.

  Six seconds into the game and all they could think of was the score, even though Muck had told them to erase the score from their minds.

  Travis couldn’t remember a shorter shift. Six seconds! Not being involved in the play, he had hardly moved. He hadn’t even shaken the butterflies from his stomach, hadn’t increased his pulse or broken a sweat–and here was Muck calling them off the ice and sending out Derek’s line.

  They sat out three shifts, Derek’s line going out twice more and the game beginning to move back onto equal footing. Once, Mr. Dillinger, in crossing toward the defensive units with a water bottle, gave Travis a gentle, encouraging pat on the arm, but Travis didn’t want encouragement. He wanted Muck to call Sarah’s name so they could head back out and make up for things.

  “Sarah!” Muck finally barked. “And stay with your man, Dmitri.”

  They skated back out and Travis could hear some of the parents shouting. Dmitri looked cross, angry with Muck for seeming to put the blame on him. The face-off was to be in the Panthers’ end of the ice, and Sarah was determined not to lose this one. Twice the linesman waved her around to get her to face correctly, and each time she went back to turning sideways with her bottom hand reversed, her lower grip almost at the heel of the stick, a certain sign that she was going after the puck and it was going straight back and across to Nish for the shot. Travis thought the official might wave her out altogether and he’d have to take the face-off when, suddenly, the linesman threw the puck down so hard it bounced straight back up.

  Sarah was waiting for it. She clipped the puck out of midair on the bounce and drew it back, as Travis had known she would, to Nish, who moved in for the shot. The dark Panther centre was rushing him, though, and sliding with his pads toward the puck, so Nish, instead of hammering the puck into the pads and having it bounce out over the blueline, stepped lightly around the sliding player and rifled it around the curve of the boards so it came perfectly to Travis, who was waiting, expecting.

  Travis took a moment to look. A Panther defender was rushing him and trying to poke check–a mistake–and Travis took advantage of his decision by sliding the puck between the player’s outstretched stick and his skates and twisting around so he was free again, the defenceman piling shoulder-first into the boards. Travis faked a pass to Sarah at the front of the net and swung the puck back to Data, who was pinching in from the far point, and Data shot.

  But the shot never came through. It hit the Panthers’ little blond defenceman on the chest, bounced over Sarah’s stick, and landed in empty space between the crease area and the blueline. Quick as a cat, the little defenceman gathered up the puck and sped away, with Sarah in pursuit and Travis, lost in the corner, well out of the play.

  The little defenceman and the big dark centre raced down the ice, the puck moving twice between them. Dmitri, caught skating the other way, could not get back. Data, having taken the shot, had fallen trying to turn hard. He scrambled back fast but not quickly enough, and was also behind the play. Only Nish was back, his skates snaking backwards almost as quickly as the two Panthers’ could stride forward.

  Sarah was the only Screech Owl forward in position to get back into the play. She missed her check when the puck first went off the little defender, and tried to catch him, but by the blueline Sarah was digging deep, her head down, shoulders swinging, a tired player seeming to be wading waist-deep through water rather than scooting on this magnificent, hard ice, as the two Panthers were doing.

  The big centre cut cross-ice, the little defenceman cutting so he went over the blueline just ahead of his teammate. Nish was dead centre, expecting the crisscross, playing the pass. The little defenceman looked to pass, moved his stick to pass, and Nish gambled, going down on his knees and arms to block the pass that never came. The little defenceman tucked the puck perfectly back in on his skates and kicked it niftily around the sprawling Nish, the two Panthers now home-free on Guy Boucher.

  Guy, caught in an impossible two-on-none situation, had no choice but to play the shot. But to do so, he had to leave the far side of the net wide open for an easy tip-in. Number 4 faked a shot, passed quickly, and big number 5 swept it into the net effortlessly.

  Panthers 2, Screech Owls 0.

  Two shifts, two goals-against for Sarah, Dmitri, and Travis. They didn’t even have to look for Muck’s hand signal to know they were coming off. All three skated over, heads down, knowing they were in trouble.

  But Muck wasn’t angry. When Sarah sat down he came up behind her, placed a towel around her neck, and leaned down and whispered into the ear-hole of the helmet. Travis couldn’t hear a word. He could only, out of the corner of his eye, catch Sarah choking back tears and nodding in agreement. Muck straightened up, tapped Sarah affectionately on the shoulders, and then went first to Travis and then to Dmitri.

  “We’re going to mix the lines. You’re on with Derek for the rest of the game.”

  T
ravis felt terrible for Sarah. She was too exhausted to play. The lack of sleep and crying had worn her down. Muck had done the right thing. Sarah would play a few shifts with the other lines, but the scoring they so desperately needed now would have to come from Travis and Dmitri and Derek, who was as good a replacement as the team had for Sarah. Muck had done what he had to do, and Muck–perhaps alone–didn’t think the game was lost.

  Travis and Dmitri were well used to Derek. They had played together on the odd power play and in the rare situations when Sarah would get a penalty and Travis and Derek would be sent out to kill it off. They had also worked together in a tournament at Christmas time when Sarah was off with the Toronto Aeros at the Canadian Women’s Nationals.

  Derek wasn’t as smart with the puck as Sarah, but he was better at face-offs and had probably the team’s best backhand. He couldn’t pass as well as Sarah, but all that meant was that Travis and Dmitri would have to take the puck off their skates once in a while rather than feeling it click perfectly onto their tape, as was so often the situation with the magical Sarah.

  The tournament games were set up in two twenty-minute periods, with a break, but no flood, in between. The score was still 2–0 at the break. The Screech Owls had yet to get a goal, but at least they were now holding their own. And no one was working harder than Derek Dillinger, who had stepped in so well for Sarah. He worked as hard coming back as going down, and several times had got back to break up Panther rushes. Other Screech Owls were working hard to pick up the slack. Mario, Zak Adelman, Jesse Highboy–all playing their hearts out. But what the team needed now were some good scoring chances.

  “It’s coming, it’s coming,” said Muck, who seemed much relieved at the break. Mr. Dillinger was busy making sure everyone had fresh water and a towel. Travis was standing, face-mask up, helmet half off, beside Derek when Mr. Dillinger came by with water, and he saw a proud Mr. Dillinger quickly reach out and gently pinch Derek’s arm as he passed. Nothing more, nothing that anyone but the father and son would notice. Travis felt happy for them both.