The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 1

by Roy MacGregor

  “Derek,” Muck said. Derek pulled the towel off his face, staring and waiting. “You guys have got to use the fast break more. Use Dmitri’s speed on right. They’re lining up across the red line. You should be able to chop one off the boards that Dmitri can catch up to on-side and be in behind them. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And another thing, Travis, I want to see the third guy coming in late for rebounds, understand?”

  Travis nodded. He understood.

  The second period began quite differently from the first. Derek won the face-off and sent the puck back to Nish, Nish lazily circling back into his own end to draw in the Panthers’ forwards. One darted for him, and Nish bounced the puck back off his own boards so the player flew past and the puck came back out to Nish, alone. He called this play his “Ray Bourque,” and much to everyone’s surprise, it usually worked.

  Nish used the open ice to hit Derek with a pass as Derek skated toward him at the Screech Owls’ blueline, and Derek niftily dropped a pass to himself as he turned, so the puck was waiting for him when he came around and headed up-ice. Travis inhaled deeply–it was a dangerous move if a defenceman was around, but as Muck had said, the Panthers’ defenders were dropping back to the red line, protecting their lead.

  Derek barely looked for Dmitri. He slapped the puck so it hit the boards waist-high directly in front of the Panthers’ bench. The puck jumped and lost velocity and fell near the Panthers’ blueline, quickly losing speed as it crossed ahead of any players.

  Dmitri already had the jump on the defence. He had come out of his own corner full-steam, and Dmitri at top speed with a puck to chase was about as fast as Travis had ever seen a peewee player. He turned the Panthers’ left defenceman so fast that the defender’s skates caught on each other and he went down onto one knee, Dmitri gone by the time he recovered.

  The Panthers’ goaltender saw the play and raced for the puck. A mistake. He had misjudged twice: first that Derek’s slapper would carry down into the Panthers’ end, second that Dmitri Yakushev was just another skater coming at him. By the time he realized his mistake, it was too late. The goalie sprawled and slid, waving his stick and pads to create as large an obstacle as possible, but for Dmitri, gobbling up the puck at the blueline, it was child’s play. He dipped around the goaltender and, from the top of the circle in, had an empty net.

  Panthers 2, Screech Owls 1.

  Travis loved the way momentum could shift in a hockey game. Equal skills, equal number of players, equal time on the clock, and yet sometimes a game could shift so lopsidedly, first one way, then the other, that it would seem as if only one team at a time had skates on. Like in his dream.

  This time the momentum was all with the Screech Owls. This time he felt as if there were no skates on his feet, but instead of a nightmare it was that joyous sensation that comes only a few times a season, when your skates are so comfortable and your skating so natural that there is no awareness of where skin ends and steel begins.

  Just as the first period had belonged to the Panthers, the second, and final, was going to belong to the Screech Owls. On the line’s next shift, Derek again sent Dmitri up right wing, but the Panthers were prepared this time and Dmitri wisely looped at the corner and hit Derek with a return pass as Derek came across the blueline.

  Derek shot from a bad angle, but was smartly playing for a rebound, and Travis, coming in late as Muck had said he should, found the puck sliding onto his stick directly in the slot area. He rifled a shot so hard he fell with the force, the puck ringing like a bell off the crossbar and high over the glass into the seats.

  There was a time when Travis Lindsay might have preferred this. There was a time–he figured every hockey player felt this way–when the finest moment possible in a game was when a puck would come back on edge and could be lofted high over the net where it would slap against the glass. Players in novice would sometimes get more excited by a good hoist than a goal. But no more. For the last year or so Travis had been able to shoot so well the concern was more in keeping it down than getting it up, and this time he had put it too high. This time he had blown it.

  “Nice try,” Muck said when the line came off. Travis would have none of it. He sat, his head bowed, his gloves tightly between his legs, waiting to get out there again.

  Sarah was trying her best to play. She was being short-shifted by Muck to save her energy, and it was helping. She picked up a puck in her own end, played it off the boards to herself to beat a check, then hit Matt Brown at centre, just barely avoiding a two-line pass. Matt dished it off backhand to Mario Terziano, who didn’t have the speed but let a rocket go as he crossed the blueline, the puck rebounding perfectly to Matt, who walked in and roofed a backhand with the Panthers’ goaltender on his back, waving his glove helplessly.

  Panthers 2, Screech Owls 2.

  “Allllll right!”

  From the bench, Travis could hear Mr. Brown’s bellow above all the other shouts in the arena. He looked over and Mr. Brown, who always walked along the first row of seats, was shaking the short glass and pounding it.

  “Now put it to ’em!”

  Mr. Brown was red in the face and seemed more angry than happy. Travis felt sorry for Matt at a time when he should have felt happiest for him. Matt’s teammates were slapping him and high-fiving him and Travis knew that Matt was hearing his father’s screams above everyone else’s. Too much pressure for me, Travis thought. Poor Matt.

  Next shift out, Matt Brown was pulled down from behind and, with Matt out of the play, the little Panther defenceman moved up into the play and rifled home a rebound to put the Panthers up 3–2. Mr. Brown went snaky behind the glass, crawling up it and screaming at the referee.

  “Open your eyes!”

  The officials ignored Mr. Brown, who kept pounding the glass throughout the Panthers’ celebrations and the face-off. Travis’s line was out, and he could still hear Mr. Brown screaming.

  “Who the hell’s paying you for this? You goof!”

  Just before the puck dropped, Travis saw the one official look up at the other and lightly shake his head and smile. They could hear. They knew. They understood perfectly who the “goof” was in this rink.

  Nish blocked a shot beautifully from the little blond defenceman and hit Travis moving out of his own end. Travis could feel the puck on his stick and see more open ice than he’d seen all game.

  He caught a flash out of the corner of his right eye: big number 5, charging at him. Travis slammed on his brakes, the big, dark centre flying past him and crashing into the boards. Travis began skating hard again, heading cross-ice, but lost his footing from a hard slash across the outside of his shin. Stumbling, he fired the puck up along the boards toward Dmitri and then felt the stick across his back, slamming him face-first down onto the ice.

  The Panthers touched the puck and the whistle shrieked. Travis, still on the ice, could hear Mr. Brown screaming, swearing. He turned and he could see the big centre pointing at him with his stick turned blade down, the message clear: I’m going to get you.

  Travis couldn’t figure out what he’d done. He’d stopped and the big centre had crashed into the boards. He supposed he’d embarrassed him. Nothing more. If that was all it took to throw the Panthers’ best scorer off his game, the Screech Owls had a chance.

  The referee gave number 5 four minutes: two for slashing and two for cross-checking. He could have given him two for charging, as well, but the charge had missed so the referee had chosen to ignore it. Four minutes was more than enough.

  Travis could feel Muck’s confidence in the way he told them to stay out for the power play. Travis felt fine, not even aware of the slash or the cross-check, and he could sense time changing for him the way it always did when things were starting to go right for the Screech Owls.

  It was as if everything moved in slow motion. Travis was aware of every player on the ice–even of Mr. Brown, screaming “Gooooo with it!” from behind the glass–and he could feel himself
moving as he had always dreamed he would one day move. His stride fluid, his arms steady, head up, the puck with him. Dmitri once told him the Russians called this “dancing with the puck” and he knew exactly what they meant. However he tried to move the puck, it obeyed.

  Travis beat two players, one on a shoulder fake and the second with a deft slip between the player’s skates. He could hear the roar from the stands. He could see Derek racing for the open ice, hear Derek’s stick slapping the ice as he called for the puck.

  Travis hit him beautifully, Derek not even breaking stride as he slipped past the remaining defenceman and in on net. The goalie played him to go to the backhand as Derek crossed left to right in front of the net, but Derek shot on his forehand to the short side as the goalie began to move across with him, the puck blowing the netting out like a pillow before falling, the red light flashing, Mr. Brown bellowing.

  “Alllllll rrrrrrighttt!”

  Panthers 3, Screech Owls 3, with two minutes to go.

  The big, dark centre of the Panthers hit a goal post and Gordie Griffith almost slipped one through the Panthers’ goaltender’s five hole, but the game ended in a tie.

  The Screech Owls raced to congratulate Guy, who ripped his mask off a red, soaked, but ecstatic, face. A tie, yes, but they had come back from being down 2–0, which in some ways was as good as a win. And against what everyone said was the best team in the tournament!

  Muck and the two assistants, Barry and Ty, and Mr. Dillinger came running onto the ice to join in the celebration. There were high fives for everyone. Muck slapped the back of Travis’s helmet and Sarah gave him a friendly tap on the shinpads, and Travis saw Mr. Dillinger throw a bear hug around his son. Derek deserved it. He had played brilliantly in place of Sarah.

  The two teams lined up to shake hands. It was quick and almost the same as every other time–gloves tapping gloves, most players barely looking at each other, a few mumbling something like “Good game” or “Good luck”–but this time, when Travis reached number 4, the little blond defenceman of the Panthers who had played so wonderfully, he looked up.

  And the little defenceman winked.

  Winked, and smiled, and skated right past Travis and then off the ice, leaving Travis to skate back into the crowd of congratulating Screech Owls wondering what on earth that had been all about.

  A good game? The crossbar? Sarah? The pizza deliveries? The Panthers wouldn’t do something like that…

  Or would they?

  Muck made sure there would be no distractions that night. He talked to the hotel manager and was able to arrange for a separate room in the quieter west wing for the two girls. He and the coaches of the other teams staying at the hotel had the front desk cut off pizza deliveries to that wing at 10:00 p.m. He made the girls go to bed by 8:00 p.m.

  Travis and several other members of the team walked down the hill and onto Main Street to see the sights. Travis, Nish, Data, Willie, Derek, Wilson, Zak, and Dmitri kept to one group and others took off in their own little groups. They were too many to stick entirely together, though some would have preferred to. Travis could never understand why some wanted to do everything as a team. He thought eight was more than enough–more than would ever be on the ice together at the same time.

  Nish, of course, wanted to buy a T-shirt. He had a shirt from every tournament trip they had ever been on: Niagara Falls, Muskoka, Montreal, Ottawa, Peterborough, London–Ontario, not England. One size extra-large, and Nish was content for the rest of the trip.

  His parents had given him twenty dollars to buy the shirt. It was all he had, fortunately, for if they’d given Nish a hundred he would have come back to the hotel wearing Lake Placid sweat pants, a T-shirt, wrist sweatbands, a sweatshirt with a hood, and, what he seemed to like best, a baseball cap with two big doggie doos, plastic and odourless, mercifully, perched over the brim. If something was truly disgusting, then Nish would want it.

  It was cool, Main Street feeling more as if it were down in a dark basement than high in the mountains. But the sun was set now and the only light came from the streetlights. A breeze was blowing in off the lake and seeming colder every time it rippled their jackets. Travis had his Screech Owls windbreaker on and wished he had a sweater beneath. It was strange being up this high: summer in the day, winter at night.

  Nish got his T-shirt at one of the trinket shops backing onto Mirror Lake. At $17.99 Travis and the others felt he’d been ripped off, but Nish was delighted with the shirt. It had the Olympic rink and the 1980 Team U.S.A. pictured on it, and “The Impossible Dream” written above “Lake Placid, N.Y.” Travis told him it looked like the T-shirt was made before Nish was born, but Nish just gave him a huge raspberry, patted the bag that was holding the shirt, and headed back out the door, mission accomplished.

  He stopped at a turning display tray.

  “Hey! Look at that!”

  Travis and the others stopped, stared, saw nothing.

  “nuq?” Data asked. (“What?”)

  Nish reached out his free hand. “This!” He had a small plastic tool kit in his hands.

  “You want a toy now?” Willie asked sarcastically.

  “Naw. Look at it. It’s perfect!”

  Everyone looked. Everyone saw a child’s tool kit: screwdriver, pliers, adjustable wrench. So cheap they’d probably break first turn. All in a plastic case for $3.99.

  “I could fix our TV,” Nish said.

  “There’s nothing wrong with our TV,” Travis said.

  Nish looked at him, shook his head in pity. “They cut off our movies, didn’t they?”

  “You’ve never even seen one,” Travis countered, defensively.

  “Which is why we need these tools,” Nish said, plucking the package free of the case. “C’mon, a buck apiece.”

  “No way,” said Travis.

  “I got a buck,” Data said.

  “I got fifty cents,” said Zak.

  “Me, too,” said Dmitri.

  Nish turned to Willie. “You in?”

  “It’s stupid,” Willie said.

  “You in?” Nish repeated.

  “I guess.”

  They pooled their money and Nish paid. Travis felt uneasy, as if they were buying cigarettes or something else they shouldn’t have. But it felt weird to be uneasy over a child’s tool kit.

  Travis, Nish, and the others walked up and down both sides of the street. They saw the old wooden toboggan-run down by the water. They saw the little bandshell in the park. The movie theatre, the dozens of T-shirt and souvenir shops, the art galleries, the arcade, the frozen yogurt outlets not yet opened for the tourist season.

  Data bought a pin and, for his mom, a silver spoon saying “Lake Placid, N.Y.” for her collection. Zak Adelman bought hockey cards, but the best he could come up with was a Pavel Bure that Willie, the world’s expert in everything, said was worth ten dollars, and a Martin Brodeur that was supposed to be worth eight dollars and, according to the latest Beckett Hockey Monthly, was “hot.”

  Travis bought nothing and kept walking. He didn’t bother arguing with Willie, but Travis was beginning to have his doubts about trading cards. He’d collected all through novice and atom and at the beginning of peewee, but one day he had walked into a card store and suddenly just lost interest. Simple as that. Just completely lost interest.

  Travis figured he’d been spending an average of three dollars a week buying cards–usually one lousy pack!–and while he did have a hardcover collection of Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky (autographed!) and Adam Oates and Teemu Selanne and Sergei Fedorov and Mike Richter and Adam Graves and Pierre Turgeon and Alexei Yashin and Radek Bonk and, of course, Bure, the favourite, he had about 10,000 cards in a big box that meant nothing to him and nothing to anyone else, either.

  Besides, he’d started to wonder whether or not they were really worth anything at all. Right from the start his dad had said the whole collecting thing was “a house of cards,” which, according to his mother, meant it was phoney, not real, a
nd while Travis had periodically got testy over his father’s continuing cracks about the real value of cards, he was beginning to think his father might be right after all.

  Just for fun, Travis had tried to sell about a half-dozen of his better cards. He picked out the autographed Gretzky, a few Donruss Ice Kings, some Ultra award winners and a Patrick Roy and Eric Lindros from the Topps Gold Series, and took them to a flea market where a number of dealers had tables set up.

  “Would you like to buy these?” Travis had asked each one in turn.

  And each one in turn had done exactly the same thing: taken the dozen or so cards, walked through them with their fingers, checking, and then handed every one of them back, including the Gretzky. “Don’t need ’em,” the dealers would say. At first this made sense to Travis, but after a while he was wondering if, in fact, “Don’t need ’em” meant “Don’t want them,” and that what they were really saying was that the cards weren’t worth anything to them or to him. According to the Beckett, the Lindros Topps Gold was worth thirty-five to forty-five dollars, but he couldn’t even get a sniff of interest from the flea-market dealers.

  He took the same cards in to the local card store, a little store run by a kind, elderly man who sometimes threw in a free card or a hardcover or, once in a while, even a free monthly Beckett magazine so Travis could look up the values of his cards.

  “I’d like to cash these in,” Travis said, handing the cards over.

  The man, smiling, took the cards and examined them, just like the men had done at the flea market. “You’ve got some dandies here,” he told Travis.