There's a Shark in My Hockey Pool

by Dave Belisle

  "LaBonneglace drops the puck to Corcoran," said Able, "who drops it to Hicks. He in turn drops it to Henrickson ... who drops it to Boswell ... "

  "Fire that biscuit!" hollered Kane. His eyes were starting to swim. He rubbed them and shook his head.

  Corcoran wound up and blasted the puck by Arrette's glove into the top right shelf where they keep Mother Hubbard's doggie biscuits.

  "Well, park my Packard in the back, there ... the Serpents score! The Herculean club worked the ol' kamikaze kaleidoscope play to perfection," said Able. "Uh, Harv? Harv?

  Kane's eyes were rolling like those of a cat -- following a healthy spin on a lineoleum floor.

  "Harv. Speak to me, Harv."

  Artie slapped him in the face.

  Kane's eyes were still moving clockwise, albeit more slowly.

  Artie slapped him again. Hard.

  The air bag released inside Harv's head, popping his eyes out.

  "Thanks," said Kane. "I needed that."

  "Honestly, Harv. You've got to start watching good hockey. See what happens when you watch too much of that neutral zone trap crap."

  Kane put a finger to his lips and pointed to their live mikes. They scrambled back to their positions.

  "Ahem. And ... that public service announcement was brought to you by the people at St. Testosterosa Ambulance. If that had been an actual brain hemorrhage, your dialing 555-AAGH might have saved a life."

  Kane and Able settled back into their chairs and the teams lined up for the face-off at the Serpents blue-line.

  "The Serpents lead 4-2 ... with 3:20 to go in the second period. The Short Hand line is out there for the Leafs. Joey Girardelli and Jean-Guy-Claude Monchummes are the wingers with Danny Short Hand taking the draw. Nicky Dixon and Bowie Hackett man the blue line. Henrickson, Stapleman, McCann, Boswell and Hicks are on for the Serpents."

  "Short Hand pulls it back and Hackett hammers it in from the right point. DeChance doesn't get there in time ... "

  "You mean he didn't move," said Kane.

  "... And the puck goes all the way around the glass," said Able. Sam Sunhite is there to keep it in at the other point for the Leafs. This will be the 14th team that Sammy has played for this year. Sunhite shoots it. Oh! The puck grazed the post! The Leafs came close to making it 4-3. The puck bounces off the back boards, out in front. Monchummes is there. He drops a neat pass behind his back to Short Hand in the slot. Short Hand snaps a return pass to Monchummes and heads for the net. Looks like a give and go ... but Monchummes passes back to the point. The Leafs continue to control play in the Serpents zone."

  "Looks like the Zamboni will be cleaning this side of the ice after all," said Kane.

  "Dixon takes the shot," said Able. "OOOOH! PA DECHANCE! Pa DeChance with a miraculous save! That puck was redirected not once ... not twice ... but three times! DeChance regrouped and reached out with the kick save and a spectacular one! The original shot was taken by Dixon from 72 feet away. It then deflected off the skate of Short Hand, 50 feet away ... then off the shaft of Monchumme's stick from 20 feet out, before reaching Girardelli just outside the crease, where his waist-high stick almost tipped the puck in."

  "DeChance was there to eat up that puck like a doggone cop in a donut shop. Harv will provide you with more details during the next stoppage in play."

  "Sorry, it would take two weeks to analyze that one."

  Down at ice level, the high-pitched screaming of Erskine could be heard above the slashing skates and crunching body checks. He'd given up hollering for someone to freeze the puck or get an icing call. Erskine was now threatening the lives and loved ones of the five Serpents who were on the ice.

  "Don't come back!", he hollered. "I'm not opening the gate! DO YOU HEAR ME!?! After this period -- your clothes will be in the hallway!"

  "Monchummes with another shot," Able said. "DeChance makes the pad save. Short Hand gets the rebound and sends it back out to Monchummes. Jean-Guy-Claude fires the puck. DeChance kicks it back out. Short Hand is there, johnny-on-the-spot. Another pass to Monchummes. The Leaf winger blasts it, one more time. It's three for a quarter and Monchummes needs fifty cents. He is positively snake-bit."

  "Now Short Hand works the puck back out of the corner. He hits the top of the face-off circle, wheels and fires! Oooh! Pa DeChance took that one off the left shoulder. Monchummes grabs the rebound and passes back to Short Hand. Another one-timer! DECHANCE WITH THE SAVE! I can't take this any more! Will somebody please get a whistle?!? That one hit him in the right shoulder. Left shoulder, pad save, you name it ... DeChance is kicking out more rubber than Canadian Snow Tire."

  "Monchummes pushes Hicks aside and shovels the puck back once more to Short Hand. Another blast! Oooh! Goodness gracious, DeChance is spacious! That one hit him as he was going the other way. DeChance never saw it! When you're this good you don't even have to try. DeChance is stopping everything. The Leafs have taken 18 shots on goal in the past two minutes."

  "Another four have hit the posts and two off the crossbar," said Kane.

  "As play continues ..." said Able, "Girardelli is motioning to Short Hand and Monchummes. He's letting them know he wants to take a crack at it. I can't remember seeing such one-sided play going unrewarded. The Leafs still trail by two goals. They've fired everything but the jaccuzzi plug at DeChance."

  "In my pre-game interview with locker room security," said Kane, "... they told me those plugs ain't goin' nowhere."

  "Still ..." said Able. "With twelve seconds left in the second period, the Leafs are taking turns among themselves, setting up whatever shooting and passing combinations they like. Girardelli steps into one from the right face-off dot. DeChance gloves that one, one of the few howitzers he's handled cleanly from the Leafs tonight. DeChance drops the puck to Riddick behind the net. That's the first time the Serpents have had control of the puck in several minutes."

  "Riddick slaps the puck off the glass up the boards and down the ice. They finally relieve the pressure. Arrette leaves his net to get the puck. Wait! The puck hit a crack in the boards! Arrette tries to get back to the net! He dives for the puck! He can't reach it! They score! Well, color my colon and call it cologne!"

  Derek looked off into the upper reaches of the rink, wanting to take a bite out of the puck. The scoreboard changed to read SERPENTS 5, LEAFS 2. Three seconds remained in the second period.

  ... 4 ...

  The horn sounded, signalling the second intermission. Sylvie leaned against the wall outside the Serpents dressing room. She was wearing a knee-length mink-chinchilla coat. Sylvie wasn't a fur fanatic, but if the animal rights activists were going to chase her down, she wasn't going to be caught wearing a scrawny fox stole. The corridor was clear of animal lovers however. A recent Anguish Freed poll reported that 72% of Canadians felt that the intellectual dichotomy between hockey fans and animal rights activists was most similar to that shared between Rwandan warlords and Electrosux salesmen. Or Sylvie and the balding, middle-aged security guard standing nearby. She winked at him demurely.

  "Excuse me?" said the guard.

  "Oh, you don't have to excuse yourself, big boy. At least not yet," she said huskily.

  "Uh, I'm not sure I understand."

  "You will in a minute," she said. "I've been standing here for the past little while."

  Sylvie drilled his retinas with a sensuous leer that would melt Stonehenge.

  "... Watching you," she said, purring. "There's something about a man in a uniform. It makes my knees go weak. I think it's the spit-polished look. So squeaky clean ... kind of like when I've just stepped out of the shower."

  The guard stood there with a queer look on his face. Harold Ravenitch had been working for Brink of Dawn Security for 14 years. This was the first woman who had spoken to him who wasn't looking for the rest room. He racked his brain for a line from one of the many dime store detective novels he'd waded through on many more nights. Harold couldn't figure out how to work "private dick walking his dogs" into the co
nversation, so he stood there with his mouth open. Sylvie would have to add more bait to her hook.

  "Or maybe it's the special decorations on a man's uniform. What's this one for?" She pointed to a green and brown rectangle on his medal-marquee. She pressed her finger just below it and half-drew, half-massaged a small circle on his chest for effect.

  "Uh, that one there would be for the successful Operation Cliffhanger in northern B.C. We spent the summer of '91 saving lemmings from certain death." Harold stuck his chest out proudly.

  His reply didn't phase Sylvie.

  "In fact," Sylvie said, husky voice intact. "It's what's under the uniform that turns me on. Any man that appreciates the strict dress code of authority shouldn't have any problem with mine."

  "And ... what would that be?" Ravenitch said with a gulp.

  "I love the feel of an extra large, long sleeve, cotton shirt against my skin," Sylvie said. "To lounge around the house in. Or wear to bed."

  Harold cocked an eye.

  "That is," she said, "when I'm not sleeping in the raw."

  Harold's pulse quickened. He looked around. He'd been married for eleven years. An extra-marital affair for him had always seemed so out of reach, so impossible, so available to everyone else but him, that his own wife may as well be selling tickets to it.

  That certainly wasn't going to happen. Ravenitch's wife had already been divorced twice. She told him that if she ever caught him with another woman she had a John Wayne Bobbitt signature slicer that was ready and willing.

  "Uh, this is hardly the time or place," Harold said.

  "Oh, I have the time, sweetheart ... and I believe you have the place."

  Sylvie nodded with an alluring smile to a maintenance closet a few yards down the hallway. Ravenitch looked around. In two nanoseconds he weighed his job from hell ... and a marriage that was nearing the bottom of that same elevator.

  Harold steeled himself and followed after her. They arrived at the door. He took a key out of his pocket.

  "Please, allow me," Sylvie said. "It's the nineties. Must a man open every door for a woman?"

  Ravenitch handed her the key. She unlocked and opened the door. There was an awkward moment as they stood side-by-side, staring in at the cleaning equipment.

  "After you," Sylvie said sweetly. "I insist. It's the nineties, remember?"

  "Oh yeah, the nineties."

  Harold stepped forward with confidence into the closet. What his wife didn't know wouldn't hurt her. He stared at the corroded skull and bones warning label on a gallon container of industrial bleach.

  Sylvie quickly closed the door, locking him inside.

  She slid through the Serpents dressing room door, almost bumping into Erskine from behind. He was in conference with Slager and MacIlroy, who were busy comparing notes. They didn't see her.

  "We've got to blanket Coolidge," said Erskine. "He's getting too many chances. I want two guys all over him like road kill. If Coolidge so much as starts a game of pocket pool, I want our guys fighting over who gets to break. Understand?"

  Slager and MacIlroy shared a confused look.

  Sylvie entered the main area of the dressing room. Most players were sitting at their stalls. Many had untied their skates. Some had shed their jerseys. Players relaxed and recharged their batteries for the final stage of battle. Three strides into the locker room, Sylvie knocked energy conservation to the bottom rung of their priority list.

  Stapleman spotted her first.

  "Erskine really knows how to take care of his players, eh?" he said, nudging Corcoran beside him.

  "Is this what it's like in the NHL?" asked Corcoran.

  Sylvie picked out LaBonneglace in his stall and approached him, strutting her stuff. The chinchilla-fox combination rolled off her smooth, bunny slope shoulders and hit the floor. Beneath it she was wearing a black lace teddy, black nylons and a hot pink garter belt. Fred Wicks Hollywood Lingerie Spring Issue's cover page was alive and well, five-foot-nine and turning heads.

  Desjardins continued her slow, stripper strut toward LaBonneglace. Tony Treadwell, whose video collection was stocked with more stag than Steven Spielberg, began humming the stripper's theme. Woodley, then Henrickson joined in and soon the whole team was singing back-up.

  In the entrance of the dressing room, Erskine, Slager and MacIlroy paused for a moment, taken aback by the commotion.

  "Christ," said Erskine. "I hope they're not celebrating a victory already."

  Sylvie stopped in front of LaBonneglace. She planted her hands firmly on her hips and gyrated one last time for good measure. She gave him a look that said she would do it with him in a car ... in a bucket seat ... with a parakeet. She licked her lips.

  "Bonjour, monsieur," she said.

  "What'd she say?" Stapleman asked DeChance.

  "She wants to have his children."

  "Ma cheri ..." said LaBonneglace.

  Stapleman again looked to DeChance for clarification.

  "He wants her to be gentle. It's his first time," said DeChance.

  "I'm glad to see you 'ere," said LaBonneglace. "I t'ought I'd seen de last of you."

  "Baby, when you've seen the last of me, you'll still have wet dreams."

  "I t'ink I'm dreaming already. Don't anyone pinch me, eh?"

  Sylvie sat down beside him. Beneath hockey pants, socks, long underwear, garter belt and a jock strap, his loins awoke. There was a new game in town.

  "What's a little pinch between friends?" She extended her long, tapered, crimson-colored fingernails for all to admire.

  "See? I've done my nails just for you." Sylvie picked up a nearby tube of deep heating liniment and rolled it back and forth in the palms of her hands.

  "C'mon, sweetie," she said. "Off with the sweater. These intermissions are only fifteen minutes long."

  LaBonneglace quickly shrugged off his jersey. Sylvie spun the cap off the tube and squeezed a healthy dollop of ointment into her palm.

  "My, what broad shoulders you have."

  "De better for you to sit up dere."

  "Easy, Trigger. I'll make the ride a little easier with a massage first. Just relax now and let Madame Montreal's fingers work their magic."

  He smiled and leaned back, dreamily closing his eyes. She reached down his hockey pants and squeezed the liniment into his groin. LaBonneglace exploded out of his seat.

  "AAAAAAAYE-Y I I I I I I I !! CALLL-EEEEES!! EEE-YOWCH!! TABERNACLE!!"

  He fell to the floor and for a brief moment impersonated AC DC guitarist, Angus Young, and his signature solo -- where Angus lies on his side with his legs running at top speed. LaBonneglace was a human pinwheel in motion. Whereas Angus would be wildly strumming his guitar however, Gaston had both hands in his pants, clutching his crotch. His jockstrap was a microwave on high.

  Sylvie grabbed her coat and beat a hasty retreat for the dressing room door.

  In the Leafs locker room, the players sat dejectedly in their stalls. Derek slowly walked to the center of the room. He scanned the sullen faces. In the last half of the period they'd done everything but put the puck in the net. An invisible force field protected the Serpent net. That was it. Derek wondered if vulcanized rubber carried a positive or negative charge. He'd ask Artie later.

  Marcotte searched his mind for the stop button on this downward sliding elevator he'd been on for so long. Soon it would come to a stop and open out onto the foyer called failure. But desperate times called for words from Winston. Derek had great respect for a man who could sleep until noon and still run the country.

  Derek cleared his throat.

  "Yes, this is no time for ease and comfort," he began. "It is the time to dare and endure. I know we have a lot of anxieties, and one cancels out another very often. But the farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult. Responsibility is the price of greatness. Because no one can guarantee success in war ... only deserve it."<
br />
  Did he deserve it? He deserved a titanium-plated ptarmigan for traipsing all over Canada's hinterland. If they won this game, maybe Anne Murray would write a song about it. She could take the ignominy out of it all and make it sound almost ... inspiring. It would need a rough edge to it ... to do the rocky Helen-Sylvie quinella any justice. Gordon Lightfoot could hook on for a duet. That would work. Marcotte could see himself listening to the song while sitting in a sunny sandbox at some sanitarium.

  He resurfaced in reality a few seconds later in the midst of a locker room that was on the losing end of the second intermission score.

  "That, uh ... that was Winston Churchill. He's played in some big games ... and survived the battles to win the war. Unfortunately you've got me, not Winston. And we don't have the extra battles to draw experience from. Not one scar to scratch. Not one reconnaissance mission or one bloody scouting report. We're marching down the Gaza Strip with Gideon's Bible on this one, fellas."

  "Like Winston said, it ain't gonna be easy. I don't have the answers. I thought I did once upon a time. But I've been fighting my own wars."

  Derek dug his hands into his pockets and looked around the room.

  "You know why you're here. You're hired hockey sticks ... mercenaries ... and I'm the low bidder, in case you hadn't guessed. Well, boys ... mercenaries or monarchs ... no one can buy the bullets you'll have to squeeze out of your sticks to win this one."

  He slapped his palm with his fist.

  "But I've seen the playmaking ... that lifts the fans out of their seats. And the checking ... that made the same crowd cringe. Right here in this room. I'm asking to see it now."

  Marcotte sat down beside Arrette, who was sweating profusely by the door. White caps could be seen on the rivulets streaming down the goalie's face.

  Head down, the Leafs coach slowly rubbed his palms together. He finally raised his head to address the troops.

  "I'd give my other knee to be out there with you today. But I can't. Y'know ... life is like a two-line pass that's too close to call. Does the referee blow the play dead -- or give his blessing to a breakaway? Off-side or on-side? Failure or success? This game today was never supposed to take place. Or maybe it was. Guys ... this is my Stanley Cup final. Let's make it ours."