Rule #1

by T. A Richards Neville

  The cheerleaders and bands are out hyping up the crowd, and people can’t move for the noisy chaos. Seven-story high Frozen Four posters have been hung up around the arena’s entrance, me and Notre Dame’s captain side by side on one of them, and that’s the biggest I’ve ever seen myself.

  I stare out the window with my earbuds in and ‘Role Modelz’ turned up as we cruise by the mixed bag of fans, phones held up to take pictures as we pass. I’m mostly calm, but my heartrate recognizes we’ve arrived and how much is at stake for us. There hasn’t been a national championship at Northvale in ten years. If we do everything right, we’ll change that today.

  “You ready?” West’s staring out the same window I am, his expression neutral, kinda reflective.

  My eyes skim over the NU jerseys and crowd-held posters. The same three faces are missing from all my games, but I still catch myself looking for them out of habit. “Yeah,” I say. “You?”

  “Yeah,” West says casually, his tone lightly confident. “We’ve got this.”

  Silence settles over the locker room when Coach Gachet walks in, hands pressed into the pockets in his gray suit pants. We’re suited up, our skates are laced. My heart’s thumping in my chest like a ticking bomb.

  “No matter what the final score is when that buzzer goes, I’m proud of you boys for even getting us here, and you should all be proud of yourselves.”

  He stops, looks up and down the stalls and takes a quiet breath.

  “Take it in now and appreciate where you are, because it’ll all be over before you know it. Life will snap right back to normal, and the grind will start again. Every damn one of you deserves to be here. You’ve worked hard for this. Now I need you to keep on working. Let’s set the expectation here for what type of player you all want to be next season. How you want to be remembered.” Coach’s gaze glances off the seniors in the room, and he nods. “Ten years, boys,” he says with plenty of feeling. “You can break that dry streak today. And stay out of the box. Skate hard, play clean.” He makes a rocking motion with his hand. “Ish.”

  We’ve already hammered out how we need to overcome Notre Dame’s offense and break down their defense, and Coach gives us a minute before its time for puck drop.

  I pick up my helmet and my mouthguard off the bench and look out at my team. “We need to get on that scoreboard before they do. We lead the first period and more goals will come.”

  A hum of agreement rustles along the stall benches.

  Sonny Montclare hoists his stick in the air. “Let’s walk out of here with crowns, eh?”

  Everyone else’s stick goes up, a collective roar of early celebration.

  “We’re the team to beat,” I stand up and say. “Don’t you forget that and don’t let Notre Dame forget. Play our game our way and let’s take care of business.”

  From the first whistle the game’s moving fast. We take easy, short shifts to keep up with the pace, and my line’s on the ice.

  Our D-man, Robbie Kater, skates the puck behind our net, and Kempy sweeps up the drop pass on his stick, outskating the backchecker.

  “Ice!” I shout to Kempy. The boards are choked, so I call for the pass and speed through neutral, into the offensive zone. West skates into the zone on the weak side, and I chip the puck in behind Notre Dame’s D. West’s at the crease for the loose puck, getting his stick on it first, and he jams it into the net in a greasy, short-side goal.

  He’s first on the board after a suffocating four minutes. Thousands of Warriors fans tear down the roof with their raucous celebrations, floor stamping and seat slamming, the air vibrating with noise.

  I glance up at the jumbotron from the boards, watching the repeat of the puck crossing the line.

  We’ve come out on a strong start, our overbearing presence now domineering in controlling the early pace and flow, but Notre Dame don’t let us keep our one-goal lead for long.

  Two minutes after West’s scored, Notre Dame’s forecheckers bear down on our defense, putting them under pressure. Husky shuffles back into his crease, and Notre Dame’s third-line center makes a sweet play off the wall. Husky loses track of the puck as it slices through the traffic and under his glove.

  Notre Dame fans have their thundering moment of glory, and It’s one moment too many.

  “He’s a fucking liability,” West mumbles between chewing on the end of his mouthguard, frustrated with our freshman D for not blocking the shot or clearing the puck. It was a nice shot, though—unpredictable. “Get someone in on the fucking blue line.”

  Nathan Bowers has been out of action for all of the postseason with a fractured collarbone, our spare D-man, whose name is literally David Spare, pairing up with Monty in Bowers’ place.

  “It’s his first major mistake,” I say to West. “Give the kid a break.”

  We’re squared up as we head into the locker room, and West hangs back at the benches for an interview as the only Warriors goal scorer in the period.

  We keep the momentum going in the second, shooting more and pushing the play into Notre Dame’s end of the ice. Their goalie denies us two back-to-back shots on goal, and it’s a mad scramble for the puck before the whistle’s blown.

  “Get out of the fucking paint!” Rowdy, Notre Dame’s left winger, shoves Kempy in the shoulder, losing his edges and falling on top of him at the edge of the crease. Puck’s frozen under the goalie’s pads and the ref blows the whistle.

  I glide over to the faceoff circle and get in position outside the dot. The linesman throws down the puck and I’m locked in a short stick battle for it before I win the draw and whack it back to Kempy, who’s quick with a shot at the net. The puck hits the c-bar and Notre Dame’s D chips it away, clearing it for their winger, Pettersson, to pick up on the tape and race it down ice. He rushes our net. Ems, our D, skates backward with his stick out on the ice, and I sprint into the zone, trailed by Kempy and West.

  Pettersson aims a wrister at the net. Ems stretches out on the ice on his stomach and pokes the puck away, sliding into the boards skates first. I scrape the puck over our blue paint and back into the offensive zone. The goalie denies my slapshot with a glove save and I hustle off the ice and onto the bench.

  That’s when the third goal comes, and it’s not from us. Notre Dame are on the board again; a second line, loaded snapshot and a hell of a screen to help guide it in.

  “Shit,” Coach grumbles.

  Kempy edges me a predictable look from the bench, his gaze darting up to the jumbotron. West squirts a stream of water into his mouth and then spits it out, a thunderstorm brewing in his expression.

  We can come back from one goal, but we need to do it soon before Notre Dame get too confident and score on us again.

  Puck possession ping pongs all the way into the third, and Notre Dame are leading the game 4-3. Coach sends me to take the PK faceoff when our D-man, Lahaye, puts Notre Dame on the power play for crosschecking.

  The officials have been pretty generous with the whistle, but Lahaye came down so hard with his stick, I’m surprised it didn’t break in two. With the centerman spread out like a snow angel on the ice, shouting himself purple in the face and Notre Dame’s bench straining vocal cords, the ref couldn’t exactly look the other way.

  It’s five on four, and the puck drops for the draw. I win it, scraping it to Ems. Notre Dame trap us in our zone, and we get the puck as far as neutral before Monty overplays and then loses it, Notre Dame cleaning up the turnover and skating the puck back into our zone.

  I’m breathless now, stuck on the ice chasing the puck because we can’t get across our paint to dump it, or even get some wood on it.

  Weaker on my edges, I brace for the pain and throw myself in front of the puck when it comes flying at our net off Number 6’s stick. The puck whizzes into the center of my chest and I drop to the ice, winded, can’t even fucking breathe. It feels like I’m gasping at sweet fuck all as I get a second knee on the ice and push to my skates, my vision spotting black around the edges.<
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  I shake the sweat out of my eyes and rub a glove over my sternum, making sure there isn’t a hole where the puck torpedoed right through the plastic, and then try and forget it ever happened until we’ve killed off this fucking penalty.

  Pain shoots through my muscles, across my shoulders, pulling tighter and tighter across my chest, but I see it out, skating after the puck as Breezy finally breaks out of the defensive zone.

  “Skate! Skate!” I yell, throwing a hasty glance at the Notre Dame player on Breezy’s tail. Chest on fucking fire, I bear down and skate as hard, as fast, as I can, slapping the ice with my stick for the pass. Breezy sends it across, gets up just ahead of me on the weak side, and I swing it back to him.

  The puck hits the tape.

  “Shoot!” I call out. And he does, saucing the puck over the D’s stick. It bounces off the goalie’s pads, and I bury the rebound, finally losing that edge and sliding across the ice.

  Breezy, Ems, and Monty pile on top of me, and I wince through the pain, teeth clenched, only slightly numbed from the goal I just scored.

  We change with thirty-four seconds left, a wired-up Coach Gachet and one of our trainers flapping around me on the bench.

  I insist I’m fine when Morrison, the team trainer, asks me to come back to the medical room so he can take a proper look at the point of impact. That’s too much of the game to miss, and now we’ve got that tie, I’m not losing it over a bruised chest. A fractured rib at worst, but nothing I can’t or won’t play through.

  “Seriously, I’m not hurt,” I say, lowering my eyes to the floor between my skates to shadow the pain on my face. “I can play. It didn’t hit that hard.” It hit like a goddamn missile, but eleven minutes on the clock means I’m not going anywhere other than back on that ice.

  “That thing came at you at seventy miles an hour. You sure you want to go back out there?”

  I give West a sidelong look.

  “Yeah, okay,” he says, reading the message there. “I hear ya.”

  Coach calls a timeout with a minute-fifty left to play in the period. I’m tired, everyone’s tired, and the thought of going into overtime when I already feel like I’m slowly dying is all the motivation I need to keep pushing for one more goal. Which is like asking for rain in the Sahara Desert when Coach needs us to play as much defense as we have been offense.

  I skate with my line to faceoff. Notre Dame win it this round, the worst possible time to give up a draw. The forward with the puck trips over his own skates and hits the ice.

  Kempy backpedals for the turnover, dangles, and passes it to me on his backhand. The puck sails around Notre Dame’s D and onto my blade. A stick slides into my lane, battling for the puck, and I lift my shoulder and use the width of my body to keep him off it, buying time to get the puck to West along the boards. The D marking him is dogging it, and West makes a backdoor play that gets swept away from the crease, the puck still alive.

  Kempy chases after it, beats the D, and chips it off the boards. I’m there to meet it on the other side, jostling with the winger to get it on my stick. He pushes me into the boards, and I kick the puck sideways, scrape it with my blade to West.

  Time bears down on me like ten freight trains.

  West shoots, hits the crossbar, and Notre Dame are all over it, sprinting out of their zone and toward ours carrying the puck, the roar of the crowd spurring them on.

  My line’s shouting continuously at each other, and West strips the puck off the center’s blade before he can get a shot off, pivoting and reversing the direction of play.

  He skates over the blue paint and I call out for him to drop it because the D’s pinching off the fucking wall. West leaves me the pass, and Notre Dame must be more tired than they look.

  I knock the puck forward, lift my stick over the helmet of the winger covering for the pinching D, cut around him and race onto a breakaway. I knock the puck from my front to backhand and fake cutting to my right side. The goalie commits, because every one of us is as desperate as we look, and I plant a wrister in the far side corner of the net.

  The horn blares, the fire in my chest is searing so hot I’m on the verge of vomiting, and we’ve won it. It’s over.

  Our bench hurdles the boards, swamps husky, and charges the ice. A swarm of black and white jerseys barrel me into the glass.

  I’m pretty certain I’ve broken a rib, maybe two, and only adrenaline from winning the championship game stops me keeling over and crawling off the ice to spew my guts into a bucket.

  West skates up to me on one side, Kempy on the other, and we put our helmets together.

  Soon, we’ll go our separate ways. West’s looking at the Capitals’ rookie training camp in September, and Kempy’s got another year of college eligibility left. If we make it into the show as planned, and then onto the roster, we’ll see each other again, play against each other, but that feels like years away when so many of us have been playing on the same line since our freshman year, and honestly, I’ll miss living with the gruesome twosome. It’s been a wild fucking ride, for sure.

  “You gonna finally get Farming Frenzy?” West asks. “We can share a barn while you’re in NY and I’m in DC. It’ll be like old times.”

  “Yeah,” I say. Can’t hold my grin back. “I’ll download it.”

  We toss our helmets and put on the hats given to us. It’s unbelievable, really, and not one bit of what we’ve come here and achieved has sunk in as we parade through all the official shit that needs to be done, interviews and team pictures, before I get to see a single one of my family’s faces and celebrate with them.

  We gather for the award ceremony, waiting noisily but patiently for the speech to grind to an end.

  On a sharp inhale, I hoist our trophy, and the entire team, coaches, staff and players—every Warrior fan who’s traveled to see us win—are buzzing off the energy.

  Families eventually start pouring down to ice-level in droves, the stands still jam-packed because no one wants to be the first to leave, and I skate to the door, my breathing shallower now to ward off the pain and keep movement to a minimum.

  A head full of bouncy, highlighted curls puts that idea to bed, and Kimberly throws herself at me, arms flying around my neck and her legs hooking around my waist. She knocks the cap off my head, and I just about keep my balance, my teeth crunching under her weight on my screaming ribs.

  “Whoa, easy,” I say, wincing as I take my hands from under her thighs and gingerly pull her off me.

  She sinks to her feet, frowning heavily. “You were an idiot to block that shot.” Then she steps in and slides her arm around my waist, leaning her head under my shoulder. “I knew you’d hurt yourself.”

  “So you were testing that theory out?”

  She looks up at me with a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I just couldn’t wait to see you.”

  I reunite with Steph, Paul, and my cousins, resigning myself to a few more minutes of agony so Steph can hug the broken stuffing out of me. Paul, Anna and Jace compose a lot more chill, and after a long, draining weekend, I wish I had more time with them.

  “I’ve got something for you,” Steph says with a cheesy grin, looking behind her and up into the stands. Her eyes are damp and red from crying, her topsy-turvy emotions simmering to erupt again at any second. Even Coach and his gang are on the ice bawling like babies.

  I look where Steph’s looking, at Brooke standing at the rail along the stairs. I walk over to her, and she leans forward as I press my forehead to the jersey hanging loose over her soft stomach, her hands either side of my face and her fingers raking into my sweaty, wet mop of hair.

  She’s not supposed to be here. Plane tickets were too expensive, the journey was too far, and her schedule’s jam-packed, but she is here, and I don’t really give a fuck how, just that she is.

  “Hey,” she says, her voice a soothing balm to all my bruises. “You’re seriously hurt, aren’t you?”

  “Nothing that won’t heal.” I lift my head up and look
into her eyes. “It was all worth it.”

  She brushes soaking strands of hair from my face, her fingers tangling at the roots. “You were unbelievable.”

  “You’re unbelievable. You’re still okay?” A question I ask her at least once a week to stop her from shutting me out and sinking back into her insecurities.

  She nods, a timid smile tilting her rosy mouth. “Better than okay.”

  Resentment over flying back to Maine with my team thwarts my championship-winning high. “I wish you’d gotten in yesterday, so we’d have longer together.”

  “Yeah… me too.” Brooke leans over the rail, and I brush my lips across the slope of her jaw, one hand on the back of her neck as I capture her mouth in a kiss that quickly makes me wish we weren’t sharing an arena with twenty thousand people.

  I’m shit out of words or flowery declarations of love, content just being here, everyone else blocked out by the brunette shield of Brooke’s silky hair.

  Through the wide gap in the railing, my hand curls around her hip, her lips stretching into a smile against mine.

  “Forever, right?’ Because saying ‘I love you’ feels like an oversimplification of how my life’s changed since Brooke came into it, how she’s stabilized it. I feel it, though, beneath the throbbing pain in my chest, and I grab Brooke’s hand and press it to where she’s been firmly seated, so she can feel for herself what I never tell her.

  “Forever,” she says on the edge of a whisper, the crowd noise drowning her out. I hear her, though.

  And she must feel it, because how in the hell could she not? Every strong, grateful beat is to the sound of her name. And I know I’ve won more than just a hockey game.

  If you’ve made it this far (it was long, I know) thank you so much for reading. You’ve really made my day :) x