The Moment

“Please let me get through this.” I mumbled under the mask that I have been wearing for the past sixteen years of my career. I couldn’t mess this up, not again. I felt my palms get sweaty under the big heavy gloves I had on. The goalie stick I had been gripping for dear life, hoping to be able to make good saves, was starting to hurt my hand. I wanted to give up at this point. Maybe I wasn’t a great goalie as everyone says. Maybe they just say that so my performance will always be perfect.

The thing is, no one is perfect. Not even me.

Maybe I had made a mistake when I decided that I wanted to be in the National Hockey League when I was younger. I should have just followed many children’s dream when they had been younger. The kids who would always say they wanted to become a doctor when they were asked what they wanted to be when they grow up. I had separated myself from the rest of those kids and told the teacher or whoever asked me at the tender age of five that I wanted to become a hockey player.

Now I was here living the dream for so long yet I still get nervous every single game we face. This team may have it's ultimate superstars but in the end it was all about the team’s goalie: Me. Everybody blames the goalie every tough loss a team goes through. Most don’t understand the heavy burden hearing that the goalie has failed their team, not even my own teammates know how much my heart aches each time someone tells me I wasn’t good enough to be on this team.

Every single day I face this battle field, I still get the same adrenaline rush every moment I get on ice. This was it for me. This life of hockey was the only life I will ever know. As soon as I fail to make big saves or win it for the team by doing a shutout, I knew I had not only failed my team, my coach, my family but I had failed myself most definitely.

“I can do this.” I tell myself. I still had a little bit of faith in me. That was one thing that was keeping me grounded. I always had to have faith in myself even just a teeny bit. I needed to believe in myself. I needed to believe that no matter what, I’ll still be a good goalie and I deserved to be on this team that I have considered my second family for so long.

This is my life. I could only control how to get to the direction I wanted my life to go and that starts now.

I closed my eyes and opened them once more. Everything had felt like slow motion as I watched the scene in front of me unfold. Both men from both teams rushed towards me, bodies flying and crashing to every corner, hockey sticks being thrown around.

This was my moment.

I slid my skates on both sides of the net in a splits position, one glove in the air, and my stick in the other hand. They all struggle getting the puck inside the net as I continued what I was doing. One shot at the puck from the other team, still in slow motion form. I quickly stood up from my position and stuck a hand covered glove in the air with only seconds left into 3rd period. I felt a strong force on my left hand as I caught the puck as if I caught a baseball. The crowd goes wild as the horn echoes through the whole arena.

I see my team rush towards me with the biggest smiles on their faces.

I knew that I had done it. I had proven to my team, my city, my family, and myself that I deserved to have this position.

This was the life I chose to live and that’s how it’s going to stay.