Who Wouldn't Want To Be Me

“Good God! Come on guys!” Jordan hollered, as we watched the seconds tick away on the clock, each one making our impending loss come closer. We were down two goals with four minutes left in the third. We needed a fucking miracle.

“Staal! Bates! Crosby! Bring it in boys! Line two!” Dan called, and as soon as everybody was switched we made our way to the faceoff circle. Jordan left it to Sid, deciding he would play wing, and waited for the puck to drop. Marchand was shoving me around, but I noticed the way Seguin looked intimidated by Jordan’s size. Hopefully that would play to our advantage.

As soon as the puck hit the ice I found myself flat on my ass; Marchand had shoved me forward so I nosedived towards the ice. I growled as I picked myself up and when the puck touched his stick slammed him into the boards with everything I had. He slumped to the ice for a second, which allowed me to skate up and pass the puck off to Jordan, before coming after me. We got the puck down into their end, and were passing extremely well, all too aware of the lack of time we had. Sid looked to me, and I saw Marchand and Bergeron move towards where I was standing, so they had little time to react to the one-timer Jordan slammed to the back of the net. We all hollered at the top of our lungs, dog-piling him as he celebrated his goal. One more, we could do that. We had almost two full minutes; we could manage one game-tying goal.

As we high-fived everybody on the bench Dan surprised us by saying we would stay on the ice; but Brooks and Michalek would be skating defense this time around. We lined up again, and it was the most hellish minute or so I’d ever experienced. The shoving, pushing, hitting, everything was ridiculous as we tried to scrape up that one goal that would do it. Jordan had taken my spot on the sidewall, so I’d moved in front of the net. Seidenburg kept pushing me around, as I tried to stay in front of Thomas and block his view. I couldn’t see around Krejci to see if the shot was fired, and was shoved onto my ass in front of the net. I slipped a little, catching an edge on my skate as I got back up, and then heard the buzzer go off. I looked to see the puck in the net, the spotlight in CONSOL on me. All I could hear was the screaming of the fans and soon the yelling of my teammates as I was dog piled by the whole twenty-some of them.

“What the hell just happened?” I asked, and Jordan patted the top of my helmet.

“You fucking scored! It hit your foot and went in! Thomas didn’t even see it! There’s only five seconds left; we took it to overtime!” he yelled, and I hugged him tightly. Soon enough though I could see the ref signaling; and felt dread in the pit of my stomach. He wanted to review the call.

“He didn’t kick it! Hell he didn’t even know the puck was there!” Dan called, but the refs ignored him. We made our way quietly back to our bench, standing in front of it and watching the replay on the Jumbo-Tron. It had bounced off of my skate when I’d slipped trying to stand up, and it was more than obvious I had no clue where the puck was.

“No goal – the puck was kicked in,” the announced declared, and I felt my heart drop into my stomach. Sid skated over to the refs, obviously arguing my case. If I hadn’t known where the puck was how could I have kicked it in? You could’ve heard a pin drop in the CONSOL center as Geno’s line went out for the last five seconds, and the horn signaling the end of the game was met with silence as Boston celebrated. We were done; our playoff run was over.

“FUCK!” I yelled, slamming my stick against the wall before sitting down hard in my stall. It was all my fault; if I’d paid more attention and seen the puck I could’ve stuck my stick out to deflect it in or something. Then we would be going into overtime rather than packing up for the summer.

“It’s not your fault,” Sid insisted, but it made no difference to me. I’d fucked it all up, I’d ruined the playoffs for the team.

“It is; if I hadn’t fucking kicked it we’d still be in this thing,” I growled, my teeth clenched as I resisted the sudden unexplainable urge to cry. The room was fairly quiet, and Dan didn’t have much to say. We’d given it our all, but we’d had more unlucky bounces and they’d had more lucky ones this game. He was proud of us. Sad that this was where it ended this year, but proud of us nonetheless. When he left there was no pump-up music pounding through the locker room, no jokes, no pranks, no laughter, just the solemn silence that accompanies the knowledge that you were done for the season.

“See you guys at team meeting tomorrow,” Marc said before he quietly left the room. I sat there, trying to calm the warring emotions inside me as everybody did their routine and left. I let out a rough breath, thinking I was alone, instead learning that Jordan had sat just as silently beside me the entire time.

“It’s not your fault Cam; you couldn’t have done any different,” he whispered, pulling me in for a hug. A few tears escaped then, and he wiped them away before softly brushing his lips against mine.

“I love you, no matter what. We’ll get ‘em next year,” he told me, those blue eyes boring into me as he cupped my face in his giant hands.

“I love you too,” I whispered back, and a hint of a smile graced his face before he walked to the showers. I took my equipment off then, waiting for him to get out. He came back to the locker room in just a pair of boxers, which made me blush and stare at the ground while he slipped back into his dress pants.

“Sorry, I have to stop doing that,” he grinned, mussing up my hair as I walked towards the showers. I didn’t lock the door – knowing Jordan would keep an eye on things, and quickly showered and dressed in my undershirt and dress pants before walking back into the locker room and putting on my dress shirt, tie, jacket, and shoes.

“Ready to go see everyone?” he asked, and I nodded as we walked out of the locker room together. I stopped before the door and took one last, long look.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to remember this, just in case,”

“In case what?” he asked, and I sighed.

“In case I’m not back next season,”