Aspiring

“Boys,” Coach Blackburn said. Tyler Marchand and his teammates and friends were gathered around him at center ice, having just finished practice the day before the 1981 Massachusetts state hockey championship was to begin on the home rink in Boston College. Coach held his stick high over his head, pointing at the four blue-and-gold banners hanging in the rafters. Behind the one that said, “Regional Finalist, 1977,” they saw a man crouched on a narrow catwalk.

“You’ve heard me say it a million times,” Coach said. “Losing is good for winning. You know I believe that. Losing has made us strong. It has helped us see our weaknesses so we could eliminate them. It has made us keenly aware that at any moment the thing we desire most can be snatched away.” He paused. “Now boys, we are done with losing. We have learned its lessons. Now it is time to win.”

After four years of lobbying, Coach had persuaded Massachusetts’ amateur hockey officials to hold the state tournament in Boston College. Players, coaches, families, and fans from across the state jammed the town’s only hotel and all the motels along Route 816. A line spilled out the door of Audrey’s, by seven each morning. Visitors clamored for the glossy tournament program, the souvenir pucks embossed with the Eagles’ logo, the kielbasa and bratwurst sizzling on grills in the rink parking lot.

All week, people from Maine and all over New England sought out Coach to tell him what a great tournament and a beautiful place this was.

But for all the good cheer and money flowing down Main Street, the tournament would not be a success unless the Eagles won it in front of their own fans, in their own rink, with all of Massachusetts hockey establishment watching. Coach knew that. That was the plan. And he thought – everyone at BC thought – that they had a good chance to win. They’d lost just six of the fifty-seven games they’d played that year. Three Eagles – Patrick Cleary, Zack Greene, and Tyler Marchand, the kid who’d been given the opportunity to make something of his career with BC – had been named to state All-Star teams. And they’d come so close the year before, only to lose to the Pipefitters in the semifinals. All the while, led by the offensive prowess of Tyler’s first line.

“Remember what we said all those years ago?” Coach said to them. “We said we came together to achieve the ultimate goal. And what was that?”

“To win one game, Coach,” they all answered in unison.

“Not all the games. One game. Now we’re going to play that game.” He lowered his stick. “We’re going to play it tomorrow in the quarterfinals. We’re going to play it again Friday in the semis. And on Saturday afternoon, we are going to win that one game, the state championship. Do I have that right, boys?”

“Yes, sir,” they yelled.

He gazed up into the rafters. “Fiyero,” he called out. “Now.”

They all looked up and watched as Fiyero, the captain, scuttled from banner to banner, undoing their fastenings. One by one they fluttered down to the ice. Coach gathered them up and carried them away.

Naturally he had a plan for defeating each of their opponents. In the quarterfinals, they came out hitting against quick but small Fife Electric of Concord and wore them down, scoring twice late to win, 3-1. Patrick scored the winner. Against Copperstone Sporting Goods, they frustrated their two high-scoring centers, by giving them the outside lanes while jamming up the front of their own net. Tyler scored two goals in their 4-1 win.

As they did in all of their games, they used the Eagle Swoop to clog the middle of the ice and make it hard for teams to break out of their own zone cleanly. The opponents and their fans loathed the Eagle Swoop, just as the parents and fans once had. Now, of course, the parents and fans loved the Eagle Swoop because it helped them to win. As Coach was so fond of saying, “They don’t care how, just how many.”

They were playing the Pipefitters in the state final. The latter had dispatched their first two opponents with ease, 5-0 and 7-1. They were big and fast and intimidating, like the big, bad Bruins of Boston. They had goatees and sideburns and long hair hanging down over the numbers on their jerseys. Mostly they were good. To beat them, they knew they would have to execute the Eagle Swoop to perfection. And take advantage of whatever scoring opportunities they could muster. Even if they did all that, they would not win if they didn’t stop number 17.

And just as so, they knew they could not win without stopping number 43, Tyler Marchand. College scouts had started watching the guy when he was just thirteen. That year he scored 127 goals in eighty games for Paddock Pools. The Pipefitters lured him away by making his father an assistant coach. By the time he was sixteen, colleges were begging him to enroll, and he was projected as a number-one draft pick in the Canadian junior leagues. But in an accident that summer, he lost the sight in his left eye.

As Pipefitter fans told it, he pulled over on the Ford Freeway near York Beach in Main to help a woman, whose car had broken down. When he tried to jump-start her car, the battery exploded. His face was somehow spared severe burns, but the hot acid splashed his eye.

Outside Pipefitter circles, another story circulated. It involved Southern Boston, jumbo firecrackers, and a neighbor’s mailbox. Doctors told him his hockey career was over. But when the Pipefitters held tryouts that fall, he showed up wearing a black eye patch. He struggled at first. His impaired depth perception made it hard for him to feel how hard to shoot and pass. His coaches worried that his severely limited peripheral vision made him a target for crippling checks. Still he played on.

He removed the eye patch for games; his teammates took to calling him “Deadeye.” In a few months, he was turning defensemen and goalies inside out again and, by season’s end, he was again one of the most talked-about players in Mass. Still, nobody was talking anymore about college and the NHL. The scouts didn’t believe a one-eyed skater could make it at those levels. They stopped coming.

In the Pipefitters’ first two state tournament wins, he was unstoppable, scoring five goals and assisting on four others. When they were watching film and studying the opponent, Tyler saw him score on a wrist shot, a low slap shot, a deke, and a high backhander. At one point, seemingly trapped behind the net, he caromed a goal in off a goaltender’s calf. On breakaways, Tyler noticed, he especially liked to try to stare the goalie down and then head-fake him into flopping, whereupon he would come to a near stop and calmly flip the disk over the fallen tender.

Coach noticed, too. After their semifinal win, he squeezed between Patrick and the goalie, Andrew Carpenter, on the bench in the dressing room labeled number three. “Tomorrow night, Andy, number seventeen,” he spoke. “Remember – you’re a stand-up goalie. I’ve seen you watching him. He’s got a lot of dipsy-doodles, eh? Every one’s designed to make you fall on your face, so he can go high on you. Don’t take the bait, Andrew. You’re not a flopper. Hold your ground.”

“I will.”

“Good.” He put his arm on the goalie’s shoulder. “You coming tonight?”

Coach had invited them all to stay in his billets. He said it was important for the entire team to be together before its biggest game ever. Everyone was going – except Tyler. His mother insisted that he not go.

“I don’t think so, Coach,” Tyler said. “My mother – you know.”

“Yes, I know. You ought to be there tonight. I’ll speak with your mom again.”

That was the night Tyler called his mother a bitch.

Patrick was quiet the next morning at their pregame skate-around. Tyler sat down beside him in the dressing room, as he struggled with his left skate.

“Have fun last night?” Tyler asked.

“Same old thing,” he replied. He kicked his skate heel against the floor to force his foot all the way in.

“I hope you guys got some sleep.”

“I’ll get a nap before the game.”

“You okay?”

“Just nervous.”

“Aren’t we all!” Fiyero’s voice sounded, across the way.

They weren’t going to be playing for hours, but already Tyler’s stomach was squirming like a bass on a fishing spear. Patrick never seemed to get nervous, though. Neither did Fiyero. They were always fooling around, throwing tape wads, telling jokes. Something wasn’t right.

Coach walked in. “Good morning,” he said. “Are we ready to win?”

“Yes, sir,” they all said. Patrick was busy still working on his skate.

“Cleary?” Coach inquired. “Something wrong, boy?”

Patrick didn’t look up. He plopped his helmet down on his head, grabbed his stick, stood up, and brushed past Coach on his way out of the room. Coach silently watched him go. Zack Greene came in with his bag slung over a shoulder. Coach slapped him on the back.

“Ready, Greenie?”

“Oh, yeah,” Zack said.

Tyler leaned over to Bryan, who was taping his stick blade. “What’s up with Clears?”

“Hell if I know. Maybe he’s pissed about not being the one shadowing the one-eyed guy?”

“We’re shadowing Drouin?”

A “shadow” would stay with Drouin wherever he went on the ice, in the hope of keeping him from getting the puck in the open. It was a difficult, but potentially glorious job. A shadow had to be fast and disciplined and utterly selfless. For a player as quick and shifty as Drouin, Tyler couldn’t imagine anyone but Patrick Cleary being the shadow.

“Don’t know for sure,” Bryan said. “But Coach had him up at his house for a couple of hours last night, and when they got back, I thought I heard him say something about it, but I was half asleep.”

“Man,” Tyler said, “we never had a shadow before. Coach must think this Drouin is still hot shit.”

“Screw him. Screw Drouin!” Bryan snorted, cracking his knuckles.

Eight hours later, they were back in dressing room 3, dressed and waiting to go out on the ice for the state championship game.

Tyler sat next to Patrick, staring at the shiny black tape he’d wound onto his glove. He was so afraid to play that he couldn’t wait to get out on the ice. That’s how any hockey player thought. Tyler’s belly would keep jumping around even after he got in the net and started roughing up the ice with his skates. The butterflies would disappear only after the first shot on goal drove into him and he saw the goalie swat at it, knocking it down or kicking it away or grabbing it in his catcher. If it hurt, even better.

The only sound in the dressing room was of the stick blades being tapped nervously on the rubber-mat floor. Through the closed door they could hear the crowd’s rumble, and when the door swung open to let Coach in, they saw the throng in red and gold squeezed in the space between the room and the rink, clapping and yelling. Fiyero slid in behind Coach. Coach threw the bolt on the door and stood before them in a jacket and tie, a gold Eagles stickpin in his lapel. His eyes scanned the room, falling briefly on each one of them. He clapped his hands together in front of him and held them there.

“Boys,” he spoke. “Three things.”

He held up an index finger. “First, as always, the Eagle Swoop.”

He held up two fingers. “Second, the Fitter goalie’s got a good glove and two left feet. Make him use those feet. Shoot low and crash the net for rebounds.”

He held up three fingers. “Last, we’re going to shadow number seventeen. Tyler Marchand’s our man.” He gave curt nod and glance in Tyler’s direction.

Tyler looked to Patrick, who was sitting, as always, to his left. His eyes were on the floor. “Seventeen’s got some speed and a few moves,” Coach said, “but he doesn’t much like the rough stuff, does he, March?”

“No, sir,” Tyler said.

“Truth is, he’s a fag, isn’t he, March?” This coach sounded just like his old coach, which was interesting.

“He’s a one-eyed fag with a lot of fancy-ass fag moves,” Tyler said.

He looked across the room at Patrick, the hint of a smirk on his lips. The others egged him on, saying, “Yeah, Marchy boy!” and “Do it!” and “Kill the little fag!” Patrick kept his eyes down. Tyler elbowed him, though. They couldn’t win without Patrick Cleary at his side to help them out. To help him out.

“Clears,” Tyler whispered. “You don’t want to be tied up covering Drouin. The guy’s got one eye. Hell, the Fitters’ll probably have a shadow on you!”

He ignored Tyler.

“What do you say, boys?” Coach spoke again. That was their signal. It was when Patrick usually clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Tonight, you’re Patrick Kane…” Now he didn’t move. Everyone was up, crowding around Coach. Tyler stood up.

“Pat?” Tyler repeated. Still he didn’t move.

Coach stuck out his right hand and they all reached in to touch it, glove on glove on glove. Coach got up on his toes and looked over their heads at Patrick. “Clears?”

Patrick slowly stood without raising his eyes and placed a glove, haphazardly on his outstretched forearm. Coach watched. Than he looked at the rest of them and said, “One game.”

“One game!” they yelled.

When one hockey team faces another, that is clearly faster and more skilled, the job of the goalie on the lesser squad is to keep his team close until they catch a break that might shift the momentum in their favor. Keep your team within a goal, even two goals, and they play with proper balance of patience and urgency needed to come back. Get behind by three and despair begins to take over. You start playing stupid. Then its over. In hockey there is no better match for superior speed and skill than a hot goalie.

Luckily, Andrew was never hotter than during the first two periods of that state title game.

The Pipefitters won the opening face-off and flung the puck hard into the corner to Tyler’s left. While two Fitters gave chase, Patrick tried to rifle the puck around the boards behind the net. But one of the Fitters slapped it out of the air and the next thing he knew it had bounced out in front of the net and onto the stick of Drouin, not fifteen feet away, all alone.

His rising shot caught Andrew on the left side of his neck, hitting him so hard that it popped his mask clear off his head. The puck deflected downward and pinged off the goalpost as Tyler saw his goalie tumble backward, grasping at the crossbar for balance, determined not to go down. The refs were whistling the play dead, but Drouin skated up and deliberately banged into him. He saw his left eye pop up close, phlegmy gray as the innards of a clam. He wanted him to see it.

“Fuck off!” Andrew snapped, pushing him away.

He laughed and kicked his mask aside. Then Patrick, Zack, and Bryan and two other Fitters converged, shoving and swearing as the refs pulled them apart. When they’d separated and he leaned over to pick up his mask, Patrick turned to Tyler and punched him once, hard, in the chest, nearly toppling him over right then and there. And in front of all of the Pipefitters and Eagles, Coach and the fans standing there deep along the glass.

“Where were you?” Patrick shouted, and Tyler heard Drouin laughing again as the Nova Scotia native turned away and skated to his position.

“Boys, what the hell?” Andrew screamed. His neck was burning and the butterflies were gone. Now only frustration and fury remained.

For the next fourteen minutes, it seemed like the Pipefitters never left their zone. It was as if they had ten skates to their five, as if there were an invisible wall at their blue line that kept the puck from going to the other end of the ice.

Andrew scuttled furiously back and forth between the goalposts, trying to stay square and upright between the puck and his net, as the Fitters relentlessly circled, quick as bumblebees, the puck flashing from one Fitter’s stick to another, corner to slot to point to dot, behind him, in front of him, and back again and again and again. The shots came from everywhere, two and three at a time. Andrew kicked them into the corners. He snatched them from the air. He deflected them off his shoulders, chest, and mask. Whenever he could, he gathered the puck into his chest or his glove to freeze it for a face-off, so that they could get fresh legs on the ice.

The Boston College Eagles were gasping for air.

Tyler felt off and it was frustrating him. But he fought through it, continuing to try and put an effort into his shadowing. He got better at staying with Drouin, but it didn’t matter much, because that just left their four players against their four and almost all of theirs, skater for skater, were better. But the Eagles had luck and drive and a desire.

Up until that one moment, part of the problem had been me; the other half was Patrick. He was as good as any of the Fitters, even Drouin, but he wasn’t playing his game. He wasn’t controlling the puck and leading the charge out of the zone. He was hanging back. Coach Blackburn knew. Tyler saw him glower when Patrick went to the bench. Tyler also saw Patrick ignore the man.

With two minutes to go in the period, the Fitters’ enormous defensemen, the aptly named Wallman, stepped between Tyler and Drouin and suddenly Drouin was free. Someone got him the puck and he faked out the last man, Zilchy, as if his skates were tied together.

Now it was just Drouin and Andrew. The goalie slid forward to cut down the angle, hearing the crescendo roar of the crowd, even as he heard Coach in his head telling to man to: “Hold your ground.” Drouin dropped to his left shoulder to fake a shot. Tyler saw his goalie’s right knee buckle. He had to do something.

Tyler launched back to help his goalie out and he dug his stick in and stole the black disk away from the stunned Fitter forward. The young man from Boston College didn’t hesitate; he put on his breaks, spun around and skated as fast and as hard as he could toward the opponent’s net. The goalie looked shocked and like he’d been bored. He slipped into his position, staring Tyler down.

Tyler loaded up his shot, faked it and made the goalie slide to his left. Then Tyler dug his blades into the ice and cut in the same direction. In a flash the puck was on his backhand. It was just how he’d seen him deke the other goalies. Like them, the goalie wanted to do down, his legs wanted to, his body wanted to. Tyler flicked the puck at the goalie’s right shoulder. It sailed into the back of the net.

There was a quick celebration, before the puck was dropped once more. Drouin shot off again; he flicked the puck at Andrew’s right shoulder now. His knees were giving way, his butt was dropping and the momentum was taking him to his left, away from the puck, when he flung out his right hand, the glove hand. As he fell to the ice, the puck just barely caught the edge of the glove and skipped higher. He craned his neck to look back as he sprawled and saw the puck – or maybe he just heard it – clang off the crossbar and fly up and over the glass behind the net. Whistles shrieked. He jumped to his feet. He’d gotten away with a flop, a sloppy one at that.

The crowd began to chant: “Andy! Andy! Andy!”

Drouin spun on his skates and stopped, looking straight at him. Their eyes meant. He grinned and winked his good eye. Tyler and Andrew looked away.

Finally, they caught that break. Wallman crushed Zack Greene against the boards on his left as Zack tried to scoop the puck out of their zone. But Wallman’s stick blade snagged in a seam of the boards and snapped off. He dropped the broken stick and tried to kick the puck as Zack fell to a knee, poked it past him, jumped up, and wheeled around him on a breakaway. The poor Fitter goalie must have been cold; he hadn’t seen a shot in ten minutes, since Tyler’s. He flopped, of course. Zack sent it to Tyler, who waited till he was down, then fired a shot over his right shoulder.

As the goal light flashed red a second time, Andrew raced out of his net to the blue line with his stick raised in celebration. He couldn’t believe it. No one could. The Fitters had put twenty-two shots on net to our four. But the Eagles led, 2-1. Thanks all to Tyler Marchand!